Chapter 21

Rebecca Nelson, Hannah thought, seemed to quite enjoy ringing the bell on its ornate stand. The bell which marked out the stages of the prisoners’ march towards freedom or the grave.

While the new superintendent was finding his feet, Rebecca had made herself indispensable. Already with a good understanding of the daily workings of the Factory, she had so completely occupied the role of unofficial matron that Hannah wondered whether it would cause her some sadness to give it up when the lady from Van Diemen’s Land finally sailed up the Parramatta River.

Over the past few days Rebecca had spent hours closeted with Superintendent Rohan in the matron’s residence, taking him through the Factory’s workings in a detail Hannah had not known she possessed. How many women wore clothes that would need to be replaced. How many had proper shoes – this number counted in the tens. Realistic expectations for the Factory’s output, and the adequacy of the rations for the First, Second and Third Class women, including those who were expecting babies.

She even suggested that the superintendent repair the windows in the Third Class penitentiary. ‘I’m sure a man of your discernment will understand this,’ she said to Mr Rohan. ‘We must be above reproach in our treatment of the prisoners, including the one who seems to have ended your predecessor’s life. An efficient prison is a humane one, don’t you agree? Particularly when the prisoners are partly responsible for producing the funds needed to run the Factory.’

Hannah all the while stood by, cleaning and making tea or being sent out on a variety of errands – to the storekeeper to check on the rations of flour and salt beef, for example, and to the guard outside Grace O’Leary’s room for information on her condition.

Entering the Third Class penitentiary today, Hannah was unable to see the turnkey, but had no trouble hearing his low voice and Peggy’s giggle from the shadows inside. She crept back out and waited quietly a little to the side of the penitentiary door, so she wouldn’t immediately be seen by anyone exiting.

Whatever Peggy was doing with the guard, she was not doing it quickly. Perhaps half an hour passed, and Hannah was wondering whether she would need to abandon her vigil – Rebecca would surely be missing her by now – when the door opened and Peggy stepped out.

She wasn’t alone. A moment later, Bronagh followed her and the pair started across the penitentiary yard.

‘Erin go bragh,’ Hannah said.

They immediately turned, gaping at the source of the phrase they had thought was theirs.

‘You’ve a full tummy and clean clothes which fit you,’ said Bronagh, in her Cork accent. ‘You’d not know the meaning of those words.’

‘I said them when you weren’t yet born,’ said Hannah. ‘When they did have a meaning. And they might mean something still, if some from the south hadn’t rolled over to have their full tummies rubbed by the British.’

Hannah refused, usually, to give the ancient anger its head. Not in this place and time. Its rightful targets were dead or across the seas or both, and she feared that if she allowed it to run, it would consume her in the place of those who shot croppies.

But hearing these girls – speaking with the accents of the North Cork militia, of those who had carried a Catholic missal in one hand and a pike covered in Catholic blood in the other – use the phrase as though it were a game, as the price for entry to some childish club and then tell her she understood nothing of their meaning, Hannah felt rage unfurl, push its way to her fingertips so she half-expected to see sparks flying from them.

Bronagh stepped backwards, as though expecting to be struck. ‘You were there. The revolution. You saw it?’

‘Saw it, took my own part in it, lost everything to it,’ Hannah said, in a voice which amazed her, as she had expected it to shake. ‘Shall I avenge a few drops of Wexford blood by reporting you? I noticed no guard at Grace O’Leary’s door, but I heard him well enough – and you, Peggy. You’d get to spend more time with him as a Third Class prisoner.’

‘Do you think I want that? He’s foul and rough – not as bad as Church but near enough – and if you understood what we were doing, you would praise me for my sacrifice – one such as you would, anyway, if you really lived through it.’

‘Make me understand then.’

Bronagh sighed. ‘You’ve seen how thin everyone is. You know how little food we receive – less even than the pitiful amount rationed for us. Even with the new man, we’ve not seen an increase in our rations. He’s not yet tried to take any of the girls, but who’s to say he won’t turn into as big a monster as Church? And who’s to say he won’t start skimming our rations, profiting from our hunger? You profess to care about the fate of the women here. Surely you can see how poorly we are fed and how badly we are clothed.’

