He didn’t wait to see how they took this news, but carried on, ‘I’ll be there for all of you next week, and meanwhile I’m going to see Henry Dundas, the Home Secretary. He’s a dear friend of mine.’
The moment Boswell had gone, James let out a whoop of joy and jingled the box of money. ‘He knows the Home Secretary,’ he gloated. ‘And people made a collection for us. We’re going to be set free!’
Sam looked at Mary reflectively, making her blush. ‘He offered to defend you alone and you turned him down, didn’t you?’ he asked in an awed voice.
The other three men frowned, not understanding. Nat asked Sam what he was talking about.
‘Don’t you see?’ Sam shook his head at their stupidity. ‘That lawyer wasn’t here by chance. He came to see Mary again. The reason she didn’t tell us about his visit the other day was because he only wanted to defend her. She turned him down because of us!’
‘You did that?’ Nat said, his blue eyes wide with incredulity.
‘Holy Mother of God,’ James exclaimed. ‘And we laid into you!’
Mary blushed furiously. ‘It doesn’t matter now,’ she murmured.
‘It does matter, Mary,’ Sam said, putting his arm around her. ‘That crowd up there collected the money for us because of what you said in the dock. I’m sure that’s why the lawyer changed his mind about us too. Once again you’ve saved our lives.’
Mary couldn’t sleep at all that night for her mind was whirling with ‘what ifs’. What if they stayed in prison for months or even years until the public lost interest in their fate? They would never get a pardon then. What if Boswell was just a braggart like Will and didn’t really know the Home Secretary? What if she did get pardoned? Where would she go, and how would she live?
If the public’s imagination was fired up about her plight as Mr Boswell said, then her family would be bound to hear of it. Her mother would surely die of shame to know her daughter’s name was in the newspapers. Mary couldn’t help but be amused to think of her worrying about that, after all she’d been through. But her mother’s feelings were still very important to her. And she badly wanted to see her and the rest of her family.
At the second hearing in the magistrates’ court, the five returned escapees were told officially that they would not be hanged. They were to receive an indeterminate sentence without a trial. To the men this was good enough; they had fame and enough money to be comfortable in Newgate, which after some of the other prisons they’d been in was paradise. It would of course be wonderful if Boswell got them pardoned, but they weren’t counting on it.
But Mary couldn’t see it the same way. She wanted to be hanged or to be freed, no half measures. She could wait for freedom, but she needed to know exactly how long it would take before she could walk on grass again, swim in the sea, smell flowers and cook her own meals. She couldn’t spend her days in a gin-soaked stupor, the time-honoured way of Newgate.
Boswell was right in saying everyone in England would hear about them. The story had spread far and wide. But Mary took no pleasure from her fame. Each day people came to the prison to meet her. A few were from organizations who were firmly against transportation, others were journalists, but in the main they were just curious people, wanting to look at the woman who was in the news as if she was a freak in a side show.
Mary couldn’t refuse to meet any of these people. She knew she and the men were dependent on public opinion to get a pardon. But it was painful to keep on telling and retelling the story, and have people raking up things she would rather forget.
James loved it all, especially the grand ladies who kept returning to visit him. Mary knew they didn’t really care about his plight. Visiting Newgate was a diversion from their otherwise dull lives; it was exciting to go somewhere so dirty and dangerous. James turned on his Irish charm and he flirted with them, telling them shocking things they could repeat in whispers to less daring friends over afternoon tea. In return they brought him food, new clothes and books. He had also made a start on writing an account of their escape which he hoped he could sell for enough money to go back to Ireland and breed horses.
As for Nat, Bill and Sam, they felt important for the first time in their lives. They too had women admirers, and as each day passed they seemed to need Mary less.
Then there was Mr Boswell. Mary liked him – he was clever, entertaining and very kind – but she didn’t know what he wanted of her.
