The Grace Stories Read online

  ‘That’s right, Nance. I plan to find me a nice husband,’ Sally replied. ‘To buy me a fine crimson dress with filigree lace around the hem.’

  ‘You’ve got to be assigned as a servant first, and you’d better hope you go to work for a kind master or you’ll be wishing you were back here,’ said Anne May.

  ‘Never! I’d rather die than spend more time on this ship,’ Sally answered.

  ‘But if you don’t get assigned you get sent to prison – did you know that?’ said Anne May. ‘Only the worst of the convicts get put in prison here, the ones who’ve misbehaved – that’s you, Sally, my dear, with your hair all short like a man’s. Wouldn’t you look a sight in a fine crimson dress with hair like a gentleman? The prisons take the very old, too, who nobody wants no more. Or the ones with children . . .’ She shot a look at Liza, who pretended not to notice.

  ‘Why did they drag us all the way here just to throw us in another dirty prison?’ Sally kicked at the side of the ship.

  Grace remembered the squalor and violence of Newgate Prison with dread. But if we are put in prison at least we will be together, she thought.

  ‘Grace, what is it? What’s wrong?’ Hannah whispered, when she saw her friend’s anxious face. ‘Are you scared of going back to prison?’

  Grace felt as if something was stuck in her throat. She took a deep breath. ‘No, not prison, Han. I’m afraid that when we get to the land, we’ll be separated.’

  Hannah took Grace’s hand and looked into her eyes. ‘Grace, we’re sisters. Sisters can always find each other no matter what. You’ll see.’

  Grace smiled. But when she turned back to listen to the women, the fear was still there, trapped in her stomach.

  Finally, after six days locked in the hold, the hatch was thrown open and the guards called down. ‘Everybody out!’

  Grace followed the other women climbing slowly up through the hatch. She gasped as the light burned her eyes, and squeezed them tightly shut. She remembered what Jenny Tankard and the other women had told her back in London about wild animals walking the streets and trees that grew upside down. She didn’t know if that was true – but she couldn’t be sure.

  ‘Grace, open your eyes. You must look!’ Hannah sounded excited. ‘I never knew there could be such a blue sky. Nor such a sun! Is it the same sun as in England, Mama?’

  ‘The same sun,’ answered Liza. ‘Only there are no dark clouds full of rain to cover it.’

  Grace barely heard her. She had opened her eyes and looked across the narrow stretch of water at the new land, and she had seen something wonderful . . .

  HORSES! In the distance Grace saw horses. Horses pulling carts, horses tethered to railings, horses carrying riders along dusty roads. Am I dreaming? she asked herself.

  Hannah smiled at her. ‘Perhaps it will not be so bad for you here, Grace.’ Grace couldn’t speak. More than anything she wanted to be off the ship and on land, closer to the animals she had missed for so long.

  As they stood on the deck beneath the cloudless sky, the guards snapped chains back around the women’s wrists and ankles and the iron collars around their necks.

  ‘I’d almost forgotten about these,’ Grace whispered to Hannah. The heavy collar bit into the skin around Grace’s neck and the irons around her wrists and ankles left red marks.

  ‘I could never forget,’ Hannah replied. ‘But one day soon we’ll never have to wear them again.’

  Three uniformed men came on board the ship and inspected the women, the same way Mr Evans had back in England. They lifted Grace’s arms and looked at the skin underneath them. One of them asked her to open her mouth and put out her tongue, and the man stared down her throat. Then he looked into her eyes and asked her to take several deep breaths. When the men seemed satisfied that she was well, she was ordered to climb down a rope ladder with the other women to longboats that waited beside the ship.

  Grace stuck close to Hannah and was put into a longboat beside her. Each boat was guarded by a marine and at the front sat a male convict, oars in his hands, waiting to row the boat to shore. The convict on Grace’s boat had a long jagged scar across his cheek. The marine watched him as if he might escape at any minute.

  Grace looked at the new land she was approaching. Sydney Cove was edged with grey-green trees. They were different to the trees in England. Their silver-green leaves were long and narrow and their trunks were the colour of smoke, but they were definitely the right way up. Flocks of strange white birds flew through the sky, their heads crowned in tufts of yellow.

