The Grace Stories Page 4

  But Grace did not steal Dorothy’s money, and she tried her hardest to make sure nobody else did either.

  That day, Dorothy took Grace into the taphouse. It was warm and smoky and filled with sounds of laughing and shouting. Prisoners sat on benches at long tables and drank jugs of ale. Grace had never been into a taphouse before; she had only stood outside while she waited for Uncle Ord to finish drinking and buy her something to eat.

  Dorothy asked Grace to take them to an empty table. A female prisoner not much older than Grace brought them each a large bowl of steaming mutton and potato soup.

  ‘Eat,’ Dorothy said to Grace. ‘Eat when you can or this place will finish you off.’

  Grace gulped her soup. It was good and warming. Grace was eating more than when she had been a mudlark living with Uncle Ord – Dorothy made sure of that. And at night she had her straw bedding and her blanket and Dorothy beside her. She had never imagined that life would be easier for her in Newgate Prison than it had been living as a mudlark, but in some ways it was and Grace was grateful.

  When they had finished their soup, Dorothy pulled a pipe from under her dress. She packed the bowl with tobacco from a small leather pouch, then lit the pipe from the fire that burned in the hearth. She smiled at Grace through the smoke that curled past her face. Her cheeks were flushed pink from the warm soup.

  All around them prisoners fought and swore and drank and fell over and embraced then fought again. From the back of the alehouse someone played a tin penny whistle. Dorothy’s pipe glowed bright.

  ‘It’s good to be alive, isn’t it, Gracie? Isn’t it good to be alive?’

  Grace smiled.

  That night, Grace woke to the sound of Dorothy crying. She rolled over towards her and whispered, ‘Dorothy, what is it, ma’am? Are you cold?’ But Dorothy continued to cry. ‘Dorothy, did somebody steal something from you? Are you all right?’

  ‘Shut your traps, you two. I’m trying to get some shut-eye,’ a prisoner on the other side growled.

  ‘Please stop crying.’ Grace put her arm around her friend. ‘What is it? Is there something I can do?’

  ‘Oh, Grace . . .’ Dorothy sobbed.

  Grace had never heard Dorothy cry before; she was always strong, always ready with a joke. What has happened, Grace wondered, that would make Dorothy cry?

  At last Dorothy’s crying subsided. She sniffed back her tears and soon she was quiet.

  ‘Ma’am, are you all right?’

  But Dorothy didn’t answer. Instead she began to sing a lullaby, stroking her fingers gently across Grace’s hair:

  Sleep bonnie bairnies

  Behind the castle

  By, by, by, by.

  Thou shall have a golden apple

  By, by, by, by.

  As Grace listened and felt Dorothy’s soft touch she was reminded of a place and time too long ago to remember properly. All Grace knew about that long-ago time and place was that it was warm and safe. Just as she was drifting into sleep, Grace wondered if Dorothy had ever been a mother. And if she had, where were her little babies now?

  ONE morning the guard who unlocked the cell told Grace that today was the day of her trial. Her stomach knotted in fear. She had been afraid of this day all along.

  ‘I’ll be back for you shortly,’ the guard told her. ‘Then it’s off to the Old Bailey.’

  ‘Oh, Grace . . .’ Dorothy sighed. ‘I knew this day would come, but what will I do without you?’ Her clouded eyes filled with tears again.

  Grace hadn’t expected Dorothy to cry. No one has ever cried over me before, she thought. It made her sad to see Dorothy’s tears. It made her want to cry too. ‘I’m sorry, Dorothy,’ she said.

  Dorothy took Grace’s hand and squeezed it hard. ‘Don’t you be sorry, Grace, child – not even for a minute. You have always helped me and never hurt me or taken anything from me. You’ve kept me out of trouble, and made sure we both got our dinner. I just don’t know what I’m going to do without you is all.’ She hugged Grace, and for an instant it made Grace feel warmer than any blanket.

  ‘Move yourself! Time to go.’ The guard had returned for her.

  Grace was pulled away from Dorothy as the guard locked chains around her wrists and ankles and led her out of the cell.

  ‘Goodbye,’ she said. ‘Thank you for helping me.’

  ‘Good luck, Grace. You’re a good girl.’

