Behind the Sun (4 page)

The girl in the shawl, whose name was Maisie and who Sarah knew to be a hopeless opium inebriate, collected her two shillings in silence, tucked them inside her bodice and left quickly.

The men pounced on theirs, complaining as always about the paltry sum, and eventually departed with bad grace. Sarah had
picked the pockets and stolen the rings of the woman with the shopping basket while Maisie and the men diverted attention. It was a caper they used occasionally and often with great success. All you needed was an unaccompanied, well-heeled woman who believed she was in danger of being robbed, an accomplice or three to manufacture that threat, and then you robbed her yourself. No one was hurt, Sarah and Tom took most of the risk, and all the victim lost were a few valuables and her pride. Sarah had become so skilled now at picking pockets and relieving marks of purses, rings, bracelets and even necklaces she could lift almost anything off anyone, and it made no difference to her whether she stole from someone in a store, the markets or walking down a crowded street.

Tom had also coerced her into breaking into houses and shops now and then and, on rare occasions, she shoplifted as well, though like all professional pickpockets and cracksmen, she looked down on shoplifters: there wasn’t enough skill involved to consider it a craft. She, Tom and their crew stole mainly money, silver and jewellery, swag that could be easily spent, fenced or broken down and remodelled. Tom took most of the proceeds, of course, but he paid her more than he paid anyone else, which was something, she supposed. But so he should: he’d be lucky to find anyone else with her unique combination of talents.

He paid her enough to live moderately comfortably without starving or having to go on the town. But she wasn’t living comfortably: she was living in Seven Dials squirrelling away her money because she’d finally decided he didn’t pay her anywhere near enough to put up with him, or to risk rotting in gaol for the rest of her life.

Tom Ratcliffe left Sarah’s mouldy, rat-infested lodgings, stopped to buy a baked potato and a mug of hot elder wine from a street-seller, then walked along the busy thoroughfares towards his own lodgings at the Drury Lane end of Short’s Garden. ‘Garden’ —
that’s a joke, he thought as he stepped around piles of animal dung and refuse. Nothing green’s grown here for decades. Christ, now he had some sort of shit splattered on the hems of his good fawn trousers.

He trudged up the stairs to the pair of rooms he and his family lived in and pushed open the door. His wife, Caroline, looked up from the mean little hearth where she sat stirring a pot of something that smelt like it might be his supper.

He set his hat on the table and slumped onto a chair, looking around at the shabby furnishings, the lumpy mattress on which his three children slept, the mess they’d made of their things left lying all over the place — all the dross collected by a family who couldn’t afford cabinets or bureaux or robes to put it in. You’d think he’d be a relatively wealthy man by now, all the loot his crew had stolen over the years, but times were hard, his gambling debts were huge, and the dollyshops weren’t paying as much now as they once might have. Too risky, the fences said, take it or leave it. Nothing had been the same since Ikey Solomon had disappeared from the scene.

And he’d heard just a few weeks ago that his man, who had been so good at turning one fat old dowager’s ear pendants into a necklace that some other rich heifer just
had
to have, had been nabbed and was now in Newgate and looking at fourteen years minimum. He’d thought briefly about getting Sarah to rework the pieces they stole — he knew she could do it — but he had a nagging, uneasy feeling about her, and it wasn’t going away. She’d changed since her six months in Newgate. She was…less biddable. And sometimes when she looked at him he couldn’t fathom what she was thinking, whereas in the past he always could. It really bothered him. Bloody women.

He reached down and retrieved a crust his pet ferret had chucked out of its cage, his stomach lurching queasily as he spotted what looked like a dirty nappy on the floor beneath the table. ‘Jesus, woman, can you not clean up after those bloody chavies? There’s
a shitty clout on the floor here.’ Caroline was such a slattern sometimes.

His wife, her face shiny and red from the fire, turned to look at him. ‘You clean up after them, Tom Ratcliffe! I’m cooking your supper.’

Tom glared at her; she glared back. They had ceased being interested in each other long before the birth of their third child and, since then, the indifference had turned into outright animosity. But she wouldn’t leave him, Tom knew; she was too stupid or too lazy — he couldn’t decide — so he’d have to be the one to eventually go. Which suited him.

‘Where are they?’ he said.

She waved a wooden spoon vaguely towards the door. ‘Outside somewhere.’

He frowned; Phoebe was only eighteen months old. But he supposed the others would be looking out for her.

