Break your chains, p.5
Break Your Chains, page 5
The cell you are thrown into is dank and subterranean, about the size of a barn but with a low ceiling. It’s crowded with about fifty ragged women and a few children. Mercifully, it has an opening in one of its slimy, black stone walls – a window lined with iron bars, at head height. The window lets in a little light and air, and through it you can see the feet and ankles of those walking by directly outside at street level. Some of the prisoners glance at you when you arrive: a few with glazed, indifferent eyes; others with faces prickly with hostility. You shrink back against a wall, not saying anything – just waiting and watching, until you can learn if there’s anyone here to trust.
A few of the women crowd under the little window, extending their hands and calling out pleadingly to passers-by. You watch them do this for hours, wondering why they bother to keep at it – until, just before dusk, a passer-by throws the tail end of a loaf of bread down through the hole. A broad, blonde woman catches it, then fights off the others with one hand as she shoves the food into her mouth with the other, chewing and swallowing as fast as she can, even as her hair’s being yanked by one of the others.
As darkness falls, the prison guard drops a single scoop of watery slop into a bowl for you. You eat it quickly, but there’s still a gnawing hole in your belly. So that’s how you get by in here, you think. Those who are tough enough to stand at the window the longest, and fight the hardest, get something extra.
I can do that, you think, a little flame of hope lighting inside you. And I’ll be lucky tomorrow – I know I will.
ANKLES. ALL THE next morning, you watch ankles and feet passing by the window. Your eyes follow them as keenly as a dog on a scent: leather shoes, some broad and black, some dainty and tan, plodding and tapping. When you stand right under the window and look up, you can see people’s faces, too.
‘Milady!’ you shout as a parasol swings by.
‘Please, sir!’ you call to a man in black who’s stopped to check his watch.
Plenty of them look wealthy enough to spare you a coin or a crust, but none of them do.
Hours pass, and your arms ache from holding them up to the window. You can see why most of the prisoners don’t bother with this: it’s disheartening and exhausting. But just then, a middle-aged man in a cap and brown waistcoat passes by.
‘Here you go, love,’ he says kindly, and he tosses something down to you that flashes in midair and hits the stone rim of the window with a clink.
You snatch up the coin from the floor where it falls. Then you dart away and hold it tightly in your hand as the other women who were also at the window grab at you and yell.
‘Oi, you’ve only been here one day. Give it to me!’ shouts one, pummelling you. You manage to elbow her in the face, and she screams. She raises a hand to strike you when a shout from one of the other prisoners makes everyone run back to the window.
‘Men prisoners! They’re bringing a load in for sentencing!’
It’s hard to see past the crowd that’s formed under the window. ‘What’s going on?’ you ask a brown-haired girl standing beside you.
‘They’ve brought some men in from one of the other prisons, or the hulks maybe, to be taken to the Old Bailey next door for sentencing,’ she explains.
You plunge into the crowd and wriggle your way to the front to get a better look. A line of men comes up the street, being herded like tired sheep by guards with truncheons at the ready. Iron shackles on their wrists and ankles are linked to a long chain that clinks as they shuffle along. The women who are crowded around you at the window jostle to see the men better, and some of them cheer.
As you watch the line trudge past, your eyes scanning each exhausted, unfamiliar face with pity, suddenly a figure catches your eye – a tall, broad man with a ginger beard. Your heart stops. It’s him!
‘Da!’ you scream at the top of your voice. His head swings around, looking for the sound. ‘Da, down here! Da! Da!’
He sees you, and his mouth drops open in astonishment. He can barely walk in those chains, let alone break free, but he’s wrenching at them and lurching about with all his bodily strength anyway. He is trying to get closer to you, and he’s bending down to look at you better through the bars. The other prisoners chained to him are shouting, and shuffling towards you too, trying to help him get closer. Wardens come running down the street. Inside your cell, the women around you shove and cheer, hoisting you up closer to the hole.
‘It’s you!’ you hear Da shout above the din. ‘Oh, dear God, what’s happened to you, my love?’
