England

When the five from Botany Bay appeared before the magistrate, Mary stood with lowered head, refusing to communicate with the court or with those around her by so much as a glance. Her behaviour might have been deemed a form of insanity, and perhaps it was. But James, recalling Dr. White’s words about how some women were like those beasts of burden that simply laid down and refused to move when their burden grew too great, clung to the notion that this was what had driven Mary to close her senses to what was going on around her, and that once that burden lightened, she would return to normal.

Standing before the magistrate, he pleaded Mary’s cause, which she was neither willing nor able to do for herself. “She is not insane,” James assured the judge, “but lost in grief, by reason of both her children dying in the past six months, the last barely five weeks ago.”

“Such love as she had for her babies you can’t imagine,” Pip put in. “Sure and it was for their sake that she made a bid for freedom, for she oft said they was innocent and didn’t deserve to grow up away from their native land.”

“She fussed over them regular-like,” Scrapper put in. “Don’t I wish my mum had set such store by me.”

“Her original offence had no violence in it,” Luke offered. “A gentle lass she is, by her very nature.”

Mary remained slumped and silent, in a posture which might have suggested shame or bereavement. In truth, it was fury. For a full year she had struggled to keep it in check, but with the death of Charlotte it had come to dominate her soul. Although she had been willing to hope as long as there was hope, now that there was none, why should she not draw strength from her rage and use it for a final act of defiance? Thus the determination to never again look up to men who were looking down on her. Judge her they would; that she could not prevent. But her participation was hers to decide, and her absolute intent was that there would be none.

The magistrate was favourably impressed by the fact that Mary’s companions, rather than pleading their own cause, had spoken up on her behalf. Having no notion that the bowed head was intended as an act of defiance, he felt enormous sympathy for the starvation-thin woman standing before him. After sending the lot of them to Newgate to await trial, he told the press, “Never have I experienced so disagreeable a task as being obliged to commit this poor soul to prison.”

One week later, the five of them were brought to stand trial at the Old Bailey. By this time the men were aware of the publicity surrounding their case. In addition to press accounts, there were pickets in support of them in the street outside the courtroom. They learned that, even before their arrival back in England, the tabloids had made of Mary a celebrity, first as “The Girl from Botany Bay Who Got Away,” and later as, “The Girl from Botany Bay Who Almost Got Away”. Now, in part because she was silent, everyone felt at liberty to project onto her whatever they liked. Most saw the great sailing adventure as a heroic act undertaken for her children’s sake, one which demonstrated the courage and character of a true Englishwoman. Despite flourishes added to the story by newspapers that did not feel wholly bound by the facts, this was not far from the truth.

The Crown Prosecutor may have felt some sympathy as well, or else he was influenced by the press’s expressions of sympathy, for he did not call for the bolters to be hanged. Outright leniency, though, was out of the question. As he explained, if the Government went so far as to “do a kind thing,” that would give encouragement to other prisoners to try to escape. With these considerations in mind, the penalty imposed was for all five to, “remain on their former sentences until they should be discharged by due course of law.”

Given conditions inside Newgate Prison, such an indeterminate sentence certainly met the Crown’s criteria of not being a kind thing. Survival depended entirely upon the treatment received in lockup—and on whether one succumbed, as most did, to gaol fever.

As they left the courtroom, Mary to be taken to a ward in Newgate apart from James, Luke, Pip, and Scrapper, only the men said goodbye. Mary did not speak, nor lift her head, nor even move unless someone took her by the arm and drew her along. Was she sad? Was she sorry? Was she sane? As long as she showed no awareness of what was going on around her, and neither her face nor her eyes revealed what was going on in her head, how could anyone know?

A decade later, one Elizabeth Fry would bring about prison reforms which would include sleeping pads, so that inmates were not forced to lie upon the cold stone floor. Rules of decorum would be instituted to prevent the kind of chaos that reigned in the women’s wards during Mary’s incarceration. Although dogs had recently been banned
from the prison, inmates were still allowed to bring children, poultry, and pigs. All contributed to the noise and filth, and all went unnoticed by Mary. If she recognised this as the place where she had met Florie, Cass, and Colleen six years earlier, she gave no sign of it.

Mary’s notoriety had preceded her into the ward. Where other vulnerable women might have been abused by fellow inmates, most of the prisoners stood back, a little awed by the tales that had circulated regarding where she had been, what she had done, and what she had endured. The few inclined to molest her, as she curled herself into a ball against one wall, were quickly blocked by others who set themselves up as her defenders. It was an unusual situation, one the jailers admitted to visitors that they themselves had not seen before.

There were visitors. Some were merely curiosity-seekers come to gawk at the adventuress from Botany Bay, but at least one had a serious interest in seeing justice done. This was the writer James Boswell, a Scottish lawyer, member of London’s literary elite, and old college friend of Henry Dundas, the Secretary of State for Home Affairs. Boswell had a reputation for taking on causes for humanitarian
reasons, and in particular, ones involving “unfortunate” young women. None of his friends were surprised when he showed a keen interest in the affairs of “the girl from Botany Bay.”

