Behind the Sun (15 page)

‘No, no, it will be an oral medicine and plasters, something of that sort,’ he said hurriedly. ‘Now, girls, I would like a moment alone again to speak with your mother.’

Mrs Seaton sat with her eyebrows raised in polite interest until her daughters had gone.

James decided she had probably seen enough of the world to appreciate a direct approach. ‘Forgive me for saying so, Mrs Seaton, but I couldn’t help noticing that Eudora has reached a stage in her physical development that suggests she is no longer a child.’

‘
Physically
she has become a young woman, yes,’ Mrs Seaton said warily. ‘But she is still a child at heart.’

‘Of course, and so she should be. But she is an attractive girl and so is her sister, and we — and a number of perhaps unprincipled sailors — are about to embark upon a long sea voyage. It pains me to say this, but I strongly recommend that you accompany them at all times.’

Hester Seaton’s mouth puckered in distaste: she obviously knew to what he was referring.

‘Confine them to the foredeck during the day, unless you are with them, and certainly do not allow them to leave your cabin at night.’

‘Of course not!’

James sighed and wondered how best to couch what he wanted to convey without causing offence. ‘It isn’t just the crewmen, Mrs Seaton. Some of the prisoners may not take kindly to the sight of two smartly dressed young ladies promenading about. They can, on occasion, be…unpredictable.’

Hester Seaton brightened. ‘Oh, I do understand, Mr Downey. I have studied the phenomenon of women in prison at some length, you know, and I have a copy of Mrs Fry’s marvellous
Observations
. Have you read it?’

‘Er, yes, I have.’

Mrs Seaton clasped her hands and raised her eyes to the ceiling. ‘“Punishment is not for revenge, but to lessen crime and reform the criminal.” A wonderful quote of hers. I use it often. And I was
delighted
to discover that we were to sail with an entire
ship
load of female convicts because, you see, it has always been my ambition to work with poor wretches less fortunate than myself, and now
it seems as though God has steered me directly onto my chosen path. “Oh Lord, may I be directed what to do and what to leave undone.” Another quote from Mrs Fry — and such a very apt one, in my case!’

James was slightly nonplussed; in his view Eudora and Geneve’s safety was a far weightier topic than their mother’s philanthropic ambitions. But then Mrs Seaton — presumably — didn’t know sailors, or indeed convicts, like he did.

‘That’s very commendable, Mrs Seaton, and I’m sure the prisoners will benefit from any contribution you might make to their welfare during the voyage. However, I do reiterate that your daughters’ safety is paramount.’ James had a sudden, excellent idea. ‘Perhaps you could employ one of the women, one of the younger, better educated ones, as a companion for the girls?’

Hester Seaton looked at him, unable to disguise a faint expression of horror. ‘One of the convicts, you mean? With my girls? In our cabin? Oh, no, I don’t think so.’ She stood in a rustle of skirts. ‘Thank you, Mr Downey. Good day.’

Matthew Cutler and Gabriel Keegan were, as James had suspected they would be, fine physical specimens and in the best of health. Matthew, twenty-five years old, was bound for a position with the New South Wales Government Architect in Sydney, and very much, he told James, looking forward to it. Gabriel Keegan had secured a place with the Office of the Surveyor General, also in Sydney, and James gained the impression that he wasn’t as pleased with the prospect of his new life in the colony as Matthew. He volunteered no explanation regarding the reasons for his emigration, however, and James didn’t ask. Otherwise, James found him intelligent, good-humoured and engaging. Barring the possibility of unfortunate shipboard accidents, or perhaps severe seasickness, he expected to see neither man back in his hospital during the voyage.

By the time the convict women came up on deck for their evening exercise, the mess captains, who had been to the galley
to collect supper, had breathlessly spread stories involving fine-looking gentlemen in silk toppers promenading the foredeck, and beautiful little princesses flitting about. There was, therefore, great curiosity and speculation regarding who the paying passengers were and what they were like. However, the foredeck’s only occupant was Amos Furniss, the whites of his eyes shining in the growing gloom as he smoked his pipe, coiled ropes and winked at the women.

Rachel was deeply disappointed. ‘You saw them, Sarah, didn’t you? Were they really princesses?’

Sarah said, ‘Of course they weren’t. They were just ordinary girls, a couple of years younger than you.’