Caroline turned back to the pot, then said over her shoulder, ‘The watch were here.’

Tom felt his heart quicken nauseatingly. ‘What?’

Caroline faced him again, swivelling her bony arse on the stool. Tom noted she didn’t sound half as perturbed as she should. ‘The watch. Two of them. Looking for you.’

Tom half rose, panic bubbling in his chest. ‘When?’

‘Not long before you got in.’

‘Did you tell them I was away?’

‘Told them you weren’t in.’

‘What else?’

‘What else what?’

Tom exploded. ‘Don’t be so
bloody
stupid! What else did you tell them?!’

Caroline looked at him for a long time, then a tiny, vengeful smile appeared at the corners of her mouth. ‘I told them you’d be back soon.’

Tom grabbed his hat — he’d deal with her later — but he was too late: a heavy fist banged on the door. He glanced at Caroline, who shrugged. So, not stupid then. Just a bitch.

He briefly considered the window but dismissed the possibility — they were three storeys up. He paused, thinking. Perhaps he could do a deal; he had other names after all. His mind racing, he opened the door.

Friday and Harrie watched the new girl unenthusiastically slosh soup around her basin with her spoon. They were eating, as they always did, sitting on their mats in the ward. The other women were all too busy slurping and complaining about their food to pay any attention to them. The girl had a slim, wiry build, hair the colour of jet, and wary dark eyes. Her skin was very slightly olive but had an unhealthy pallor and her right cheek was marked by a curved silver scar.

She looked up and scowled at them. ‘What are you staring at?’

‘That scar on your phiz,’ Friday responded brightly. ‘Just wondering how you got it.’

‘How do you think?’ The girl stabbed a lump of potato and inspected it closely.

‘Dunno.’

‘Fighting someone who asked me nosy bloody questions.’

Friday laughed. ‘What’s your name?’

The girl gave an irritated sigh. ‘If I tell you will you go away?’

‘No.’

After a moment’s consideration, the girl said, ‘Sarah Morgan.’

‘What are you in for?’

Sarah propped her spoon with deliberate care against the rim of her basin and gave her full attention to the two girls regarding her. She’d been watching
them
for several days now. The redhead, whose odd name she already knew was Friday Woolfe, was a whore, and mouthy and quick-witted, and seemed to wield a fair bit of power
because of it. She wasn’t at the top of the heap in here — those who were, Sarah knew from her own associations, were already well-established flash mob — but the Woolfe girl was giving them a run for their money.

The smaller one looked like she wouldn’t say shoo to a goose. She had a pretty figure, nut-brown hair, hazel eyes and a sweet, open, freckled face with hardly any pockmarks.

‘What are
you
in for?’ Sarah asked her. ‘And what do they call you?’

‘Me?’ The girl flicked a questioning look at Friday Woolfe. Friday nodded and the girl said, ‘I’m Harrie Clarke, arrested for stealing a bolt of silk and some embroidery thread.’

‘Shoplifting.’ Sarah snorted derisively. ‘Up the skirt?’

Harrie nodded.

‘And you?’ Friday persisted.

‘Breaking the law,’ Sarah said. ‘Been tried yet?’

Friday shook her head. ‘Indicted, waiting for the Grand Jury, both of us.’

To Friday, Sarah said, ‘First or second offence?’ Hoisting a bolt of cloth was so obviously Harrie Clarke’s first offence she wasn’t going to bother to ask.

‘Third for me,’ Friday replied. ‘You?’

Sarah wondered how much about herself she wanted to reveal to this nosy, garrulous girl. What purpose would it serve, really?

‘She’s done a stretch before,’ wardswoman Maryanne Marston said, eavesdropping. ‘I remember her sour bloody mug.’

Sarah gave her a filthy look. Maryanne Marston was a long-time inmate and controlled everything that happened in the ward, which gave her the power to demand and receive a regular payment from every prisoner. The system was almost as old as Newgate itself and known as ‘garnish’, and those who couldn’t pay it were deprived of food, drink, eating utensils, a place on the barracks bed and even physical safety. Payment could come from legal or
illegal sources, but inmates who had recourse to neither found their time in Newgate even more insufferable than expected. Maryanne Marston was universally hated but, not unexpectedly, had her share of toadies. During her first prison sojourn, Sarah most certainly had not been one of them.

