Colleen McCullough - Morgan’s Run

They nodded soberly.

“’Tis our good fortune to be twelve to London from here. The other six are young save for Ike, and he seems to prefer their company to ours. So I am going to advise Ike to do the same thing with his five. That way, there will be twelve of us on the hulk to form up as mutual protection.”

“You expect trouble, Richard?” asked Connelly, frowning.

“I do not honestly know, Will. If I do, it is more because of what my informants have not said, than said. We are all from the West Country. That will not be so on the hulks.”

“I understand,” said Bill Whiting, serious for once. “Best to decide what to do now. Later might be too late.”

“How many of us can read and write?” asked Richard.

Connelly, Perrott and Whiting held up their hands.

“Four of us. Good.” He pointed to the five boxes standing on the floor alongside him. “On a different note, these contain the things that will enable us to stay healthy, like dripstones.”

“Oh, Richard!” Jimmy Price exclaimed, exasperated. “Ye make a fucken religion out of your wretched dripstone! Lizzie is right, ye’re like a priest saying Mass.”

“It is true that I have made a religion out of staying well.” Richard looked at his group sternly. “Will and Neddy, how did ye manage to stay well through a year in the Bristol Newgate?”

“Drank beer or small beer,” said Connelly. “Our families gave us the money to eat well and drink healthy.”

“When I was there, I drank the water,” said Richard.

“Impossible!” gasped Neddy Perrott.

“Not impossible. I filtered my water through my dripstone. Its function is to purify bad water, which is why my cousin James imports them from Teneriffe. If ye think for one moment that Thames water will be more drinkable than Avon water, ye’ll be dead in a week.” Richard shrugged. “The choice is yours entirely. If ye can afford to drink small beer, well and good. But in London we will not have families on hand to help us. What gold we have ought to be saved for bribing, not spent on small beer.”

“Ye’re right,” said Will Connelly, touching the dripstone on the table reverently. “I for one will filter my water if I cannot afford to drink small beer. It is good common sense.”

In the end they all agreed to filter their water, including Jimmy Price.

“That settles that,” said Richard, and went to talk to Ike Rogers. He was sorry that he did not have twelve dripstones, but not sorry enough to share six of them among twelve. Ike’s group would have to manage as best it could, and at least Ike always seemed to have plenty of money.

If the twelve of us stick together as two groups, we stand a chance to survive.

From

January of 1786

until

January of 1787

T he wagon to London and Woolwich arrived at dawn thenext day, the 6th of January; exactly a year since his last wagon trip had commenced, Richard realized. But this was a gaol parting of higher magnitude and much sorrow, the women weeping desolately.

“What will I do without you?” Lizzie Lock asked Richard as she followed him to Old Mother Hubbard’s house.

“Find someone else,” said Richard, but sympathetically. “In your circumstances, a protector is essential. Though ’twill be hard to find another like me, willing to forgo sex.”

“I know, I know! Oh, Richard, I shall miss you!”

“And I you, skinny Lizzie. Who will mend my stockings?”

She grinned through her tears, gave him a shove. “Get away with you! I have shown you how to use a needle and ye sew well.”

Then two gaolers came and took the women back to the prison, waving, howling, protesting.

And back to the iron belt around the waist, the four sets of chains joined together at its front.

In appearancethis wagon looked the same as the one from Bristol to Gloucester-rawn by eight big horses, covered with a canvas semicircle. Inside it was quite different, having a bench down either side long enough for six men to sit with plenty of space between each. Their belongings had to be piled on the floor between their legs and would pitch and slide every time the vehicle jarred, thought the experienced Richard. What road was smooth, especially at this time of year? Dead of winter, and a rainy one.

Two gaolers traveled with them, but not inside with them; they sat with the driver up front, which had a fine shelter built over it. No one in the back was going to slip out and escape; once seated, a length of chain was run through an additional loop on each man’s left fetter and bolted to the floor at either end. If one man moved, his five companions had to move.

The pecking order was now established. Muffled in his warmly lined greatcoat, Richard sat at the open end of the wagon on one side, with Ike Rogers, leader of the youngsters, facing him.

“How long will it take?” asked Ike Rogers.

“If we cover six miles in a day we will be lucky,” answered Richard, grinning. “Ye’ve not been on the road before-in a wagon, I mean, Ike. I do not know how long. It depends which way.”

“Through Cheltenham and Oxford,” said the highwayman, taking the joke in good part. “Whereabouts Woolwich is, however, I do not know. I have been to Oxford, but never to London.”

Richard had conned his first geography book, a text on London. “It is well east of London but on the south bank of the Thames. I do not know if they mean to make us cross over-we are going to hulks moored in the river, after all. If we go through Cheltenham and Oxford, then we have about a hundred and twenty miles to travel to Woolwich.” He did some calculations in his head. “At six miles a day, it will take almost three weeks to get there.”

“We sit here for three weeks?” asked Bill Whiting, dismayed.

Those who had already been on the road in a wagon laughed.

“No need to worry about sitting idle, Bill,” said Taffy. “We will be out and digging half a dozen times in a day.”

As indeed proved to be the case. Wayside hospitality, however, fell far short of that extended to Richard and Willy by John the wagoneer. No barns, no warm horse blankets, nothing to eat save bread, nothing to drink save small beer. Each night saw them bed down in the wagon by transferring their belongings to the seats and occupying the floor to stretch out, greatcoats for covers, hats for pillows. The canvas roof leaked in the perpetual rain, though the temperature stayed well above freezing, a small mercy for damp and shivering prisoners. Only Ike had boots; the rest wore shoes and were soon caked to above their fettered ankles in mud.

They did not see Cheltenham or Oxford, the driver preferring to skirt both towns with this cargo of felons, and High Wycombe was no more than a short row of houses down a hill so slippery that the team of horses became entangled in the traces and nearly turned the wagon over. Bruised by flying wooden boxes, the prisoners were set to work righting the perilously leaning vehicle; Ike Rogers, who had a great affinity with horses, engaged himself in calming the animals down and sorting out their harness.

Of London they saw absolutely nothing, for one of the gaolers fixed a shield over the open back and blinded them to what was going on outside. Soon came a trundling motion rather than a lurching one; they had reached some paved main road, which meant that their services would not be needed to dig the wagon out. Noises percolated inside: cries, whinnies, brays, snatches of song, sudden babbles which perhaps meant they passed by an open tavern door, the thump of machinery, an occasional crash.