by Anna Mazzola
Lucy was also to go to New South Wales, for a term of seven years. As Edmund had predicted, she was acquitted of murder but convicted of concealing the birth.
“At least it means we’ll get to be together,” she had whispered the previous evening. “You’re the only real friend I’ve got.”
But you hardly know me, Sarah had thought. You know only the small pieces of me I have chosen to show. If you knew the whole story, you would hate me as the others do.
Sarah’s attention returned to the women whispering on the next table.
“Yes,” a red-haired girl was saying, “I heard the black ones carry sticks and knives and whenever they see a white woman they butcher her straight off.”
Mary nodded. “And there’s poisonous snakes and huge spiders bigger than London rats.”
Miss Sowerton walked over to their table. “Kindly keep your mouths shut save as is required to get the food in.”
The women grumbled but ceased their conversation.
“At all events,” Miss Sowerton said in an undertone, “never mind your spiders and snakes: I’d be more worried about something a little closer to home.” She jerked her head toward Sarah.
Sarah felt the other women’s eyes settle on her, like flies. Since her fight with Rook and her escape from the dark cells, the other inmates looked at her in a new way: more fearful, perhaps more respectful.
“Not surprising they won’t let her take her son with her,” Miss Sowerton murmured.
Sarah met the woman’s stare. What can you do to me now? she thought. I am being wrenched away from my own child, and you think your words can hurt me?
• • •
“You mustn’t be cast down,” Miss Pike said when she visited Sarah that afternoon. “The fight is not over yet.”
Miss Pike’s pale face was even whiter than usual and her eyes were red-rimmed behind her glasses. She began to remove items from a bag: a few books, a flannel petticoat, some woolen stockings, a calico dress.
“I have this morning delivered a petition to the Home Department,” she said in an enforced sprightly tone. “A petition signed by two hundred people, Sarah—Mrs. Fry included—insisting that Lord Russell grant permission for George to travel with you. It’s simply ludicrous to separate a child so young from his mother, and Lord Russell knows it. It is all political posturing. I cannot believe that he will really—”
“Miss Pike.” Sarah put her hand on the woman’s arm. “If the petition doesn’t work. If I really do have to leave George behind, will you help him? Will you help my sister? They won’t have enough to live on.”
Miss Pike’s eyes filled with tears. “Sarah, what a ridiculous question. Of course we will help them. But it will not come to that.”
“They mean to make an example of me, Miss Pike. I’m the monster, remember? You said it yourself.”
Miss Pike shook her head and blinked away her tears. “If there are any monsters in this whole affair, it’s the bureaucrats, playing politics with children, for heaven’s sakes.” She abandoned her air of levity and her face seemed to droop. “We claim to be able to make a difference with our petitions and our visits and our meetings, but those who make the decisions are not listening.”
“You’ve made a great difference to me,” said Sarah. “You’ve made me feel as though I’m not entirely alone. You helped me see what I had to do.”
Miss Pike averted her eyes and nodded. Sarah wanted to say something more to her—to show her the full hand—but it was too late for that.
“You know, Sarah,” Miss Pike said, a little more confidently, “you must think of this as an opportunity for reformation. A chance to redeem yourself before God and in the eyes of society.”
Sarah smiled at her cheerlessly, thinking of how the prisoners had regarded her in the dining hall. “You’re very good, Miss Pike, but I doubt others will allow me the opportunity to redeem myself, as you put it. I might be on another continent, but they won’t forget who I am or what I was convicted of.”
Miss Pike busied herself with folding the items of clothing she had brought with her. “You don’t know that; really, you don’t. Lord Russell and his imbecile advisers might not understand the importance of second chances, but remember that you’re going to a place where many are trying to escape their past. There would be no future for the colony if people were forever judged by their previous crimes. You must trust in God and you must do what you can to set things right.”
“I will do my best,” Sarah said, but she doubted one could ever really escape the past. She had tried to shed the abuse of her childhood, but had become entangled in a relationship defined by violence and humiliation. She had wanted to be a good mother to George to cancel out the sins of her own mother, but now she was deserting him altogether. It was as if the damage within her radiated outward, drawing in and scarring everything around.
She picked up the dress that Miss Pike had brought. It was of the same calico fabric as the garment that had been passed to the jury box during the trial. “Clear proof, we say, that the prisoner Gale knew about the murder and helped to conceal it.”
No, while she would like to think that you could simply turn a page and begin writing on a blank white sheet, Sarah suspected that your deeds followed you wherever you went, like a shadow.
• • •
That night, as she slept, Sarah felt warm water washing about her bare feet. She was on a boat: not a convict ship but a steamer of the type that carried people down the Thames. The boat was sinking and people all around her were filling vessels with water to bail it out. Some used bowls and buckets, but others used strange objects: old shoes, silver teapots, feathered hats, and wooden boxes. Rosina was there too, using a coal scoop to sweep water over the side as fast as she could. She was weeping and begging Sarah to help: “We’ll all go down!” she was crying. For George was beside her, she realized, clinging to her wet skirts, the water reaching to his knees. Sarah searched about desperately, but she could find nothing with which to catch the water. She tried using her own hands, but the water slipped through her fingers and the boat sank lower and lower until the water was up to her chest and she had to pick George up to keep his head above the water.
