The Disgrace of Kitty Grey

by Mary Hooper

  This meant nothing to me. ‘What do you mean?’ I asked between sobs.

  ‘I mean I was taken away by Royal Navy men and pressed into service. I am just as much a captive as you are. That’s why I’m wearing manacles.’

  I stared at him but was not prepared to give an inch. ‘I don’t understand. What happened to you?’

  He sat down beside the coil of rope and I sat beside him, but it was a while before he started speaking.

  ‘It was at the end of August,’ he began at length. ‘I took two Navy fellows across the river to Millbridge in the normal way, and they complimented me on the way I handled the boat and said they had need of such strong young men in the Navy.’

  ‘But you surely didn’t . . . ’

  ‘Of course I didn’t! I thanked them, and they asked if I was a single man or no.’

  ‘And you said . . . ’

  ‘I said I was a single man, but had certain responsibilities. When I’d taken them over I said I would sit in the boat and wait to row them back if they wished, and they asked if I would first join them for a tankard of ale at the Royal Oak and drink the King’s health. I refused at first, but they persisted, and were such civil fellows that I thought they might take it as an insult if I didn’t join them.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Then we went to the Royal Oak. I took up my ale and we drank to the King, to the Royal Navy and to the right outcome of the wars, and when I got to the bottom I saw there was a silver coin there.’

  I looked at him curiously. ‘Why? What did that mean?’

  ‘I will tell you. I drained the tankard and took up the coin, and when I did so both men cheered and said I had taken the King’s shilling and was now in the Royal Navy. I protested, but to no avail, for they clapped handcuffs on me. They rowed me back to my hut to collect my tin box and spare clothing and so on, and that night we left for Plymouth Sound in a closed carriage.’

  I looked at him bleakly. ‘But was there nothing you could do?’

  ‘There was not, for I was in handcuffs and the two fellows whose charge I was in were sturdily built. I was fair desperate to leave you a message at the hut, believe me.’

  ‘If only you had!’

  He sighed. ‘Never have I regretted so much the fact that I couldn’t write. There was not even paper or pencil in my hut, or I might have drawn a picture telling you what had happened. I was fair out of my mind trying to think of what to do.’ His voice thickened. ‘It broke my heart to think of you and Betsy finding me gone; of you hating me or thinking I was dead.’

  ‘Both of those things and more,’ I said, but I gripped his hands tightly, for the tables had turned and now I was comforting him. After a moment I asked, ‘But what happened to you after that?’

  ‘We went to Plymouth, picking up some other fellows on the way who’d been similarly taken. Once there we worked in the dockyards, but always manacled and under close guard.’

  ‘What did you do all day?’

  He shrugged. ‘Repaired rigging, sewed nets, scrubbed tables, caught rats, practised our letters. That’s how I could write those notes to you.’

  ‘Did you write the notes you sent?’

  He nodded.

  ‘You spelled my name wrongly.’

  ‘That’s how it sounds,’ he said, smiling.

  We stared at each other for a moment, nose to nose, and I felt I wanted to turn cartwheels like a child, or race about or scream – anything that might help express the turmoil inside me.

  ‘A dozen pressed men were packed off to help fight Napoleon, but myself and some others were – by all that’s wonderful – chosen to work below decks on the Juanita and help sail her to Botany Bay.’ He gave a short laugh. ‘They say that when we get out to sea we may have our shackles off. What they don’t know is that I’ve already devised a way to spring the lock open with my penknife.’

  I sighed very deeply, still not really accepting or believing that he hadn’t left me through choice, but was actually here, beside me. ‘When did you find out that Betsy and I were on board?’

  ‘Two days ago,’ he said, smoothing my hair back from my face as he spoke. ‘When I saw you I could not believe it . . . just could not believe my eyes.’

  ‘Tell me what happened!’ I urged.

  ‘Well, we had heard which ship we were to travel on: the word had spread around the yard that we would be going to Botany Bay with . . .’ he raised his eyebrows, ‘. . . a cargo of disgraced and disorderly women.’

