Dream Time (historical): Book I (3 page)

§ CHAPTER THREE §

Newga
te prison was a nightmare of surrealistic proportions. To think she had written an article denouncing the institution from an impersonal point of view!

Almost a hundred female prisoners were incarcerated in Newgate, and they were not separated from the male prisoners. For a woman of genteel birth to survive with all her faculties intact would be considered a minor miracle.

Between her physical pain and her emotional pain, Nan Briscoll easily distinguished the greater. Her body was resolute, but she was unprepared for the loss of love.

However wretched were the conditions in the prison, and they were incredibly wretched, her thin body was sustained by her inner resources and resilience.

She was imprisoned in the worst part of the prison—Commonside. It was so crowded with pickpockets, felons, ruffians, and murderers as to justify its title of Hell on Earth.

Coleridge was appalled. “My dear girl, when I heard about your circumstances,
I came as soon as I could. Is there anything I can do to alleviate your ... conditions here?"

Yes, she thought dully, kill me. Kill me so I no longer have to think, to feel. “No.” Her reply was a mere whisper.

His bulbous nose wrinkled in response to the fetid smell. He glanced at the sordid women around him. His fingers polished the malachite handle of his cane. He cleared his throat. “Honestly, I think there is not much anyone can do about your legal situation, Nan. With a charge of treason being prepared against you, you will be lucky if you aren’t sentenced to hang.”

That she did not ap
pear to be listening disconcerted him, and he started over. “I have some influence, very little actually, with certain Parliament members. Maybe a word here or there about obtaining a more favorable sentence—at the least, obtaining a grant of the Privilege of the Rules for you.”

Those prisoners who had abundant financial resources could resort to the Privilege of the Rules. This meant paying for the right to reside in lodgings outside the prison walls but close enough to report back daily.

“Of course, we’ll need to find some financial backing for this, but...” He paused.

She bestirred herself to reply. “No. No, I wish to be hanged, Coleridge. Hanged quickly. Do you understand?”

With the other women screeching like harpies, he grew agitated. “You are distraught. You don’t know what you are saying. I’ll return as soon as I know more.”

Within a few seconds, she could hear his buckled slippers tap-tapping down the cold stone corridor with a rapidity that did credit to a man of his girth and age.

She returned her mind to its own padded cell, where thought and feeling could not intrude. Little by little the slender shafts of sunlight from barred windows high overhead climbed the floor and walls to escape through the seams of the ceiling.

In the overcrowded prison, she found a space to stretch out for another night. Each prisoner was allocated floor space eighteen inches wide by six feet long. Those lucky enough slept in hammocks strung from one wall to a gre
at oak pillar in the room’s center.

The first night, she had worried about being molested by one of the male prisoners. Either they were as apathetic as she or they simply weren’t interested in her. Not yet, anyway.

What she did not worry about was jail fever. The lack of ventilation and sanitation killed the prisoners off like flies. She could only hope she could be so fortunate as to catch the fever.

Sleep, of course, did not come. If the noise didn’t keep her awake, the vermin did.

After nearly ten days of languishing in Newgate, Nan was taken to an antechamber to bathe in vinegar. By now, she had heard enough to know that this was a signal she was to be taken into court. The vinegar bath was a preliminary precaution against a prisoner’s stench and transmission of jail fever to the judge, counsel, jury, and warders.

She was finally having a trial—but without even a barrister to represent her?

Along with several other prisoners, political ones from Fleet Street Prison, she was herded not into Old Bailey, the central criminal court of London, but into Westminster Hall. Alone, she was hauled before the Bar of the Court of King's Bench.

The enormous number of people who crowded the paneled room to watch was amazing. They stared at her in particular. She realized she appeared unkempt, haggard even. Her pride burned.

Then she understood why she was the source of attention. The white-wigged attorney general, appearing for the Crown, rose to give his opening remarks. “We have before us a woman who the Crown will prove is a support of the foolish doctrine of equality and who seeks to unleash terror like that instigated by the revolutionaries of France.”

She was being tried for high treason by the supreme criminal court of the realm!

