The Hanging of Mary Ann

by Angela Badger

  No more rambles at night, when he’d absented himself from the fireside with excuses of lost cattle or marauding dingoes, no more tumbled sheets in some wayside inn. Well, why couldn’t he have both… Brigid and Bywong?

  “I say you need help around the place. I say she’s coming.”

  “No, George. She is not.” Mary Ann clenched her fists.

  He paused and looked at her white, strained face. He reached for the knife and sliced off a piece of chicken breast. “A man’s master in his own home, Mary Ann.”

  “This is my home, George.”

  He half rose and glared at her.

  “She’s comin’ and you’d best make the best of it!”

  “She’s not coming.”

  “And I say she is.” He pushed the chair back and went into the yard.

  At that moment from the house came the chimes of the grandfather clock striking nine o’clock.

  To Mary Ann each stroke sounded like the voice of her ancestors. The deep, notes rumbled out strong and firm and utterly rebuked her for the low level to which the family had come.

  In that instant she vividly recalled her grandparents. Even more vividly she remembered Grand-père’s words as he spoke of the doomed queen. A Guise never turns his back on the enemy.

  Now she faced her enemy. Hastily she put that word aside. She must not think like that. He was the father of her children. He must understand, he must understand.

  Mary Ann stood stock still for a whole minute. She picked up the knife and started to wipe the blade upon her apron. It was sticky from the chicken. Then another thought struck her: she must tell George her news. That might put the whole of their life into perspective again. Wiping the knife on her apron she followed him into the yard.

  “Wait, George… wait!”

  He grunted some unintelligible words, his back firmly turned as he started to walk away.

  “I’ve got something to tell you.”

  “Go tell it to the birds, tell it to them jackasses. Leave me be! Brigid’s coming here to live, make no mistake.”

  “Where are you going, George?”

  “Where do you think?”

  Gripping the knife she leapt towards him.

  CHAPTER 18

  Lord Justice Alfred Stephen glanced at the prisoner in the dock. He rearranged his papers and shuffled some of them to one side, making a neat pile of the rest.

  Squirming, he shifted uneasily. The night had been most uncomfortable. Admittedly his bed had been clean and the covers adequate but, above in the roof, the rats scampered and squeaked. Now a queasy stomach was beginning to make itself evident. Could it be the water or the food?

  The inn, albeit the best in town, proved a far cry from the comforts of his home in Hyde Park Crescent. Dinner had been an even further cry from the repast of a few evenings ago at Government House. Then there’d been every variety of fish, flesh and fowl, hock and claret flowed like water, sweet wines had been served with the syllabubs. Last night’s roast fowl of indeterminate age and cold bread pudding rumbled ominously in his guts. Sighing to himself he admitted his life to be one of extremes and wondered briefly what this woman’s life had been like.

  But only briefly, for Sir Alfred Stephen was a true man of the law. He had a reputation for extreme fairness. His mind functioned on two levels, as a tireless legal administrator and a devoted family man, but he lacked that element of imagination to glue the two together and make for compassion.

  The clerk, a fussy little man with a perpetual dewdrop on the end of his nose and eyes that gimleted each prisoner in turn, prided himself on his local knowledge.

  “One of the Guise family, sir, very early in the district.”

  Sir Alfred nodded. “Heard of the family. French, of course.”

  “Oh, we have every nation in the world come to the Limestone Plains and roundabout, sir.”

  He glanced at her again, a dark-haired young woman, not much meat on her bones. Skinny, in fact. She’d sat there throughout the morning without looking once in his direction, her eyes cast down or just occasionally scanning the courtroom where friends and relatives anxiously gathered.

  Lot of interest in the woman he noted, even if she did not appear particularly concerned. Strange remote quality about her. Not one supplicating look in his direction, not a single tear. Unwomanly. Definitely unwomanly.

  But then to kill your husband wasn’t exactly in the normal course of events. Not the way to proceed with married life. And Alfred Stephen considered himself an expert on married life. Wasn’t he about to be presented with his eighteenth child?

