Forged in the Fire (5 page)

When the meeting for worship was over, we talked about our Friends in Newgate. Edmund Ramsey, a city merchant who sometimes attended our meetings, had heard a rumour that the authorities would make another attempt to embark the prisoners on sixth-day – and that they would be better prepared this time, and send more officers.

“We must make a presence,” said Joseph Law. “Pray, and exhort them, and give comfort to our Friends.”

“I say we should hire boats,” said John Turner. He'd know the boatmen, I realized, since he worked on the waterfront. “With boats we can follow the barge out to the ship, and be there with our Friends until the very last moment.”

This was seized upon eagerly, especially by the wives and mothers of some of the prisoners.

Joseph Law agreed to spread the word among other meetings, and John Turner undertook to hire three boats for the twenty or so people from our meeting who wanted to go.

I had some anxiety about whether I should join them. I'd resolved to stay clear of trouble this year, if I could, so as to be sure of getting to Shropshire to marry Susanna. And yet, for the first time since our plans to leave London had been disrupted, I felt some excitement and enthusiasm. It would be a show of support for our Friends, but it would also carry an enticing edge of risk; and Nat was going, and all the other young men. I didn't want to be left behind with the elders. And it was not illegal to hire a boat. I said I'd go.

When the day came, my employer stayed to mind the shop, but I went, with his permission, down to the wharf at Blackfriars.

We waited till the prisoners were on the barge and it had been cast off before going aboard our own boats. Nat and I were in the smallest boat, along with John Turner, Rachel Chaney and two women Friends supporting her, Sarah Chandler and Rebecca Edge.

The day was warm, but as we moved out onto the river I felt the cool wind ruffling my clothes. Rachel was calmer today, her face pale and set. Nobody believed the prisoners could escape transportation now, so she must have known she would be seeing her husband probably for the last time.

The women sat with their arms around Rachel, and we three young men stood together at the other side of the boat. The boatman was an acquaintance of John's, a rough-spoken man with no patience for the workings of so-called justice. He provided a commentary on the idiocy of prison officers, turnkeys, judges and soldiers as we swung out into the current and followed the crowded barge.

Other small boats with more Friends aboard came out from the Southwark side, and more still as we passed the Tower. I began to feel exhilarated, as if we were setting off on an adventure; and I guessed the other two felt the same. Only the presence of the unhappy young woman restrained our spirits.

Then Rachel cried out, “God help us! Soldiers!”

From the Tower, we saw several boatloads of soldiers setting out. The sight of them in their red coats, with sunlight glinting on their muskets, struck alarm into me and – no doubt – deadly fear into Rachel. They had clearly been sent to make sure the prisoners were all got aboard this time.

As one of their boats drew closer a captain shouted to us to be gone.

“Turn back! We have orders to sink you if you obstruct us!”

I knew they'd have no mercy if we got in their way. The dirty Thames slapped at the sides of our boat, unpleasantly close. Sarah Chandler began to pray aloud, so that our Friends might hear, and the rest of us joined in.

The coarse jeers and laughter of the soldiers carried across the water.

“Canting dogs! Holy Joes! Be off!”

“And take your whores with you!”

“Drown the fools!”

We ignored the abuse. Our boatman began to swear in return, but Sarah laid a restraining hand on his arm and, with some reluctance, he fell silent.

Now our spirits rose. As we passed Horsleydown, and then Wapping, more and more little boats left the shore on either side; and we recognized in them the plain black hats and sober clothes of Friends. Meetings from all over London and Middlesex had members on the barge, and soon a small flotilla of boats followed in its wake and outnumbered the soldiers. The prisoners on the barge, seeing us all, must have felt supported; and I began to believe that by sheer weight of numbers and the power of prayer we might yet change the course of events.

And so we continued around the bend in the river and out beyond Deptford to Bugby's Hole.

