by Meg Keneally
Elenor looked at Jenny and Bea and nodded, holding up her hand, ready to chop it downwards in their signal to begin. The hand stayed where it was as the woman scuttled closer. Jenny heard the heavy breathing brought on by her attempt to catch up with the group. The woman clutched a shawl around her shoulders – thicker, softer and more expensive-looking than any Jenny had yet seen. As she moved, the shawl moved with her, offering glimpses of something that shone around her throat.
Most ferry passengers would glance at the side of the road every minute or so, hoping by their vigilance to ward off threats. This woman was doing no such thing. She was looking at the rutted, uneven surface in front of her, her fine leather shoes unused to such insults.
When she passed by, Elenor’s hand went down.
The three of them stepped into the road behind the woman. Jenny was the tallest, probably the strongest. The others seemed to assume she should be the one to take physical risks. Elenor stared at her and flicked her head in the direction of the woman, who was advancing slowly away from them. Jenny closed the distance in a few paces, put her hand on the woman’s shoulder, and pulled.
The woman wasn’t as old as Jenny had imagined. For some reason, she always presumed that wealth was acquired through age, despite the many ageing paupers she had known. But this woman’s face was unlined, her eyes a clear brown, and the little hair that could be seen under her bonnet did not show any obvious grey.
The woman screamed.
‘Now, my lovely, there’s no need for that,’ said Jenny. ‘We’ll be having that bonnet, now, your shawl and,’ she felt around the woman’s waist, ‘oh, yes, and that lovely fat purse you have there. The necklace too, of course, and that’s a handsome ring. So you will be giving them over to us, now, and be on your way.’
The woman was trembling but hadn’t looked away from her attackers. She inhaled sharply, and breathed out a soft, shaking word. ‘No.’
‘You don’t mean that, we know you don’t, my dear. There’s three of us, and my friend here, you see she has a blade.’
Elenor extracted her knife and turned it around, examining it as though looking for nicks.
‘Here, I’ll help you,’ said Jenny. ‘We’ll start with the bonnet, shall we?’ She reached out and pulled on the black silk ribbons that held the bonnet fast to the woman’s head.
The woman, though, had found her voice. ‘No!’ she screeched, and the toe of a very expensive leather shoe connected with Jenny’s shin.
Jenny grabbed the woman’s shoulders. ‘Don’t do that again, my lovely. There’s a great difference between walking this road with fewer belongings, and never walking again.’
Of course she had no intention of carrying through on the threat, did not consider herself a murderer. But the woman didn’t know that, and began to flail, scratching at Jenny’s face.
This woman, thought Jenny, has never had to eat limpets. Has never had to experience the kind of cold that kills a baby. Has never had to worry that an absent school of pilchards will destroy her. Perhaps her father had paid for the necklace, the bonnet, the shawl. Perhaps he yet lived, and had no need to choose between starving and placing himself in the hands of the midnight sea.
Jenny drew back a hand and cracked the woman across the face. She fell to the ground, sobbing now, and shaking. There was blood at her mouth, and a strange gurgling sound merged with the word, ‘Please.’
Jenny bent down and jerked the bonnet roughly from the woman’s head. She tried to tear the necklace away, but it was too well made. ‘Hold her!’ she hissed at Elenor and Bea, who looked almost as shocked as the woman. With the two of them pinning the woman to the ground, Jenny removed the necklace and the shawl, and snatched the purse from the woman’s belt. ‘We’ll leave you the ring. Least we can do, in thanks for your generosity.’
Jenny, Bea and Elenor backed away from the shuddering creature in the dirt, watching to see if she would spring up and offer a fight.
She didn’t. She sat there, watching the road as carefully as she had when walking, sobbing and sniffling and shivering from shock, and perhaps from cold as her shawl was now bundled on Jenny’s arm.
The three highwaywomen looked at each other, nodded, and began to run. Not towards the protection of the trees, but into Plymouth, where they would hide among hundreds of others with goods to sell.
