by Meg Keneally
‘I hope you do.’
‘It’s easy to hope on a full belly. It is easy to hope in a feather bed. It is something, though, in which I no longer have any interest. Please leave me.’
‘But Mrs Gwyn –’
‘I will not buy whatever it is that you are selling. I have yet to see a man of your position act from pure charity. You profess some concern for my circumstances – if you do not wish to cause me further pain, you will leave, now.’
He opened his mouth, closed it again, nodded and left. She heard the gaoler call him ‘my lord’ on the way out.
‘Not the shrewdest thing you could have done,’ said Harriet.
‘I am finished doing shrewd things,’ said Jenny. ‘They led my children under the waves, and they led me here.’
CHAPTER 32
The courtroom was even more crowded than it had been the previous day. Court officers had to go ahead of Jenny as she was led in, to make a path for her to reach the dock.
The same chair on which Jenny had sat yesterday was waiting for her today, and the magistrate gestured her to it.
‘All rise,’ Mr Binder said in a high, reedy voice. He visibly straightened as he said it – this was probably the best part of his day.
The magistrate gestured for everyone to sit, at least those who had seats. Many were leaning against the courtroom walls or crouching in the aisle.
Jenny stayed standing. The magistrate looked over at her, and nodded.
‘I prefer to stand, sir,’ she said. ‘If you approve, of course.’
Binder gave her an even more poisonous glare: he had carried a chair for nothing.
‘As you wish,’ said the magistrate. ‘You will be aware,’ he said, turning towards the throng, ‘that Jenny Gwyn, also known as Trelawney, is charged with escaping transportation, an offence which carries the penalty of death by hanging. We are here to determine whether she should be committed for trial. In my view, that requires determining whether the punishment she has received has already exceeded the severity of her crime.’
He asked her about the seaworthiness of the boat, and she told him of pitch and turtle fat. He asked her about food, and she spoke of palm hearts and rice. He asked how her children had stayed aboard, and she told him about ropes and crushing hugs.
She did not speak of boredom and terror holding hands with each other, of the madness that nibbled at the edge of the boat. She did not tell him about the bickering and the salt sores, or of her mistrust of her own eyes when Coepang came into view.
She tried to avoid mentioning Charlotte and Emanuel as much as possible. She did not want to share them, and was fearful that mentioning their names would lead the magistrate to question her further about them. But eventually it couldn’t be avoided any longer.
‘I’m afraid, Mrs Gwyn, that I must ask you about the circumstances of the death of your family.’
The crowd was all held breath and tension. This is what they had come for. Tales of turtle fat and ropes were nice appetisers, but the crowd fed best on loss and horror.
Jenny looked at a few of them, one by one, staring just long enough to let them know she had seen their avidity: a pinch-faced matron, a balding merchant, a young, rich scrap of swagger and stupidity. Why should you still grow? she thought. Why should you still be breathing?
Then she did sit down.
‘They died, sir,’ she said. ‘Surely that is all the court needs to know.’
‘Perhaps it is,’ the magistrate said. ‘But we will not know that with any certainty, I’m afraid, until you are able to speak of the details.’
‘There is one detail I will gladly share with you,’ she said, standing again and leaning forward in the dock. ‘You treat children as though they had committed their parents’ crimes. That is why my children died. They had the misfortune to be born to me.’
‘Perhaps you should have thought of that before you robbed someone.’
An anonymous voice from near the back of the room. She looked towards it and saw Richard Aldred raising himself on his cane from his chair, craning to see if he could identify the man who had spoken.
She would later think back on the interjection with gratitude. Because at that moment, the shell in which she had crammed herself cracked open. It spilled out and consumed her – the pain at the loss of her children. And the anger.
‘You, then, would have had them chained below decks?’ she yelled to the back of the room, hoping the words found their mark. ‘Denied them food and water, kept them in darkness for months? When the fever came, there was no hope. They were not strong enough. Because they had been treated like murderers, like thieves, when their only crime was not to have been born to a rich woman.’