You slip an arm out of the window, but he’s too far away to touch. He struggles to reach out to you, but his chains make it impossible. You start to cry.
The last time Da shouted to you like this, his voice full of tears and love, was as they dragged him away a year ago. Now, again, he is fighting to get back to you – gaunt and pale as a ghost, but his eyes shining like jewels.
‘Da!’ you manage to cry again through your tears.
‘Eyes to the ground!’ barks a warden outside, but the prisoners don’t comply: everyone is staring at the thirteen-year-old waif at the window with tears coursing down her cheeks, and her convict father struggling to reach her.
‘I said eyes to the ground!’ shouts the warden again. He cracks his truncheon into his palm as a warning, and all the men hastily look at their toes – except your da. He can’t tear his eyes from yours.
You don’t want to tell him about Ma, but he has to know. You manage to choke the words out, half sob, half shout: ‘Ma … she’s dead! The smallpox took her.’
‘You’ll be whipped for this!’ shouts the warden with the truncheon.
Da has crumpled in half with grief … but then he straightens. ‘To hell with you and your chains!’ he shouts. ‘Stay strong, my darling! I promise I’ll find you! I prom—’
The warden starts using his truncheon to pound Da’s body like he’s tenderising a piece of meat. Another warden starts moving the chain of men onwards towards the Old Bailey, past your window, dragging Da with them.
You are hiccupping with sobs now, your shoulders shaking. But as Da disappears out of sight, your tears subside. The tiny flicker of hope and determination you felt last night burns brighter and begins to glow in your belly – a fire to warm you all the way through. Da is alive – he is right next door – and you will see each other again. You must. To hell with them and their chains.
SLEEP IS IMPOSSIBLE that night. What sentence did Da get? Will he be hanged, or transported? How will he keep his promise to find you again? The stone floor and your thin blanket give you no comfort. Your position beneath the window is the coldest spot in the freezing room – everybody else huddles as far away from it as possible at night, like sheep in bad weather – but you’ve found you cannot bring yourself to leave that one small opening into the world outside now, not even while you sleep.
In the darkest part of the night, when the noises of Newgate have faded away to an occasional clank or shout, and when the air coming in through the barred window is black and frigid, a voice cackles in your ear, making you jump.
‘I saw the whole thing,’ whispers a hoarse voice. ‘Little daughter, did what she oughta. Dad was trying, you were crying. Am I right?’
You leap to your feet – and realise the voice is drifting into the cell from outside. You peer up into the window and your eyes slowly make out a figure crouching on the ground outside: a nose, two gleaming eyes in a thatch of wrinkles, a mouth black as a rotting pit, and a haze of pale hair over a scabbed scalp.
‘I be Nell,’ says this strange creature. ‘This be Hell. Now let me tell you, little winklet, what Nelly doesn’t know isn’t worth knowing. Nell knows the name of every flea that crawls on your body. Nell knows how, and who, to tell. She has ears on the ceiling and eyes up the gaolers’ nostrils. Nell knows the shape of every key that turns in every lock. Tick, tock.’
You feel a shudder run over you. Nell looks so weathered and diseased that she seems like a creature from a nightmare nightmare – or from one of Granny’s old tales about witches who steal babies. You’re about to move away when she reaches a hand through the bars and runs a fingernail down the side of your face. She has power in her fingertips. Your skin rises into goosebumps, and you feel weirdly compelled to ask her something.
‘I saw my da outside today. Can you help me find him again? He’s a prisoner on a men’s hulk, but I’m not sure where exactly. I want to know what sentence he was given today.’
She gives a wheezy laugh. ‘Nell can pass messages. Nell moves like smoke through these walls. But there’s a cost, to get back what you lost. Nothing here’s free but the fleas. You see?’
You think of the golden bracelet, safe inside the hem of your petticoat. No, that’s out of the question – you can’t give her that. It is your biggest secret in here; if the other prisoners knew you had it, you’d be murdered for it in an instant. Then you remember your twopence – but you’re not sure about giving her that either. It’s all you have in here right now.
