Storm Bay

by Patricia Shaw

Genres: General Fiction; Sagas

Synopsis

Prisoners of the Crown are being played by the state... Patricia Shaw's Storm Bay is a gripping saga of shocking revelations and conspiracy behind the transportation of British convicts to Tasmania. The perfect read for fans of Tamara McKinley and Coleen McCullough. 'A well-researched, compelling story' - Launceston Examiner Portsmouth, 1832. Once the pride of the British East India fleet, the Veritas has fallen on hard times. She is now a transport ship, her cargo prisoners of the Crown, her destination the penal settlement of Van Diemen's Land, now known as Tasmania, the southernmost State of Australia. Pastor Bob Cookson tries to offer solace to the convicts on board, but is shocked to discover that most of them have committed only trivial offences. He suspects a conspiracy to empty British prisons, but finds a more sinister motive at work... What readers are saying about Storm Bay : 'This book is up to Patricia Shaw's high standard ' ' Excellently researched - the plot was so intriguing and so interwoven I couldn't put it down' 'A well written story that keeps you turning the pages '

Release date: October 27, 2011

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 459

Sample

February 1832

The magistrate furrowed his brow, scowled, peered at the packed courtroom and began to turn pages in the heavy journal on his high desk.

Carlendon was a busy little village that served the surrounding farmlands on the outskirts of London, and normally few took an interest in court proceedings, but today, it seemed, everyone wanted to hear the fate of Lester Harris, especially since this case involved not one but three of the county’s leading families. And, as luck would have it, the magistrate sighed, Harris was related to his own kin, the Mudlows, by marriage.

The defendant was in the dock now, a well-built, well-fed sort of fellow with the smooth skin and even features much admired by ladies. Lester Harris was oft referred to as handsome, but to the magistrate, Jonathan Mudlow, the wretch’s visage was flawed. He had always thought Lester had mean eyes – pale, calculating eyes that surveyed the world from under lowered lids. Hence it had been a wonder and a consternation to him that his cousin Josetta Mudlow, a fine young woman who, in normalcy, was no fool, should even consider marrying Lester. And he had said so. Whereupon his Aunt Ophelia had rounded on him, calling him a sour grape, claiming he was jealous because her daughter was to marry the most eligible bachelor in the district.

And so Josetta and Lester had wed. She became the mistress of Glencallan, a fine farm gifted to them by Lester’s family, and in due course they were the proud parents of a bouncing baby girl called Louise May.

Jonathan had attended the christening. Josetta looked rather wan, understandable after the ravages of childbirth, but there were whispers abroad that Lester beat her.

Shocked, Jonathan asked his aunt, who brushed off such a suggestion. ‘Rubbish! Where did you find a tale like that? He’s got a bit of a temper, Lester has, but he’d never lay a hand on Josie. Never! And did you know she has a servant girl working for her now? How many men let their wives have servants, I ask you. None in our family and that’s for sure.’

Now Jonathan studied the pages before him, coughed, rapped the desk for quiet, and turned to the prisoner at the bar. ‘You have been charged and found guilty of assault and battery, a particularly brutal, unprovoked assault on a gentleman, who is now deaf as a result and has lost the use of his right arm …’

And, Jonathan said to himself, we also know now that you’re a bully and a coward, since the second witness claims you’ve committed previous assaults that have never been brought to the notice of the law.

He saw Lester sneer and raise his eyebrows impatiently. Even now, the Harrises seemed to think they were above the law. That this guilty charge could be solved by money. They had made it plain to Jonathan that they expected him to do the right thing by his cousin’s husband and levy a fine. A heavy one if he thought fit. Good of them, Jonathan reflected cynically, to assist me with my decision.

On the other hand, the victim, Matthew Powell-Londy, was the owner of a timber mill, and the permanent injuries he’d sustained constituted a serious handicap in the conduct of his business. Further to this, his brother was a lecturer in law at Cambridge, and on his advice, their father, James Powell-Londy, a powerful and bitterly angry man, expected the death penalty. They were both in the courthouse, in the front row, glaring at Jonathan this very minute.

On the other side, though, was Josie. She’d come to his door begging for clemency and he’d tried to turn her away.

‘I can’t listen to you,’ he’d said. ‘The crime has been discussed and debated in court, it is over now.’

‘But he didn’t mean to do it,’ she persisted. ‘It was just a moment of temper, Jonathan. He was provoked. He was being overcharged for the timbers he’d ordered to build the new stables, and God knows we can little afford all that extra money.’