  ‘Not all of us so,’ I put in swiftly.

  ‘We spoke long into the night about such women and there was much bawdy talk and jesting.’

  ‘I’m sure . . .’ I blushed at the thought of what might have been said about us.

  ‘And then we pressed men were taken on board and sent down below, so we hardly got a glimpse of anyone. But when I was sent on deck to collect something, I saw you and Betsy seated near the gangplank watching the livestock come on board.’

  ‘And what did you think when you saw us?’

  ‘I thought you were a mirage,’ he said simply. ‘I saw you there and wondered if I might have gone mad.’

  ‘But why didn’t you shout? Why didn’t you let us know?’

  ‘That was my first instinct, but then I realised that I should not let anyone discern that there was a link between us.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’ve been trying to devise an escape plan for some time.’ I gasped at this and he continued, ‘Now, of course, my plans will include you and Betsy, which will make it a shade more difficult.’

  ‘I must tell Betsy you’re here!’ I said.

  ‘Not yet! If you tell her she won’t be able to keep it to herself.’ He took my hand. ‘But tell me how you and Betsy came to be in a cargo of girls being sent to Botany Bay.’

  ‘We are both here because the authorities – that is, the judge and the prison governor and so on – think that Betsy is my own child.’

  He looked baffled at this. ‘They think that Betsy is yours?’

  I nodded. ‘I had to say that to save us from being separated, otherwise they might have taken Betsy and put her in an orphanage.’

  He heaved a sigh. ‘Then although I am still bewildered as to how all this happened, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for looking after her. Betsy and I both owe you a great deal. When I think I could have lost her for ever . . .’

  We sat speechless for a few moments – and I think both of us were trying to come to terms with all that had happened – then he took my other cold hand in his own. ‘But tell me how you came to be here? What were you convicted of? For it surely is the most wonderful thing that we’ve ended up in the same place.’

  ‘I will tell you everything,’ I said, and took him through the whole story: how I’d believed he was in London working with his cousins, so when the opportunity had presented itself for me to go there, I’d done so, and there met with my great misfortune. I told him about my realisation that half of London could see St Paul’s, about the rogue of a landlord and the kindness of Mr Holloway, about the horror of Newgate Gaol – the cold and the stink and the fierceness of the inmates, and tears fell from two pairs of eyes during the course of all this telling.

  Oblivious of the cold, we talked all night, until my account of what had happened had reached the present day and the fact that Miss Sophia’s beau was on board. As dawn streaked the sky in the east and we prepared to part, he impressed upon me both the need for secrecy and for us to act with all speed, for the day which was dawning was Tuesday, and on Wednesday at high tide the Juanita, with or without us, would set sail for Botany Bay.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Will went down below and I stayed out of sight until the hatches were opened and the other girls began coming up the ladder. Martha appeared with the children and I kissed Betsy, then – on Martha saying she was desperate to know what had happened – put my finger to my lips and said I would tell her as soon as we found ourselves alone. Martha
had become a good friend and, though Will had urged restraint upon me, it would have been impossible not to tell her about this.

  The other girls milled around us, finding spaces to sit or beginning their work on repairing lengths of canvas, scrubbing decks or gutting fish. There would be work for all once we’d set sail, we’d been told, but until then it was only those girls who had received longer sentences who worked. Their duties were always outside and their hands, with almost continuous exposure to cold and salt water, had become red-raw. This caused some of them to be resentful of the rest of us, which manifested itself in certain spiteful ways: tripping another girl on the deck ladder, giving the odd sly pinch, stealing food when a girl’s back was turned. Martha and I had spoken about it and concluded that it would not take long for an almighty fight to break out.

  That morning we waited, playing with baby Elizabeth (who, despite her surroundings, had recently begun to smile), until we found ourselves with space to speak more freely. The cows came on board during the time we were waiting, being swung over on giant hammocks from another ship, but I felt so anxious and overwrought that I hardly glanced their way. What were these cows to me, when I might soon be seeing my own?

