A table, with a basin and a jug of water. At the far end of the room, the ones chosen for the task were whispering and fluttering to each other.
‘Knock when ye are ready,’ said the tipstaff, a sneer in my direction as he closed the door behind him.
Leaving inside this room the twelve of them, and me.
Some I knew by sight but not to speak to, from shops in the town, or from the fair. One or two were widows and still wore their widow’s weeds. Mostly they were Mam’s age, though one was younger, a heart held by two hands in the manner of the Claddagh on her finger. Another was much older than the rest, with a long cream shawl and hair like a sheep’s fleece of purest white.
One spoke up. Small and stout, she wore a yellow bonnet.
‘Have any of you done this before?’ she said.
The white-haired crone was about to speak but appeared to think the better of it.
‘Because I have.’ Yellow Bonnet was clearly proud of this dubious achievement.
‘Then you should be our foreman,’ said another, and the rest murmured their agreement, since Judge Weedle had directed that they select one amongst them for this office.
‘Forewoman, better say.’ Yellow Bonnet tittered and gave a little bow. ‘But I thank you for this honour.’
Then she turned to me, and her face darkened.
‘Up on the table, girl,’ she said, ‘and we’ll soon see what’s what.’
*
I could have no quarrel with the original jury’s verdict, or so Farrington told me anyway. Agent McNally was as dead as dead could be, and by my hand. Beside the hearth in a lake of his own blood the peelers found him, his head split like a walnut by the axe. I was prepared to meet my Maker, though I had no immediate wish to do so. But to endure, for even one more day, McNally’s stinking breath and groping, ale-stained fingers and thrusting crotch when he came calling for the rent seemed to me a fate far worse than Hellfire.
‘A bad time to put yourself on the county.’ As he spoke to me in the cell beside the courthouse on the morning of my trial, Farrington was eyeing up the young assistant he’d brought with him. He munched a buttered scone. ‘The land’s aflame with tithe disputes, and tenant-wars, and the like; this jury will convict you without drawing breath, for fear their own pockets will be robbed next.’
At this prediction Mam let out a whimper. I said then I was no Ribbonman, nor cutpurse neither, since I’d not touched a penny of McNally’s ill-gotten gold; and what was he, Arthur Farrington, Queen’s Counsel, going to do for me, now that Mam had sold the brown heifer to pay his fees?
‘I warned you she was a strap,’ said Crilly the solicitor, but Farrington raised his hand and Crilly fell silent.
‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘what happened.’
So I told Farrington about McNally calling each week when he knew that Mam and the smallies were not home, and how he’d hunt me round the cottage, until I’d that day put an end to his filthy business. The heat rose in my cheeks, and my lungs fought for air as I spoke; and Crilly, taking this for shame, said he’d fetch the priest, since the most that could be hoped for was to save my sorry soul.
But Farrington held up his hand again, and his assistant, who had been looking at me most curiously, whispered something in his ear.
*
Yellow Bonnet stepped towards me. I backed away but she kept coming until my arse was up against the table.
‘C’mon now, lassie,’ she said, ‘you know what’s to be done.’
She grabbed my arm and tried to shove me back onto the oak.
‘Let go of me, you sow!’ I shook my arm free and squirmed away from her.
‘Oh, she has spirit, this one, hasn’t she?’ Yellow Bonnet beckoned the others, her eyes glittering. ‘Help me here, please,’ she said, though it sounded less of a request and more of a command.
Two burly countrywomen stepped shyly forward and stood either side of me.
‘Get her up,’ said Yellow Bonnet.
At first they hesitated, but when she rapped the table the pair of them hauled me up on top of it by the oxters like some stricken beast, and though I lashed and kicked until I thought the wood might splinter, I could not escape their grip.
‘Her legs, hold her legs.’ At Yellow Bonnet’s command two more came forward to clutch an ankle each, so that now I was pinned at all four corners.
‘Get your hands off of me, you stupid bitches,’ I cried. But no matter how I wriggled and twisted, nor what obscenities I shouted, there was no deflecting them.
‘Now, then,’ said Yellow Bonnet.
And she began rucking up my skirts.
*
‘There is a matter I must discuss alone with my client,’ said Farrington.
After Mam and Crilly and the assistant had left the cell, my counsel stared at me in a silence I found most unnerving. Then he withdrew a small flask from some inner pocket, unscrewed the top and took a swig before proffering it to me. Initially I declined, but at his further prompting I took a shallow sip, my eyes watering as the whiskey lit a fire in my throat.
Farrington took back the flask and stowed it in his jacket.
‘A day may come, Miss Sweeney, when what McNally did to you will set you free, but I fear instead that the morrow will see you hoist upon The Hill.’
