Emily (26 page)

‘No, perhaps not. Mrs Edwards has only recently discovered Emily. Emily’s father was Mrs Edwards’s cousin, but Emily was not aware of the relationship until a few weeks ago.’

They spoke together for another fifteen minutes and discovered that Roger Francis knew of Philip’s family, so giving a better footing for their discussion when Francis questioned Philip’s interest in Emily.

‘I have met her only a few times,’ Philip flushed, ‘but I was impressed by her charm. I was on my way to seek her out when I was approached by a friend of Emily’s, who told me the whole sad story.’

‘Why did this friend approach you, Mr Linton?’ Roger Francis asked curiously. ‘Did she know you?’

‘Of me!’ He smiled. ‘There are some servants who know more than their masters and mistresses and Ginny appears to be one of those.’ He grew serious. ‘But it was mere coincidence that we met and I rather feel that she was clutching at straws. She could think of no-one who could help Emily.’

‘So she is a true friend?’ Roger murmured, then, looking up, he rose as Mary Edwards approached. ‘What news, my dear? How is she taking it?’

‘Badly.’ Mary’s eyes were red rimmed with weeping. ‘She is so very bitter and it is not in her nature to be so. And the news is that she will be moved tomorrow down to the Thames. There will be transport ready in the morning to take the prisoners.’ She stifled a sob, yet could barely speak for her emotion. ‘And Emily will be one of them.’

Emily boarded the coach outside York Castle gaol with some difficulty. Her ankles were ironed as before and she was manacled to another woman by her right hand and a girl of perhaps fourteen by the left.

The girl sobbed and screamed and refused to climb on board and Emily was pulled by the woman climbing aboard and dragged back by the girl, who fell to the floor in her distress, pulling Emily and the other woman on top of her. Emily felt that her arms had been wrenched out of their sockets as she struggled to get to her feet. The guard rushed over to them and verbally abused them all, roughly pulling the girl by her bodice and thrusting her with Emily and the other woman into the coach.

He grabbed the handcuffs holding them and released the girl from them, then clasped her hands behind her back and manacled her wrists. ‘Out,’ he ordered. ‘Get up on ’top. You two stop here.’

‘Swine!’ the woman muttered. ‘I know his ma, she’s no better than she should be.’

Emily turned away, the morning was dark and
dismal with a light rain falling and she watched with glazed eyes, through the coach window, as other prisoners, men and women, perhaps fifteen or twenty in all, came out of the prison yard and towards the waiting coaches and wagons. If I can travel inside it will be preferable to being on top, she pondered, remembering the journey from Hull to York. I believe London is a very long way.

Another guard looked inside. ‘Who’ve we got here then? Hello, Molly. Got you at last, have they?’ He grinned and winked. ‘Nice little sail for you to Sydney Cove! Weather’s good, so I hear, and plenty of husbands to choose from. I could almost wish I was going with you.’

The woman leaned back against the seat and gazed at him from beneath wrinkled and heavy eyelids. ‘Why don’t you, then? Take a free passage.’

‘No thanks,’ he said. ‘Too many villains down there. Besides, my missus wouldn’t go.’

‘Leave her behind then,’ she said idly. ‘I’d see you all right. Go on,’ she urged, leaning towards him, ‘there’s plenty o’ land going cheap, plenty o’ women – even cheaper.’ She laughed coarsely.

He shook his head. ‘I live in prison already. Why swap it for another one?’

The woman sniffed. ‘You’ve no backbone. I’ll be glad to be gone from this land.’

‘Watch yourself, Molly,’ he said gruffly. ‘Watch that tongue o’ yourn or it’ll get you into trouble like it’s done before. They might not give women the lash any more, but they have other ways of punishing them.’

He turned away and they were left alone for a few
moments. ‘What did he mean’, Emily asked in a trembling voice, ‘about other punishments?’

The woman stared at her. ‘They used to give women the lash, not as many strokes as the men, but enough to mark ’em. Now they’re not supposed to, though I’ve heard some do.’ She gave a sly sneer. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve had a strap on your white skin?’

Emily shook her head. She was starting to shake.

