Behind the Sun Read online

  It would have been nice to have Lucas’s baby and he’d have been delighted, she knew he would. But Newgate Gaol — what a place to be expecting! Not for long, though. Her mother and father hadn’t been able to get her out, but she knew when he came back, Lucas would.

  She wished she knew where he was. Some days lately she was starting to wonder if she’d imagined him, but she couldn’t have, because if she had, she wouldn’t be here in gaol, would she? That first ever time she’d seen him he hadn’t seemed real he’d been that lovely, just like an angel or a prince or a knight, or perhaps all three together. The day had been cold and foggy and she’d had her woollen scarf tied over her head to cover her ears, trudging along the side of the road on her way to see if the berries were out yet on the mistletoe growing on the poplar tree halfway along the ditch. It had been at the behest of her mother, who had decided it would be a good idea if Rachel were to be standing under some mistletoe when the Stemps arrived to pay their Christmas visit in a few weeks, so she hadn’t been in a very good mood.

  As usual Shannon had been with her. It was useful having four older brothers because they spoilt her, but often they treated her as though she were a silly little girl. Shannon didn’t; he never told her to grow up. Well, he couldn’t — he was a dog. When she wasn’t busy with her chores she would go for long walks across the fields with him and talk to him about everything. He knew all her secrets and dreams. He was supposed to be a farm dog and had a kennel outside under the big tree, but sometimes she sneaked him upstairs to her attic room and he slept on her bed, though not that night because he’d rolled in a dead hedgehog.

  Someone on horseback had come trotting down the road behind them, the mount’s hooves squelching in the muddy gravel, and she’d stepped aside to avoid getting splattered. But as the rider had passed she’d looked up just as he had glanced down and, when their eyes met, she felt a jolt of something so strong her knees had almost given way. He’d reined in, whirled his horse around and touched his hand to his shako in such a dashing manner. Vanity had made her slip the scarf from her head so her hair swung free. She knew of course from his uniform he was a soldier, but it was his beautiful face that snatched her breath away. Oh, he’d been so handsome, his red jacket making such a bright splash in the grey day, his blue eyes sparkling and his black horse tossing its head and snorting clouds of vapour.

  And that’s how it had started. He was on three weeks’ furlough from his regiment and they met every day for a week in the woods near her family’s farm, until her mother demanded to know where she was sneaking off to. So she’d told her and her mother and father both said she would marry a soldier over their dead bodies, even if he was a junior officer: she was from farming stock and on the land was where she belonged. When she crept out to meet Lucas the next day she had a bag with her and after she asked him to take her away, he did.

  They had two wonderful weeks together in London, then he’d had to leave. But he’d promised he would come back. He had, he’d promised. She remembered that very clearly, even if everything else concerning their time together in the city was turning into a bit of a muddle in her head. And she knew he’d find her, even here.

  She missed him horribly, but she knew she’d feel even worse if she didn’t have Harrie and Sarah and Friday. Harrie was kindest. Harrie was like her mother, on the rare occasions when her mother was in a calm, loving mood, but she’d come to like and appreciate Sarah and Friday very much, too, even though she annoyed them. Yesterday she’d overheard — because you overheard everything in here — Sarah telling Friday that she, Rachel, was spoilt, which was true, she supposed. But it wasn’t her fault she was the only daughter in a family of lads and her father doted on her — and she was doing her best. She’d won nearly seventeen pounds now playing cards and put just about all of it in the kitty. Pretty well the only person she hadn’t played was Liz Parker, and that was because she was terrified of her. She was tough, nasty and very unpleasant. Friday and Sarah were tough, too, but each was generous in her own way, though not quite as generous as Harrie, who would give you everything she had if the others didn’t stop her.

  Rachel had her back against the wall and her knees bent, using her skirt as a barrier so no one could see what she was doing behind it. She’d arranged for Rosina to buy her some plain white linen handkerchiefs and, as a surprise, was embroidering Harrie’s, Friday’s and Sarah’s names on them. She was quite good at needlework; better at that than shovelling cow shit anyway.

  ‘What are you hiding?’ Friday asked.

  Rachel eyed her. Her cheeks were ruddy and her eyes bright, which meant she’d got in some gin. Not always a good sign. Gin tended to make Friday a bit…unpredictable.