At least, his interest in her was keen as long as he was merely reading about her in the press. When he actually visited her in Newgate, he was nearly shocked into abandoning her cause. Although she was young—only twenty-six to Boswell’s fifty-two—she was not beautiful. Nor was she, in his opinion, even sane.

“I’d not go in there if I was ye,” warned the turnkey when Boswell insisted on being permitted to enter the narrow exercise yard where upwards of forty women were engaged in all manner of activities from washing clothes to quarrelling to using chamber pots. “These ‘uns is rough, and could do a man harm.” The turnkey pointed to what appeared to be a heap of rags against a far wall. “Not that one, a’course, yer Mary Bryant. She ain’t moved yet of her own accord.”

“That’s her?” Boswell started at the body indicated. “Rouse her and bring her to the bars. Tell her a friend wants to speak to her.”

“Ain’t no rousing her,” the turnkey explained. “I can bring her, forcible-like, because I done it before. But she won’t look at ye nor speak a word, and quick as she’s let, she’ll flat turn away.”

“Then I will go in,” Boswell decided, for he could not believe that anyone who had done what Mary was reputed to have done could be entirely unreachable.

The turnkey instructed the prisoner designated as wardswoman to accompany Boswell across the courtyard to where Mary lay. The stench of the area was enough to induce gagging, for, in addition to the filth one might expect in such an overcrowded space, there were, in nearby chambers, the corpses of prisoners whose families had not yet come to claim them. Upon reaching Mary’s side, Boswell spoke her name. She did not move.

The wardswoman grabbed Mary’s forelock, jerked her head up, and cackled, “You got a gentleman ‘ere to see you, dearie.”

Although Mary’s blue-grey eyes were open, they stared vacantly, in such a way as to give Boswell the creeps. They were, he recounted later, as empty as those of a dead person.

But he was not a man easily put off an idea, and so he seated himself uncomfortably on the stone floor next to her and proceeded to talk. Other women collected in a circle around them, some making lewd remarks or calling out answers to questions he put to Mary. Boswell soon concluded that conversation was doomed in such an atmosphere, even if Mary were inclined to respond, which clearly she was not. Deeply disappointed, he said, “I will try to visit again, Mary, but I do not know if I can, for you see, I myself have been sentenced to death.”

Mary’s body jerked, and she turned her head just slightly to see him out of the corner of one eye, which was bluer than Boswell had first thought. This indication that she was in fact listening, and even comprehending, was there for only an instant, and then was gone.

Encouraged, he said, “The doctors give me no more than two years to live. Perhaps not even that long. But long enough, I hope, for us to become friends and share our histories. Would you like that?”

Something like a curtain drew over her eyes, causing them to revert to their original cloudy appearance, more grey than blue. When it became apparent that there would be no connection, verbal or otherwise, Boswell struggled awkwardly to his feet and left the ward.

Although Mary was not inclined to bestir herself, she had not been unaware of Boswell’s presence nor uncomprehending of his words. She operated more on feeling than thought these days, and her feeling about the man, whose name meant nothing to her, was that he was both kind and lecherous. His comment about being under sentence of death she did not believe. But then, she believed little of what was said to her by anyone, which was why she paid more attention to the squealing of rats scrabbling around the edges of the ward than she did to any words. Still, it was a startling thing for the man to say, which she had not expected.

Some would say later that it was Boswell’s interest that revived Mary, and perhaps that was a factor. He did leave money with the warden to pay the garnish which would ensure that she received a reasonable ration of food, and had soap and other items for which all prisoners paid or went without. He did the same for Pip, Scrapper, James, and Luke, housed in a men’s ward on the other side of the prison. It was in his mind even then that if he could not get a story from Mary, he might learn details of the trip from them.

A more likely reason for Mary’s return to something like normal was the simple passage of time. Several weeks after Boswell’s visit, Mary’s fingers touched the comb in her pocket, and she drew it forth. She examined the smooth wood and delicate workmanship, drawing pleasant sensations from the feel of it. It recalled to her Bados’s large hands, not as he was delicately carving this very item, but how they trembled when he held the compass. Another day she examined the teeth of the comb closely, to see if a few strands of Charlotte’s golden hair might yet be caught between them. One morning she remembered the feel of the comb as James had pulled it through her own hair on the last day they had been able to touch one another, as he tried to make her presentable for appearing before the magistrate. She brought her waist-long braid around into her lap and tentatively fumbled the comb through the loose end, below where it was tied.

This is what she was doing—this and remembering things that had been shut out of her mind for many months—when a ruckus broke out near the ward entrance. Mary did not look up or pay any attention whatever, but here is what was going on:

A well-dressed woman, and a well-known one, for she had been the madam of a bawdy house until her arrest following the suspicious death of one of her gentleman clients, had just been admitted. Her expensive clothing was awry and her elegantly-styled hair had come undone. Immediately upon entering she began to put herself right, buttoning this, straightening that, patting something else back into place. Seeing Mary fiddling with the comb, she made straight for her.