‘They’ll all be after you then, won’t they? Officers, seamen, guards!’ She jerked Emily closer to her and whispered. ‘Stick by me, I’ll pick somebody out for you. We’ll find you an officer on board ship. Treat him right and we’ll both do well. How about it?’

Emily fell forward, retching and retching as the woman’s words brought Hugo Purnell to her mind. How would she ever rid herself of his memory?

‘You sickening for summat?’ the woman asked. ‘I don’t want you travelling next to me if you are!’

Emily wiped her mouth and looked into the woman’s face. She was pockmarked, with a grey unhealthy skin. What sickness could I give her that she hasn’t had already? She suddenly started to laugh. An hysterical, shrieking laugh as she thought terrifyingly of what was in front of her. She was to rub shoulders and share her life with whores, thieves and murderers. How would she survive?

Another guard came rushing forward as he heard the commotion and dragged them both out. ‘She’s mad,’ the woman declared. ‘Don’t put her next to me!’

Their handcuffs were released and Emily was
pushed up on the front of the coach and the woman on the rear, the other prisoners were brought on board, the driver climbed up and with a crack of his whip they jerked forward. They were off, out of the city of York on the two-day journey to London.

They stopped for an hour that night whilst the horses were changed and were allowed to walk around the yard of an inn to stretch themselves, but their ankle chains and manacles were not removed and Emily kept her face hidden as customers came to the inn door to peer curiously at them. When she climbed back on board she was shaking with cold and hunger, for they had been given only a chunk of bread and water at midday, and only been allowed to step down to relieve themselves. As dawn broke the next morning only the fact that she was shackled to the other prisoners held her to her seat, for otherwise she would have fallen with fatigue, off the coach and beneath the horses’ hooves.

No-one spoke as at midday, once more, they stopped and were given bread and water and a piece of cheese and staggered in a disordered circle in order to exercise. As the coaches and wagons entered the city of London the prisoners were subdued, meek and hungry and looked with dull eyes at the capital city, which would be their final destination point for their departure to another shore.

They followed their captors meekly into the gaol which was to hold them and sank wearily on to their straw mattresses, not minding the fleas or livestock which invaded them, but only glad to rest their
weary bodies on solid ground and not feel the jarring, jolting movement of the coach or wagon below them.

Male prisoners sentenced to transportation were held in Pentonville prison and served a third of their allotted span incarcerated there; then they were given hard labour in the naval dockyards before sailing to finish their sentences in Australia. Most knew that they would never return, unless they could work their passage home; some had no intention of returning to the land which had abandoned them and appealed to the authorities to allow their wives and families to follow them.

Some of the women prisoners already held in gaol when Emily arrived had been there for weeks waiting for their transportation ship to arrive and their tempers were ugly. They abused the guards with foul language or else promised all kinds of favours if they were given special treatment. ‘Tomorrow, tomorrow, you keep on saying,’ one woman shouted through the bars. ‘Yet we’ve been locked up for weeks in this stinking hole!’ Some of the others rushed to the bars and rattled and banged on them, whilst other quieter, frightened prisoners, such as Emily, cowered against the walls, trying to make themselves invisible. But the rebellion was to no avail and those who complained too loudly and for too long were shackled to the walls of their cells.

Emily felt ill, dirty and depressed. Mary Edwards had promised that she and Mr Francis would appeal on her behalf against the sentence, but Emily had now given up all hope. There would be
no release, she was convinced. Only Hugo Purnell could appeal to the authorities in mitigation for her crime, and he would not, of that she was certain, and she would not appeal to him, not ever. Her hatred of him, which was growing like a cancer inside her, was total.

Two hundred women prisoners were mustered together the next morning and once more ironed by their ankles and chained in groups of six. They had been brought to the capital from all over the country, from towns and from country villages. Some of the women cried for their children, a number of them dropped to their knees and prayed, whilst others cursed and ranted at God, the queen and their captors.

‘Right you are, ladies,’ called one of the guards. ‘This is what you’ve been waiting for. You’re off on a little sea voyage. Hope you’ve said goodbye to your next of kin, ’cos if you haven’t it’s too late now. You’re outward bound in a week.’

