The Exiles

by Christina Baker Kline

  In tawdry penny circulars she’d read stories about the dangerous criminals locked up in Newgate. Now here it was, a block-long fortress squatting in the shadow of St. Paul’s Cathedral. As they drew closer Evangeline saw that the windows facing the street were strangely blank. It wasn’t until the coachman shouted at the horses and pulled hard on the reins in front of the tall black gates that she realized the windows were false, painted over.

  A small crowd, idling near the entrance, swarmed the carriage. “Misery mongers,” said the constable with the droopy moustache. “The show never gets old.”

  The three constables filed out of the carriage, barking at the crowd to stand back. Evangeline crouched in the cramped compartment until one of them gestured impatiently. “Come on!” She hobbled to the lip of the door and he tugged at her shoulder. When she stumbled out of the carriage, he hoisted her like a sack of rice and dumped her on the ground. Her cheeks burned with shame.

  Large-eyed children and sour-faced adults stared as she found her footing. “What a disgrace,” a woman spat. “God have mercy on your soul.”

  A constable pushed Evangeline toward the iron gates, where their small group was met by two guards. As she shuffled through the entry, flanked by the guards, the constables behind, she gazed up at the words inscribed on a sundial above the arch. Venio Sicut Fur. Most of the prisoners passing through these gates probably didn’t know their meaning, but Evangeline did. I come as a thief.

  The gate clanged shut. She heard a muffled noise, like cats mewling in a bag, and cocked her head. “The rest of the harlots,” a guard told her. “You’ll be with ’em soon enough.”

  Harlots! She cringed.

  A slight man with a large ring attached to his belt, keys hanging from it like oversized charms, was hurrying toward them. “This way. Only the prisoner and two of ye.”

  Evangeline, the constable with the droopy moustache, and one of the guards followed him into a vestibule and up several flights of stairs. She moved slowly in the leg irons; the guard kept prodding her in the back with a baton. They made their way through a twisting maze of corridors, dimly lit by oil lanterns that hung from the thick stone walls.

  The turnkey came to a stop in front of a wooden door with two locks. Riffling through the keys, he found the one he was looking for and inserted it in the top lock, then in the lock below. He pushed the door open into a small room with only an oak desk and chair, lighted by a lamp high on the wall, and crossed the room to knock on another, smaller door.

  “Beg your pardon, Matron. A new prisoner.”

  Silence. Then, faintly, “Give me a moment.”

  They waited. The men leaned against a wall, talking among themselves. Evangeline stood uncertainly in her chains in the middle of the room. Her underarms were damp, and the irons chafed her ankles. Her stomach rumbled; she hadn’t eaten since morning.

  After some time, the door opened. The matron had clearly been woken up. Her angular face was heavily lined, her graying hair pulled back in a messy bun. She wore a faded black dress. “Let’s get on with it,” she said irritably. “Has the prisoner been searched?”

  “No, ma’am,” the guard said.

  She waved toward him. “Go to.”

  Roughly he ran his hands over Evangeline’s shoulders, down her sides, under her arms, even, quickly, between her legs. She pinked with embarrassment. When he gave the matron a nod, she made her way to the desk, lit a candle, and sank into the chair. Opening a large ledger filled with lines of tiny script, she said, “Name.”

  “Evangel—”

  “Not you,” the matron said, without looking up. “You have forfeited your right to speak.”

  Evangeline bit her lip.

  The constable extracted a piece of paper from the inner pocket of his waistcoat and peered at it. “Name is . . . ah . . . Evangeline Stokes.”

  She dipped her quill into a pot of ink and scratched on the ledger. “Married?”

  “No.”

  “Age.”

  “Ah . . . let’s see. She’ll be twenty-two.”

  “She will be, or she is?”

  “Born in the month of August, it says here. So . . . twenty-one.”

  The matron looked up sharply, her pen poised over the paper. “Speak precisely, constable, or we’ll be here all night. Her offense. In as few words as possible.”

  He cleared his throat. “Well, ma’am, there’s more than one.”

  “Start with the most egregious.”

  He sighed. “First . . . she’s an accused felon. Of the worst kind.”