“My dear,” she carolled, “allow me to borrow your comb.”

Mary responded as she always did, which is to say, she did not respond at all. The newcomer, used to having her way with men and women alike, reached down and snatched the comb from Mary’s hands. She held it up to the light to examine it for lice before putting it to her own head. Mary slowly stood up, with her back to the wall, and reached for the comb.

“A moment if you please, dear,” the woman said sharply, holding it out of Mary’s reach. “I shan’t be long.”

The words were hardly out of her mouth before Mary had grabbed her by the hair and flung her to the floor. The comb went flying. Mary turned from the woman at once and picked it up. She had no more than dropped it back in her pocket when the woman grasped her by the arm, and plunged her hand into Mary’s pocket in pursuit of the comb. Without a sound or change of expression, Mary backhanded her in the face, knuckle hard, exactly as Will had hit her on more than one occasion. The stranger screamed and fell back, suddenly occupied with trying to staunch the flow of blood from her nose.

Women came running from all over the ward as those closest to the altercation began shrieking that the girl from Botany Bay had come alive and was on the verge of murdering a fellow inmate. The wardswoman pushed her way through the crowd just in time to see the new inmate spattered in blood and Mary—Mary had dropped to the floor and curled into a ball. The wardswoman grabbed her arm, intending to jerk her to her feet. Then she let out a piercing scream as Mary sunk her teeth into the woman’s hand. That brought the turnkey, who ordered Mary to get up and gave her a kick in the kidneys to make his point. Still Mary did not rise, so the turnkey lifted her bodily and flung her over his shoulder like a bag of potatoes, which in limpness she much resembled.

Out of the ward he marched, and to one of the refractory cells used for incorrigible prisoners; the one chosen had been vacated only hours before by a woman taken out to be hanged for having murdered her husband. Mary was flung down so roughly that her head struck the stone floor hard, a blow that left her unconscious.

When she came to and felt inclined to lift her throbbing head, she saw that she was in a room about six feet wide and eight feet long. At one end was the heavy wooden door through which she had been carried. At the other end, a high iron-barred window let in a little light. A chamber pot, a candle stand without a candle, and a stone bed with neither pad nor coverlet made up the contents of the room. Mary dragged herself onto the bed, which was more in the nature of a bench and no less hard than the floor. She reached into her pocket, felt the comb still there, and smiled.

From that moment on, Mary spent hours each day combing her hair, keeping it clean of lice and tangles. In the whole of her life, it was the first time she had ever been absolutely alone for an extended period. Such solitude was not a situation she would have requested, or even thought possible this side of the grave. Yet quite by accident, the small cell gave her precisely what she had been trying to create through emotional and mental withdrawal: a space which shut out almost everything, to the point that she could cease to participate in a world which had become intolerably unjust. There was no escaping the prison stench or the clamour that went on out in the exercise yard, but with stone walls and iron grates separating her from all that, she no longer had need of a mental barrier. She relaxed, and within a few days her mind had begun to form the occasional coherent thought.

Very likely she would not have remained in a refractory cell long, for there were surely more violent inmates than she, had it not been for another incident. Although she had begun to recover, she was not far enough along to deal with the unexpected appearance of a person whom at first she did not recognise, and when he recalled himself to her, she could make no sense of the purpose of his visit, and therefore responded in a way deemed most inappropriate.

Normally visitors and inmates exchanged words only in the visitors’ box, wherein they were separated by about three feet. This separation, along with the watchful eye of a warden, ensured that no contraband items were passed from one to the other. But with the payment of a fee anything was possible at Newgate. Mary’s visitor, as curious as all the rest of England about the girl from Botany Bay, did not wish it known that he had paid her a visit. Thus he paid a tidy sum to be admitted to her cell. As she had been quite calm during the two weeks she had been confined there, the warden who accepted the payment foresaw no problems.

The slender young man in clerical garb followed the turnkey along the corridor to the cell, holding a white silk handkerchief to his nose in a futile attempt to block out the smell of humans, animals and corpses grown putrid in the summer heat. The heavy wooden door was opened to reveal Mary sitting on the stone bench which served as a bed. Immediately she got up, moved to the far wall, and stood with her back to the man who had just been let in.

When she failed to acknowledge his presence, he said, in a high-pitched voice which revealed his nervousness, “Mary?” When still she did not respond, he tried again. “Mary Broad?”

The use of her maiden name so startled her that Mary turned and looked at the man, but still said nothing.

“Do you not remember me, Mary? I am Adam. The same whose father was the parson at the church you attended before . . . before . . .” He swallowed, and after a moment, tried again. “I last saw you in the lane, as I was departing for college. Do you not recall?”

He took a few steps toward her. As his features came clear to her in the dimly-lit room, Mary at last spoke. “I remember how long your lashes were, Adam, and how they lay against your cheek when your head was bowed in prayer.”

Adam’s intake of breath was audible, so startled was he by her recollection of such an intimate detail.

“You have hardly changed at all,” Mary continued, meaning that his face still matched the one she had dredged up from her memory.