  As they rowed closer to land, Grace saw white cottages with red roofs lining dusty criss-crossing roads and men working everywhere. She thought that they must be prisoners, since they were all wearing the same loose pants and shirt and small caps on their heads, all printed with black arrows. Some of them were cutting down trees, some carrying heavy loads on their backs, some building fences, others working on buildings and roads. Grace looked out for the giant rats Anne May had told them about, but she didn’t see any.

  ‘It really is the other end of the world,’ Hannah whispered.

  There were guards here, too, just as on the boat, guns slung across their sides, watching over the convicts.

  Grace whispered to her friend. ‘I don’t see many women here, Hannah, and no girls.’

  When the longboat reached the shore, the women clambered out, and were told to wait in a group. The water came as high as Grace’s knees, wetting her skirt as she waded to the sandy shore.

  Two guards began to separate the women. Grace tried to stay as close as possible to Liza and Hannah and was relieved when she was chosen to be in their group, along with Sally and three other prisoners who she did not know so well.

  One of the guards turned to them and said, ‘You lucky lot are off to the Factory in Parramatta.’ When Hannah saw that Sally was going with them Grace thought she looked upset. ‘Will we ever be free of her?’ Hannah whispered. Grace just shook her head.

  They were taken back down to the water’s edge and told to climb into another, smaller boat. Grace looked again at the horses – working, resting, grazing. They seemed taller and stronger and shinier than in England. She hoped there would be horses in Parramatta.

  As the boat moved through the harbour and up the river, Grace saw groups of convicts carrying heavy logs down to the river. She flinched as she saw a guard cracking his whip over one man who had fallen down. Is that how we’ll be treated at the Factory? she thought, frightened.

  Soon the boat was away from the activity and noise of Sydney Cove and on both sides of the wide river Grace could see thick forest. The only sounds were the call of birds, the wind in the trees and the slip of the oars into the water.

  The river here is different to the Thames, Grace noticed. It doesn’t stink of sewer and rubbish. If I were to try mudlarking here, I don’t think I’d find a single thing – it’s too clean.

  It made Grace feel calm to look over at the forest but at the same time it felt strange. Back in London, all the trees had been cut down long before to make room for houses and churches and factories and roads. Where were the people and the houses here? Where were the costermongers and the children? Where were the chimneys billowing smoke? And most importantly, where were the horses?

  Hannah seemed to sense Grace’s fear. ‘You and I could run away and make a house in that forest, Grace, and we would tether our two horses out front. We would plant watermelon trees and pineapples and eat nothing but pink and yellow fruit all day.’

  ‘Can I run away with you, girls?’ Liza smiled at them. ‘I wouldn’t mind a nice bit of watermelon myself.’

  ‘I’d rather a glass of whiskey and a handsome gentleman to go with it – don’t suppose you ladies will be serving that up in your palace?’ Sally spat over the side of the boat.

  But Grace smiled back at Hannah. For now, she was safe. She leaned against Liza and it wasn’t long before she fell asleep. When she awoke her face felt hot. The convict rowing the boat
dripped with sweat. The guard was shouting at him. ‘Move yourself, you lazy beggar!’

  ‘Grace, your face has turned as pink as your beloved watermelon!’ Hannah laughed.

  Grace put her hand to her cheek. It felt very hot. ‘Yours too, Hannah.’ She looked around. ‘And yours, Sally!’

  Sally looked up. ‘Even the blasted sun is against you here,’ she said. ‘This whole country is a prison.’ She swatted at the flies that tried to sit on her nose.

  ‘At least we can breathe the air,’ said Liza. ‘And soon we’ll be assigned and find a home and a husband.’

  ‘Bleedin’ fresh air makes my stomach turn,’ Sally said, cursing. ‘I wish I was back in England.’

  ‘All right, that’s enough from you, girl. They flog women here for misbehaving,’ the guard said.

  Towards the end of the day, the light changed. It grows darker, but not the way it does in London, Grace thought – there’s a golden light mixed with the grey as if the sun is so strong that it never quite disappears. Little insects that seemed to be made of tiny black sticks bit at her skin as frogs sang to each other across the river.