Up to then I had been strong, but now I trembled and began to snivel. I had witnessed hangings on The Hill; the roadsides thronged with onlookers drunk on moonshine, baying as the prison cart hauled its latest wretched cargo to the summit where no tree grew but the one that dangled from its single branch our whole town’s rotten fruit.
Farrington produced a handkerchief, which though grubby still retained some hint of perfume. As I snuffled in its folds, he whispered, ‘If you will only say it, you may yet escape the rope.’
I snuffled harder, pretending not to know his meaning, and anyway not seeing how acknowledging my secret would bring me anything but disgrace.
He leaned in closer; our heads were almost touching.
‘She is still learning, my sweet assistant,’ he said, ‘but she misses nothing, and about you she is right, is she not?’
‘What do you mean?’ I did not dare to look at him.
He touched me very lightly on the hand.
‘I hold no torch for the Church,’ he said, ‘nor for the noises wagging tongues make in this town. My only concern is that your life is spared’—he gestured at my stomach—‘as well as the new life growing inside you.’
*
‘Should we not… question her first?’
The one who spoke was thin, dressed in widow’s weeds, a squint in her right eye.
‘Because maybe we can find out from asking her if she…’ The widow’s voice trailed off, her distaste evident for the job that lay ahead.
‘Well, maybe.’ Yellow Bonnet paused and looked at me. ‘When were you last in your flowers?’
I stopped wriggling; I had not heard this phrase before, and did not know its meaning.
Yellow Bonnet took my hesitation for dissembling.
‘Oh now, you’ll not pull the wool over my eyes, lassie,’ she said, and she hoicked my skirts up further.
‘What she means,’ Squint Widow said, not unkindly, ‘is: when did you last bleed?’
Ah, that.
‘Twenty weeks,’ I said, and although I did not mean to, I gave a little sob, since I was reminded then of Sean, my Sean, who’d left almost five months ago, his limbs entwined with mine as we lay together the night before his ship set sail.
Squint Widow turned to Yellow Bonnet, eyebrows raised. There’s your answer, her face said.
But Yellow Bonnet was not done.
‘Twenty weeks is nothing either way.’ She put her hands on my knees. ‘Spread your legs so we can take a look at you.’
I tried to keep my knees together but could not. ‘Leave me alone, you hag,’ I said, blubbing tears and snot as she prised my legs apart.
‘Not the first time she’s obliged, and not the last time either, I daresay.’ Claddagh Heart smirked at her own wit, and one or two of the others giggled also until the white-haired crone shushed them, to remind them of the solemnity of their duty.
A thought struck Yellow Bonnet, and for a moment she released my knees.
‘Of course, if you are with child—’
‘Quick with child’ corrected Squint Widow, since this had been Weedle’s direction to the twelve.
‘Yes, yes, quick with child.’ Yellow Bonnet’s patience was wearing thin. ‘And a shameful thing it would be for you to be in such a state, a girl of nineteen summers, and with no husband by her side.’ To this prim castigation some of the others added their own murmurs of disapproval. ‘But if you are,’ continued Yellow Bonnet, ‘who, then, is the father?’
A silence: she had the interest of a good number of them now. Eyes widening, they waited, appalled by my loose morals yet anxious not to miss out on any tittle-tattle.
‘Who is he?’ said one.
‘Tell us,’ said another.
‘Yes,’ said Yellow Bonnet, ‘you have to tell us.’
*
Farrington had been right. Earlier, at the end of my trial, less than half an hour after they had been sent out, the first jury were back.
‘You have a verdict?’ asked Judge Weedle, whose gloomy, long-faced countenance reminded me of a particularly stubborn mule.
‘Guilty, m’Lord!’ cried the foreman, his eyes shining in triumph.
A growl of approval rose up from McNally’s family and hangers-on. Other land agents roared their vigorous agreement. At the back of the packed courtroom one or two Ribbonmen shook their fists, shouting in anger, while others muttered darkly about vengeance. Mam hugged the two smallies and wept.
Weedle looked simperingly at the jury.
‘May I say,’ he said, ‘that I wholeheartedly agree with your verdict, and have no hesitation in imposing the sentence required by law.’
He motioned to his tipstaff, who handed him a small wooden box. Weedle took from it a square of black cloth and placed it on top of his wig.
‘The sentence of this court is that you be taken from here to a place of execution—’
‘M’Lord, there is a matter I must bring to your attention.’
Farrington was on his feet. The prosecuting counsel looked at him, bemused.
‘M’Lord, I have reason to believe that my client, Miss Sweeney, is with child.’
Amid gasps in the public gallery, Mam raised her head from the mesh of her hands. She tried to catch my eye, but I could not look at her.
