“Don’t know how we’d have managed without you, sir,” Henry Lintott shook his head. “Our Hannah’ll be down with her husband, as you know, but at the moment they can do more to help up there in the city. Her husband Edward knows everyone who’s in the know, so to speak, as we’ve said before. But we’ve a lot to thank you for, getting that Mr Fawcett for one thing.”
“Fawcett’s one of the best. Reputation second to none. Not that there’s any doubt about it. No one in their right mind would… would… would take the wrong path, so to speak. We all know the facts of the matter - your poor sister-in-law was being swindled out of her inheritance. But it’s best to make certain sure and I’m very pleased the way he’s handled the whole matter. Top of his profession. A couple more days at the most and Mary Ann’ll be on the road back to Bywong and we’ll all be remembering this as a bad dream.” He nodded at their two anxious faces. “Now come on, Mrs Lintott, that pie, remember.”
Reluctantly she slipped the slice onto her plate. “I’ll try, but to tell you the truth, my insides feel rock solid.”
Sir Alfred had quite the opposite problem. Cursed place, he muttered out in the privy as he buttoned himself up. Sooner I’m back in civilisation, the better. Bad food, bad beds, bad people!
When he took up his pen once more he was in no better frame of mind. When he addressed the court he had, in his own opinion, a complete grasp of the case.
A crime of passion, of jealousy, did not provide sufficient excuse for such a violent act. The murder was premeditated, evidence showed the knife had been concealed in her apron and she followed the victim before striking the blow. Out of her own mouth her words condemned her. Had not Constable Nugent heard her state she would do it again if necessary?
Beside the evidence in his notes he wrote his judgement.
“I sentence her to death.”
CHAPTER 19
“Hush, hush,” Mary Ann sighed as she cradled her son in her arms. Gradually his screams lessened and his tiny body relaxed as he gulped down the milk. The relief at being back in the solitude of her cell almost cancelled out the misery of the last hours – almost, not quite.
Stiff with dread since early morning, she’d sat and listened throughout the long day while witness after witness testified. By mid afternoon every detail of her marriage had been exposed and the closely-knit raiment of love, birth and death unravelled.
Friends and curious onlookers crowded the court. Keeping her head held high she did not allow her gaze to meet that of any other. Any glimpse of pity would have been unbearable.
Even when Sir Alfred delivered his verdict she did not flinch. Her only concern had been getting back to the baby, giving him his feed, making sure he was dry and comfortable. That other Mary Ann who’d followed George Brownlow into the yard, who’d raised the knife and plunged it into him, that other Mary Ann was another person from another world… that other world of months ago.
Overwhelmed she had not even noticed as George had stumbled away into the darkness. Cathy and Lizzie were all she thought about as she hurried indoors and went to their room. She was still kneeling beside the sleeping children when the house began to fill with people. Some voices hushed, some harsh. All around, disjointed words and phrases added to the confusion in her mind. “Murder,” “wicked shame,” “seen it comin’,” “who’d have thought,” “respectable folk”…on and on they went.
The kaleidoscope of sounds battered her ears till finally a pattern of coherent thought emerged from the chaos. She faced them, white-faced and unrepentant.
“I wish I had done it better,” she cried out. “If he get’s over this I’ll do it again.”
As that fierce tide of rage subsided all the snags of their marriage became exposed and visible on what had once been the enchanted shores of love. Like rocks that had lain concealed until the tide receded, now they were laid bare for all the world to see. Every devious action was revealed. The sale of Guise land, the sacking of Job, the visits to Goulburn and the other towns, and small lies giving way to larger ones. But, just as the hazards of a rocky shore are exposed on the ebb, so they will be covered up again by the next flood. And following her furious outburst Mary Ann felt the tide turn in her emotions.
She must remain calm, she needed to be strong for her daughters’ sakes.
Hadn’t it been said that even the doomed queen’s accusers were chastened by her dignity? Mary Ann found herself strangely calm when she finally made the journey to Goulburn Gaol.
