by Anna Mazzola
The words faded as Sarah’s eyes clouded with tears. How had it come to this?
Groves appeared at Sarah’s side. “You have five minutes before you leave,” she said gruffly. “You must put your things on the boat.”
Sarah stood up. George attached himself to her leg.
“It’s all right. I’m not leaving you,” she said.
Five minutes. What do you say when you have five minutes to speak to your sister—the one person who has ever truly loved you and you know you will never see her again?
“I’ve packed a bag for you,” Rosina said, passing it to Sarah. “George’s clothes, his red spinning top, and his doll; some food too: apples, boiled beef, and a loaf. And here, this is for you.” She passed her a plum-colored woolen cloak.
“But this is yours, Rosina.”
“Well, then, it can remind you of me.” She kept her eyes on the muddy ground. “I can’t bear it, Sarah. God, I can’t bear it.”
Sarah put her arms around her sister’s neck. Rosina’s sobs were loud in her ear, her tears wet against her own cheeks, and she gripped tight to her sister’s juddering body, unable to recall when anyone had last held her like this. George clung to both of them. And that was how they stayed for their five minutes.
When Sarah moved away from Rosina she saw that there were several other family groups saying their good-byes: men with tired, drooping faces; older children weeping. But there were some women whom no one had come to see off. Rook’s friend, Mary Boltwood, stood on her own, her arms clutched around herself, staring out at the riverbank. Maybe it was better not to have anyone to leave behind.
Rosina bent down to George and kissed him on the cheek. “You must be a brave boy for your mother,” she said, her breath catching. “You’re going on a long journey.”
“Are you coming too?” he asked.
“No, poppet.” Sarah could see Rosina was trying not to cry again.
George looked intently at his mother and then at his aunt. “But we’ll see you when we come back?”
Rosina looked despairingly at Sarah.
“Yes,” Sarah said. “We’ll see her again.” Sometimes it was easier to lie.
Sarah felt a firm hand on her shoulder.
“It’s time now, Gale.”
When Sarah looked in Groves’ face, she was surprised to see that the warder’s eyes were full of tears. For a moment she thought perhaps it was the stinging wind, but then something occurred to her.
“It was you, wasn’t it, Miss Groves?”
“What was me?”
“It was you who got me out of the dark cells. It was you who got the message to Mr. Fleetwood.”
Groves met her eye. “You’ll have to look out for yourself out there,” she said. “Better than you have here. Now say good-bye to your sister.”
Sarah turned back and hugged Rosina one last time. “This is the right thing,” she murmured in her ear. “It couldn’t have been any other way.”
• • •
A grim-faced guard led them up a plank and onto the huge vessel, George gripping Sarah’s hand tightly. The water, as she looked down, was mud-choked and still, the color of clay. Once they were on deck, she stared back to the small group waiting on the quay. Groves waited with them, watching, but not waving. Rosina stood to the right of the clutch of people, a lonely figure in green.
Sarah lifted George up onto her hip and pressed her face against the side of his, feeling the brush of his lashes on her cheek. Together they waved until a bell rang out the hour and they were herded with the other prisoners into the darkness below decks.
34
“Eyes will not see when the heart wishes them to be blind.
Desire conceals truth as darkness does the earth.”
—Lucius Annaeus Seneca
The whistle screamed, gray plumes of smoke blew past his window, a shower of smuts hit the roof of the carriage, and they were off. Thanks to Morris, Edmund was traveling to Birmingham to prosecute licensing offenses—dull as ditchwater, but a reliable line of work. Moreover, it got him away from home, where he felt increasingly like a prisoner, kept under constant observation. He knew that Bessie watched him and worried. He knew that she perceived his obsession but said nothing about it. Her gaze made him feel a heavy, sickening guilt. It was best to stay away.
The train sped past the jagged sides of houses torn down to make way for the railway, past smoking factories and brick chimneys and on toward the countryside. Occasionally, Edmund glimpsed fragments of other people’s lives: a woman sitting in a doorway feeding a baby, a group of ragged children, waving.
Edmund turned his attention to the pamphlet on his lap: “Emigration to New South Wales.” He told himself that the research was for Rosina. In part, it was. However, as he read more about the Government scheme, he increasingly thought it might be an opportunity for him. London was awash with criminal barristers, all vying for scraps of work. Australia, on the other hand, had crime aplenty and very few lawyers. Surely, out there it would be much easier to succeed.
Edmund stared from the window at the trees and ditches and lines of wooden houses. The journey itself would be the hardest part: he had heard that the vessels were overcrowded, the food terrible, and the voyage long. Better—far better—than a convict ship, however. He felt a crushing sensation in his chest at the thought of Sarah boarding the ship with George. Miss Pike had assured him that conditions were much improved: the boats were of a better quality, the prisoners were no longer kept shackled below decks, and—since surgeon-superintendents had been put in charge of the prisoners’ health—most arrived alive. Many still spoke, however, of the lechery of the crew; the rapid spread of disease; and the survival, despite the new regime, of the old breed of captains who flogged or starved their convict cargo.
