‘What’s it like?’
‘Like rolling the dice. Some of them treats you right but most don’t. The wives is bad. They’re always afraid their husbands will get after you. Lots of them do, them and their sons. The sixteen year-old ones are the worst. There’s no stopping some of them.’
‘What do you do about it?’
‘What can you do? Tell him no, the husband will say you come on to him, send you back to the factory. Or maybe to the Anson, that hulk they got moored in the harbour. Say yes and the wife finds out, she’ll send you back. It’s a horrible life, whichever way you looks at it.’
‘Why did you get sent out?’
‘Cut a bloke, didn’t I?’ A grin like the gates of hell. ‘He won’t be giving young girls no more trouble, that one.’
‘You were lucky not to be hanged,’ Cat said.
Emma Larkin gestured at the walls enclosing them, the never-ceasing rain. ‘Call this lucky?’
Cat looked up at the mountain beyond the wall, the specks of birds circling. Freedom… No matter what they do or say to me, she thought, I shall survive. The important thing was to cling to the person she was, the seventeen-year-old woman whose life had been shaped by the way the world had treated her.
At night she listened to the rain. When the sky was clear she watched the moonlight shifting across the walls of the dormitory. She heard the sounds of the sleeping women, breathed the stale air of imprisonment and in her mind went back to her childhood in Porlock Town, the tiny fishing village trapped between the Bristol Channel and the desolate wilderness of Exmoor.
TWO
The last day of April 1846. The hands of the St Dubricius church clock stood at ten past twelve as thirteen-year-old Cat Haggard came racing up the track from the beach.
Tom Percy had promised her a ha’penny to help him and she’d been busy with his nets when she’d heard the blood-jump beat of drums, the shrilling of pipes, the chorus of cracked voices bruising the sweet spring air. Deaf to the fisherman’s angry bellows she was off, running as fast as she could up the steep track to the village. She got there just in time to see the visitors strut past. They wore tattered finery: two women in crimson cloth, men in frockcoats and tall hats much the worse for wear, a handful of boys and girls with mud up to their knowing eyes. Best of all was a fortune teller in a scruffy robe decorated with the signs of the zodiac. They brought the world with them, a breath of air to Cat’s cramped lungs, and her eyes ate them up. She couldn’t stop – Tom Percy would leather her if she stayed away long – but later that evening, ha’penny tucked safely away, she went back.
There were fires on the hills to mark Mayday Eve. In the village, too, where the girls jumped through the flames before disappearing into the woods with their boys.
Cat came face to face with the fortune teller at the entrance to her tiny booth. She was wizened and old, rats tails of grey hair escaping below her cap and a smell of the earth about her. Her eyes, black as midnight, scaled Cat to the quick.
‘Child,’ she said. ‘Come to see your future, have ’ee?’
In her booth a guttering candle hinted at mysteries. A white ferret circled in a cage, red eyes gleaming. A crystal orb gleamed on a velvet cloth.
‘I wouldn’t mind,’ Cat said.
‘Cost ’ee a farthing.’
She handed over the ha’penny, waited till she got her change and followed the old crone into the booth.
‘Sit, child.’
The gypsy stared into the orb’s depths. She began to mutter and sway while Cat stared with round eyes.
‘What do you see?’
The fortune teller took no notice. Her muttering grew louder.
‘A ship… Blood… Heavy troubles…’
Cat couldn’t make head or tail of it.
‘Horses riding fast. A masked man. An empty noose. Silver –’
She was certainly getting her farthing’s worth but was less interested in silver than love. ‘Shall I have lovers?’
‘Lovers, all the girls wants a lover. Wait, child, let me see. Oh yes. I see a big man, big as a tower, my ’andsome.’ She cackled, eyes still fixed on the orb’s depths. ‘He’ll make ’ee dance, sure enough…’
‘Shall I love him, this man? Will he love me?’
‘A crown,’ the gypsy said suddenly. ‘I sees a crown. Wi’ diamonds.’ She stared at Cat as though observing her for the first time. Her eyes gleamed hopefully. ‘Fortune like that… Worth another farthing, I reckon.’