  She pulled her skirt up over her lap. ‘Nothing.’

  Friday shrugged. ‘I meant to ask you, what did you use?’

  ‘What did I use for what?’

  ‘To stop getting knapped.’

  Harrie said, ‘Is that not Rachel’s business?’

  Rachel thought that was nice of Harrie, but she didn’t mind Friday asking. ‘I didn’t do anything. I wanted a baby.’

  Friday shook her head in frank disbelief. ‘You’re bloody lucky you didn’t fall. Imagine that. In here!’

  ‘Watch out,’ Sarah warned.

  Liz Parker and a handful of her acolytes were approaching, doing a circuit of the courtyard. Liz’s hoop earrings glittered in the pale sunshine. It was rumoured she had Romany in her blood, but Friday told everyone who would listen her skin was dark because she’d never, ever had a wash.

  ‘On the rag, I see!’ Liz called gaily, pointing between Rachel’s legs.

  Rachel quickly dropped her knees and covered herself with her skirt.

  ‘Be sure to let me know when you’re off.’ Liz stuck out her tongue and waggled it. ‘Partial to a tender bit of corned beef, I am!’

  Shocked, Rachel felt her face flame and her skin crawl. What a completely revolting thought!

  Friday jumped up, fists clenched. ‘Fuck off with yourself, you dog-faced baggage.’

  Liz stepped forwards. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘You heard.’

  Liz launched herself at Friday, who swung her fist at Liz’s head. Liz ducked and only partially avoided the blow.

  Rachel scrambled to her feet but Sarah gripped her arm. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

  ‘To help.’

  ‘Don’t be so stupid. Look at the size of the cow. Get over there with Harrie.’

  It was true: the top of Rachel’s head didn’t reach Liz’s shoulder and Liz was possibly three times her weight.

  A shouting, cheering circle immediately formed around the sparring pair. The turnkeys came running.

  Liz hit Friday in the jaw; Friday staggered backwards, stood on the hem of her skirt and fell on her backside. Sarah dragged her to her feet and lashed out at Liz. In seconds more women joined in the mêlée, Friday managing to rip an earring from Liz Parker’s ear, leaving a trail of blood down the woman’s neck and shoulder.

  Rachel and Harrie watched from the safety of the ward doorway as more turnkeys arrived, males this time from the men’s prison, to break up the fight. In minutes it was over, the women herded back to their wards, Friday led off to a cell in solitary and Liz Parker, shouting and cursing, to another.

  Friday returned five days later, with a bruised face and complaining of a sore, loose tooth. ‘See?’ She opened her mouth and with a finger wobbled a molar in her upper jaw.

  Harrie’s stomach lurched: she hated things to do with teeth. Thank God her own had settled down.

  Sarah had a look. ‘It stinks, too. You should get it pulled.’

  Harrie gave a tiny, sour-tasting retch. ‘I’d avoid the hospital. Liz Parker’s in there. Her ear’s gone rotten.’

  Friday smirked. ‘Dearie me. You can do it, can’t you, Sarah?’

  ‘I suppose. Rachel’s got some news. Well, we all have.’

  ‘My trial’s next week,’ Rachel sa
id glumly. ‘And —’

  ‘And they’re saying there’s a transport leaving for New South Wales at the end of April,’ finished Sarah.

  ‘They’ve been saying a transport’s leaving since November,’ Friday said dubiously.

  Harrie, looking miserable, shook her head. ‘No, it’s true. Matron told us yesterday, after prayers.’

  Friday’s eyebrows went up. ‘Just women?’

  ‘Seems so.’ Sarah picked at a scab on her wrist. ‘She said about a hundred and ten of us from Newgate, which will clear the place out, won’t it? But nothing about any men prisoners.’

  ‘Unless we’re picking them up on the way,’ Friday said thoughtfully. ‘But if it’s just us it won’t be a big ship, so not a big crew.’

  ‘Working out how much money you can make on the side?’ Sarah said slyly.

  ‘It’s all right for you. I haven’t been able to work for the last four months.’

  ‘Neither have I. How many pockets do you think are worth picking in here?’