It was only at that point that she realized that the water was red. Indeed, it was not water at all, but blood. Warm blood.
32
“That Testimony which is delivered to induce a Jury to believe, or not to believe the matter of Fact in Issue, is called in Law EVIDENCE, because thereby the Jury may, out of many Matters of Fact, Evidere veritatem; that is, see clearly the truth, of which they are proper Judges.”
—The Englishman’s Right: A Dialogue between a Barrister at Law and a Juryman, Sir John Hawles, 1764
The letter arrived first thing. Edmund walked quickly through the Temple Gardens, the letter in his hand, rehearsing in his mind what he would say to Sarah in the same way that he might prepare his speech before a day in court. He found, however, that he could not form coherent sentences.
He announced himself at the prison lodge and waited in the legal visitors’ room, watching solicitors hunched over their papers, speaking in low voices to their sullen or weeping clients. Through the narrow window, Edmund saw morning shadows stretch their tall fingers up the gray stone wall opposite. Pigeons cooed in the yard. A clock ticked loudly.
Ten minutes passed, twenty. He began to grow anxious. Was it possible Sarah had been taken onto the ship early? That he had missed his last chance to see her? Or perhaps something else had happened. Maybe Rook had attacked again.
But at last she appeared, even frailer and more delicate than before, walking behind a heavily built warder with a fleshy face. The warder met his eye as she led Sarah to him, seeming to wish to convey something to him. “Here she is,” was all she said.
Edmund pulled out a chair for Sarah, opposite him.
Once Sarah
had sat down, Edmund drew his own chair in close. “I bring news.”
She looked up at him with such hope and trust that he felt that his heart might burst. “The Home Secretary has agreed that George should travel with you.”
Sarah closed her eyes and put her hands over her face. “Thank God,” she whispered. “Thank God.” She began to cry, silently.
He drew out his silk pocket handkerchief and pushed it into Sarah’s hand. After a moment, she pressed it to her face and held it there as she tried to calm herself.
They sat for a minute or two without speaking. He could smell her—an animal smell mixed with lavender—and hear her breathing above the beating of his own heart, which was now so loud that he had the ridiculous idea that she could hear it.
When she spoke, her voice was cracked. “Edmund, I don’t know how to thank you.”
It was the first time she had used his Christian name. It struck him full force in the chest like a fist.
“It wasn’t only me,” Edmund said. “Miss Pike’s petition, your sister’s letter…”
She shook her head. “I’m not just talking about that,” she said. “You’ve done more for me than I ever anticipated—more than I deserved. And I know that, when I last saw you, I must have seemed very ungrateful.”
“I never expected gratitude. That’s not why I did this. I wanted…I wanted…” He floundered. “Well, at first I just wanted to solve the riddle—to work out why you had kept silent. To prove myself clever, I suppose. But then I realized that it wasn’t about me: it was about you. It was about getting justice for you. And in that I’ve failed utterly. If I’d made a better case—”
“Please,” she said. “Please don’t blame yourself. You saved me from the rope. You have ensured my son will travel with me. And I lied to you.”
“You lied because you were terrified; I understand that. What’s important is that you told me the truth eventually. I’m just sorry I raised your expectations. It was naive of me to think that a full pardon was possible. I realize now that it was all about public opinion, not about justice; about giving the appearance of fairness rather than the thing itself. I shouldn’t speak like this, of course, but this is perhaps the last time we’ll meet, and I wanted to be entirely honest with you.”
She met his eye and then looked away. For some time there was just the sound of others talking, pens whispering on paper, chairs scraping, the clock ticking. Sarah sat with her head bowed.
“This isn’t necessarily the end,” Edmund said. “If I could find something that would support your story, it might be possible to get the Home Secretary or perhaps the authorities in Australia to look at your case again. And if you were to be granted a conditional pardon, you could return to England. I won’t stop looking—I promise.” He put his hand over hers.
Sarah raised her eyes to his. “You must forget about me. You must return to your old life.”
What life? Edmund wanted to ask. “I can’t do that,” was all he said.
“You think you can’t now, but you’ll forget all this soon enough. You’ll have other cases.”
“Not like this,” Edmund said. “Besides, the Home Secretary is unlikely to give me a further commission after I dared to question his judgment in this one.” He gave a wry smile.
“This has damaged your reputation, hasn’t it?” Sarah said. “I’ve spoiled things for you.”
“No, no. There are those who mutter that I shouldn’t have recommended a pardon, but they can say what they like. They don’t know the truth.”
Sarah closed her eyes for a second. When she reopened them, a tear rolled down her right cheek. Edmund resisted the urge to reach out and stop its descent with his finger. There was so much he wanted to say to her and yet, even now, when it was almost too late, he could not bring himself to tell her how he felt. He was not even sure he would be able to verbalize it were he to try.
“Time!” Miss Sowerton shouted. “Prisoners, move to the doorway!”
“Sarah…listen,” Edmund said, still desperately trying to find the right words to convey what he meant.