Jonathan shook his head. ‘Now, Josie. Your farm is biding well. Don’t go telling me stories.’

‘Oh God, please don’t regard me if I’m saying the wrong thing. But Lester is truly sorry for what happened …’

‘Is he now? I hadn’t noticed.’

‘But he is. You have to let him go free. He’d never do such a thing again!’

‘Josie, you don’t understand. There are two hundred crimes on the books that incur the death penalty, many of them far less serious than this …’

‘What?’ She reeled back in shock. ‘You’re not … you can’t be thinking of such a thing! The death penalty! Are you mad? We have a daughter, she’s only twelve, would you …’ Too overcome to continue, she turned and ran off into the night, her wails echoing down the dark street.

Next thing, old man Harris was hammering at his door, but Jonathan refused to respond. He thought Newgate prison would be the most appropriate sentence in this case. A ten-year sentence instead of the gallows.

The night had taken its toll on his nerves as he’d dreamed of riots in the village – roisterers pillaging and burning – and seen himself atop gallows on a fine day, with the sun streaming down and children playing at his feet, a gaily beribboned noose swinging back and forth across his face, ticking heavily like a worn-out clock.

He was still groggy from those miserable dreams, and the depressing knowledge that whatever decision he made today would be met with rage by one side of the argument, at least.

Then he reminded himself that Newgate prison was not all that far from here.

Jonathan gazed into the future and saw members of the Harris family, and their friends, returning from visits to Lester in that foul prison to vent that rage on him, and his household, over and over again. There’d be no end to it. And he simply was not about to be pilloried by anyone, no matter how sorry he was that the law had Josetta’s husband in the dock. He knew there was another path open to him, and he decided to take it.

He rapped his gavel and called the court to order, then, when all was quiet again, he continued: ‘Lester Harris, I hereby sentence you to ten years’ imprisonment for this crime, your sentence to be served in the penal colony of Van Diemen’s Land. You are to be taken forthwith to Newgate prison to await transportation to that colony at the earliest.’

Harris shouted abuse at him as he was being dragged away, but his voice was drowned by the screams and shouts in the courtroom. Jonathan had other cases to hear, but he adjourned the court, taking refuge in the clerk’s office until these people drifted away. It was all over and he felt relieved. In time they’d all forget Lester Harris, except Josetta and her daughter, he supposed.

But if she had any sense she’d divorce him now.

Josetta’s father-in-law, Marvin Harris, came to see her that night, still enraged by the sentence.

‘But I’m a practical man, Josie, so we have to look at this straight. Now I know Glencallan’s my son’s property, left to him by his grand-daddy, but you can’t run it without Lester, and he’s not coming back, so we have to hang on to it.’

She was sitting at the kitchen table, too dulled by tears to care much about anything except the savage sentence her own cousin had inflicted on Lester, and the shock of seeing her husband dragged away. She hadn’t begun to grasp the enormity of that sentence, she simply could not conceive of it … that her man, her lover, was to be lost to her for ten years. It wasn’t real. Could not be. It was like saying that there’d be no dawn for a decade, or that the moon wouldn’t ever be seen in the skies again. She let Marvin rattle on; it was company if nothing else, for Josetta cared not a whit about the family sticking together. All she could think about was the suffering poor Lester would have to endure, locked in a grim dungeon for years and years.

Days later, when Marvin was convinced she understood the arrangements he’d outlined, he took Josetta up to London to visit Lester in prison.

Newgate was the worst, the most vile and filthy place Josetta could ever have imagined, and though she dared not say it, she was glad her husband was to be removed from there, and for the first time thought Jonathan’s decision might have had some merit.

As they made their way through the stinking stone corridors, she kept the hood of her cloak closed over her face, on Marvin’s advice.

‘Try not to look, Josie, there’s things here your eyes shouldna see, nor let the foul men either side here peer on your face.’

He paid a warder to bring Lester to an empty cell, so they could talk with some privacy, but when he arrived they were shocked at his filthy appearance.

‘About time!’ he yelled at them. ‘You’d let me rot here, wouldn’t you? Did you bring me some food?’

Josetta was ready to faint, so Marvin grabbed her basket. ‘Look here, son. Plenty here for you. There’s spiced sausage and ham leg, and bread and pies your mum made for you …’

He broke off as Lester, ravenous, grabbed at the food, stuffing it into his mouth as fast as he could.

