The Remarkable Life and Times of Eliza Rose (4 page)

‘Val! Valentine! Come on, you fool,’ came from the youth in maroon.

The one in green smiled at the two girls. ‘I’ve heard enough,’ he said, reaching into his pocket. ‘Any more of the tale and I shall have to call your father out for a duel.’ He spun a silver coin through the bars. ‘Take this and buy yourselves some food, ladies, for I cannot see such beauty be made low.’

‘Oh, thank you kindly, sire!’ Elinor said, nudging Eliza.

‘Remember us another day, sire!’ Eliza stammered, and she brought herself to glance once more at the young man and smiled.

‘A silver sixpence!’ Elinor said as they were elbowed out of their prime position by two or three of the other inmates. ‘See how easy it is. All you have to do is act the lady, but appear down on your luck. You
must seem at just the right degree of poverty. I tell you, the players at the King’s Theatre couldn’t put on a better performance than me when I’m hungry.’

Eliza laughed. ‘If our audience were all like him I’d be well satisfied.’

‘We can have oysters for breakfast every day for a week,’ Elinor continued, twirling the coin between her fingers. ‘Or we can buy ourselves a cell of our own for tonight and pay to have some washing done …’

‘I must have a cap to cover my head – but before that, some shoes!’ Eliza said, looking down at her dirty feet. ‘For I cannot bear to feel the lice under my toes a moment longer.’

Days went by and Eliza, under Elinor’s guidance, managed to get along fairly well. She bought back her own pair of shoes from a turnkey, and also purchased a shawl and a cap. Elinor teased her, saying that these items were from a woman who had been hanged the week before, but Eliza said she hadn’t known her, so it was of no matter. She hired her own blanket at night, but carried on sharing a pallet with Elinor, for being used to occupying a bed with younger brothers and sisters, both liked the extra warmth and companionship. After a few days in Clink, Eliza’s sheer tiredness meant that she could manage to sleep for several hours at a time without waking. Every day they begged at the grille and every day too, although hardly realising she was doing it, Eliza looked for the youth named Valentine, the one in the green breeches with the merry, blue eyes, but he never came again.

On a Monday (Eliza knew it was that day because the one before, being Sunday, everyone in the jail had
been given a slice of charity mutton) Elinor was taken off for trial along with twenty or so other prisoners. They went by foot, chained together, and Eliza, looking through the grille, was upset to see her friend weeping profusely as she was herded along the street. A small crowd had gathered outside to jeer at the manacled prisoners, and Eliza thought – not for the first time – about her own trial. How ashamed she would feel to be driven along, chained up like an animal going to market. What if her father saw her?

Having promised Elinor that she would beg that day for both of them, Eliza worked hard with her smiles and her ‘If it please you, sires’ and earned nearly a shilling. She sent out for a rabbit pie and, for a treat to celebrate Elinor’s homecoming, some sugared plums.

When Elinor returned, though, her face was red and puffed up from weeping, and it was obvious that she wasn’t going to be consoled with either of these things. For a moment Eliza feared the very worst, for four of those who’d gone for trial that day had been sentenced to be hanged – this news had spread back to the prison even before the prisoners had returned – but when she could draw breath through her sobs, Elinor spoke not of this unspeakable thing, but of something which she felt was worse.

‘I’m to be transported,’ she said, her voice broken by hiccoughing gasps. ‘Six of us are to go to Virginia, for the judge said he wants to make an example of the younger ones and it would be a fresh start for us.’

‘Transported!’ Eliza gasped. ‘Just for theft of some material?’

Elinor nodded. ‘The pick-pocket before me was to
be branded on her forearm – and another thief had his hand cut off!’ As Eliza gasped in horror, Elinor burst out, ‘But I would rather have those punishments – both of them – than be taken across the seas to the plantations!’

For a while they cried together, and then Eliza, thinking to console her, said, ‘I’ve heard the land is very fruitful.’

‘
I’ve
heard ’tis a wild and desperate place, full of wolves and wild people!’ Elinor said, bursting out crying again. ‘And besides, nearly all who go there die on the fearsome journey!’

Eliza, who had heard the same, did not know what to say to this, and now fell silent. Neither of them slept that night.

Next morning, one of the turnkeys, after ringing the bell at daybreak, called loudly, ‘Rose Abbott, Margaret Audley, Elinor Bracebridge for transportation!’

