Behind the Sun (27 page)

Furniss sniggered knowingly and Holland’s gaze slid back to him. If there was any prostitution going on, he knew bloody well who would be at the bottom of it. He shifted in his seat, trying to ease the pain in his belly: he was in a very uncomfortable position, both physically and metaphorically.

If he accepted the story that the convict girl — what was her name, Winter? — had been assaulted, he would have to arrest Keegan. But if the crew had been merrily paying to have sex with some of the women for God knew how many weeks, they would have little feeling for a prisoner claiming she’d been raped. Their sympathies would more likely lie with Keegan, so who could be relied upon to
guard him? None of their number could be spared anyway; he was running a tight ship as it was. Neither could Keegan be kept in irons or in the brig for the next twelve weeks, or however long it took them to reach Sydney. He, Holland, could well find
himself
up before the judge for that; Gabriel Keegan was just the sort of well-connected toff who could bring pressure to bear to see to it.

And there was the other matter, too, dreaded by all ships’ masters. Furniss was a thug, which was why Holland hadn’t promoted him to first mate, but he wielded a lot of power aboard the
Isla
and Holland knew it, though he certainly didn’t like it. Should the crew take against their master because of a decision concerning Keegan, Furniss had the ability to push them that little bit further and Holland might find himself in the quarterboat, alone, in the middle of the icy Southern Ocean.

Holland sighed for roughly the fifth time. Furniss had said at the time that Keegan had shoved the girl, though Furniss would say anything if it suited his agenda, and God only knew what his agenda was regarding this affair. Deflecting attention from himself, probably. Hester Seaton was adamant about not seeing what had happened on the foredeck, though Holland couldn’t understand how she hadn’t: she and her daughters had evidently been standing right beside Keegan and the girl. James Downey and Cutler had been farther away, up near the head rail, and said it had
looked
like he’d pushed her, though he’d had his back to them, and that it was true she had attacked him first. They weren’t prepared, however, to
swear
he’d shoved her off the foredeck deliberately, though clearly they strongly suspected he had — in an effort to stop her accusing him of rape, they were insisting. There was no doubt they had very much taken against him.

So what was he to do? Whatever decision he made he would be damned by one party or another. The
Isla
, however, was his ship; his sole objective was to sail her to Sydney and back to England again. And he could feel, even without looking, Furniss’s malevolent stare
burning into the side of his head like the sun through a magnifying glass, daring him to chance his luck.

Deeply aggravated by the position in which he now found himself, he sat up straighter in his chair and glared at the men assembled before him.

‘Until the injured prisoner can speak for herself, Mr Keegan will remain at liberty.’ He lifted his hand in warning as James Downey rose out of his seat yet again. ‘No.
I
am in command of this ship, Mr Downey, and I will brook no argument. Mr Warren, please have Mr Trent change the lock on the prison hatch this afternoon, then bring
all
of the keys to me.’ Stifling a painful, acid-laced burp, he added, ‘Now, will you please all leave. I have work to do.’

Sitting alone minutes later, sagging with relief as the draught of bicarbonate of sodium in peppermint oil made its way down his tortured oesophagus, it occurred to him to wonder: if his crew had been buying sex from the prisoners, what had they been using for money? They probably had a little with them, but they didn’t get paid until they arrived in Sydney. He must check the claret, port, brandy and whisky shipments in the hold.

Rachel had been in a coma for three days, suffering, Mr Downey said he suspected, from something called a cerebral haemorrhage. Harrie had washed most of the blood out of her hair, carefully avoiding the stitches, given her a sponge bath and put her into a clean shift. She lay now in one of the hospital beds, tucked up under several blankets: Mr Downey said it was important to keep her warm as she couldn’t generate her own heat because she wasn’t moving. She peed where she lay and every time she did Harrie changed everything all over again, giving the soiled things to Sarah and Friday to wash. It rained on the second day and nothing would dry and they soon ran out, but Janie and Sally Minto, and some of Sally’s and Lil’s friends, lent their things, and there was enough.

But today, and it was the middle of the afternoon now, Rachel hadn’t peed once. Harrie and Lil had tried to make her drink, first a little broth and then just water, but it hadn’t worked. The liquid had gone in but had either dribbled out the side of her mouth or she’d choked. So they’d stopped trying. She had coughed, though, and Mr Downey said that was a good sign.

But Harrie wasn’t so sure about that; she wondered if it wasn’t more of a natural sort of thing to do, to cough if you were choking. She was also starting to suspect that Mr Downey was just declaring things to be a good sign to make them feel better. If he was, it wasn’t working.

They hadn’t said it out loud, not even among themselves, but they thought she was going to die. Her face was as white as rice flour, except for her lips, which had gone a faint lilac colour, and her arms and legs seemed boneless. And her breath was awful, worse even than Newgate Gaol breath. She had talked, though. Yesterday afternoon she had mumbled ‘magpies four a berth’, and, late last night, something that had sounded like ‘devil’s own’ something. Friday said she must be talking about Keegan, but it hadn’t really sounded as though there’d been anything behind the words: her mouth was just saying random things.

Harrie fussed about straightening Rachel’s blankets, then kissed her cold cheek and moved to the next bed to check on Evie Challis. Evie was enormously pregnant, due to give birth in three weeks or so, but had been ‘showing’ for the past week, and so prescribed bed rest. Evie was delighted, as she’d worked as a laundress right up until the day she’d given birth with her last two and felt as though she were being treated like a queen this time round, especially as someone else was looking after the next littlest one on the prison deck. Her elder child had been left behind in England as she was eight and too old to be allowed to be transported with her mother.