  Harrie waved an irritated hand. ‘Stop that, you two. Rachel needs to know if she should plead guilty or not guilty.’

  ‘Guilty,’ Sarah said.

  ‘Not guilty,’ Friday said.

  They looked at each other.

  ‘She did steal the ring,’ Sarah said.

  ‘But she didn’t pawn the sheets,’ Friday argued in a muffled voice as she prodded her tooth, ‘so she might as well plead not guilty to everything.’

  ‘But then she’ll get the jury and they’ll mark her a barracks hack for running off with a soldier and pass a guilty verdict anyway. And the judge will be a bigger prick than usual because of her pleading not guilty when the jury’s decided she is and give her a heavier sentence.’

  ‘But if she pleads not guilty the jury might decide she isn’t. Look at her; look at her face. She looks like a child. You can say you were seduced, can’t you?’

  Rachel nodded and massaged the back of her head. She was getting another headache. She wanted the trial to be over and she wanted Lucas. She still hadn’t heard anything from him and she was so sure she would have by now.

  Why hadn’t he come for her?

  Rachel was sentenced to seven years’ transportation. In the public gallery Flora Winter cried out, then fainted. Her beautiful, beautiful daughter, banished across the seas, ruined and branded forever as a common thief.

  Rachel had stopped listening to anything once she was certain Lucas wasn’t in the gallery. She’d seen her mother and father and two of her brothers, then turned to face the judge and let her mind wander off. She didn’t even hear Mrs Begbie deny ever having met Lucas Carew. When she was asked a question she answered, but afterwards couldn’t remember what she had said. Her father told her she’d pleaded guilty.

  The morning after Rachel’s trial, Sarah returned from the water closets in a fury and threw herself onto the ground outside the ward beside Friday.

  Momentarily distracted from examining the split ends of her hair, Friday stared at her. ‘What’s the matter with you?’

  ‘Some fucking cow’s stolen my money! Our money.’

  Harrie gasped and leant forwards to hear better. ‘What? Oh no! Where was it?’

  ‘In the bog, hanging down the side of the pit on a string.’

  Harrie made a disgusted face.

  ‘Oh for God’s sake, it was in a bloody jar!’ Sarah snapped. ‘And now it’s gone.’

  ‘Bloody hell, how much was left?’ Friday asked, aghast.

  ‘Twenty-three pounds of my money, and Rachel’s seventeen.’

  ‘But who could have taken it?’ Harrie said.

  ‘I don’t know, do I? But whoever it was must have stuck their entire bloody head down the crapper because the jar was completely out of sight.’

  Friday groaned and swept her hair back off her face. ‘Jesus Christ. Well, that’s us buggered, isn’t it? I’ve got a bit left but it won’t last forever. We’ll have to get it back. Ah shite, what does she want?’

  Liz Parker and half a dozen of her girls swaggered up. Liz’s earrings were uneven, the hoop in her left ear sitting much higher now that the lobe was missing.

  ‘Bugger off,’ Sarah said, in no mood for Liz Parker’s antics.

  ‘Mornin’, ladies,’ Liz said, smirking. ‘Enjoying the sunshine?’

  No one answered.

  ‘I am. I’ve had meself a lovely morning. A lucky morning, ya could say. That reminds me, I think this might belong to yous.’ She fumbled about in a pocket of her voluminous skirt and pulled out an empty jar. ‘Reckernise it?’

  Friday launched herself up off the ground, but Sarah grabbed her ankle before she could reach Liz. Friday landed on the hard dirt on her hands and knees, cursing.

  Liz cackled. ‘That’s right, best keep ya dogs tethered.’ And she and her crew laughed themselves silly as they walked off.

  Friday slapped angrily at Sarah’s hand. ‘What did you do that for?’

  Her voice shaking with suppressed rage, Sarah said, ‘What was the point? She won’t have it on her; it’ll be hidden somewhere.’

  ‘Somewhere safe like down the bog, you mean?’

  ‘It was safe. How was I to know she’d go crawling down it?’

  ‘She’s a bloody pig of a woman,’ Friday shot back. ‘She’s probably one of these types who has to admire their own turds and saw it then.’

