The Hungry Heart Fulfilled (The Hunger of the Heart Series Book 3) (17 page)

 

 

Ever yours,

 

 

Emer and William.

 

 

Frederick nodded. “Perfect. He’ll never suspect a thing. Right,
Constable Warren, take her if you
please.”

 

 

“Wait, the baby. I need a few more
things for him. Please,
if you won’t let me leave him
behind, at least allow me to take him some clothes and
cloths,” Emer requested.

 

 

The child clung on
to the carved
rosary beads in bewilderment as one of the constables held him
up and wrapped
him in a blanket several times like a mummy, while the other
one went next door
and grabbed a few things out of the nursery drawers as Emer
had instructed.

 

 

“Where are you
taking me?” Emer
asked, as they threw back the covers, and taking an arm apiece
suspended her in
between them, with her feet dangling lifelessly on the floor.

 

 

“Straight to court
to be tried,” one
of the constables muttered as he negotiated the narrow stairs.

 

 

Frederick looked as
though he had
been given a revolting disease as he was forced to take the
baby down the
stairs. He didn’t so much as glance at his own grandson, so
hard-hearted was
he.

 

 

“You will be taken
to the
magistrate’s court within the hour, where your hearing will
take place, and
sentence will be passed,” Frederick triumphed, knowing full
well that he was
the sitting magistrate, and Emer hadn’t a chance in the world
of being found
innocent.

 

 

But first Frederick
had to get rid
of the bastard child. Separating from the police constables,
he got into his
own carriage and headed down to the docks, where a steamer
heading for Toronto
from Grosse Ile had just pulled in to let off a few
passengers.

 

 

“Are any of you
going to Toronto?”
he called out.

 

 

“Aye, and if we
can't find work there,
then on into the mountains after that.” a few of the people
informed him,
hoping the prosperous-looking gentleman would offer them some
work.

 

 

“Who will take this
poor orphan off
my hands for five pounds?” Frederick declared loudly.

 

 

At first there were no takers, for
everyone felt sorry for
the poor babe, swaddled up to its odd golden eyes, and turning
redder by the
minute with heat and weeping as it bawled inconsolably.

 

 

Finally one gnarled
old crone looked
up and answered, “I’ll take it, sir.”

 

 

“Very well,”
Frederick positively
gloated, and handed over the money, the pillowcase, and the
child.

 

 

Convinced that he
had found a
thoroughly disreputable old woman who would take the first
convenient
opportunity to throw the child overboard as the steamer
cruised down the St.
Lawrence River, Frederick headed off to the magistrate’s court
without a second
thought for his poor helpless grandson.

 

 

But once he was
gone, the old woman
approached a very young girl, whose eyes were half glazed with
fear and grief,
and said to her in Irish, “Look, Mary, your son. He’s hungry.”

 

 

The pathetic dazed
girl, having just
lost her own baby to the fever, unwrapped the bundle, undid
her grimy blouse,
and automatically began to suckle the infant tenderly.

 

 

The old woman
smiled, and then
stared suddenly at the infant’s fist. She looked with interest at
the carved wooden rosary
William clung to
tightly, and crossed herself.

 

 

She had no idea who
the rich man was
who had given her the infant, but she was certain that he was
up to no good.

 

 

Then she looked in
the pillowcase,
and saw all the beautiful baby clothes Emer had made so
lovingly with her own
hands, and saw several bibs with the name ‘William’
embroidered on them.

 

 

Though she had
doubts about the
wisdom of what she had just done, the old woman was certain
that Mary would
treat the child as her own, which was more than could be said
for the generally
heartless orphanage authorities.

 

 

So she decided to
keep the child and
the money, and hope she could one day discover the truth about
the infant's
identity, and how it had come to meet such a fate at the hands
of the grim man
with blue-grey eyes as pale as a wolf's.

 

 

She placed the
hand-carved rosary
around the child’s neck for safe-keeping, and hung onto the
baby’s pillowcase
tightly to protect it from thieves.

 

 

“I think William,
Liam is a lovely
name, don’t you, Mary?” The old woman smiled gently.

 

 

The girl nodded,
and cradled the
child until he finally stopped crying and began to drowse.

 

 

Then the boat cast off from the dock, and
continued its
voyage down the mighty river.

 

 

 

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

 

 

While Frederick
took his side trip
to the docks to dispose of baby William to the first immigrant
who would take
him off his hands for five pounds, Emer had been brought
straight to the court
house. Since her arrival, she had been forced to sit propped
up in a chair by
her arms, to wait for the magistrate’s arrival.

 

 

Apart from one of
the constables who
had arrested her, Constable Warren, there was no one else
present, and more
alarmingly, no sign of her child.

 

 

Constable Warren
looked quite severe
and forbidding, and Emer had a sinking feeling that worse was
yet to come.

 

 

In that she was
quite correct, for
when she was ordered by the constable to rise for the judge’s
entrance, she of
course was unable to do so.

 

 

The magistrate,
none other than
Frederick Randall, entered, and abruptly called his first and
only witness, Mr.
Pertwee, who came into the room through the door situated
behind her.

 

 

“I commanded you to
rise!” Frederick
barked.

 

 

“Show some respect,
you damned
whore!” Pertwee
shouted at her,
and dragged her up onto her feet.

 

 

Emer tried to break
her fall as her
dead legs gave way under her. But Pertwee had yanked her so
violently, that she
went crashing to the ground, and was nearly knocked
unconscious as her jaw made
contact with the solid stone floor.

 

 

“Get her up!”
Frederick snarled, and
then the whole farce of a trial began.

 

 

Emer felt herself
being dragged back
off the ground, and shoved into the chair again. She sat numbly
trying to stanch the flow
of blood from her
mouth and nose, and prayed she wouldn’t lose all her front
teeth.