  In the midst of the respectful hum of the court his thoughts flew for a moment to that event possibly taking place at this very moment far away in Sydney. Dear Eleanor, would she prove stronger than Ginny had been? In bringing her ninth into the world poor Virginia had lost her life – and the child. But Eleanor had so far proved to be made of tougher material.

  He smilingly reflected on that bustling home. God, justice and family, what a fortunate man he was to have such a rewarding life. Eighteen children! Would it be a boy or another girl? How wonderful were the rewards of duty and fidelity. All those sparkling eyes and rosy cheeks.

  Of course some looked askance at such a large family, at least in the home of a Supreme Court judge. Some would say an educated man might have managed a smaller family?

  Well, let them titter behind their hands. Oh yes, there were ways, ways that were known to many, ways to limit the Will of God. There were herbs and shocking stratagems to regulate the size of a family. There were restrictions for the man - certainly not condoned in the Bible - and there were devices for the woman - he’d hesitate to use the word ‘lady’. Yes, shocking devices that interfered with God’s work.

  The French were adept at such matters. Why, it was said they even used pig’s bladders to… well, to contain the problem. Ah, nicely put. And weren’t there said to be sponges for their consorts? Wasn’t it maintained that for a French nobleman to have his mistress with child was regarded as the most shocking and ignorant behaviour? The French! Well, we all know about the habits of the French!

  So, a descendant of the de Guise family? Well, that might account for her distant demeanour. A cornstalk perhaps, but not a sturdy one. Not a typical currency lass. Everyone knew the French were given to romantic notions of the extravagant kind. They even spoke of passion, passion for men and passion for women.

  He shuddered. Passion for women! Sir Alfred blinked as he thought of either his first or second wife even reaching up and… and… oh no! He closed his eyes momentarily.

  What were they saying? Firmly he pushed away his wandering thoughts and listened to the evidence.

  A cause for jealousy, the hint of an errant husband? Well who could say what the truth of that might be but certainly if every wife who caught her husband playing away from home immediately knifed him, then the population of the Colony would soon be seriously depleted.

  The place was going to the dogs. All these Continentals—Germans, Italians, French and heaven knows what else. The place was filling up with them. Always disputes when you had people like that to deal with.

  “Mr Fawcett is her lawyer,” the clerk told him.

  Why, the woman did not even appear to be listening to her own lawyer! Her family had procured one of the best legal men in Colony; why didn’t she at least acknowledge him? Sir Alfred could not understand such behaviour. He expected a variety of emotions, to see the face of the accused display some sort of reactions: fear, supplication, resignation? Craven glances were called for, not this aloof bearing.

  She just sat there, silent, without the slightest trace of humility, staring into the distance with her gaze miles and miles away. Tall, dark-haired, sombre-featured, submitting but remaining detached from the proceedings.

  “Constable Nugent!” The first witness was called. The policeman had been told to make a few notes but his ability with the pen did not match his ability with saddle, handcuffs, lock-up or
carbine.

  “Prisoner stated…” He fumbled with the paper.

  “The very words, Constable,” Sir Alfred demanded.

  “She said, ‘I wish I had done it better. If he gets over this I’ll do for him yet’.”

  A gasp went round the court. The Lintotts and the Cantors looked at each other and shook their heads, Frank de Rossi muttered to one of his neighbours, someone at the back of the court cried out, “Shame.”

  “Silence!” shouted the clerk.

  They heard how George Brownlow had staggered along the road and been able to reach some houses where his cries drew attention to his plight. One, Edward Hines, had taken him into his home and sent for the doctor. Andrew Morton, surgeon, testified that he’d suffered a wound on the left side between his ribs, closer to the spine than the front of his body. George Brownlow had lingered on at the house of Edward Hines, who had persuaded the dying man to make a statement two days later.

  “Dr Morton said that he’d best make his peace with God and leave a statement explaining what happened. He told us Mr Brownlow did not have long to live.”