James Martin had made it his business to find out everything about the man, and some of it was a little frightening. While he was a famous and much admired writer, and mixed with the aristocracy, he was also a rake who drank heavily and consorted with whores. He might be a good and loving father to his children, but it was said he neglected his wife, to the extent that he hadn’t gone home to Scotland when she was dying. He wasn’t even considered a very good lawyer.
Mary thought he was similar to Will in character. He gave the impression of great capability, of intelligence and daring, just as Will did. Of course Mr Boswell was much older, well-educated and a gentleman, but if she could strip him of his years, his book learning and fine clothes, he and Will had a great deal in common. He talked of friends in high places, but were they really friends or just passing acquaintances? He boasted, too, of cases he’d won in courts, and of his success with women, and how he was a descendant of Robert the Bruce.
But Mary could smell drink on him, whatever time of day he visited her, and the redness of his complexion was a sure sign he over-indulged in it. Drink had been Will’s weakness too, and she couldn’t forget the part it had played in their downfall.
Yet during Boswell’s visits Mary believed in him totally. It was so easy to, for his melodious voice with just a hint of a Scots accent was easy on the ear. He painted a new world for her of dinner parties, ladies’ gowns and country houses. He made her laugh with his vivid descriptions of people he knew. Yet for all that showiness his kindness was apparent too. He hated injustice, he had real understanding of weakness, especially in women. He loved children, he wanted a fairer society, and schools for the poor.
While he was with her, the room felt warm and full of light, his conversation stimulated her, she felt hopeful. But the moment he’d gone, the shadows came back. What did he really want with her? Somehow she couldn’t quite believe that he was doing so much just out of kindness. He had to have a motive, people always did.
Early in August, just over a month after they’d arrived in Newgate, he came to see her, this time in a small room downstairs in the prison which was furnished with a table and chairs.
‘Dear me, it is so hot today,’ he began, wheezing from the exertion of his long walk to the prison in the hot sun and wiping his brow with a handkerchief. ‘I am off on holiday tomorrow. To Cornwall, my dear, but I have put things in hand on your behalf and it is my belief we shall have good news on my return.’
He launched into an explanation about a letter to Henry Dundas, to which he still hadn’t received a reply. It seemed to Mary that his earlier claims at what a good friend this man was were probably exaggerated.
But then Boswell put the brown parcel he was carrying down on the table. ‘Something for you, my dear. It isn’t new, but I hope it will cheer you.’
Mary opened it, and gasped in surprise to find it was a dress, probably a cast-off from one of his daughters, she thought. It was pale blue and the low neckline was trimmed with white lace.
‘It’s lovely,’ she said, blushing with embarrassment. It was in fact the kind of dress any woman would dream about, but it was surely intended for a lady of quality taking afternoon tea or a walk in a park, not for a prisoner in Newgate who had lice in her hair. ‘Thank you so much, Mr Boswell, but I’m not sure it’s suitable for me.’
‘My friends call me Bozzie,’ he said reprovingly. ‘I consider you a friend. And of course it’s suitable for you, you are still a young woman, and with freedom ahead of you. I shall enjoy seeing you wear it.’
‘Will I really
be freed?’ she said, putting the dress to one side and sitting down. ‘And if I am, what will I do?’
‘I am certain you will walk free,’ he said firmly. ‘And I am your friend, so I shall make arrangements for somewhere for you to stay. It will give me great pleasure to be able to show you London properly.’
‘I couldn’t expect you to do that, sir,’ she said, a little alarmed. ‘I’d be more than happy to get a job as a housemaid or seamstress.’
He put one of his soft podgy hands over hers. ‘You will need a little pampering before you can work,’ he said, looking into her eyes. ‘You are skin and bone, you need feeding up, a tonic to purge your blood. You will also have to learn London ways.’
Mary had a sudden, sharp picture of Lieutenant Graham. Did Mr Boswell believe he was going to take her as a mistress?
While she knew that if he did get her pardoned her gratitude would compel her to go along with it, the thought revolted her. He was fat, his breath smelled of drink, and she didn’t think she could even bear to kiss him, let alone lie with him.
