Toward the Sea of Freedom (10 page)

By year’s end, the redcoats’ ardor to wring new confessions from Michael and Billy had cooled. Instead, a man appeared. Though his suit had seen better days, he introduced himself as an attorney. Michael listened as Billy told the story again, crying through the whole tale. Michael kept his silence with this man as well. He did not believe this sad-looking lawyer could do anything for him. With theft came banishment. They would be condemned. And the length of the sentence was more or less irrelevant. Once you landed in Australia, you never came back.

Still, Michael stubbornly believed he would find a way back. There was no prison one could not escape. Walls couldn’t be put up around an entire country, and if Australia were an island, he would just swim for it.

Michael yearned to write to Kathleen, at least. Like most of the village youths, he had mastered the fundamentals thanks to Father O’Brien. As long as he sat in the dungeon, though, there was nothing he could do. Even if Michael had a penny with which to bribe the guards, he would have needed not just pen and paper but also a lamp. The lantern Kathleen had gotten from the guard had long since burned out, and in his cell, Michael could hardly see his hand in front of his face.

The attorney told the prisoners the date of their trial. The sentencing was scheduled for the beginning of January, just next door in the courthouse. This news caused new rivers of tears for Billy, but Michael looked forward to it. Once they had been sentenced, there would be no more reason to torture them. Michael also thought they would be moved out of the dungeon to the cells, where it was surely warmer and the food might be better. He drew new courage from these hopes, and he made it through his trial without saying a word.

“You two could shorten your sentences by showing remorse,” said the judge—a short, thin man, wearing a giant white wig, who reminded Michael vaguely of Trevallion.

At that, Billy almost fell to his knees before the man, and crying and lamentation arose in the courtroom too. Gráinne Rafferty and two of her younger sons were present, but Michael had hardly recognized the old cook at first glance. The once rotund Gráinne looked haggard and emaciated, her children dirty and ragged. Apparently they had been cast out of the village and were struggling through life on the street. Michael wondered how a woman could make money out there without selling herself. With a guilty conscience, he thought of Gráinne’s daughters, who had not come with her. Were they standing on some corner of the wharf, offering their bodies to the sailors?

Michael’s parents had not come either, but as he let his eyes roam for the third time over the people in the courtroom—among them, other prisoners to be sentenced and their families—he caught sight of Brian and Jonny in the last row. Jonny grinned at him, and Michael smiled in return. It was good to know the two of them were over there and not in chains next to him.

When the judge saw Michael’s smile, he became annoyed. He angrily accused him of contempt for the law, but Michael let the accusations bounce off him, just as he had the judge’s earlier admonition. The English occupiers could mistreat him, condemn him, and exile him, but they could not force him to take them seriously.

Finally, the sentences were announced. Billy’s seven years of exile were no surprise. That was the usual sentence for theft. Michael received ten years. The Irish in the courtroom found that too hard a sentence, and they reacted loudly.

Michael received his sentence in silence. He did not move or say a word until the other prisoners were led out and Jonny could finally make his way to him.

“Jonny! How’s Ma? Is everyone well?”

Jonny nodded. “Aye. Ma sends her love, but it was too far for her to travel in this cold. And she’s not mad at you.” He grinned. “On the contrary, I’d almost say she and Da were one heart and one soul. Wouldn’t surprise me if we have another brother or sister before long.”

“Jonny!” Michael laughed, if a little forcedly. “And . . . Kathleen?” he asked quietly.

Although his family no longer lived in the village, he was sure Jonny still talked to his old friends.

Jonny shrugged. “Don’t know. I haven’t seen her. Or hardly anyone from the village. Seems the O’Donnells didn’t throw her on the street. But people are talking, you know. So, is it true what Pat Minoghue says? Is there a baby coming?”

Michael bit his lip. Of course, Kathleen must now be in her third month. A pregnancy could not be kept secret forever. And naturally, her parents were in a rage and punishing her, but at least they had not sent her away.

He did not know whether he was relieved or disappointed. Of course everything would be easier if Kathleen waited for him in the village. But being thrown out might have given her the courage to try her luck in the New World. Australia might even be closer to America. Perhaps he could flee straight there.

“Tell her I’m thinking of her,” Michael called to his brother as the guards pulled him away. Until then, they had allowed him the conversation—perhaps out of surprise that their stony prisoner could actually talk—but regards to his beloved proved too much for them.

Indeed, they did not take the men back to the dungeon. Finally, the relief Kathleen and Bridget had worked out for Michael was taking effect. The corrupt but affable guard was convinced to extend favors to Billy too. Bridget was in the courtroom when Billy and Michael were sentenced, and the old whore was happy to pay an extra penny for Michael’s desperate accomplice.

Kathleen had left plenty of money with the good woman, and Bridget felt sorry for Billy and his family. Since the trial, he had shared a halfway spacious four-person cell with Michael and two other men. There were even a few logs for the fire and plenty to eat every day.

“What happens now?” Billy asked.

“Now, we wait,” one of their fellow prisoners explained, “until the next ship leaves for Australia. And that might take a while. If the winter is long, they won’t send us over until May.”

“Probably also depends on how quick this place fills up,” the other speculated. “If the jail’s bursting at the seams, they’ll sail—they don’t care if the tub sinks, after all.”

