Look Ahead, Look Back (The Snipesville Chronicles Book 3)

by Annette Laing

  “Now ’ere’s the story,” said Jane. “I was down at Clare Market after I went to see the ’anging in Hyde Park, and this woman comes . . .”

  “You went to what?” Hannah interrupted, aghast. “Wait, did you just say a hanging? Like, someone getting executed?”

  Jane stared at her blankly. “Yes, of course. Ain’t you never seen an ’anging before? It was a good ’un, too. Two men, and one of ’em sang an ’ymn before he got turned off. Danced a merry dance on the gallows, he did.”

  Hannah had no answer for that. She nodded dumbly, and Jane resumed her story.

  “So, like I said, I wanders down by Clare Market, and this woman comes up to me, and offers me to buy an apron, a straw hat, stockings, a cloak and an ’andkerchief off of ’er. ’ow much you want, says I? Three shillings, says she. I says to her, I ain’t got but two shillings and this ’ere bottle of gin. . .”

  Hannah stopped her again. “You had a bottle of gin with you? You look like you’re my age.”

  “So?” Jane said, irritated by Hannah’s repeated interruptions. “Anyway, as I was saying, she took the money and gin off me, and I gets the clothes from ’er, and I go ’ome, and put them on. Next thing, this servant wench stops me in the street, and she says, ’Oi, those clothes belong to my mistress, what you doing wearing them?’ And she says ’You must go along with me, and if you won’t come by fair means, you’ll come by foul.’ Then she drags me by my ’air to her mistress’s house, and I end up ’ere.’

  But Hannah was already thinking ahead. “What will they do to us if we’re found guilty?”

  “Dunno,” said Jane, picking a bug off her knee. “Might get a whipping. Might get ’anged.”

  The color drained from Hannah’s face. She felt faint.

  “But I doubt it,” Jane added, and Hannah grabbed on to this hope.

  Oblivious to Hannah’s shifting emotions, Jane continued, “Most likely, I’ll get transported, this being my first time before the court, and me being young. Mind you, I think I’d rather ’ang than get transported, myself.”

  “What do you mean, transported?” Hannah asked. She imagined being tortured in a dungeon.

  “It means they send you across the sea to America for seven or fourteen years,” said Jane, “and you get used like a slave all that time.”

  “Well, that’s better than hanging,” Hannah said with relief.

  “So you say,” Jane shot back. “But I ’ear America is a terrible place.”

  Hannah kept quiet, and listened to the sounds of heavy wooden doors banging, and the bitter sobs of a nearby woman. What would happen to her? And where was the Professor? Had she abandoned them? Hannah dismissed these thoughts. They were too frightening to contemplate.

  Jane snapped her out of her reverie. “Well, least you ain’t got long to dally in Newgate,” she said, scratching her leg. “Quarter Sessions is tomorrow.”

  “And what’s that?” Hannah asked anxiously.

  “That’s when we’ll start ’aving trials, tomorrow or later this week,” Jane said. “We’ll know our fate soon enough, one way or another. And they say the next convict ship to Virginia departs on the tide this Saturday morn.”

  Virginia? Hannah thought. That can’t be right.

  When, on the Thursday, Hannah finally made the short walk from Newgate prison through the underground passage to the Old Bailey, her heart was in her mouth. Now, as she stood in the dock, the small enclosure for accused criminals in the courtroom, she felt very small and very vulnerable. She felt as though she had already been convicted, especially when she realized that “the prisoner” whom the judge and lawyers were discussing was her.

  The courtroom was filled with bizarrely-dressed people. The judge wore what looked like a red bathrobe, and a long flowing white wig covered his head like a marshmallow blanket. His seat was a sort of high throne with a desk that was strewn with fresh flowers. Hannah vaguely wondered why. She didn’t know it, but they were there as air fresheners, since the prisoners brought to court, including her, smelled awful. At the judge’s feet sat another desk at which several men in black robes and short wigs scribbled with featherless quill pens. Off to one side sat the jury, made up of twelve plainly-dressed men, all of whom looked very bored.

  Hannah had a hard time understanding what was going on in court, and her attention wandered. Her eyes scanned the public galleries, which were packed with spectators, but there were no familiar faces. She had half-hoped that Brandon would ignore her instructions and come to the trial to offer moral support, but he had not.

