‘Would you like to be?’ he asked, his dark eyes looking hard at her.
‘I would,’ she said bluntly, seeing no point in being bashful.
‘I think I could arrange that,’ he said, and smiled. ‘Now, not a word to anyone, especially Lieutenant Graham.’
‘Is he going too?’ she asked.
Tench shook his head. ‘Does that sadden you?’
Mary smiled. ‘No, not at all. I don’t think he’s a man for an adventure.’
Tench chuckled, and Mary wondered if that meant Graham had in fact refused to go. ‘No, he’s not one for adventure, Mary. But you and I are, and perhaps we’ll see things we never dreamed of.’
Chapter four
The prisoners were not informed of the date of their transportation until the morning of 7 January, the day they were to be moved to the Charlotte.
Ever since Tench had told Mary when it would be, she’d been in a state of agitation, made far worse because she was unable to share it with anyone else. One moment she was hugging herself with glee that her days on the Dunkirk were numbered, the next she was terrified that the sea voyage and the land at the end of it would be even worse.
As the days slowly passed and she’d still heard nothing official, she began to think Tench might be mistaken. She couldn’t even ask Graham to verify it, for he would undoubtedly take Tench to task for telling her.
Lieutenant Graham was behaving very strangely though. More and more, he fluctuated wildly between tenderness and malice. This in itself seemed to confirm Mary really was leaving.
‘You are just a whore,’ he said with venom one night. ‘You might think you are different from the rest of the women in the hold, but you aren’t, just a damned whore like all the rest.’
Yet on another occasion as she was getting dressed to go back down to the hold, he fell down on his knees before her and clung to her with his face buried in her breast. ‘Oh, Mary,’ he gasped out. ‘I should have done more for you, not used you the way I have.’
On Christmas night he was very drunk and he told her he loved her. That night his love-making was gentle and very tender; he kissed the marks on her ankles made by the shackles and with tears in his eyes, begged her to forgive him for his moments of cruelty to her.
‘There’s nothing to forgive,’ she said. His previous insults hadn’t really hurt her, at least not if she stacked them up against the good things he’d done for her.
‘Then tell me you love me,’ he begged her. ‘Let me believe you came to me for something more than food and clean clothes.’
‘Of course I did,’ she lied, feeling sorry that he wasn’t able to accept their arrangement as she did. ‘But you aren’t free to love me, Spencer, so please don’t give me false hope by saying such things.’
She didn’t love him, she wasn’t sure that she even liked him, yet that night he had moved her, touched some inner part of her. As she made her way back to the hold the following morning, with another, newer grey dress, she wondered whether if they’d met under different circumstances it could have been different.
On the night of 6 January he called her out again, and she expected it was to tell her about the move the following day. But he said nothing about it, offered no endearments, further apologies or good wishes for her future. He just took her roughly, and curtly ordered her back to the hold. If she hadn’t known better, she might have thought he didn’t know what was coming for her.
It was barely light when the guards opened the door of the hold and read out the names of the women who were to go up on deck. Mary wasn’t surprised by the brusque order, but she was startled to hear just twenty names called, and some of those the old and infirm.
The reaction of the women called up on to the deck in a sleet storm was understandable. They were suspicious, puzzled and dismayed, clutching their ragged clothes about them and huddling together for warmth. Mary had to act just like them, for if anyone was to guess she knew where they were going, she’d be in trouble for not telling them. Yet as she stood there shivering on the deck, she was at least glad that Sarah and Bessie had been called, and Aggie, her old adversary, left behind.
Mary Haydon and Catherine Fryer were on the list as well, something Mary viewed with mixed feelings. They made a show of friendship now and then, but she sensed they would always be waiting for her downfall. Among forty women Mary had been able to keep her distance from them, but now the number was down to twenty it would be harder.
