The Disgrace of Kitty Grey (26 page)

A further note arrived for me later that day. And yet another the following morning, saying the same thing, addressed to me by name (though spelled with an I at the end: Kitti) and stuck in the top of the hatch.

‘He has discovered your name!' said Martha.

‘ 'Tis not hard. He would only have to ask one of the children,' I said.

However, I spoke to Betsy and Robyn later, and they said no one had asked them anything. I could not help but be intrigued. I didn't want to start a liaison with anyone, but I did want to know who was writing to me. What if I stayed hidden on deck, I thought, just to look at the fellow? It was vain of me, I knew, but I was flattered by this mystery man's attentions, for it had been a very long time since anyone had taken the slightest notice of me.

 

When dusk came, then, and they rang the bell for us to go down to the orlop, I asked Martha if she would see Betsy settled to sleep, while I stayed, hidden, on the deck. When it got dark I crept (undercover and holding on to the manacle around my legs to prevent it from clanking) not to the first lifeboat, but to a hidey-hole I'd come upon behind a gigantic coil of rope. From here, by the light of the oil lamp hanging above the gangplank, I could see if anyone came to the meeting place.

The ship was rocking gently, the sea plashing against the sides, and I fear that, after an hour or so, and despite the carousing coming from the crew's quarters, I fell asleep. When I woke up, it was to feel that someone had one hand across my mouth whilst the other was holding my two wrists in a tight grip.

Terrified, I began struggling. The person who held me was behind me and in shadow, so I could only see the shape of him.

‘Are you Kitty?' he asked in a low, gruff voice.

I nodded, shivering with fear.

‘Why have you come here?' he asked, then loosened his grip around my mouth a little, so that I could reply.

‘I . . . I received some notes,' I babbled. ‘Someone asked me to meet him.'

He began to say something in reply, but I seized the opportunity to sink my teeth into the hand that was around my mouth. He let go of my wrists with an oath, and I jerked around to look him in the face.

It was Will.

Chapter Twenty-Four

 

 

I had oft thought of what I'd say and how I'd act if I ever saw Will again, and it was then that I found out. My first reaction was one of total fury, and I turned on him like a wildcat.

‘How dare you! How could you?' I hissed through gritted teeth, flailing my arms and trying to punch and scratch him. ‘You are the most heartless and wicked devil that ever walked this earth!'

‘Hush! Hush!' came the only reply.

‘I will not hush!' I kicked at him in the darkness. ‘I will put it about that you tried to kill me!'

‘Kitty –'

‘I'll have you taken to Newgate! I'll see that you hang!'

‘Quiet!'

I managed to reach his face and scratch it. ‘I'll have you put in irons.'

‘Kitty,' he said quietly. ‘I am already in irons.'

I stopped my tirade.

‘See.' He caught hold of my hand and put it on his calf, so I could feel that he was wearing manacles.

I straightened up, squinting under the dim light of the lantern high above, and stared at him. It was the same Will, but thinner, browner, his hair scraped back in a pigtail like that of the sailors, a red kerchief around his neck and a new little white scar in a vertical line through his lip. The fact that he was in manacles meant little to me then, for I was still intent on killing him.

‘You are beyond wicked!' I said, so choked with fury that I could hardly get the words out. ‘Betsy and I could both be dead for all you care! You left us –
left us
. . .' And then I could manage no more before I broke down completely.

He put his arms around me while I pounded my fists against his chest.

‘I will never, ever forgive you,' I said, shaking all over. ‘You left me with Betsy, and we came to London to find you, and then I was taken to Newgate, which was terrible in the extreme, and now we're here and set for Australia and I will never see my mother and father or my home again!'

‘Kitty, listen to me: I was
pressed
.'

This meant nothing to me. ‘What do you mean?' I asked between sobs.

‘I mean I was taken away by Royal Navy men and pressed into service. I am just as much a captive as you are. That's why I'm wearing manacles.'

I stared at him but was not prepared to give an inch. ‘I don't understand. What happened to you?'

He sat down beside the coil of rope and I sat beside him, but it was a while before he started speaking.

‘It was at the end of August,' he began at length. ‘I took two Navy fellows across the river to Millbridge in the normal way, and they complimented me on the way I handled the boat and said they had need of such strong young men in the Navy.'

‘But you surely didn't . . . '

‘Of course I didn't! I thanked them, and they asked if I was a single man or no.'

‘And you said . . . '

‘I said I was a single man, but had certain responsibilities. When I'd taken them over I said I would sit in the boat and wait to row them back if they wished, and they asked if I would first join them for a tankard of ale at the Royal Oak and drink the King's health. I refused at first, but they persisted, and were such civil fellows that I thought they might take it as an insult if I didn't join them.'

‘And then?'

‘Then we went to the Royal Oak. I took up my ale and we drank to the King, to the Royal Navy and to the right outcome of the wars, and when I got to the bottom I saw there was a silver coin there.'

I looked at him curiously. ‘Why? What did that mean?'