As the train hurtled through a tunnel, Edmund glimpsed the outline of his features in the train window. He should have thought of a way to save her.
• • •
When Edmund returned to London that evening, he made the mistake of broaching the subject of Australia with Bessie.
“Thirty-six pounds for a man and wife, and five pounds for each child aged one to seven.”
Bessie did not respond, but continued to dissect her broiled chicken.
“It is said,” Edmund continued, “that there are very good opportunities for criminal barristers out there.”
“I’m sure there are,” Bessie said. “It’s full of criminals. All the more reason not to go there.”
“That’s very shortsighted of you, Bessie.”
“Is that so, Edmund? And why this sudden enthusiasm for Australia? Why not America, for example? Or France?”
“Their legal systems there are quite different. I would need to retrain.”
“I see. And of course this has nothing to do with Miss Gale.”
Edmund felt his cheeks grow hot. “No, Bessie, it has nothing to do with her, save to the extent that it was because of her sister that I was reading of the scheme in the first place. I’m simply raising it as a possibility.”
“Very well. I’m simply rejecting it as a possibility.”
“Because of Miss Gale?”
“Because it’s on the other side of the earth and is full of people like Miss Gale.”
“As we have discussed previously,” Edmund said quietly, “it is in fact my view that Miss Gale is innocent.”
Bessie attacked her chicken with additional vigor. “Well, evidently she was good at acting the victim.”
“What do you mean by that?” Edmund snapped.
“She was an actress—you knew that, didn’t you?”
An icy shiver ran up Edmund’s back. “That doesn’t make her a liar.”
Bessie looked up from her plate. “She used to be part of a troupe in the East End. It was in the Kent papers while I was staying
with my sister.”
There was a longer silence. Then Bessie said softly: “You didn’t know, did you?”
Edmund took a drink of his wine. “No, she didn’t mention it. But then I didn’t ask about all of her previous positions. There were more pressing matters to discuss.”
Edmund stared at the candle flame, the flare of white within red. When he looked at his wife, Edmund saw that she was gazing at him with what might almost have been pity.
• • •
After dinner, Edmund took a cup of spiced wine to his room and changed into his evening attire. The Season was still in full swing and there was only so long he could avoid it, and his father.
Standing before the looking glass to tie his black satin cravat, Edmund wondered if what Bessie had said was correct. Could she be inventing stories merely to rile him, or had Sarah really been an actress? She had never mentioned it, but perhaps she had not thought it relevant. Strictly speaking, it was not.
Edmund took a hansom cab to Hanover Square and waited in line to be announced by the liveried footman, staring at the austere family portraits and fine porcelain figures that adorned the hallway. As soon as he entered the ballroom, he knew it had been a mistake to come. The glittering room was awash with women overdressed in white crepe and lace pelerines, and dull men, fitted out in doeskin breeches, velvet waistcoats, and bright-gold buttons. Footmen in powder-blue jackets circulated the room with trays of glistening glasses, and a string quartet played a quadrille. Within a few minutes of his entering the ballroom, his father had clasped his upper arm and steered him into the refreshment room and toward a man with very little hair and a wide face the color of a boiled ham.
“Edmund, this is Montague Squires. A great friend of mine—and,” he added in Edmund’s ear, “adviser to the Lord Chancellor on judicial appointments.”
“Ah, the famous son. Arthur has told me you’ve been delving into the criminal underworld,” the ham-faced man said, looking him over as if to check for dirt or blood. “Tell us: are the women of Newgate really so wicked and depraved as is claimed?”
Was this it now, Edmund wondered. Was he to be an exhibit? The criminal pièce de résistance?
“Many are more sinned against than sinning, I believe.”
“Yes, I understand that you recommended that the Gale woman be pardoned entirely. Can that be true?”
Edmund sighed inwardly. “Yes, that’s correct. But,” he said quietly, looking at his father out of the corner of his eye, “it was not my recommendation that he followed.”
• • •
Edmund managed to slip away to the punch bar, but there too he was accosted by people wishing to talk to him about Newgate and the penal system and the moral depravity of the lower classes. A man with luxuriant dark whiskers tried to engage him in conversation about phrenology, claiming that the criminal mind demonstrated itself in the shape of the skull.
“The low-intentioned have low brows and a broader forehead,” the man assured him. “The men tend to have an ape-like cast to their face.”
“And what about female criminals?” Edmund said, not bothering to keep the sarcasm from his voice. “Does this apply to them too?”
“Oh, yes, most certainly,” the man replied. “Indeed, the female criminals are the most easily recognizable by dint of their animal features and dark complexion.”
Edmund pictured Sarah—her fine nose and milk-white skin. He had not been aware until that moment of quite how much he missed her.
