Furthermore, Sir Jasper Waterlow, conscious that royalty itself made use of the great private bank, was not in the least keen that the notorious Ikey Solomon's patronage of the same facility be known to the public at large. He had therefore dropped the conspiracy charges against Reuban Reuban, merely holding him in solitary confinement for a week, charged with being a public nuisance. When the greater part of the public furore over Ikey's escape had died down, he was sentenced to twenty-five lashes and released on the condition that he would say nothing more to the newspapers than was already known.
This was thought by Reuban Reuban to be the mildest of sentences. He had received the sum of one hundred pounds for his role as a thespian, the highest salary he would ever be paid for plying his craft. Realising that he had just completed the greatest performance of his life in a real life drama, Reuban Reuban hit upon the idea of using the money Ikey had paid him to mount a grand theatrical production in which he starred and was titled: 'The Jew who Bankrupted England!'
Though this, when the sensibilities of the times changed under the new young queen, would be altered on the poster hoardings and outside the theatre to read: 'The Man who Bankrupted England'
Presenting, in the title role: The great Reuban Reuban himself!
The original and real life impersonator in the escape of the notorious Ikey Solomon!
His role playing Ikey Solomon, Prince of Fences, in his own production was to earn the previously struggling actor a handsome living for the remainder of his career.
When Abraham announced his visit the day after Ikey's escape, Mary withdrew with him to a dark corner of the dungeons, taking a candle so that she might see the truth in his face. It was here that he told her the entire story, though the young tailor omitted the details of Ikey's passage on a Danish ship carrying ballast back to Denmark. Instead, he suggested that Ikey had left their coach on the road to Southampton and had been met by another, which was presumably to take him to a ship bound for America.
He told Mary of Ikey's most earnest resolve that she should have money to facilitate her voyage to Australia and that it was Ikey's fondest hope and desire she should lack nothing in order to extract the maximum comfort from so arduous and unpleasant an experience upon the high seas.
Abraham stressed Ikey's most heartfelt regrets at what had happened to Mary, and then took great pains to explain Ikey's reasons for making no attempt to contact Mary while they had both been incarcerated in this very same gaol – the explanation being that Ikey, thinking only of Mary's personal welfare, was mindful that their past association might reflect badly upon her and cause needless suffering and humiliation.
It was a succinct enough explanation and Abraham, who had watched his father at rehearsal since he had been a small boy, delivered Ikey's message with sufficient ardour to suggest that he might himself have enjoyed a career upon the stage.
Mary became at once so bemused with Abraham's message containing Ikey's solicitude that she could scarcely believe her ears. It was with great difficulty that she forced into her mind the true picture of the rapacious, greedy, whingeing, entirely selfish and self-serving Ikey she knew as her erstwhile partner.
'What does 'e want?' she demanded sternly, pushing the candle close to Abraham's face.
'In truth, I swear, he seeks only your high regard, Mistress Mary,' the young tailor protested, much enjoying the sound of such high-minded phrasing. 'Those are the words from his own dear lips,' he added.
'Ha!' Mary replied. 'Ikey never done nothin' in 'is whole life what wasn't for profit! 'Igh regard, you says? Where's the profit to be found in that?'
'His sentiments were most soft in your regard, most spontaneous soft, Miss,' Abraham protested again. ' 'Abraham, my dear,' he says to me, 'you must convince Mistress Mary of my high regard, my most 'umble 'igh regard!' He said it three times, I swear it, Mistress Mary. There was tears in his eyes when he spoke them words and then he handed me the soft. 'You must give 'er this fifty pounds, for she 'as been done a great wrong and it is I who is responsible!' That's what he says to me, Gawd's truth!' Abraham concluded.
Mary looked genuinely startled. 'Ikey said that? Ikey said it were 'im what was responsible?'
Abraham nodded. 'He was most sad, most very sad indeed at the inconvenience he'd caused your fair self.'
'Gawd 'elp us! Miracles will never cease!'
Despite her deep suspicion, Mary could think of no way that Ikey, at the moment of his escape, could possibly profit from her by a further penny. So why, she asked herself, had he parted with a small fortune? Could it possibly be for the reasons Abraham had given? Had Ikey grown a conscience? She could not imagine a repentant Ikey, nor one who was capable of feeling the slightest remorse for a fellow human. We all want to feel the love of another and Mary had not been loved since she had been a small child, when she had briefly known the tenderness of a consumptive mother. Did Ikey really love her, not simply regard her as a profitable partner, as she had always quite contentedly supposed? It seemed too bizarre for words that he might do so, or for that matter, that she could harbour in her breast, unbeknownst to her, a love for him in return.
Love was not a word in the vocabulary which had existed between Mary and Ikey. Even on those rare occasions when she had taken him to her bed, there had been no thought of love. Mary had long since packed that hope away, concealing it in the darkest corner of her soul. Love was not for such as her. And so she simply shook her head, silently forcing back a tear, truly not knowing what to think of the whole matter of Ikey's amorous protestations brought on the importuning lips of a young man with a strong sense of melodrama.
At that moment Abraham Reuban produced Ikey's Duke of Wellington medal.
'Ikey wishes you to have this as a further token of his most remarkable esteem, Mistress Mary,' he said, holding the medallion and chain against the light of the candle. 'It be pure gold an' all!'
'So, where'd 'e steal it, then?' Mary asked tartly, though her heart thumped within her breast at the sight of the medallion.
'No, no, missus, it be his luck, what be called his talisman!' Abraham then told Mary the story of the medallion as Ikey had related it to him in the coach.
Mary had a dim recollection of having once observed a gold chain about Ikey's neck. Stripped down to his vest and long johns, the gold chain had disappeared into the top of his tightly clinging woollen upper garment so that she had no knowledge of what might be contained at its extremity. Now the thought that it might be his medallion, Ikey's talisman, opened her heart like a summer rose. She took the Wellington medallion from Abraham and, turning it over, read the inscription nestled between the garland of laurel leaves. Whereupon Mary's broken hands pressed Ikey's talisman to her bosom and she knew with a fierce certainty that she would survive, that she would never surrender and that somehow she had inherited Ikey's uncanny luck.
At that moment, despite his innumerable faults and thinking him no more than she knew him to be, Mary loved Ikey Solomon.
Chapter Seventeen
Mary was to spend five months in Newgate Gaol, two months longer than her original sentence, this to await a convict ship bound for Van Diemen's Land. On the 15th of May 1827, with eighteen other female convicts, she was placed in light irons and transported by open cart to Woolwich, where the convict ship Destiny II was berthed to await its full complement of female convicts.
The weather was grand, the winter frost well past, the elm and larch and sycamore, the bright green oak, in new leaf all. The orchards showed a bedazzlement of white and pink, the fancy dress of pear, apple, cherry and of summer's blood-red plum to come. The woods through which the cart rumbled were carpeted with bluebells and the yellow splash of daffodil, in an England ablaze with bud and blossom and the joyous fecundity of spring.
Several of the convicts were heard to sigh that this was a poor time to leave the shores of England, their most ardent wish being to make their last farewell in the fiercest needle sleet and howl of north wind. This, so their memories might be consumed by the bitter gales and so send them, half cheerful, on their way to the hell of Van Diemen's shores.
This sky of clear blue with the high call of larks and the singing of thrush in the hedgerows was too much a