  “The charge.”

  “Attempted murder.”

  The matron raised a brow at Evangeline.

  “I didn’t—” she started.

  The matron held out the flat of her hand. Then she looked down, writing in the ledger. “Of whom, constable.”

  “A chambermaid employed by . . . aah”—he searched the paper—“a Ronald Whitstone, address 22 Blenheim Road, St. John’s Wood.”

  “By what method.”

  “Miss Stokes pushed her down the stairs.”

  She looked up. “Is the victim . . . all right?”

  “Seems to be. Shaken, but essentially . . . all right, I suppose.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Evangeline saw a small movement where the floor met the wall: a thin rat squirming out of a crack in the baseboard.

  “And what else?”

  “An heirloom belonging to the owner of the house was found in Miss Stokes’s room.”

  “What kind of heirloom?”

  “A ring. Gold. With a valuable gemstone. A ruby.”

  “It was given to me,” Evangeline blurted.

  The matron put down her quill. “Miss Stokes. You have been reprimanded twice.”

  “I’m sorry. But—”

  “You will not say one more word unless addressed directly. Is that clear?”

  Evangeline nodded miserably. The panic and worry that kept her vigilant all day had given way to an enervating torpor. She wondered, almost abstractly, if she might faint. Maybe she would. Merciful darkness must be better than this.

  “Assault and theft,” the matron said to the constable, her hand on the page. “Those are the accusations?”

  “Yes, ma’am. And she is also . . . with child.”

  “I see.”

  “Out of wedlock, ma’am.”

  “I understood your implication, constable.” She looked up. “So the charges are attempted murder and larceny.”

  He nodded.

  She sighed. “Very well. You may go. I’ll escort the prisoner to the cells.”

  Once the men had filed out, the matron inclined her head toward Evangeline. “Long day for you, I suppose. I’m sorry to tell you it will not improve.”

  Evangeline felt a rush of gratitude. It was the closest thing to kindness she’d experienced all day. Tears gathered behind her eyes, and though she willed herself not to cry, they spilled down her cheeks. With her hands shackled, she couldn’t wipe them away. For a few moments her strangled sobs were the only sound in the room.

  “I need to take you down,” the matron said finally.

  “It wasn’t like he said.” Evangeline hiccupped. “I—I didn’t—”

  “You are wasting your breath. My opinion is irrelevant.”

  “But I hate for you to . . . to think ill of me.”

  The matron gave a dry laugh. “Oh, my girl. You are new to this.”

  “I am. Entirely.”

  Setting down the quill and closing the ledger, the matron asked, “Was it force?”

  “Pardon?” Evangeline asked, uncomprehending.

  “Did a man force himself on you?”

  “Oh. No. No.”

  “It was love then, was it?” Sighing, the matron shook her head. “You’re learning the hard way, Miss Stokes, that there’s no man you can count on. No woman neither. The sooner you understand that, the better off you’ll be.”

  She crossed the room and opened a cupboard, from whic
h she pulled out two pieces of brown sackcloth, a wooden spoon, and a tin cup. After wrapping the spoon and cup in the cloth, she tied the bundle with twine, making a loop to hang from Evangeline’s bound hands. Then she took the candlestick from the desk and a ring of keys from a drawer and motioned for her to follow. “Here,” she said when they were in the hallway, “take this,” and handed her the glowing candle, which Evangeline held awkwardly, spilling hot wax on her thumbs, while the matron fastened the locks. The candle smelled strongly of tallow. Mutton fat, meaty and greasy. She recognized it from visits to poor parishioners with her father.

  They made their way down the corridor, past the hissing lights, and descended the stairs. At the main entrance the matron turned left into an open courtyard. Evangeline followed her across the damp cobbles in the dark, trying not to slip, listening to the moaning of the harlots. She wanted to lift her skirts, but the handcuffs made it impossible. Her wet skirts slapped against her bare ankles. The candle illuminated only a few feet in front of them, the path behind swallowed by darkness. As they approached the other side of the courtyard, the cries grew louder.

  Evangeline must have made a noise herself, a self-pitying whimper, perhaps, because the matron glanced over her shoulder and said, “You’ll get used to it.”