She stopped talking, feeling dizzy, aware of the rise and fall of her chest as it accommodated the air she was suddenly ravenous for.
‘Ask yourself,’ she said, ‘whoever you are – a brave soul who is content to yell from the back and not show anyone their face – ask yourself if you would have done the same. And if you would, I will most certainly meet you when we are both in hell.’
Binder was glaring, now, shaking his head. The magistrate was gaping.
Jenny lowered her head. It would come now, she thought. The reprimand from the magistrate, followed by his order that she be committed for trial. There was no question of her innocence. Her crime, escaping from transportation, was as public as a crime could be.
She half hoped he would hang her.
He banged his gavel and cleared his throat. ‘It is my direction that Jane Gwyn do not stand trial for escaping from transportation, that she instead be returned to Newgate to serve an appropriate sentence to be determined.’
He banged the gavel again, and sat down, as more in the crowd – those who hadn’t already been standing – rose to their feet and cheered the substitution of almost certain hanging with almost indefinite imprisonment.
When she was brought back to Newgate, and guided back into the cell with the other women, Aldred was already waiting for her. He was sitting in the same chair, holding the same cane, although he clearly had more than one waistcoat – this one was blue.
‘Pardon me, my lord?’ said the gaoler as he squeezed past Aldred’s knees to open the cell.
‘Oh, my lord, is it?’ Jenny said, dropping a mock curtsy.
‘Yes, as it happens, not that it’s relevant.’
‘Yes, riches and shelter and food are only irrelevant to those who have them. Why do you even work, lawyering or anything else, when you’re a lord?’
‘Not much money in it these days, I’m afraid,’ said Aldred.
‘Even less in fishing.’
‘Yes, I imagine so. And none at all in being a prisoner. Which is why I’m here. You did well today. Wonderful performance.’
‘It was not a performance.’
‘I did not mean to imply . . . never mind. I hope you reconsidered, that you will allow me to represent you.’
‘In exchange for?’
‘In exchange for nothing.’
‘You asked me to trust you, Mr Aldred. I do not trust anyone who asks for nothing.’
The joviality had drained out of the spiderwebbed cheeks, the darting blue eyes.
‘Understandable, and entirely wise,’ he said. ‘And you’re right, of course. I will get something out of such an arrangement.’
Harriet and some of the other girls snickered. They were enjoying being watchers for a change.
Aldred glanced at them, looked away immediately and squared his shoulders. ‘You will probably dismiss what I’m about to say – however, I assure you it’s the truth. I will get the satisfaction of knowing justice has been done.’
She turned away. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Aldred, but you’re too pompous to be believed.’
‘You are a maddening woman, you know. And you’re not the first to make that observation. Very well then, complete honesty.’
‘Has your honesty been incomplete, up to now?’
‘Very p
ossibly, yes, actually, although I wouldn’t have characterised it as such if you’d asked me even a few short minutes ago. But what will I get out of it? It was true, what I just told you: satisfaction. But also, and I will deny this if you ever tell anyone, I do quite enjoy a certain amount of notoriety, and my ability to obtain mercy for you – I do assure you that ability exists, by the way – will do no harm to my reputation.’
Jenny turned around slowly. ‘You seek fame.’
‘Already have it, dear girl. But it drains away if you don’t continually replenish it.’
‘I can trust that,’ she said. ‘I can trust an exchange.’
‘If you insist on seeing this as a transaction, I am satisfied.’
‘And if you fail?’
‘I will come in there with you and look for the fairies in the corner myself.’
‘There are conditions, of course,’ Jenny said.
‘Of course.’
‘One, actually,’ Jenny said. ‘What you do for me, you also do for John Carney.’
‘Easily done. Already done, in fact. I came to see him before I saw you. Wanted to get the measure of things, you see. Asked him what you were like.’