  When the first witness was called, Hannah returned her attention to the proceedings. Mr. Evans walked gravely to the witness box. The judge asked him to identify “the prisoner in the dock,” and he glanced at Hannah.

  “I have no doubt, my lord,” he said gravely, “that the prisoner in the dock is the thief who stole my silver plate.”

  Even though she was intimidated by the court, Hannah couldn’t stop herself. She shouted, “It’s not me! You’re lying!” The judge banged his gavel on his desk, and called for her to remain silent, while the guard in the dock with Hannah roughly shook her shoulder and growled at her to shut up.

  Her shoulders slumped. It was hopeless. Mr. Evans was a thoroughly believable gentleman, while she, Hannah, was just a filthy criminal.

  Now things took an unexpected turn.

  “What is the prisoner’s name?” the judge asked Mr. Evans.

  “Elizabeth Strachan, my lord. She was formerly my servant . . . .”

  As Hannah sat in shock and confusion, the judge interrupted Mr. Evans. “You say then, sir, that the prisoner in the dock, this girl who calls herself Hannah Day, has given a pretended name to this court?”

  “I do, your lordship,” Mr. Evans said smoothly.

  The judge gave Hannah a hard stare. Hannah was panicking now, and she looked away from him.

  Now it was Hannah’s turn to answer questions. A man in a wig (she couldn’t tell if he was her lawyer or not) asked her to explain, in her own words, her version of events. Hannah tried, but the right words wouldn’t come to her. She stumbled over her speech, and said things that made no sense, even to her.

  The judge asked sternly if she could produce any witnesses in her own defense. Hannah now realized that she should have brought Brandon to speak on her behalf, but it was too late for that. She silently cursed herself for having trusted in a superstitious feeling, rather than thinking things through.

  The jury did not go outside to decide on a verdict, but simply huddled together on their benches. Within seconds, they declared Hannah guilty. The entire trial had lasted no more than ten minutes.

  But, Hannah wondered, as she was hustled away downstairs, what about the sentence?

  There were several girls and women in the holding cell below the court, Jane among them. She was sitting on the floor, twiddling her thumbs, and she looked up and smiled when she saw Hannah.

  “You got guilty, then?” she asked eagerly.

  Hannah nodded, her eyes brimming with tears.

  “Most of us did,” Jane said. “T’won’t be long for sentencing,” she added

  somberly. “They bring all of us up together at the end of the session.” Hannah nodded, and crouched down next to her friend.

  “I wish I ’ad some money,” Jane said. “If we get sentenced to transportation, we get branded on the thumb, and that’s going to ’urt. I hear tell that if you pay the executioner, ’ee’ll use a cold iron.”

  Hannah silently thanked her lucky stars that she had held on to her cash. “How much for the two of us?” she quietly asked Jane, as she felt for the money in her pocket.

  Jane looked at her keenly. “A shilling apiece should do it,” she muttered from the side of her mouth.

  With an enormous key and a loud clang, a jailer opened the cell door a few hours later. “All right, my ladies,” he bellowed in a cheerily sarcastic voice. “It’s time.”

  The small group of women and girls, inc
luding Hannah and Jane, huddled together as they walked upstairs and entered the dock.

  Hannah trembled as, with a terrible air of doom, the judge sat up straight, while one of his clerks laid a black handkerchief on top of his wig. He looked straight at her, and said, “You have all been found guilty of felony crimes. The law is, thou shalt return from hence, to the place whenst thou camest, and from thence to the place of execution, where thou shalt hang by the neck until the body be dead! Dead! Dead! And the Lord have mercy upon thy soul.”

  Hannah staggered. She felt hot and sick, and she looked around desperately for the Professor to help, but there were no friendly faces in the crowd. And then she collapsed in a faint, into the arms of the other prisoners.

  When Hannah awoke, she was back in Newgate Prison, with Jane at her side. Jane saw her eyes flutter, and shook her arm gently. “’annah? You all right then?”

  Hannah nodded, and then her face crumpled in despair. “When are they going to kill me?” she cried miserably.

  “Oh, they ain’t going to kill you,” Jane said with a sigh. “Me neither.”