Hannah had held out some hope that Mr Rohan’s arrival would have put an end to the near-starvation of some of the women. The fact that he had not yet addressed this most urgent of problems concerned her. What was Rebecca doing closeted with him all this time if not urging him to protect the women? Were her pleadings falling on deaf ears, or – and Hannah tried to silence the thought as soon as it occurred to her – was she not pleading at all, beyond the platitudes she used in front of Hannah?

Still, she merely nodded. She did not want to give Bronagh and Peggy any encouragement, any comfort which might stop them revealing the true nature of the situation. And, she had to admit, she was still angry.

‘So,’ said Bronagh, ‘Grace is helping us do what we can.’

‘And what can Grace do from her cell? Were you with her, Bronagh, while Peggy was entertaining the turnkey?’

Bronagh looked up to the sky, a futile hope if she was expecting help from that direction. ‘I don’t suppose Grace’s situation can get any worse, even if you do report us. Mine can, though. I am trusting you, now, and praying my trust isn’t misplaced,’ she said. ‘Grace is smart, you see. She seems to know exactly how much the women need to eat to avoid dying from hunger, and how much we can take from the stores without being noticed.’

‘But what can she do from behind a locked door?’

‘She can tell us what to take and when. From behind her door she can hear when the guards are moving about and when they are not. And she can hear them planning card games. On those nights, we know they’ll be drinking rum, we know they’ll be less vigilant. So that’s when we act.’

‘Act? How?’

‘We raid the stores, of course.’

‘Are you not in fear of your lives when you do this?’

‘Of course we are. But all our lives will end from hunger if we do nothing. And we do have some protection. Grace can see the store from her window and she’s wonderful at imitating birdcalls. What’s that owl one, Peggy? A tawny something or other?’

‘Frogsnout, is it?’

‘Frogmouth! Tawny frogmouth. They make the oddest sound. And Grace’s call could fool even another owl.’ Bronagh made her best approximation of the sound. ‘But Grace’s call is far better than that,’ she said. ‘And when we hear it, we know we have time to leave the store before whoever is approaching finds us. If she does it twice, we hide in there until the danger has passed, until we hear the call again.’

‘How do you transport the food?’

‘Oh, we don’t take much. Only as little as can be carried in our aprons. And then we share it out in tiny amounts, so that the other women think we’re giving of our own rations.’

‘So Erin go bragh is your watchword. And Grace is the pirate queen?’ said Hannah.

‘You know the story?’

‘Of course I do, eejit of a girl. Wasn’t I told it before your ma met your da?’

‘If you say it so,’ Bronagh said through lips so tense the words were barely able to escape. This woman, Hannah thought, would be used to rebukes and worse from the men who kept her confined, but would not take well to an insult offered by another woman. ‘But now I must ask you – what do you intend to do?’

‘Nothing,’ said Hannah. ‘Beyond taking a report back to Mrs Nelson on the condition of Grace O’Leary, as I’ve been asked to. But I must urge you both to leave off with the raids for the moment. There are going to be more watchers with the new man in place. Be careful. Especially with a murderer about.’

‘Murderer? I say saviour,’ said Peggy.

‘Is your saviour Grace O’Leary?’ said Hannah.

‘We would be even more grateful to her than we already are if she were. But she can’t have been, you see. It is not possible,’ said Peggy, twitching her arm to dislodge Bronagh’s suddenly encircling hand.

‘Why?’

After being so profligate with detail, Hannah saw a sudden caution descend on them. They glanced at each other, as if in mutual warning that they might already have told Hannah, countrywoman though she was, too much.

‘There’s no question that Grace is an innocent woman. But innocence has no value here for any of us. We were raiding the stores the night he died,’ said Peggy. ‘So Grace was looking out for us from her window. We saw her – we always look to check that she’s there. And while we were inside, we heard two calls. Normally whoever it is passes by quickly, but this time we must have waited ten minutes. Then we heard footsteps – running footsteps – and we thought the guards were running to arrest us. But they passed. And then we heard the signal from Grace. We hurried back to the First Class sleeping quarters, and that was that.’