  ‘You must promise not to say a word!’ I began to Martha at last.

  ‘Of course I won’t! Was it someone handsome who sent the notes?’

  ‘It was. But more than that . . .’ I lowered my voice, ‘it was someone I knew from home: my sweetheart who had disappeared.’

  ‘The one who left you to come to London?’ she said, her voice rising indignantly.

  I nodded.

  ‘Then I’m very surprised that you would have anything to do with him. Why did he run off and leave you?’

  ‘He didn’t leave voluntarily,’ I said. ‘He was taken away. Pressed.’

  ‘Ah . . .’ she breathed, obviously knowing what this meant. ‘Poor lad.’

  ‘He still intends that we should be together, Martha! He says he is going to make a plan for us to escape.’

  ‘Escape from this ship?’ She shook her head. ‘Then I wish you a great deal of luck.’ She nodded towards the gangplank, which was the ship’s only point of exit and entry and guarded around the clock by two hefty sailors. ‘We sail tomorrow. How can an escape be managed in that short time?’

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘And what might happen to you if you’re retaken?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said again. ‘I just have to trust him.’

  She took my hand, looking at me sadly. ‘If you escape, I shall miss you very much,’ she said.

  ‘I’m sorry that you can’t come with us . . .’

  She shook her head. ‘ ’Tis a kind thought, but I am quite resigned to going to Australia now. Besides, I have caught the eye of a midshipman.’

  ‘Already!’

  ‘Things move fast at sea,’ she said, blushing.

  Deciding I must do something to keep my mind occupied, Martha and I went to see the six newly arrived cows, and I was a little saddened to realise that one of the poor beasts must have had her calf taken away from her too early, for she was lowing piteously and looking towards the shore. The cows were Friesians, from the Low Countries, handsome in form and known for their good milk yield. They were resilient, too, and would have to be, for we were told by a sailor that, in high seas, they’d be tied up tightly and lashed to the masts. It would not do for one sixth of the ship’s allowance of milk and beef to slip overboard.

  That morning the last women had arrived from Exeter Gaol (a sorry bunch, ill dressed for cold weather and most forlorn) and the Juanita had taken delivery of some crates of lemons and limes that she’d been waiting for. I hardly knew what I did all that day; my mind was jumping all over the place with fear and possibilities. The lack of sleep meant that I felt strange and light-headed, but I was reluctant to close my eyes in case I missed Will coming by with a message.

  I counted the hours as the ship’s bell sounded, each hour bringing us a little closer to the time the ship would sail.

  By mid-afternoon I was near despair, for no message had come from Will and I feared either that an officer had found out he was planning to escape, or that he’d been moved to another ship. Another hour went by and one of the little cabin boys came by and pressed a note in my hand asking me to go to the water butt on the starboard side without delay.

  I told Martha where I was going and made my way there as quickly as I could, my heart racing. Finding Will still seemed much like a miracle, although we couldn’t touch, or even look as if we were speaking to each other; he pretended to be cleaning the iron mugs which hung on chains around the water butt, while I stared out to the fields beyond the city, as if bidding a sad farewell to my country.

  ‘I couldn’t contact you before, Kitty,’ he said in a whisper. ‘I had duties to attend to down below.’

  ‘What are we going to do?’ I asked with some urgency. ‘I’ve been thinking and thinking . . .’

  ‘As I have, for what I’d planned for myself will no longer work with three.’

  A sailor passed by and checked some rigging, but didn’t give either of us a glance.

  ‘But now I’ve devised another plan,’ Will said. His eyes met mine. ‘How brave do you feel?’

  ‘Brave?’ I asked, pulling my shawl over my head against a sudden gust of wind. ‘I don’t feel brave at all.’

  ‘Then how much do you want to return home?’

  I tried to speak, but a lump rose in my throat so that I just stared at him.

  He nodded and touched my hand. ‘As much as I,’ he said quietly. ‘Then this is what you have to do . . .’