‘I … I don’t have any money,’ you lie, ‘but I promise that later, when I get out of here, I …’ You falter, and stop. Making promises to Nell suddenly seems unwise.
Nell snorts. ‘The promise of a pauper, a scabby little daughter, a pinch of pepper and the rest’s all water. Money, coins, treasure – that’s how to pay Nelly proper. Your da’s the Irish cove with the ginger beard, big bones, bright eyes. You be the bird that sings in his empty heart. Nelly knows.’
You blink, feeling stunned and unsure. Nell is creepy and smells foul – and you’re going to need more than just your one thin blanket and a daily bowl of gruel to survive long in this place. But although Nell’s mad, she seems to know things. Maybe she earns her living by running favours for prisoners. You almost believe that she could bring back a message from your da. Knowing his sentence – especially if it’s transportation, not hanging – could give you the courage you need to survive this place. But is it worth paying Nell to find out?
To keep your twopence and steer clear of Nell, go to scene 13.
To give Nell the twopence in the hope she’ll find Da and tell you his sentence, go to scene 14.
To read more about prisons click here, then return to this page to make your choice.
You decide to be practical, and keep your coin. You’re sure to need it, and it would be risky to trust somebody as strange as Nell.
‘Sorry, Nell,’ you say, turning away from the window. ‘I don’t have any money.’
Nell makes a noise like a spitting cat and melts into the night. Perhaps she will simply go on to the next window now and try to convince somebody else to give up their money.
Following another full day standing by the window hoping for more coins – with no success – you decide that enough is enough: you are freezing cold, and it’s foolish to sleep by the window in this weather. You will sleep on the far side of the cell tonight, like the others. As you move towards the dark edges of the room, hoping to find a corner to sleep in, your foot connects with something soft, and you stumble and fall backwards onto a blanket.
There’s a screech. The blanket lurches under you – apparently you have fallen down on top of someone. You hastily stand up, but it’s too late – a ferocious-looking woman throws you off her so forcefully that you land on the stone floor with a thud, and she leaps to her feet. She has a horsey face with wide nostrils, and thick hair in a bun.
‘Little wench!’ she snorts. ‘How dare you sit your bony cheeks down on top of me!’
Your heart is pounding, but you can hear your ma’s words in your mind: Never let yourself be bullied, my dear. Nobody will respect you if you let them walk all over you.
You get to your feet and find your voice. ‘I’d rather have bony cheeks than a bony heart.’
The woman’s eyes flare. Chuckles and ‘ooh’s bubble in the crowd that has gathered around you.
‘You little … grub! Are you insulting me?’
Your palms are sweaty, but you’re not ready to back down. ‘Oh no, ma’am,’ you say. ‘My ma always taught me to be kind to simpletons.’
Hoots of laughter erupt from the crowd. Heat is pumping through your veins. The horsey-faced woman looks like she doesn’t know what to say. Then, to your amazement, she also begins snorting with laughter. She gives you a playful clip over the ear.
‘I’d never have picked a little scrap like you as a survivor,’ she says, chuckling. ‘But perhaps you are, lass. Perhaps you are.’
She sits back down on her blanket, and you move away to another corner of the cell, feeling quietly proud of yourself.
A girl not much older than you claps you on the back. ‘That was incredible!’ she says delightedly. ‘Ellen’s been here forever – and she rules the roost. I’ve never seen anyone stand up to her!’
You recognise her as the brown-haired girl who explained what was happening yesterday, when Da and his group of prisoners were being taken to the courthouse. She has friendly brown eyes, a round face, and a thick, matted brown plait hanging over one shoulder.
‘I’m Sarah,’ she says. ‘That was your da who went past yesterday, wasn’t it? Do you know what sentence he was given?’
You smile and shrug. Then your smile fades. ‘He burnt a government ship – it was a protest for Irish freedom. He’s waited a year already for sentencing. Do you think he’ll hang?’