  “And what was stated?”

  “Mr Brownlow said his wife, Mary Ann that is, attacked him as he was crossing the yard in the night time.”

  “And why did she do this?”

  “The victim said he’d told her he was bringing a lady to live in the house.”

  “A lady?”

  “Well,” the good sergeant hesitated, “she wasn’t quite described as that.”

  “Go on, man, go on… the exact words!”

  “There was Mr Hines there and Dr Morton and he was failing, failing fast. I just writ down what was said, Sir. He said he was bringing his fancy woman to live at Bywong.”

  Fancy woman! A crime of passion! Jealousy and passion were foreign emotions in Sir Alfred’s own world. Passion distorted the judgement. Reprehensible in a man, quite shocking in a woman. The embrace of a woman was every man’s right but women were expected to control their emotions. It was not their place to dictate to a husband, however wayward, what his actions should be.

  Sharply he brought himself back to the proceedings in hand.

  Dismissing the sergeant he sat back as Dr Morton was called to the stand.

  Andrew Morton’s words came loud and clear.

  He agreed with all the sergeant’s words. That night after attending to George Brownlow he’d gone over to Bywong.

  “I examined the woman and found that she was with child.”

  With child! Had he heard rightly? Why that was, let’s see, he checked on the months that had passed since the date of the crime. The child would be no more than a month at the most now. She already had two children; how could a mother commit such a crime?

  Sir Alfred peered at Mary Ann. Not a vestige of feeling showed on her face. He turned a page and penned a few more lines. Painstaking and meticulous, he wrote down her actions in his own careful shorthand, each outline etching yet one more fact in the depiction of her character. Black was black, white was white, but the unfortunates who ended up facing him were usually those who had stumbled into a zone where only grey prevailed.

  Mary Ann looked up at the mention of her child. Her lips tightened and she frowned. Even to hear the word mentioned in this cold, shabby place sickened her. Babies were soft and warm and smelt of fresh linen, woollen bootees and bonnets. They had no place in this grim gathering where the air was filled with a mixture of mothballs and musty drapery overlaid with a patina of stale sweat. She made an involuntary gesture to push away the thought of little George, and return him to his milky sweet world.

  The long awaited son!

  Somehow if she clung to the thought of her son she found the strength to look back once more upon that night. The night when a lifetime of daily chores, early morning canters with her grandfather, working in the orchard, searching for straying beast, listening for her husband’s step upon the verandah, a whole lifetime made up of the daily round and cherished in the depths of her being came to an abrupt halt.

  George had flung himself out of the door and started across the yard. With one hand she’d picked up her skirts, the knife was still in her other and her apron still wrapped round its blade.

  “Stop,” she’d called but only the flickering candlelight from the window and the faint lifting of the branches bore witness to her desperation.

  He could not leave! She had to tell him her secret, she had to let him know another life stirred within her, she had to urge him to stay away from those who were waiting to swoop down upon the lands of the Guise family and gorge themselves upon the feast, like the crows who circled overhead and then came to rest in the branches where they can watch and wait. Just as the Irishwoman had watched and waited ten, twenty years? How many years had she awaited her chance.

  “George! George, listen!” She ran after him.

  He’d spun round and stood still. “Listen? You ain’t got nothin’ I want to hear. Brigid’s coming here to live, that’s my last word.”

  She put out her hand and grasped his shoulder but he pulled away and raised his arm as though about to strike. “Get away from me.”

  Stepping back for one second Mary Ann raised her hands and the apron dropped away. “I’ve got something to tell you.”

  “Go tell it to the birds, tell it to them jackasses. Leave me be! Brigid’s coming here to live, make no mistake.”

  “Where are you going, George?”

  “Where do you think?”

  Gripping the knife she leapt towards him.

  Mary Ann sighed and shifted uncomfortably. Her bodice was tight, the milk was beginning to flow and young George would soon be crying out for his feed. How could the questioning drag on like this? Everyone knew what had happened. Why this endless charade of question and answer? Couldn’t they take Sergeant Nugent’s word, couldn’t they accept Dr Morton’s statement? Why all this to-ing and fro-ing of argument and counter-argument.