Even so the agony at the parting from her daughters nearly broke down her firmest resolve.
“Keep up your spirits, my love,” Elizabeth had hugged her and searched for anything she could think of to lessen the blow. “Right’ll be done, right’ll be done. They’ve just got to hear your side and believe me, we all know what that is.”
The letter of the law had to be followed. A death had occurred and she must make the journey to Goulburn Gaol until the future was decided.
How often she had ridden along that dusty road with Grand-père, with Papa, with brothers and sisters; now she rode with the unsmiling troopers. Familiarity surrounded her every inch of the way. The thick stands of boxwood, the towering monolithic rocks, some as steep and sheer as the tower at St John’s, the expanses of thin poor grass barely covering sandstone outcrops and barren stretches where only goats browsed.
“Whoa there!” The sergeant reined in his mount as they reached a bluff overlooking the lake. “Time out, lads.” Then he nodded to one of the men. “Get her down,” for her wrists were manacled.
Refreshed with a draught of water she leant against the hard surface of one of the many boulders. Weereewaa stretched into the distance. Ancient and eternal it belonged in her mind to those who had lived along its shores since the dawn of time, the Canberri and the Ngunawal. King George, troopers, fences, huts and great hooved creatures mere insignificant newcomers to its great cycle of death and rebirth.
The vastness of the lake comforted her. Her sin - for over the past few days she’d been made continually aware that she had indeed sinned - her sin was dwarfed by the magnificence laid before her. How many had lived and died, loved and sinned and existed as the lake swelled and shrank with the rhythm of the elements which no one understood and yet everyone must accept.
She smiled as she caught the flash of white from a heron fishing amongst the reeds. A tiny white dot in a universe of shimmering water. As she wrapped her arms around herself and hugged her unborn baby to her, Mary Ann felt the first soothing touch of healing enter her soul.
The cycle had been completed and the magnitude of the scene brought its own peace. She wrapped her arms around herself, still hugging that secret which she had tried to share - a son. The certainty had grown within her as day succeeded day: George would have his son. That was her only repayment, he would be called George.
As she now sat with the sleeping baby so many worlds revolved around Mary Ann. Was she a mother, the owner of Bywong, a widow, a wronged wife, or a criminal? Would the bare walls of a cell become her home, would she lose her life? Everyone assured her that the sentence would never be carried out; she’d not lose her life like that poor queen.
At least Mary Ann could hold her son in her arms; Marie Antoinette never saw her own son during the final imprisonment, never once held him in her embrace when she endured those last months in the Conciergerie. She had not even been able to say goodbye to her husband when he went to the guillotine, neither had she been allowed to take leave of her son.
At thirty-five her hair had turned white. Dressed in common cloth, even her name had been changed. Reaching back to a previous dynasty her accusers had given her the name of the Capets. No longer Queen of France, she’d been called Marie Antoinette, the Widow Capet.
For two days the Widow Capet had faced the Tribunal. A pointless charade of words, the outcome already decided. Soon she would follow her husband’s path up the steps of the guillotine. Reduced, by two years of captivity, from the vivacious,
dancing queen to this frail, snowy-haired woman, body infirm, womb bleeding each day as though willing itself already dead, she listened impassively to the accusations.
The young woman who had chattered and pirouetted beneath the chandeliers in the Galerie de Glace had become a wiser and sadder human being facing her gloating accusers without fear. During the long hours of questioning she had learnt to curb her naturally quick tongue, and did not rise to their taunts. She thought very carefully before replying to every single question.
Try as they might she could not be tripped up. The charges of treachery, plotting with her Austrian relatives, and misuse of money from the nation’s coffers were parried and thrown back.
But when the ultimate charge came she did not reply.
Unnatural practices with her own son. She remained silent as the shocked onlookers waited - and wondered. No hint of this had ever been dropped before. Marie Antoinette’s faults had been bruited abroad in pamphlet and broadsheet: extravagance, treachery, nepotism, adultery and every sin a queen could commit - but incest?