  Eventually, the convict pulled the boat alongside a small wooden pier and they climbed out. They shuffled up a dusty path. Grace wished she could take off her heavy chains so walking would be easier.

  The path led to a two-storey sandstone building with barred windows. Men in convict clothing wearing chains were digging at the earth and breaking rocks. They stopped and stared at the group of women as they came close – some of them whistled and called out things Grace didn’t understand. Grace gripped Hannah’s hand and looked at the ground. All the women were silent and frightened. For once Hannah had no jokes or stories to make Grace smile.

  But Liza spoke up, her voice clear and bold. ‘Ain’t you lot ever seen fine ladies before?’ she called out to the men. ‘Your eyes look fit to drop right out of your heads.’ And the women’s noisy laughter seemed to shrink the building before Grace’s eyes.

  EVERYTHING has changed again, Grace thought. It all keeps changing and I never know what’s coming next.

  The women were led into the building and up a set of stairs. Grace heard the clatter of machines. She found herself in a long room filled with women at work. Some of them were pulling apart piles of wool while others stood at machines that seemed to be made up of drums.

  ‘They’re carding wool,’ Liza explained. ‘Separating the strands so that it can be spun.’

  Grace saw women working at spinning wheels. She breathed in the rich, sweet air. ‘What’s that smell?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s wool, fresh from the sheep, Grace. It seems we are here to spin.’ Liza looked around at the other women, all wearing the same brown dresses, hard at work. ‘It could be worse, girls. We could be breaking rocks like those gentlemen we saw on the way in. Or picking oakum until our hands turn black with tar.’

  The constable guarding the women removed their chains and handed out uniforms.

  ‘Swapping one ugly dress for another,’ Sally said, bitterly. Grace noticed that Sally’s fist was closed tight around something as she changed her dress. She still has her gloves, she thought, relieved.

  The women had to work long hours every day except for Sunday. Hannah and Grace were given the simplest task – picking the wool. They spent hours pulling the fibres away from one another so that any bits of grass or dirt or burs would fall away, leaving the wool ready for carding. Liza and Sally worked with the other women on the carding machines – turning them with a handle and pulling all the strands that were the same length together so that the wool would be ready for spinning.

  At night, the women slept on the piles of wool in the same long room they had been working in all day. Grace didn’t mind – she liked to curl deep into the wool and imagine it was the smooth back of a horse and it was carrying her and Hannah away to a home surrounded by watermelons in the forest.

  However, at night the Factory Above the Gaol became a much more dangerous place. Grace had to block her ears so that she would not hear the fighting and cursing of the other women, and of the men locked below. Some of the workers lived outside the gaol and sometimes they brought rum into the Factory and sold it to the other workers. Grace noticed that Sally was starting to join in the drinking. Grace knew all about the slurred speech and rough behaviour that came with drinking so much – she had seen her Uncle Ord drunk too many times to forget. The more Sally drank, the more time she spent on her knees at the place in the floor where the crack between the boards was the widest – calling out and talking to the men below.

  Grace wished she could make Sally take better care of herself, but when Sally was drunk she didn’t care for anything.

  One night, Grace woke up to the sound of Sally’s angry voice.

  ‘I had a bottle of rum under here! Who took it?’ she called out, lifting up an armful of wool and tossing it across the floor. ‘Who took it? Own up or I’ll find out and slit your throat!’

  By the dim light coming from the last embers in the hearth, Grace saw Sally standing by the dying fire with her hands on her hips, hair sticking up from her head in uneven bunches, the bodice of her torn dress half-open, revealing her pale, skinny chest. Where were her precious gloves? Grace was worried.

  ‘Shut your gob and go to sleep, will you, Sally? You’re as drunk as a sailor!’ somebody called from the other side of the room. Grace heard male voices shouting up to them and laughing from the gaol below.

  By now, Hannah and Liza were awake, too. Grace felt Hannah move closer to her.

  ‘Don’t listen, girls,’ whispered Liza. ‘It’s only Sally up to her usual tricks. It’s a shame there’s no coalhole here to put her in until she calms down.’

  ‘Who took my rum? Which one of you thieving bats took it?’ Sally slurred and shouted.

