James looked around but couldn’t find the double stable doors. Three days earlier he had carefully memorised the way; now, anxious to reach Grangegorman early, the markers escaped him. James leaned against a shelf in a wall to catch his breath.
The bakery was behind him; he knew that because the sun still lifted to the left, which meant Grangegorman was in front. He wasn’t going around in circles, though it felt like it. James pulled up his sleeves and checked each wrist. The baker had written a large R on one and an L on the other. Left and right, he’d told himself. Left and right: the right hand is the stronger hand – that he could remember. The punching fist, right.
Small tufts of steam lifted from the road where the sun peeked between buildings in the early morning. Skirts, boots and carriage wheels swept the ghostly clouds aside in the busyness of preparation, the scurry for work, a day’s trading to be done.
‘Matches, sir?’ A boy tugged on his jacket.
‘Sorry, boyo.’
James rubbed the top of the boy’s head, then thrust his hand inside his trouser pocket just in case. The penny was still there. The coldness of the coin tingled against his palm, but it would soon reflect the warmth of his care if he held it long enough. The boy would have to find his own luck, James thought.
Sun to the left, baker behind, Grangegorman straight ahead.
His markers began to appear – there was the ornate entrance with arched windows toppling over and around the door in a sparkling waterfall of glass. Aileen would have loved it. Then the double stable doors with the black iron latch moulded into the face of a lion. Three more corners and the Grangegorman lengthened before him, with its large riveted doors and green copper-capped tower with clocks on each face: north, east, south and west – no one could escape the glare of time passing.
A cluster of people stood around the front of the courthouse. The atmosphere was thick with impatience, faces dull with dread. James tried not to make eye contact with anyone, but every now and then he caught an instinctual glance, or someone would catch his, and he and the other would turn away as if their eyes were just passing by, not meaning to stop, not meaning to weigh or judge.
The coin in his pocket had warmed, a comfort in his palm as he waited. He imagined life behind the ornate entrance with the waterfall glass he had passed on the way to Grangegorman. Inside, a gentleman would sit by the fire, occasionally stroking the cat beside him on a green velvet sofa. A maid would appear with hot tea, toast and eggs, his stick tapping the floor when she didn’t move quick enough.
The courtroom was a shuffling mess of people coming and going. They jumped when the judge said so, stood, sat, spoke, flinched at the thump of the hammer that expelled the poor unfortunates.
Aileen sat on one of the crowded wooden planks, behind floor-to-ceiling bars that separated the free from the not free. Her blanched face found him. His thumb rubbed the edge of the coin, around and around, circles of worry flattening the English Queen’s face. With each smack of the hammer the crowd in the room shifted. For some, the misery came swift; for James and Aileen, the anticipation ached for hours.
A space opened on the bench that ended close to where Aileen sat on the other side of the bars. Body by body, James nudged his way towards her – when the judge was busy writing, or in the chaos of a conviction, the dragging away, the pleading, or when the dock sat empty, waiting for the next poor unfortunate.
‘No touching,’ a guard warned, and James let go of Aileen’s hand.
A cluster of red curls escaped her cotton bonnet and fell on to her forehead as she reached around her neck and wrenched at the stays that held her lace collar in place. With each tug, threads ripped. With each violent snap, James broke too, his eyes misting over, hers like flint sparking.
‘Stack, Catherine Aileen.’ The voice came loud and casual.
Aileen stood in the dock to the side of the judge. Her small hands cupped at the front of her best blue dress. James let go of the coin and squeezed the lace collar stretched between both fists, his face lifted to the man in the polished wood pinnacle at the front of the room. A shuffle of paper, then they began …
‘The charge,’ the judge called.
‘Your Honour, I present one Catherine Aileen Stack of Killarney. Arrested for stealing a silk embroidered handkerchief from Brown’s drapery of Byrne Road, April sixteenth. The cost of item taken is eleven pence, Your Honour, which Mrs Brown has instructed me to say she can no longer sell due to soiling from the accused’s hands.’
‘Your recommendation, Mr Cardel?’
‘Your Honour, this woman is skilled in the handcraft of lace making. It is therefore my recommendation that she be sent to one of the workhouses in Van Diemen’s Land, southern Australia. As Your Honour is already aware, requests have been made for skilled workers in that area.’
‘And as you are aware, Mr Cardel, numbers are now restricted to the colonies. How skilled is she?’
James screwed the lace collar in his lap. He didn’t want his sister to be sent away, wherever the colonies were – it didn’t sound right.
