The Prisoner

The Prisoner

  By

  Adrian Scott

  Copyright © 2011 by Ian T. Foster, M.A.

  First Publication Rights Only

  Ian T Foster, M.A;

  Unit 73/130-132 King Street

  Caboolture Queensland 4510

  Phone: 0438 559 513

  Email: [email protected]

  https://www.adrianscott.info

  CHAPTER ONE

  March 18th; 1821: Dawn had barely risen when they came for the prisoner.

  Tossing restlessly on his narrow bunk, he had been unable to sleep through that first long night because of rats that gnawed at the edges of the thin horsehair mattress that lay between his body and the hard wooden boards of his bunk, and bedbugs that crawled and crept through the thin, moth-eaten blanket they had given him.

  He heard the door of his cell open on squealing hinges, heard the heavy tramp of booted feet, and suddenly he was seized by the shoulders and almost lifted bodily upright, to stand, half-awake, beside his bunk whilst manacles were fastened about his wrists and the short, heavy chain that linked his ankles was checked. Then he was dragged from the tiny cell in which he had spent his first night ashore in Sydney, and hauled down the narrow corridor to the parade-ground.

  A hand landed heavily between his shoulder-blades, and he stumbled out into the pre-dawn chill as a group of six armed guards, bayonets fixed to the muzzles of their muskets, formed themselves in a ring about him. Before he had time to even glance quickly about his new home, the squad began marching, the prisoner dragged along in their midst by a short length of hemp that was fastened about his neck, the other end held by a swiftly-moving soldier.

  He had a sensation of a long, narrow, cobbled roadway that stretched before him, the smell of the sea from somewhere to his left, the wash of the tide on the rocks that littered the shoreline, and no more.

  Along Hickson Road they marched, the tall man stumbling along in their midst, prodded occasionally by a rifle-butt slammed into his back.

  Early morning workers stopped to watch the parade, the mass of soldiers in their coloured uniforms, the officer at their head and, almost lost to sight in the centre of the ring of guards, the prisoner. They marched to the end of Hickson Road and out into George Street, a wide thoroughfare designed to allow drays and teams of eighteen bullocks to turn about in its width, and continued on their way, ignoring the curious onlookers beginning to gather on the footpaths to either side.

  As some of the more voluble members of the crowd began to catch sight of the prisoner, stumbling along in the midst of his guards, his hands shackled, his feet, because of the chain linking them, causing him to stagger and fall occasionally as he tried to keep up with the marching platoon of soldiers, voices were raised in protest. One man, a huge, hulking bear in dirty dungarees and workshirt, hoisted a small shard of broken tile from beneath his feet and sent it sailing into the red-coated phalanx, accompanied by a raucous cry of: “Dirty, stinkin’ bastards!”

  Almost immediately, twenty yards behind the ‘parade,’ the prison-gates opened again, and a brigade of marines exited at the double, weapons at the high-port, raced past their fellows, and lined both sides of George Street, facing the crowd. As thumbs pulled back on musket-hammers and a repeated metallic ‘click!’ was heard, the crowd fell silent...with the exception of the bear, who glared into the eyes of the soldier immediately in front of him, then carefully and unerringly spat on the toecap of the man’s highly-polished boot, then stood, arms folded, smiling sardonically.

  With nary a change in his dour expression, the soldier took one pace forward, and the butt of his musket connected with the chin of his attacker.

  The bear staggered, shook his head, then resumed his place, his fists doubled, the muscles along his arms bulging.

  A shot rang out, shattering the morning stillness, and the huge man suddenly clutched both hands to his midriff, where a large red blossom had opened, and as blood pumped from his abdomen, he sank slowly to his knees, then toppled face-forward into the gutter.

  “Leave ‘im be!” the young soldier growled as an overweight woman bent to do what she could for the victim. She looked up into the eyes of the uniformed man, busy reloading his musket, stared again at the groaning figure at her feet, then melted back into the crowd.

