The Remarkable Life and Times of Eliza Rose Read online

  ‘He cannot!’ Eliza protested. ‘He’s a fair man. He’s my father!’ As she said this, Eliza tried to erase the memory of the busy, worried and rather remote figure her father had been and tried to imagine someone quite different. Someone who’d missed his eldest daughter most dreadfully since he’d been parted from her, someone who’d only recently realised how much she meant to him.

  ‘But if she’s the wicked shrew that she sounds …’

  Eliza thought of the final conversation she’d had with her stepmother. ‘Since you’ve told me I’m no longer welcome here I’ll go and find my father!’ she’d said. ‘I’ll tell him what you’ve said to me and I warrant he won’t let you treat me so.’

  ‘Is that right?’ her stepmother had said, smiling her tight smile. ‘Are you so sure, miss?’

  There was something about the way she’d said this which had caught at Eliza’s heart. She’d tried not to show it, though, as she’d shouldered her few possessions.

  ‘Yes, I am sure,’ she’d said, ducking to go through the low cottage door.

  Her stepmother had come out to the doorstep for a parting shot. ‘You’ll find out I’m speaking the truth,’ she’d shouted after her. ‘He no longer wants a cuckoo in his nest!’

  Those words had stayed with her: a cuckoo in his nest. What had she meant? But Eliza had not given her the satisfaction of turning round to ask.

  Elinor now pulled the small comb through her fair hair, muttering and grimacing by turn as it caught the tangles. ‘Come,’ she said when she was satisfied. ‘Let me comb your hair now, then you and I must go and earn our breakfast. We’ll get into the yard while the others are still rubbing sleep from their eyes.’

  Eliza started to protest again but Elinor, ignoring this, bade her turn round so that she could comb out her hair. She made sounds of approval as she did so.

  ‘Such curls and such waves!’ she said. ‘It reaches your waist and it glistens even in the glow from the candles, so ’twill look lovely in the sunlight.’ She arranged Eliza’s hair so that it rippled over her shoulders and down her back, then turned her round and round so she could admire her handiwork. ‘There! You look good enough for a king!’

  Eliza managed a smile. ‘I’m sure I do not!’

  ‘You do indeed. And your eyes are green as the leaves on the trees!’

  The comb now being put away, Elinor brought out a small bottle from the pocket of her gown. ‘A going-away present I stole from my mistress,’ she said, carefully applying a tiny amount of the red liquid to first her own, then to Eliza’s lips and cheeks and smoothing it in. She then touched a tiny smut of dirt on to Eliza’s cheek to enhance the effect. ‘There,’ she said, finally satisfied. ‘Let’s see what attention we gets from the gentlemen today.’

  The two girls were first outside in the yard and they made straight for the grille. Some women passed by – housewives on their way to buy produce at Borough market – and Elinor said to hold back, for a pretty face wouldn’t work on them. A group of workmen came by next: builders crossing to the City by London Bridge, and Elinor turned her nose up at these, too, saying they would have no money. On seeing three tall youths approaching wearing ruffled breeches under matching velvet coats, however, she prodded Eliza into action.

  ‘Here come some fine popinjays back from an evening spent carousing,’ she hissed. ‘Speak your bit and remember to smile nicely.’

  As the pairs of ruffled breeches – one pair deep green, one black, the other maroon – drew level with the grille Eliza took a deep breath. ‘Spare a penny for two fair maids, sires!’ she called, blushing pinker than the cochineal which stained her lips. ‘Oh, please help us!’

  The men paused and Elinor nudged her to go on. ‘We … we haven’t eaten a morsel these last days and are fair desperate for food!’ she continued.

  The youth in maroon velvet walked on, twirling his gold-topped cane and giving the girls no more than a haughty glance, and the one in black velvet looked hardly sober enough to know what was going on, but the other, the one in green, halted. Eliza looked up at him nervously and as their glances met he smiled at her. Such a ready smile, she thought, and a well-shaped, curved mouth and merry blue eyes. How shameful it felt to be begging money from such as he.

  ‘Val! Do come on, man!’ his friend in maroon called impatiently. ‘Hang around there too long and you’ll catch something.’