  A good girl? Grace had never been called ‘a good girl’ before. Her uncle had called her all sorts of things, as had the gangs of mudlark boys and the cab drivers and the gentlemen on Fleet Street whose horses she had offered to hold – good for nothing, dirty mumper, ragamuffin, chavy, beggar, but never a good girl. Grace liked how those new words made her feel – not quite so small and ragged and dirty.

  Grace stood alone in the docks at the Old Bailey. People stared down at her from all sides. They had come for her trial, to see her receive her sentence. The judge sat behind a long desk and above his head, on the wall, hung a long sword and a crown.

  Grace knew her life was over. Her heart hammered. Usually, it helped to think of Pegasus, but not this time. The people sitting on the benches laughed and jeered and talked loudly to each other. Grace felt very scared and alone.

  The judge banged his gavel on the sounding block.

  ‘Order! Order in the court!’ The courtroom grew quiet. The judge addressed Grace. ‘You have been charged with the theft of three apples and . . .’ He looked up at Grace, surprised. ‘A horse.’ He shook his head. ‘A horse?’ He checked the papers in front of him, then looked at Grace again. ‘What do you say to this charge?’

  ‘Guilty,’ Grace mumbled, her eyes on the ground.

  ‘Raise your head and answer the charge.’

  ‘Guilty, sir,’ Grace repeated.

  There was a long pause before the judge spoke again. ‘How old are you, child?’

  ‘Near eleven, sir.’

  ‘Do you have a mother or a father?’

  ‘I am an orphan, sir.’

  Again the judge paused, as if he were thinking. ‘Why did you take the horse?’

  The court was very quiet now. Grace took a deep breath.

  ‘I wanted to give him something to eat, sir. He was very . . . he was very hungry. I was going to feed him the apples. I only wanted him to have something to eat. I am – I am very sorry, sir . . .’

  She couldn’t say any more because she started to cry. It surprised her. She hadn’t cried when Joe Bean and the gang tried to take her hammer, not when her uncle threw the kettle at her feet, not when she was dragged away from Pegasus and not when she was taken to Newgate with an iron collar around her neck. Now tears ran down her cheeks. How did I think I was going to feed Pegasus those apples? she wondered. How did I think I wouldn’t be caught? Grace couldn’t stop her crying. The court was silent.

  ‘That’s enough, child.’ The judge coughed and cleared his throat.

  Grace looked up at him, expecting him to be angry, the way Uncle Ord was angry when she talked to him. But instead she saw sadness in his face.

  ‘I sentence you to seven years penal servitude and transportation to the colonies.’

  Everyone in the courtroom let out their breath together in one long sigh. What does that mean? Grace thought. Is that his way of telling me how I’ll be hanged?

  The court runner took Grace down from the dock and put her back in her chains. Then he led her out into the high-walled yard where prisoners, both men and women, waited.

  She wondered how much longer she had left. She had seen the gallows outside Newgate, just opposite. They stood high on the scaffold so that everybody could see when you dropped from the platform. Grace felt sick and her hands shook uncontrollably.

  Soon two court runners led all of the women out of the yard and into carts that waited at the front of the Old Bailey. Grace didn’t know why she needed to be put into the cart. They could just as easily walk.

  She wondered if she was going somewhere to wait – per
haps the gallows were too busy that day. She felt her stomach lurch with fear. But then she heard the sound of the cart – horses’ hooves clacking against the stones, and it calmed her. Grace hoped that wherever she was going after she was hanged there would be horses.

  ‘EVERYBODY out!’

  The cart stopped with a jolt and the guards let down the steps at the back. Grace stared in amazement as she clambered out. They were at a port on the River Thames.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she whispered to the old woman in front of her. ‘Why aren’t we at the gallows?’

  ‘Didn’t you listen to the judge, girly? London’s getting rid of its vermin, sending us to the end of the world.’

  ‘To the end of the world?’ Grace was confused.

  ‘Where wild animals walk the streets,’ another of the prisoners said. ‘And sometimes they stop and talk to you.’

  ‘And trees grow upside down,’ said the old woman with a toothless laugh. ‘And you eat snakes for breakfast with your marmalade.’