“Your son has spoken of his nights spent in your bed between yourself and his aunt Elizabeth when unnatural practices occurred.”
She said nothing.
“Did you hear the words?” the judge asked. She nodded, but still said nothing.
“You must reply. You must reply to the charge.”
She stepped forward. Palms upwards she raised her hands in a gesture of disbelief. The disdain on her countenance silenced the assembled company as her gaze travelled from face to face.
“Reply!”
“A child can be frightened and persuaded to say many things.”
“You have not answered the question.”
“If I have not answered, it is because my very nature refuses to answer such an accusation. How can a mother answer such an accusation?”
A mother appealing to all other mothers. A groundswell of acknowledgement rose and filled the air as every woman in that court felt, for a moment, their kinship with the wasted figure before them.
Marie Antoinette had entered the court as the Widow Capet but, head held high, she left it as the Queen of France.
CHAPTER 20
“There, there,” Henry Lintott patted his wife’s shoulder and shook his head, “nothing’ll be helped with you taking on so.”
“Our Mary Ann! How could they do that?”
“Like Mr de Rossi says, it’ll never happen.”
“He’s an old devil, that Sir Alfred. You could tell, the way he spoke. He wanted to make our Mary Ann an example. Make sure all married women knew what they’d be in for if they stood up for their rights.”
“That’s a judge’s job, Elizabeth. But mark my words, they’ll reduce that sentence! He has to go by the letter of the law, you know.”
“What about those two men? Convicted of murder they were, but they aren’t condemned to hang!”
No one could answer her.
“And why’d he give that other woman no more’n a slap on the wrist by comparison? That Catherine Reid got just six years for manslaughter! She wasn’t even married to that butcher she’d been living with when she went for him with the knife. He was dead within the hour! What’s the difference?”
“Mrs Lintott, the difference is that the man had been violent for many years and also she just picked the knife up and stabbed him, she didn’t follow him.”
“But she killed him all the same, didn’t she, Mr de Rossi? She wasn’t even married to him, and our Mary Ann’s a respectable married woman.”
“The fact that she followed him out of the house and she’d had the knife under her pinafore. those were the points he took on the side of the law.”
“Wicked. He’s a wicked old man sitting in judgement on us ordinary folk and he’s not taken into account all that speaks for poor Mary Ann. ’Tis still my belief he came down harder, her being a married woman. Let that trollop behave like any other trollop and it’s excused, but if a married woman stands up for herself… well. They’re making an example of her. Saying what she did was foul and brutal, those were his very words, weren’t they? Nothing about how she’d been deceived.”
“He did take it into account when he spoke of jealousy and passion.”
“That just makes it sound like any quarrel between a husband and wife. How about a serious cause beyond the fancy woman, how about deception over our lands, our Guise lands? He married our Mary Ann and then he deceived her. Mark my words! When there’s trouble the woman always pays the price!”
“And it’s up to us to see that doesn’t happen, Mrs Lintott. You’ve heard the uproar outside! We’re not the only ones. Every street corner in Goulburn’s buzzing with it. You haven’t been out in the town but, believe me, they’re talking about it in the shops, at the market, just everywhere.”
“What good’ll that do?”
“Just shows how people feel. A petition, that’s what’s needed. I’ll see to that myself. We’ll take it to the Governor up in Sydney. I’ll ride over to the Murrays. Mr Murray’d be better than anyone. He knows us all and of course he’d know all the high-ups. Being our member, he’ll be able to do more than anyone. You can’t go much higher than the Legislative Council. Tomorrow I’ll speak to the sheriff. Don’t worry, we’ll start the ball rolling.”
“But the time…we’ve not got long and…”
“Mrs Lintott, your place is with your sister. Leave this to us. Mr Lintott knows everyone of note in the area; together we’ll plan a course of action.”
“We need more than the local bigwigs!”