CHAPTER 6
Elenor spilled the coins onto the table in front of Mr Black. ‘Twelve pounds,’ she said. ‘For the money Bea and I owe you, and for Jenny – surely enough to buy her way out from your arrangement.’
‘There’s only nine pounds here,’ he said.
‘We kept back a pound each. Now we’ve repaid you.’
They’d had no trouble selling the necklace, and the shawl and bonnet had already found new owners. Elenor had conducted all the transactions and was handling the money, an arrangement Jenny wasn’t sure she liked.
Mr Black moved the coins around the table with his finger, picking them up one after the other, squinting at them, even licking one or two. He put them down and looked up at the girls. ‘Good enough. I’ll do right by you girls – you’re too valuable to me to have you running off because you think I’ve cheated you.’
Elenor nodded as though she often made this kind of transaction, as though it was only to be expected. For all Jenny knew, it was.
‘I’ll show faith by getting you some rum,’ Mr Black said, whistling at a barmaid who’d clearly received similar requests from him before and knew what was required.
Jenny watched Elenor throw back her head, open her mouth and pour as much rum into it as she could manage. Jenny did likewise. Bea sipped at hers slowly, not enjoying it any more than Jenny was. Mr Black ignored her, while Elenor took a moment from her attempts to impress him and shot Bea a disdainful glance.
‘Stay clear of the ferry for a while,’ Mr Black was saying. ‘Be cautious, after that. You didn’t kill her, did you?’
‘Not sure,’ said Elenor.
‘No, we didn’t,’ said Jenny. ‘She might have a split lip, and she ended up on the ground, but that’s all. We were a bit – well, a bit rougher than I wanted to be.’
Jenny had beaten a woman. She was shocked at how her voice sounded. But something in her was stretching and stirring, and deciding she also rather liked the way she sounded. Hard, unemotional. Unassailable.
Jenny tipped a second rum down her throat. While she could leave the taste alone, she did rather like the way it sat, warm and coiled, in her stomach. She was thinking of ordering another, but for the first time in months she had coins in her pocket, and she didn’t want to be careless enough to lose them or have someone relieve her of their burden. The rum, and the coins, were making her feel invulnerable.
Until the door at the end of the room was pushed inwards, and three men entered abreast. This was rare in the Plymstock, where most tried to pass in and out as unobtrusively as possible. Of course, those who wore constables’ clothes weren’t interested in entering any inn unobtrusively. Jenny had been told that they usually left this one alone – it wasn’t the worst of them, not a place where stolen goods were openly exchanged for money. But someone must have attracted the attention of the constables, and when the regulars found out who it was they would not be welcomed back.
Everyone stayed in the position they’d been in when the doors opened. Some had cups raised halfway to their lips, held up by their elbows. Nobody wanted to be the first to move.
It didn’t take long for the constables to stride to the highwaywomen’s table. No one made any attempt to impede their progress. A hand closed around Jenny’s arm, far more forcefully than it needed to. Then she was on her feet, dragged and held there so that even if she’d given her legs permission to stop working, she would still have been suspended by her arm.
The other two constables took Elenor and Bea. Elenor tried to shrug her right arm out of the man’s grip, and he responded by taking both her arms and bringing them together painfully behind her at the
elbow.
The one who held Jenny looked at Mr Black. ‘You know these?’
‘Not till tonight, I don’t,’ he said, and Jenny noticed the coins were no longer on the table.
The constable nodded, turned and propelled Jenny in front of him to the door, followed by the man holding Elenor, who was spitting and cursing, and the one holding Bea, who was beginning to sob. Before they were out the door, Jenny noticed that those who had retained their freedom were already going back to their drinks.
Some passengers had stayed at the dock for a little while, chatting, after the ferry arrived that day. It had been some time before they followed the rest, and they had come upon a bloodied and weeping woman, still lying in the dirt, with no bonnet or shawl but quite a story.