Forced now to admit it, Sarah said to Friday, ‘I did six months here about a year ago.’ She turned to the wardswoman and snapped, ‘And you can keep your bloody nose out of my business, you old tarleather.’

Maryanne’s eyes narrowed. ‘Watch your tongue, you, or you’ll find yourself with no food, no drink, no nothing.’

‘You watch yours,’ Sarah shot back, ‘or I’ll cut it out one dark night.’

There was a mutter of consternation now among the other women in the ward, as everyone suffered when Maryanne was in a bad humour, but she merely glared at Sarah, then returned to trawling through her own watery soup.

Sarah had no fear of repercussions from Maryanne Marston. She’d already discovered that the woman was due for release very soon: she wouldn’t do anything to jeopardise her chances of walking out of Newgate. Unlike Sarah, who wouldn’t be walking anywhere. When her time came to go up before the judge, she’d be sentenced to transportation. The same fate would no doubt befall Friday Woolfe.

‘Has there been talk yet of a transport?’

Friday shrugged. ‘You hear the rumours. We’ve heard April, we’ve heard May, but who knows?’

‘There are a hundred women here already sentenced to New South Wales,’ Harrie added, ‘so surely a ship must go soon?’

‘Don’t bet on it,’ Sarah said, who knew of prisoners who’d languished in Newgate for over a year waiting to be transported.

Friday gave her soup a last disgusted swirl and set her basin on the ground. ‘Anyone you know in here?’

Sarah put her own basin aside, leaving most of its contents untouched. An oily film floated on the top, with bits of stringy mutton rising through it. Her stomach clenched and saliva filled her mouth. She pushed the basin away with her foot. ‘A few faces,’ she said. ‘No one I’d call a friend.’

‘You can be our friend,’ Harrie offered.

Sarah looked away. She wasn’t very good at making friends and never had been. ‘I’ll think about it,’ she said tersely, then regretted it the moment she saw the expression on the other girl’s face.

Friday also caught her mate’s hurt look. ‘Don’t bother,’ she snapped, taking Harrie’s wrist and hauling her up and away. ‘We’re fine as we are.’

Freezing sleet fell for the rest of the day, keeping everyone huddled inside the stinking, damp cell. Sarah kept to herself, as much as anyone could in a ward built for ten inmates and crammed with almost thirty. That night she took a place on the barracks bed as far away from Harrie Clarke and Friday Woolfe as she could manage.

She couldn’t sleep, with the cold and people snoring and farting and whispering and having nightmares and crying out and breathing rank breath everywhere. Her rope mat was no better than a sugar sack and she was sure she could feel the very grain of the bed’s hard planks pressing into her hip and shoulder. Last time she’d been in Newgate there had been talk from Mrs Fry and her Ladies’ Newgate Committee about getting straw-stuffed mattresses for the women’s prison, but that clearly hadn’t happened.

What a barmy pair those girls were, asking her if she wanted to be their friend, as if they were all five years old and playing some silly little game in the lane! Mind you, Harrie Clarke might be a bit cracked, but that Friday Woolfe was a lot sharper. She’d have to watch out for her.

She tried to turn over and found she couldn’t, everyone was that tightly packed together; someone must have moved off the floor and
crept onto the barracks bed. She eased herself half onto her back, covering her face with her arm so she wouldn’t have to breathe in the smell of the woman next to her.

When she was in Newgate last time she’d waited three months for her trial then served a six-month sentence, which lucky for her had included her period of remand. It had still felt like eternity. She’d been told then she was lucky to have waited only that long to go to trial — some people marked time in the wards for up to a year before they saw the judge. But the word this time was that they were pushing people through the courts as fast as possible to clear a backlog, so with a bit of luck she wouldn’t moulder in here too long before her day came.

She wondered why Harrie Clarke had made such an open offer of friendship, especially as it appeared she was already friendly with Friday Woolfe. It had been…unexpected.

She’d not made any friends in here last time either. It was the same as on the outside — you didn’t have friends if you worked with a crew, you had
acquaintances
, and you didn’t trust anyone. Her neighbour Rosina had been obliging, though, very happy to accept payment generous enough that she could retrieve the body of her dead child in exchange for smuggling in Sarah’s precious cache of running-away money. Sarah was loathe to dip into it but she had to now, for garnish and for the other things that would make life in gaol bearable. It was hidden somewhere no one would ever think to look.