Free The Secret River by Kate Grenville Page A

not for Rob whose body was found washed up at Mason’s Stairs, but for himself, William Thornhill. Who was going to resist ten pounds?
    So they came and found him where he was hiding out up the river at Acre Wharf, next to the flour mill.
    ~
    In Newgate the people were packed tight in stone cells with hardly enough room on the dirty pallets to stretch out at night. The walls were blocks of fine-hewn stone, not a chink anywhere, of such a size they needed no mortar. Their mass alone was enough to lock them into place, and lock the people in behind them.
    Sal had given up the room in Butler’s Buildings and had joined Lizzie and Mary sewing shrouds. They all came to see him in the cell, pretending good cheer. Sal had brought Willie, holding fast to his little hand. He was four: old enough to be frightened at what he saw in Newgate, but young enough to be damaged by it. Thornhill loved to feel the child in his arms, against his chest, but told Sal not to bring him again, there was prison fever about.
    They had brought such food as they could spare: a piece of bread and some splinters of dried herring. They watched while he took it. He could see the hunger in their eyes, and did his best to eat, to please them, but he could not seem to, his throat already closed up.
    He tried not to think of their happy days. In Newgate that soft hopeful part of him was hardening over, becoming lifelesslike stone or shell. It was a kind of mercy.
    Sal took charge. She had worked it out. The thing that a man needed in Newgate, more than a loaf of bread and a blanket, was a story. There must always be a story, she insisted, no matter how red-handed a man was caught. And a man had to believe it himself, so that when he came to tell it, it felt like God’s sworn truth.
    He saw that she had gone to the heart of the matter. He had heard a boy in the yard saying over and over to himself, and to anyone who came near: It is all a lie, it is all for the reward . The boy tried it in different ways, with different emphasis, a child with broken front teeth who seemed little older than Willie. It is all a damned lie, it is all for the damned reward . He was like those actors Thornhill had rowed across the river. When the moment came, in the white glare of the limelight, the line would be there, having replaced all other thoughts by nothing more than repetition.
    The story had to take on such conviction that bit by bit the fact of the event—in the boy’s case, some business of stealing a piece of bacon from a shop—was replaced by another one, the way an oyster might grow over a rock. Then it became nothing so crude as a lie. A person could tell the new one, in all its vivid reality, with the wide eyes of someone who was speaking the truth.
    A man had come up to you and given you the coat. You had found the piece of carpet on the road. A man had said he would give you a penny if you took the box to Gosport Street. As God was your witness, you were innocent.
    Sal had already worked it out for him. He had made the lighter fast, but owing to the lowness of the tide he had left it, planning to come back at high water to unload. He had trusted the watchman further up the wharf to keep an eye on the timber, but while he was away some person unknown must have come up on the river side, without the watchman hearing, and removed it.
    It was a sound story, with no gaps or leaks. He loved her for her wit in seeing it so clear, and giving it the words that made itthe truth. You will get out of this, Will , she whispered, embracing him as she left. They ain’t going to get you, not if I got anything to do with it .
    Her love and her strength gave him heart, were a kind of wealth, he saw, that others did not have. When his wife and sisters had gone, he stood straighter, walked taller, looked the turnkeys in the eye. I made the lighter fast, meaning to come back to her later .
    The next day word went round the yard that a man called William Biggs, accused of stealing