Sarah was looking away. “Edmund,” she said, “if you should ever see things differently, if you should ever cease to think well of me, please remember that I wanted…that I’ve always greatly respected you.”
“And I you,” Edmund said. “But, Sarah,” he folded his hand over hers, “I won’t come to see things differently. I’ve never seen so clearly.” They were not the right words, but maybe they were enough.
Sarah smiled: a thin, sad smile. She squeezed his hand and then rose to leave. One last glance, and she was gone.
• PART THREE •
CRURES
33
“On the 26th June 1837 the first prisoners were received on board at Woolwich to the number of thirty one with seven of their children from Newgate and from that time to the 12th July we almost daily continued to receive from the various prisons in England and Wales to the amount in all, of one hundred and forty three prisoners and twenty nine children, the last eleven and one child arriving from Newgate.”
—from the medical journal of Surgeon Superintendent William Leyson, 1837
They started out just after dawn, leaving Newgate in silence, their feet crunching on the gravel as they were led to the Black Maria coaches. On the silent streets, the horses’ hooves rang out and the wheels whispered, carrying the prisoners on toward the Thames. On Ludgate Street, a driver brushed the gleaming coat of his horse. By Puddle Dock, a maid emptied a bucket into the roadway and then looked up to watch the cabs pass.
The women were led down to lighters on the Thames, London’s silent highway where the water sloshed darkly. None of them spoke. The lighters glided ghostlike along the murky water, past Queenhithe Stairs and Southwark Bridge; past mudlarks—small, dirt-spattered children—already starting out to find some treasure in the stinking riverside mud. The convicts stared at the black water below and listened to it lapping against the piers and the echoing arches of the bridges of the Thames.
As the lighters slid farther down the river, the women heard the occasional cry of the last revelers of the night before and the sounds of the first barrows and carriages making their way past shuttered windows.
Just after the Thames bent away from Greenwich, the hulk of a huge ship cast a long shadow on the water. As the lightermen slowed the boats and moved toward the hulk, the women realized that the enormous dark shape that rose out of the water before them was their vessel, a three-hundred-ton barque, square-rigged.
Built in Calcutta from fine Burmese teak and sheathed in copper, she was sold on the stocks to Henry Wellesley, First Lord Cowley, and now bore his name. In her fifty-year career she had borne many cargos: wheat from Carolina, sugar from Grenada, spices from the East Indies, timber from Norway. Now, reduced to a convict carrier, the ship was moored at Woolwich Quay, straining like a frustrated beast against the ropes that tethered her to the bank. Each of her three masts—foremast, mainmast, and mizzen, moving from bow to stern—was rigged to carry three square sails, which flapped idly against her masts.
The well-scrubbed quarterdeck was enclosed by a brass rail that glinted in the early morning light. Two of the private guards stood talking. The others remained in their living quarters, which had been built into the area below. On the forecastle, between the mainmast and the bow, half a dozen seamen were playing at cards, smoking, or watching the fishing lines hanging over the catheads. Gulls screeched around the vessel, passing under the stern windows and appearing again at the bows.
The bottom deck of the ship, the orlop, was usually reserved for cargo. For this trip, however, it had been adapted. Partitions had been erected to create three self-contained areas. Forward and aft were the stores, stacked with provisions for the voyage: fresh water, ale, brandy and rum, cutlings, molasses, salt beef and hams, fowl in pickle, potted herrings, spices, oatmeal, sugar, a
nd tea.
The middle partition, between the stores, was by far the largest. The hatches that led to it were fitted with a grating that could be bolted down from above. Deep shelves had been attached to each side of the hull and covered with sack cloth. Here, in the airless dark, the convict women and their children would sleep.
• • •
Sarah’s eyes followed the length of the boat, crossing the portholes, closed and silent. Some of the other women were weeping quietly. They descended unsteadily from the lighters and waited in a huddle on the quay.
Then Sarah heard a sound that seemed entirely out of place: children’s voices. She saw that a small group were advancing toward them, picking their way through the mud. Near the front was Rosina, wearing her best dress and a straw bonnet. In one hand she carried a bag; in the other, she held George’s hand.
“Rosina,” Sarah said when they were near enough to hear her. Close up, she could see that her sister’s eyes were red with weeping, her complexion blotched pink and white.
Rosina put her arms around Sarah and then pulled back, her hands still on Sarah’s shoulders, to look at her face.
“My sister. My big sister,” she said. “I can’t believe this is happening. It can’t happen. It’s not too late, you know.”
Sarah shook her head sharply. “No, Rosina.”
George stood next to them. Sarah squatted down to his level and held his hand in both of hers.
“Hello, darling boy. I’m so sorry I’ve been away for so long. But we’re going to be together now.”
George squinted at her, confused.
Rosina bent down too so that all three were crouching close together.
“Georgie, remember that present we got for your mama?” George looked at her absently for a few seconds and then reached into his breeches and removed a coin, which he held in his closed palm for a moment before offering it hesitatingly to Sarah. The old King’s head had been rubbed away and, in its place, a message had been inscribed in tiny lettering: “From your sister, who will always be with you, in lightness, and in dark.”