• • •
He walked out of the ballroom and down a corridor leading to a large dark room lined with glass display cases. Stepping closer to them, he saw that the cases were filled with insects—butterflies, moths, and glossy beetles, each stuck to white cardboard with a pin through the heart. Little nameplates were fixed beneath each specimen—Mantis religiosa, Actias luna, Latrodectus mactans. He had the distinct feeling that someone was watching him. Turning, he saw only the round glass eyes of a stuffed white fox staring blankly at him out of its glass case. A shadow moved against the back wall.
“I should have known to find you among the dead things.”
“Father. Are you following me?”
“What are you doing wandering about back here?”
“I…came the wrong way.”
His father leaned against the wall, a crystal tumbler in his hand.
“Bad news about that woman—Gale. But at least you spared her the Newgate jig, eh?”
Edmund did not respond.
“They were never going to let her off entirely, Edmund. You should have seen that. This is perhaps the best outcome.”
“And I suppose that’s what you advised Lord Russell.” Rage welled up within him but he managed to keep his voice steady. “Tell me, what made you think it was appropriate to interfere?”
“Interfere?”
“Lord Russell told me you approved of his decision.”
“Edmund, I simply responded to a question John asked me at a dinner we attended. I could hardly have refused to answer.”
“What was the question?”
“Something along the lines of: did I agree that the common man would be angered by the pardoning of a woman who had helped to conceal a murder?”
“And how did you answer?”
“I said I could see that, in circumstances where the individual had not been entirely exonerated, the public might balk at such a decision.”
“So because one cannot show that someone is innocent, they are guilty? Do you know nothing about the criminal law?” The blood rushed to his cheeks.
“Edmund, Edmund. It is about appearances, is it not? Lord Russell’s question was not about the rights or wrongs of the matter, but about whether it would seem to the man in the street that justice had been done. His view, with which I agreed, was that most people would think it wrong to grant an absolute pardon to a woman whom they perceived to have aided, or at least turned a blind eye to, another woman’s murder. I suggested, however, that they might accept transportation as an appropriate punishment. It was mere conversation.”
“No, it was a woman’s life.”
“And she is alive, is she not? You spared her the gallows, Edmund. Don’t forget that.”
“Had it not been for your intervention, she might have been spared a terrible journey aboard a convict ship. She might have been here, in London!”
“For heaven’s sakes, Edmund, don’t be so naive. John wasn’t going to simply free her, no matter how good your report. He was minded to hang her regardless. You should thank me for recommending a middle way.”
“Thank you? Thank you for what, exactly? You leaned over my shoulder for the entirety of the investigation and then, when my report evidently didn’t meet with your approval, you went direct to Lord Russell and put forward your own views. Why didn’t you just get yourself appointed to the bloody role in the first place?”
“Edmund, you have completely misinterpreted the situation.”
“You claim to have recommended me to the role for the benefit of my career, and then you intentionally humiliate me, just as you always have!”
“You’ve had too much to drink,” his father said shortly. “You are saying things you do not mean.”
“On the contrary, Father. For once in my life, I’m speaking plainly to you. For once in my life, I am telling you what I actually think.”
His father looked about him, as if to check that none of the dead animals in their cases had come to life to bear witness to this conversation. For a moment, he seemed poised to say something important, but he simply said, “Edmund, go home and get some rest. You’ll see this very differently tomorrow.”
“No,” Edmund said. “I will not see it differently. It’s perfectly clear what you’ve done. And I was a fool to have ever accepted the commission.”
35
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��As the credit due to a witness is founded in the first instance on general experience of human veracity, it follows that a witness who gives false testimony as to one particular, cannot be credited as to any.”
—A Practical Treatise of the Law of Evidence, Thomas Starkie, Esq., 1833
The captain, Master Williams, was a tall, broad-shouldered man. When young, he had been considered handsome, with his regular features and ash-blond hair. Age and the sea had not been kind to him, however. His face was now angular and harsh, his eyes narrow slits of blue. He was appropriately revered and feared by his men, never drinking with them, only alone in his cabin where he kept several bottles of good madeira and port. If he had a woman or family at home, no one knew of it. He was not one for small talk. His language was all of the masts and the sails and the wind and the seas.
Some of the men who had voyaged with him years before remembered a violent temper rising like a storm when provoked. Although it did not display itself now, he gave the impression of a man keeping a tight rein on his emotions, ready to rear up and bite at any moment, should the occasion require it.
He walked toward the women, into the wind, his blue coat flapping open.
“Ladies,” he said, although he knew full well they were not. And Sarah guessed, as soon as she heard his voice, at what sort of a man he was.
“Welcome aboard the Henry Wellesley, your home for the next five months, all being well.”
As he spoke, he walked around the groups of women, who moved closer to one another.
“Quite a few sea rats, I see,” he said, bending down so that his face was level with that of a boy of about eight, who clutched his mother’s arm in terror.
“Well, you should know that all aboard this boat must work, no matter what their age or inclination. I’ll have no dawdlers.”
He scanned the wide frightened eyes of his audience, who remained silent.