“I shouldn’t think so.” He laughed nervously. “After all, it has only been six years. You look . . . different. But I’m certain your heart is the same,” he added.

“My heart?” Had Mary been in a humorous frame of mind she would have laughed, but as it was, only her tone of voice reflected how ridiculous she thought it was that he imagined he could be certain of what was in her heart.

Flustered, Adam answered quickly, “I mean, in your love for God. Your trust in Him.”

“Ah yes,” Mary said vaguely, and, with a fingertip, began to trace a pattern of light and shadow cast by the bars of the window upon the wall.

Emboldened by her passivity and full of a sense of mission, Adam moved closer. “He will redeem you, Mary. I know He will. You know the story of the prodigal son; we learned it together in Sunday School. Believe me, God loves a prodigal daughter no less.”

“How fortunate,” she said ironically.

Warming to his subject, Adam continued, “We all have sinned—”

“And been sinned against,” Mary interrupted bitterly.

“His mercy is infinite! It shows itself—”

Mary whirled on him, her face contorted with rage. “In fits and starts, and sometimes not at all! Where was God’s mercy when I called out to Him for my children’s sake? Better to believe He doesn’t exist than to imagine He deliberately allows such innocents to suffer!”

The outburst shocked Adam to the core. “We are all born in sin!” he exclaimed.

“Sin? Sin?” she hissed into his face. “Until you’ve seen the cruelty I’ve seen, you have no idea! You want a sinner? Seek out Captain Edwards, who killed so many on that final voyage, and brought back innocents to hang!”

“You cannot claim innocence!” Adam protested, trying to reclaim the upper hand in a dialogue on God’s mercy, a subject he surely knew better than she.

Mary’s voice rose to a shrieking crescendo. “I claim innocence for my children because they were innocent. If they’re not in Paradise I want no part of it, nor of the God who betrayed them!”

The jailer, who had remained just outside the door—ostensibly in case of trouble but in fact because he had found it profitable, in the past, to observe the goings-on in private cell tête-à-têtes about which he was later paid to keep silent—opened the door with a chuckle. “Had enough of ‘er, yer Reverence?”

Adam inched toward the door. “I shall return next week. I can see this will take time.”

Mary slumped onto the bench. “It has taken time, Adam. All the time I’ve been away. More time than you can imagine. One does not come back from that kind of journey.”

Reassured by her seeming return to reason, Adam said softly, “You are back, Mary. And I will return.”

“No,” Mary said flatly. “You are you and I am a woman you have never met, nor would want to know, nor could ever understand.”

“Ah, but God understands.”

In a flash, Mary was on her feet again, screaming. “Out! Out! I’ll not be understood by a God who murdered His own son and mine as well!”

Adam vanished through the doorway. The turnkey, still chuckling, listened to the young parson’s footsteps as he fled down the corridor. Then he shook his head in pity at the sound of Mary’s sobs coming from inside the cell.

It was this incident, when related to the warden by a shaken young clergyman and confirmed by the turnkey, that kept Mary in a refractory cell. The warden also felt called upon to warn James Boswell, when the writer requested another interview, that the girl from Botany Bay had turned violent.

Boswell’s long delay in paying Mary another visit was partly due to the fact that he had been very ill, for he suffered not only from malaria and gonorrhoea, but also from bouts of depression. When he was sufficiently recovered to again be up and about, he did go to Newgate, but not to see Mary, as his first visit had convinced him it would be a waste of time. Instead, he visited her companions in the men’s ward. They gratified him with a good deal of information about their journey from Botany Bay, but asked repeatedly for word of Mary. Finally he promised he would visit her again and report back to them. That was when they informed him of her confinement in solitary, something not known by the general public but circulated by word of mouth throughout the prison.

At first Boswell was inclined to disbelieve the rumour. He found it incredible that the pathetic rag of a woman he had tried to interview a month earlier had even regained the power of speech, let alone the energy to attack people in the violent ways described. Such incidents, if they had occurred at all, would have been greatly exaggerated in the telling. Still, Boswell was curious enough to want to see for himself. Despite the warden’s warnings, the writer paid the bribe required to enter the cell of the prison’s most exotic inmate.

“A Mr. Boswell here to see ye,” the turnkey told Mary gruffly. “Better behave yerself this time. Anymore outbursts like before and we’ll have ye in shackles.”

“Mrs. Bryant!” Boswell greeted her with the cheerful optimism that was his style. “I bring greetings from those who travelled with you from Botany Bay. They are most anxious about your health. I promised that I would report back to them as to how you are faring.”

Boswell saw the spark of interest that flared in Mary’s eyes, but was dismayed to see it immediately extinguished. Although she had not moved from the stone bench upon which she was seated, he felt her withdrawal.

