When a hunk of bread thumped on the floor, Evangeline jumped, banging her head on the top of her cell. An old woman in the cage beside her reached through the slats and snatched it, chortling at her alarm. “Goes to the street,” she said, pointing to the ceiling. Evangeline peered up: above the narrow aisle separating the cells into two sides was a hole. “Some people take pity.”

“Strangers throw bread down here?”

“Mostly relatives, come for a trial. Anybody here for ye?”

“No.”

Evangeline could hear her chewing. “I’d give ye some,” the woman said after a moment, “but I’m starvin’.”

“Oh—it’s all right. Thank you.”

“Your first time, I’m guessin’.”

“My only time,” Evangeline said.

The woman chortled again. “I said that once meself.”

The judge licked his lips with obvious distaste. His wig was yellowed and slightly off-kilter. A fine sprinkling of powder dusted the shoulders of his robe. The guard assigned to Evangeline had told her on the way to the courtroom that the judge had already presided over a dozen cases so far today, probably a hundred this week. Sitting on a bench in the hallway, awaiting her trial, she’d watched the accused and convicted come and go: pickpockets and laudanum addicts, prostitutes and forgers, murderers and the insane.

She stood in the dock alone. Legal counsel was for the rich. An all-male jury sat to her right, gazing at her with varying levels of indifference.

“How will you be tried?” the judge asked wearily.

“By God and by my country,” she said as instructed.

“Have you any witnesses who will vouch for your character?”

She shook her head.

“Speak, prisoner.”

“No. No witnesses.”

A barrister stood and recited the charges against her: Attempted Murder. Grand Larceny. He read from a letter that he said he had received from a Mrs. Whitstone at 22 Blenheim Road, St. John’s Wood, detailing Miss Stokes’s scandalous crimes.

The judge peered at her. “Have you anything to say for yourself, prisoner?”

Evangeline curtsied. “Well, sir. I didn’t mean to . . .” Her voice faltered. She had meant to, after all. “The ring was a gift; I didn’t steal it. My—the man who—”

Before she could continue the judge was waving his hand in the air. “I’ve heard enough.”

The jury took all of ten minutes to announce a verdict: guilty on both counts.

The judge lifted his gavel. “Sentenced,” he said, bringing it down with a bang. “Fourteen years transportation to the land beyond the seas.”

Evangeline clutched the wooden bar in front of her so she wouldn’t sink to her knees. Had she heard him right? Fourteen years? No one returned her gaze. The judge shuffled papers on his desk. “Summon the next prisoner,” he told his page.

“That’s it?” she asked the guard.

“That’s it. Australia. Ye’ll be a pioneer.”

She remembered Olive saying transport was a life sentence. “But . . . I can come back when my time is served?”

His laugh was devoid of pity, but not exactly unkind. “It’s the other side of the world, miss. Ye might as well be sailin’ to the sun.”