The spectators broke out in mutterings that sounded as if the room were filled with swarms of bees. Majority opinion in England was still opposed to reform. The bloodbath of horror attendant upon the French Revolution was enough to make a proper Englishman tremble in outrage.

A counselor had been appointed for her defense. There was little the white-wigged barrister could do to counteract the admission of blatant articles she had written.

“Jacobin!” spread throughout the courtroom. “The woman’s a Jacobin!”

The spectators were becoming an angry mob.

Meanwhile a professional scribe recorded every damnable admission she made. When, after three days of being cross-examined, the trial was brought to a close, the jury never left the box. She stood before the chief justice to hear the verdict.

Her fate was only slightly better than hanging. “We find the prisoner, Nan Briscoll, guilty of high treason. The prisoner is to be forever banished from England. She will be remanded to transportation, to serve out the rest of her natural life in hard labor at the penal colony of Sydney Cove in New South Wales.”

The will in that thin, frail body refused to be extinguished. Nan’s hatred for Miles Randolph, her hatred for her own weakness that had resulted in her lapse of rational thinking, manufactured the sustenance her body
needed to survive. Not just survive on her hate but thrive.

Along with 700 other convicts, of which only 169 were women, Nan slept and ate below the decks of the 98-foot bark the
Serendipity
. What little exercise the convicts were permitted was limited by intermittent gales that chased the bark on its six-month voyage across the seas. Some received no exercise, chained as they were in pairs to the bulkheads in the hold.

While others suffered the bloody flux and ague or vomited at the lack
of ventilation and the maggot-infested food, Nan appeared to glow with good health. When others found sleep impossible on the narrow slats, she slept deeply and dreamlessly.

Scorched by humanity, she withdrew from its dregs there on the
Serendipity
. Most of them had been dependent upon crime for a living. The women, all forty or younger, appeared hags. The men looked a degree above brute creation. Hardly the image of God, the inheritors of his kingdom.

With two other women, she shared a bed of narrow slats. Lying there, she would stare at the slats above her and wonder if her disobedience to her father’s god had brought all this down upon her.

Nan kept a vision of returning to England, somehow a grand lady to squelch London’s high society with a frosty glance. A foolish dream of regaining respectability, perhaps, but it and her hatred of Miles Randolph sustained her during those long months.

But her dream of returning to England the grand lady was soon obliterated. She would never be going back, she knew. And Miles Randolph had left her a legacy. She was with child. If it were possible to abort, she would, but t
he mere lack of privacy prevented that. No, she was forced to carry the hated seed of the man who had exploited her weakness. During the voyage’s last leg, Nan was preoccupied with only one activity: watching herself grow large with the child.

Her unvented rage grew as well. She knew she was strong. If she sur
vived, it would be without leaving herself vulnerable to any man. A folly she would never commit again.

By the time the
Serendipity
neared the coast of New South Wales her initially healthy appearance had degenerated. Her complexion was a pasty yellow from the long months with only a modicum of sunlight, and the lack of proper food had sunken her cheeks and thinned her hair.

Waiting on deck with the other dazed prisoners,
she looked upon the awesome, lonely void of a trackless ocean. Along with the other prisoners, she fought to stand erect as the swells built to staggering heights, then descended into spumy troughs that paralyzed the brain with fear.

It was the first indication of a place that was upside down and backward from the familiarity of the Old World. A place where it snowed in July and where water went down the drain in the opposite direction.

At last, as the ship entered Sydney Cove, just north of Botany Bay, the waters quieted. January’s endless blue sky and a balmy summer breeze riffling the palms greeted the prisoners. To Nan, everything was influenced by the harbor water and the fresh, intense marine light.

Drawing closer to the limestone cliffs, the impression of sheer beauty gave way to a pressing-down feeling of a tiny population clin
ging to a rock of an empty, barren, ghostly land. The bay took on an acid brilliance.

Nan stared in disbelief at what was to be her home. Perched on t
hat barren, sandstone rocky outcrop was Fort Phillip, over which the Union Jack stirred apathetically in the sea breeze. Fort Phillip was a six-sided citadel built on the western side of Sydney Cove. One side commanded a view of the harbor, another faced a pathetic excuse for a town, and still another looked out upon the dusty Parramatta Road.