It was known, among those who knew such things, that three girls were operating together, occasionally with items for sale. No one asked where they acquired them, but no one expected they had done so honestly.
This, at least, was what Jenny was able to discover once her case went to trial.
The women were taken to gaol, after being called briefly before a magistrate with unnaturally pink cheeks. He had committed them to stand trial at the Exeter Assizes.
‘Highway robbery, was it?’ said the guard. ‘They hang robbers.’
As he closed the door to the women’s cell, Bea began to scream. Elenor, though, sat down, legs apart with her arms resting on them, as though about to dispense judgement herself. Elenor, thought Jenny, had already known.
If Jenny was to be turned off, what then? Would she still look like herself when they displayed her at the Four Turnings? Constance had never been one for leaving the village and was unlikely to start. But Dolly might pass the crossroads, or one of the Tippetts, or anyone among the dozens of villagers who had known Jenny from birth. They might bring back word of the felon hanging there, her clothes loose as her flesh rotted away. Before it did, someone, surely, would see something familiar in the thing that had been Jenny.
But she didn’t believe, not really, that she would be hanged. Not when horse thieves and poachers retained their necks – at least sometimes, or so she had heard. It was far easier for her to believe she would die of old age in this gaol.
In Penmor, though, sat a woman who might think her daughter was dead. Jenny had not sent word to Constance for a while. What would she say? ‘I’m alive’? It had seemed a message not worth the price. Now, Jenny would have paid anything to send it, together with a warning that it may not be the truth much longer, that her mother and sister should avoid the Four Turnings.
Jenny didn’t know how many weeks had passed in the dark cell, with its damp, sticky floor that was supposed to be covered in straw but never was, excrement piling up in the corners. The high, barred windows only admitted small amounts of air and light, and the cell’s perpetual dusk made it hard to keep track of the passage of days. Lice dripped from Jenny’s head by the time a month had passed. She’d stopped hearing Bea’s wails, stopped attending to Elenor’s railings as she belched spite into the air, was insensible to the moans of the cell’s lags.
It was Jenny’s fault, Elenor said, often and loudly. ‘The constables don’t go hunting at the Plymstock. Not unless they have a good reason to. Not unless you leave someone bleeding in the dirt, you stupid bitch.’
The first time they came to blows was over Bea, who hadn’t uttered a complete sentence in weeks that didn’t centre around her family, her desperation that they would think her dead, her fear that they might find out she wasn’t. It was never clear what set her off when she began to keen, but usually she wouldn’t stop for some hours. Elenor would stalk over to her, threaten her, yell to drown out the miserable sound. She would slap her before returning to her own corner of the cell. Bea would hold her cheek, stare after Elenor, rub a little more skin from the abraded mess around her eyes, and go silent for a time.
Bea did not defend herself, any more than she had in the forest. She was used, perhaps, to taking beatings in silence for fear of making them worse. The misery she wrapped herself in was so stifling that a slap added hardly any weight to it. After one such slap, on one such day, she kept up her noise and seemed hardly to notice the pain. So Elenor struck her again. Balled her fists and struck a third and a fourth time. Shifted her shoulder backwards to add weight to the next blow. Jenny barrelled into her, knocking her onto her back, scratching her cheek and creating a gouge that would suppurate if she wasn’t careful, the rot starting even before she was hanged.
In three months, there was an end to it. When it came, Jenny was grateful. Terror, she thought, was preferable to monotony.
The three of them were shackled together and loaded into a cart. With more access to daylight, Jenny could better see the changes in Bea and Elenor. Both were thinner, much too thin, and their yellowing skin stretched like a drum over their cheekbones. There were sores here and there, from where flesh had rubbed too long against the stone walls, or where moisture had treacherously softened skin until it fell away. Jenny had no doubt she looked just as awful; she had the same sores on her forearms, and a rasp in her voice that hadn’t been there during the forest’s coldest nights.