Michael thought the latter point was likely untrue. The English Crown might not care about the prisoners, but a ship was valuable and its crew consisted of Englishmen, probably experienced seamen. Michael had never heard of a prison ship going down.

Half of the prisoners in Wicklow Jail were serving shorter sentences and were employed for labor, mostly doing simple and rather boring tasks. The other half were waiting to be shipped out, and those were the more serious criminals being shoved off to Australia. They were mostly thieves who were driven to their crimes by pure need. But there were also brawlers and murderers among them, always looking for trouble.

Boredom took its toll: there was bullying, abuse, and fighting. And there were draconian punishments if someone was caught in the act. Michael, who was considered a troublemaker because he neither treated the guards with reverence nor let the other prisoners push him around, quickly became acquainted with punishment.

The guards in Wicklow Jail would have preferred to be rid of him sooner rather than later.

At the beginning of March, Michael and the other prisoners whose deportation was planned for that spring were ordered to the prison doctor. Only healthy and halfway hardy men were sent away. The traveling conditions were not easy, after all, and England did not want to be accused of causing the deaths of prisoners. However, one always had to reckon with losses. The oppressive compactness on the ships and the insufficient food and fresh water encouraged epidemics, infections, and fevers.

Dr. Skinnings—a tall Englishman who, with his red hair and freckles, could also have passed for an Irishman—examined and cared for the bloody welts on Michael’s back.

“Those will have to heal before we can send you to sea,” he said. “Open wounds quickly become infected there.”

Michael laughed bitterly. “Then tell your friends the guards to spare me their attentiveness for a couple of days. It’s not my fault the wounds don’t close, believe you me.”

While the doctor examined him, listening to his lungs and heart, Michael looked around the infirmary. He had been thinking about escape for weeks—since he had left the dungeon, in fact—but Wicklow Jail had proved a modern and secure prison. The walls were high and thick, the guards alert. So far, no opportunity for getting away had presented itself.

The prisoners, some of whom had been in Wicklow for years, confirmed Michael’s observation. Since the prison’s renovation ten years before, no one had escaped. But Michael was not prepared to give up easily. He had hoped that perhaps the doctor’s office would present an opportunity, but things did not look good here either. If he had correctly figured out the prison floor plan, the infirmary did not include a wall facing outside. Even if he had been able to flee out a window, he would only have found himself back in the prison yard. Moreover, the window in the doctor’s office was barred just like those in the cells.

A few things had stood out to Michael and awakened his interest. There were pencil and paper in the doctor’s desk, as well as a notebook and a pen atop the medicine cabinet beside the scale.

As Dr. Skinnings turned to write Michael’s information in the notebook, Michael seized his opportunity. Quickly, he made the pencil and two pieces of paper disappear into the pockets of his wide prisoner’s trousers. When the doctor turned back toward him, Michael smiled obediently.

Dr. Skinnings looked severe. “What did you just take?” he asked with a firm voice. “Don’t lie. You took something. You can give it back to me, or I’ll call the guards. The latter would not be good for the healing of your back.”

Michael felt his face becoming red. Now even this doctor would think him a common thief. Wordlessly, he pulled the paper and pencil from his pocket and laid them on the doctor’s desk.

Dr. Skinnings furrowed his brow. “Paper and pencil? Nothing from the cabinet?”

Michael looked in surprise at the bottles and pill boxes on the shelves. “What would I want with them?”

Dr. Skinnings shrugged his shoulders. “Who knows? Get drunk? Kill yourself? The men are always trying it—and yet most of them can’t even read what the bottles say. But that’s not the case with you, now, is it?”

“I could read them,” Michael informed the doctor. “But that’s about it. That’s Latin, right?”

“Latin and sometimes Greek. Well, well, you can recognize that. You’ve a clever head, Michael Drury. What a shame you seem only to want to make it through the wall. Why do you want the paper and pencil? Do you hope someone outside will free you? Do you belong to some organization perhaps planning an assault on the prison ship? You can tell me, or the guards will beat it out of you.” Dr. Skinnings eyed Michael with arched eyebrows.

Michael laughed. “No one beats anything out of me, Doc,” he said. “I can keep quiet—and die, if it comes to that. But there’s no dark secret here. I don’t have any friends with magic weapons. Just a girl in a village on the Vartry who is pregnant with my child. I’d like to write her a farewell letter, to give her a little hope.”

Dr. Skinnings shook his head. “Hope for what, Drury? Do you think you’re coming back? My God, man, be reasonable. No one comes back. You’ll spend the rest of your life in Australia, in Van Diemen’s Land, likely. But that needn’t be so bad. You’re still young. You have a ten-year sentence to serve, of course, but after that, you can apply for land as a free settler. Over there is more land than anyone knows what to do with, Drury. As for those ten years, I’ll mention in my report that you can read and write. That’ll make you valuable. You’ll be employed in more skilled jobs than just clearing the land. Only if you behave, of course. Use these ten years, Drury. Get to know your new country. Don’t see this punishment as an exile but a chance for a new beginning.”

Michael shook his head. “And what should I tell Kathleen?” he asked. “I promised to marry her.”

The doctor shrugged. “Forget the girl. It sounds harsh, but it’s the best advice I can give you. You won’t see her again. And now, feel free to take paper, a pen, and some ink, and write her a beautiful letter. Tell her to take care of herself, but don’t give her any hope.”