1
Sarah Island Penal Settlement
Macquarie Harbour
Van Diemen’s Land
¶
Winter of 1829
The silence was deafening. His crazed thoughts floundering in the raw darkness.
His sanity teetered on the edge in the stygian, claustrophobic blackness.
In the blackness, the awful blindness, Captain Bragg had time to lament — plenty of time to think. Why was he in this mess? Why was he shivering in solitary confinement in a cold dank eight-foot by four-foot stone cell, on one of the world’s most windswept islands in one of the world’s most desolate penal colonies — Sarah Island — off the west coast of Van Diemen’s Land?
Sarah, he thought — and managed to chuckle anxiously into the blackness. Who on God’s earth would call a cesspit of human waste after such a sweet name?
Yes, Captain Bragg tinkered with his lonely thoughts, plenty of time to think, plenty of time on me hands. Which reminds me, I’m thinkin’ me thirty days in this shithole are up. He tried to tally up the daily rations of bread and water poked through a small narrow hatch by the guard. Thirty times to be sure. Surely?
Days and nights were one. Blackness. No, worse, much worse. Bitter cold blindness. And the cell was designed with an antechamber so that the outer door closed first. This prevented any light spilling into the solitary cell when its door was opened — once a day.
Once a day, to empty his soil bucket and toss him some stale bread.
‘Sneaky bastards, them builders’, he muttered. ‘Night and day, same-same. Or is that day and night’? If it was supposed to drive a man mad it was doing a damned good job.
‘Abbott Bragg’, he remonstrated to himself, ‘you can get through this’. Silence answered. Unnatural eerie quietness. ‘Abbott Bragg? I never did get a chance to ask me blessed mother why she gave me the confounded name “Abbott”. I’d rather Henry … or Mathew maybe. Yes, yes, Mathew is a strong name. Matt Bragg … hmm’.
All his army mates called him ‘The Bishop’, or simply ‘Bishop’ after the religious connotation of the word Abbott. Stupid nickname, Bishop. A moment’s reflection. ‘Could be worse I’m thinkin’. Like Alliwishus … hmmm … Captain Alliwishus Bragg at your service … madam’. And Abbott coughed up a laugh.
Captain Abbott Bragg felt the cockroach creep across his bare foot. Silent. Just the sticky little pitter-patter as it climbed from his bare big toe to the gnarly bridge of his filthy foot — another blind cellmate.
‘Aha, Queen Caroline ya fat bastard, there ya be,’ he said out loud, and placed a calloused palm blindly in the path of the bug allowing it to crawl onto his hand. Like a tamed circus act the crawly was quite happy to be handled. And why not indeed? The convict had been feeding it stale bread the past week or so, so why shouldn’t the insect trust this man.
‘Queen Caroline! So where have you been ya little minx?’ Abbott placed the insect near his ear so as to hear its reply. ‘Oh!’ Abbott repeated the answer for his own amusement, in a girlie voice becoming for a roach. ‘You’ve been to see the king. Well, my armour-plated knight, how is the old devil?’ Old devil indeed, he considered. And there lay the root of his problem. It was Abbott’s pontificating thoughts, said aloud to fellow inmates — about what he would like to do to the commandant’s flirtatious wife, Rosie Ryan — that caused this incarceration in this hellhole in the first place.
Abbott sat heavily on the stone floor, a little too close to his slop bucket, and allowed the bug to crawl into his greasy matted hair where it afforded him some comfort in its own creepy crawly manner. With his elbow carelessly resting at the edge of the wooden bucket filled with his own filth, Abbott mulled over the last few years of his wretched life.
· · ·
Born in Skegness, East Midlands in 1802, Abbott Bragg served with the 53rd Regiment in Madras, Bengal, where through sheer hard work and bravery in the field, he quickly rose to the rank of lieutenant. He was a dashingly handsome man, in his late twenties with the physique of a boxing ring showman working with a travelling fair. And tall! My, how the ladies swooned. Abbott’s generous red locks and emerald green eyes hinted at a North Sea bloodline. Maybe, just maybe, there was some truth in the rumours about his mother and the shipwrecked sailor from Oslo — the same lone survivor who came ashore to seek help after being wrecked north of the village. Abbott’s father, Thomas Bragg, was a fisherman. He was away at sea at the time. Two days the sailor stayed under the same thatched roof. But it was only a rumour.
Abbott married a stonemason’s daughter, Hermione Gilby, an attractive lass; petite, polite, subservient but hopelessly uninteresting. But, apparently — the lads around the army base whispered later — she was a raving fox behind his back. She followed Abbott on his post to India. Abbott was in love, and for once in his Casonava life he kept his lustful urges — outside his marriage — locked away within his buttoned britches.
