Remember Me

LESLEY PEARSE

Remember Me

MICHAEL JOSEPH
an imprint of
PENGUIN BOOKS

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thriteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fiftteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Postscript

Afterthoughts

Acknowledgements

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Georgia
Tara
Charity
Ellie
Camellia
Rosie
Charlie
Never Look Back
Trust Me
Father Unknown
Till We Meet Again

To John Roberts, my very own Boswell.
Mere words cannot fully convey my gratitude to you.

Chapter one

1786

Mary gripped the rail of the dock tightly as the judge came back into the courtroom. The windows were small and dirty, letting in only a meagre light, but there was no mistaking the black cap over his yellowish wig, or the expectant hush from the gallery.

‘Mary Broad. You will be taken from this place, back to whence you came, and there you will be hanged by the neck until dead,’ he intoned, not even looking directly at her. ‘May God have mercy on your soul.’

Mary’s stomach lurched and her legs buckled under her. She knew only too well that hanging was the usual punishment for highway robbery, but a small part of her had clung to the belief that the judge would be merciful because she was such a young woman. She should have known better.

It was 20 March 1786, and Mary Broad was just a few weeks short of twenty. She was an average girl in every way, neither particularly tall nor short, not outstandingly pretty but not plain either. The only thing which set her apart from the other people on trial that day in the Lenten
Assizes was her country girl appearance. She had a clear complexion, which even after weeks of incarceration in Exeter Castle still had a faint glow. Her dark curly hair was tied neatly back with a ribbon and her grey worsted dress, though soiled from the gaol, was a plain, serviceable one.

A babble of noise broke out all around her, for the courtroom in Exeter was packed to capacity. Some of those present were friends and relatives of other prisoners to be tried that day, but the majority were mere spectators.

Yet the noise was not one of sympathy, nor outrage at such a severe sentence. Mary hadn’t one friend in the whole room. A sea of grimy faces turned towards her, eyes alight with malicious glee, the slight movement wafting up the smell of their unwashed bodies to her nostrils. They wanted a reaction from her, be it tears, anger or a plea for mercy.

She wanted to cry out, to plead for her life, but the defiant streak in her which had led her to rob someone in the first place urged her to hold fast to her dignity if nothing else.

A guard’s hand clamped down on her shoulder. It was too late now for anything but prayers.

Mary was barely aware of the ride on the cart back to Exeter Castle, the gaol she’d been held in since she was brought up from Plymouth following her arrest. She hardly noticed the rasp of the iron shackles on her ankles which connected to another heavy band around her waist, her seven fellow prisoners in the cart, or the jeering from the crowds in the streets. All she could think of was that
the next time she saw the sky above her would be the day when she was taken to the gallows.

She lifted her face up to the weak afternoon sun. This morning, as she was brought out to go to the Assizes, the spring sunshine had almost blinded her after the darkness of the cells. She had looked about her eagerly, seen new leaves unfurling on the trees, heard pigeons cooing in a mating display, and foolishly taken all that as a good omen.

How wrong she was. She would never see her beloved Cornwall again. Never see her parents or sister Dolly either. All she could hope for was that they would never find out what she’d done. It was better that they should think she’d abandoned them for a new life in Plymouth, or even London, than endure the disgrace of hearing her life had been ended by a hangman’s noose.

The sound of sobbing made Mary look at the woman sitting on her left. Her age was impossible to ascertain for her face was ravaged by pock-marks and she clutched a tattered brown cloak around her head to try to conceal it.

‘Crying won’t do no good,’ Mary said, assuming the woman was to hang too. ‘At least we know now what’s coming to us.’

‘I didn’t steal anything,’ the woman gasped out. ‘I swear I didn’t. It was someone else and they got away and left me to be blamed.’

Mary had heard that same story over and over again from other prisoners since her arrest in January. She had believed most of them at first, but she was harder now.

‘Did you tell them that today?’ she asked.

The woman nodded, her tears flowing even faster. ‘But they said they had a witness to it.’