  The guard at the front of the line gripped his rifle. ‘You keep your mouths shut or you’ll be transported straight to the bottom of the ocean.’

  ‘Maybe we’d be better off there than the end of the world,’ said a skinny girl down the line.

  ‘At least we’d be left in peace by you lot,’ said the old woman in front of Grace.

  ‘I said mouths shut!’ The guard shouted, raising his rifle high against his chest.

  Everyone fell quiet. Grace recalled something Dorothy had said about a land in the south. What was it? Dorothy had said her poor eyes meant she couldn’t be transported.

  Surely stealing a horse was such a bad crime that no punishment short of death would be severe enough? But here I am being transported! thought Grace. She remembered the judge’s sad eyes and suddenly she understood that he had felt sorry for her.

  ‘I’m not going to be hanged!’ Grace said aloud.

  The woman in front turned to her and laughed. ‘That’s right, chavy. You’re going to Sydney Cove instead and that’s how you’re getting there.’ She gestured toward a huge ship in the harbour, sails flying in the wind.

  ‘We’re really getting on that?’ Grace asked. She had never been on a ship before, though she had worked around them all her life. She could hardly believe what was happening to her. ‘Are we really leaving London?’

  It was so much to take in, she hardly knew how to feel or think. Was Sydney Cove really at the end of the world? I’ve never been outside of London, she thought. What’s the world outside London like? I didn’t even know there was one . . .

  The guards unlocked the prisoners’ chains and directed them into a shed where they were told to undress to their petticoats and drawers, and wash themselves from barrels of water. A man wearing a red navy coat appeared and, one by one, they walked in front of him to be inspected.

  The man, who Grace decided must be a doctor, checked their tongues and looked at the sores and cuts and bruises on their legs. One woman was coughing and looked pale. When the doctor inspected her, he looked worried and spoke to one of the guards. Grace saw their faces tighten in disagreement. The doctor was saying that the woman was too sick to get on the ship but the guard disagreed.

  When the inspection was complete, the women were each given a plain blue dress and a brown petticoat along with a pair of stockings and shoes. After they had dressed they were taken down to the water where a rowboat was waiting for them. The guard must have won the argument because the coughing woman was taken with them.

  Grace climbed onto the boat with the others and two guards rowed them out across the Thames toward the ship.

  Grace looked over the side of the rowboat; she was out deeper than she had ever been. In the dusk light, the water was black. She understood now why the guards on shore had removed their chains. There was nowhere to go; if you put up a fight and were knocked into the water you would drown. Grace gripped the sides of the wooden boat so hard her knuckles turned white.

  As they came closer to the ship, one of the prisoners said, ‘Ladies, did you read the name of your new home? In-dis-pens-able.’

  The woman sounded clever to Grace, as though she had been taught to read in a school.

  ‘Anyone know what that means, ladies? Indispensable? I’ll tell you. It means important – necessary. They think more of their boats than they do of us! We, ladies, are what is known as dispensable. Nobody gives two hoots what happens to us.’ She stood and did a fine curtsey, rocking the small boat.

  The other prisoners laughed.

  ‘That’s enough from you lot or you’ll find out just how dispensable you are.’ The guard raised his long rifle and the woman sat down. The prisoners were quiet as the small boat was rowed closer to the ship.

  As the oars dipped into the water, Grace thought about the name of the ship – Indispensable. Important and necessary – that’s what the woman had said. That’s not me, she thought. Nobody will even notice I’m gone. Uncle Ord will find another way to get money for his whiskey. And the river won’t miss me – every day there’s a new mudlark, coming to scavenge for a living.

  Will Pegasus miss me? Or has the cab driver already taken him to the slaughterhouse? Maybe Pegasus is dispensable too . . . Thinking about Pegasus this way made Grace feel sad.

  Will Dorothy miss me? she wondered. Or has she already found someone else to be her eyes? Grace didn’t want to think about that.

  The boat knocked up against the side of the ship. Are only big things like ships, and buildings, and judges behind long desks, and high-walled prisons indispensable? she wondered.

