Far From Botany Bay

by Rosa Jordan

  Out of the ward he marched, and to one of the refractory cells used for incorrigible prisoners; the one chosen had been vacated only hours before by a woman taken out to be hanged for having murdered her husband. Mary was flung down so roughly that her head struck the stone floor hard, a blow that left her unconscious.

  When she came to and felt inclined to lift her throbbing head, she saw that she was in a room about six feet wide and eight feet long. At one end was the heavy wooden door through which she had been carried. At the other end, a high iron-barred window let in a little light. A chamber pot, a candle stand without a candle, and a stone bed with neither pad nor coverlet made up the contents of the room. Mary dragged herself onto the bed, which was more in the nature of a bench and no less hard than the floor. She reached into her pocket, felt the comb still there, and smiled.

  From that moment on, Mary spent hours each day combing her hair, keeping it clean of lice and tangles. In the whole of her life, it was the first time she had ever been absolutely alone for an extended period. Such solitude was not a situation she would have requested, or even thought possible this side of the grave. Yet quite by accident, the small cell gave her precisely what she had been trying to create through emotional and mental withdrawal: a space which shut out almost everything, to the point that she could cease to participate in a world which had become intolerably unjust. There was no escaping the prison stench or the clamour that went on out in the exercise yard, but with stone walls and iron grates separating her from all that, she no longer had need of a mental barrier. She relaxed, and within a few days her mind had begun to form the occasional coherent thought.

  Very likely she would not have remained in a refractory cell long, for there were surely more violent inmates than she, had it not been for another incident. Although she had begun to recover, she was not far enough along to deal with the unexpected appearance of a person whom at first she did not recognise, and when he recalled himself to her, she could make no sense of the purpose of his visit, and therefore responded in a way deemed most inappropriate.

  Normally visitors and inmates exchanged words only in the visitors’ box, wherein they were separated by about three feet. This separation, along with the watchful eye of a warden, ensured that no contraband items were passed from one to the other. But with the payment of a fee anything was possible at Newgate. Mary’s visitor, as curious as all the rest of England about the girl from Botany Bay, did not wish it known that he had paid her a visit. Thus he paid a tidy sum to be admitted to her cell. As she had been quite calm during the two weeks she had been confined there, the warden who accepted the payment foresaw no problems.

  The slender young man in clerical garb followed the turnkey along the corridor to the cell, holding a white silk handkerchief to his nose in a futile attempt to block out the smell of humans, animals and corpses grown putrid in the summer heat. The heavy wooden door was opened to reveal Mary sitting on the stone bench which served as a bed. Immediately she got up, moved to the far wall, and stood with her back to the man who had just been let in.

  When she failed to acknowledge his presence, he said, in a high-pitched voice which revealed his nervousness, “Mary?” When still she did not respond, he tried again. “Mary Broad?”

  The use of her maiden name so startled her that Mary turned and looked at the man, but still said nothing.

  “Do you not remember me, Mary? I am Adam. The same whose father was the parson at the church you attended before . . . before . . .” He swallowed, and after a moment, tried again. “I last saw you in the lane, as I was departing for college. Do you not recall?”

  He took a few steps toward her. As his features came clear to her in the dimly-lit room, Mary at last spoke. “I remember how long your lashes were, Adam, and how they lay against your cheek when your head was bowed in prayer.”

  Adam’s intake of breath was audible, so startled was he by her recollection of such an intimate detail.

  “You have hardly changed at all,” Mary continued, meaning that his face still matched the one she had dredged up from her memory.

  “I shouldn’t think so.” He laughed nervously. “After all, it has only been six years. You look . . . different. But I’m certain your heart is the same,” he added.

  “My heart?” Had Mary been in a humorous frame of mind she would have laughed, but as it was, only her tone of voice reflected how ridiculous she thought it was that he imagined he could be certain of what was in her heart.

  Flustered, Adam answered quickly, “I mean, in your love for God. Your trust in Him.”

  “Ah yes,” Mary said vaguely, and, with a fingertip, began to trace a pattern of light and shadow cast by the bars of the window upon the wall.

  Emboldened by her passivity and full of a sense of mission, Adam moved closer. “He will redeem you, Mary. I know He will. You know the story of the prodigal son; we learned it together in Sunday School. Believe me, God loves a prodigal daughter no less.”

  “How fortunate,” she said ironically.

  Warming to his subject, Adam continued, “We all have sinned—”

  “And been sinned against,” Mary interrupted bitterly.

  “His mercy is infinite! It shows itself—”

  Mary whirled on him, her face contorted with rage. “In fits and starts, and sometimes not at all! Where was God’s mercy when I called out to Him for my children’s sake? Better to believe He doesn’t exist than to imagine He deliberately allows such innocents to suffer!”

  The outburst shocked Adam to the core. “We are all born in sin!” he exclaimed.

  “Sin? Sin?” she hissed into his face. “Until you’ve seen the cruelty I’ve seen, you have no idea! You want a sinner? Seek out Captain Edwards, who killed so many on that final voyage, and brought back innocents to hang!”

