by Jo Macauley
“You have to look on the bright side,” Maisie said, coming over and taking Beth’s hand, squeezing it tight. “They could have hanged your friend, you know!”
Beth clenched her fist in frustrated rage. “It’s not fair,” she whispered. “Transportation? After everything he’s done for this country...”
“What do you mean?” Maisie enquired, and Beth quickly shook her head, realizing her slip-up. “Nothing ... Uh, his work at the Navy Board.” She sighed. “It’s all just so unfair.” Beth could hardly believe that Strange had done nothing, and now John had been found guilty of a crime he hadn’t committed, would never have committed. Surely he could have done something, pulled some strings? She clenched her jaw angrily.
“Now, you pull yourself together, Mistress Beth,” Maisie said sternly. “There’s a lot worse than transportation, and I should know.” Her voice softened. “It’s not so bad. If you work hard, you can afford a few privileges. That sweetens life a bit. And it’s only seven years. He can come back home once it’s up. Or he can stay and make a new life for himself over there, like we hope to!”
“A new life,” Beth repeated, thinking.
“He’s young and strong. Well-spoken too. Your friend could really prosper in America.” Maisie smiled encouragingly. “Think how much money he could send home to his family! Why, they might even buy their own house, in time. They couldn’t do that on the pittance he likely earns here in London, could they? Don’t worry, Mistress Beth. I’m sure someone’s looking out for him. A guardian angel.”
Beth sat up straight. Suddenly everything she had just seen made perfect sense. “That crafty old fox knew exactly what he was doing...!” she murmured to herself. John did have someone watching out for him; but “angel” certainly wasn’t the word for Sir Alan Strange...
* * *
“I need to talk to you.”
Strange rose from his armchair at the Corinthian Club. “Close the door.”
Beth did so, leaving the two of them alone together in the darkened room. A single oil lamp stood on Strange’s table, turned down low; the man liked the shadows.
“John Turner has been sentenced to transportation. But you already knew that would happen, didn’t you?”
“I have saved his life,” Strange said. “Soon he will be in America, ready to resume his career as an undercover spy. As will your colleague Ralph.”
“Ralph too?” Beth exclaimed.
“He has agreed to form part of my new American spy network. I already have passage arranged for him. He would prefer to take up his spy work under your supervision, but as you haven’t yet accepted my offer, I could not guarantee him that.”
Well played, Beth thought.
“I’ve ... I’ve decided to accept, that offer, sir.” Strange smiled, and Beth held up a hand. “But I have two conditions.”
“Conditions?” Strange said, sounding both surprised and irritated.
“Yes. Firstly I require you to pay John Turner his first year’s wages in advance.”
Strange’s irritation turned to anger as he saw she was serious. “My budget is limited, as you know very well. Why would I agree to such a thing?”
“Because I doubt any of your other senior agents is willing to uproot their whole life and move to America. More importantly, because John has a family who will starve without him,” Beth said severely. “They cannot wait until he reaches America. They need the money now.”
“I see,” said Strange.
“My second condition is that I am allowed to bring a friend with me.”
Strange sighed. “Let me guess. The orange girl,” he said, not hiding his displeasure.
“Her name is Maisie. If I am travelling in disguise as a grand lady, then I will need a maid. She’s perfect.”
“And how on earth would you explain to her why you want her to play such a part?”
“Leave that to me.”
Strange loomed above her, his face etched with shadows. “Miss Johnson, had you considered changing career? Perhaps your interest in worthy causes would be better served if you were patroness of a charitable institution.”
Beth drew a deep breath. “We have nothing further to discuss,” she said. “Good day, sir.” She turned on her heel.
Her hand was on the doorknob when Strange called back to her. “Wait!”
“I was a foundling child,” Beth said, without looking round at him. “Do not joke with me about charity, sir. I would not be here now without them.”
“Miss Johnson...”
“Good day!”