‘Did you bring me any money?’ he asked hoarsely as he ate. ‘You have to have money to get food here, or clean clothes or even fresh water. They took everything I brought with me. I haven’t got a stitch of my own. I can’t live like this.’ He grabbed his father by the lapels of his jacket. ‘You have to get me out of here. Do something! Pay them whatever it costs. Sell the farm if you have to.’

Lester didn’t want to hear anything else from them. He was frantic to be released and demanded his father see to it right away. He hardly spoke to Josetta, except to urge her to keep Marvin working for his freedom.

‘I’m begging you,’ he wept in the end, ‘get me out before it’s too late. They say there’s a transport ship near ready to sail any day.’

Marvin took two rooms at a nearby inn, and day after day did the rounds of legal offices on his son’s behalf, to no avail. Each day, armed with a basket of food and wine, he and Josetta reported to Lester and sat stolidly, suffering his abuse. Eventually, when it did dawn on his son that there was no turning back now, Marvin broached the matter of Glencallan Farm.

‘Hard for me to say this, son, but we have to mind all of our interests. You’ll be back one day, but in the meantime …’

Lester sat on the bench, head down, a study in dejection, only raising it to reach for another bun and the pieces of apple Josetta was peeling for him. He didn’t even appear to be listening, so Marvin pushed on.

‘What I was thinking is this. Josetta can’t run it with you away, so we add it to my farm and make one big one, eh? That way it’s protected for you. I mean, if you leave it the way it is, then Josetta could end up bringing another man in, even marrying him!’

‘No! How could you say that, Pa Harris! I love Lester, I would never …’ Josetta dissolved into tears.

Lester ignored her. ‘One big farm, you say?’ he barked at his father. ‘One big farm?’

‘Yes. I’ve got the papers here.’ Marvin fished into his vest pocket. ‘If you sign Glencallan over to me, you’ll never have to worry about it.’

Lester charged from the bench and slammed his hand against the damp stone wall. ‘Do you think I’m stupid? Do you think I can’t see what you’re up to? You’ve always envied me Glencallan, you cursed Grand-daddy for leaving it to me, cursed him at the graveside! Now you think you’ll get it! And won’t my brother be rubbing his hands in glee! Well, it won’t happen. Get out!’

He rushed at his father and manhandled him out of the cell.

Bewildered, Josetta tried to quieten him as the slovenly guard glanced at them from his perch at the top of nearby steps.

‘Give her the papers,’ Lester snarled at Marvin, grabbing them and shoving them at Josetta. ‘I want to talk to you. Without him interfering.’ He pulled her aside.

‘Lester, you know I would never fail you …’ she began.

‘Sit down and listen to me,’ he said. ‘I’ve been asking around here to find out about this place Van Diemen’s Land. I don’t suppose any of you have done that.’

‘There hasn’t been time,’ she whimpered. ‘We’ve been too worried about you.’

‘You let me do the worrying from now on, because this is what you do. You sell the farm, lock, stock and barrel. Sell everything. Then you buy a passage for you and the girl to Van Diemen’s Land.’

She clapped her hands to her mouth. ‘What did you say? I can’t go to a prison. And I wouldn’t know how to get there.’

‘Shows how bloody ignorant you are. And stupid. Like him. I’ve been making enquiries. People are going to live there. Settlers. Instead of America. They go to this island, there’s a town called Hobart, and they make their fortune because they get convicts to work for them free. Imagine that! A farm where you’d not pay the farmhands!’

‘But I can’t go off to the wilds like that. I wouldn’t know where to start.’

‘Then you better learn up fast, because you’re emigrating to Van Diemen’s Land, with the girl and my money, and there you’re buying a farm. And if you don’t do that, I swear I’ll come back and kill you.’

She tried to soothe him. ‘Lester, dear, you’re overwrought. Please … stop a minute. I’ll do everything you ask, of course I will. I am beside myself that you are being taken from me. If you go slowly and explain to me patiently what I’m to do, then I’ll be with you in Van Diemen’s Land as soon as is humanly possible.’

To his surprise, Marvin saw Lester take her in his arms, and thought sadly what a foolish fellow he was to entrust his farm to a woman.

When Josetta sold Glencallan to a stranger who outbid him, he was outraged.

Patrick O’Neill told his wife he’d keep fighting for their son as long as there was breath in him. He forbade her to despair. And indeed, it seemed at first that he was making headway.

‘The first charge,’ he said, ‘was little more than drunk and disorderly.’

‘Riotous assembly,’ the solicitor corrected primly, ‘assault upon a person, destruction of property.’

