Remember Me - Lesley Pearse [155]
Mary looked appealingly towards the other three. ‘Surely you know I’d do anything in my power to help you? Has cheap gin rotted your minds?’
They all looked a trifle sheepish.
‘But James is right, you should have come and got us,’ Bill said mulishly. ‘He’s the one who is good with words. You just don’t care any more.’
‘I might not care about myself, but I care about you,’ Mary retorted heatedly. ‘And if you want to know, I think you are becoming like everyone else in this place, drinking yourselves stupid and fucking anything that moves.’
‘Is this man coming back again?’ Nat asked hopefully.
‘I doubt it,’ she said curtly. ‘There’s nothing he can do for us.’
They heard Spinks coming down the passage, locking the cell doors for the night. Mary retreated over to her corner of the cell and lay down, hoping that the fast-fading light would put an end to the bitterness. James and Bill carried on talking for some time in low voices. Mary didn’t even attempt to listen for she was bone-tired and dejected.
Mr Boswell had been such a nice man. Apart from Tench, no other man had ever shown such a keen interest in her. Maybe she ought to have tried a bit harder to persuade him to help all of them? What if she’d pleaded tearfully, clung to him, or even offered herself to him?
‘No man would want you, not the way you look now,’ she thought to herself. She knew without even seeing herself in a looking-glass that she was no prize. Exposure to hot sun and wind and a poor diet had made her prematurely old; she had no curves, no softness about her. Even Sam, who she knew had had romantic feelings about her in the past, seemed to have lost them since their capture in Kupang.
She could hear a woman screaming in the distance. It sounded like the agony of childbirth and it made Mary’s stomach contract in sympathy. It seemed so strange to hear that after all the terrible things she’d seen in the past years, the hurts and humiliations, she still felt others’ pain. She ought to be entirely numb by now, unconcerned whether a newborn baby would survive. But she did still care; each time she passed the doorway to the common side of the prison, she felt guilty that those poor wretches were starving, filthy and sick, while she was able to go outside, eat, drink and sleep in a decent cell.
The screaming stopped suddenly. Mary wondered if that was because the mother had finally delivered, or had died. Perhaps for her sake she should hope it was the latter, for the woman’s troubles would surely only increase if she lived.
Three days passed, and slowly the men returned to their old easy manner towards Mary. On the fourth day they were taken to the court to be brought before the magistrate, Mr Nicholas Bond.
All five of them had become very nervous as soon as their chains were put back on. Then, as the prison cart rumbled through the crowded, noisy streets, nervousness turned to terror at what lay ahead. Nat’s blue eyes were wide with fear, Bill clenched his fists so hard his knuckles were white, Sam appeared to be muttering a prayer. Even James was silenced for once, and when the cart was suddenly surrounded by a horde of people, all shouting at them, he clutched at Mary’s hand.
All at once Mary realized this wasn’t a mob baying for their blood, quite the reverse. Their shouts were ‘Bravo’, ‘Good luck’ and ‘God go with you’.
Someone threw a sprig of white heather into the cart. Mary picked it up and smiled. ‘They are on our side,’ she gasped.
They had all got used to their notoriety in Newgate, but it hadn’t occurred to them that their story would be of interest to ordinary people too. Clearly it was, and had touched their hearts too, for so many to have made their way towards the court to show their solidarity with Mary and her four friends.
*
As they were led up to the dock, they saw that the gloomy and dusty courtroom was packed to capacity with spectators. Among them Mary glimpsed James Boswell.
‘Mr Boswell’s here,’ she whispered to James, assuming he and the others would start on at her again