  ‘If you could … could but spare a penny, sire!’ Eliza said in little more than a whisper. She felt sweat begin to prickle her forehead, though the sun wasn’t yet in the prison yard. ‘We are nigh on starved to death in here.’

  Elinor, who had been turned discreetly away, now joined in. ‘Oh, sire, my sister and I are helpless with hunger,’ she said, slipping her arm around Eliza and dropping her head on her shoulder in an appealing manner. ‘And we are imprisoned here through no fault of our own. Our wicked father tried to sell us to a slave ship but we ran away.’

  ‘Val! Valentine! Come on, you fool,’ came from the youth in maroon.

  The one in green smiled at the two girls. ‘I’ve heard enough,’ he said, reaching into his pocket. ‘Any more of the tale and I shall have to call your father out for a duel.’ He spun a silver coin through the bars. ‘Take this and buy yourselves some food, ladies, for I cannot see such beauty be made low.’

  ‘Oh, thank you kindly, sire!’ Elinor said, nudging Eliza.

  ‘Remember us another day, sire!’ Eliza stammered, and she brought herself to glance once more at the young man and smiled.

  ‘A silver sixpence!’ Elinor said as they were elbowed out of their prime position by two or three of the other inmates. ‘See how easy it is. All you have to do is act the lady, but appear down on your luck. You must seem at just the right degree of poverty. I tell you, the players at the King’s Theatre couldn’t put on a better performance than me when I’m hungry.’

  Eliza laughed. ‘If our audience were all like him I’d be well satisfied.’

  ‘We can have oysters for breakfast every day for a week,’ Elinor continued, twirling the coin between her fingers. ‘Or we can buy ourselves a cell of our own for tonight and pay to have some washing done …’

  ‘I must have a cap to cover my head – but before that, some shoes!’ Eliza said, looking down at her dirty feet. ‘For I cannot bear to feel the lice under my toes a moment longer.’

  Days went by and Eliza, under Elinor’s guidance, managed to get along fairly well. She bought back her own pair of shoes from a turnkey, and also purchased a shawl and a cap. Elinor teased her, saying that these items were from a woman who had been hanged the week before, but Eliza said she hadn’t known her, so it was of no matter. She hired her own blanket at night, but carried on sharing a pallet with Elinor, for being used to occupying a bed with younger brothers and sisters, both liked the extra warmth and companionship. After a few days in Clink, Eliza’s sheer tiredness meant that she could manage to sleep for several hours at a time without waking. Every day they begged at the grille and every day too, although hardly realising she was doing it, Eliza looked for the youth named Valentine, the one in the green breeches with the merry, blue eyes, but he never came again.

  On a Monday (Eliza knew it was that day because the one before, being Sunday, everyone in the jail had been given a slice of charity mutton) Elinor was taken off for trial along with twenty or so other prisoners. They went by foot, chained together, and Eliza, looking through the grille, was upset to see her friend weeping profusely as she was herded along the street. A small crowd had gathered outside to jeer at the manacled prisoners, and Eliza thought – not for the first time – about her own trial. How ashamed she would feel to be driven along, chained up like an animal going to market. What if her father saw her?

  Having promised Elinor that she would beg that day for both of them, Eliza worked hard with her smiles and her ‘If it please you, sires’ and earned nearly a shilling. She sent out for a rabbit pie and, for a treat to celebrate Elinor’s homecoming, some suga
red plums.

  When Elinor returned, though, her face was red and puffed up from weeping, and it was obvious that she wasn’t going to be consoled with either of these things. For a moment Eliza feared the very worst, for four of those who’d gone for trial that day had been sentenced to be hanged – this news had spread back to the prison even before the prisoners had returned – but when she could draw breath through her sobs, Elinor spoke not of this unspeakable thing, but of something which she felt was worse.

  ‘I’m to be transported,’ she said, her voice broken by hiccoughing gasps. ‘Six of us are to go to Virginia, for the judge said he wants to make an example of the younger ones and it would be a fresh start for us.’

  ‘Transported!’ Eliza gasped. ‘Just for theft of some material?’