“I’ll grant your blasted conditions,” Strange said quickly. “If that’s the price I have to pay to get my network started in America, then so be it.”
Beth nodded, stifling a smile. “Then we have a deal.”
“We do. Meet me here tomorrow and we will finalize our plans. But I warn you, Miss Johnson, I am still your superior. In future I will not be bargained with like a market fishwife!”
“Understood, sir.”
Beth left without looking back, wearing a smile of victory on her face.
* * *
The man on the bench was dying, and he was doing it noisily.
“When’s the beast?” he raved, whipping his head from side to side. “My lungs do bleat like buttered peas. O, laddie, whet me a moonbeam for to cut my way out...”
He had been raving like this for hours. The final stages of gaol fever had taken hold of him. Sores had spread across his face and he reeked like a slaughterhouse. John kept his distance as best he could. Here in the condemned block at Bridewell, the prisoners were crammed in like the human cargo on a slave ship. A semicircle had formed around the dying man as guards and prisoners alike watched him die.
“Where’s my Dolly-o?” the man said, sitting bolt upright. Then his eyes rolled back in his head and he fell back. He made some wet sounds in his throat and his breathing came to a slow, rattling end.
“There’s another one we don’t have to hang,” one of the guards said. “Back away now, you filth. Show’s over.”
As they dragged the corpse away to a freshly dug lime pit, John heard the clang of a stick on a bucket. That meant food. Along with the other prisoners, he went to stand in line by the crude tables where the rations were being handed out. The man in front of John was given a large hunk of bread and a chicken leg to chew, along with a mug of beer. The other prisoners looked on with greedy eyes as he sat down to feast. Nobody dared come near him.
“Why can’t I have what he had?” John asked the guard with the ladle.
“You can if you pay for it,” the guard said. “His family’s paying a shillin’ a day for his keep and protection while he’s inside. How much are you getting?”
“Nothing,” John said.
The guard shrugged and silently sloshed a ladleful of thin gruel into a wooden bowl and stuck a crust of bread into it. The bread was dotted blue with mould. “Move along.”
John’s stomach was aching with hunger. He sat down on the ground away from the other prisoners and got ready to eat the first loathsome mouthful. As he did, a shadow fell across him. It was Jenkins, six-foot four and thick as a barrel.
“I’ll have that.”
“You’ve had yours!”
“And now I’m having yours too.”
John tried to keep his food, but he had no chance. Jenkins smacked him around the face like a disobedient dog, took his rations and strolled off, munching them. John’s eyes burned, but he was damned if he’d cry.
“You could always do what I do when someone gives me grief,” said a man called Shaw snidely, settling down beside John.
“What’s that?”
“Wait until they’re asleep, then cut their throat.”
John couldn’t tell whether he was joking or not. The eighteen-year-old was being held for murder, after all.
“Or you can just wait for him to die,” said Shaw.
John nodded. “They’re hanging him on Thursday, I heard.”
&nbs
p; “Thursday?” Shaw laughed. “He’s rotten through with typhus! He won’t last that long.” The boy pulled his sleeve back and showed John his own sores. “You can’t dodge the gaol fever. You’ll get ’em too, if you haven’t already.”
“I’ve got them,” John lied. Then he had a thought. “Maybe they won’t put me on the ship, if I’m sick.”
“You’ve got to be joking,” Shaw scoffed. “All the transportees they load onto them ships are sick, near enough. You know how many survive the journey over? About half! And the ones that make it don’t often last more’n a month! They work you ’til you drop, in the colonies.”
“But—”
“We’re all dead men here,” Shaw said, standing up and brushing off his muck-encrusted trousers. “You too. Mummy’s not coming to get you.”
“But people do return from transportation!” John said. “I’ve heard stories!”
“Stories,” Shaw said, and spat on the ground. The spittle was red with blood. “That’s what they are. A load of spit.”
“You’re lying!”