‘And what did he tell you?’
‘That you are braver, stronger and more resolute than the men in that boat combined. That you were the most remarkable woman he had ever met. And I had no reason to doubt him, but I can see that he did not go nearly far enough.’
‘Watch him,’ said Harriet, after he’d left. ‘He is one for the ladies. Propositioned me in my master’s house. Did it as easily as breathing, and with as little thought.’
‘Very little he can do in here,’ said Jenny. ‘And I doubt he’d appreciate you watching and commenting on his performance.’
Harriet’s face twisted in disgust. ‘I’d appreciate it even less,’ she said. ‘If he means to free you, though, there’s a good chance of it. He knows people. And is known.’
‘Known as what?’
‘A writer. A drinker and a gambler and a womaniser. And a taker of hopeless cases.’
But Aldred didn’t seem to believe that Jenny’s case was hopeless. He visited almost daily, telling her about what he’d been doing on her behalf. He spoke in the same tone she imagined he would use while sitting in his club, a port in his hand, conversing with a colonel about his tour of duty in Madras.
‘Wrote to the home secretary,’ Aldred said to her one day. ‘Made the point – he’d be aware of it anyway, but it doesn’t hurt to remind people – that the magistrate decided not to commit for trial because he felt that due punishment had already been exacted. Under that logic, there is no point in keeping you here.’
‘There is, though, isn’t there?’ said Jenny. ‘People know who I am. That’s why I’m not standing trial, not being hanged.’
‘Highly likely,’ he said.
‘So I would think it would suit them very well to have me here. Until they forget. Until I become easier to hang.’
Aldred shook his head. ‘You are the most extraordinary . . . but we are not going to let them forget, are we? Believe me, Mrs Gwyn, they are already singing songs about you. No, it’s true! Some of the songs, it has to be said, are a bit indelicate. But they are sung in taverns in drunken voices and on street corners, perhaps even in wealthy homes, although the owners of those homes would never admit it. The people are calling you the Girl from Botany Bay.’
‘The Girl from Botany Bay. Is nothing to be trusted anymore?’
‘Nothing ever was. Why do you object to it?’
‘I never set foot on the shores of Botany Bay.’
She had heard the water lapping against those shores, had heard the shouts of Dan and the others as they went ashore and tried to make the place yield something more than rocks. She felt a sudden astonishment that she had travelled to the other end of the world and back again, and lived for three years in a cove from which she could have walked, with some difficulty, to Botany Bay, yet never been there.
‘None of it matters, Mrs Gwyn,’ Aldred said. ‘Few people here will care about the distance between Sydney Cove and Botany Bay, and whether you left a footprint on the shore of one or the other. What matters is that they now have a name for you. One which is exotic, one people will remember. One we will make them remember.’
‘Fame drains away if it’s not replenished, you told me,’ she said. ‘They will forget, in time.’
‘Not for a time yet. I will be bending all my efforts to reminding those who have power over your fate that it doesn’t do to hang a brave heroine, or to leave her mouldering in gaol.’
Moulder, though, she did. When other visitors came in, very occasionally she would turn, sometimes even smile if somebody looked particularly friendly. For the most part, though, she faced the wall.
Until the gaoler said, ‘They came to see your face, my lovely. Thems the ones that pay for fresh bedding and better food. If they stop coming, and stopped paying – well, you’d be back to sleeping on a wooden board.’
So she would face the crowd, but she would not perform for them.
‘I had an appointment with the home secretary this morning,’ Aldred told her.
He was such a regular presence, now, that a chair was kept permanently for him, and he’d reached an arrangement with the gaoler to come and go as he pleased.
‘Yes. Probably at the same time as my appointment with the Queen,’ Jenny said.
He looked at her sharply. ‘Do not mock me. Question me, by all means. But do not insult me by doubting that I’m doing everything I can.’
She felt oddly chastened. He was, after all, bending a lot of his efforts towards gaining her freedom, without asking for payment.
