He brings his scepter down.
"Take her away."
I almost swoon as I realize...
I am not to hang.
Chapter 12
As I was taken in chains from the courtroom, I took a last tearful look at Richard Allen's face, then mouthed a silent Thank you to both him and Captain Hudson ... and to Higgins. I was not able to say a similar farewell to my other friends there assembled, for I was quickly hustled out and thrown into an open wagon and hauled off toward the Woolwich docks.
After a jolting ride in that cart filled with similarly shackled unfortunates, we came to the place where, once again, I laid my eyes on the Hulks, lying down on the banks of the Thames. Before we even got near, the stench of raw sewage hit my nose and I could not keep from gagging. There were four massive Hulks moored there, each one containing at least four hundred prisoners. The Thames, large as it is, doesn't move fast enough to clean up after that multitude. There is a low, greenish, miasmic fog over the river.
Steady down, girl. You'll just have to get used to it.
Dismasted and shorn of all rigging, these sad remains of once proud fighting ships had been decommissioned and refitted as prisons to hold the overflow of England's jails—some convicts awaiting transportation to the penal colonies while others were serving out their whole sentences aboard these stinking, rotting derelicts. I knew that the Bellerophon, a bold eighty-four-gun First-Rate of the Line of Battle, which fought so valiantly at Trafalgar, broadside to broadside with the best of Napoleon's fleet, was one of them, and it saddened me to think on that.
Me and my mates from the Rooster Charlie Gang had come up to Woolwich one summer day many years ago, hitchin' rides on the backs of hay wagons, to see if there was anything shakin' in the neighborhood that might lend us some sustenance. But lookin' down at the poor convicts toilin' away on the mud, dredging out the channel, we knew there was nothin' for us here, so we went back to our kip in Cheapside and, for once, were glad of our state, which was sure better than that...
...than this... And I thought Newgate was bad...
I am taken aboard and tossed into a cell, and metal shackles are put around my ankles. After giving me a kick or two and warning me to be good or else, the jailers leave and lock the door. I look about me and take stock.
The room measures about fifteen feet square and there are barred windows high up on two sides, which I suspect were once gun ports, and rough benches line the walls. There is a table in the center. There is no privy, but the place still stinks worse than any latrine.
There seems to be about twenty or so females in this particular cell, all seated on rough benches that line the walls, intent on sewing the fabrics spread out in their laps. 'Tis plain that, while the male convicts are sent out to do the muddy river work, the females toil here, making the rude garments the prisoners are given—after their own clothes rot off their bodies. From their general pallor, I assume they seldom, if ever, see the sun.
With my iron hobbles rattlin' on the deck, I shuffle over to the bench and sit down. The relief that had flooded over me after my deliverance from the noose has somewhat ebbed, and despair, once again, slips in. I know that I, too, could rot away in here for years and years, or at least until the typhus takes me off.
"Welcome to Haitch Hem Hess Bedlam, dearie. Yer sure t' love it here." The woman next to me laughs. "And what be yer name, then?"
I tell her.
"Well, yer name be all that you got o' yer old self down 'ere, dearie, so 'ang on to it as best ye can. In a couple o' years ye might be forgettin' it, and then you'll be like poor Edwina there."
At the end of one of the benches sits an old woman, her head nodding, saying over and over, "Eat cher puddin' girl or you'll get a whack ... eat cher puddin' girl or..."
I notice that about half the women wear the ill-fitting prison garb, and the other half got the remnants of their former clothes still clingin' to them. My companion sees me lookin' at the others.
"Y'see, dearie," she says, givin' me a companionable elbow in me ... my ... ribs, "Y'can tell who's bin 'ere a long time by how they look and what they're wearin'. See, over there? That's Elizabeth ... Elizabeth Drury."
I look over to see the woman, bent over and sewin' at the same sort of garment she's got on herself—rough cloth coat, rough cloth waistcoat, rough cloth skirt, her own clothing long since rotted off in the rank dampness of this place. The men outside got clothes made similar, 'cept they got trousers instead of skirts.
"She's been 'ere since '04, and 'tis wonder that she's still alive, poor thing, and 'as still got a part o' her mind left. 'Bout every summer, gaol fever comes through and takes about half o' us off, but she's still 'ere, bless 'er. Bless us all," she says, smoothing out the cloth in her lap. "I was named Margaret Wood at me christenin', but you can call me Maggie. Settle in, dearie. They'll soon be puttin' needle and thread inta yer hand and ... Ooohhh, look! 'Ere's the grub!"
There's a rattle at the door of the cage and men enter, carrying what is sure to be Missus Wood's much anticipated dinner. Cloth, needle, and thread are put aside, and the women flock to the table. I go to join them, and sit next to Maggie.
It is burgoo, of course, and particularly foul, bein' of a milky-lookin' mush, which sure ain't never seen no real milk and what's got a scum of brownish fat curdled up on top. I give it a bit of a sniff... No ... I can't... The biscuit that is put next to it is moldy green on both sides and soft ... squishy soft. I can do weevily biscuits, but not that. I push both bowl and biscuit toward Maggie.
"Thankee, dearie! But y'know you'll come t' eat it bye and bye, Missy, count on it," she says, munching contentedly on my discarded biscuit. "Else you'll die."