‘Did you ask Grace what happened?’ asked Hannah. ‘What she’d seen from the window?’

‘Of course. But she said it was too dark to see anything and urged us not to ask again.’

‘Do you believe she saw something related to the murder of the superintendent?’

‘Well, after she told us not to ask anymore, just to accept the fact that the monster was gone, she said, I think, that help can come from unlikely places.’

*  *  *

Hannah returned to the matron’s residence to tell Rebecca and Superintendent Rohan that the turnkey had informed her Grace O’Leary said nothing and did nothing. The turnkey, of course, had said no such thing, but she was confident she would not be contradicted. The man would not want to admit he had been absent from his post.

Hannah knew that Mrs Nelson intended to sit again with the superintendent that afternoon, to present to him a list of supplies she felt the women in the lying-in hospital needed. The midday meal, she thought, would be her best chance to talk to the other women. It was possible Grace may not have been the only watcher that night.

So when Rebecca Nelson reached up her expensively gloved hand towards the bell-pull, Hannah said, ‘Would you like me to supervise, today?’

Mrs Nelson always stood by as the mass of women surrounded the communal cooking pots eager to make their rations palatable enough to swallow and knowing they had only a short amount of time in which to do it. Anyone who had not managed to cook and eat their food by the time the bell next rang would go hungry. So if Mrs Nelson saw anyone struggling, perhaps saw one of the newer inmates being pushed aside by long-timers, she would step in, take the girl’s rations and cook them herself before handing them back (probably, Hannah suspected, with a prayer of gratitude that her own victuals were considerably better).

Now, Rebecca Nelson frowned slightly at Hannah’s suggestion.

‘It was just a thought,’ Hannah said. ‘I watch, of course, the way you manage things. You’re an absolute paragon of efficiency, and I seek to model myself on you, you see. So I have a fair idea of what to do, and I know you’ve been busy enough with Mr Rohan.’

As she was speaking, Hannah was chastising herself for allowing the flattery to reach heights she hadn’t intended to scale. She feared Mrs Nelson would feel mocked or, worse, would guess at the truth – that Hannah was trying to get her out of the way.

Indeed, Mrs Nelson did not seem convinced by Hannah’s suggestion. As she rang the bell, there was a slight frown when normally the action would make her smile.

‘Well … I suppose … Having been a convict, though, I’m not sure you’d be allowed.’

‘Ah, well, that’s no trouble then. I just thought it might be a help to you, you know, with everything you’ve to do this afternoon. And of course as it is not an official task, I thought it might be all right if you were to hand it off to somebody such as myself. No matter, though. How can I assist you while you’re supervising, then?’

Mrs Nelson’s eyes were unfocused. She moved her mouth to one side, so that the outline of her teeth was visible underneath the stretched skin of her right cheek.

‘Well, as you say, it’s not an official position. I suppose it could do no harm, and of course I am extremely busy. You are certain you know what to do?’

‘Yes, indeed. Although I’m sure I won’t accomplish it with the same finesse as you.’ Rebecca smiled, didn’t contradict Hannah.

‘Very well then. I shall be in the residence, do send a guard if you need me. I look forward to hearing about how you got on!’

*  *  *

So now it was just her. Well, her and two guards and an unaccountable mass of women.

She met the guards’ sideways looks with a frank, open stare as she waded into the middle of the group which surrounded one of the cooking pots, looking for those too weak to push their way to the front. Looking, if she were honest, for Helen. Distress was abundant here, but the keenness of Helen’s pain spoke of a soul which had not yet grown a callus, and therefore might be open to accepting help and, perhaps, letting slip some information.

Hannah found her on the outskirts of one of the groups of women. She walked up the girl. ‘Have you eaten yet?’

Helen shook her head, looking at the ground.

‘Well, you’ll not find your dinner down there in the dirt. Come on.’