  Hannah looked at her skeptically, but her hopes rose. “What?”

  Jane gave her a sly grin. “While you was asleep, the King ’imself granted us a pardon, and so we get transported to Virginia instead.”

  Hannah gave a half-laugh, half-sob in relief. She would live after all. “That’s amazing! What made him do that?”

  But Jane wasn’t at all surprised. “Oh, ’ee does it all the time,” she said, “’specially if you’re young, or it’s your first offense. I got transportation, too.”

  “That’s great!” Hannah said.

  But Jane didn’t share her happiness. “That’s what you fink,” she said, scratching away a bug from between her bare toes. “But I know a man what’s come back from Virginia, and ’ee said ’ee was lucky to be alive, much less come ’ome.’Ee said it was ’orrible.”

  Hannah wasn’t too worried. What would an urchin like Jane know about America, anyway? And the Professor was sure to save her. But a voice in the back of Hannah’s head whispered, Will she?

  An elderly woman in rags shuffled up to the girls. “Your sister all right, is she?” she asked Jane kindly.

  “My sister? She ain’t my sister,” Jane said. “She’s a pal of mine. Yeah, she’s all right. Ain’t you, ’annah?”

  Looking at Jane’s dirty, scabby face, Hannah thought that, obviously, the old woman who had called them sisters was a blind old bat.

  The very next day, Hannah and Jane were among the prisoners returned to the courtroom to be branded on the thumb. Hannah shook with fear as she heard the screams of the men and women undergoing the punishment, and she gripped her leather money pouch tightly in her pocket. “Why do they do this to us?” she asked Jane plaintively.

  “So’s we cannot return early from America wivout people knowing,” Jane said glumly. “I ’ope you still intends to pay ’im.”

  Hannah was now at the front of the line, watching the executioner apply the red hot end of a long branding iron to the hand of man who was being held by guards against a low wooden wall. The man did not cry out, but he grimaced and whimpered as the smoke rose from his thumb. A crowd of onlookers watched the spectacle from the gallery behind him, clearing enjoying themselves. When the man was released, he begged for water to dip his injured hand. Now the executioner beckoned to Hannah. As discreetly as she could, she slipped him two coins. “Two shillings,” she whispered, “for me and my friend.” She pointedly glanced at Jane, and the executioner’s eyes followed. “Four,” he mumbled.

  Hannah sighed heavily, and brought out two more shillings. It was a lot of money. She passed the coins to him as she stepped toward the low wall. The executioner returned the long brand to the fire, then picked up another from the floor, and dipped it into the flames. Hannah watched nervously as a guard seized her hand and held it against the wooden partition, while another guard gripped her shoulders. Deftly, the executioner took the brand from the fire, and pressed it briefly against the pad of her thumb. She screamed as it burned her skin. “You lied!” she cried, but she was quickly shoved away toward a waiting guard.

  Yet when she looked at her thumb, even though it smarted, there wasn’t a mark on it. The iron hadn’t been hot enough to burn through the skin. The executioner had not cheated her after all.

  Brandon had considered ignoring Hannah’s wishes, and following her to London. In fact, he was on the verge of asking permission from Mr. Osborn to do just that when he realized that they would both be better off if he stayed in Balesworth. He decided he would try to learn more about Hannah’s alleged crime. And at least he knew where he could find Hannah later.

  Every day that week, he knocked on the side door of the Balesworth Arms, and asked if Mr. Jenkins had returned, only to be disappointed. But on the following Monday, when Mrs. Jenkins answered the door, he saw her look over his shoulder, just as he heard horses’ hooves behind him.

  “Here he is!” she cried.

  Brandon turned to see Mr. Jenkins dismounting from his horse, with no small difficulty, onto a wooden block that one of the stable lads had swiftly placed for him on the cobbles of the yard.

  “Good morrow, Mrs. Jenkins!” he called out heartily to his wife.

  Mrs. Jenkins nodded and beamed in reply. “And to you also, Mr. Jenkins. Sir, I know that you must be tired from your journey, but could you speak with this lad here? It is a grave and urgent matter indeed that brings him to our door.”

  Mr. Jenkins looked puzzled, but he followed his wife and Brandon into the kitchen, where he sat down wearily on a wooden chair. “What has happened?” he asked as Mrs. Jenkins pulled off his boots. “You both appear most solemn.”

