The Convict's Daughter Read online

  It had been one thing to get up to the Darlinghurst Gaol, but she hadn’t considered getting home. Nor had she thought it would get dark so soon. Her plan had been to use the election commotion to her advantage. And to a large extent this had been successful. Her father had been entirely distracted by the crowds around Pitt Street, many of which were making frequent sojourns to the Gills’ establishment in between the various campaign speeches. Mary Ann had chosen to slip away the moment she had seen her father’s favourite—the shabbily attired statesman, William Charles Wentworth—standing astride the omnibus waiting to begin what she suspected would be a long-winded oration. She had given herself a couple of hours to get to the prison and back and figured the crowds would cause enough commotion during that particular speech to keep her father busy. It had been an excellent plan, but now she could see the mood about town had changed and conditions had become treacherous. She had been foolish, she thought, regretting how she had dismissed her brother’s disapproval for its lack of courage.

  But Mary Ann shook her head and refused to give in to the fears that were rising in her belly. Quickly, she got to her feet and was soon hurrying along King Street. The town reeked of stale ale and rum and the soles of her boots were sticky with it. It made her feel heady and sick, but she kept pushing away from the glowering chaos of the park, towards home.

  So far so good, Mary Ann said to herself as she turned into Pitt Street. But then she was brought short again. All the way down the street, were hundreds, perhaps even a thousand electioneers crammed up against one another. She could hear their screaming and calling, pushing and shoving. They were Cabbagers mostly, but among them were a few desperate women. All were swept up in a mob that was thrashing about like a furious snake—lashing out first in one direction and then the other. Mary Ann flattened herself against a wall as she tried to work out what to do. She was standing like that, clammy with perspiration, when out of nowhere, forty or more mounted troopers suddenly thrust their heavy horses into the wild turmoil. Thwack, thwack, the uniformed men went with their bludgeons, smacking them down sharp and fast as they pushed their way through the screaming mass. Mary Ann had never seen anything like it. Nor heard, either, for all about her was shrieking and cursing.

  She had to get home. She could not stop here. She must keep on. Her mother would be starting to think about her and Mary Ann knew that if he was asked, William would tell. He would have to. She began running, as well as her skirts would let her, up King Street until she found George Street. This was a safer passage and she got all the way down to Hunter Street before she came upon yet another large crowd. This one had a hundred or so men in it but they were no mob, Mary Ann thought with relief as she spotted in their midst several prominent townsfolk. Four of them had rolled up their shirt sleeves and were heaving a brightly painted carriage up George Street. They looked so jubilant that they were oblivious to the great bulk they were hauling. Behind them trailed a great band of men, many of whom were carrying torches and lanterns as they sung and clapped and cheered together, some with their arms tossed across each other’s shoulders. Mary Ann wondered who or even what might be in the carriage at the front of this triumphant procession but when it rolled past her and she looked inside she saw nothing. The men pushed further up George Street, and this time when she looked again Mary Ann was astonished to behold—up on the carriage roof—the People’s Idol standing aloft, like a grand colossus, resplendent in a pinstripe suit and spectacles, waving to the great throng and occasionally cracking and snapping a stock whip into the smoke-thick night. Mary Ann grimaced. ‘The very man’, she muttered while she waited for the great procession to pass by.

  Once the last of the revellers had passed she continued onto Hunter Street which felt curiously empty and then turned quickly into Pitt Street. She was close to home, she thought with growing relief. She was going to be fine. She could feel how satisfying it would be to slip into her bed and muse over all that had taken place at the prison gate. ‘Becky Sharp indeed,’ Mary Ann smiled to herself as she slipped into the hotel’s coach yard.

