Remember Me - Lesley Pearse [168]
‘The second of May!’ Mary exclaimed. ‘Then it was my birthday two days ago, and we’ve been here nearly eleven months.’ Her birthday meant little to her other than it came the day before May Day, which had always been special in Cornwall. No one had even mentioned that in here, so perhaps Londoners didn’t celebrate it.
‘It seems we’ve been here a whole lifetime, and they say it’s bad manners to ask a lady’s age,’ James said with an impudent grin.
‘You’re older than me,’ she retorted, and jumped down from the crate to sit on it.
‘I have difficulty keeping track of years now,’ Bill said thoughtfully, scratching his bald head. ‘I’m not sure if I’m thirty-two or -three.’
‘I’m still the youngest at twenty-five,’ Nat chipped in.
Mary was loath to admit she was now twenty-eight. It seemed so very old. But then she felt old, and she’d been in Newgate for so long that almost everyone she’d met when she first came here had been hanged, died of fever, or been taken away for transportation.
‘Someone’s coming,’ Sam said, looking up from his whittling.
He was right, they could all hear brisk footsteps coming along the passageway. It wasn’t Spinks, who had a kind of shuffle, and the other prisoners walked slowly. Mary had found that odd at first, until she discovered herself doing it. What was the point of rushing anywhere when you had a long, empty day to fill?
The footsteps stopped outside their cell, and the door was pushed open. It was one of the guards from the gate, a tall, broad-shouldered man with a pock-marked face. They had seen him on their arrival here, and when they had been taken to court.
‘Mary Broad!’ he said, looking to her. ‘You are wanted below.’
Mary exchanged a puzzled glance with the men. Normally when a visitor arrived for one of them, Spinks came to tell them.
‘Maybe it’s the King,’ James said, and laughed at his joke.
Mary picked up her shawl and followed the guard down the stairs, across the outside yard and into the small office she had come through on her arrival.
‘Mr Boswell!’ she exclaimed when she saw him waiting there. He looked even grander than usual in a dark red jacket trimmed with black braid, and he had a cockade of red feathers in his three-cornered hat. ‘I had expected something bad. Why didn’t the guard tell me it was you?’
‘Because this is an official visit,’ he said, glancing at the guard, then suddenly his face broke into a joyful smile and he pulled a sheet of paper from behind his back. ‘This, my dear, is your pardon!’
Mary was too stunned to respond. She blinked, caught hold of the edge of the desk for support and just stared back at Boswell.
‘Well, say something,’ he laughed. ‘Or won’t you believe it till I read it to you?’
He cleared his throat, made a sweeping bow as if about to deliver a proclamation to royalty, then held up the sheet of paper.
‘Whereas Mary Bryant, alias Broad, now a prisoner in Newgate,’ he read aloud, and paused to smile.
‘Go on,’ she whispered, afraid she might faint with shock.
‘Stands charged with escaping from the persons having legal custody of her before the expiration of the term which she had been ordered to be transported, and whereas some favourable circumstances have been humbly presented unto us on her behalf, inducing us to grant our Grace and Mercy on her and to grant her our free pardon for her said crime.’
Boswell went on reading and finished up by telling Mary that the letter was signed by Henry Dundas at His Majesty’s command. But she could barely take it in: the only two words which really meant anything to her were ‘free pardon’.
‘Oh, Bozzie,’ she gasped as he finished. ‘You did it! I’m free?’
‘Yes, you are, my dear,’ he beamed. ‘As from this very moment. You can walk out through the gates right now with me. You have spent your last night in Newgate.’
She rushed to hug him, kissing both his cheeks.
‘You are a wonderful, wonderful man,’ she said joyfully. ‘How can I ever thank you enough?’
Boswell’s face was always so red it