Remember Me - Lesley Pearse [9]
‘Do you think that’s where we’re bound then?’ she asked.
He shrugged and scowled at the other women who were crowding around Mary to hear what he was saying. ‘Get back on the cart,’ he said curtly. ‘We’ve got a fair few miles to cover before dark.’
Once back on the cart, Mary decided there was no point in thinking upon anything more than the present. It might be uncomfortable in the cart, but it was better to be out in the spring sunshine than in a stinking gaol. She would keep herself poised for an opportunity for escape.
She doubted there was any hope of that before Devonport. If the guards on this journey kept to the same routine as those on the way from Plymouth to Exeter, she and her companions would remain shackled together constantly.
But there was a faint possibility that the chains would be removed when they had to get into the small boat to be rowed out to the hulks. If so, she could jump out and swim for it. She smiled inwardly. It was a very faint hope, for surely any guard worth his salt would anticipate such an attempt, but then few people knew how to swim, even sailors like her father couldn’t. The thought of swimming was pleasing, to be able to wash off the prison stink and make for a stretch of coastline she knew well. It was worth any risk, and even if she couldn’t do it then, maybe she could jump from the side of the hulk at night.
But as the afternoon shadows lengthened and it grew colder, Mary’s spirits began to sink again. Even if she could escape, where would she make for? She couldn’t go back to Cornwall, she’d be caught again in no time. And how would she get anywhere else with no money, wearing filthy clothes and boots with holes in them?
By dusk Mary was in too much pain to think beyond lying down. Even the slightest movement from herself or one of her companions made the iron shackles bite into her ankles. She had torn a strip off her petticoat to act as a bandage beneath the iron, but the cotton was stiff with dried blood now, and it rasped against the wounds rather than protecting them. She had hunger pains in her stomach, her back was so stiff she doubted she could walk, and she was shivering with cold.
Four days later, when the cart eventually reached Devonport, Mary’s companions were too deeply demoralized even to react to their first sight of the prison ship moored out in the river. It had been raining solidly for the past two days, and they were all soaked through to the skin. Many of them were feverish and everyone was exhausted through lack of sleep due to the cold in the barns and sheds they’d been locked into overnight.
There had been no conversation on the cart today. The only sounds were groans, sneezing, coughing, sniffing and the clank of chains as they vainly attempted to get more comfortable. Able was now seriously ill, unable to sit upright, and with each strained cough he brought up blood.
‘That’s yer new home, the Dunkirk,’ the guard said, turning in his seat to grin maliciously as he pointed at the old hulk moored out in the river. ‘She ain’t a very pretty ship, that’s for sure, but then you lot ain’t so pretty either.’
Mary had suffered as much as her companions, but whether it was because she was the youngest and the most healthy at the outset, or just because she had kept her mind active by thinking about escape, she appeared to be the only one affected by the sight of the hulk.
With its masts cut down to mere stumps and surrounded by wispy sea mist, it had the eerie look of an ancient wreck waiting for one good storm to dismember it. But worse still than its appearance was the putrid stench wafting from it on the wind.
Mary was already shivering so violently that her teeth were chattering, but she felt an even icier chill run down her spine, and her empty