Cat was having none of that. Exciting, all the same. A crown… She skipped out of the booth, practising her regal look.
THREE
Joanne
2015
My boss, otherwise known as Vice-Chancellor Richard Cottle PhD, almost hurled the letter at me across his desk.
‘I am getting sick and tired of this bloody crown! This is the third time they’ve written to us in six months.’ Tetchy was Dick’s middle name, especially when things weren’t going his way. ‘You’d better read it,’ he snarled. ‘Then maybe you’ll tell me what you plan doing about it.’
Through the window behind him I could see the sandstone buildings of the university glowing golden in the setting sun. I ran my eye over the officialese favoured by every government on earth and pushed the letter back to him.
‘I love the layout,’ I said. ‘Very stylish.’
His lips tightened, nerves scraped by my flippancy. ‘Is that all you have to say about it, Professor?’
Oh boy! He must be really mad to call me by my title.
‘What else is there to say? I see they’re now calling the crown a national treasure, but there’s nothing new in that.’
‘They’re convinced we’ve got it squirrelled away somewhere.’
‘I can’t imagine why.’
Dick Cottle steepled his fingers and gave me a meaningful look. Along with the pregnant pause and unspoken accusation, meaningful looks gave him the dignity that the poor sod thought he deserved.
‘Because it’s valuable?’ he said. ‘Because it’s of interest historically? Because it’s generally accepted it was stolen by a convict who happens to be your ancestor and was transported for theft one hundred and fifty years ago? Take your pick, Joanne.’
‘There’s no evidence Catherine Haggard had anything to do with the crown of Muar. And she arrived here one hundred and sixty-five years ago, in April 1850. If you want to be picky about it.’
Dick hated to be corrected, which was why I’d said it. He was fifty, along with millions of others, but seemed to think the miracle of surviving so long entitled him to a deference he would never get from me. I’d never been much good at deference. I was thirty-two – young to have my chair – but at times made like I was ten years younger; Dick hated that. There was also the matter of Timothy Luttrell. He hated that even more.
Journalist Tim was a player, or so my friends were always telling me, but he was also my significant other, at least for the present. His provocative columns appeared in several papers and in Dick’s universe that put him firmly in the enemy camp. He was also married. Married to someone other than me. No matter that he and his wife lived apart, it was the kiss of death to m’lord Cottle and his oh-so-adorable wife. I didn’t care. Three years before Tim had dug me out of a deep pit. I had thought I was in love. I was in love. Then my lovely Charlie stopped being lovely when he took off with my friend Amanda. My ex-friend Amanda. I’d buried myself in a hole, teeth bared, and dared the world to come and get me. From that Tim had rescued me. Player or not, I owed him.
The boss and Mrs Boss found the whole situation distasteful. If that wasn’t enough, there was my uncomfortable habit of speaking my mind. Dick hated that most of all. We were united in mutual dislike: he thought me crass; I thought him an imbecile. We both knew he would have fired me if he could have got away with it but unhappily for him I was a whizz kid with a track record of turning over the stones of earlier generations and finding all sorts of interesting creatures lurking underneath.<
br />
‘I had a phone call from Canberra last night. The prime minister is taking an interest.’ He spoke with a degree of reverence. They might not see eye to eye politically but Dick hadn’t got where he was by fighting prime ministers. ‘He believes there may be repercussions if we don’t come up with a solution. Diplomatically speaking.’
‘What solution would he like?’
‘He’d like us to find it.’
‘After a hundred and fifty-seven years? Did he suggest how?’
‘I told him you were the acknowledged authority in the field so he thought you might have some thoughts on the subject.’
‘I’m dean of Historical Studies, not a magician.’
‘He feels it is important that we should be seen to be making an effort.’
Dick would have loved to discover I’d had it stashed away all the time I’d been telling him I knew nothing about it. A diplomatic incident on top of lying about it on top of professional misconduct… It would have made his day, giving him just the excuse he needed to give me the chop. Vain hope; I had no more idea than he where the crown of Muar was hidden. Or whether it existed at all, come to that. I only wished I had.