‘I must make my own way in the world,’ she said after a second’s thought. ‘I am so grateful to you, Bozzie, but if I do leave here, I shan’t lean on you.’
He laughed, and tickled her under the chin. ‘Smile for me, Mary. You are a pretty woman when that doleful expression vanishes. Do not be too hasty, for London is a harsh place without a friend.’
He changed the subject then, much to Mary’s relief, and spoke of his planned holiday to Cornwall.
Just the mention of Cornwall was enough to evoke vivid mental pictures of home for Mary. It was just about seven years since she’d boarded the boat for Plymouth, and Dolly’s words, ‘You could travel the whole world and never find a place as pretty as Fowey’, came back to her.
She had travelled the world now, and it was true, she had never seen anywhere so pretty. If she shut her eyes she could see the sea sparkling under the summer sun, smell the seaweed, hear the gulls.
‘I’ve never been to Truro, Falmouth or Land’s End,’ she said, when Boswell told her these were places he intended to visit.
‘No!’ he said in surprise. ‘Really?’
‘You will understand why when you visit them,’ she said, and smiled because despite his age he had a very boyish enthusiasm for life. ‘They might not be far away in miles from Fowey, but the roads are bad, little more than tracks.’
‘There have been riots in Truro,’ he said with a sigh. ‘The Army had to be called to quell them. But then there have been riots everywhere since you’ve been away. England has been affected by the revolution in France, I suspect, so much dissatisfaction and unrest.’
Mary knew Boswell read a great many newspapers. One of the things she liked best about his visits was the chance to talk about what was going on outside the prison walls. She might have her four friends for company, but their conversation was very limited. She was tired of discussing their escape, and the people they knew back in New South Wales, and she had even less interest in discussing the other prisoners here.
‘I wish I could read,’ she said regretfully. ‘I am very ignorant of world affairs.’
He put his hand on hers again. ‘Mary, you can learn to read if you wish for that. But do not say you are ignorant, for you have a greater intelligence and wisdom than many people I know who consider themselves clever.’
He got up then. ‘I must go now. Try not to fret, and be sure you will be on my mind all the time I am in Cornwall.’
He kissed her on the cheek. ‘Wear the dress, Mary, it might make you remember the days before your young life turned sour.’
Mary did wear the dress, a great deal. And Boswell was right, it did make her remember her girlhood. She thought of running to meet Thomas Coogan in Plymouth, the way he used to catch her in his arms and spin her round, and the heady delights of kissing him.
There were no looking-glasses in Newgate, but she could tell by the way men looked at her in the dress that she wasn’t as worn and plain as she had previously thought. Knowing that helped her; she found herself thinking of freedom more and more, and despairing sometimes that it would never come.
Chapter nineteen
‘What ails you, Mary?’ Boswell asked, reaching across the table in the Newgate visiting room to take her hand. ‘You’ve hardly said a word to me today!’
Mary had been imprisoned for seven months now, and it was a bitterly cold February day. She was wearing a man’s great-coat, one of two that had been given to James Martin by his lady admirers. She had thick woollen stockings, and mittens on her hands, but she was still so cold she felt she might just die from it. But it wasn’t only the cold which was making her so morose, she had lost heart.
‘Will we ever get pardoned?’ she asked in a small voice. ‘Tell me now if it isn’t going to happen, Bozzie. I can’t go on waiting and hoping like this.’
Each time Boswell came to see her he told her how busy he’d been on her and her friends’ behalf. He said he was making a nuisance of himself to everyone, browbeating Henry Dundas and anyone else who was influential. But as the months crawled by, Mary couldn’t help but suspect Boswell’s promises were empty ones.
‘It is seven years now since you were first arrested,’ Boswell said gently. ‘You have borne that with such fortitude. Surely you can be patient for just a little longer? Or is it that you’ve lost faith in me?’