The remnants of her decimated self-confidence withered. At that moment, she drew a curtain over her thoughts and numbed herself to what she rightly suspected was the ordeal that lay in wait for her upon disembarkation.

Because the British defeat in 1781 meant that the American colonies could no longer be used as a convenient dumping ground for criminals, Sydney Cove had become the repository.

Nan was only vaguely aware of being corralled in the palisaded Punishment Yard to stand with the women in one group while the men formed the larger group. The two groups were guarded by red-coated soldiers armed with flintlocks and a few antiquated blunderbusses.

The internment looked as if it would be an all-day event, yet no water was offered to ease the parched throats of the convicts. A single fern tree offered scant shade.

The stocks and gallows in the yard’s center served as grisly reminders that His Majesty’s retribution could extend even as far as twelve thousand miles.

Nan averted her gaze. Beyond the fort, she studied the primitive settlement of wooden buildings with but a few interspersed ones of brick. Rising above them could be seen the single respectable and substantial building in the settlement, the Government House.

Only as she watched officers and soldiers and other men in simple brown perukes pause before her to assess her personage and that of the others did she realize the extent of what was happening.

The men were looking for not only workers but wives!

“H’its awaiting s
election, we are,” said an acne scarred woman.

Instinct told Nan that in order to do more than merely survive she would need to escape the sentence of hard labor. But the one thing she prided herself
on—her intellect—was certainly of no use here. Beauty or a strong back were a better commodity for life in New South Wales.

Not only was her lack of strength going against her but also her obvious pregnancy. In a primitive land where food was scarce, another mouth certainly was not needed.

Time after time, she was passed by.

From the co
rner of her eye, she watched a squat soldier amble up before a stout and coarse prisoner named Moll Cutpurse. Hands on her ample hips, Moll lustily eyed the bantam rooster of a sergeant as he circled her. Finally, he said, “I’ll take ye to wife.” The grin on both their faces said they were delighted with the bargain struck.

The sun continued on its path across the western expanse of sky. By the time it became a fiery globe hovering over the vast stretch of sea, the more appealing of women convicts had been taken from the Punishment Yard. Drained by the hours in the sun and her advanced pregnancy, Nan fought to stand upright among the two score or so of women left.

Humiliated beyond anything she had so far endured, she followed the line of shuffling prisoners, some of them still manacled in their irons. Burdened by the child she carried, her own gait was as awkward as the shackled convicts.

In the deepening dusk, their destination revealed itself as a collection of huts, which accommodated fourteen to eighteen women and were without the amenity of either bed or blankets. A woman in drab kersey ladled out a watery soup into bowls fashioned from the green wood of the country.

From the woman, the convicts learned what was to happen to them. Her empty eyes barely moved from the soup she ladled as she talked. “Be thankful that ’tis female yew are. The men work on the government farms or on the plots of the officers from five in the morning till sunset. The overseers’ whips snap the livelong day. Us women, the ones that don’t get selected as wives, are made ’utkeepers or set to work to make spirits or clothes. Only a few of yew will ’ave to pick in the fields.”

Nan stared into her soup at the little white worms swimming there. She set aside her bowl. She was no longer hungry.

After what seemed a very short night of rest on bare planks, Nan was informed that, at least, she would not be required to pick in the fields. “Not ’til yewr term of delivery is over,” the woman said.

Instead, along with several others, Nan was loaded into a two-wheel cart that rumbled from the quay through narrow dirt streets with names like Church Street and High Street. On Pitt Street, a pawnshop rubbed elbows with a milliner’s and a wig shop, but most of the shanties housed cheap taverns, bawdy houses, warehouses, and grog shops.

As the cart rattled over a bridge and headed out a narrow road, Nan felt very lonely and afraid. Unaccustomed to direct sunlight for so long, her skin burned and her turbulent thoughts boiled.

