There’s a screech. The blanket lurches under you – apparently you have fallen down on top of someone. You hastily stand up, but it’s too late – a ferocious-looking woman throws you off her so forcefully that you land on the stone floor with a thud, and she leaps to her feet. She has a horsey face with wide nostrils, and thick hair in a bun.
‘Little wench!’ she snorts. ‘How dare you sit your bony cheeks down on top of me!’
Your heart is pounding, but you can hear your ma’s words in your mind: Never let yourself be bullied, my dear. Nobody will respect you if you let them walk all over you.
You get to your feet and find your voice. ‘I’d rather have bony cheeks than a bony heart.’
The woman’s eyes flare. Chuckles and ‘ooh’s bubble in the crowd that has gathered around you.
‘You little … grub! Are you insulting me?’
Your palms are sweaty, but you’re not ready to back down. ‘Oh no, ma’am,’ you say. ‘My ma always taught me to be kind to simpletons.’
Hoots of laughter erupt from the crowd. Heat is pumping through your veins. The horsey-faced woman looks like she doesn’t know what to say. Then, to your amazement, she also begins snorting with laughter. She gives you a playful clip over the ear.
‘I’d never have picked a little scrap like you as a survivor,’ she says, chuckling. ‘But perhaps you are, lass. Perhaps you are.’
She sits back down on her blanket, and you move away to another corner of the cell, feeling quietly proud of yourself.
A girl not much older than you claps you on the back. ‘That was incredible!’ she says delightedly. ‘Ellen’s been here forever – and she rules the roost. I’ve never seen anyone stand up to her!’
You recognise her as the brown-haired girl who explained what was happening yesterday, when Da and his group of prisoners were being taken to the courthouse. She has friendly brown eyes, a round face, and a thick, matted brown plait hanging over one shoulder.
‘I’m Sarah,’ she says. ‘That was your da who went past yesterday, wasn’t it? Do you know what sentence he was given?’
You smile and shrug. Then your smile fades. ‘He burnt a government ship – it was a protest for Irish freedom. He’s waited a year already for sentencing. Do you think he’ll hang?’
The girl considers you seriously, biting her lip. ‘They’ll give him a heavy penalty, no doubt. But I’d wager he’ll get transported – perhaps for life. Plenty of us in here did worse than him and have escaped the noose.’
You nod gratefully, overwhelmed by emotion. If Da doesn’t hang, then a smaller crime such as yours isn’t likely to be punished by death either. Perhaps you will both survive. You manage to give Sarah a little smile. ‘How long have you been in here?’ you ask her.
‘A few months,’ Sarah replies. ‘I’ve been sentenced to transportation. Most of us here in this cell are bound for the colonies eventually. I hope we’ll sail soon. Maybe you and I will be on the same boat.’
‘I’d like that,’ you say. ‘If I get sentenced to transportation, and so does my da, do you think it’s possible he and I will end up in the same colony?’
It’s almost too much to hope for – that you and Da might both escape hanging, and be sent to the same land, at the end of the earth.
Sarah smiles wistfully. ‘Well, it’s always possible, but you’d need the luck of the gods on your side,’ she replies. ‘There are many colonies in far-flung places, and any of us might end up waiting for years in gaol before we’re transported. Still, no one can stop you from hoping. Just behave yourself, for I’m afraid they don’t take kindly to rebels in here.’
WEEKS PASS. SARAH shows you how to survive in the rough, filthy world of Newgate: which guards to avoid at all cost, and how waiting at the end of the food line sometimes means you get the thicker, more substantial stew at the bottom of the pot. She also introduces you to a prisoner who knows how to read and write and who says she can write a letter to Da for you for fourpence. You keep a tight hold of your twopence and pray for another one, but without success.
One morning, you wake from weird dreams about a gaolor cutting off your fingers to sell as sausages for a bonfire to discover that your shiny bronze twopence is gone from its hiding spot beneath your blanket. You hurriedly search the folds of your clothes and the cracks of the stones where you slept, but it’s really gone. Somebody must have pinched it from under your sleeping body in the night.
You look around and see Ellen, the big, horsey-faced brute, slumped in a corner, watching you. Her head is lolling to one side, and an idiot’s drooling smile is spread across her mouth.
‘Missing something, pet?’ she slurs.
You see the cup in her hand, and stride across the room as, around you, the other women and their children stir and wake. Sure enough, Ellen’s cup is filled with a brown, reeking liquid – alcohol, which she must have bought from a gaolor in the middle of the night after she stole your twopence.
So this is how she’s going to punish me for standing up to her, you think. She might think I’m a survivor, but she still wants to be sure I know my place.
You’re frustrated, but more than anything you just feel sorry for Ellen. She was born right here in Newgate, and has known precious little kindness in her life. The few times she’s been let out, she’s immediately