Emily shook in every limb as she waited. She could not hold her body still. This is the end of the life I have known, she wept. There is no-one to save me now. And, as once before she had stood on the river bank and said goodbye to Sam, to Granny Edwards and her childhood as she had set off into adulthood, she said a silent goodbye now. To Mary Edwards, to Roger Francis, to Sam and the friends she had made in service, and Philip Linton, she sighed, who once danced with me and made me happy.

I’m so glad that he doesn’t know of this. I would be so ashamed if he should hear of my downfall and
think ill of me. She spared a thought for Deborah Purnell and even in her own anguish she felt a stab of sorrow for her and the life she would lead with her husband. Poor, poor lady, she considered, I would rather be as I am now, than be as she is and married to him.

They walked in file towards the river, down narrow, unlit cobbled streets with ancient, decrepit courts and alleys leading off them, where people came out of their decaying ramshackle houses and silently watched them pass. The sun came up as they travelled, but the sunlight only served to emphasize the poverty and degradation of the area, where barefoot, ragged children played in the filth-choked gutters.

They passed the dockyards and saw the shackled, labouring felons, who looked up as the procession went by. The river was busy with traffic, with coal barges, dredgers and cargo ships, whilst on the muddy banks scavengers and mudlarks searched amongst the stinking sewage for their fortune. They saw the infamous old hulks, where once the First and Second Fleet of prisoners had been packed in the dark in dank and dirty holds, without light or air before being sent to the other side of the world, and which were still used when the prisons were full.

This is wrong! Emily suddenly rebelled. Why should people be sent into exile for crimes of poverty? During the night, unable to sleep, she had listened to muttered conversations, of complaints and weeping, and recognized that not all the prisoners were hardened criminals, but that some had
stolen to feed their children or pay their rent. Her gaze drew across the river. A five-masted barque rode at anchor, seamen swarmed high out on the yards overhauling the rigging, whilst below, carpenters hammered and sawed and caulked the decks, and in the surging water three ships’ lighters packed with provisions, barrels of water, chickens, sheep, pigs, goats and their kids were being rowed towards it.

The prisoners waited all the morning, shivering in the cold river air and watching the activities of officers and men as they travelled between ship and shore, until finally the lighters were empty and the guards were given orders to move the women forward to be taken on board.

I’d like to sail on a ship. Her own childish voice came back to her in memory. I used to watch the ships sail down the Humber and wonder where they were going. But I haven’t seen such a ship as this. This was a stalwart vessel designed to sail under its own power of canvas on the great oceans of the world. This ship, she thought, could ride the huge seas and capture the winds of any storm in its square sails and make them fly; and in spite of her fear she felt a tremble of excitement as she was rowed towards it.

Their hands were freed, but the chains were kept on their ankles as the lighter bobbed alongside the ship. ‘Right,’ called a soldier, who had a rifle by his side. ‘Climb aboard.’

‘Bear a hand, mate,’ one of the seamen called to him. ‘They’ll not make it up jack ladder on their own!’

The lighter dipped and bobbed as the women tried to get a foothold on the rope ladder. The anklets were just wide enough for them to lift one foot above the other to gain the step, but the boat swayed so much that most were afraid of falling into the water. Though their lives were meaningless, yet still they clung to them as firmly as they clung to the rope which kept them between life and death.

The soldier handed his rifle to one of the seamen and stood by to put a hand against the women’s backs as they struggled to reach the ladder from the plunging boat. He grinned at their efforts and leeringly peered up their ragged skirts as they climbed up towards the deck.

‘Get your hands off me!’ Emily pushed him away as he put his hands on her buttocks to push her up. ‘I can manage.’

She felt the ladder shake and looked up. An old woman had gone before her and was hesitating half-way up. Emily had noticed her on the journey from the gaol. She had barely been able to walk; her shuffling feet were bare and festering and her back was bent and she moaned constantly.

‘Come on, Mother!’ the soldier shouted. ‘Get a move on.’

The woman appeared not to have heard him, but had half-turned and was staring down into the water. Suddenly she looked up into the sky. ‘God help me,’ she cried pitifully and letting go of the ladder she flung herself off and into the swirling water below.