  “You cannot claim innocence!” Adam protested, trying to reclaim the upper hand in a dialogue on God’s mercy, a subject he surely knew better than she.

  Mary’s voice rose to a shrieking crescendo. “I claim innocence for my children because they were innocent. If they’re not in Paradise I want no part of it, nor of the God who betrayed them!”

  The jailer, who had remained just outside the door—ostensibly in case of trouble but in fact because he had found it profitable, in the past, to observe the goings-on in private cell tête-à-têtes about which he was later paid to keep silent—opened the door with a chuckle. “Had enough of ‘er, yer Reverence?”

  Adam inched toward the door. “I shall return next week. I can see this will take time.”

  Mary slumped onto the bench. “It has taken time, Adam. All the time I’ve been away. More time than you can imagine. One does not come back from that kind of journey.”

  Reassured by her seeming return to reason, Adam said softly, “You are back, Mary. And I will return.”

  “No,” Mary said flatly. “You are you and I am a woman you have never met, nor would want to know, nor could ever understand.”

  “Ah, but God understands.”

  In a flash, Mary was on her feet again, screaming. “Out! Out! I’ll not be understood by a God who murdered His own son and mine as well!”

  Adam vanished through the doorway. The turnkey, still chuckling, listened to the young parson’s footsteps as he fled down the corridor. Then he shook his head in pity at the sound of Mary’s sobs coming from inside the cell.

  It was this incident, when related to the warden by a shaken young clergyman and confirmed by the turnkey, that kept Mary in a refractory cell. The warden also felt called upon to warn James Boswell, when the writer requested another interview, that the girl from Botany Bay had turned violent.

  Boswell’s long delay in paying Mary another visit was partly due to the fact that he had been very ill, for he suffered not only from malaria and gonorrhoea, but also from bouts of depression. When he w
as sufficiently recovered to again be up and about, he did go to Newgate, but not to see Mary, as his first visit had convinced him it would be a waste of time. Instead, he visited her companions in the men’s ward. They gratified him with a good deal of information about their journey from Botany Bay, but asked repeatedly for word of Mary. Finally he promised he would visit her again and report back to them. That was when they informed him of her confinement in solitary, something not known by the general public but circulated by word of mouth throughout the prison.

  At first Boswell was inclined to disbelieve the rumour. He found it incredible that the pathetic rag of a woman he had tried to interview a month earlier had even regained the power of speech, let alone the energy to attack people in the violent ways described. Such incidents, if they had occurred at all, would have been greatly exaggerated in the telling. Still, Boswell was curious enough to want to see for himself. Despite the warden’s warnings, the writer paid the bribe required to enter the cell of the prison’s most exotic inmate.

  “A Mr. Boswell here to see ye,” the turnkey told Mary gruffly. “Better behave yerself this time. Anymore outbursts like before and we’ll have ye in shackles.”

  “Mrs. Bryant!” Boswell greeted her with the cheerful optimism that was his style. “I bring greetings from those who travelled with you from Botany Bay. They are most anxious about your health. I promised that I would report back to them as to how you are faring.”

  Boswell saw the spark of interest that flared in Mary’s eyes, but was dismayed to see it immediately extinguished. Although she had not moved from the stone bench upon which she was seated, he felt her withdrawal.

  He had no clue as to the confusion that existed in Mary’s mind about the others, and most especially about James. She remembered in great detail their escape from Botany Bay, and also their time together in Kupang. But she had no memory of what transpired during their last months together; she only knew that during that final voyage Charlotte had somehow been lost. And she remembered James combing her hair. Why he had done that she had no idea, for she did not recall their appearance before the magistrate, nor being in the dock at the Old Bailey. Had the men been brought to Newgate like herself? Returned to Botany Bay? Or hanged? Even if James was still alive, was it not probable that his love for her had died? After all, it was the workings of her mind he had loved. She did not need to be told that for the past many months her mind had scarcely functioned at all.

  Thus, when Boswell indicated that he had news of her friends, Mary longed for that news as she had once longed for a sip of water on a deserted isle. Simultaneously she feared it, for what could be more painful than learning that James was alive but had ceased to love her? Unless it was that he loved her yet as she loved him, but with no hope of ever consummating that love, as they had promised each other, in freedom or not at all.

  As Mary sat in silent confusion, Boswell lowered his corpulent body onto the stone bench next to her and proceeded to tell her of his visit to the men’s ward. “The visitors’ box kept them about a yard away, so we had to shout to make ourselves heard above the din. I asked them what I might have sent in to ease their confinement, expecting the usual requests for tobacco and the like. But all they clamoured for was news of you. Your Mr. Brown, now, he also asked for books, if you can believe that. I asked him what sort, and he gratified me by indicating that he had read my interview with the Corsican revolutionary Pasquale Paoli. When I told him I had recently had published a biography of Dr. Johnson, he immediately solicited a copy! By Jove, but I was surprised!”