He had no clue as to the confusion that existed in Mary’s mind about the others, and most especially about James. She remembered in great detail their escape from Botany Bay, and also their time together in Kupang. But she had no memory of what transpired during their last months together; she only knew that during that final voyage Charlotte had somehow been lost. And she remembered James combing her hair. Why he had done that she had no idea, for she did not recall their appearance before the magistrate, nor being in the dock at the Old Bailey. Had the men been brought to Newgate like herself? Returned to Botany Bay? Or hanged? Even if James was still alive, was it not probable that his love for her had died? After all, it was the workings of her mind he had loved. She did not need to be told that for the past many months her mind had scarcely functioned at all.

Thus, when Boswell indicated that he had news of her friends, Mary longed for that news as she had once longed for a sip of water on a deserted isle. Simultaneously she feared it, for what could be more painful than learning that James was alive but had ceased to love her? Unless it was that he loved her yet as she loved him, but with no hope of ever consummating that love, as they had promised each other, in freedom or not at all.

As Mary sat in silent confusion, Boswell lowered his corpulent body onto the stone bench next to her and proceeded to tell her of his visit to the men’s ward. “The visitors’ box kept them about a yard away, so we had to shout to make ourselves heard above the din. I asked them what I might have sent in to ease their confinement, expecting the usual requests for tobacco and the like. But all they clamoured for was news of you. Your Mr. Brown, now, he also asked for books, if you can believe that. I asked him what sort, and he gratified me by indicating that he had read my interview with the Corsican revolutionary Pasquale Paoli. When I told him I had recently had published a biography of Dr. Johnson, he immediately solicited a copy! By Jove, but I was surprised!”

Boswell smiled in a self-satisfied way, and rattled on. “I thought he was putting me on, not expecting someone of his class, and from the Colonies at that, to be so well-read. But when he added that anything by the Bard would be equally welcome, and spontaneously, the three standing with him began to recite The Phoenix and The Turtle, well, can you imagine the incongruity of four men shouting out those verses over the din of the ward?”

He glanced at Mary, and was startled to see silent tears trickling down her cheeks. Mention of that poem brought to mind how all the prisoners in the hold, including those from the Bounty, had recited it by way of eulogy for little Emanuel.

“Why, Mrs. Bryant!” Boswell was astonished. “Have I upset you? I am so sorry!”

Mary dried the tears with the back of her hand, and said only, “Broad.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“My name is Mary Broad.”

“Yes, of course!” Boswell brightened. “That was your maiden name, was it not? In one of the newspaper accounts I recall reading that. Actually, I have been wondering about those stories, Mrs.—uh, Mary Broad. Just how much of what has been reported might be true?”

There was a silence; the sort which at first Boswell would take for slow-wittedness, but which he would later come to understand was something else. At times it was a lack of interest in answering the question, but at other times, thoughtfulness. In this case it would seem to be the latter, for she eventually replied, “How much of anything is true?”

Boswell raised an eyebrow. “I suppose that depends on what one believes.”

“Belief has little to do with truth,” Mary said flatly, in a tone which suggested that she had dismissed him as some kind of fool.

Boswell was more excited than offended to hear such pithy remarks coming from the mouth of this infamous yet largely unknown woman. Drawing out a pad and pencil, he asked, “Do you mind if I take notes on our conversation?”

“Will they be used against me?”

“Oh no,” Boswell assured her. “On the contrary. They might be used to help you.”

“Help me be hanged, or returned to Botany Bay?”

Boswell frowned, for it seemed to him that she had misunderstood the judgement already rendered, which was that she was to remain in prison for an indeterminate period of time. There was every likelihood that she would perish of typhus, or “gaol fever” as it was called, for this was the fate of most confined here for very long.

“Have you a preference?” he asked curiously.

This time it was even longer before she replied, “If I were put on a ship, I could cast myself into the sea. I like the sea. ‘Twas where my father ended his days. And my children.”

“What if you are compelled to live?” he asked gently, his innately sympathetic nature coming to the fore.

“I do not live now,” she said simply.

“I grant you this is hard, Mary, but surely it is life!”

With words still coming slowly, but definitely moved along by thought, she replied, “Life has light, and colour. There is no colour here.”

It was then, finally, that she looked at him, and he back at her, until he replied, “Your eyes are very blue.”

She continued staring at him a little longer, then dropped her gaze and asked, “What is it you want of me, Sir?”

“To understand something of your nature, dear girl. But perhaps I already do.”

“Perhaps you never shall,” she contradicted.

“You think not? Pray, tell me why.”

“England is very far.”

“England? Far?” His brows puckered with incomprehension.

“Far from Botany Bay.”

Mary grew moody after that, disinclined to provide even cryptic responses to Boswell’s questions. After a few more questions, met with silence, he took his leave.

Boswell followed the turnkey back down the corridor with a jaunty step. The girl from Botany Bay was proving ever so much more interesting than he had imagined. She would provide stories with which he could entertain his friends for weeks!

A month passed before Boswell visited again, and again the delay was by reason of ill health. When at last he felt inclined to revisit the bolters from Botany Bay, he was received with the utmost courtesy by the men. The same could not be said of Mary. His September visit unfortunately coincided with a hanging. Boswell himself would not have thought this worth mentioning, but the jailer, as he was searching through his keys for the one to her cell, asked, “Did ye see the execution of the mutineers, Governor?”