  ‘Well, that’s not my fault. I can’t —’

  ‘Stop it!’ Harrie ordered. ‘Just stop it!’

  Friday and Sarah stared at her.

  ‘We need that money. Stop bickering, both of you, and work out how we’re going to get it back.’

  Harrie and Rachel were dismayed now that their departure from England, perhaps forever, had actually been confirmed. While there had only been idle talk and rumours of a transport setting sail for New South Wales, it had been easy for them both to pretend it might not happen, especially Rachel, who had demonstrated a tendency to ignore the things she didn’t care to know about.

  Newgate was a loathsome place, but in Harrie’s mind it was better to be incarcerated there where she could still receive visits from Ada and the children. She had been making a little money of her own for a few months now, artfully mending clothes for the women in the wards, and was no longer quite so dependent on Friday and Sarah. She had even managed to pass a little to her mother. But when she was transported to New South Wales, there would be no one to give Ada and the children anything. They would have to rely on outdoor relief — virtually nothing these days. It was making Harrie sick with worry, though she tried to hide it. She wasn’t the only one; everyone would be leaving friends and family — husbands, lovers, children, siblings, parents — and no one knew when they would meet again, if ever. A heavy pall of gloom and nostalgia was settling over the women and they’d not even left Newgate yet. What would it be like when they finally arrived in Australia?

  Rachel was anxious about the fact that the farther she went from London, the more difficult it would be for Lucas to find her. And she would miss her family, too, she had finally admitted. They came to see her when they could, visits that often resulted in tears and bitter, quickly regretted words on both sides of the railing, but all hope of a reprieve or a pardon had evaporated after Rachel’s guilty plea. Her mood was brittle and prickly and she flipped between the expectation that Lucas would gallop up Old Bailey Street and hammer on the great gates of Newgate Gaol at any moment and lying on the barracks bed weeping inconsolably because he hadn’t.

  Sarah, however, was not unhappy about leaving England. Matron had confirmed that the ship would transport female convicts only: men awaiting transportation would be moved from Newgate onto the prison hulk HMS Retribution at Woolwich. Which meant, Sarah knew, that Tom Ratcliffe — who had blithely exchanged the names of his associates for his own freedom but had himself been played the crooked cross by the watch — would be left behind to rot in a dripping, disease-ridden, rat-infested skeleton of a navy ship on the river Tha
mes, while she finally began a new life far away from him. The prospect of his fate pleased her immensely, even though she would be at the beck and call of a master or mistress for quite possibly every month of her seven-year sentence. She had heard, however, that if a convict girl kept her eyes and ears open, there were opportunities to be had in New South Wales — far more than in London. More perhaps than in all the British Isles. And they said the sun shone more days there than it rained, the rivers were clean and you could eat the fish from them, the air was sweet, the streets were wide and a convict’s money was as good as anyone else’s.

  And leaving Newgate had a more immediate advantage. She and Friday had not been able to get anywhere near Liz Parker’s ward, so clearly their money was hidden in there somewhere. They’d paid some girls a shilling to stage a fight in the yard to get Liz’s crew to rush outside and that hadn’t worked; they’d tried fighting their way in and been beaten black and blue for their efforts; and they’d bribed one of Liz’s crew to hand over the money and had themselves been double-crossed. The bloody money was more secure in Liz’s ward than it would be in the Tower of London! They’d likely have a better chance of getting it back on the transport, Sarah suspected, where there would be even less privacy and fewer hiding places. If not, she would personally rip it out of Parker’s filthy hands coin by coin.

  Friday, too, wasn’t overly perturbed about leaving England, as she had also heard stories about better times to be had across the seas, even while a convict girl was serving her sentence. She had no intention of curtailing her money-making activities when she arrived there and, in fact, would have to go back on the town in the very near future as she had eroded her savings quite severely. As Sarah had remarked, she could attend to that problem on the transport. Men were the same everywhere, whether walking foggy London streets, sailing a ship, or working beneath a southern sun — they would all hand over money for a fuck if they wanted one. And Friday wouldn’t be leaving much behind, really: only the filthy streets of London and a few graves she hardly ever visited any more. She would miss her old mates, but she’d always made friends easily. And she had three now who, day by day, were becoming closer almost than her own family had been.