‘What about the gentlemen in the silk toppers?’

Fed up already with the gossip, Sarah snapped, ‘Who cares what their hats were made of, Rachel? They’re just folk. And not very grand ones, either, if they can only get passage on a convict ship.’

Rachel looked hurt. ‘I only want to know what they’re like.’

‘Why? You won’t be talking to them. None of us will. You heard what the captain said. No fraternising.’

Friday, leaning against the ship’s rail, drew on her pipe and puffed a cloud of smoke in Sarah’s face. ‘Don’t be a bitch, Sarah. She’s only having a little daydream.’

‘Well, daydreaming’s —’ Sarah stopped. ‘Did you hear that? A splash?’ She turned sharply and peered down into the murky, scum-topped water of the Thames.

‘A mermaid?’ Rachel rushed to have a look.

They watched intently as choppy little waves slapped against the
Isla
’s shadowed hull twenty feet below. The stink of the fouled river rose to meet them, a broken barrel and other rubbish from the surrounding ships bobbed languidly past, and not far away a wherry with two people aboard rowed in a slow, wide circle, almost invisible in the descending darkness.

Harrie coughed on Friday’s smoke. ‘You must have —’

They all screamed as a white face burst up out of the water directly below them, arms stiff and outstretched, fingers grasping. Then, just as quickly, it was gone again.

‘
Man overboard!
’ Friday shouted. ‘
Oi! Man overboard!
’

A sudden crush as everyone on deck crowded to the rail to see, shoving and elbowing for the privilege, then the thud of running feet. First Mate Warren forced his way through.

‘A face in the water, down there!’ Friday exclaimed, one hand pointing, the other pressed over her thumping heart. ‘Someone drowning!’

‘A woman,’ Sarah insisted. ‘I saw her hair.’

Silas Warren’s gaze shifted from where the face had emerged in the water to the previously circling wherry, now carrying three passengers and pulling swiftly away towards a point on the right bank beyond the dockyard. He swore, then barged his way back out of the crowd.

Harrie reached after him, clutching at his jacket. ‘You have to help her, she’s drowning!’

Warren shrugged her off and kept going.

‘
You can’t leave her!
’ Harrie shrieked.

But Mr Warren was bellowing orders now: the ship’s bell sounded and the deck suddenly swarmed with crew. Rattling and clanking, the quarterboat was lowered with a hard, flat splash and four men, descending the ropes like monkeys, dropped into it and snatched up the oars. Mr Warren, yelling from the rail, pointed vigorously and they set off, pulling hard, rowing alongside the
Isla
’s hull. Then they dug in the oars, slowed the boat and stared down into the black water. On deck, barely anyone moved, transfixed with horrible fascination on the scene below.

‘Oh, she’s drowned, she must have drowned,’ Harrie said in a muffled voice, her hands over her mouth.

Finally, after what felt like an age, one of the crew reached out with a boat hook and snagged a barely discernible shape beneath
the water. As it rose to the surface it transformed from a clump of dark rags into something possessing a head and limbs: the sailor settled his big hand on the pale throat, glanced up at Mr Warren and shook his head. A moan of shock rolled through the women.

The men in the boat dragged the dead woman aboard by her skirts. Her arms and legs flopped and her nether regions became exposed in the manoeuvre, prompting angry cries from the watching women.

It was too much for Captain Holland, already appalled by the first escape ever attempted on his watch. To have a prisoner drown was bad enough, but for another to actually slip over the side and abscond right beneath his very nose was unthinkable. Not only did it reflect on his prestige as a ship’s master, but he would lose the fees the government was paying him to transport both women.

‘
Get them all below!
’ he barked at Mr Warren.

The
Isla
sailed the next morning, the third day of May, on the outgoing tide. Towed a short distance until the day’s buffeting wind filled her unfurled sails, she tacked steadily downriver until Gravesend was nothing more than a smudge on the horizon behind her. The women, locked below on Captain Holland’s orders, were bitter and morose, lamenting the loss of the only home most of them had known.