Thirty men were called out too, six of whom looked so sick and frail that they could barely be expected to stand, let alone survive a long voyage. But Mary was cheered to see Will Bryant and Jamie Cox among them, though disappointed that James Martin and Samuel Bird were not. Mary had grown to like all four men during her chats with them through the grille: Will and James both made her laugh, and Jamie had become like a younger brother. His crime had been stealing some lace valued at only five shillings, and he worried about how his widowed mother was managing without him. He was so mild and gentle that she was very relieved he could stay under the mantle of big Will’s protection. She hoped James and Samuel would look out for each other when their other friends had gone.
The news that they were to be moved immediately to the Charlotte came from a man Mary had never seen before. He wore civilian clothes covered by a thick cloak, and a three-cornered hat trimmed with gold braid, and seemed ill at ease addressing felons. Perhaps his nervousness was because he expected his announcement would be met with anger. And it was: the majority of the prisoners let out a wail of outrage, for many had already served over half their original sentence and had husbands, wives or children they now feared they would never see again.
As always, protestations were ignored, and the guards moved menacingly closer. Only Mary dared to raise her voice with a question.
‘Sir, are we to receive clothes for this voyage? Some of our number have little more than rags to wear, and I fear they will die of cold before we reach warmer climates.’
The man lowered his spectacles and peered over them at her.
‘Your name?’ he asked.
‘Mary Broad, sir,’ she called back. ‘And some of the women are already sick. Will there be a doctor to see them before we leave?’
‘Everyone will be checked,’ he said, but there was no certainty in his voice. He made no reply to the request for clothes.
It was dusk before all the prisoners from the Dunkirk were ferried out to the Charlotte in Plymouth Sound. Mary’s only thought as she saw the ship was surprise that it was so small, just a three-masted barque perhaps a hundred feet long. But it looked sturdy, and she was so perished with cold that she was incapable of taking anything else in.
The belief they were to set sail within a few days was soon dashed. It seemed the rest of the fleet wasn’t ready and there was a problem with the seamen’s wages. The conditions on the Charlotte were superior to the Dunkirk’s in as much as rations were larger, and the twenty women were not joined by any other prisoners, so they had more space. The men were not so lucky, for they had been joined by prisoners from elsewhere in England, making a total of eighty-eight. But as the Charlotte was anchored out in the Sound, and the hatches to the holds were closed because of bad weather, many of the women suffered from sea sickness immediately. Within days the conditions were almost as foul as those on the Dunkirk.
Week after week passed with no news of sailing. As they were still chained and kept in darkness for most of the day, with the ship wallowing in the waves, any optimism the women had felt at first was soon replaced by despair. Many of them took to their bunks and sought refuge in sleep. Those who found themselves unable to do this squabbled among themselves.
There were times when Mary fervently wished she was still on the Dunkirk. She desperately missed her conversations with Tench and the male prisoners, and even her visits to Graham. Tench was on leave, and on the rare occasions the women were allowed up on deck, the few Marines and sailors on board ignored them.
The brief periods on deck were a torment to Mary. While it was wonderful to breathe clean, salty air, to be able to stand upright and walk, the sight of Cornwall on the horizon was almost too painful to bear. And it was worse still to be forced to return to the stinking hold, never knowing when she’d get out again.
She found herself recalling the most inconsequential things about her home and family as she lay shivering on her bunk. The way Dolly and she used to brush each other’s hair at night, laughing at how it crackled and sparked. Father chopping up wood for the fire, shouting through the window that he should have had boys so they could do it. Mother straining her eyes threading a needle by candlelight. She wouldn’t sew and mend by day when the light was good because she felt it was sinful to spend daylight hours doing something she enjoyed.
Mostly these memories were tender ones, but now and again Mary would be stricken by a bitter one too. Like the time her mother beat both her and Dolly because they’d gone into the sea naked.
On the day it happened Mary hadn’t understood why their mother was so angry. It seemed totally illogical to her. It was after all a very hot day, and surely if she and Dolly had spoiled their new clothes with salt water, that would have been much more serious.