FOUR
Cat
The gypsy had promised Cat trouble. She found it soon enough. Ten paces from the booth she met one of the boys she’d seen that morning.
He laughed. ‘Jump through the fire with me?’
She laughed straight back at him. ‘That’ll be the day.’
‘Better than die wondering,’ said he.
He stroked the front of his breeches, grinning.
‘What you got there?’ Cat said. ‘A maggot?’
One word led to another and in no time they were scrapping, rolling on the ground and screeching fit to burst with a crowd of bystanders to egg them on. She was on her back with him grinning on top of her when her hand found a jagged pebble and gave him such a smack on his head that his eyes stood out like goose eggs. He fell off her and she staggered to her feet. Before his friends could make anything of it she took to her heels, proud she’d got the better of a boy, but the next day she went back. She had a plan to make some money but it needed two and she thought he might be just the ally she needed.
Her marks were still on him as his were on her. He looked at her suspiciously but she peered through her black eye and grinned.
‘Fancy some fun?’
‘What’s in it for me?’
‘Maybe a shilling. Any luck could be two. Equal shares.’
‘What have I got to do?’
She explained.
‘I’m game,’ he said.
Obadiah Gregory’s shop was in the main street, twenty yards from the church. Obadiah was as tight as clams; people said it would be easier to hoist the cash from Heywood’s Bank than the goods out of Gregory’s store. It was a challenge Cat could not resist.
They went into the shop. His sly eyes measured them.
‘Looking for something?’
‘Nails,’ the gypsy boy said.
‘Nails cost money, or hadn’t you heard?’
‘I got money,’ the boy said.
‘Want to show me?’
‘Nails first.’
‘Hoity toity,’ Obadiah said.
But led the way to the back of the shop where there were nails in tubs. The boy began picking over the nails with Obadiah checking every move.
‘He’ll be that scared of you nicking them he’ll have no time to keep his eye on me,’ Cat had said.
Now she lingered near the clothes displayed at the front of the shop: shirts and dresses and boots. And shawls.
A man at Selworthy market would pay for shawls, no questions asked. Obadiah Gregory was not watching her. Heart popping, she slid a shawl inside the open neck of her dress. A second one followed the first. She strolled innocently to the door.
A sudden movement. Obadiah Gregory stood between her and the light. He took hold of her arm.
‘Let go of me!’
‘Oh no.’ He had spit bubbles on his lips and a strange clicking sound in his breath. ‘Oh dear me no.’
A rush and pummel of fists. ‘Let her be,’ the gypsy boy shouted.
Obadiah Gregory backhanded him with a crack that put him on his bottom halfway across the shop. ‘You get out,’ he said. ‘Or I’ll set the constable on you. He’ll soon clear you lot out, I guarantee you that.’
‘We’ll leave,’ Cat said. ‘We won’t bother you no more.’
‘You’re right about that.’ He glared at the boy. ‘Last chance,’ he said. ‘You going or not?’
‘Better do what he says,’ Cat said.
‘You’ll be all right?’
‘I be coming with you.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Obadiah said.
She would have made a run for it but his grip was as tight as a fighting dog’s jaws on her upper arm.
‘Get on out of it,’ Cat told the boy.
He hesitated. ‘You sure?’
‘Get!’
He obeyed. Obadiah and Cat were alone in the shop.
‘Put them back,’ he said.
‘Put what back?’
‘Please yourself.’
Still holding her, he began to unbutton the front of her dress. ‘Steal things, you got to be punished. Didn’t no one teach you that?’
He pulled out first one shawl, then the other.
‘What we got here?’
It was not the shawls he meant. Cat’s bosom was still small but it was coming on and Obadiah began to caress it with furtive strokes of his free hand.
‘Oh my,’ he said, sighing through wet lips. ‘Oh yes. Very nice.’
While she stood ramrod stiff, trembling with outrage. This was a grown man. She had no chance of handling him so endured, eyes burning with tears she would not let him see.