  As the large man’s lifeblood slowly trickled away down the gutter, an angry muttering began, picked up and carried from voice to voice. The crowd pressed forward, and from behind the soldiers lining the roadway, a middle-aged officer, his shoulder-epaulets shining in the dawn sunlight, cried “Ready!” and rifles swiftly came to each shoulder, the muzzles pointed straight at the crowd.

  The forward movement of the throng stopped. The muttering did not.

  Along the road and past the corner of King Street the parade continued, its collective pace timed to the beat of a lone drummer, past shops and dwellings and workhouses, to the junction of George and Market Streets, where an armed squad of men awaited the arrival of the prisoner. Out in front of them stood a giant of a man, a sergeant, a cat-o’-nine-tails coiled over one shoulder. He wore no shirt, the red braces of his trousers appearing incongruous against the worn, unwashed, and tattered undershirt. As his little pig eyes caught sight of the prisoner, a slow grin split the fat face, and he jerked the leather coils down off his shoulder and allowed them to uncoil in the dust at his feet.

  “P’rade...halt!” echoed loudly along the street, and the entire assembly of uniformed figures stopped. Two guards seized the prisoner by the arms and dragged him forward to a huge wooden triangle, and his wrists were tied to the peak, some three feet above his head. An officer stepped forward, took hold of the ragged shirt the man wore, and ripped it wide open down the back, revealing protruding ribs and an absence of body-fat.

  The sergeant stepped forward, the cat trailing behind him, and took careful aim at the back of the prisoner. At the cry of “One!” the cat whistled forward, the weighted ends coiling about the upper body of the prisoner and ripping into skin and muscle. Bloody streaks appeared on the pallid skin, and the prisoner jerked slightly, but not a sound escaped his firmly clamped lips.

  “Two!” and the cat struck again, gouging lumps of living flesh from the unprotected body.

  “Three!”

  This time, a grunt of pain escaped the pale face, and the head drooped slightly down between the shoulders. But before the prisoner could brace himself, the cat had struck again, and his legs began to buckle. By the time the count had reached fifteen, the bloodied figure was hanging, unconscious, all his weight suspended by his wrists.

  The count continued. The punishment went on unabated, until the number had reached fifty. Then the big sergeant, now panting heavily, lovingly ran the plaited tails of the cat through his hand to strip the flesh that had clung to the leather, coiled it again, and hung it over his shoulder. A bayonet severed the ropes binding the prisoner’s wrists, and his body dropped, senseless, to the ground.

  A soldier stepped forward, a wooden pail in one hand. Hefting the pail, he sent a cascade of sea-water splashing over the prisoner’s body.

  As the salt in the brine ate into the raw wounds on the body, the prisoner was brought back to a world of pain he would not forget for many months.

  He screamed.

  Two soldiers stepped forward, handed their muskets to two of their fellows, and lifted the unfortunate man by the armpits. His feet dragging behind him, his head hanging, he was surrounded by guards and hauled away, and the parade returned back the way it had come.

  CHAPTER TWO

  As eight am; chimed from a ship’s bell in the harbour, they tossed him into a cell, slammed and locked the door, and left him.

  All was quiet and still for a time, interrupted only by the laboured breathi
ng of the prisoner. Then, emboldened by the smell of blood and the lack of movement in their world, rats began to creep from their holes in the walls and climbed up the sides of the rotting mattress to investigate. They followed the scent of fresh blood and butchered flesh to its source, sniffed, and began gnawing at the open wounds that curled around his back and ribs.

  For perhaps ten minutes, unconsciousness held him free from the pain and burning torture of the world that awaited him. Then, as a particularly bold rat approached a gaping wound in his side and began chewing at the flesh hanging from him, he awakened, screamed once – a long, lonely sound in that world of steel bars and granite-block walls – and attempted to rise from his bunk, to flee from the creatures that tore and ripped at the damaged meat of his body.