‘Same thing. And that other charge of being a member of the Young Ireland Association, well, that’s not right. Our Matt was never political. He was only visiting the house.’

‘They all say that.’

O’Neill thumped the wide desk. ‘You’re not here to take their side! I’m paying you to get Matt home. We’ll pay a fine, whatever it is, but you have to pull your weight. Don’t be just sitting there like a knot on a log. Do something!’

‘Mr O’Neill. On the first charge, if you recall, it was I who had the sentence reduced from ten to five years, but you don’t seem to understand, the second charge is far more serious.’

‘Don’t tell me what I don’t understand!’ O’Neill roared. ‘I understand what they’re up to, but I don’t accept scooping up good with bad in a netting expedition and giving them all life! My son isn’t one of them, he’s never held a gun in his life.’

‘He joined them, Mr O’Neill. His signature’s in the book plain as day. And they were in that house plotting a raid.’

‘Jesus wept! That was never proven. No one gave evidence to bear that out, not a soul.’

The solicitor sighed. ‘I’ve done my best. Transportation to Van Diemen’s Land is better than having to live in a prison cell here.’

‘You’re wrong. They can’t wrench him away from his family like this. You have to stop him being transported! Lodge an appeal before it’s too late.’

‘I did appeal, it was rejected. I can do no more, I’m sorry to say.’

‘And what about my nephew, Sean Shanahan?’

‘His sentence was set in stone right from the beginning, Mr O’Neill. I told you that. Assault and robbery! That is a life sentence!’

‘But it was only mischief!’

‘Not to the magistrate.’

Though it was a warm day, the room seemed icy cold to Patrick. He shuddered. ‘Did you read that an English ship carrying convicts went down off the coast of France, and a hundred and sixteen convicts were drowned?’

‘Yes,’ his solicitor said sadly. ‘But they were all female. And some children.’

‘God help you, man! Are you thinking that men would have a better chance? Chained in holds with less freedom than the rats?’

‘I’m not saying that at all. I am simply at a loss to offer you any more advice at this stage.’

‘Then tell me, how does a man draw up a petition to present to the Government?’

‘On what subject?’

‘On the banning of transportation of our citizens to parts unknown. Can we talk about that now?’

‘It’s too late for Matt.’

‘Don’t you think I know that? Don’t take me for a fool, man. I want you to show me how to get the petition started. If I can’t help my son, then I’ll try for other men’s sons, and daughters. I won’t go back to my wife empty-handed.’

‘Very well. I’ll send my clerk for the official petitioning forms and when they’re ready, I’ll have an MP lodge them for you.’

From the lawyer’s office, Patrick made his way up O’Connell Street to his hotel, where he collected the parcel of warm clothes his wife had packed for Matt. From there he trudged on to the prison, his heart as heavy as his boots.

At the gate, he was about to hand in his permit when a girl rushed over and took him by the arm.

‘Mr O’Neill, wait! They won’t let me go in there on my own. Could I come with you? I have to see Sean.’

He frowned. ‘Ah, it’s you, Glenna Hamilton. You shouldn’t be here. This is no place for a young lady.’

‘Oh please! Sean’s being sent away too. He and Matt, it seems likely they’ll go any day. You wouldn’t deny me seeing him this last time.’

He looked down at the pretty, winsome face, remembering that there had been a time when Matt was keen on Glenna, but of late she’d been walking out with his cousin Sean Shanahan. And now this … both lads sent into exile.

Patrick was distraught over the fate of the boys, but he found room for a measure of sympathy for the colleen, and thought she’d bring Sean some cheer at least.

‘All right then. Pull that scarf over your face and don’t be making any chatter. I’ll see if I can find him for you.’

They were taken across a courtyard to the archway over the visitors’ entrance, where they stood awhile, with an elderly couple and a huddled family group, until the door was unlocked and they were ushered inside, to line up before a bench and deposit belongings.

Four guards – three men and one woman – watched them; the woman was a nasty-looking beast, Glenna thought, as she handed over her purse and shamrock brooch and moved over to the female line, where the Beast actually manhandled her when it came time for her to be searched from head to foot.

She saw Mr O’Neill in his search line, looking angry at the way the woman was treating her, hands like cast iron banging up and down her person, but she shook her head at him to show that she was all right, for fear he’d cause a disorder and they’d be thrown out. But then he too was searched, and they were allowed past to join the others. They were led down a long corridor, called to a halt as if they were recruits, and left standing there, under guard.