She could not appreciate the raw beauty of the countryside. Wild grapevines and raspberries infringed on the road, and infinitely old and strange-looking trees formed a leafy canopy above. If she thought to escape, where would she run to in that wilderness?

The convicts were being sent to one of the government farms, someone said.

“Surry Hill Farm,” clarified a woman whose head had been shaven for prostitution.

Nan could only hope that the conditions of the government farm were no worse than those she had left. She was learning to be thankful for the small crumbs of luck that life was allotting her.

At last, the woods receded to a clearing on the cart’s left. With keen disappointment, Nan viewed the government farm. Primitive was the only word that came to mind. In the harsh sunlight, half-naked men toiled in fields of corn, beans, and squash. The forest had been pushed back to the fields’ margins, and on a rise between the fields squatted a scattering of huts, sheds, and crude split-log buildings.

When the cart rolled to a halt before the largest of the buildings, dust flurried up to blind her. As it drifted away, she saw a burly soldier prodding the women ahead of her down from the cart and directing them to their workstations.

She almost stumbled but regained her balance in time to avoid a flicking jab from his whip handle. “You,” he said, pointing the whip at her, “take yourself to the third hut yonder.”

Wearily, she turned in the direction he indicated. The hated parasite within her belly weighed heavily, making each footstep across the grass-denuded grounds an enormous effort. Escape flitted through her mind and as quickly vanished. Escape from the only settlement on a continent said to be larger than Europe was in itself a death wish. Men had tried it. If any escaped and lived, they certainly hadn’t talked about it. The thought was not even worth the energy of entertaining for a woman large with child.

Before she could reach the hut, a black woman of maybe five and twenty came out with a basket of folded laundry balanced on her bony hip. She was built oddly, with a pouter pigeon breast and a tiny, almost misshapen lower torso, which maybe accounted for her limp. Nan thought her almost ugly, with a broad black face framed by short hair, and a band of tattoos spanning each cheekbone beneath eyes deep sunken to protect them from the sun.

As Nan moved to pass the aborigine, the woman missed a step. Or maybe her ankle gave way, Nan wasn’t sure. Whichever, the woman stumbled and fell, the basket rolling in front of Nan and the soldier and strewing the laundry with it.

“Ye stupid, frigging slut,” the soldier muttered in irritation.

Almost as a matter of course, his whip lifted and would have descended on the hapless woman had Nan not grabbed hold of his sleeve. The action was not so much a humanitarian one on her part as it was purely reflex to keep her own bulky body from tripping over the woman.

Regardless, the soldier jerked his arm away from Nan’s clutch. His expression was nigh comical. Confusion and suspicion overcame his irritation. He scowled at Nan. “Both you bloody bitches, pick up the laundry afore I rip you a new arse.”

The aborigine was already scrambling on her knees, collecting the scattered items. Nan was slower, and he jabbed the whip’s haft in her ribs, more to goad her than to injure her. Her breath whooshed out at the pain. She went on all fours. The black woman’s expression was a warning to keep silent. By now, Nan knew enough to heed it.

The soldier stomped away, leaving the two women to finish gathering the spilled laundry. The woman grinned, revealing perfect, small white teeth. “So, there be two of you to feed.”

Comfort and compassion colored the aborigine’s voice. For the first time since Romney had come to the house on Clarges Street to warn Nan of Miles’s betrayal, she began to cry. Deep shuddering gasps were accompanied by a rain of tears.

“Sssh, baby,” the black woman cooed. “Nutt’ is as bad as all that. Trust Pulykara. Come
to the hut, baby, and lie down. Them menfolks won’t be comin’ back till sundown. You can rest till then.”

Strange, the aborigine woman calling her “baby,” Nan thought,
following her to the hut, when she was no older than Nan herself. Then Nan forgot to think and fell at once into a heavy sleep. She awoke at the rumbling voices of convicts returning to the darkened hut. Her gaze darted over the large room, searching for the black woman. When she saw Pulykara’s softly glowing eyes, Nan knew the woman was right. Nothing was as bad as all that—as long as one learned from the experience.

That was something else Nan knew—she would never be a foolishly romantic woman again.