At the third name both Eliza and Elinor stopped eating their oatmeal and stared at each other in alarm.

‘Surely not so soon!’ Eliza cried.

Elinor ran towards the turnkey. ‘Is it
now?
Are you really come for us this morning?’ she asked desperately.

‘Aye,’ he nodded. ‘You’ll be taken in irons to the lighters at Blackfriars, then sail downriver to the docks. The boat is waiting there to catch the tide.’

‘No!’ Elinor said in a panic. ‘I can’t go yet – I want to see the judge again! I don’t feel well enough for the journey. I’m sick!’

But the turnkey had slammed shut the iron gate and
passed on to the men’s cell. ‘Emmanuel Badd, Thomas Mann, Goodman Hughes,’ they heard him call, and there were answering shouts and protestations.

Elinor, after ineffectually banging her tin cup on the bars and shouting for him to come back and listen to her, sank to her knees and Eliza, weeping too, knelt beside her.

‘Hush … hush … there’s nothing can be done,’ she said. She put an arm around Elinor, searching for something to say which might help. ‘It may not be that awful,’ she said. ‘Some people pay their passage to go to the Americas and start a new life. They buy land or make a lot of money working on the plantations.’

Elinor just sobbed harder. ‘I shall never survive the sea trip!’ she said pitifully. ‘They chain you up below the decks and you don’t see daylight for weeks.’

‘I’m sure you
will
survive.’ Eliza smoothed back Elinor’s hair. ‘You’ll charm the sailors on the ship – and perhaps you can work out your time there and come back a rich woman. Perhaps you’ll employ me as your lady’s maid when you return!’

But Elinor refused to be comforted. ‘I only took what was due to me – and now I shall never see my brothers and sisters again!’ she sobbed, and she wrapped her arms around herself and rocked backwards and forwards. ‘I should have pleaded my belly!’

‘That would have done you no good,’ a fat, frowsy woman next to them said. ‘That will only stop you being hanged. They still sends you off on the boats whether you’re with child or no.’

Eliza put her arms around her friend, holding on to
her tightly. She was scared on behalf of Elinor, and also scared almost witless at the thought of being left alone in the prison.

Within fifteen minutes the turnkey was back with two constables, and Elinor and the two other women were fitted with leg irons to guard against their running away. As these were being put on, Eliza looked through her trifling possessions and gave Elinor her shawl, an apron and all the money she had.

‘’Tis only fourteen pence but it may serve to buy you some small comfort on the boat,’ she said.

‘But I shall never survive!’ said Elinor, almost bowed over with the manacles and with grief. ‘Never …’

Eliza, too devastated to give any words of comfort, merely pressed the things on to her and then looked on tearfully as her dear friend was dragged away. She went to the barred window in the yard and watched, crying all the while, as Elinor and the others were herded down the road in chains.

Chapter Four

The days went by and it grew warmer. Although she still hated doing it, Eliza took her place by the grille most days and – though her freshness was fast disappearing under layers of grime – managed to earn enough to get by. She missed Elinor very much but didn’t seek to make other friends in the prison. One or two of the girls, on seeing the ease with which Eliza had made money by her smile, tried to fall in with her, but she was learning prison ways fast and knew that most of them would steal, lie, cheat and even kill to improve their lot. Twice her money had been taken when she was asleep; once she’d been kicked quite viciously when she was at the front of the grille and had had to limp back inside, doubled over with pain.

As the weather became warmer the conditions in the jail grew worse. Now the river water that was brought in was fetid and foul-smelling before it arrived in the cells, now the sewer channel was continually blocked with matter, now the stench from scores of unwashed bodies and foul clothes was so nauseating that sometimes Eliza couldn’t draw in breath without choking. She kept herself to herself, trying to get through each day as best she could, planning what she’d do when she got out.

When she got out
… She spent anxious hours wondering when her trial was likely to be. And what about her sentence? Surely she wouldn’t be transported just for theft of a mutton pasty? If she was, she felt, as Elinor had done, that she might as well be dead. The thought of being taken off to a strange land across the sea, of never seeing again the dear native countryside where she’d grown up, was a most horrid and terrifying one.