  Great piles of thick blue election ribbon had been torn from the walls of her father’s hotel and everywhere she looked there were smashed crates. One of the stable doors was hanging from a single hinge while both the coal cart and wood box, which usually stood by the kitchen door, were smashed to splinters. The mob had passed through, she realised, as she picked her way across the yard and carefully slipped inside the servants’ entrance. The kitchen staff were busy with the organised chaos of serving time and Mary Ann made her way upstairs unnoticed. Once inside her bedroom she removed her bonnet and gloves and checked her reflection in her looking glass. Her pupils were quite wide and she was still struggling to settle the fast pace of her breathing as she stepped into the nursery.

  Despite the great madness about town it was eerily quiet upstairs. Mary Ann lit a candle and gradually the glow of the single flame revealed the sleeping forms of Isabella, Harriet, little Thomas and baby Martin. There was a peace to their steady breathing that was a world away from the commotion of the day. She stood there a moment, savouring the relief of all that had transpired. She had been successful. She had returned home unscathed and undetected. And more than that—she had also seen Kinchela and secured his heart. But slowly, as her breath finally steadied, she felt the presence of someone sitting in the high-backed chair that occupied the middle of the room. It was someone, she suspected with a sinking feeling, who had been awaiting her return.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The Manly and the Unmanly

  No sooner had the smoke cleared from the election hullabaloo, than Holroyd headed back to the prison governor’s quarters on Woolloomooloo Hill to have a word with his client. Kinchela appeared in the side office looking, Holroyd thought, considerably more sober and settled than usual. The lawyer still harboured a sense that his client had been hard done by and he was prepared to do all he could. But he needed his client to play his part, too, Holroyd advised, ‘particularly now’ that the appeal had been set for the end of the week. Kinchela gave a convincing nod and proceeded to listen to his counsel with a respect that came as a pleasant surprise to Holroyd. He had expected the same indifference he had been subjected to over the past month, but as he began to furnish his client with various details he learnt that Kinchela not only had a renewed interest in his appeal, but was also greatly relieved that his old family friend, Roger Therry, would be on the appeal bench.

  Less welcome was the news that Therry would be joined by Dickenson, and, of course, William Montagu Manning, with whom both Holroyd and Kinchela were already well acquainted. Both men were still seething about the astounding rebuke they had received from Manning regarding their defence. Unmanly indeed. Both men felt that Manning had been less concerned with exercising sound legal judgment than establishing his position on the bench, and Kinchela could not help recalling that it was not so long ago that men would have duelled over such an insult, in Ireland at any rate.

  Holroyd brought Kinchela up to pace with all the newly elected representatives on the Legislative Council. ‘Lowe got himself a Sydney seat, of course, as did Wentworth, although,’ Holroyd offered with a cough, ‘although most reckon the two squeaky cartwheels will cancel each other out with all their bluster. Bob Nichols won one of the country seats,’ Holroyd continued, ‘a very easy win.’ Then he added, with something of a raised eyebrow, ‘Lowe only won by a cat’s whisker, you know, but you wouldn’t think it by all the fuss he and the mechanics have been making about town.’

  As he prepared his papers for their day in court, Holroyd reminded his client of the potential sentence he must expect if things went against them. ‘As much as two years with hard labour I am afraid, James,’ he swallowed before adding, ‘but at least they can’t hang you for abduction anymore.’ Kinchela nodded, watching Holroyd slide one set of papers into his leather case and remove still others for his client’s attention. No indeed, thought Kinchela, it had been six years since
they had executed a man in Ireland for such a crime. Nonetheless, two years was a long time to be imprisoned. He had been wrong to rest upon his brother’s laurels, he realised miserably. He had probably left his run too late.

  Martin Gill was overseeing the repairs about the hotel and already wondering if his sweet moment of vindication in the Supreme Court in June was beginning to rot like the peaches McCormick sold to the hotel, which always looked better than they tasted. Many of the ‘Up Country Gentlemen’ who had been crucial to his trade were less frequent customers at the hotel than before the trial. He wondered if winter was to answer for that, or the sudden plummet in the price of wool. He couldn’t fight off the feeling that by setting himself against Kinchela he may have warned off others of that set. Good riddance to them then, Martin Gill scowled to himself as he set to sharpening the kitchen knives. But the truth of it was that their absence was not good. He had built his business on the back of the settlers. Their money had fed his family and given his establishment the right air. He might not like them and certainly didn’t want any such man in his family, particularly not an Irishman, but these men had been his bread and butter. If they were struggling it stood to reason that it wouldn’t be long before he did too.