  He seized one large creature by the scruff of the neck and smashed its skull into the wall, then tossed it from him. Immediately, the remaining rats scurried to this new, fresher, and more helpless victim, and began tearing at it with their sharp little teeth. Ripping, cracking sounds issued from the motionless corpse until hair, flesh, and bone were all consumed, and all that remained was a filthy scum of blood on the floor of the cell. Then they returned with renewed vigour to the larger prey cringing on his bunk, his knees drawn up to his chin, his eyes wide in terror, his hands flailing uselessly at the beasts that turned his world into a place of ripping, burning agony.

  In desperation, the prisoner found, from some deep place within him, the strength to rise to his feet, to stand, unbalanced, on the thin mattress from which the odour of rotting horsehair and material arose, and for a time the rats were held at bay, unable to reach the upper body that offered so much fresh nourishment to their hungry maws.

  But soon they began to climb the thin legs, to reach out for the shreds of flesh surrounding the wounds created by the lash and the heavy lead weights that hung at the tips of each ‘cat’, and his agony began anew.

  Driven to the rim of insanity by the unending pain, he gradually sank to his knees, offering an easier path to his tormentors. And as his fevered brain collapsed once again towards unconsciousness in an effort to protect itself from the ghastly torment of the myriad rodents that invaded that tiny cell, he slumped, once again, down on his face, and lay there, oblivious to the needle-sharp claws and razor teeth of the rats.

  Sometime later, when all but the greediest of the rodents had eaten their fill, two guards, each carrying a pail of heavily-salted water, entered the cell and hurled the contents of their wooden receptacles over the creatures, sending them scurrying for their holes.

  Laughing and joking at the hideous sight that greeted their eyes, they took the prisoner by the arms and dragged him from the cell, threw his limp form in the back of a tumbril, and drove the cart some six miles, out into the bushland surrounding what was to eventually become the premier city of that faraway land, and awakened him by hauling on his ankles until his body slid from the back of the cart and landed, face-down on the hard-baked earth.

  He was lifted to his feet, his manacles were unfastened, and a pick was forced between the fingers of his curled fists. They led him to a pit, where foundations were being dug for a block of offices near the area later to be known as Broadway, hurled him down into the mud and slime, and ordered him to work.

  The prisoner dragged himself slowly to his knees, then his feet, and looked about him. Within the long, narrow pit, two other prisoners laboured with spade and pick, digging, tossing aside shovelfuls of earth, and turning to dig again. He raised his eyes upwards, and there above him stood two guards, their muskets pointing directly at him, their fingers curled about the triggers, grim smiles on their faces.

  “Yer digs…or yer dies,” the taller one told him, an evil grin lighting up the little pig eyes, and so he worked.

  There, as the sun burned down on the open wounds in his torn and shredded body, he swung that pick until he could lift it no more, then sank to his knees in the slime, whilst the two guards laughed and taunted him, prodding him with the tips of the bayonets affixed to the muzzles of their rifles and challenging him to “Run! Damn yer! We ain’t shot nothin’ in many a day!”

  For an instant, he considered shrieking “Shoot, then! Shoot! And release me from this hell!” But some inner, deep-seated desire to cling to life at all costs asserted itself, and he hefted the pick again, just as a whistle sounded from somewhere on the other side of the worksite.

  “Orright!” the shorter of the two guards grated; “come on. Git outa there. It’s time fer yer lunch!”

  He dropped the pick, somehow managing to release the handle though his fingers had locked themselves about the wooden grip, and stumbled to the end of the pit. Pushed from behind by the other two prisoners, he managed to clamber over the end of the worksite, crawled onto flat, heated earth, and found the strength to rise to his feet.

  Prodded from behind by the ever-ready bayonets, he stumbled off in the direction indicated, and saw, ahead of him, a group of some twenty other prisoners, seated on stumps and rocks and digging their filthy fingers into tin pannikins of mash and barely-warm, rotting meat. As he collapsed to the ground once again and twisted his aching body so that he was seated on the earth, a pannikin was shoved into his hands, and he stared at the fly-infested contents of the bowl, whilst his stomach heaved at the foul odour emanating from the mess.