  Down another flight of stairs, through a short corridor. The matron stopped in front of a black iron door with a cross-hatched grate in the top half and handed Evangeline the candle again. Selecting a key from the ring, she inserted it into three separate locks before opening the door into a dark hallway.

  Evangeline paused, gagging at the foul odor. It evoked a long-ago memory: the killing room of the butcher shop in Tunbridge Wells, which she’d only entered once and vowed never to set foot in again. She couldn’t see the women in the cells, but she could hear them, muttering and groaning. The plaintive wail of an infant, coughing that sounded like a barking dog.

  “Come along now,” the matron said.

  Only the feeble glow from the candle lit their way down a narrow passageway, lined with cells on one side. There was a tap-tap-tapping as they passed, sticks against the iron grating on cell doors. Fingers touched Evangeline’s hair, grasped at her apron. She cried out and veered to the right, knocking her shoulder against the stone wall.

  “You’re a fine one, ain’t ye?” one woman said in a mincing voice.

  “That dress won’t stay clean for long.”

  “What’d ye do, missy?”

  “What’d ye do?”

  The matron stopped abruptly in front of a cell door. Wordlessly she handed Evangeline the candle again and unlocked the door. Murmuring and rustling from the women inside. “Make room,” the matron said.

  “No room to make.”

  “Somebody fell over in ’ere, ma’am. She was awful sick. Now she’s cold as a wagon tire.”

  “She’s takin’ up space.”

  The matron sighed. “Move her to a corner. I’ll send someone in the morning.”

  “I’m hungry!”

  “Slop jar’s full.”

  “Take the girl someplace else!”

  “She’s coming in.” The matron turned to Evangeline. “Lift your skirts and I’ll remove your leg irons.” Before she knelt, she touched Evangeline’s trembling hand and said, in a quiet voice, “They’re more bark than bite. Try to get some sleep.”

  As Evangeline entered the dark cell, she stumbled blindly over the stone lip and sprawled headlong into a huddle of women, hitting her shoulder on the floor.

  Voices rose in a chorus of insult.

  “What’s wrong with ye?”

  “Clumsy oaf.”

  “Get up, ye foozler.”

  She felt a kick in the ribs.

  Struggling to her feet, rubbing her unshackled wrists, Evangeline stood at the cell door and watched the faint glow from the matron’s candle retreat down the long hallway. When the door at the end clanged shut, she flinched. She was the only one who did.

  One small window, high and grated, let in dull sooty moonlight. As her eyes adjusted, she surveyed the scene. Dozens of women filled the cell, which was about the size of the Whitstones’ small front parlor. The stone floor was covered with matted straw.

  She sank against the wall. The smell near the floor—the metallic scent of blood, the fermented tang of vomit, the foulness of human waste—turned her stomach, and when bile rose in her throat, she doubled over and retched onto the straw.

  The women near her stepped back, grumbling and exclaiming.

  “Nasty wench, she shite through ’er teeth!”

  “Ugh, disgustin’.”

  Wiping her mouth with her sleeve, Evangeline mumbled, “I’m sor—” before heaving up what little remained in her stomach. At this, the women around her turned their backs. Evangeline shut her eyes and fell to her knees, dizzy and tired beyond sense, slicking her dress with her own bile.

  After some time, she roused herself. She untied the bundle the matron had given her and tucked the tin cup and wooden spoon into the pocket of her apron. She spread one of the sackcloths above the muck-slick straw, wadded her petticoats beneath her knees, and sank to the floor, where she lay carefully on the too-small rectangle of cloth. Only this morning she had lain in her own bed, in her own room, dreaming about a future that seemed well within her grasp. Now all of that was gone. Listening to the women around her wheezing and snoring, grunting and sighing, she drifted into a peculiar half-sleeping, half-waking state—aware, even while dreaming, that few nightmares could compare to the misery she’d face when she opened her eyes.

  Newgate Prison, London, 1840

  The door at the end of the hallway clanged open, and Evangeline dredged herself from sleep. It took a moment to remember where she was. Soot-stained stones oozing damp, miserable clusters of women, a rusting iron grate . . . her mouth cottony, her petticoats stiff and sour-smelling . . .