  Still, the election had brought in some solid cash—even if a good deal of it would have to be spent on repairs. Gill hoped that the windfall might signal the beginning of a new season. The past two months had been a tight squeeze, that was for sure, and he would need to get set right in terms of pounds and pennies for the coming season. Sooner rather than later, too, for he knew as well as any businessman that things could turn on a coat pin in this colony. You could not afford to be caught out. You rarely got a second chance and there was always someone ready to take your place. People would cross the street to avoid a man on the downward spiral. Hypocrites, he muttered to himself, the lot of them. Nonetheless, it was time to get his nose out and find what was about.

  From the way things were looking, though, the girl would have to make amends for all the damage she had done and find a way to bring in some proper money. If she wasn’t fit for work now that her name had been in the papers, he would have to get her set up with a rich husband and make her bring in some money that way. Simple. She owed it to her brothers and sisters as well as her parents. They could not be brought low and forced to live in the shadow of her recklessness. It would work, too, Gill thought, feeling more certain about the matter the more he mused it over. It would also put a stop to the various whispers he had been hearing around and about, which had made him feel violent with shame. He was pretty sure that Mary Ann was still clean. Had not been touched. But he also knew that rumours could be as bad as the truth when it came to shifting dubious product. If he got Mary Ann with a man who had good tin, that would shut them all up and also help to sop up the various debts rapidly accumulating about the hotel. Who knows, the right match might even help to cover Robert Lowe’s costs. And so, Gill began to consider his wealthy associates and identify those who might be in need of a young wife and also willing to overlook what he would describe, if pressed, as his daughter’s youthful indiscretion.

  Two days after Holroyd’s visit, Kinchela was escorted through the gaol tunnel and into the Supreme Court where he took his place before his father’s old friend as well as two other high dignitaries of the legal profession. Holroyd was there, but not the Great Gyrator, who had loftily informed his irritable-looking client that he was now fully absorbed ‘with the responsibilities of his new political office’. Bob Nichols would attend in his absence, Robert Lowe explained as he hastened from his chamber, expressing utmost confidence that ‘things are set to go our way’. And Lowe was right. And yet, the three judges were so intent upon extracting as much pleasure as possible from the grand event of a full bench hearing that each man took more than an onerous hour to recall the various cases and clauses, precedents and principles upon which they had determined their final decision.

  On and on it went with The Herald doing its best to cover the specificities in great detail. Only Therry gave Kinchela the slightest benefit of the doubt. Despite Manning’s decision, Therry was convinced that there was merit in hearing the girl’s reason for quitting her family home, particularly if her ‘domestic discomfort was such that she had been compelled to forsake her filial duty’ and accept an offer that ‘only furthered the unfortunate breach that had already opened between parent and child in this matter’. But, no, the other men of the law shook their heads in disagreement. Such evidence was inadmissible, they insisted. The original verdict must be upheld.

  Worse still, after much consideration, the bench determined that the defendant’s motivations were such that they must be publicly condemned ‘in the most unequivocal terms’. Therry could do nothing. The other judges were convinced the defendant had never intended to marry Miss Gill. Indeed, their examination of ‘each element and incident associated with this case’ led them to the grave conclusion that the prisoner had been ‘deeply dishonourable—luring the young girl from her home with the sole purpose of seducing her’. And he had not stopped there, the bench railed, for when he had ‘failed once, he had been bold enough to try yet again,’ Dickenson growled as Manning sternly shook his head. ‘Such a man,’ they gravely concluded, ‘must be kept thoroughly in check.’

