'So, where'd 'e steal it, then?' Mary asked tartly, though her heart thumped within her breast at the sight of the medallion.
'No, no, missus, it be his luck, what be called his talisman!' Abraham then told Mary the story of the medallion as Ikey had related it to him in the coach.
Mary had a dim recollection of having once observed a gold chain about Ikey's neck. Stripped down to his vest and long johns, the gold chain had disappeared into the top of his tightly clinging woollen upper garment so that she had no knowledge of what might be contained at its extremity. Now the thought that it might be his medallion, Ikey's talisman, opened her heart like a summer rose. She took the Wellington medallion from Abraham and, turning it over, read the inscription nestled between the garland of laurel leaves. Whereupon Mary's broken hands pressed Ikey's talisman to her bosom and she knew with a fierce certainty that she would survive, that she would never surrender and that somehow she had inherited Ikey's uncanny luck.
At that moment, despite his innumerable faults and thinking him no more than she knew him to be, Mary loved Ikey Solomon.
Chapter Seventeen
Mary was to spend five months in Newgate Gaol, two months longer than her original sentence, this to await a convict ship bound for Van Diemen's Land. On the 15th of May 1827, with eighteen other female convicts, she was placed in light irons and transported by open cart to Woolwich, where the convict ship Destiny II was berthed to await its full complement of female convicts.
The weather was grand, the winter frost well past, the elm and larch and sycamore, the bright green oak, in new leaf all. The orchards showed a bedazzlement of white and pink, the fancy dress of pear, apple, cherry and of summer's blood-red plum to come. The woods through which the cart rumbled were carpeted with bluebells and the yellow splash of daffodil, in an England ablaze with bud and blossom and the joyous fecundity of spring.
Several of the convicts were heard to sigh that this was a poor time to leave the shores of England, their most ardent wish being to make their last farewell in the fiercest needle sleet and howl of north wind. This, so their memories might be consumed by the bitter gales and so send them, half cheerful, on their way to the hell of Van Diemen's shores.
This sky of clear blue with the high call of larks and the singing of thrush in the hedgerows was too much a bittersweet parting. This single memory of the darling buds of May would linger with them for the remainder of their lives. They would hold their grandchildren in their laps under a different sky, and tell of the soft shining of the English countryside. They would remember these two days, when they had rocked and bumped in shackles along a rutted road, as if, for this short space in time, they had been transported through the gates of paradise itself.
It was an unbearable wrench for several of the younger women, who wept piteously for the time it took to arrive at Woolwich, where Destiny II creaked and groaned to the slap of the tide. They came upon it suddenly at the turn of a large warehouse and they immediately forsook the rattle and rumble of the cobblestones and turned into the quay, where the wheels of the cart squeaked and lurched along the uneven dockside timbers. Only then, with the cart drawn to a halt beside the squat vessel and with the sudden silence, into which dropped the call of a gull and a soft phlurrr from the nostrils of one of the cart horses, did the finality of the sentence of transportation come to each of them.
Standing on the dockside next to the gangway was a diminutive male in frock coat, dirty shirt with a sweat-soiled neckerchief, breeches, hose and tiny brass-buckled shoes much in need of repair. His hair was cropped, though not evenly or in the convict style, and stuck up in raggedy bits an inch or so all about his skull, with whiskers, once dark and now densely speckled with grey. These also stuck out and framed his face from sideburns to the circumference of his chin. Heavy tufted eyebrows, black as pitch, seemed to entirely encase his small bright eyes. Jutting at right angles to this furry visage were two large thin-skinned ears to which the light from the sun behind him gave a bright crimson glow. The total effect was of a remarkable likeness to a simian creature, a monkey dressed in a frock coat, breeches and hose.
'Gawd, look at that!' Mary exclaimed.
The tiny man chuckled and threw an arm upwards pointing to the sky. ' "Gawd", now that be a partickler name what Mr Smiles don't like folks to take in vain! That be three punishments all at once!' He tapped the first finger of his left hand with the forefinger of the right. 'Short rations and no port wine for the father!' He tapped the finger beside it. 'Two days' bread and water in the coal hole, for the son!' He tapped the third. 'Attendance to Bible study for a month, that be for the Holy Ghost!' He looked up at Mary. 'Swear away, me dear, help yourselfs, last chance afore comin' on board to be rid of all that bile! What's your name then?'
'Mary Abacus. What's it to you if I swear?' Mary challenged., 'Ah, yes! For me? Well it be a delightful hopportunity, Mary Habacus. A most pleasant task to do you…' He paused in mid-sentence and pointed to the abacus under Mary's arm. 'What be that? A contraption is it? Them black and red beads, it ain't witchcraft is it?'
'Abacus. It be an abacus.'
'A habacus, eh? An' pray tell us, what be an habacus if it ain't your name what is also Habacus?'
Before Mary could reply Ann Gower asked, 'What day o' the month and year ya born in, then, mister?'
The small, hairy creature thought for a moment, then decided to co-operate. 'April seven in the year o' our Lord, seventeen seventy-six or near enough, I reckons.' His voice had a cackle to it, his words sharp and fast and somewhat high-pitched like Chinese crackers going off in a bunch.
Ann Gower turned to Mary and whispered from the side of her mouth, 'Show lover boy, darlin'.'
'Lover boy, is it?' The little man had the most astonishing acuteness of hearing, for Mary had barely heard Ann's whisper herself.
Mary shrugged. She was manacled but the clamps were on either end of a good twelve inches of chain so that her hands were more or less free to work the abacus. She rested it on the side of the cart and instructed Ann to hold the abacus firmly. A moment later her twisted fingers began to fly in a clicking and clacking so rapid that the red and black beads slid across their wire runners faster than the eye could possibly follow them. After what seemed only a few minutes she stopped and read the beads.
'You been alive eighteen thousand, six 'undred and sixty-four days. You was borned on a Sunday.' Tapping the abacus, Mary added, 'That be what me abacus does, it counts things.'
'Ho, ho! We's got us a smart one 'as we? A Jack 'n a box what springs out above others! Well, Mary Habacus what's got an habacus what counts, pleased to meetcha, me name's Potbottom, Mister Tiberias Pot-bottom, that be the full complement o' me cartouches.' He spread his hands and grinned disarmingly. 'They calls me, "The Scrapins"! Now can you imagine why that could possibly be, eh?' His head jerked enquiringly from one woman to another, waiting for the women in the cart to acknowledge him with a laugh or some sign of acquiescence. But no laughter or even a nod was forthcoming, for Mary sensed a trap and the others had held back, waiting for her reaction. She remained stony faced looking down at the diminutive creature on the dock.
All at once the bright eager to-and-fro of Potbottom's head ceased and he looked down at his scuffed and worn shoes. His head began to nod slowly as though it were coming to some sort of conclusion. His dark eyes moved to each of the women above him, lingering as though taking in all their details, as if, in his observance, he had suddenly learned much about them and what he found was of the utmost disappointment. His eyes came last to Mary and held her gaze as he spoke.