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  On Wednesday at dusk I heard, from far above me on the deck of the Juanita, the voice of the chaplain: ‘For as much as it has pleased Almighty God to take unto himself the souls of our sisters here departed . . .’

  I could not see anything, for I was in darkness, but knew that if I could, there would be a few girls – Martha amongst them – standing at the side of the ship, looking down at my canvas-wrapped body lying in the bottom of a rowing boat.

  ‘I must not move . . . I must not move . . .’ I heard Betsy say in a whisper.

  It was noisy, thank goodness: seawater plashing against the sides of the ship, shouts from other craft, the sound of a sea shanty being sung on a nearby boat.

  ‘No, you mustn’t move,’ I whispered in her ear, for she was lying close beside me inside my canvas shroud. ‘And you mustn’t speak either. Not for a little while.’

  ‘I must not move and I must not speak,’ came Betsy’s muffled voice. ‘I must not . . .’

  ‘. . . we therefore commit their bodies to the deep, in sure and certain hopes of the resurrection to eternal life . . .’

  I felt something light land on top of me and knew what it was. ‘I will make sure that you have a flower on your coffin,’ Martha had said to me, and she’d pulled a velvet rose from the front of the gown given to her by Mrs Fry. ‘Even if you are not really dead, you must have a flower.’

  The chaplain intoned a final blessing and there was an answering ‘Amen’ from Martha and the few girls standing on board the ship.

  ‘Thank you, Chaplain,’ I heard Lieutenant Warwick call to him, and then, ‘If you please, sailor!’ to Will, who was rowing us.

  Will loosed the rope that was keeping him at the side of the ship and began to row away from it. Almost immediately, lying in the hull of the rowing boat and sewn into a canvas coffin bag, I began to feel sick from the rise and fall of the waves. I would have to tolerate it, however, because we didn’t know for how long anyone might be watching us. We had to get as far away from the Juanita and the other Royal Navy vessels as we could.

  I’d gone to see Lieutenant Warwick first thing that morning, and it had not been difficult to persuade him to help us, for it was not his belief that ordinary men should be pressed into service. When he heard first Will’s story, then the circumstances which had
caused Betsy and me to be on board, he said he felt we had been treated unjustly and it was his duty, not as an officer but as a gentleman, to aid us. In turn I assured him most sincerely that I would inform Lord and Lady Baysmith of his noble behaviour towards us, and do everything in my power to advance his suit with Miss Sophia.

  ‘I am certain that she still loves you, sir,’ I said. ‘In my experience of young ladies, the more their parents oppose their wishes, the more they cling to them.’

  ‘And she refused to be introduced to the gentleman in Bath, you said?’

  ‘She did, sir!’ I replied.

  He thought for a moment. ‘We are stopping in Madeira; perhaps you could beg Sophia to contact me care of the Royal Navy office there. I can send her a list of the stops the ship is making and we can write to one another at each one.’

  ‘Of course, sir,’ I said fervently. ‘I will tell her everything that happened, and assure her of your complete devotion.’

  ‘I’ll try to get passage on a fast ship back from Australia. It’ll be eighteen months, Kitty – please make Sophia aware of this.’

  ‘Indeed I will, sir.’ I took a deep breath. ‘But about Will, and me, and Betsy . . .’

  ‘Yes!’ He seemed to pull himself from his reverie. ‘Sadly, Annie Lease, one of the two girls who were ill, has died, so I have already ordered a sea burial this afternoon. The Plymouth authorities won’t think of taking the body ashore; they’re too frightened that gaol fever will come in with the corpse.’

  ‘But won’t they . . .’ I hesitated, for it sounded so callous, ‘. . . want to wait in case the other girl dies so they can bury them together?’

  ‘What – set sail on a long voyage with a dead body on board?’ He shook his head. ‘Never! Sailors are a superstitious bunch.’ He was quiet for a moment, then said, ‘No, you will be in the other canvas shroud, playing dead. And it will be me who sews you in, so you can rest easy that I won’t do the final stitch.’

  I looked at him curiously.