Then, as a result of complications during the birth of their first child, Hermione died. Both mother and child were lost to the Creator. Abbott slipped head first from the rails. He abused the bottle, experimented with laudanum, smoked opium and one thing led to another.
And the devil loitered in the man’s shadows.
1825
How Abbott awoke naked in the arms of the disarmingly beautiful Rebecca McGourley — young trophy wife of his commanding officer, Brigadier Fergus McGourley — was a total mystery. But the empty gin bottle propped neck down in the bedchamber pisspot, like champagne in its wine cooler, should have been a clue. Not that it mattered one rupee in this philanderer’s case. Abbott was slapped awake by the spank of a heavy-duty leather glove — Brigadier Fergus McGourley’s glove. It was to be pistols at dawn the next day!
Being guilty of wounding your superiors in the British Army was a dangerous space to be in and Brigadier Fergus McGourley made certain he had the witnesses to see Abbott court-martialled.
‘He was bloody lucky the ball only skinned his neck,’ Abbott told his lawyer; a useless retired army major with rancid breath from tonsil stones, and dandruff snowing from under his second-hand wig.
Luckily for Abbott, the dithering brigadier’s bullet whistled harmlessly askew and lodged itself in a cart fifty yards further back — the pistols in question being the brigadier’s heirloom duelling flintlocks two generations overdue for service.
Later that morning Abbott was arrested by six strapping young red-coated soldiers and their ambitious sergeant and marched directly to the lockup in Fort William. Here he spent nearly four weeks in a single cell in stifling and cramped conditions until a frigate of the line, the HMS Angry, sailed for England and Abbott was finally sent back to the Mother Land in disgrace.
Misfortune continued to shadow Abbott.
Gossip persisted. Scuttlebutt whispers about the honourable Brigadier Fergus McGourley stalked Abbott all the way back to England. Rumours that the less than righteous Brigadier Fergus McGourley — who was also retiring back to England with his adulterous wife on board the HMS Angry — had a dark side. The old school army officer had a weakness for the company of young men. A dark secret undeniably out of character for a professional regimental man of his standing. A wolf amongst the lambs.
· · ·
After three months in West London’s notorious Newgate Prison — penned up with debtors, murders, rapists, arsonists, forgers, coiners and even highwaymen — Abbott was set free without charge. It seemed the brigadier — with all those skeletons in his closet — had a hand in his release and did not wish to stir the porridge any further than he already had, for fear trouble may catch up with himself also. Abbott left Newgate Prison with nothing but the tattered, smelly clothes on his back and a giant chip on his shoulder.
Abbott, the flesh on his ankles raw from the prison irons, dawdled down Ludgate Hill and passed Christopher Wren’s imposing structure of St Paul’s Cathedral. He gazed up at its overwhelming Baroque dome and pondered why his God had deserted him. Abbott crossed over Moorgate and ambled down Threadneedle Street searching for his purpose in life.
If Abbott had not been an old school acquaintance of the doorman at the Bank of England in Threadneedle Street, he would never have been allowed entrance into the bank. Here he drew out his total savings of two pounds and thirteen shillings with interest; savings he had squirrelled away before leaving for India. The two gold guinea coins, along with silver florins, shillings and sixpences, chinked with a welcome renewed confidence in Abbott’s grubby britches pocket — that is until his holey boots crossed the threshold of Ye Olde Fighting Cock Inn in Powder Lane.
The remainder of the day passed pleasantly, but as the number of inns visited increased, the number of coins in his pocket dwindled. Then Abbott met an old soldier mate in The White Hart Inn, a fellow officer newly returned from India. Godfrey Bowes-Lynn had also hit on hard times. His pension had crossed the taproom bars of many a watering hole to satisfy his fondness for gin. As the weight of his purse dictated the quality of the gin, the imported Dutch Geneva was soon replaced with the local Old Tom. And the cheapest Old Tom was generally found in Southwark where The White Hart Inn stood, precariously wedged between other firetraps on the bank of the Thames. It was here, amongst the gin soaked desperate of the White Hart, that Abbott learnt from his army colleague that Rebecca McGourley, the brigadier’s trophy wife, had run off with a French aristocrat.
‘Really?’ Why was Abbott not surprised?
‘Yesh, really,’ Godfrey’s heavy eyelids grinned back.
‘I alwaysh shed she was naught but a whore,’ Godfrey muttered, his smile fading to displeasure as he peered into his empty pewter mug.
Abbott had to agree. ‘Here’s to whores,’ he toasted the bar while pirouetting on his heels. As the conversation continued, Godfrey remembered he also knew the old brigadier’s address, which he unfortunately entrusted to Abbott.