‘Where are we being taken?’ Elenor asked one of the guards imperiously.
‘Exeter Assizes,’ he said. ‘From there, hell, probably.’
In Exeter the men and the women were separated. Jenny didn’t know what the men’s cell was like. She couldn’t imagine it would be worse than the women’s, though, with over a dozen of them sharing rotting straw bedding strewn on a damp floor, and squatting over a bucket in the corner that was rarely emptied. After a few days guards would come to the prisoners, one by one, when it was their turn before the bench. Mostly, they didn’t come back.
Elenor was taken, and then Bea. Neither of them returned to the cell.
Then Jenny was before the bench in the Assizes Hall, wincing at the light from the large arched window behind the judge, while the woman she had last seen on the Plymouth ferry road pointed at her with a hand that trembled perhaps a little too artfully, and said, ‘Yes, yes, she’s the one, the unnatural one who struck me like a man, and was dressed like one too.’
‘I was forced into men’s clothes, and onto the highway,’ Jenny called out.
‘Oh?’ said the judge, without looking up from the black marks he was gouging into the paper in front of him. ‘Who forced you?’
‘His Majesty the King.’
The judge chuckled, glancing at her briefly with indifferent eyes that sat on top of a tiny upturned nose. Of course.’
‘The taxes. The land enclosures. It’s impossible to survive.’
‘Yet people do, and they do so without beating women senseless on the King’s Highway.’
‘Sir, you can’t expect –’
‘Your Honour, if you please.’
‘Your Honour, then, although I can’t see what honour there is in this whole business. If you stop us from feeding ourselves honestly, you have to expect us to do it dishonestly. We will not simply lie down and obligingly die to save you some trouble!’
‘Will you not?’ He reached into a small box on the bench, extracting a black cap. Little more than a square scrap of fabric, really. It didn’t need to sit securely on top of the judge’s curled wig; it simply needed to rest there while he said words he had surely said before this day and would again, words apparently rendered meaningless to him through repetition, as he delivered them with all the emotion of a cook ordering vegetables at the market.
Jenny didn’t really hear those words. She’d known what he was going to say as soon as she saw that black scrap emerge.
‘Jane Trelawney, for the crime of feloniously assaulting Agnes Lakeman on the King’s Highway, putting her in corporeal fear for her life on this said highway, and violently taking from her person and against her will on the said highway one silk bonnet valued at twelve shillings and other goods to the value of eleven pounds eleven shillings, you will be taken from this place ba
ck to your prison, and thence to a place of execution where you will be hanged by the neck until dead, and may God have mercy on your soul.’
The judge’s gavel struck the bench, and he rolled the piece of paper that had been in front of him into a tight tube, handed it to an associate, and received the next one as Jenny half walked and was half dragged by a guard out of the courtroom.
The condemned cells were not the place of wailing and lamentation Jenny had expected. The one she shared with Bea and Elenor and the other condemned women was cleaner than the others had been, and the vibrating current of desperation with which Jenny had become so familiar was oddly not present here. Jenny would not, she vowed, pass the time by sleeping or allow herself to fall into a stupor as some of the other women had. There would soon be plenty of government-enforced eternal sleep.
Bea was quiet now, staring. Elenor wasn’t quiet, far from it. But her words were making less and less sense. She walked up to Jenny, grasped her shoulders and wetly hissed in her ear. ‘We will jump on the guard, so we will, when he comes in with food. Or, no, Bea can pretend to be dead – she’s almost there anyway – and then we can attack when they come to take the body out.’
Jenny nodded, saying it all sounded wonderful, knowing escape from here was impossible. She lay on the ground, staring at the oozing stone. What was it about gaols that made their stones so slick, so wet?
As the afternoon wore on, the cell slowly filled with women. Some of them sounded almost cheerful, chattering away, asking one another for details of their offences. But Jenny was left alone. There seemed to be an understanding that those who were silent wished to remain so.
