As she made her way, flanked by the guards, back to Newgate and down the dark corridor to the cells, Evangeline forced herself to square her shoulders (as best she could, chained hand and foot) and took a breath. Years ago, she’d climbed to the top of the church spire in Tunbridge Wells, where the bells were rung. As she ascended the circular stone staircase in the windowless tower, the walls narrowed and the steps became steeper; she could see a shaft of light above her head but had no idea how much farther it was to the top. Trudging upward in smaller and smaller circles, she’d feared that she might end up penned in on all sides, unable to move.

That was how this felt.

Passing the cells filled with prisoners, she noticed the ragged, dark-rimmed nails of a woman clutching an iron grate, the large eyes of a baby too weak or too hungry to cry. She heard the thudding flap of the guards’ boots, the dull clang of her leg irons. Under the pungent odor of human waste and sickness was the sour salty smell of vinegar, used every other week or so by the lowliest guards to scrub the walls and floors. A stream of liquid snaked toward a grate beneath her feet. She felt as if she were watching a play that she herself was in—The Tempest, perhaps, with its topsy-turvy world, its chaotic and menacing landscape. A line floated into her head: Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.

“Including you,” the guard said, shoving her along.

She’d said the words aloud, she realized, as if reciting them to her father during a lesson.

Every few days, regardless of weather, a group of prisoners was led out of the cell, shackled, and marched to a desolate exercise pen, separated from other pens by high iron-spike-tipped walls, to plod in a circle for the better part of an hour.

“How long do you think until we leave?” Evangeline asked Olive as they tramped around the pen one gray afternoon.

“Dunno. I heard they fill a ship twice or three times a year. One left just before I was nabbed. Midsummer, if I had to guess.”

It was the beginning of April.

“I don’t understand why they’re sending us halfway around the world,” Evangeline said. “It’d be a lot less money and bother if we served our sentences here.”

“You’re missing the point,” Olive said. “It’s a government scheme. A racket.”

“What do you mean?”

“England used to send its dregs to America, but after the rebellion they had to find a new rubbish dump. Australia it was. Before they knew it there was nine men for every woman. Nine! Ye can’t found a settlement with only men, can ye? Nobody thought that through. So they came up with arse-backward excuses to send us over there.”

“Surely you don’t mean . . . ,” Evangeline said.

“Surely I do. By their reckoning we’re already sinners.” Slapping her belly, Olive said, “Look at us, Leenie! No question we’re fertile, is there? Plus we’re bringing new citizens inside us. Bonus if they happen to be female. And it doesn’t cost ’em much. Fix up a few slaving ships and they’re good to go.”