“Did ye get the gallows?” Bill Whiting asked Taffy.

“Twice over, Da.”

“For one heifer?”

“Nay. I got the second for escaping. But the Welsh ain’t too happy at the moment, would not have liked to see a Welshman hanged even in Monmouth, so they reprieved me again and got rid of me,” Taffy explained.

Richard found himself drawn to Taffy as much as he was to Bill Whiting and Will Connelly. He had Welsh moods like clouds chasing the sun in and out on a heath-purple hillside. But then, Richard’s own roots were Welsh.

Cousin James-the-druggist made it to Gloucester just in time on the 5th of January, loaded down with sacks and wooden boxes.

“The Excise Office paid over your five hundred pounds at the end of December,” he said, burrowing. “I have six new dripstones, five of them with their brass frames and catching dishes because I felt that you must keep the five friends around ye safe and well.”

“Why five friends, Cousin James?” Richard asked, intrigued.

“Jem Thistlethwaite said in his letter to me that the men on the Thames hulks are separated into groups of six who live and work together.” He did not go on to tell Richard any of the other things Jem had explained about the hulks; he could not bring himself to. “That is why there are five new boxes, all containing what yours does, save not in the same quantity. I brought your tool box too.”

Richard sat back on his heels and thought about that, then shook his head. “Nay, Cousin James, not my tools. I will need them for this Botany Bay, but there are enough rays of enlightenment dancing inside my head to feel very strongly that did I take them with me now, they would not survive to see Botany Bay. Keep them until ye know what ship I will be on, then send them to me.”

“Here are more books from the Reverend James. He has concentrated this time on books about the world, geography, voyages. Heavier, because most are on ordinary paper and leather bound. But he thinks they may help, and hopes that ye’ll be able to carry them and all your others to Botany Bay.”

After which Cousin James-the-druggist could find nothing to say about practical matters. He got to his feet. “Botany Bay is at the other end of the world, Richard. Ten thousand miles if ye could fly, more like sixteen thousand as a ship must sail. I fear that none of us will ever see you again, and that is a terrible grief. All for something you never meant. Oh dear, oh dear! Remember that you will be in my prayers every day for the rest of my life, and your father’s, and your mother’s, and the Reverend James’s. Surely so many good intentions cannot be lost upon God. Surely He will preserve ye. Oh dear, oh dear!”

Richard reached for him, held him close, kissed his cheeks. Then he pattered away, head bent, and did not look back.

But Richard’s eyes followed him down the path between the vegetable patches, through the castle gate. He turned a corner, and was gone. And I will pray for you, Cousin James, for I love you more than I love my father.

Lizzie Lock draped around his shoulders, he gathered his troops at the table in the felons’ common-room.

“It is not that I wish to lead,” he said to his five chosen companions—Bill Whiting, Will Connelly, Neddy Perrott, Jimmy Price and Taffy Edmunds. “I am seven-and-thirty, which makes me the oldest amongst us, but I am not the stuff makes leaders, and ye should all know that now. Each of us must look for strength and guidance within himself, as is fit and proper. Yet I do have some learning, and a source of information in political London as well as a very clever druggist cousin in Bristol.”

“I know him,” said Will Connelly, nodding. “James Morgan of Corn Street. Recognized him the moment he came in. Thought, phew! Yon Richard Morgan is well connected.”

“Aye, enough. First I have to tell ye that the men on the hulks are divided into groups of six who live and work together. An it pleases you, I would have the six of us form one such group before some hulk gaoler does it for us. Is that agreeable?”

They nodded soberly.

“’Tis our good fortune to be twelve to London from here. The other six are young save for Ike, and he seems to prefer their company to ours. So I am going to advise Ike to do the same thing with his five. That way, there will be twelve of us on the hulk to form up as mutual protection.”

“You expect trouble, Richard?” asked Connelly, frowning.

“I do not honestly know, Will. If I do, it is more because of what my informants have not said, than said. We are all from the West Country. That will not be so on the hulks.”

“I understand,” said Bill Whiting, serious for once. “Best to decide what to do now. Later might be too late.”

“How many of us can read and write?” asked Richard.

Connelly, Perrott and Whiting held up their hands.

“Four of us. Good.” He pointed to the five boxes standing on the floor alongside him. “On a different note, these contain the things that will enable us to stay healthy, like dripstones.”

“Oh, Richard!” Jimmy Price exclaimed, exasperated. “Ye make a fucken religion out of your wretched dripstone! Lizzie is right, ye’re like a priest saying Mass.”

“It is true that I have made a religion out of staying well.” Richard looked at his group sternly. “Will and Neddy, how did ye manage to stay well through a year in the Bristol Newgate?”

“Drank beer or small beer,” said Connelly. “Our families gave us the money to eat well and drink healthy.”

“When I was there, I drank the water,” said Richard.

“Impossible!” gasped Neddy Perrott.

“Not impossible. I filtered my water through my dripstone. Its function is to purify bad water, which is why my cousin James imports them from Teneriffe. If ye think for one moment that Thames water will be more drinkable than Avon water, ye’ll be dead in a week.” Richard shrugged. “The choice is yours entirely. If ye can afford to drink small beer, well and good. But in London we will not have families on hand to help us. What gold we have ought to be saved for bribing, not spent on small beer.”

“Ye’re right,” said Will Connelly, touching the dripstone on the table reverently. “I for one will filter my water if I cannot afford to drink small beer. It is good common sense.”

In the end they all agreed to filter their water, including Jimmy Price.

“That settles that,” said Richard, and went to talk to Ike Rogers. He was sorry that he did not have twelve dripstones, but not sorry enough to share six of them among twelve. Ike’s group would have to manage as best it could, and at least Ike always seemed to have plenty of money.

If the twelve of us stick together as two groups, we stand a chance to survive.

PART THREE

From

January of 1786

until

January of 1787

The wagon to London and Woolwich arrived at dawn the next day, the 6th of January; exactly a year since his last wagon trip had commenced, Richard realized. But this was a gaol parting of higher magnitude and much sorrow, the women weeping desolately.

“What will I do without you?” Lizzie Lock asked Richard as she followed him to Old Mother Hubbard’s house.

“Find someone else,” said Richard, but sympathetically. “In your circumstances, a protector is essential. Though ’twill be hard to find another like me, willing to forgo sex.”

“I know, I know! Oh, Richard, I shall miss you!”