  Dr Morton had known all of the Guises, hadn’t he seen both Cathy and Lizzie into the world? How she’d wished he had been there to bring her son into the light of day. There had been nothing to relieve those hours on that rock-hard bed, for the most part on her own, as the pains came closer and closer together. To stop herself crying out she had bitten her lips and only when they held up that tiny boy did her emotions overwhelm her. The longed-for boy… too late, too late by far.

  Familiar faces crowded the court. Her sisters and their husbands, many of the neighbours and Frank de Rossi. Even Job had managed to get himself brought all the way to Goulburn, wearing his new waistcoat, bobbing his head to all but resolutely not meeting her eyes. Everybody knew everybody else. Doctor, policeman, landowner, and then there were those who had just come for the spectacle.

  She lifted her head up high and stared at them. Muffled against the cold seeping into the courtroom, all squeezed together from lack of space, for all the world no better than the caged monkeys in Ashton’s Circus. Some had eager eyes which peered at her as though they could see into her very soul, others were vacant in their glances.

  “Yes,” said Dr Morton. “I saw George Brownlow on the night in question I was called to the house of Edward Hines. The victim was a healthy man about thirty. He had staggered towards the village and been taken in by Mr Hines who had immediately sent a servant to my house. In spite of the depth of the wound, on the left side between his ribs towards the spine, there wasn’t much blood, but there would have been copious bleeding internally.”

  “Did the victim explain his condition?”

  “My lord, he was in extreme pain, nothing could be said. Two days later, still at the house of Edward Hines, I urged him to make a statement. I said to him, ‘You are in a very dangerous state. Do you want to make any statement with reference to your injury? You’d better make it now as there is the prospect of death. Your life is fast drawing to a close.’”

  Sir Alfred dipped his pen in the inkwell and wrote at a furious pace to keep up with the docto
r’s words.

  “George Brownlow said, ‘I was aware all along from the time of getting the stab’ and then he made a statement which I took down correctly, hurriedly too, because I feared he’d become insensible. I read it over to the victim afterwards in the constable’s presence and he agreed with it.”

  “Read it, sir.” For a moment only the scratching of the judge’s pen could be heard in the courtroom.

  “George Brownlow said his wife followed him after an altercation with her about a fancy woman came up. She had a knife concealed and stabbed him.”

  Elizabeth Lintott drew in her breath. “Fancy woman! Fancy woman! Why don’t they speak the trollop’s name, that Brigid? Makes our Mary Ann just seem like many another jealous wife. But why don’t they speak about him selling off the land…? And think of having her living there, under your own roof…eh?”

  “Hush, my love.” Glancing round nervously Henry Lintott nodded to Frank de Rossi. They’d gathered for a while in the parlour of the inn, waiting together during an adjournment. “My poor Elizabeth’s beside herself, beside herself with worry.”

  “Never fear, Mrs Lintott.” Frank de Rossi sounded confident. “They’ve not hanged a woman in thirty years.”

  “It’s that old devil I’m afeared of, that Sir Alfred. He’s got a nasty reputation, very strict, they say. If she’d have come up for trial earlier it’d been easier. If she’d have been tried before the baby was born, it would have been different. Everyone knows you can’t hang a woman as is expecting. But what do they do? Let her have the poor wee thing and then they tries her. I tell you, our Mary Ann’s being made an example of.”

  “We don’t know, my love,” her husband shook his head. “’Tis hearsay, we don’t know. Take a bit of this.” He pushed a piece of pie towards her, but she shook her head.

  “Stomach’s turned to iron, it has. Don’t want a thing.”

  “Come, Mrs Lintott, now is the time to keep your strength up. All day with not a bite passing your lips, now, that’s not doing your sister a service, is it?” Frank de Rossi held out the plate once more. Elizabeth grudgingly picked at a crumb.