The girl considers you seriously, biting her lip. ‘They’ll give him a heavy penalty, no doubt. But I’d wager he’ll get transported – perhaps for life. Plenty of us in here did worse than him and have escaped the noose.’
You nod gratefully, overwhelmed by emotion. If Da doesn’t hang, then a smaller crime such as yours isn’t likely to be punished by death either. Perhaps you will both survive. You manage to give Sarah a little smile. ‘How long have you been in here?’ you ask her.
‘A few months,’ Sarah replies. ‘I’ve been sentenced to transportation. Most of us here in this cell are bound for the colonies eventually. I hope we’ll sail soon. Maybe you and I will be on the same boat.’
‘I’d like that,’ you say. ‘If I get sentenced to transportation, and so does my da, do you think it’s possible he and I will end up in the same colony?’
It’s almost too much to hope for – that you and Da might both escape hanging, and be sent to the same land, at the end of the earth.
Sarah smiles wistfully. ‘Well, it’s always possible, but you’d need the luck of the gods on your side,’ she replies. ‘There are many colonies in far-flung places, and any of us might end up waiting for years in gaol before we’re transported. Still, no one can stop you from hoping. Just behave yourself, for I’m afraid they don’t take kindly to rebels in here.’
WEEKS PASS. SARAH shows you how to survive in the rough, filthy world of Newgate: which guards to avoid at all cost, and how waiting at the end of the food line sometimes means you get the thicker, more substantial stew at the bottom of the pot. She also introduces you to a prisoner who knows how to read and write and who says she can write a letter to Da for you for fourpence. You keep a tight hold of your twopence and pray for another one, but without success.
One morning, you wake from weird dreams about a gaolor cutting off your fingers to sell as sausages for a bonfire to discover that your shiny bronze twopence is gone from its hiding spot beneath your blanket. You hurriedly search the folds of your clothes and the cracks of the stones where you slept, but it’s really gone. Somebody must have pinched it from under your sleeping body in the night.
You look around and see Ellen, the big, horsey-faced brute, slumped in a corner, watching you. Her head is lolling to one side, and an idiot’s drooling smile is spread across her mouth.
‘Missing something, pet?’ she slurs.
You see the cup in her hand, and stride across the room as, around you, the other women and their children stir and wake. Sure enough, Ellen’s cup is filled with a brown, reeking liquid – alcohol, which she must have bought from a gaolor in the middle of the night after she stole your twopence.
So this is how she’s going to punish me for standing up to her, you think. She might think I’m a survivor, but she still wants to be sure I know my place.
You’re frustrated, but more than anything you just feel sorry for Ellen. She was born right here in Newgate, and has known precious little kindness in her life. The few times she’s been let out, she’s immediately reoffended and been sent back – the fist of Newgate has squeezed her into a shape that only feels at home in a cell. Ellen doesn’t know how to live as a free woman.
Sarah is at your side. She shakes her head, with sadness in her eyes.
‘That was my twopence,’ you mutter angrily.
Sarah links her arm in yours. ‘Bloody drink,’ she sighs, and there’s a bitterness to her voice you haven’t heard before. ‘It took more than just twopence from me. I’d be free right now if it weren’t for that evil stuff.’
‘Did you used to drink, Sarah?’ you ask, feeling a little scared of the demons of your friend’s past.
‘No, never,’ she says immediately. ‘It was Da …’
Then she trails off into silence.
Sensing she’s about to clam up, you put your arm around her shoulders. ‘It’s all right,’ you say. ‘You can tell me what happened. Go on…’
To continue with the story, go to scene 17.
‘All right,’ you say. Nell’s eyes light up greedily, and you feel a rumbling of unease, but you press on, passing the twopence up through the bars of the window and into Nell’s claw-like fingers. It glistens in the moonlight.
‘Send a message to my da. Tell him …’
You want to say, Tell him I love him, but you need to think of something more useful than that.
‘Tell him I’m awaiting sentencing, and hoping for transportation. Tell him I’ll keep watch for him every day from this window, just in case. And find out his sentence – promise me, Nell. I have to know what happened,’ you urge her.