Shaw looked back at him. “You want to watch it,” he said softly. “I’ve killed men for less.”
“He has too,” chimed in another young prisoner.
John sat with his head in his hands. They were going to take him thousands of miles away, to a country he couldn’t even imagine. And that was if he didn’t die first, from hunger or gaol fever, or Shaw’s hands around his neck in the night...
Later that night, as he lay on the meagre planks that were all he had for a bed, he tried to think of his friends, to bring him comfort in this dark place. Beth, especially. Soon, the memory of her face would be all that was left to him. But all he could see was the grotesque, staring-eyed face of the man who had died while he looked on.
He rolled over and opened his eyes. There, revealed in a shaft of bright moonlight, was a symbol scratched into the stone above his bunk. A crude dagger, freshly drawn. It hadn’t been there before when he’d tossed and turned trying to get to sleep on previous nights. And as soon as John saw it, he knew he could not sleep at all that night. His life was more directly under threat than he had even imagined.
He recognized that symbol, and it wasn’t just a random scrawl – he realized it meant somebody knew that he was a spy. And he couldn’t imagine why it mattered, now he was practically a condemned man anyway – but it looked like someone was sending him a threat.
Chapter Fifteen - Fatal Complication
Now that Beth had money from Strange, getting into Bridewell to see John was child’s play. The guards even escorted her through to a private cell where they could talk without the other prisoners listening in. It wasn’t until Beth was halfway down the steps that she realized what they must think she was here for. They probably got a lot of young women in here, paying to visit their sweethearts...
The door closed behind them. “Ten minutes, and that’s yer lot,” the guard warned through the barred window. “There’s rules. And don’t try slipping him a file. We’ll be searching him after you’ve gone.”
John looked starved and desperate. He clearly hadn’t slept, and the filth of the cells was caked on him like mud. Beth went to hug him anyway, but he held up a warning hand. “Better not. These prison rags are full of lice.”
“It’s good to see you,” she smiled.
“You too,” he said, managing a smile in return. “Beth, I have to tell you something—”
“Your family is safe,” she told him quickly.
John stared, like a man no longer willing to trust good news. “Safe? How?”
She checked to make sure nobody was eavesdropping, then told him everything: Strange’s offer, her decision to accept. She told John about the plan for him to ride out the transportation to America, and that they’d then arrange for him to work as a spy again over there – alongside her and Ralph. And she explained about the advance money she’d negotiated for him. When she told him she’d had some of it passed on to his mother, he slumped in his chair like a weary traveller who finally reaches a resting place, long after he’s given up hope of ever finding one.
“God bless you for that,” he said. “That makes all of this easier to bear, somehow. Knowing they won’t starve, no matter what happens to me.”
“Nothing’s going to happen to you,” Beth chided. “You’ll be protected. Strange has it all under control—”
“You’re wrong,” John said hollowly. “Beth, I’ll be a slave in all but name, if I even get there alive. This place is a death trap! Six men died of gaol fever yesterday. Six! And there’s something else.” He lowered his voice even further. “Someone scratched a dagger over my bunk.”
Beth looked at him, confused for a moment before she realized what he meant. “Dear God,” she said. “Vale uses that symbol.”
“I know,” John said. “An assassin’s mark. God alone knows how, but one of Vale’s men must be in here with me! I don’t know whether he’s a prisoner, or a guard, or even one of the governors. But he’s going to murder me, and soon. They must have got wind of Strange’s plans somehow.” He turned pleading eyes upon her. “You have to get me out of here.”
Beth nodded, feeling the blood drain from her face. “I’ll talk to Strange.”
“You’ll have to do something fast. Vale’s assassin won’t strike in the prison, I expect. Too many people watching, too much chance of getting caught, nowhere to hide my body. But once I’m on that transportation ship, he’ll finish me for sure. Nothing’s easier than getting rid of a body when you’re at sea...”