‘Your Honour, I would also like you to take into consideration the age of the defendant. As you can see, she is young enough to contribute towards the population of the colonies, as has also been specifically requested.’
Her skill was sending her away, her skill and her age. James couldn’t make sense of it. Surely they were the reasons she should be kept in Ireland?
‘Recommendation accepted. The name of the assigned ship, Mr Cardel?’
‘The Blackbird, Your Honour. She is set to be accompanied by the 59th Regiment on the twenty-fourth of May, given good winds.’
Blackbird, James thought. What kind of bad luck was it to name a ship Blackbird?
‘Miss Stack, you are to be remanded at Grangegorman Penitentiary until the twenty-fourth of May, at which time you will be taken to the ship Blackbird for transportation to Van Diemen’s Land, Australia. Your term of punishment will be set at seven years.’
‘As Your Honour pleases.’ Mr Cardel took his seat.
The bang of the hammer jarred, but Aileen’s small figure stayed stoically still, facing the judge.
‘You can’t be doing that!’ James stood, indignant.
‘Remain seated,’ the guard called.
‘But that’s not right,’ James said.
‘Order,’ the judge warned.
‘I’ll find you, Aileen, on the other side. Aileen?’
Aileen didn’t turn around.
‘Be seated,’ the judge called, ‘or you’ll find yourself on the other side quicker than you think.’
‘I’ll find you, I promise.’
Aileen didn’t look behind or wave. A guard held the door and led her away. James stayed where he was on the bench, unable to move. Words rushed about him, empty husks of words where meaning used to belong. The lace collar, he now realised, was to give to their mother. Their mother. How was he going to tell their mother?
Eventually James gathered himself and pushed past the row of knees along the bench. If they didn’t move fast enough, he knocked them hard with the bone of his own knee – he didn’t care if they were men or women, if it hurt or not. They couldn’t protest, not with the judge and the guards and the hammer.
The corridor was jammed with people still trying to get into the courtroom. James squeezed between them, standing as tall as he could to resist the pressure, the pushing that sent him falling into backs and bodices. Hands. Too many hands.
‘Out!’ he shouted.
He felt his resolve settle into the flint he’d seen in his sister’s eyes.
‘Make way!’ he ordered, and someone laughed.
Outside at last, on the top step, James stopped, his mouth full of dry breath and the taste of sweat that didn’t belong to him. The woollen lace collar had begun to matt in his hand, small fibres coming loose, returning to their natural fluffy state. The blue fabric of Aileen’s dress was prettier than James had remembered. It was the dress his mother had made for the presentation to their uncle. James rolled his fingers across the surface of lace flowers. Roses, her favourite, rambling roses – the kind he cut down for the landlord so the sheep wouldn’t get tangled, the kind he transplanted around the cottage just for Aileen.
With as much care as he could, he folded one side of the collar into the middle, then another, and another, until every edge pointed in. He then folded it in half again, rolled the length of it up and placed it deep inside his pocket, on top of the penny.
The sun hung low, its afternoon light already tired. Shadows fell like stretchers across the road laid out before him, a path that led him naturally towards the docks. Van Diemen’s Land, Australia. The Blackbird.
The sight of rabbits in a window display stopped him. Rabbits stuffed so tight their eyes bulged as if caught in the moment of shock that comes just before a killing. He remembered that look from his childhood, the silent scream of it, the pleading, the disbelief. The wanderers buried beneath the strawberry tree, the ghosts of their torment still followed him. Smoking pipes made a uniform line in front of the rabbits, with a hive of stacked matches in the centre. To the side, a small row of pocket-knives fanned out like a hand with splayed metal fingers.
James went into the shop and asked to see the knives close up. One of them, a second-hand sailor’s knife, had a blade the size of his pointer finger that opened out from inside a wooden handle.
He would have to get on one of the ships, he decided, rubbing the blade across his thumb in a dumb haze. The shop assistant’s voice drummed in his ear like fingers thrumming on a desktop.
‘How much?’ he asked to shut the man up.
James took the folded bundle of woollen lace from his pocket, then the penny. The two items lay side by side on the counter. It would take nearly the entire penny – enough left for maybe two pints of lager, but that would do: two pints would get him in beside a fire, fill his stomach for the evening and maybe find him a friend. He had to get on a ship, a ship bound for the colonies. Australia. Van Diemen’s Land.
The street was slick from a passing shower by the time he left the shop. The sun dipped behind steeple-tops, and his too-big boot heels scraped along the cobbles. The evening settled with a sudden shiver. The thought of a ship to Australia lifted his chin, pulled him towards the docks. The knife weighed down his pocket in a way the penny never had.