“No,” Boswell answer shortly.

“Hanged by the neck, they was, the three of ‘em. And left to dangle two full hours to make sure they was no coming back to life.”

At last the turnkey got the door open and Boswell entered quickly, not wanting to hear more morbid details. But already too many had reached Mary’s ears. As soon as the cell door closed, she turned on him and demanded, “Who?”

“Three of the Bounty mutineers,” Boswell said, taken aback by her intensity. “If I recall the names correctly from the morning paper, it would be Burkitt, Ellison and Millward.”

“What foul deeds pass for justice in this country!” Mary hissed.

“You think they were not deserving?” Boswell personally believed that if anyone deserved to hang, it would be mutineers.

“They were abused beyond endurance before the mutiny, for which they were scarcely to blame! And afterwards, tortured more than those who celebrate their deaths can possibly imagine! And that I know for a fact, for was I not with them?”

“You were—oh, my dear! Were you and they returned on the same ship?”

“So we were! Separate cells we had in the dungeon of Kupang and later on the Gorgon, but for the five months from Kupang to Capetown, shackled side by side we were in conditions as foul as a privy. Yet in all that time, even the two who admitted to being party to the mutiny never lost their humanity.”

“Which two would those have been?” Boswell asked alertly. At last he was beginning to get the kinds of stories he sought from Mary, related to her travels, and he was mightily intrigued.

“Ellison claimed to have participated, but he was only a boy, not above sixteen when the mutiny occurred. Burkitt said he knew of it in advance, so I suppose he was in on it, too. But neither chose to go with Christian, wanting only to escape the brutality of Captain Bligh.”

Pacing like a tiger, Mary went on, “Burkitt had in O’Tahiti a native wife he’d given the name of Mary, and they had a daughter the age of mine, whom they called Charlotte, too. Of all the Bounty prisoners, none was kinder to my little girl. Why, he gave her food from his own portion!”

She stopped before him and stared angrily into his face. “You cannot know, Sir, until you have been as hungry as we were, how starvation is one torture, but to take a bit of food your whole body is craving and put it in the mouth of another and watch them swallow it down brings on a suffering just as intense. This poor pock-marked Burkitt did for my child when Captain Edwards was starving us all to death!”

“There was another youth, Peter Heywood,” Boswell began tentatively. “And a man by name of Morrison, both recommended to His Majesty’s mercy. I expect they will be pardoned. Also a cook’s assistant—”

“Willy Muspratt,” Mary supplied. “Flogged by Bligh more than once, they said, and yet all agreed he had had no part in the mutiny. Did they hang him, too?”

“Muspratt was sentenced to die,” Boswell told her. “But he wasn’t hung with the others this morning. Perhaps there has been some reconsideration, and he will be pardoned as well.”

“Pardoned!” Mary spat the word bitterly. “How is it that some are pardoned for crimes they never committed, while others are never called to account for the crimes they did? Mark my word, Mr. Boswell, Captain Edwards, murderer of children and the parents of children, will walk the good earth into old age.”

Boswell stayed a while longer, but Mary lapsed into a moody silence, and he could get no more out of her. At last he took his leave, tipping the turnkey on his way out, and leaving extra money with the warden to ensure that Mary had decent food and other necessities.

Mary suffered a period of depression after that visit, but by the time Boswell came again she had come out of it and, if not cheerful, was at least receptive to his company. Little by little she came to trust the roly-poly man for, despite the lecherousness she sensed in him, he never presumed to touch her. Physically unattractive though he was in most respects, his eyes were genuinely kind, and he had a serious interest both in her adventures and in her unconventional ideas.

Only once did she seriously offend him, and that was on a visit when he undertook to read to her one of his lengthy poems, entitled, No Abolition of Slavery or the Universal Empire of Love. As he perched his bulky body on the stone bench and read aloud, she sat on the floor at his feet as, long ago, she had sat at the feet of her father as he spun tales.

Boswell read with such cheerfulness and droll expressions that she enjoyed his recitation even though she barely understood what the poem was about, only dimly perceiving that it had something to do with goings-on in the House of Commons. Not till many pages along did she grasp that it was a rant against those who would abolish slavery.

At that she rose and walked to the end of the room and stood under the barred window with her back to him, as she was wont to do when she did not wish to be engaged. Her silence and the set of her shoulders caused Boswell to stop reading.

“Are you not understanding, Mary dear? Would you have me break the rhyme and provide explanations for the difficult parts?” he inquired solicitously.

“I doubt you can explain to me what you do not understand yourself,” she snapped.

“I beg your pardon?” he asked, scarcely believing she could have said such a thing. “What in this verse, which I myself have written, do you imagine I do not understand?”

“I wager you have never known a black man, or have any idea how they’re treated.”

“What? You consider me insensitive on the subject? Did you miss the line where I remarked that the conditions in which slaves are transported should be improved?”