“True, true. As I said, there’s talk of a petition. There was talk of it before Sir Alfred came to town. A petition to the Governor-General himself. Never had that round these parts before, no one got that worked up. But everyone’s on poor Mary Ann’s side.”
“…and so everything’ll be right in no time at all,” Elizabeth later reassured her sister. She said it on her first visit, she said it on her second and then repeated it each time she walked into the narrow cell and perched beside Mary Ann on the low bed. “Mr Murray’s spoken to that Mr Plunkett, the Attorney-General. Well, you can’t go much higher’n that, can you? Then they’ll be sending our petition to the Governor himself. You’ll not be seeing our Hannah, she’s gone back up to Sydney with Edward for there’s another petition being got up in the city, think of that! It’s on everyone’s lips, had a letter from her by Friday’s mail. Having her and Edward up there’s a godsend at the moment.
“She was that upset at having to go back with Edward but, ‘Hannah’, I said ‘you can do much more for our Mary Ann up there where all the bigwigs are than down in our part of the world’.”
“How are… they?” Mary Ann asked. Suddenly her lips couldn’t say her daughters’ names. To hear their names in these grim surroundings was too much. “How are my girls?”
“That happy they are. The old tabby had her kittens last month; they’re that took with the little kitties, nothing else counts. And growing, I can’t tell you. Cathy’s got some legs on her, that one, have to keep our eyes on her, alright and young Lizzie, she’ll be the same.”
“And little George, what of my Georgy?” Mary Ann’s eyes were dark with worry as they searched her sister’s face.
“Never fret, never fret, lovey. Our little Georgy’s alright. Happy as a sandboy, gurgling away every time he sees his sisters. Have to keep little Cathy away or he’d not get a mite of sleep. They’ll be alright, all of them.”
“But his feed?”
“Winny, our dairymaid, she’s just had her fourth. Plenty of milk there, plenty and to spare.”
“A wet nurse! I remember Grand-mère speaking about wet nurses.”
“Sometimes I think our Gran spoke about too much. Lived in the past she did, like Grand-père and took you along with her.”
“Do you remember how she said history repeats itself? The poor queen.”
Elizabeth sniffed. “’Twas on account of Marie Antoinette they call
ed you Mary Ann but that don’t mean a thing.”
“But they took her son away from her, didn’t they? They’ve taken my son away from me!”
“Coincidence, just coincidence, and you’ll be out of here and away before too long when those in the right quarters have had their say. Mark my words, it’ll be different for you, my girl.” Elizabeth shut her mind, anything else was unimagineable.
“Well, he’ll be cared for, never you upset yourself. You’ve got to keep strong, to keep up that strength for when you’re back with us.”
Another visitor came to Goulburn Gaol. Hesitantly he waited as the gaoler unlocked the gate. He was not sure, yet he had to speak to her.
“This way, this way, sir,” the gaoler spoke almost as one would speak to a child for he sensed the other man’s reluctance. Gentry did not often come calling here!
As the door of the cell clanged shut behind him and the man’s retreating footsteps echoed down the passage Frank stood staring at her and found himself completely speechless. Although he’d thought this over many times, he’d even rehearsed some words of comfort, now that he stood here, he remained tongue-tied.
What words of comfort could you give to one in the condemned cell?
Mary Ann had been sitting on her bed, the prayer book in her lap and the Bible close by. Compared with the last time he had seen her she was even thinner and the shadows round her eyes highlighted the pallor of her features. But those eyes still held the same faintly inquiring light they’d held when she first walked into that inn, when she’d started off on her journey into adulthood so eagerly, not so many years ago.
“Mrs Brownlow.” he held out his hands.
Immediately she rose and held out hers. “Not Mrs Brownlow please. Do you remember, it’s Mary Ann.”
“How could I forget?” he laughed and the sound echoed round the barren walls and brought a smile to her face. “You know I’d never forget that Mary Ann… but I did not want to appear presumptuous.”
The Hanging of Mary Ann Page 24