Glenna was tingling with excitement at the very thought of seeing Sean, and was finding the whole thing an adventure, never having been inside a prison before. So far it had been not a lot different from entering any government building, with that same old flagged floor and watery walls.

A guard came and whisked away the old couple, then returned for Mr O’Neill, but when Glenna stepped forward she was ordered back behind the black line, the one she hadn’t even noticed before.

‘She’s with me,’ Matt’s father told them, but was informed that his son was in the yard, and women weren’t allowed out there.

‘Then where can she see Sean Shanahan?’ he asked. ‘She has the permission.’

‘He’s out there too. Send him back to his cell. You’ve only ten minutes left; you should have come earlier, they’ll be going in to tea now.’

Mr O’Neill jerked his shoulders impatiently and began walking forward, forcing the guard to hurry after him. Glenna watched nervously as they disappeared around a corner, then appealed to the guard who carried a clipboard and seemed to be in charge of directions.

‘What about me, sir?’ she asked in her sweetest tone, but he scowled and made what she was sure was a rude remark over his shoulder to guard number three, and they both looked at her and laughed.

Blushing, Glenna turned away, and one of the women in the group said loudly: ‘Don’t take no notice of them, darlin’. You’re too good for the likes of them.’

Then her name was called, and Glenna, counting the minutes now, was running down towards that corner, to be taken through heavy doors that had to be unlocked and locked again, with time awasting, and then sent into a bare room, with nothing, no furniture at all, only bars on the narrow window.

‘Is this his cell?’ she asked, incredulous, but the door was slammed shut. The guard hadn’t locked it, so she sneaked over to open it just a little, because it stifled and frightened her in there, and as she reached for it, it opened and a man was pushed inside. Sean it was, shoved at her like a bag of potatoes, leg irons tripping him, hands cuffed behind his back.

He almost fell, but she caught him in her arms, and his mouth was on hers in that same minute, searching for her, needing her, and Glenna was ecstatic.

‘Ah,’ she said, ‘you’re still so beautiful and all, no matter what they do to you.’ But then she remembered he’d said, often, that it wasn’t for men to be beautiful. It was for beauties like Glenna Hamilton.

‘Dear God, but I love you, my darlin’,’ he said to her, wrestling with the yearnings of those poor clamped arms. ‘I’d have died had you not come to say goodbye.’

‘But it’s not goodbye,’ she cried fiercely, as he shuffled over to lean against the wall. ‘You’ll be back, I know you will. And I’ll never stop loving you, Sean. Never.’

She clung to him, their kisses frantic now, as if they could hear the clock ticking. She undid her blouse, baring her breasts as she felt for the hardness of him, trying to do her best for him, though she’d never been so bold, or allowed him to be so bold, ever before, and he moaned and told her again how much he loved her and of his regrets that he had brought them to this, but then the door burst open and the guard stood there grinning. Sean moved in front of her, trying to protect her from the brute’s leer, but Glenna Hamilton stood by him, taking her time to button up, astonished that she didn’t care one whit what the guard had seen.

Sean kissed her, long and tenderly, and they took him away, and Glenna trooped back to the front door in a daze, in an absolute walking-on-clouds daze, to wait for Mr O’Neill and be reminded to collect her belongings.

‘They leave here tomorrow,’ Mr O’Neill said, his voice hoarse. ‘Both of the lads.’

Glenna pulled up the collar of her coat to try to hide the tears that were already wet on her face.

One of the dilapidated hulks now wallowing in the Thames still bore the name Earl of Mar, but it was a far cry from its glory days as a warship, as the present ship’s company would avow. They were the overflow from London’s prisons, billeted aboard and sent ashore daily, to clear the marshes in a backwater known as Bosney Flats, in preparation for landfill works that would extend the shoreline to deeper water and create more accessible wharves.

No one, except the unfortunate convicts, seemed to notice that snow was falling this particular morn, and that the muddy water was caked with ice – certainly not the overseers, rugged up to the eyeballs, as they ordered the men to ‘wade in and no hanging about’.

Angus McLeod, late of Glasgow, waded into knee-deep water hauling a raft to collect the reeds as they were wrenched from their beds, listening to the curses of his freezing workmates and pondering the irony of his situation. Six months ago, his support of violent protests against intolerable working conditions for the poor had seen him arrested and sentenced to be transported to Van Diemen’s Land. Now awaiting the transport ship, along with a number of Earl of Mar’s occupants, he was enduring conditions ten times worse than those for workers in the Glasgow slums.