  Elinor nodded. ‘The pick-pocket before me was to be branded on her forearm – and another thief had his hand cut off!’ As Eliza gasped in horror, Elinor burst out, ‘But I would rather have those punishments – both of them – than be taken across the seas to the plantations!’

  For a while they cried together, and then Eliza, thinking to console her, said, ‘I’ve heard the land is very fruitful.’

  ‘I’ve heard ’tis a wild and desperate place, full of wolves and wild people!’ Elinor said, bursting out crying again. ‘And besides, nearly all who go there die on the fearsome journey!’

  Eliza, who had heard the same, did not know what to say to this, and now fell silent. Neither of them slept that night.

  Next morning, one of the turnkeys, after ringing the bell at daybreak, called loudly, ‘Rose Abbott, Margaret Audley, Elinor Bracebridge for transportation!’

  At the third name both Eliza and Elinor stopped eating their oatmeal and stared at each other in alarm.

  ‘Surely not so soon!’ Eliza cried.

  Elinor ran towards the turnkey. ‘Is it now? Are you really come for us this morning?’ she asked desperately.

  ‘Aye,’ he nodded. ‘You’ll be taken in irons to the lighters at Blackfriars, then sail downriver to the docks. The boat is waiting there to catch the tide.’

  ‘No!’ Elinor said in a panic. ‘I can’t go yet – I want to see the judge again! I don’t feel well enough for the journey. I’m sick!’

  But the turnkey had slammed shut the iron gate and passed on to the men’s cell. ‘Emmanuel Badd, Thomas Mann, Goodman Hughes,’ they heard him call, and there were answering shouts and protestations.

  Elinor, after ineffectually banging her tin cup on the bars and shouting for him to come back and listen to her, sank to her knees and Eliza, weeping too, knelt beside her.

  ‘Hush … hush … there’s nothing can be done,’ she said. She put an arm around Elinor, searching for something to say which might help. ‘It may not be that awful,’ she said. ‘Some people pay their passage to go to the Americas and start a new life. They buy land or make a lot of money working on the plantations.’

  Elinor just sobbed harder. ‘I shall never survive the sea trip!’ she said pitifully. ‘They chain you up below the decks and you don’t see daylight for weeks.’

  ‘I’m sure you will survive.’ Eliza smoothed back Elinor’s hair. ‘You’ll charm the sailors on the ship – and perhaps you can work out your time there and come back a rich woman. Perhaps you’ll employ me as your lady’s maid when you return!’

  But Elinor refused to be comforted. ‘I only took what was due to me – and now I shall never see my brothers and sisters again!’ she sobbed, and she wrapped her arms around herself and rocked backwards and forwards. ‘I should have pleaded my belly!’

  ‘That would have done you no good,’ a fat, frowsy woman next to them said. ‘That will only stop you being hanged. They still sends you off on the boats whether you’re with child or no.’

  Eliza put her arms around her friend, holding on to her tightly. She was scared on behalf of Elinor, and also scared almost witless at the thought of being left alone in the prison.

  Within fifteen minutes the turnkey was back with two constables, and Elinor and the two other women were fitted with leg irons to guard against their running away. As these were being put on, Eliza looked through her trifling possessions and gave Elinor her shawl, an apron and all the money she had.

  ‘’Tis only fourteen pence but it may serve to buy you some small comfort on the boat,’ she said.

  ‘But I shall never survive!’ said Elinor, almost bowed over with the manacles and with grief. ‘Never …’

  Eliza, too devastated to give any words of comfort, merely pressed the things on to her and then looked on tearfully as her dear friend was dragged away. She went to the barred window in the yard and watched, crying all the while, as Elinor and the others were herded down the road in chains.

  Chapter Four

  The days went by and it grew warmer. Although she still hated doing it, Eliza took her place by the grille most days and – though her freshness was fast disappearing under layers of grime – managed to earn enough to get by. She missed Elinor very much but didn’t seek to make other friends in the prison. One or two of the girls, on seeing the ease with which Eliza had made money by her smile, tried to fall in with her, but she was learning prison ways fast and knew that most of them would steal, lie, cheat and even kill to improve their lot. Twice her money had been taken when she was asleep; once she’d been kicked quite viciously when she was at the front of the grille and had had to limp back inside, doubled over with pain.