Mary had no heart to ask for the full story. She wanted to fill her lungs with clean air, fill her mind with the sights and sounds of the bustling town of Exeter, so that when she got back to the filthy, dark cell she would have some memories to draw on. Hearing this woman’s tale of woe would only bring her down even further. Yet her natural sympathy wouldn’t let her ignore the poor creature.

‘Are you to be hanged too?’ she asked.

The woman’s head jerked round to look at Mary, surprise registering on her ravaged face. ‘No. It was only a mutton pie they said I took.’

‘Then you’re luckier than me,’ Mary sighed.

Once back in the Castle, thrust into a cell with around twenty other prisoners of both sexes, Mary silently found herself a space against the wall, sat down, adjusted the chains from her shackles so she could pull up her knees, wrapped her cloak around her tightly and leaned back to take stock of her situation.

It was a different cell to the one she’d been taken from this morning, better in as much as fresh air was coming in through a very high grille on the wall, the straw on the floor looked marginally cleaner, and the buckets weren’t yet overflowing. But it still stank, with an all-pervading stench of dirt, body fluids, vomit, mould and human suffering which she inhaled with every breath.

There was an ominous hush. No one was talking loudly,
swearing or screaming abuse at their gaolers, as they had in the previous cell. In fact they were all sitting much as she was, submerged in thought or despair. Mary guessed that meant they were all sentenced to death, and as stunned by it as she was.

She couldn’t see Catherine Fryer or Mary Haydon, the girls she’d been caught with, although they’d all been taken together to the Assizes that morning. She had no idea whether they were still back there waiting to be tried, or if they’d escaped with a lighter punishment than her.

Whatever the reason, she was glad they weren’t there. She didn’t want to remember that but for them she would never have considered robbing anyone.

It was too gloomy to see her other cellmates clearly, the only light coming from a lantern in the corridor the other side of the grilled door. But at a cursory glance, aside from the fact that there were men there too (her previous cell had been all women), they didn’t appear very different from those she’d been imprisoned with for the last couple of months.

The age range was wide, from a girl of about sixteen, who was sobbing on an older woman’s shoulder, to a man of perhaps fifty or even older. Three of the women might have been whores, judging by their colourful and even quite elegant gowns, but the remainder were very ragged, women with hard faces, bad teeth and stringy hair, and gaunt-faced men staring silently into space.

There were two women from her previous cell. Bridie, in a red gown with a tattered lace collar, had confided in Mary that she’d robbed a sailor while he slept. Peg was
much older, one of the very ragged women, but she had steadfastly refused to say anything about her crime.

Mary guessed from the experiences in that cell that however subdued they all were now, within a few hours the naturally dominant types, like Bridie, would rally themselves to take charge. Much of this was bravado – it was necessary to appear strong if you were to survive prison. Fighting, shouting and demanding food or water from the gaolers was one way of sending out a message to your cellmates that you weren’t to be pushed around.

Mary wondered if there would be any point in anyone asserting themselves now. She certainly didn’t feel inclined to do so herself; all she wanted was to know how many days she had left to live.

Seeing Mary, Bridie hitched up her chains and hobbled across the cell towards her. ‘Hanging?’ she asked.

Mary nodded. ‘You too?’

Bridie squatted down on the straw, her woebegone expression confirming it. ‘That bastard of a judge,’ she spat. ‘’E don’t know what it’s like for us. What good will hanging me do? Who’ll look after the old folks now?’

Bridie had told Mary soon after she was brought to Exeter that she’d taken up whoring to keep her old parents from the parish. But there was something about her colourful clothes and even more colourful nature that suggested she hadn’t had much of a moral struggle. Yet ever since Mary’s first night in prison, Bridie had been kind and protective towards her, and Mary felt she was at heart a good woman.

‘I thought you’d get off though, what with yer innocent
face an’ all,’ Bridie said, reaching out her dirty hand to caress Mary’s cheek lightly. ‘What happened?’