‘And if this be confirmed by a jury of matrons,’ continued Farrington, ‘the sentence you have imposed following the verdict’—and here Farrington glanced witheringly at the jury —‘cannot be carried out, since to do so would be to punish the innocent within the womb for its mother’s crime.’
There was a ripple of excitement along the benches. The prosecuting counsel conferred hurriedly with his flustered junior.
‘Matrons?’ said Weedle suspiciously. ‘A jury of matrons? This is news to me.’
‘But not to the legal system of this land, whose laws you have promised to uphold.’ Farrington smiled sweetly at the judge as he handed up four dusty tomes, which had been passed to him by his assistant.
‘These precedents show that if my client “pleads the belly,” it is her right to have another jury—a jury of matrons— appointed to inspect her, so as to confirm her pregnancy. A right, m’Lord, going back almost six hundred years. Before even you were appointed.’ This last line he said barely audibly. The assistant stifled a giggle.
‘This is 1846, Mr Farrington. Not the… the Dark Ages.’ Weedle’s jowls wobbled in exasperation. ‘And did you not hear this conscientious jury’s verdict?’ Here, Weedle raised an inquiring eyebrow at prosecuting counsel, who could only grimace back, shaking his head: perhaps there’s something in the defence’s argument after all.
‘I do not contest the verdict.’ Farrington was a model of reasonableness. ‘But the case-law makes it clear that this court cannot execute an innocent. And if twelve matrons decide—’
‘Women, Mr Farrington! On a jury?’ From Weedle’s mouth the word came like a lump of horse-droppings from underneath his buckled shoe.
‘Yes, m’Lord. Given their particular expertise in matters of such delicacy. “Discreet women,” as the cases say, “with some presumed experience of childbirth.” Whatever that means,’ muttered Farrington as an aside to his assistant.
‘Quick with child, it says here.’ Weedle was flicking one of the book’s pages back and forth, searching in vain for an argument against Farrington’s proposal. He glanced sullenly in my direction. ‘She does not look “quick with child” to me.’
‘We are perhaps of like mind on that, m’Lord,’ said Farrington, artfully nodding in agreement. ‘But as the law makes clear, it is not for you or I to decide. This is a matter for the matrons.’
*
‘Actually, she doesn’t. Have to tell us.’
Another one spoke. Tall and graceful, her long black cloak gave her the appearance of a crow.
Yellow Bonnet rounded on her challenger. ‘But surely we must first know who the—’
‘Never mind who the child’s father is.’ Crow would brook no argument. ‘It may as well be Daniel O’Connell, for all it matters.’ One or two of the women whinnied indignantly at this impertinence concerning The Liberator, though I’d heard it said that not for nothing was he known as the “Father of Ireland”.
‘What matters,’ continued Crow, ‘is whether a child is quickening inside this girl or not. So, ladies, since we have this task to perform, let us set to it before the men outside deny us even this.’
I kicked and struggled; I even tried to bite the hands that held me.
‘This is for your own good, girl,’ cried Crow over my screeching, ‘how else are we to find out if what you say is true?’
‘There is a baby inside of me, there is, I know it.’ By now the tears were spilling down my cheeks.
‘Well, then,’ said Crow, all business, ‘you best allow us our inspection, so that we can confirm you are indeed with child.’
Maybe it was the logic in what she was saying, or maybe I had just grown weary of the battle; but for whatever reason, I lay back with my eyes closed and my legs open as they crowded round me. Some were shy to even touch me at first, but sooner or later almost all of them laid hands on me, prodding my stomach, pinching my skin, palping my breasts for early milk. They were most of them gentler than I’d imagined, though one made me yelp, her cold fingers probing up my gowl. How long they took I cannot say, for though it felt like hours, it must surely have been less. The windows in the jury-room were too high to see out to the street, but the light of day was fast declining, and already one or two were muttering about sending out for candles when Crow stopped proceedings.
‘Ladies,’ she said, ‘I think we have laboured here enough.’
Nods and whispers amongst some of them.
‘I think,’ continued Crow, ‘we now know that this girl is no more pregnant than that slack-jawed fool of a judge who tried her case.’
‘Too right!’ cried Yellow Bonnet. There were further murmurs of assent, and she knew that she would soon have the whole room. ‘I think,’ she said, her voice rising, ‘that we twelve should go back in there and tell the truth; that there is nothing in this belly but piss and wind.’
‘Wait,’ I said, ‘please, wait.’ Though none seemed to be listening; and by then I was so tired that I began to doubt even my own body, my own instinct: what if I was wrong?
‘I wonder should we not first vote?’ Squint Widow at least wanted to do the right thing. ‘Since the judge told us we must all be agreed?’