‘Them shawls be worth three shilling each,’ Mr Gregory said. Mouth wet, hand busy. ‘Six shilling in all. You know what they do to shoplifters steal goods worth over five shilling, Catherine? They gives them the rope.’ Lightning quick, his hand moved from her arm to her throat. His fingers gripped. He leant forward and whispered in her ear. ‘How you fancy that, eh? Dancing on air, Catherine, while the noose tightens round your pretty neck?’
For a moment his fingers held their choking grip then, suddenly, he released her.
‘But we won’t say no more about it, shall we? You be nice to me, I’ll be nice to you.’ Again the smile, the strange click in his breath. He squeezed her bottom through her dress. ‘Off with you now. Come back in a year’s time and we’ll be friends. Isn’t that right?’
Out in the street Catherine was trembling. I’ll kill him, she thought. She let herself dream of knives and blood but not for long. Dreams were all very well but what mattered was doing something about them.
She went to see Maud Rout.
‘I want you to learn me to fight,’ Cat said.
Maud studied her with knowing eyes. ‘Some bloke been messing with you?’
‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘Course you don’t. Come back first light tomorrow, I’ll give you a few lessons.’
They worked at it every day for months. Bending and stretching and pounding a rope-bound block of wood that Maud said would strengthen her arms and back. At the end Maud said she’d taught her all she could.
‘Anyone gives you trouble, kick him in the goolies. That or a good clout to the jaw should make him start thinking holy thoughts.’
FIVE
Cat was fifteen. She spoke to the breaking waves, the spume smoking salty sharp in the wind off the Channel. She spoke as though to God.
‘Learn me to escape.’
She spoke to the seabirds gliding on stiff wings along the cliffs.
‘Learn me to fly.’
She took her yearning body up on the moors behind the village. The wild ponies cantered, her longing reflected in the thunder of their hooves. She went down to the fish-packing sheds where she had worked since sh
e was tiny, on the rare occasions there was work to be had. She scrounged broken pieces of mackerel and took them home.
Mother, white face and flushed cheeks, was still in bed. Since Cat’s father had disappeared three years ago – whether drowned or run away they never knew – starvation had never been far off, but Mother had managed to keep them going by her needle, making dresses for the local farmers’ wives or patching shirts and dresses for the less well off.
‘We’re no worse off than many,’ she’d said and it was true. But then had come catastrophe.
A year earlier she’d been caught in a snowstorm coming home late from a farmer’s house high on the moors. She had been out for hours on end, lost and wandering in the blizzard, with Cat half out of her mind with worry. Blinded by snow, it was more by chance than anything that she had eventually stumbled across the steep track down to the village and by the time she reached the cottage she was frozen near to death and could barely stand. Cat had done what she could. She had heated water on the fire, bathing her feet and face and using old rags soaked in the hot water to thaw the frost that had settled deep in Mother’s bones, but Mother had continued to shudder all night. Cat had wrapped her arms and legs around her, doing what she could to make her warm, but she had remained cold, so cold, and in the morning had been flushed and feverish.
The fever had passed eventually but Mother had never fully recovered. Three months back she had started to cough in terrible, body-wrenching spasms, and a month later had begun to spit blood. Now she was mortal sick, coughing more blood every day and hoping Cat didn’t notice. The fever had come back worse than ever and now she began talking to those who had never lived at all, the other children she had hoped to have.
‘I think of their little souls wandering with no place to go,’ she said.
Cat did not know how she would manage if Mother didn’t get better. She hated her helplessness but there was nothing she could do about it; as a seamstress she would make a good cow girl. There was a tree stump not far from the cottage. The salt air and endless wind had killed it off years ago yet it was still strong. She had wound a length of frayed rope around it in the way Maud Rout had taught her. She went there most days and worked up a sweat hitting the stump harder and harder with her tightly clenched fists while the blood flushed through her arms and her sweat-stinging eyes saw images of buzzards flying, their fierce eyes scanning the ground, their mewing voices crying freedom.
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