* * *
Beth could hear her heart pounding as she rushed to find Ralph. It had only been a couple of hours since she’d seen John, but she’d moved swiftly, and at least now she had a plan, however risky. Strange had been stony-faced but business-like when he’d heard her news, and Beth couldn’t help but admire his calm in the face of a crisis. Now she just needed to find Ralph...
She finally located him in an alley round the back of the Pig and Whistle, sitting on a pile of crates like a king holding court. The scruffy children that had surrounded him ducked out of sight when they saw Beth coming.
“It looks like rain,” she said casually.
“Bing avast, you lot,” Ralph ordered, using the secret language only street people knew. He’d taught Beth a few phrases, and she knew “bing avast” meant “get out of here”. The children obediently fled, darting off down side streets and vaulting over walls into backyards.
“Sorry to interrupt whatever business you were conducting there,” Beth said.
“What is it?” He already knew it was an emergency, “it looks like rain” was one of their code phrases.
“One of Vale’s assassins is in Bridewell, targeting John,” she said. “We can’t just let him be transported to America. He’ll never survive the journey.”
“So what are we going to do?” Ralph said. “Bust him out of prison?”
“You’re not far wrong.”
Ralph stared. “You can’t be serious. How on earth—”
“I’m deadly serious. Strange says the only hope of saving John is to make sure he never gets on that transport ship. He wanted to send some of his men to free him, but I insisted we’d take care of it. This is John we’re talking about, after all.”
Ralph nodded quickly and blew out a long breath. “Right. Well, where do we start?”
“We need to know everything about the movement of transportees. Where they take them, how they get them there, how many guards they have – everything. Can you do that?”
Ralph pursed his lips. “I think so. It’ll mean talking to some very nasty people, though.” He leaped down from the crate and landed gracefully as a cat. “But I’ll ask around. Meet me back here at six.”
* * *
Beth wished Ralph had picked a more public meeting place, or at least a better lit one. As she made her way back down the alley, only the light of the moon showed her where to walk. It was almost full now. A shadow up ah
ead detached itself from the darkness and came towards her. As she braced herself to run or fight, it held its hands up.
“Easy, Beth. It’s me.”
She let out the breath she’d been holding. “Next time, Ralph, we meet inside the pub.”
“Nah. Too many nosy parkers.” His grin flashed in the dark. “Listen. Here’s what I’ve found out. The prisoners get taken from the Bridewell in batches, still in their chains. They load them onto small boats at Greenwich Harbour, then sail down round the coast to Portsmouth. That’s where the transportation ships are, the big ’uns.”
“So if we were to set John free, where would we do it?”
“Greenwich,” Ralph said quickly. “They have to get ’em onto rowboats and ferry ’em out to the ships, and that’s the one time when the chains come off. If we can take down the guards, we can whisk John away before they know what’s happened.”
Beth’s palms ached with excitement. “You think it’ll go to plan?”
“I ruddy well hope so, my old duck,” Ralph said softly. “Because if we mess this one up and they catch us, it won’t just be John who swings for it. We’ll be hanging right next to him...”
Chapter Sixteen - One Chance
“You have a week to set your affairs in order,” Strange told Beth. “I’ve booked passage to America for yourself, Master Turner and Miss White on the Antelope, out of London port.”
He clenched his jaw a little when he mentioned Maisie and John, but Beth ignored him. She knew that John’s passage on the Antelope would be contingent on their rescue going to plan later on, and that Strange wasn’t pleased at her insistence that she and Ralph conduct the dangerous snatch-and-grab themselves.
He passed her a smart leather case. “Everything you’ll need for the passage is in here, along with your deeds to the house provided for you in Virginia. Once you are securely in residence, but not before, you are to unpick the secret pocket sewn into the lining. It contains the codes and ciphers we will use when communicating.”
Beth kept a perfect poker face as she looked over the papers. After living in one room for as long as she could remember, the thought of a whole house made her giddy.