‘I will tell you. I drained the tankard and took up the coin, and when I did so both men cheered and said I had taken the King's shilling and was now in the Royal Navy. I protested, but to no avail, for they clapped handcuffs on me. They rowed me back to my hut to collect my tin box and spare clothing and so on, and that night we left for Plymouth Sound in a closed carriage.'

I looked at him bleakly. ‘But was there
nothing
you could do?'

‘There was not, for I was in handcuffs and the two fellows whose charge I was in were sturdily built. I was fair desperate to leave you a message at the hut, believe me.'

‘If only you had!'

He sighed. ‘Never have I regretted so much the fact that I couldn't write. There was not even paper or pencil in my hut, or I might have drawn a picture telling you what had happened. I was fair out of my mind trying to think of what to do.' His voice thickened. ‘It broke my heart to think of you and Betsy finding me gone; of you hating me or thinking I was dead.'

‘Both of those things and more,' I said, but I gripped his hands tightly, for the tables had turned and now I was comforting him. After a moment I asked, ‘But what happened to you after that?'

‘We went to Plymouth, picking up some other fellows on the way who'd been similarly taken. Once there we worked in the dockyards, but always manacled and under close guard.'

‘What did you do all day?'

He shrugged. ‘Repaired rigging, sewed nets, scrubbed tables, caught rats, practised our letters. That's how I could write those notes to you.'

‘Did
you
write the notes you sent?'

He nodded.

‘You spelled my name wrongly.'

‘That's how it sounds,' he said, smiling.

We stared at each other for a moment, nose to nose, and I felt I wanted to turn cartwheels like a child, or race about or scream – anything that might help express the turmoil inside me.

‘A dozen pressed men were packed off to help fight Napoleon, but myself and some others were – by all that's wonderful – chosen to work below decks on the
Juanita
and help sail her to Botany Bay.' He gave a short laugh. ‘They say that when we get out to sea we may have our shackles off. What they don't know is that I've already devised a way to spring the lock open with my penknife.'

I sighed very deeply, still not really accepting or believing that he hadn't left me through choice, but was actually here, beside me. ‘When did you find out that Betsy and I were on board?'

‘Two days ago,' he said, smoothing my hair back from my face as he spoke. ‘When I saw you I could not believe it . . . just could not believe my eyes.'

‘Tell me what happened!' I urged.

‘Well, we had heard which ship we were to travel on: the word had spread around the yard that we would be going to Botany Bay with . . .' he raised his eyebrows, ‘. . . a cargo of disgraced and disorderly women.'

‘Not
all
of us so,' I put in swiftly.

‘We spoke long into the night about such women and there was much bawdy talk and jesting.'

‘I'm sure . . .' I blushed at the thought of what might have been said about us.

‘And then we pressed men were taken on board and sent down below, so we hardly got a glimpse of anyone. But when I was sent on deck to collect something, I saw you and Betsy seated near the gangplank watching the livestock come on board.'

‘And what did you think when you saw us?'

‘I thought you were a mirage,' he said simply. ‘I saw you there and wondered if I might have gone mad.'

‘But why didn't you shout? Why didn't you let us know?'

‘That was my first instinct, but then I realised that I should not let anyone discern that there was a link between us.'

‘Why?'

‘Because I've been trying to devise an escape plan for some time.' I gasped at this and he continued, ‘Now, of course, my plans will include you and Betsy, which will make it a shade more difficult.'

‘I must tell Betsy you're here!' I said.

‘Not yet! If you tell her she won't be able to keep it to herself.' He took my hand. ‘But tell me how you and Betsy came to be in a cargo of girls being sent to Botany Bay.'

‘We are
both
here because the authorities – that is, the judge and the prison governor and so on – think that Betsy is my own child.'

He looked baffled at this. ‘They think that Betsy is your
s
?'

I nodded. ‘I had to say that to save us from being separated, otherwise they might have taken Betsy and put her in an orphanage.'

He heaved a sigh. ‘Then although I am still bewildered as to how all this happened, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for looking after her. Betsy and I both owe you a great deal. When I think I could have lost her for ever . . .'

We sat speechless for a few moments – and I think both of us were trying to come to terms with all that had happened – then he took my other cold hand in his own. ‘But tell me how you came to be here? What were you convicted o
f
? For it surely is the most wonderful thing that we've ended up in the same place.'

‘I will tell you everything,' I said, and took him through the whole story: how I'd believed he was in London working with his cousins, so when the opportunity had presented itself for me to go there, I'd done so, and there met with my great misfortune. I told him about my realisation that half of London could see St Paul's, about the rogue of a landlord and the kindness of Mr Holloway, about the horror of Newgate Gaol – the cold and the stink and the fierceness of the inmates, and tears fell from two pairs of eyes during the course of all this telling.

Oblivious of the cold, we talked all night, until my account of what had happened had reached the present day and the fact that Miss Sophia's beau was on board. As dawn streaked the sky in the east and we prepared to part, he impressed upon me both the need for secrecy and for us to act with all speed, for the day which was dawning was Tuesday, and on Wednesday at high tide the
Juanita
, with or without us
,
would set sail for Botany Bay.