She took Helen’s arm and they fetched an earthenware bowl of stew, with its sparse meat and the arse end of a stale loaf, and found a seat on the edge of one of the long benches which hemmed in the dining hall tables.

‘Now, you know me, child,’ Hannah began. ‘You know I’m a friend to you, to all the women at this place.’

Helen nodded.

‘Good, very good. Now, you must forgive my bluntness, but I’m concerned about you. Anyone would be in a state, anyone in your position. But I can’t help thinking you also seem a little – well – frightened.’

Helen looked down. ‘You must think me weak, I suppose.’

‘Not a bit of it. Haven’t you reason enough for sadness and fright, with little Eliza at the orphan school?’

‘I’ve not done anything wrong, you know.’

Hannah felt a small, burning frustration rising. Mustn’t give in to it, she thought. Any sharpness now would just send the girl scurrying back behind those downcast eyes. ‘And I’m not suggesting you have. But tell me what scares you.’

‘I’m scared the new superintendent will be like the old. And I won’t have the pirate queen to protect me.’

‘The pirate queen – she took some risks on your behalf?’

‘He would come to us at night, you know. To the First Class sleeping quarters. He said he liked young ones. The younger the better.’

Helen’s breathing had quickened quite suddenly. Hannah put her arm on the girl’s shoulder.

‘He said he would never let any other man near us. We were for his personal use, he said. He would come and visit us. He would choose someone and simply lie down on top of them, get to work. The youngest, the most innocent. Some of them virgins. He appeared to like the screams.’

‘And Grace O’Leary, she tried to put a stop to it?’

Helen pulled away, looked at Hannah. ‘I did not say that name.’

‘Neither did you, and there is no need. You are not alone in trusting me. If I was intending to inform, I would have done so.’

Helen exhaled, but her eyes were moving now, skimming over the landscape as they had on the way to Mrs Nelson’s house.

‘She did what she could,’ she said. ‘Tried to make him uncomfortable, to organise the other women to stand around him. It didn’t work very well. But sometimes, if he was drunk enough, she’d haul him off before he could get underway. Roll him right over so he landed on his back on the ground. He’d looked up at her and laugh. Said she would be punished. Then he’d say we were all whores anyway, and a man of his distinction shouldn’t be forced so low, and he’d stagger out.’

‘And she did that for you.’

‘God, I tell you, his breath was almost the worst of it. The man stank, in a way in which no free man has a right to. And he was heavy, lying there, breathing rum.’

‘So he didn’t get you some nights. But there were other nights?’

‘Yes, for years. It’s how I got Eliza. He didn’t care about her, about any of them. She would be asleep, delicate as glass, holding my hand, and he would come and dump her on the floor to get her out of the way. She watched. Always. She is spared that, now, at least, in the orphan school.’

‘Did the pirate queen try to stop that?’

‘When she could. But she disappeared. After the riots. And as soon as she wasn’t here, he came back.’

‘For you.’

‘He wasn’t drunk the next time. He smiled when I cried. He pressed my arms, held them so hard. And then he left and came back the next night. And every time, afterwards, I would cry and say I wanted to go home. The others, they all pretended to be asleep, but they can’t have been. So they would have heard me saying it. Home is lost to me, but I wish I was home.’

Helen had begun to cry. Rocking backwards and forwards, her stew uneaten. Hannah tried to get her to take a mouthful, but she seemed not to see. All she would say was ‘home’, over and over.

One of the guards rang the bell. Hannah helped Helen to her feet. Whispered in her ear, ‘You must calm down now, my love, you must. I am sorry for causing you distress. Dry your eyes now. I don’t think you weak, but others might. And you know yourself what happens to the weak here.’

Helen nodded, wiped her eyes on a calico sleeve that was too short for her arm, and joined the rest of the women going into the workrooms.

How many of them, thought Hannah, had suffered visits from the foul Robert Church? Would she have encountered Church, or one like him, if she’d arrived late enough to be sent to the Factory? She suspected she knew the answer.