  Grace heard a loud smash and sat up with a start. Everyone was awake now.

  For once I wish there were more guards at the Factory, Grace thought. At night there was only the constable and he slept in a house across the way.

  Grace saw that Sally had pushed over a spinning wheel, so that the back half had landed in the dying embers of the fire. The room lit up brightly as the legs caught alight and flared. ‘Sally, no!’ somebody screamed. Grace smelled smoke.

  In front of the hearth, Sally was grabbing at piles of wool and throwing armfuls around the room as she searched for her missing bottle. Some of the wool landed in the hearth, and the flames leapt higher. ‘I bleedin’ hate it here! I hate it. I hate you all!’ Sally cursed. She kicked at the spinning wheel, breaking off one of the legs. She held its burning end out before her like a weapon, the fire casting shadows against the walls.

  Grace’s skin prickled with fear; in the half light, with her torn dress and burning stick, Sally looked like a demon. Hannah trembled beside Grace. ‘Mama, Mama, Sally has gone mad this time!’

  Liza dragged the girls to the other end of the room. ‘Stay here,’ she said, ‘where you’ll be safe.’ Liza rushed back to Sally. ‘Come on, dear. Nobody’s taken anything – you just need a good sleep,’ she said, trying to calm her.

  Another woman tried to help. ‘We’ll find the bottle in the morning, love.’

  Hannah cried out as Sally waved the burning stick in her mother’s direction.

  ‘Don’t come any closer, you witches! I know you don’t care about me! Give me back my drink!’

  The whole spinning wheel was burning and flames were leaping up. Now Grace was really panicking. What if the hem of Sally’s dress caught fire? The material was so thin and worn, it would burn in an instant. Sally backed closer and closer to the hearth. ‘Which one of you witches has my drink? I’ll burn this place down if you don’t give it back!’

  Grace watched, horrified. ‘Hannah! Sally is going to catch fire!’

  ‘There’s nothing we can do . . .’ Hannah gripped her friend’s hand. ‘You’ll only get hurt yourself, Grace!’

  Even Liza stepped back, and none of the
other women moved. They stood against the walls as if the flames had cast a spell over them.

  I can’t stand back and let her burn! thought Grace. She pulled away from Hannah and ran into the centre of the room.

  ‘No, Grace!’ cried Hannah, trying to grab her arm. ‘You can’t help her! Nobody can!’

  But I’m the only one that knows her secret, Grace thought. I have to find her gloves.

  She got down on her hands and knees and searched desperately through the piles of wool where Sally slept. Where are they? How will I find them in this mess? She searched under the carding machines where Sally worked, but she found nothing.

  ‘This place is hell and you witches can burn alongside me!’ Sally screamed.

  Grace rushed to the place where Sally talked to the men in the gaol below. There, at last, between the boards, she found what she was looking for – a pair of ragged, dirty lace gloves. Grace picked them up, her heart racing. Over by the fire, Sally took a step backwards, not seeming to notice or care about the fire licking at her skirt.

  ‘Sally!’ Grace called out, holding the gloves towards the older girl and walking towards her. ‘Look, Sally!’

  Sally swung round waving the burning stick, and Grace jumped back as it came close to her face. Grace felt its heat against her hair. She heard Liza calling her name.

  ‘Your gloves, Sally! From your father!’

  When Sally saw the gloves in Grace’s hand, her face seemed to fold. The burning stick dropped from her hands and she stood motionless. It was as if the room was holding its breath. Any second Sally would be on fire. Grace’s body shook. Her face was hot from the flames and the fear. As she reached out for Sally’s fingers and closed them around the gloves, Sally’s skirt caught alight. Flames raced along the hem, licking up towards her bodice. But she stood where she was, lifting the gloves to her cheeks, and began to cry. ‘Oh, Father, Father, forgive me.’

  As if Sally’s tears had broken the spell, everyone sprang into action. Liza and two of the other convicts threw a cask of water over the fire. Sally seemed to have lost all her strength – she didn’t struggle as three other women smothered her smoldering hem with damp wool. There’s nothing dangerous about her, Grace thought. She’s just lost and alone with nobody to protect her.