Mary turned around and glared at him. “Ah yes, so, as you would have it, they can sing, sing, sing while they toil as time flies by on downy wing. Filled with joy they are because in sickness they are never neglected, and their wives and children always protected!” she recited in a tone of dripping sarcasm, somewhat scrambling the words but with meaning intact. “Ah, Sir, I have met some fools in my time, indeed I have. Given your kindness to me and my companions, it pains me to discover that you are one of them.”

Boswell rose, red-faced and sputtering. “You speak as if you know something of slaves yourself, which hardly seems credible!”

“Indeed not!” Mary gave him a look of contempt “What could I know of a black man with whom I spent many months, who made for me this very comb—.” Here she reached into her pocket and flashed the carved comb in Boswell’s face. “And whose hands I last saw holding the compass I used for our escape from Botany Bay—a compass which enabled him to make his escape, along with a most beautiful woman who threw in her lot with him.”

This outburst, one of the longest Boswell had heard from Mary, left him both infuriated and intrigued, for up to now he had heard nothing about a black man who sailed with them, or how he had evaded capture.

As he gathered up the pages of his doggerel and called to the turnkey to come let him out, Mary saw she had hurt his feelings, and later she was sorely ashamed. Once again she had let her temper flare, and probably had damaged a relationship which had resulted in benefits not only to herself but to James, Luke, Scrapper and Pip, who had more need of kindness than she. What she needed was—well, truth be told, she had no idea. What does a person who has already lost everything and has no future to look forward to, really need?

Certainly she did not need memory, for that only intensified her sense of loss. Nor did she crave kindness, for it was a reminder of decent people among whom she was not considered fit to mingle. Not that all people who were kind could be thought decent, nor did everyone who imagined themselves decent practice kindness. These thoughts she brushed away, for they were among the many things she did not need.

Ah, James, she thought, as for this mind of mine which will not be done with thinking, whose way of proceeding you most admired, that is the thing I now need least of all.

Mary might have imagined that she no longer needed her mind, but once the grief which had muddied it began to abate, she did use it. First and foremost, she undertook to be civil to Boswell when he next appeared, as she could not avoid the fact that his interest in their story had generated some benefits for Pip, Scrapper, Luke, and James. Boswell had hinted that he wanted to help her, too, but she sensed his lecherous intent and remained prickly in his presence. Why indulge him when, unlike Captain Smit, Boswell had nothing she wanted? All she had ever cared about was now gone or, like freedom itself, was beyond her reach. And, she supposed, beyond the reach of Mr. Boswell.

It was a good long while before Boswell came again. When at last he did, she made a point of behaving toward him in a courteous manner. Instead of turning away or ignoring him until he spoke, she put out her hands in greeting. “Mr. Boswell, how nice to see you,” she said, and discovered that she actually meant it.

He beamed his delight at the warm reception and replied, gallantly, “You look very handsome, Mary. If your presence were not required here, I would take you to meet my friends.”

She snatched her hands back from him as if he meant to drag her out to meet strangers that very moment. “I should not like that, Mr. Boswell!”

He laughed. “And why not, may I ask?”

“Ah, you would not understand, Sir.”

“Do give me the opportunity,” he implored, lowering his bulk onto the bench and patting a place beside him. “Come, my dear. Explain yourself.”

She hesitated, then sat, not quite where he indicated, but close enough to not cause offence to him or unease to herself. As for explaining, she hardly knew where to begin. Could she describe how the mere mention of “meeting friends” caused her heart to contract with aching for friends she would never see again? Or that knowing such a simple thing was forever impossible was like knowing one’s life was ended already? Although those things were in Mary’s heart, she did not have the means to put them into words. Instead, she spoke of her behaviour, feeling that this, at least, Boswell would understand.

“When I left England,” she began tentatively. “its customs were strong in me. But now I often fail to think of pleasing others. Yet for your kindness these past months, it would sadden me to conduct myself in such a way as to cause you shame. As I most likely would if I were brought into the presence of your fine friends.”

“Dear Mary!” he exclaimed. “Have I not proven myself to you by now?”

“Proven yourself?” Mary frowned, not understanding what proof he might suppose was needed for anything. “In what way?”

“Have I not demonstrated that in my presence you may conduct yourself exactly as you please?”

“Ah, I see. ‘Tis true, you have never censured me for my behaviour.” She added, more to herself than to him, “With so little time, and all of it to be spent within these walls, it can’t really matter now, can it?”

Boswell smiled broadly, “Perhaps you are wrong in your suppositions as to what the future holds. The Home Secretary was a school chum of mine. I have communicated with him on countless occasions regarding your case. Believe me, dear girl, when I say there is hope!”

If he had anticipated that Mary would throw herself on him in a spasm of gratitude, it was only because he did not understand the workings of her mind and so was unaware of her ability to look into the future and see how one thing would likely lead to another. She rose from the bench and moodily began to pace the cell from door to window and back again.

“Tell me, Sir, what hope is there for an Englishwoman who does not bow to her betters? One who shows anger when felt and will not pretend to beliefs she does not hold?”

“But my dear!” Boswell exclaimed excitedly. “Those are the very habits of one who harbours an independence of both mind and spirit.”