When we saw the
Black Spread-Eagle
a cry of despair broke from Rachel. The ship was as grim as her name: painted in peeling black, and with a filthiness about her that could be seen even at this distance and that brought a foul smell towards us on the wind. No one knew what trade Fudge had been engaged in, but I felt, with an instinctive revulsion, that this might have been a slave ship – for I knew that English ships did engage in that evil trade; and Fudge was clearly a man without honour or human sympathy.

The barge had now come alongside the ship, and we heard the shouts and commands of prison officers and soldiers. The soldiers climbed swiftly aboard the barge. The prisoners were herded to the side, and the seamen, who had assembled on the deck of the
Black Spread-Eagle
, were commanded to assist.

Rachel stood up, craning to see her husband.

It soon became apparent that the seamen would not cooperate. They stood idle, and would neither prevent nor assist the operation. The master could be seen swearing and exhorting them to no avail. The prisoners, for their part, would not go willingly aboard. They did not resist, but let their bodies become limp, so that the soldiers and prison officers struggled to lift and move them. Meanwhile our flotilla of Friends' boats surrounded the scene, and we prayed aloud and called out words of encouragement.

The soldiers grew rougher. Some got aboard the ship. Others beat the prisoners with the butts of their muskets, forced them to the side and heaved them up and over the rail onto the ship, where they were seized by those aboard. The violence increased as the prisoners continued to fall limp to the deck rather than go meekly to their fates. People were dragged on board, buffeted and scraped against the bulwark and hurled onto the deck, where the master drove them below. Women were treated as roughly as men, and with deliberate disrespect. I saw one young woman pulled aboard upside down, her skirts over her head, the soldiers leering as her buttocks and thighs were exposed. A man was caught by one arm and leg, swung, and thrown down on top of her before she could rise.

There was wailing as well as prayer and encouragement from Friends aboard our little boats as many saw those they loved beaten, injured and degraded.

Rachel cried out when her husband appeared, dragged by his armpits to the edge of the barge. He was dealt with quickly. A soldier heaved him up, and another on the
Black Spread-Eagle
hauled him on board backwards.

“Vincent!” Rachel screamed.

But in a moment he was gone, driven down into the hold of that foul ship.

Rachel turned a face of anguish to us. “It is a death ship. I shall never see him again.”

The two women tried to comfort her. “Have faith, Rachel, have faith.”

But I feared Rachel was right; and even if her husband did survive, it would be more than seven years before she saw him again. My own separation from Susanna was nothing by contrast.

It took over an hour to get the fifty or more prisoners aboard. Such violence had been used that we feared some of them could now be lying below with broken limbs.

At last all was done. The soldiers returned to their boats and sailed back to the Tower, the small boats full of Friends going to their various home wharves. Our three remaining boatloads followed the barge back to Blackfriars Wharf.

We were a subdued group as we came ashore and walked up towards Paul's Churchyard. The excitement and bravado had gone, and now we reflected on the cold reality of our Friends' fate. The prison officers from the barge were laughing and joking, jubilant at their success. One of them, swaggering past me, knocked my hat off into the gutter. As I stooped to retrieve it, he said, “Much good your praying did those fools!”

I should have ignored him, but the close contact with Rachel Chaney's grief had made me angry. I slammed my hat back on my head, and retorted, “It is you who are fools! Who turn away from Christ's mercy and send honest men to their deaths!”

The joviality vanished in an instant. Now the man was menacing. He stepped in front of me; forced me to stop.

“Do you call me a fool, sirrah?”

Friends and prison officers alike paused; I felt the tension in both groups, and saw Francis Palmer make a slight warning gesture.

I was frightened now. How had I got into this? It was nothing to me, their strutting and crowing; why had I responded to it?

I took a breath and said evenly, “I call on thee to attend to the light within.”

“You call on
me
!”

He lunged forward, knocking me off balance. I moved to go past him, but he hit me again and I felt blood running from my nose. Francis came to my aid and was pulled away. I heard Nat shout my name; he was down nearer the wharf, with the women, but he came hurrying up the street with other Friends as the officers surrounded me and two constables appeared. As they seized me I became aware of another scuffle close by and saw John Turner knocked down.