  Boswell smiled in a self-satisfied way, and rattled on. “I thought he was putting me on, not expecting someone of his class, and from the Colonies at that, to be so well-read. But when he added that anything by the Bard would be equally welcome, and spontaneously, the three standing with him began to recite The Phoenix and The Turtle, well, can you imagine the incongruity of four men shouting out those verses over the din of the ward?”

  He glanced at Mary, and was startled to see silent tears trickling down her cheeks. Mention of that poem brought to mind how all the prisoners in the hold, including those from the Bounty, had recited it by way of eulogy for little Emanuel.

  “Why, Mrs. Bryant!” Boswell was astonished. “Have I upset you? I am so sorry!”

  Mary dried the tears with the back of her hand, and said only, “Broad.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “My name is Mary Broad.”

  “Yes, of course!” Boswell brightened. “That was your maiden name, was it not? In one of the newspaper accounts I recall reading that. Actually, I have been wondering about those stories, Mrs.—uh, Mary Broad. Just how much of what has been reported might be true?”

  There was a silence; the sort which at first Boswell would take for slow-wittedness, but which he would later come to understand was something else. At times it was a lack of interest in answering the question, but at other times, thoughtfulness. In this case it would seem to be the latter, for she eventually replied, “How much of anything is true?”

  Boswell raised an eyebrow. “I suppose that depends on what one believes.”

  “Belief has little to do with truth,” Mary said flatly, in a tone which suggested that she had dismissed him as some kind of fool.

  Boswell was more excited than offended to hear such pithy remarks coming from the mouth of this infamous yet largely unknown woman. Drawing out a pad and pencil, he asked, “Do you mind if I take notes on our conversation?”

  “Will they be used against me?”

  “Oh no,” Boswell assured her. “On the contrary. They might be used to help you.”

  “Help me be hanged, or returned to Botany Bay?”

  Boswell frowned, for it seemed to him that she had misunderstood the judgement already rendered, which was that she was to remain in prison for an indeterminate period of time. There was every likelihood that she would perish of typhus, or “gaol fever” as it was called, for this was the fate of most confined here for very long.

  “Have you a preference?” he asked curiously.

  This time it was even longer before she replied, “If I were put on a ship, I could cast myself into the sea. I like the sea. ‘Twas where my father ended his days. And my children.”

  “What if you are compelled to live?” he asked gently, his innately sympathetic nature coming to the fore.

  “I do not live now,” she said simply.

  “I grant you this is hard, Mary, but surely it is life!”

  With words still coming slowly, but definitely moved along by thought, she replied, “Life has light, and colour. There is no colour here.”

  It was then, finally, that she looked at him, and he back at her, until he replied, “Your eyes are very blue.”

  She continued staring at him a little longer, then dropped her gaze and asked, “What is it you want of me, Sir?”

  “To understand something of your nature, dear girl. But perhaps I already do.”

  “Perhaps you never shall,” she contradicted.

  “You think not? Pray, tell me why.”

  “England is very far.”

  “England? Far?” His brows puckered with incomprehension.

  “Far from Botany Bay.”

  Mary grew moody after that, disinclined to provide even cryptic responses to Boswell’s questions. After a few more questions, met with silence, he took his leave.

  Boswell followed the turnkey back down the corridor with a jaunty step. The girl from Botany Bay was proving ever so much more interesting than he had imagined. She would provide stories with which he could entertain his friends for weeks!

  A month passed before Boswell visited again, and again the delay was by reason of ill health. When at last he felt inclined to revisit the bolters from Botany Bay, he was received with the utmost courtesy by the men. The same could
not be said of Mary. His September visit unfortunately coincided with a hanging. Boswell himself would not have thought this worth mentioning, but the jailer, as he was searching through his keys for the one to her cell, asked, “Did ye see the execution of the mutineers, Governor?”

  “No,” Boswell answer shortly.

  “Hanged by the neck, they was, the three of ‘em. And left to dangle two full hours to make sure they was no coming back to life.”

  At last the turnkey got the door open and Boswell entered quickly, not wanting to hear more morbid details. But already too many had reached Mary’s ears. As soon as the cell door closed, she turned on him and demanded, “Who?”

  “Three of the Bounty mutineers,” Boswell said, taken aback by her intensity. “If I recall the names correctly from the morning paper, it would be Burkitt, Ellison and Millward.”

  “What foul deeds pass for justice in this country!” Mary hissed.

  “You think they were not deserving?” Boswell personally believed that if anyone deserved to hang, it would be mutineers.

  “They were abused beyond endurance before the mutiny, for which they were scarcely to blame! And afterwards, tortured more than those who celebrate their deaths can possibly imagine! And that I know for a fact, for was I not with them?”

  “You were—oh, my dear! Were you and they returned on the same ship?”

  “So we were! Separate cells we had in the dungeon of Kupang and later on the Gorgon, but for the five months from Kupang to Capetown, shackled side by side we were in conditions as foul as a privy. Yet in all that time, even the two who admitted to being party to the mutiny never lost their humanity.”