  Grace’s heart raced as she looked up at the Indispensable’s steep sides. Soon she would be inside those high ship walls about to set sail for a faraway place. She didn’t mind leaving England – it hadn’t given her much. But Grace felt sad that she would never see her beloved Pegasus again. That she was leaving all the fine horses of London. Perhaps she would never see another horse again. The thought of it was too much for Grace to bear. She wasn’t sure what there would be to live for if there were no horses.

  AGUARD on the ship let down a rope ladder and the women at the front were told to climb up one by one. When it came to Grace’s turn, her hands shook as she gripped the rungs. She knew that if she fell from the ladder she would drop into the deep water below, and nobody would save her.

  Grace began to climb, holding onto the rope as tightly as she could. Rung by rung, she made it all the way to the top. A guard wearing a long red coat pulled her over the side of the ship and locked chains around her ankles and wrists. Another guard gave her a small wooden bowl and spoon, and rolled up bedding.

  ‘Don’t lose these, you hear,’ he said. ‘They’re the only ones you’ll be getting.’

  The ship tilted back and forth beneath her, as Grace was directed by two more guards towards the hatch in its centre.

  Just before she went down into the small hole, Grace turned and took one last look back at London. It spread as far along the river as she could see, a jagged skyline of rooftops, every building a different size and shape, all lit with tiny lights blinking in the smoky darkness. St Paul’s Cathedral stood above the rest; its tall spire piercing the low winter clouds. Somewhere out there is Dorothy and Uncle Ord and Pegasus, Grace thought. I’ll never see them again . . . A rough hand pressed her through the hatch into the ship’s hull and London was gone from her sight forever.

  In the darkness, Grace sensed that the space was crowded with people. She heard muffled voices and laughter, then somebody crying. She smelled sweat and slops.

  The other women who had come in with her were busy choosing where they were going to sleep. Grace didn’t know where to go; she was smaller than the others and they were pushing her forward along the narrow aisle between the two rows of sleeping berths.

  Somebody jumped down in front of her from one of the top bunks. ‘I’ve got a spot for you,’ she whispered to Grace. Whoever it was took the bedding and utensils from Grace’s h
ands, and before waiting for an answer, pulled her towards the berth. ‘Climb up!’

  Grace climbed to the top berth, her chains clanking against each other.

  ‘I sleep here against the wall, and you can sleep there, beside me.’

  As Grace’s eyes became used to the darkness, she saw, sitting next to her, a girl about her own age.

  ‘My name is Hannah,’ the girl said, unrolling Grace’s bedding beside her own. ‘What’s yours?’

  Grace felt uncertain. She wondered what Hannah wanted from her. Everyone wanted something – her uncle, other mudlarks, everyone on the streets of London.

  Hannah gave her a gentle push on her shoulder. ‘Don’t be shy. What’s your name?’

  Hannah’s wide, warm smile melted something in Grace. She couldn’t help but answer.

  ‘Grace,’ she said quietly.

  Hannah smiled again. ‘Grace. That’s nice. I like that very much. It’s the kind of name a princess might have. Princess Grace, we’re the youngest on the ship. I’ve been here a week already. What did you do to get transported?’ Hannah’s words flowed out of her as if she was used to talking.

  ‘I – I stole – I tried to steal – I . . .’

  ‘What? Can’t have been that bad, they didn’t hang you.’ Hannah nudged Grace. ‘What did you do?’

  Grace took a deep breath. ‘I tried to – to – steal a horse.’

  ‘A horse? A whole horse? Really?’ Hannah asked the question as if she thought it was an exciting thing that Grace had tried to do and not a bad thing. It made Grace want to explain.

  ‘His name was Pegasus and we were going to sell flowers from a wagon at the Clare Street Markets. He was very fast and he tried hard to carry me away. Pegasus was really my horse – a gypsy lady told me. That’s what nobody knows.’

  Grace hadn’t spoken to anyone about Pegasus and now the words were out Grace worried that Hannah would think she was bad after all and wouldn’t want to share her sleeping berth with her.

  Hannah sighed and leaned her face on her hands. ‘I wish you’d got away,’ she said. ‘You and Pegasus could’ve sold more flowers than anyone. You could’ve got an acrobat to do a show on the street and a singer to let everybody know about the flowers in a song. Everyone would have come for Princess Grace’s flowers and you would’ve had so many extra you could’ve put them in your hair.’