Of course it wasn’t Dolly’s idea: she couldn’t swim, and a paddle was all she wanted. Mary made her do it.
Mary could see them both now. Dolly was about sixteen, and had the Sunday afternoon off from her job in service, so they’d gone for a walk to the beach at Menabilly. Both girls were wearing new pink dresses. Their uncle Peter Broad, who was a mariner and rumoured in the family to be making a lot of money, had brought back the silky material from one of his voyages overseas, and Mother had spent weeks making them.
Dolly was absolutely thrilled with her new dress. She adored the colour pink and the style was a very fashionable one, with a nipped-in waist and a small bustle. Mary wasn’t struck on pink, nor did she want to be dressed identically to her sister. It was bad enough that Dolly always managed to look perfect, whatever she wore, for she was naturally neat, but when they were dressed the same, Mary thought her own defects showed up more. They were very alike in as much as they both had the same dark curly hair, but Dolly was much daintier, with a tiny waist, a graceful way of walking, and big blue eyes that enchanted everyone. Next to her Mary felt plain and awkward.
By the time they got to the beach they were very hot, and Dolly was disappointed that there was no one there to see her in her new finery.
‘It was silly to come here,’ she said peevishly. ‘Now we’ve got to walk all the way back in the heat.’
‘Let’s cool down in the sea then,’ Mary suggested.
Dolly was worried about their dresses of course, but after some persuasion Mary convinced her that they could go beyond the beach and through the woods, then come out again at the water’s edge, take their dresses off and paddle.
One thing led to another. Once they were in a place where they couldn’t be seen, Dolly saw no point in getting her petticoat or shift wet either, for she was sure Mary would splash her. Maybe for that one time she wanted to be as daring as her younger sister, and when Mary took off every stitch of clothing and went in for a dip, Dolly followed her willingly.
It was the most fun they’d ever had together. Mary held Dolly under her stomach and tried to teach her to swim. She couldn’t get the hang of it, so Mary pulled her along in the water by her hands. They were so engrossed in playing that they forgot to keep an eye out for anyone watching.
Later, dressed again, they giggled all the way home, and Dolly told Mary funny stories about some of the other maids where she worked.
Their mother was standing outside the house when they got home, and even from a distance they knew she was very angry. Her mouth was set in a straight line and she had her arms folded across her chest.
‘You little hussies,’ she shrieked at them as she came closer. ‘Get inside at once and explain yourselves.’
It seemed a fisherman in his boat had seen them bathing, and passed on the information to someone else, who hastily reported back to their mother.
‘The shame of it,’ she kept saying over and over again as she clouted them up the stairs and ordered them to remove their clothes.
She beat them with a stick across their bottoms and backs, drawing blood on Dolly. Then she banished Mary to bed without any supper, and Dolly back to her employers.
Mary had thought then that her mother was a cruel kill-joy. She couldn’t see what harm there had been in swimming naked. And she continued to blame her mother when Dolly never seemed to want to go anywhere with her again.
Mary sighed as she remembered that day. She had been so innocent then, barely aware of her own budding breasts, let alone of how desirable Dolly was. She certainly didn’t have any idea that her mother was afraid of what might have happened if her daughters had been spotted by a couple of sailors.
But she knew now, and understood what animals men could be. It seemed to her that almost everything her mother had tried to warn her about had happened. Even the absence of the menses.
Mother had always been vague about what happened between men and women, but she had warned them about what she called ‘funny business’, and said when the menses didn’t arrive it meant a girl was having a baby.
Mary tried to convince herself this couldn’t be so, that perhaps it was only the result of the anxiety of waiting for the ship to sail. But by March she was forced to face the possibility that she was expecting Graham’s child, and she consulted Sarah.
‘I reckon you are,’ she said, looking at Mary thoughtfully. ‘You poor cow, I’d throw myself overboard in the chains if I thought I was. I’ve heard tell you can get a reprieve from hanging because of your belly, but I never heard of anyone getting off transportation because of it.’