He’d told another convict, George Smith, about that, complaining bitterly at the way they were being treated, and George had laughed. Irony meant nothing to him. He thought the story was supposed to be funny – but to Angus there was nothing amusing about the cruelty they were enduring, the long hours of work and the starvation rations. He claimed there had to be prisoners’ rights, that they had to be entitled to lodge complaints somewhere.

‘Stop worryin’ about it,’ George said. ‘Nothin’ to be done. You’d not be doin’ the job so hard if you got on with it and stopped your thinking. You’re making it worse on yourself, Angus.’

George was a kind man, from Wessex, listed as a farmer, but he’d stolen a prize goat, borrowed, he’d claimed, ‘for to husband my nanny goat’, and ended up in this foul wreck with more than three hundred other men, and inevitable fights.

Only two nights ago, a bully-boy, Lester Harris, who had appointed himself boss of a work gang, making sure they kept on the land side of the marshes, ferrying barrows of soil across narrow plank walkways, had head-butted a man over some disagreement, knocking him out for a few minutes. He’d then reached out to grab the man’s blanket, decent blankets being rare, but George had stepped in and ordered him to leave it.

‘Who’ll make me?’ Harris had challenged, but when George suddenly produced a knife, astonishing his friend Angus McLeod, the argument subsided as quickly as it had begun, and the injured man, recovering dizzily, kept his blanket.

‘There are terrible punishments for carrying a weapon,’ Angus felt he ought to mention to his mild-mannered friend. ‘Harris will dob you in to get back at you.’

‘No he won’t,’ George grinned. ‘He ain’t got the goolies.’

As rumours swept the gangs that they’d be leaving soon, Angus had managed to write a frantic letter to his cousin Ursula, asking her to bring his parents to London so he could bid them farewell. They hadn’t even come to see him in the Glasgow prison, though Ursula had made the effort, explaining that they were in a state of bewilderment. ‘The arrest and all, it happened so fast,’ she said. ‘They’re not familiar with the regulations and how to go about things.’

‘Aye, I understand that. Me being arrested would be a dead shock for them, but if someone would come with them … bring them here …’

‘I’ll try. They might come with me, but you know, Angus, they think I’m a fallen woman because I work as a maid at the Grand Hotel and, God help my soul,’ she grinned, ‘I live in there. They’ve even got my mum looking sideways at me.’

‘They’ve always been sticklers for the straight road, especially my Ma. She’s been brought up strict chapel, but I don’t think she understands they’re sending me out of the country for years. It’ll break my heart to have to leave without bidding them farewell. You couldn’t say it to them, and I wouldn’t want you to, but they could pass away in that time, and that would be the worst of all punishments for me.’

He stood at the barred window and kicked the wall. ‘Do them blasted magistrates ever stop to think that these sentences are outrageous and irresponsible, in no way meant to fit the crime?’ he blazed, and Ursula nodded respectfully.

It was a fact, Angus realised, that this girl didn’t know what he was talking about; so ground down were poor folk that few would contemplate raising their eyes, let alone a fist, to protest. And his mother was the same. Worse even. To her, complaining about low wages was a slight to a person’s own dignity.

‘Do ye want people to think we’re dead poor?’ she’d railed at him one night, when he arrived home from a protest meeting.

‘We are dead poor,’ he’d said wearily.

‘Ach! You should have seen how we grew up. A pot of gruel like mud for tea, and pleased we were to get it, no money for firewood in the freezing winter. The winters were colder then …’

She fought change, he recalled. Wore black all her life. One skirt for the winter, one for summer. And thanked the Lord for preserving them.

He tried to talk to his father. ‘The bosses are stealing from us. Getting rich on our toil. Can’t you see that?’

But Jim McLeod had no time for that sort of talk. ‘There’s plenty worse off than us.’

‘Sure there are, so we have to help them.’

‘I think you ought to do your own work and mind your own business.’

Ursula was standing at the cell door. ‘Don’t fret, Angus. I’ll have my mum tell them there’s not much time.’

But time had run out before they made it to the London prison, and they’d never find him here. No visitors were allowed, except for the few, like Harris, who paid to be taken under guard to the coach house at the Bosney crossroads.

Harris had gone to meet his wife.

‘We had business to attend to,’ he’d growled when he returned to the inevitable obscene remarks from his offsiders, and had given them no further information.

After three months in the hulk, plenty of time for a letter,