  Burdened as they were with the heavy duty of protecting the colony, the two judges were obliged to act in a manner that would reassure other parents that ‘their affections were not for naught’, and that property and dignity must be respected. The gravity of Kinchela’s actions had warranted a most particular statement from the court. In the final column published on the topic for some time, The Herald agreed: It was necessary that men like Kinchela were punished as firmly as possible. In so doing, the authorities sent a clear message to those who might also wish to threaten ‘the greatest blessing of the new society: namely the peace of the family and the happiness of the humble home’.

  And so, the ‘vile seducer’, James Butler Kinchela, was off to the much less salubrious confines of Parramatta Gaol, where he was to serve nine calendar months, The Herald reported. If he was lucky, the shamed esquire might once more walk the streets of Sydney in March the following year, for, in an act of mercy, Therry had somehow managed to have the sentence backdated to the day of his conviction in early June. Kinchela stood in the court with his head hung low as the iron cuffs were clapped onto his wrists. The prisoner gave Holroyd an odd shrug and Nichols mumbled that he thought the whole affair a sorry business, before Kinchela stepped away with the two guards.

  Moments later the old Black Maria prison cart trundled from the court, down Oxford Street. It was morning, and as the cart rolled past Hyde Park, Kinchela noticed that several trees had been scorched by fire—their bare and blackened limbs stretched out into the bleak winter sky with an expression of futility that seemed to match his mood. Mary Ann had no doubt crossed this way on her journey home. What had she seen?, he wondered with some concern. Was she safe? He had no way of knowing now. The cart crossed over George Street where a handful of government men were cleaning up the last of the election debris and a scattering of domestic servants were heading towards the markets. An ordinary day, Kinchela thought as his cart trundled towards the Parramatta road, and probably the last he would see in a while.

  It was a road he knew all too well, although he had hardly imagined travelling it under such circumstances. Most often he had been heading out to the races, or to check out stock in those parts. Now he was a convicted felon and all the rules had changed. As the cart pushed past the rough timber homes and makeshift inns along the outskirts of town, Kinchela realised that from this time on he would probably be considered more of a blackguard than those who had come to the colony in chains.

  Upon his arrival at Parramatta Gaol, a mean-looking warden took possession of Kinchela’s gold-plated cane and ebony-finished snuffbox as well as the pile of last year’s Punch. ‘You will find us less accommodating than Mr Keck’s pr
ivate Elysium,’ the warden said snidely before recording the details of ‘Prisoner 486’ in his thick ledger book. ‘Arrived in the colony?’ he asked with a sniff. ‘Eighteen thirty-one,’ Kinchela replied. ‘Height?’ he barked, pointing to his underling to put the prisoner against a measuring rod on the wall. ‘Five feet five, with a slight build and a ruddy complexion, sir,’ the younger warden noted as the chief administrator penned down the details, occasionally looking up to check his offsider’s work before returning to jot them down in the appropriate column. ‘Black hair and brown eyes,’ the trainee continued. ‘Any distinguishing features?’ the scribe asked. ‘None that I can see’, the assistant replied with a snigger. It was noted that the incumbent could read and write and was also a gentleman by calling. Then Kinchela was subjected to another public bathing and kitted up in prison garb before being taken to a grim looking cell. The guard slammed the gate on the prisoner and locked him in for the day, ‘and so the real penitence begins’, Kinchela sighed glumly.

  Martin Gill had been making discreet enquiries. He had been spending more time out and about the town than usual. The news was grim. Indeed, even grimmer than he had first thought. The drought had got its teeth into much of the country and in the past few weeks alone two of the most established men of the land had come in with the dust of a rainless season on their boots and not much else to show for their efforts. The farmers were just walking away—he had heard—leaving their stock to starve because they couldn’t afford the shot or the poison or because they had lost the spirit to kill them even for the melted-down tallow that might bring in a few pence. It didn’t bode well, particularly since there was also a lot of talk about uncertain money conditions in England and this would no doubt make local exports and the price of sugar even more exorbitant. He would need to act smart and fast, Gill decided, if he was to get things back on track.