Mary considered this notion, which had never occurred to her before, then dismissed it. “In a man, perhaps. But in a woman, those are deemed the habits of one not fit to be a wife or mistress or servant. Perhaps not even a decent trollop.”

Boswell burst into such a fit of laughter that his whole robust body jiggled. Then he sobered and said, “I daresay you speak the truth. Remarkable that you should discern it.”

Mary shrugged. “If the whole world can discern it, how is it so remarkable that I can?”

Then she turned the subject away from herself, for she had long since discovered that thoughts of her personal situation were among the most depressing. “What of you, Mr. Boswell? Is there any power that will pardon you, that you might live long and happily?”

At that he sagged a little, and replied, “Long, I fear not. But if I live to see you free, Mary, that will give me more happiness than I have known since . . . .” He paused, and smiled slyly, “Since my wilder moments as a young man.”

Mary sat down next to him then, and, for the first time, voluntarily put her hand in his. For a long while neither spoke, but sat in companionable silence. In Mary’s mind, which was never as quiet as her person, the only question was which of them would be first into the grave. She felt sorrier for Boswell than for herself, because she had nothing more to lose.

On each of Boswell’s subsequent visits, Mary endeavoured to give him what he seemed to want most from her: tales of her travels in far places. She even told him about the deaths of her children, and was gratified when he wept as if their loss had been his own.

“You must miss them terribly,” Boswell said sympathetically.

“No.”

He looked as shocked as if she had said she had strangled them. “No?”

“By day I can barely remember their faces. It’s as if they were tots I only heard tell of and never really knew.” She paused and added, “Nights I often dream of them, and they are as real as in the flesh. I do not miss them then, for it seems that they are with me.”

Boswell continued to bring books, pamphlets, and poems to read to her. Mary enjoyed these more than conversations about herself. Perhaps because of her reaction to the pro-slavery poem, he did not again read anything he had written. He brought some things by Dr. Johnson, who he said had been his boon companion until that great man’s death eight years before.

“Once,” Boswell grinned, “Dr. Johnson criticised me for eating oats for breakfast. He said that in England a man would not think of eating oats; that they are fed only to horses. I replied that this must be why in England you have better horses, and in Scotland you have better men.”

They laughed together. Then Boswell grew teary as he recalled the death of his best friend. This time Mary wept with him for his loss, as he had wept for hers.

Having no calendar or means for determining the date, Mary did not know when she woke up on the morning of May 1, 1793, that it was her twenty-seventh birthday. Nor did she know, when Boswell came to visit, so ill that he required the assistance of his manservant to walk the distance down the corridor to her cell, that he carried news which would turn the life that she no longer deemed worth living upside down. Which is to say, it was about to be put right side up again.

When the turnkey opened the door and she saw the pained paleness of Boswell’s normally ruddy face, she rushed forward to help him to a seat on the stone bench. But he waved her off, and said, “Dear Mary, this is the last time I shall visit you.”

“Please tell me that is not so!” she cried, for she had grown truly fond of the jolly man whose illness made him seem so much older than his fifty-three years.

“Perhaps our next visit will be in my quarters.” He attempted a smile which came out more as a grimace. “These days, my doctors get very cross with me when I go out, and my body protests even louder.”

Anxious on account of his condition and thinking his invitation for her to visit him a humourless joke, Mary urged, “Do come and sit, Sir, for I can see it pains you to stand.”

“Nay,” said Boswell. “My carriage waits without. I came only to give you the news, which will be given to the warden by the Sheriff of Middlesex on the morrow.”

“What news might that be?” Mary asked anxiously, for all she could think was that any news pertaining to her situation could not be good.

“As I told you before, I have been lobbying for your release for many months. And not only I, but a great many other people. At last a pardon has been granted. Within a day or two, you shall be free to go.”

“I . . . alone?” Mary was so stunned she could scarcely breathe. “My . . . friends?”

“We are still working on that,” Boswell replied. “I can only assure you that they have not been forgotten.”

She fell against Boswell’s ample chest and began to weep, for it was all too much to take in. “But I have nothing to give you in return,” she blubbered.

“I have done much good in my life,” Boswell said immodestly, “and have got much good in return. But sometimes it benefits a man to do good for the sake of goodness alone.”

*

How much Boswell had done for Mary she did not know till the following day. This was when she was released, having served the seven years to which she had originally been sentenced, plus six additional weeks.

Mary did not walk out of the prison alone, for Mr. Boswell had sent his solicitor to explain to her that she was to receive an annuity of ten pounds for the rest of her life.

“He also instructed me to give you this purse, which contains a sum of money for your immediate expenses. Can you think of anything you need right away?”

Mary stood on the paving outside Newgate Prison and looked up at the grey sky. Were she in Cornwall the sky would be blue, and the sun would be spreading its warmth across the land. But here in London the sky was overcast, and a cold spring wind bit through the ragged gown that she had worn night and day during the eleven months of her imprisonment at Newgate.

“Yes,” Mary said. “A cloak.”