Remember Me - Lesley Pearse [143]
‘The Mary you loved was a scheming little minx,’ she said with a half smile. ‘She cared only for survival, she made things happen. But too much happened in the end. Things you can’t even imagine. The old Mary died back in Batavia. All you see now is an empty shell.’
Tench looked into her eyes, saw the bleakness there and instinctively knew she truly believed what she said. ‘Let me kiss you,’ he whispered, not caring if anyone was watching them because he was sure it would change her mind.
Mary nodded. It seemed fitting to her that she should end this with the one thing she had so often dreamed of.
He slid his arms around her and drew her to him, his heart aching with the need to bring back the mischievous and audacious girl who had captured his heart and held it for so many years. Her lips were soft and yielding, but disappointingly her kiss was one of farewell. Tender, clinging, yet without passion, just a goodbye. He knew then there was nothing more he could do or say which would persuade her.
He cupped her face in his hands. ‘I’ll do my best for you,’ he said fiercely. ‘I’ll write and come to visit you.’
‘No, Watkin,’ she said firmly. ‘I don’t want you to. You’ve been one of the best people in my life, I have a hundred bright memories of you in my head. If I’m to be hung they will sustain me. Let it be at that. Find someone from your own class who can bring you happiness.’
Of all the many traits of Mary’s personality Tench had come to know and admire over the past years, her resolution was the most powerful. He knew it was that which had kept her alive and helped her make the best of what was thrown at her.
He knew she was resolved now. Even if by some miracle he could sweep her away from Newgate and the gallows, she would not allow him to sully his family name or his career by marrying her. Tench knew he had never known anyone so heroic and unselfish.
He stood up and moved to the ship’s rail. He wanted to find a persuasive counter-argument, yet knew there wasn’t one. ‘We’re nearly at Portsmouth,’ he said eventually, looking towards the shore. ‘I have to leave the ship there while you go on to London.’
He couldn’t stand the thought of it. He knew that very soon she would be put back in chains, just the way she was when he first met her.
‘God go with you,’ she said from behind him, her voice shaking. ‘You are destined for greatness, Watkin. And I’ll always count myself fortunate to have had you as a friend.’
Chapter seventeen
Late in the afternoon on a fine, sunny day at the end of June, Mary shuffled dejectedly along behind the Newgate gaoler, her four friends behind her. They had been processed and now they were being led along a narrow, dark stone passageway into the prison itself, to be locked up until their trial.
Mary’s ankles were raw and bleeding from the chains that had been put back on her earlier in the month when the Gorgon docked at Portsmouth. They had remained on for the last part of the voyage to the London docks. She was also hungry, for she hadn’t eaten anything since dawn when she, James, Bill, Nat and Sam left the ship, shackled together to wait to be escorted to Newgate prison.
Mary had felt very much as she had when she left the prison in Kupang to be transferred to the ship which would take them to Batavia. The difference was that the voices around them were now English ones, and more poignantly, four of the men and the two children were missing.
They hardly spoke as they waited on the busy wharf for the prison cart to arrive. They just sat in a row against a wall, clutching their small bags of belongings on their laps, each wrapped in their own private thoughts. Mary could understand why people passing through the wharf looked at them so curiously, for they must have been a strange sight. Chained convicts were usually ragged, dirty and malnourished, whereas they were clean and healthy. The men had all been issued with canvas breeches and shirts, and Mary was wearing the green and white dress given to her by the