 

 

Pertwee’s by now
predictable
testimony concerning the fire and the flogging on the
Pegasus
was
recited to the court for the
benefit of the tiny audience.

 

 

Surprisingly, Pertwee then
continued on to say that
he had been present on the night of the orphanage fire, and
had seen her set
the blaze herself.

 

 

Emer could hear a
small scratching
sound behind her, and managed with some difficulty to turn her
head far enough
around to see who was there.
Emer
espied a timid little clerk taking down all of Pertwee’s
statements, and her
heart sank.

 

 

Even if she could
move her jaw to
speak, how could she possibly defend herself?

 

 

When Pertwee came
to the end of his
catalogue of lies, Frederick demanded gruffly, “Have you
anything to say on
your own behalf, Prisoner, before sentence is passed?”

 

 

“I just wish to ask
Mr. Pertwee by
what means the fire was started?” Emer managed to get out
after several tries
through her numb jaw.

 

 

“The same as on the
ship. She made
it seem as if the logs had
fallen out of the fire in the library, and then they of course
set fire to the
carpets and curtains, and burnt the house,” Pertwee invented
happily.

 

 

“Did you get all
that down, Clerk?”
Frederick asked.

 

 

“Yes, sir,” he
quavered.

 

 

“Pertwee is lying,
sir. I'm
innocent. I was crippled in the fire saving the
children. No one
was injured except myself.
It was started on the back porch with
the lamp oil from the outside lanterns, as several people can
attest.

 

 

"On the ship, I
broke down the
wall with an axe, and stopped the fire from spreading
throughout the ship. I
wasn’t even in the galley when it
went on fire. I was attending to my other duties. It was Fred’s
negligence, not mine, that
caused the fire. If
Fred were still alive he could tell you so. But there are other
witnesses. The
Jenkinses, Patrick
Bradley the first mate, and Mr. Randall’s own son Dalton were
all there!” Emer
argued in a slurred voice.

 

 

“That is enough. Clerk, you will
ignore those comments,
and tear up that piece of paper with her testimony on it,"
Frederick
commanded.

 

 

"Now, since there
are no
witnesses for the defence, the court will proceed.
  If the prisoner has nothing else
to say, then we
declare that this court finds Emer Nugent Dillon guilty of two
counts of
arson."

 

 

"No!" she screamed.
"I'm innocent!"

 

 

"The usual
punishment for this
crime is hanging, but in your instance, due to your gender and
youth, and since
you are not a citizen of this country, we sentence you to
transportation to
Australia, with hard labour.
You
will be sent to Ireland immediately, on a ship bound for Cork,
and from there
you will be committed to the prison on Spike island, until a
suitable outbound
convict vessel can be found to take you to Botany Bay.
Constable Warren, take
her away,” Frederick said abruptly, and banged his gavel.

 

 

“What about my
son?” Emer called
out, as she felt her arms being seized.

 

 

Frederick looked at
her sharply, and
she could see the gloating smile on his face through her haze
of pain.

 

 

“The court has seen
fit to grant you
a stay of execution, so that you may have time to reflect upon
your past life
and the errors of your ways.
Your
son has been placed with suitable parents, able to look after
the child’s
welfare. Let the
loss of your son
also be a punishment to you, to remind you of the loss of life
which could have
occurred had your evil deed caused fatalities amongst the
innocent children in
your care.”

 

 

“No, no!
  You can’t give him away! Dalton loves him!
  It will surely kill him to lose us
both. Have some
mercy, for pity’s sake!
I don’t care what you do to me, but
don’t harm the baby! William
is
your own grandchild! My
God, what
kind of a devil are you!" Emer screamed, trying to grab
Frederick’s jacket
as he stormed past her contemptuously.

 

 

The constable held
her back from
him, and Frederick disappeared with Mr. Pertwee hot on his
tail.

 

 

The tame clerk,
perturbed by the
events of the day, finished scribbling down all of Emer’s
words as he had been
trained to do, though Frederick had ordered him to strike out
all her
testimony.

 

 

Constable Warren,
moved by Emer’s
tears despite himself, gave her his handkerchief and a glass
of water so she
could try to clean up her bleeding mouth, and waited uneasily
for the clerk to
finish taking down all that had been said.

 

 

As Emer tried to
stanch the flow of
blood, she pleaded with them to help find her son, that the
magistrate's son
Dalton Randall would reward them for the return of his child.

 

 

Constable Warren
thought he had seen
it all in his years as an officer of the court, but the
battered, crippled
woman begging for her baby's life was like nothing he had ever
encountered.

 

 

Once the clerk had
completed his
report, he filled out the papers required to secure Emer’s
transport on the
next vessel bound for Ireland.

 

 

Then Emer’s
pillowcase containing
her few possessions was thrust into her hands, and she was
carried away by the
very disturbed constable.

 

 

Once outside, he
put her into in a
closed carriage with another constable, who looked at her
bruised face with
puzzlement and shock. They
drove
on through the streets of Quebec with her trying to explain
what had just
happened, and how she needed to find her son.

 

 

The young man felt
pity for her, but
had no idea what to do. He had his orders, after all.

 

 

Emer's heart began
to sink as her
pleas fell on yet another set of deaf ears. So she forced herself to
think about her
own immediate
situation. She was crippled, and now she was fairly certain
her jaw was broken.

 

 

Though there was no
window in the
conveyance, Emer could tell from the smells filtering through
the closed door
that they were heading towards the docks. They were
transporting her like a
common criminal. She was going to have to endure an Atlantic
crossing once
more, only this time with no freedom, family, or supplies.