  As the weather became warmer the conditions in the jail grew worse. Now the river water that was brought in was fetid and foul-smelling before it arrived in the cells, now the sewer channel was continually blocked with matter, now the stench from scores of unwashed bodies and foul clothes was so nauseating that sometimes Eliza couldn’t draw in breath without choking. She kept herself to herself, trying to get through each day as best she could, planning what she’d do when she got out.

  When she got out … She spent anxious hours wondering when her trial was likely to be. And what about her sentence? Surely she wouldn’t be transported just for theft of a mutton pasty? If she was, she felt, as Elinor had done, that she might as well be dead. The thought of being taken off to a strange land across the sea, of never seeing again the dear native countryside where she’d grown up, was a most horrid and terrifying one.

  No, surely they’d take what had happened to her, how she’d been turned out of her home by her stepmother, into consideration. Maybe she’d be free within a few weeks, manage to get some sort of living-in job, and begin to look for her father. Perhaps she could go to a hiring fair and get a job as a maid, or go around the big houses, knocking on doors to seek employment. She rather shrank from the idea of this, though, for no one was likely to employ her the way she looked now, and she’d probably have to take some lowly and menial task like skinning rabbits or sweeping the streets to get by. If only Elinor was still here and they could seek employment together. Elinor had always known what to do …

  Early one morning there came a strange, roaring chant from the men’s quarters which spread in a wave across the women’s cell until they picked up the same words – a man’s name – and began chanting it too.

  Eliza listened, intrigued. ‘Jack Parley … Jack Parley … Jack Parley …’ they shouted, and then they began banging their shoes or their iron cups against the bars in time to their chant. ‘Jack Parley … Jack Parley … Jack Parley.’

  Stepping through the crowd of bodies around her – for it was so early that no one was outside in the yard – Eliza made her way towards Charity.

  ‘What are they saying?’ she asked.

  ‘Can’t you hear, dearie? They are saying the name of the highwayman.’

  ‘Jack Parley?’

  Charity nodded. ‘The most famous in the country. Apart from Monsieur Claude Duval, of course.’

  Eliza remained bemused. ‘But why are they saying his name?’

  ‘Because he’s been sentenced to hang, my sweeting. He is to go from here today an
d hang on the Tyburn tree!’

  Eliza gasped, for she had heard, of course, of the Tyburn tree – the famous wooden scaffold which had three great wooden arms and was capable of hanging fifteen men or women at once.

  ‘He’ll be taken out when the bell sounds to do the Tyburn frisk,’ Charity said with a snigger. ‘What a dance he’ll do, spinning on the end of a rope!’

  Eliza looked at her with distaste. If ever a woman didn’t suit her name, it was Charity.

  ‘But ’tis not all bad,’ the old woman went on, ‘for Jack Parley has said that his possessions are to be sold to provide a portion of meat and a sup of wine for every fellow in here, so three cheers for him is what I say!’

  The chant of Jack Parley was kept up whilst the prisoners were drinking the water and oatmeal which passed for breakfast, and also when the gates were opened to let them out into the yard. Eliza hung back a little here and didn’t rush out to be first at the grille. She liked to take a little time tidying her appearance, to go to the barrel of river water in order to cleanse her face and hands without being jostled. She’d also untie her hair at this time and try and untangle it with a small, broken piece of comb. She endeavoured to maintain some standards, for her earnings partly depended on her looking comely, but she knew she must look a fright by now. Her hair – the very feel of it made her shudder – was as matted as a mare’s tail and her skin was grimy and, she thought, probably as brown as a gypsy’s from being outside in the yard in all weathers. She no longer hoped to see the youth with the blue eyes – in fact, she dreaded that he would come by, for she knew that he could only look at her with disgust now.

  By the time she went through to the yard that morning there was no room at all in front of the grille, for it seemed as if the whole of the prison were bunched together there, straining for a glimpse of the outside world. Those who were too far back were jostling the others for position, constantly asking to know what was happening and if Jack Parley could be seen.