  Every muscle in his body ached; his fingers were cramped, barely able to cling onto the pannikin; and the open wounds in his flesh burned from the sun that had scorched down mercilessly upon him all that long morning. But he ate, somehow, regardless of the disgusting odour and nauseating taste of the meat and potatoes, and even managed to wash it down with a half-mug of cold, sugarless tea.

  A hand reached out from beside him and passed into his fingers a white, ricepaper-wrapped cylinder of tobacco, then held a Congreve so that he could bring its end to glowing life, and he breathed in the smoke, feeling his head spinning as his first cigarette in several days took its effect upon his blood-pressure.

  He turned his head and gazed with thanks into the eyes of an aged, white-haired prisoner clad in rags even more tattered than his own.

  “What’d yer do?” the old fellow asked in a hoarse whisper, flicking his eyes to the wounds in the prisoner’s flesh, and the prisoner replied: “Stumbled comin’ down tha gangplank…grabbed a guard ta save meself from fallin’. Laid me ‘ands on tha Queen’s uniform, they said. Fifty lashes.”

  “Silence! Or ye’ll get more o’ tha same!” a senior guard yelled at him, and he fell silent once more.

  Slowly, so very slowly, the nicotine began to relax him. He gazed around, at the towering eucalypts that surrounded the worksite, at the flashing blue waters of the bay some fifty yards distant, at the multi-coloured parrots squawking and chattering high in the branches of the trees. It all seemed so peaceful, so quiet, so tranquil, and so very far removed from the horror into which he had fallen through no fault of his own.

  Found assisting a dying man who had robbed a baker’s store and been shot down by the Bow Street Runners, he had been arrested and tried as an accomplice, and regardless of his own protestations of innocence, been sentenced to fourteen years’ transportation to the colonies.

  And so, here he was at the start of his sentence, more a victim of the harsh and implacable justice system that ruled the British Isles than many other men who had sailed with him on that distant day some two months previously, part of a population his home country no longer wished to accommodate.

  All too soon the order to “Return ta work!” was given, and he crushed out the remains of his cigarette, rose to his feet, and hefted the heavy pick once more. His first day on the work-gang would not end until sunset was approaching; by then, he was barely able to raise a hand to swat at the black, buzzing flies that tormented him endlessly.

  CHAPTER THREE

  April 1st; 1821: Two weeks had passed since that day when Hell had opened its doors and forced him to taste of its horrors, and the gaping wounds and liv
id gouges on his back and ribcage had begun to close over.

  His stomach had become immured to the foul stench arising from the food they offered him, and he could now swallow the rancid meat, rotting potatoes, and cold, lumpy gruel without wanting to vomit.

  But he appreciated most of all the small quantity of tobacco and the old, handmade white-clay pipe with the fractured stem he had found, together with a small box of Congreves, in the prison yard one morning. It had been his fortune to find them when a particularly old guard had been on duty, a man with a heart that could, at times, offer a representation of kindness to those beneath his charge, and so his treasure had not been taken from him. He had slipped tobacco, matches, and pipe into the only pocket remaining in the once-white cloth trousers he wore, and now could enjoy the taste of tobacco at lunchtime, and at night when the guards had passed on their hourly rounds, and all was quiet in the long corridor off which the cells opened.

  Two cigarettes a day was a pittance. But to the prisoner, that pittance was something to be looked forward to, something to be enjoyed and for which he could have thanked Heaven, had not the cruelty and mistreatment of the past three months driven all thoughts of a Heaven and a God from his broken being.

  Every day, he laboured in the heat of the sun or the flooding downpour of torrential rain, swinging his pick again and again, until the muscles in his back and shoulders ached, and his hands cramped and became locked to the handle of the implement he used. And every day, he dreamed of the world he had left behind, a world where hunger was a daily companion and want a never-ending accomplice, but a world where freedom, at least, was also present.

  He had not been married, had not even been aware of so much as one relative still existing of the extended family into which he had been born. And now, he could feel gratefulness for the lack of both, for to leave a wife or grieving relatives would have created an ache his heart could not have borne when the prison-fleet sailed on that morning which now seemed so long ago.