One of Us Buried by Johanna Craven (year 2 reading books TXT) 📕

I told the magistrate exactly what he wanted to hear. I was hoping for lenience, for mercy. Hoping blindly to return to that townhouse in Clerkenwell with little more than a slap on the wrist.

“Are you aware the crime of coining is considered high treason, Mrs Marling?”

I wasn’t aware. Jonathan had played down the crime I was committing. I was nothing but a courier, he’d assured me, my hands clean of the silver dust and chemicals that saw the coins churned out into the world. And he had led me to believe we would not be caught. I had accepted it because I needed to.

“Are you aware of the punishment you will likely face for such a crime?”

In a hollow, expressionless voice, he told me how I would be drawn to Old Bailey Road to face the Newgate hangman.

I heard a laugh escape me. That same disbelieving, bordering on hysterical laugh I had given when Jonathan had first told me about his coining enterprise. I heard the sound of it hang in the still air of the interrogation room. My body went cold, then hot, and I saw the world swim.

“And my husband?” I managed.

But Jonathan was never to make it to the hangman. The day of my arrest, he took a bullet to the chest in the front garden of our townhouse. The constable delivered the news to me in such a blank, matter-of-fact tone that his words barely registered. I was far too shocked to feel anything; not grief, or anger, or regret. All I could make sense of was that I would not be returning to Clerkenwell, or Hanover Square. There would be no more townhouse, and no more fortepiano. No more roses in the garden where my husband’s body had fallen.

My other realisation was that I knew who had killed him. There was no doubt in my mind that Henry Wilder had come after him to prevent Jonathan from speaking his name. Prevent him from revealing him as the architect of the enterprise.

But I stayed silent. I’d been taught never to speak out. Never to make waves. I told the magistrate I knew nothing of who the shooter might be. And with closed eyes and death hanging over me, I turned my back and let my husband’s killer walk free.

Once, back in the blissful days of my ignorance, Jonathan and I had passed a prison hulk rotting on the banks of the Thames. We were returning by boat from two days at the seaside, and the sight of the sorry vessel beached in the mud at the low tide had yanked me back to reality. Men in ragged clothes moved about on deck and I could hear shouts and groans coming from within the lightless shell of the ship.

I found myself watching, unable to tear my eyes from these men who had been reduced to little more than animals. Stripped of dignity, of privacy, of freedom, a future.

“They’d be better off dead,” Jonathan said, a hand to my shoulder ushering me away. I nodded along, forever in agreement.

And perhaps there were convicts on that hulk who wished they had faced the hangman. But when I was sent to New South Wales for the term of my natural life, I found myself sobbing with relief.

I kept to myself as the Norfolk slid down the Thames and into the English Channel. At least as best as I could with elbows in my face and women on every side of me. I couldn’t fathom that this was my life now. Somehow, engaging with the chatter, the gambling, the out-of-tune singing made my new life far too real.

I’d managed the seasickness well enough in the early days of the voyage, when the Norfolk traced the coast of Europe and slid smoothly into the Bay of Gibraltar. But in the open ocean, the ship was seized, and down in those airless, lightless quarters, we lost all sense of up and down.

Water poured in through the hatches and the sea was thunder against the hull. Most of us were too sick to stand, to speak, to do anything except huddle in our own mess, and the pool of seawater gathering at our feet. I shivered and retched, and clung to the edge of a bunk until my fingers were raw. I tried to close my eyes, but that only made things worse. I had no idea of how many days and nights had passed. All I knew was that, there in the bowels of the ship with months at sea ahead of us, I wanted to die.

With my eyes half closed, I was dimly aware of a woman weaving her way through the bunks and groaning bodies. Hannah Clapton. I couldn’t fathom how she was on her feet.

And then she was standing over me, offering me a gentle smile.

She held out a small hunk of bread. “Here, love. You ought to eat something.”

I shook my head.

“You’ll feel better for it. Trust me.”

I took the bread. Forced down a mouthful. It wasn’t like I could feel any worse.

“That’s it,” she said with a small smile. “It’ll help. Take a little more.”

She watched me like an anxious mother as I took another minuscule bite.

“Why are you not sick?” I asked. My throat was burning, and my mouth felt horribly dry.

Hannah shrugged. “Spent half my childhood on my pa’s fishing boat. Seems I still got my sea legs after all these years.” She tilted her head to look at me, chuckling to herself. “And I here I were thinking you couldn’t speak.”

I leaned my head wearily against the edge of the bunk. “What are you talking about?”

“You’ve not said a word to any of us since we boarded,” she said. “Me and some of the others were wondering about whether you was soft in the head.”

I