  Rising to her feet, Mrs. Jenkins told him the whole story, while Brandon listened quietly. Mr. Jenkins looked horrified, and he tried to interrupt his wife several times, but she wouldn’t let him, for she was determined to finish her tale.

  Finally, he could stand it no longer, and jumped to his feet. “There is not a moment to lose!” he exclaimed. “There has been a gross miscarriage of justice.” He turned to his astonished wife, and demanded,“Is Evans still here?”

  “No,” she said nervously. “He had urgent business to attend, and he has gone. Why ask you, pray?”

  “And did he take the silver plate with him?” Mr. Jenkins said, as if he already knew the answer.

  “Yes,” Mrs. Jenkins said, baffled. “Of course. It was his . . . .”

  “Damn it!” Mr. Jenkins roared, stamping his foot hard on the floorboards. “It is my fault, madam, entirely my fault. This Evans, if that indeed be his name, came to me on the very day he arrived, and asked to speak with me in confidence. He had no ready money to pay for his lodging, he told me, for he had been robbed on the highway. Would I accept this plate in pawn for his room? ‘Of course’, said I. ‘It will be more than ample for a week’s lodging, or you may redeem it with interest on modest terms.’ What a fool I have been.”

  Mrs. Jenkins looked aghast as it dawned on her what had happened. “He pawned it to you? But how came it to be under Hannah’s bed?”

  “I reckon he placed it there,” Mr. Jenkins said. “Or perhaps the girl stole it from where I had secreted it . . .”

  “No,” Brandon interrupted. “She never touched it.”

  “I am inclined to believe that,” said Mr. Jenkins gravely, “since this Evans has proved himself a charlatan by claiming to you that the plate was still his property, and not mine. He must have planted it in her bedchamber to incriminate her, and to deflect the attention from his own crime. And now I know why he was so curious to converse with me about Hannah. I thought he had merely taken a fancy to the girl. Where do you think he has gone?”

  “He told me he was abandoning his journey to York, and going back to London to testify in court,” said Mrs. Jenkins weakly.

  “Of course,” Mr. Jenkins said in disgust. “He must ensure that she is unable to return to Balesworth an
d implicate him in his crime. Brandon, fetch the magistrates here at once. We must all act quickly in the interests of the girl. I don’t doubt but that this “Evans”, whose name is surely otherwise, will vanish once Hannah has been transported . . . or hanged.”

  Mrs. Jenkins was already weeping as Brandon ran from the room. He ran all the way to Mr. Fox’s house as if his life depended on it, because he was afraid that Hannah’s life almost certainly did.

  Once he finally figured out what a frantic Brandon was trying to tell him, Mr. Fox decided that the only course of action was to go to London to meet with the judge. To Brandon’s relief, Mr. Osborn not only allowed him the day off to accompany the magistrate, but also gave him the stagecoach fare to London. Brandon knew that Mr. Osborn could ill-afford the money. But the curate was insistent that he go, and Brandon was touched by his generosity.

  At the Old Bailey, Brandon waited apprehensively with Mr. Fox outside the judge’s office until a clerk called them in. It was late in the evening, and the judge slumped in his seat in the grand wood-paneled chamber: He had spent a long day hearing cases. However, he listened patiently to Brandon’s testimony, pursing his lips and asking occasional questions.

  Finally, he gave his verdict. “It appears that an injustice has been committed,” he told Brandon and Mr. Fox. “I will issue a warrant for this man Evans’ arrest. I fear, however, that he will prove difficult to apprehend. As to the unfortunate case of the prisoner . . .” It took Brandon a moment to realize that he was talking about Hannah. “Regrettably, she has already been transported to Virginia, this past Saturday. I will request an investigation into her whereabouts by the office of the Board of Trade, for it is they who handle American affairs. But since, in their purview, this is but a minor matter, I’m afraid my request may be of no consequence.”

  Brandon sagged in his chair. He felt so alone. He had read enough about history to know what transportation meant, and to understand the grave danger that Hannah was in. Perhaps he would catch up with her in America, assuming she survived the voyage, but he could not imagine how far a distance it would be between Georgia and Virginia by horse, by water, or on foot.