  How pleasant it had been to forget.

  Daybreak wasn’t much to speak of: hazy light filtered from the window above. Grasping a bar, she pulled herself up from the floor and stretched her sore back. A putrid piss bucket squatted in the corner. The tap-tapping had started again, and now she saw its source: women hitting the iron grate and walls with their wooden spoons.

  Two guards appeared in front of their cell with a bucket. “Line up!” one shouted as the other unlocked the door. Evangeline watched him dip a ladle into the bucket and slosh the contents into a prisoner’s outstretched cup. Digging into her apron pocket, she pulled out her own battered cup and flipped it upside down to remove the grit. Despite the dampness around her ankles, her full bladder, her aching limbs and nausea, she pushed her way to the front, hunger winning out.

  When the guard filled her cup, she tried to catch his eye. Couldn’t he tell she had nothing in common with these pathetic wretches with faces as dirty as those of coal miners?

  He didn’t give her a glance.

  She stepped back and took a sip of watery oats, cold and bland and possibly rancid. Her stomach heaved slightly, but she willed herself not to vomit.

  Women juggling cups and crying babies tripped over each other to reach the gruel, thrusting their cups toward the guards. A few hung back, too sick or defeated to fight their way to the door. One woman—probably the one they’d told the matron about the night before—wasn’t moving at all. Evangeline looked at her uneasily.

  Yes, she might very well be dead.

  After the guards left, carrying the unconscious woman, the cell quieted. A group of prisoners huddled in a corner playing cards fashioned from what appeared to be the torn pages of a Bible. In another corner, a woman in a knitted cap read palms. A girl who appeared no more than fifteen cradled an infant against her neck, crooning a tune Evangeline recognized: I left my baby lying here to go and gather blueberries . . . She’d heard women in Tunbridge Wells sing this strange Scottish lullaby to their children. In it a desperate mother whose baby disappears retraces her steps: I searched the moorland tarns and then wandered throug
h each silent glen. The mother discovers the tracks of an otter, the wake of a swan across a lake. I found the trail of the mountain mist but ne’er a trace of baby, O! Clearly an admonition to new mothers to keep an eye on their infants, the lullaby now seemed to her cruelly grim, the specter of loss almost impossible to bear.

  Evangeline felt a rough poke in her back. “So what’d ye do?”

  She turned to face a ruddy-cheeked woman of substantial girth, half a dozen years older than her at least, with a frizzy blond bob and a snub nose.

  Evangeline’s first impulse was to tell her to mind her own business, but instinct hadn’t served her particularly well lately. “What did you do?”

  The woman grinned, revealing a row of teeth as small and yellow as corn kernels, with a wide gap in the front. “I took my due from a cad who didn’t pay what he promised.” She patted her stomach. “Soon to be a father, and now he’ll never know.”

  With a sly wink, she added, “Hazard of my profession. Bound to happen sooner or later.” She shrugged. Wagging her fingers at Evangeline’s stomach, she said, “I’m not feelin’ tewly anymore, at least. It doesn’t last. So ye know.”

  “I know,” Evangeline said, though she didn’t.

  “So what’s your name?” When Evangeline hesitated, the woman said, “I’m Olive.”

  “Evangeline.”

  “Evange-a-leen,” Olive repeated, as if saying the name for the first time. “Posh.”

  Was it? Her father had chosen the name, he told her, because it was a derivation of the Latin word evangelium, meaning “gospel.” “I don’t think so.”

  Olive shrugged. “We’re all the same in here, anyway. I’m sentenced to transport. They gave me seven years, but it might as well be a life sentence, from what I heard. Ye?”

  Evangeline recalled seeing small items in the newspaper over the years about the incorrigibles—men, she thought—transported on convict ships to Australia. Murderers and other deviants exiled to the far side of the earth, ridding the British Isles of the worst of its criminals. She’d shivered with horrified delight at the details, as strange and otherworldly as stories from Greek mythology: bleak gulags and workhouses carved into rock in the middle of nowhere, separated from civilization by miles of desert sand and deadly predators.