‘Well, perhaps so.’ Crow looked diffidently towards Yellow Bonnet. ‘Maybe you can put it to a vote?’
‘Indeed I will.’ Yellow Bonnet’s cheeks flushed with excitement. ‘I say our verdict is: there is no child quickening inside her. All in favour, raise your hand!’
Already she had her own hand high above her head. She seemed to me possessed of a particular urge to punish, yet nine other hands rose also in the air, with varying degrees of reluctance, making ten. And then, eleven, when Squint Widow apologetically raised her arm.
‘But we still are not unanimous,’ the widow said, and she sounded almost relieved.
Yellow Bonnet was staring at the one remaining holdout: the fleece-headed old crone sitting in the corner.
‘What doubts can there be left for you not to vote with the rest of us, woman?’ asked Yellow Bonnet, and there was a razor’s edge beneath her silken tone.
The high windows were almost dark; the light was very nearly gone. ‘Candle, we need a candle,’ said Crow. She knocked on the door of the jury-room to wake the tipstaff snoozing outside, who quickly produced wax and flame.
The door sighed shut. In the amber glow of the new candle, the old woman began to speak.
‘The thing is,’ she said, looking first at Yellow Bonnet, ‘I once before witnessed a woman plead the belly. And before we condemn this girl, there is something I would like to see.’
She stood up and waddled towards me. With her white shawl and whiter hair, she seemed ghost-like in the candle’s guttering light.
‘In this condition,’ she said, ‘the piddle a woman makes is different, or so it is said. Can you please bring me that basin?’
Young Claddagh Heart duly obliged.
‘Now, you,’ said The Ghost, addressing me, ‘sit up for me, please.’
As I raised myself on my elbows, she lowered her head over me, just beneath my belly button. One hand stroked my skin, while her other hand held the receptacle below. The other women peered at us, waiting for the basin to fill: was this some fairground trick, some witch’s spell?
I tried to piddle but could not.
‘There, you see.’ Yellow Bonnet had had enough. ‘There is no child inside her, and she knows it.’
‘Just wait.’ The Ghost was patient. Yet still no piddle came.
But there came something else instead: a movement, down almost in my crotch, like the ticking of a mouse’s heart.
‘Aha!’ cried The Ghost, for she felt it too.
She looked at the others. Another flutter came, and then another, making me gasp.
‘You see?’ The Ghost removed her hand.
Tentatively, Crow and Yellow Bonnet each placed a palm on my stomach. As they huddled in to watch, some of the others stretched out their hands and did the same. Again there was a stirring, stronger this time, then another and another. And then, definitely, a kick, that made Yellow Bonnet flinch.
‘Well, then.’ The Ghost spoke quietly. ‘We are all of the same mind now, I think?’
One by one she scrutinised the faces gathered round me; each nodded their agreement, even Crow, until it came to Yellow Bonnet. Her mouth was tighter than an agent’s purse; she glanced around, searching for support, but not one of the eleven spoke, except through their determined silence.
‘So it would seem,’ Yellow Bonnet said eventually, with an exasperated horse-fluttering of her lips.
A couple of the women let out small sighs of relief. As Yellow Bonnet turned to knock on the door so as to alert the tipstaff that the matrons’ jury had a verdict, The Ghost took my hand and helped me down off the table. ‘I wish you well,’ she said, her eyes glistening. ‘Whatever may be next for you, I wish you well, you and your baby.’
*
On the quayside hawkers moved amongst the passengers and their families, thrusting handbills about Monster Meetings and the Corn Laws to anyone who would take them. A stevedore grunted as he swung sacks of grain into a ship’s hold.
The baby shivered. I tightened the shawl I’d swaddled round him, and he stopped.
I clutched my steerage ticket. The way Farrington had explained it after the matrons returned their verdict, I had little choice. ‘Once the baby is born,’ he said, ‘the law requires the mother to return and serve her sentence. And though the Crown may pardon you, or sentence you to transportation, you’d be best advised instead to arrange some transport of your own.’
Mam was trying not to cry. ‘I’ll pray that you’ll return,’ she said, her lip quivering as the two smallies tugged at me, wanting one last chance to hold their nephew.
‘Of course I will,’ I said, though whether this would happen neither of us could know.
After one last embrace, I turned and wiped my eyes. As I walked down the pier towards the gangplank of our ship, I thought I saw a long white shawl in the distance, and although it was not her, I could not but think of all of them, Crow, and Yellow Bonnet, and Squint Widow, and The Ghost, and the rest of those twelve women who had saved us. I kept walking, my mewling baby nuzzling against me as above us the canvas sails flapped and billowed in the breeze.