People on the street and leaning out of windows clamoured to be heard.

“They did no harm!”

“The turnkeys set upon them!”

But it made no difference. I was held, pinioned by the arms, and heard the constable's voice – “I arrest you on a charge of causing an affray” – and moments later three of us were in the custody of the prison officers, on our way to Newgate.

I turned, saw Nat struggling to reach me, the constables barring his way. I shook my head at him, mutely urging him to keep back.

I was bound for Newgate, along with my Friends John Turner and Francis Palmer, who might have been safely home by now if I had not spoken out. I felt guilt as well as despair. A few streets on I saw the familiar gateway. It always filled me with dread, but never more so than now. Inside, I knew, the plague had taken hold, and Friends were dying from it every day; buried in the common graveyard within the prison. I had not meant to come here this summer. I had been determined to keep myself out of prison, to be free to marry Susanna. Now I realized I might never see her again. I could pay for that moment of anger with my life.

A
fter Dan and Judith left Hemsbury, it seemed the summer yellowed and faded fast, and my spirits with it. I shall die a virgin, I thought; for sometimes I feared Will must be dead, and I could not imagine loving anyone else. I felt lonely without Judith; and my work, which used to be satisfying, was nothing to me now. I wrote to Will regularly, as I always had, and tried to write of things that would amuse or cheer him, trusting that he would somehow receive my letters. But news came from London of three thousand dead of the plague in one week; of pits being dug to accommodate the great increase of corpses; of rows of shops empty and grass growing in the streets. From Friends we heard of the deaths of many of our people, both in Newgate and in the city at large. I scanned those lists, dreading to see Will's name. It was not there. Did that mean he was alive? I could not be sure, for London seemed to be a place where all order and communication was breaking down. Sometimes I lay awake at night, and then my darkest thoughts came to me. I imagined Will lying dead, tumbled into a plague pit. I knew I should think of death as a release from suffering and a joyous reunion with God, but I could not. I wanted my love here, now, with me on this earth, in our earthly bodies.

One day, when I was alone in the bookshop, the door opened, and Henry Heywood came in.

I stiffened with fear and my heart began to pound. This man was my enemy, the one who had tried to part Will and me; who had called me a whore and connived (so I believed) with Robert Danson to have me put in the stocks. Why had he come? He had never set foot in the shop before – or not since I'd been working here. Was he here to abuse me for having caused his son to go to London, into danger?

Or did he have news for me? Bad news? At that possibility I felt faint, and reached for the edge of the table to support myself.

He seemed agitated. He paced back and forth, then swivelled abruptly to face me. Without introduction, or any form of address, he said, “Have you heard from my son?”

I steadied my breathing. “No,” I said. “Not since midsummer.”

Did he know we were to be married, I wondered? Had Will told him? I remembered that Will had said his letters to his father were never answered, and I felt a surge of anger. If Henry Heywood wanted news of his son, why had he ignored him for so long? Why come troubling me in my unhappiness?

I regarded him stony-faced.

“You people have lists, I heard,” he said. “Lists of … Quakers” – his voice broke on the word – “dead of the plague…”

I saw then that he feared Will was dead; and feared also that he was so far alienated from his son that he might not have been told. It was desperation that had driven him to speak to me.

“Will's name was not on any list,” I said. “But I did hope to have heard from him, and have not.”

His shoulders sagged.

“The post is perhaps disrupted,” he said; but his voice sounded as bleak as my own feelings.

Until then I had thought of this man only as my tormentor; now I saw him as one who loved Will, and I knew how my own father would feel in such circumstances. A little of my fear left me, and was replaced by pity.

“If I hear any news,” I said, “I will send to thee at once.”

And pray do the same for me, my heart begged him, though I would not say the words.

He nodded – curtly, I thought – and strode to the door. As he reached it, he turned back and looked fully at me, as if seeing me for the first time.