Mary’s heart sank even further then, for she had expected Sarah to pooh-pooh her fears. ‘Well, if I am to have it, I’d rather have it here than on the Dunkirk,’ she said defiantly. She had witnessed Lucy Perkins giving birth there and the horror of it hadn’t left her. Lucy was not released from her chains, and after some twenty hours of labour her baby was stillborn. Lucy died a few days later. No doctor was called, the only help she’d had was from the other women. Sarah had been one of them. ‘Besides, you’ll help me, won’t you?’
‘Of course I will,’ Sarah said quickly, perhaps remembering that birth too. ‘You’re strong and healthy, you’ll be all right.’
Mary lay awake all that night worrying. Not so much about the birth, but what Tench would think of her when he found out. She would never stand a chance with him now.
It was the start of May, just after Mary’s twenty-first birthday, when they finally heard they were to sail on Sunday the 13th to join the rest of the fleet. There would be eleven ships in all, four of them carrying nearly 600 convicts and a full company of Marines, some with their wives and children, and the rest carrying stores and provisions for the first two years.
During the long wait, most of the other prisoners had written home, or if they couldn’t write, had others write letters for them. One day back in April while Mary and the other women were allowed up on deck for exercise, Tench had suggested writing one for Mary, but she refused his offer.
‘It’s better they don’t know where I’m bound,’ she said, looking sadly towards Cornwall across the choppy sea. A green haze of spring had suddenly appeared on the land in the last few days, and she thought nostalgically of primroses on grassy banks, birds nesting, and newborn lambs out on the moors. It seemed unbelievable that she was to be torn away from the land she loved so well. ‘Better for them to think I don’t care about them any more than to imagine me in chains.’
Tench glanced down at her chains and sighed. ‘Maybe you’re right. But I think my mother would sooner know I was alive and thinking of her, even if I was on a prison ship.’
Mary felt even sadder at his words. Before long her belly would be swollen and he’d see she wa
s having a baby. She doubted he would want to continue to be her friend then. She could just about cope with never seeing her family again, but she didn’t think she could stand to be rejected by Tench too.
As the Charlotte finally weighed anchor and slipped out of Plymouth Sound, many of the women were crying and saying their goodbyes to England forever.
‘I shall come back,’ Mary said firmly. ‘I swear it.’
While many of the women grumbled even more about sea sickness, the sound of the wind in the sails, and the cuts and bruises they got from falls in bad weather, Mary found herself exhilarated once the ship got underway. The sound of wind in canvas was like music to her and she delighted in watching the bows cleave through the clear water.
The captain of the ship, a Royal Naval officer called Gilbert, was a humane man and he ordered the prisoners’ chains to be removed, and only put back on as punishment for bad behaviour, or when they reached port. And as the ship sailed down the coast of France and the weather improved, the hatches were opened up again and the stink in the holds gradually dispersed.
Mary had always loved sailing, but she had never been in anything bigger than a fishing boat, and then only for a few hours at a time. It was very different on a big ship, for you could move about and even find quiet hideaways between coiled copes and lockers to get away from everyone else.
All at once she understood why her father had always eagerly anticipated his next voyage. It was exciting to feel the deck roll beneath her feet, and there was a kind of awe in seeing the wind harnessed to drive the ship along and the way everyone from the lowest sailor to the captain worked as one to maintain her speed and direction. The Charlotte was one of the slowest ships in the fleet, and the men had to work hard to keep up. Yet striving to hold their position was a challenge, and Mary could see the pride in their faces each time they managed to outrun the Scarborough or the Lady Penryn.
But it was the freedom to be up on deck for long periods which Mary appreciated above all else. She could cope with the hold at night, lying wrapped in a blanket between Bessie and Sarah; it wasn’t so terrible if she’d been outside nearly all day.
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