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on a washing-line to air. Yet another had stolen a couple of silver teaspoons. None of the women were hardened criminals, they had all committed opportunist crimes, out of need.
    When Mary admitted she was convicted of High Toby, she saw awe on the faces of her audience. Back in Exeter Castle, she had learned the hierarchy of crime, and a highway robber was at the top of the pile. To Mary it seemed a little absurd that snatching a hat and parcels should be considered in the same light as waylaying a stage-coach. But she supposed she had technically robbed on the highway, as opposed to stealing from a shop or dwelling-house.
    While she knew that in reality she was exactly the same as most of these women, just another country girl who had fallen by the wayside, she saw immediately that it would be smarter to keep that to herself. Status was ascrucial to survival as food and drink. She would make it work for her.
    Another thing she observed was that not all the women were filthy and in rags. Four of them had fairly decent clothes, their hair looked as if it had been washed recently, and they were plumper, less strained and hollow-eyed. Because of their appearance, and the fact that some of the prisoners gave them the cold shoulder, it didn’t take long for Mary to realize these women had friends among the guards and Marines. Clearly they were trading their bodies for extra comforts.
    ‘They ought to be ashamed of themselves,’ one old biddy exclaimed, pursing her lips in disgust. By the way she coughed she had to be in the grip of consumption. ‘Dirty whores!’
    Mary had always believed that any woman who sold her body was beyond redemption. In Plymouth she had seen whores grappling with seamen in alleys, and heard about the terrible diseases they passed on, and she felt almost faint with disgust.
    Yet as the days slowly passed on the Dunkirk , and the horrors seemed to grow greater rather than diminish, she found herself looking at the whole question a little differently. While she still thought that offering her body in return for food and a clean dress would be the surest way to hell and damnation, surely she was in hell already? She intended to survive at all costs, and if sacrificing her chastity would prevent a slow death from starvation, she was prepared to do it.
    It wasn’t just the desire for more food and the chanceto get out of this stinking hold into fresh air once in a while. Escape was most prevalent in Mary’s mind, and for that she needed her chains to be removed. While there was no certainty that a lover would do this for her, she hoped she could persuade him to. Maybe if he grew to like her enough he’d even help her escape.
    Sadly, she had no idea how to go about getting a ‘friend’ on the upper decks. The ugly brutes who came to collect the slop bucket or bring the rations had to be the lowliest of the crew, and they were the only ones she had any contact with, and that only briefly.
    At the end of her third week she was growing desperate. Her twentieth birthday had passed at the end of April, and May Day, with all its happy memories of village celebrations, had made her spirits plummet even further. She would stand all day at the open hatch, looking out seawards, watching the sunshine glint on the water, aching so badly to be out in it that she thought she would lose her reason.
    She knew all forty women’s names, where they came from, their crimes and about their families. She had even seen a change in Catherine Fryer and Mary Haydon’s attitude towards her, perhaps because they saw she was stronger and quicker-witted than anyone else, and it was better to be on a winning side than a losing one.
    Mary had spoken to some of the men prisoners too, at least shouted to them through the barred grille. Because they were often taken out to work ashore, she’d learned from them the names of the few humane officers on board.
    Lieutenant Captain Watkin Tench was the one who had captured Mary’s