Remember Me - Lesley Pearse [10]
She thought she’d been in hell there, and was glad when they’d first left, delighting in the fresh air and sunshine. But all too soon she’d found herself wishing she was back in the Castle. Late the previous night, cold, wet and hungry, every bone in her body screaming in pain, she would even have accepted a noose being put round her neck to end it all. Now it seemed there was even more horror in store for her.
‘Ain’t no use looking like that,’ the guard said, and leaned back in his seat to give Mary a poke with the stick. He’d already struck several of them when they took too long getting off and on the cart. ‘That’s the wages of sin out there. You lot deserve it.’
A few days earlier Mary would have cursed him, spat in his face or even lashed out at him, but she had no fight left in her.
‘Are we to be taken out there now?’ she asked instead, her quick mind telling her she’d better keep on the right side of him.
‘No, it’s too late,’ he said, touching the horses with the whip to get them to move. ‘You got another night in a warehouse first.’
It wasn’t just the occupants of the two carts from Exeter who spent the night in the warehouse. They had hardly got inside and slumped down on to the dirt floor when the doors opened again and another couple of dozen people joined them.
They were in an even worse state than Mary’s party, having come all the way from Bristol. Their clothes were mere rags, they all looked feverish, and gangrene had clearly taken a hold of a gaping wound in one of the men’s legs, for the smell was unmistakable.
There was a feeble attempt at conversation, questions asked about friends who had been incarcerated in Exeter Castle and Bristol’s Bridewell, but the main thing everyone was concerned about was how long they would be kept in the prison ship before being transported.
‘I heard a party escaped from Gravesend,’ one fierce-looking man from Bristol claimed. ‘The guards opened fire on them and killed a couple, but the rest got away. Since then they’ve kept everyone in chains.’
Bessie, sitting next to Mary, began to cry. ‘We might just as well been hanged,’ she sobbed out. ‘I can’t take no more.’
The same thought was in Mary’s head too, but faced with Bessie’s utter dejection she swept it away. ‘We will be all right,’ she insisted, putting her arms around the woman and hugging her tightly. ‘We’re just cold, wet and hungry now, we can’t think straight. In a day or two everything will look different.’
‘You’re so brave,’ Bessie whispered. ‘Aren’t you scared too?’
‘No,’ Mary replied without a second thought. ‘Not now I know I’m not going to be hanged.’
Later that night as Mary lay in a huddle with the other women, desperately trying to draw some warmth from their bodies, she realized she really wasn’t scared. She was angry that people could treat others so cruelly, ashamed of the crime that had brought her to this, apprehensive about what would come next, but not scared. In fact, when she thought about it, she’d never been fearful of anything. She had taught herself to swim at six by just plunging into the sea. After she’d discovered she could keep afloat, the sea held no terrors for her. Nor did anything else. She was the one who always took dares, found risk exciting. Even when she first found out how Thomas made a living she wasn’t horrified – it just seemed daring, a bit of a lark.
She remembered then how her father had always remarked on how sharp she was. She had always been much smarter than Dolly and her friends of a similar age. She grasped things quickly, was curious about how things worked, and retained the information. She could almost hear her father boasting to the neighbours that Fowey was too dull for Mary, and that he had no doubt she’d come home one day having made her fortune.
How was he going to hold his head up when her recorded crime and punishment was seen in the Western Flyer? He couldn’t read himself, but there were plenty of people in Fowey who could and