No, surely they’d take what had happened to her, how she’d been turned out of her home by her stepmother, into consideration. Maybe she’d be free within a few weeks, manage to get some sort of living-in job, and begin to look for her father. Perhaps she could go to a hiring fair and get a job as a maid, or go around the big houses, knocking on doors to seek employment. She rather shrank from the idea of this, though, for no one was likely to employ her the way she looked now, and she’d probably have to take some lowly and menial task like skinning rabbits or sweeping the streets to get by. If only Elinor was still here and they could seek employment together. Elinor had always known what to do …

Early one morning there came a strange, roaring chant from the men’s quarters which spread in a wave across the women’s cell until they picked up the same words – a man’s name – and began chanting it too.

Eliza listened, intrigued. ‘Jack Parley … Jack Parley … Jack Parley …’ they shouted, and then they began banging their shoes or their iron cups against the bars in time to their chant. ‘Jack Parley … Jack Parley … Jack Parley.’

Stepping through the crowd of bodies around her –
for it was so early that no one was outside in the yard – Eliza made her way towards Charity.

‘What are they saying?’ she asked.

‘Can’t you hear, dearie? They are saying the name of the highwayman.’

‘Jack Parley?’

Charity nodded. ‘The most famous in the country. Apart from Monsieur Claude Duval, of course.’

Eliza remained bemused. ‘But why are they saying his name?’

‘Because he’s been sentenced to hang, my sweeting. He is to go from here today and hang on the Tyburn tree!’

Eliza gasped, for she had heard, of course, of the Tyburn tree – the famous wooden scaffold which had three great wooden arms and was capable of hanging fifteen men or women at once.

‘He’ll be taken out when the bell sounds to do the Tyburn frisk,’ Charity said with a snigger. ‘What a dance he’ll do, spinning on the end of a rope!’

Eliza looked at her with distaste. If ever a woman didn’t suit her name, it was Charity.

‘But ’tis not all bad,’ the old woman went on, ‘for Jack Parley has said that his possessions are to be sold to provide a portion of meat and a sup of wine for every fellow in here, so three cheers for him is what I say!’

The chant of
Jack Parley
was kept up whilst the prisoners were drinking the water and oatmeal which passed for breakfast, and also when the gates were opened to let them out into the yard. Eliza hung back a little here and didn’t rush out to be first at the grille. She liked to take a little time tidying her appearance,
to go to the barrel of river water in order to cleanse her face and hands without being jostled. She’d also untie her hair at this time and try and untangle it with a small, broken piece of comb. She endeavoured to maintain some standards, for her earnings partly depended on her looking comely, but she knew she must look a fright by now. Her hair – the very feel of it made her shudder – was as matted as a mare’s tail and her skin was grimy and, she thought, probably as brown as a gypsy’s from being outside in the yard in all weathers. She no longer hoped to see the youth with the blue eyes – in fact, she dreaded that he would come by, for she knew that he could only look at her with disgust now.

By the time she went through to the yard that morning there was no room at all in front of the grille, for it seemed as if the whole of the prison were bunched together there, straining for a glimpse of the outside world. Those who were too far back were jostling the others for position, constantly asking to know what was happening and if Jack Parley could be seen.

‘The crowds are ten deep outside!’ a wiry young fellow said to Eliza. He had an eye patch and a face pitted with smallpox scars. ‘They say that all the seats have been sold around the scaffold for weeks past.’

‘Is Jack Parley very famous, then?’ Eliza asked.

‘I should say! As brave and excellent a highwayman as ever there was. And one who has evaded capture by the constables for ten years! He’s the favourite of the ladies,’ went on the youth. ‘That is, apart from Claude Duval.’

That name again. Eliza had never heard of these
famous highwaymen before and reasoned that this was because the lanes of Somersetshire did not offer such rich pickings as those of London.

‘And is
he
here in Clink, too?’ she asked.

The fellow laughed. ‘Never! The great Duval won’t ever be caught!’

Eliza, intrigued, stayed in the yard, listening to the clamour from the citizens outside and the prisoners within. A woman beside the grille was reporting on the clothes worn by those on the other side of the prison gate, and her remarks were passed back through the crowd. ‘There’s a large woman wearing a Holland sprigged gown and blue satin shoes,’ Eliza heard. ‘A plain gentleman with a large nose wearing a heavily embroidered doublet over magenta hose,’ and ‘A woman, crying, wearing a cherry-coloured gown and petticoat with gold lacing.’