The night before gossip had spread through the prison deck like the Great Fire about Ruth Bowler and Mary Ann Howells, the women who had gone overboard. It had been Mary Ann who had drowned — her sheet-shrouded body had been taken off the
Isla
before their departure — but Ruth Bowler had clearly got away, and her triumph had given the women such a fillip, their cheers and singing reaching the captain’s ears as he sat in his cabin and fumed. He’d ordered the quarterboat after the mysterious wherry and alerted the authorities at the dockyard, but of course it had been long gone, vanished among the river traffic if not already
ashore, the escaped prisoner Ruth Bowler with it. She would be found eventually, he expected, and hopefully hanged this time for her sins, but what an infuriating occurrence — and on his last mission transporting convicts! They could stay locked below until the ship was in the middle of the North Atlantic ocean as far as he was concerned.

Equally irritated by the escape was Liz Parker, who’d had no inkling at all of Ruth Bowler and Mary Ann Howells’ plans. They’d sworn allegiance to her, vowing to stand by her come what may, and running off like that just served to make her look stupid. They hadn’t even been liked by the rest of the prisoners, Liz knew damn well they hadn’t, and now Ruth was being touted as a heroine and Mary Ann a poor, tragic martyr. Well, the silly bitch couldn’t swim — of course she’d drowned! And now she, Liz, was left with only three genuinely loyal souls in her crew. She would have to start recruiting again, bugger it, or she’d lose the balance of power and that whore Friday Woolfe would be lording it all over the prison deck. It’d be intolerable.

And two women down meant two women fewer to watch over the money she’d stolen from Woolfe’s crew. It already wasn’t easy organising the roster to ensure there was always someone on guard at the bunk: Woolfe and her girls were constantly watching and sniffing around. She hadn’t made one of her crew dig around in that disgusting crapper just to have the dosh pinched back again.

Now, though, the women were quiet again as seasickness took hold. Around them the cocoon of the
Isla
’s hull creaked and squeaked as she tacked down the Thames; above them came thuds, bangs and shouts as the crew ran across the deck attending to sails and securing ropes.

Friday, who really had thought she might be spared because she hadn’t felt even a flutter while the
Isla
had been bobbing at anchor, tried desperately to pretend she was feeling well, but when she began to yawn repeatedly, her mouth filling with spit, she knew she was
in for a rough time. She’d opened the scuttlehole near their bunk and peered through it, hoping the sight of land would stabilise her roiling gut, but the giddying rise and fall of the distant riverbank only made her feel worse. She held on as long as she could, but finally blurted, ‘Harrie! Bucket!’

Harrie lunged for a slops pail and whipped it over to Friday, who sat on the end of the bunk, feet on the floor, knees apart, bucket between them, and threw up what appeared to be several days’ worth of food while Harrie held her hair out of the way.

‘Phew.’ Rachel fanned her own notably pale face. ‘That smells of gin.’

Friday choked up another surge of vomit, letting go a fart at the same time. Coughing and giving a great, epiglottis-rattling sniff, she hoicked and spat into the bucket.

‘Ever the lady,’ Sarah remarked.

Harrie smoothed back Friday’s hair. ‘Better?

‘No.’ Friday lay back on the bunk, then sat up again, looking wretched. ‘God, it doesn’t matter whether I lie down or sit, I feel foul.’

‘Are you seasick or is it the gin horrors?’ Sarah asked.

‘Oh, who cares.’

Harrie placed her hand on Friday’s sweating forehead. ‘Shall I ask Mr Downey to give you something?’

Friday groaned and lay down again. ‘No, just let me die.’

She wasn’t alone in her suffering. At least a third of the women were prostrate on their bunks and the air smelt rank, the sharp stink of vomit enough to encourage those not seasick to part with the contents of their stomachs. James Downey had started visiting the prison deck every few hours to monitor the condition of his charges: so far no one was ill enough to be admitted to the hospital — and he hadn’t expected that anyone would be, as the
Isla
had not even encountered open water yet — but that time would surely come.

Still, there was no real need for them to be locked below. During a heated exchange that could be heard by most of the
crew, he’d quarrelled with Josiah Holland to let the women out, arguing that to keep them below for such a length of time was inhumane and that no one was likely to attempt escape now that the
Isla
was under full sail and approaching the Thames estuary. The captain, conceding to himself that it would perhaps be unreasonable to continue to pander to his own dented pride at the expense of the remainder of his human cargo, and mollified by the fact that they had made such good time downriver, relented and suggested to James that the hatch to the prison deck could now be unlocked. James, refraining from rolling his eyes, agreed it was an excellent idea and rushed off to do it himself before the captain changed his mind.