After the so-called dinner, the lights go out and I curl up alone on a bench and go to sleep listening to the moanings of the lunatic Edwina and the howlings of many others like her, echoing throughout the length of this miserable Hulk.
Lord, help me...
Chapter 13
It's been a week since I was brought here, and things sure ain't gotten any better. I have been given needle and thread and simple trousers to sew together. The cloth comes to us already cut—they don't trust us with scissors, and that's a wise move on their part for I'm about ready to slash the throat of any number of our jailers, heartless bastards that they are. There ain't a good one among the filthy bunch, and I don't care if I hang for my thoughts, I don't. I've already been struck by the rod several times for mouthin' off to the guards, and Maggie told me to watch my gob if I wanted to live through this. Don't care ... they can all go to hell.
And yes, I have even learned to eat their slops. I have cursed myself ten times over for not wearing my money belt on that day that I was taken—could've bought some decent food from the corrupt jailers, I could.
I'm wishin', too, that I'd kept my cloak that I'd left back in Newgate, because nights here are damp and my dress is thin ... my once elegant white Empire dress, now even more bloodstained and filthy. Recalling Newgate makes me think sadly of Mary, Molly, and Esther. Poor girls, you've got to be off and gone by now, your Monday appointment with the gallows certainly having been kept... Ah, I can't stand to think on it, but I can't help it. I do hope you died quick and clean, but I fear from the slightness of your forms that your deaths were slow and obscene. I don't pray for much anymore, in light of all the vileness and evil I have seen, but I have prayed for your souls and hope that they now rest easy wherever they may be.
I stick mostly to myself, seldom talking to anyone but Maggie. Most of the rest of them are a pretty rough, surly bunch. Well, I can be rough and surly, too, as several have already found out. Jacky Faber may not have 'er shiv, but Little Mary's fingernails are still sharp. She may be little, but she is strong ... in body, anyway. But in mind ... when I think on the fact that I could be in this hellhole for years and years ... I dunno...
It's mid afternoon and we are sitting silently sewing when we hear a commotion outside. Maggie gets up and stands on the bench so as to be able to peer out the barred window.
"Coo, come look, dearie!" she says.
"Wot, Mag?" I ask, getting up on the bench.
"Sumthin's happenin'!"
I'm too short to see out merely by standing on the bench, so I leap up and grab the bars and pull myself up to look out. Chin on bottom sill of the window, I see crowds of women being herded aboard our Hulk—women who ain't bein' particularly quiet about it, neither.
"Oo the 'ell you think you are? I runs a respectable house and I always has! Getcher hands off me! And getcher hands off my gels!"
And...
"I'm a good girl, I is! That sheriff is a lyin bastard! Let me go!"
And...
"Ow! You watch it wi' that stick, you filthy bugger! Ow!"
There must be at least fifty of them, dressed in a wild assortment of clothes—from the garish and bawdy, to the clean and respectable, and to what is plainly prison garb. What's goin' on here?
I watch until I hear a rattlin' of keys behind me.
Uh-oh, prolly gonna smack us for slackin off on the sewin'.
I drop back down and quickly snatch up my cloth and needle and sit. Ain't no one bein' bad 'ere, guv'nor...
The door opens and two of the guards—and a particularly nasty pair they are—come into the cell.
"Mary Faber, whichever one o' this gang o' sluts ye be, stand up," says the viler of the two, the one known as Toad.
I stand up and say, "Wot?"
"Ah, 'tis our little bint w' the fancy dress," he says, coming over to stand in front o' me. "Sit yer ass back down."
He puts his fist on me chest and shoves me backward, and I fall on the bench.
"Wot's goin' on, Toady?" I ask.
"Jes' shut yer gob. Get 'er hobbles off, Frogger, and be quick about it."
The other bloke, known to all and sundry as the Frog because o' his general appearance, crouches down at my feet and unlocks the shackles from my ankles. Before he brings them up to put on my wrists, he runs his hand up my leg. Way up my leg...
"Fancy drawers on this one." The Frog chuckles. "Fancy dress, too."
"Come on, Frogger. Later for that. There's money to be made."
"Aye, and I knows 'ow I'll be spendin' my money. I'll be buyin' pretty little things, I will." He gives me a poke in my ribs and a big leerin' wink. It makes me sick to my stomach to see it.
"First the money," says Toad, seemingly the more practical o' the two sods. "And then the quim. Get 'er up. Let's go."
I am taken and hauled out the door. It is a bit of a relief to be able to walk free for a change. I look about for a chance to escape in my current condition—if I could make it to the side, I could leap over and swim away. I believe I could manage it even with these heavy irons about my hands, but I am not taken topside, no. I am taken into what I suspect is the guards' mess room ... and there ... lookin' glorious ... there stands...
Higgins! Oh, thank you, God! Higgins!
I go to rush to his side, but I am held back by my fetters, grasped firmly by the Frog.
"Nay, you sit down there," says Toad, pointin' to me and to a spot at the table. "And you, Sir, can sit yerself across from the tart. Keep your 'ands clear so's we can see 'em. Don't pass 'er nuthin' or else I'll toss you out, nob or not, and she'll taste me cane again. And maybe taste a few things more..."