‘And your appointment with the home secretary,’ she said, ‘how did it go?’
‘It didn’t, as matter of fact. I waited for an hour – no sign of the man. He was like that at Oxford as well, unreliable. I did, actually, leave a rather sternly worded letter expressing my disappointment, for all the good that will do.’
‘Will you try to see him again?’
Aldred nodded. ‘I even went to his wife, you know. Used to be a lively girl, gone a bit sour now. I asked her to plead your case with him, and she told me she makes it a policy not to discuss such things. You should have seen the mouth on her. She looked as though she was trying to prevent a bee from escaping.’ He stared at Jenny expectantly.
He wants me to laugh, she thought. To shake my head and say he’s a dreadful rogue, but at least he tells a good story. ‘I could not care less, Mr Aldred, about the home secretary’s wife and whether she has a bee imprisoned in her mouth.’
The gaoler, ever near, walked over. ‘You will refer to his lordship as “my lord”,’ he snapped.
‘I will refer to him as I please,’ said Jenny. ‘Do not forget who I am. And do not think that a lecture in manners from you is the most frightening thing I face.’
The gaoler was looking at her quietly, probably weighing up whether a visible, swift punishment would win him favour with the illustrious visitor.
‘Please don’t worry about it, Francis,’ said Aldred. ‘I don’t stand on ceremony, as you know – I find all of that lordship stuff rather irritating, if I’m honest.’
Of course, Jenny thought. He’s found out the man’s name and will use it at every opportunity.
‘No one will forget you, Jenny,’ said Aldred, after the gaoler had walked away. ‘If we are going to dispense with the ceremony, I would feel better using your given name, as we are embarked on this adventure together. Have you any objection?
‘None. Assuming of course you’ll allow me to call you by your first name.’
He laughed. ‘Seems fair. You may call me Richard. Try to avoid it in front of the gaoler, though. The man seems a little sensitive about rank. Often the way with those who have a small measure of power over the powerless. But you are not powerless, Jenny. You are simply resting, preparing for the next escape.’
CHAPTER 33
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Jenny did not feel as though she was resting. She felt as though she was rotting.
Aldred went away for a few weeks to visit his ailing wife. Without his constant presence, she noticed her ration slowly dwindling.
‘The money’s running out, you see,’ Mr Arum said. ‘Not as many coming.’
She had, actually, noticed a reduction in visitors. The fewer who came, the less frequently her bedding was changed. Sores appeared on her skin. More than once she heard people asking the gaoler for their money back, refusing to believe this scrap had defeated the ocean.
‘What would his lordship say?’ she asked Mr Arum as the bread got staler and smaller.
‘His lordship isn’t here.’
The next morning, when the dwindling crowd was let in, they found the women lying on their bedding, facing the walls and moaning. No amount of yelling from Mr Arum would make them move, and he was chastised by a few of the visitors for cruelty.
That night, the rations improved again. Even before they arrived, though, the women seemed miraculously recovered.
‘Your doing, I’ll wager,’ Mr Arum said to Jenny.
‘Me? No. I will say, though, if you’re selling something, best to make sure your wares are in good order.’
Aldred opened the door casually, as if he had last visited yesterday, and looked around for the chair that had long since been removed.
Jenny ran to the bars, so that some of those who’d come to look at the women stumbled back, perhaps thinking she intended to attack them.
Even with the reduced crowd, Aldred had trouble reaching her. She had assumed he had been exaggerating his fame, even when Harriet had said he was well known. Now, though, she could see he may have played it down. As he politely asked people to excuse him, and then pushed his way past them without giving them a chance to get out of the way, she heard an intake of breath from one young lady, a gasp from an older man standing near her.
‘Aldred! Extraordinary,’ one man said to the young woman on his arm. ‘I had heard . . . But there are so many rumours, you know. I didn’t think there was anything in them.’