Mary didn’t want to admit that was the case, for she was very aware of how little she knew of the world outside the prison gates, or of lawyers, judges and Home Secretaries. Boswell tended to talk to her as an equal, telling her about famous people he’d met, parties he’d been to, the theatre or concerts, assuming she knew who or what he was talking about. But how could she? She was an illiterate country girl. The closest she’d come to a concert was seeing a marching band in Plymouth. Not once in her life had she sat down to dinner at a table laid with silver knives, forks and crystal glasses.
When Boswell spoke of Lord Falmouth, Evan Nepean and Henry Dundas, people he was seeing on her behalf, they were just names. She didn’t know who or what these people were. For all she knew he could be inventing them to make himself sound busy.
Her father used to have a saying: ‘In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is King.’ She had only come to understand what was meant by that when she was in Port Jackson. There she was smarter than most of the other prisoners, many of the Marines, and indeed some of the officers too. She had come to believe she was astute about people and capable of coping with almost anything.
But London and Newgate were a very different kettle of fish to Port Jackson. Everyone was sharp here, they might not have any more book-learning than she, but they were cunning. All of them, convicts, gaolers or visitors from outside the prison walls, had far more breadth of knowledge and experience than she did.
She might have been to the bottom of the world and back, but since arriving in Newgate, she had seen how limited her own abilities really were. She could catch a fish, gut it and cook it. She could sail a boat, help build a hut too, but there wasn’t much else. She had pinned all her hopes on Boswell because he was clever and educated, but maybe she’d been foolish to do that.
‘I think it’s myself I’ve lost faith in,’ she said with a sigh.
‘That is very understandable,’ he said, his dark eyes softening with sympathy. ‘Newgate tries to destroy all that comes in through its doors. But you must fight against it, Mary. Look around at the women who sell themselves for a glass of gin, the men who would steal a man’s boots while he sleeps, and remind yourself you are not one of them. You, because of your courage and forbearance, have captured the hearts of a nation. Each day people ask me how you are, they press money into my hands for you.’
‘They do?’ Mary said in surprise, and then her eyes narrowed. ‘So where is it?’
Boswell chuckled. ‘I’m keeping it safe for the time when you will need it. It wouldn’t be wise for you to have it here, but I jot every
penny down, and when you are released it will go towards lodgings, clothes, food and transportation to wherever you wish to go.’
She nodded, taking heart that he had said ‘when’ rather than ‘if’. ‘Can you tell me how many more weeks before I know for sure?’
Boswell shook his head. ‘I can’t, Mary. I’m doing everything I can to force the hands of those with the power to get you released. I can do no more.’
After Boswell had left, Mary went to the tap-room in search of the men. Despite her aversion to the place, she was loath to wait alone in the cell for their return.
As always, the fumes of cheap spirit, tobacco and human odours almost knocked her back as she opened the door. The room was small, a cellar-like place with grey stone walls which felt cold and wet to the touch. It was lit by a smoking lantern and the only furniture was a couple of rickety benches. Fresh air only came in via the door, but the regular drinkers appeared to have adapted to the smog-like conditions.
It wasn’t as crowded as it normally was, perhaps because gaol fever was raging on the common side. But there were still around sixteen men and four women, two of whom Mary thought might be recent arrivals as she hadn’t seen them before. One of them, gaudily dressed in a purple and blue striped dress, was perched on a man’s knee, letting him fondle her breasts as she swigged at a bottle.
As always when she had occasion to come in here, Mary’s stomach churned. It wasn’t that she disapproved of people drinking here or anywhere else – drink was just as valid a way of coping with being in prison as prayer was. But the tap-room seemed to bring out the very worst in people. They boasted, they whined, they tore other people’s characters to shreds. Sexual fumbling, often with a running commentary from the perpetrator, was a regular occurrence. She had come in here once to see a man push a woman off his lap, having just completed the sex act, and another man grabbed her and used her too, while people applauded him.
Remember Me Page 36