So it was, that after a session of drowning his sorrows in the grimy depraved inns along the Thames, wisdom finally abandoned Abbott. It deserted him the moment he put his elbow through the rear scullery window of the brigadier’s townhouse in Fulham. Bent on dishonouring the old war veteran Abbott rummaged through the man’s middle class abode. And a little more recklessly than he would have normally if he hadn’t consumed the extra flask of gin on the omnibus ride to the western suburb.
Once again Abbott was slapped awake by the enraged Brigadier Fergus McGourley, when he too arrived home in the early hours of the morning. Abbott had fallen into a peaceful slumber, spreadeagled in his foe’s front hallway.
· · ·
Another two miserable months passed at Newgate Prison. Finally, Abbott was dragged in irons next door to the Old Bailey courthouse.
‘Abbott Bragg,’ the leering judge scowled down from his pulpit at the sorry sight of his intimidated prisoner. ‘Disgraced army lieutenant Abbott Bragg, late of His Majesty’s army.’ Abbott dropped his head and avoided the judge’s cruel stare. He gazed at the bare floorboards through his own bloodshot eyes, conscious of his bedraggled appearance, with his long, red hair matted from lack of soap and water.
‘You have been found guilty of burglary with intent to steal from the home of the honourable Brigadier Fergus McGourley. Do you have anything to say for yourself?’
Abbott now looked up at Judge Maximillian Edward Sandpecker. Something was crawling through the man’s wig and Abbott wanted to laugh out loud. The overfed bloated judge simply glared back with impatience — fresh pork pies were waiting with the publican’s special dark ale at the Pig and Whistle across the street, and the monstrous pudding of a man was famished.
‘No,’ Abbott said meekly.
‘No what?’
‘No, your Honour.’
‘That’s more like it you wretched man.’ Abbott’s attention was side-tracked once more by spittle collecting on the judges pallid portly chin. ‘Nothing to say for yourself, fine. Now stand, so I may pass sentence.’
The judge gulped several breaths until he was confident he had the wind required for his task.
‘Abbott Bragg of Skegness, Yorkshire,’ he boomed across the courtroom, fancying himself as a Roman orator. ‘You have been found guilty of burglary with intent to steal. You are to be transported to the penal colony of Van Diemen’s Land for the term of seven years.’
The gavel slammed into the oak, gouging another dent into the already dinted bench. Although the ruling was expected it now seemed to Abbott like a death sentence.
And maybe it was.
The court bailiff immediately slammed his staff onto the floorboards. ‘All rise,’ he croaked with self-importance. All in the room stood to a chorus of scraping furniture legs and the scuffling of boots; and the judge waddled through into his chambers like a beached sea elephant. The courtroom immediately cleared in a disorderly scrum for the taprooms around The Old Bailey while Abbott was handcuffed and dragged unceremoniously back to his holding cell deep underground where urine infused straw and lice awaited.
· · ·
‘Yes,’ Abbott told the cockroach, now sitting back in the palm of his hand, in the blackness of his Sarah Island cell, ‘That judge was a fat bastard, a large portion if I have ever seen one. Maximillian the humungous we called him.’ The cockroach stood at attention a moment. It seemed awfully interested in Abbott’s ramblings.
‘You know I saw several hangin’s from my cell window at Newgate, dozens of ’em.’ The roach was fascinated. ‘On the eve of a hangin’ they’d wheel out the “New Drop”, that’s what they called them gallows, with a team of horses. And they’d place ’em in front of Debtor’s Gate so the public could see. Thousands of people would show up, some rich bastards, I was told, paid ten quid a piece for good seats. They ’ad soldiers armed with pikes there as guards to keep the crowd orderly. If there were ladies to be ’anged they bound their dresses to their ankles, for modesty like, when they dropped.’
Abbott — concerned the cockroach had died on him — couldn’t resist poking it gently with his finger in the dark. It moved slightly. Satisfied he still had an audience Abbott continued.
‘Then you’d hear the crowd at the back yell out, “off with hats”. I thought this was out of respect for them about to die, but really it was so the crowd at the back could get a good look!’
Abbott chuckled in the blackness at the macabre thought. The cockroach immediately scurried about on his hand. Abbott felt the bug crawl up and under his sleeve looking for bread, then return. ‘Sorry matey, they haven’t fed me yet,’ he said. The roach stopped in the centre of his palm, listening. Waiting.
‘What’s that you say?’ Abbot asked the insect. ‘How did I end up on this ’ere island? Well, Queen Caroline, I’m glad ya asked. Take a pew old girl and I’ll tell ya.’
· · ·