‘All right, Evie?’ Harrie asked.

‘I think so.’ Evie awkwardly manoeuvred herself onto her side like a cast cow. She began to cough, a dry rattle that had worsened during the voyage.

‘I’ll just check, will I?’

Evie flipped open the sheet and Harrie ducked her head and pulled back the folds of cheesecloth between Evie’s legs. They were stained with blood, but not a lot of it. She would tell Mr Downey when he came in next, but she didn’t think the bleeding was getting any heavier.

She popped the cloths back into place. ‘Do you need anything?’

‘Some oysters would be nice. Or winkles’d do. And mebbe a muffin or a crumpet? Toasted, mind.’

Harrie laughed. Poor Evie missed the food of London’s street-sellers desperately. Perhaps her appetite would return to normal after her baby arrived.

‘Evie Challis, you’d be completely round if you ate everything you fancied,’ Lil said, then swore ripely as she dropped one of Mr Downey’s leech jars.

Harrie rushed over to help her. ‘Oh
no
, Lil, we’re not supposed to touch those.’

‘I was only giving it a wipe.’

‘Quick, take the lids off the other two jars.’

Six or seven leeches were making a break for freedom, squirming their way blindly across the deck boards. Harrie snatched up a pair of tweezers, gingerly picked them up one by one from the wreckage and dropped them into the jars.

‘Harrie?’

‘Hold on, Evie,’ Harrie said over her shoulder as she grappled with the last furiously writhing escapee.

‘I never said that,’ Evie said. ‘She did.’

Harrie and Lil, crouched on the floor, skirts clamped tightly around their ankles, looked at each other, then slowly stood.

Rachel was sitting up, watching them. She licked her dry lips.

‘Harrie, my head hurts.’

‘Bella wants to talk to you.’

Harrie jumped. Concentrating on her sewing, she hadn’t noticed anyone creeping up on her. It was Lucy whatever-her-name-was, one of Bella Jackson’s girls.

‘Me? She wants to talk to me?’

Lucy nodded.

Harrie hesitated. What on earth could Bella Jackson want with
her
? She didn’t want to speak to Bella, especially not by herself. She had done them all a kindness by announcing Liz Parker’s perfidy, but that didn’t mean Harrie felt comfortable at the thought of being alone with her. Friday and Sarah had gone up on deck — perhaps she could wait for them to come back. It was annoying, too, as she’d been up with Rachel in the hospital half the night, and this was the first bit of time she’d had to herself since yesterday. She had made Janie’s baby a gown from a piece of white lawn from Mrs Fry’s scraps donation, and now that Rosie had been born she was embroidering a rose on the bodice. Over the past few weeks she’d amassed enough different-coloured thread to make up a really pretty pattern and she was hoping to finish it today.

‘Now?’

‘Yes, now.’

‘About what?’

Lucy shrugged. ‘I dunno, do I?’

Harrie sighed, put down her sewing and followed Lucy along the aisle to Bella’s compartment. Lucy stuck her head behind the curtain for a moment, said something, then pulled it aside, revealing Bella sitting on the bunk.

‘Good morning, Harrie,’ Bella said pleasantly. She patted the blanket beside her. ‘Please, do sit down.’

Harrie perched gingerly on the very end of the bunk. Bella was wearing a velvet turban and an embroidered satin robe, the value of
which Harrie placed at roughly two years of the salary paid her by Mrs Lynch. The skin of her face was dusted quite heavily with rice powder and there was rouge on her cheeks and lips.

Bella said, ‘I won’t bite, you know.’

Harrie wasn’t so sure about that. She waited in silence for Bella to get to the point.

‘I’m told you’re doing a sterling job in the hospital.’

Harrie blinked. She didn’t know what she’d been expecting, but it hadn’t been this.

‘He must hold you in quite high regard.’

‘Mr Downey, you mean?’

Bella nodded.

Harrie said, ‘I suppose. Well, I’m not sure. He’s happy for us to look after the patients when he’s not there.’

‘So he trusts you.’

‘Well, he must do.’

‘What else does he trust you with?’

For the first time, Harrie really noticed Bella’s very pale skin, the exaggerated blackness of her eyes and the jutting collarbones beneath the scarf she wore at her throat. And, with a dismayed little jolt, she realised that Bella Jackson quite possibly had an intemperance of some sort. For the poppy, perhaps?

‘Oh, no, I’m sorry, I can’t get you anything from the hospital. If you need…something, you’ll have to see Mr Downey yourself.’

Bella laughed. Harrie noticed she had several teeth missing from her upper jaw at the back. ‘Oh dearie me no, I’m not asking you to
procure
for me, Harrie.’

‘Well, what
do
you want?’ Harrie said. This was starting to get annoying.

‘I want to borrow something.’

Harrie stared at her. ‘Borrow what?’

‘The use of a key.’

‘What key?’ Harrie bit her lip: she was sounding like a parrot.

All traces of conviviality disappeared from Bella’s face. ‘The key to the door between the hospital and the prison.’

‘But…what for?’

‘Thanks to the trouble your little friend has caused, there is now a new lock on the prison hatch, my girls can’t get out at night and my business is suffering.’ Bella’s voice became harsh. ‘You and your witless crew owe me a debt. You make sure that door is open every night so my business can continue and I’ll consider the debt paid.’

Friday whipped aside the curtain, almost giving Harrie a heart attack. ‘And if she doesn’t?’

Bella also jumped. She hissed a curse, her fists clenched. ‘Then I promise you, you’ll be watching your backs for the rest of your lives.’

Friday smiled coldly. ‘There’re four of us, Bella: we can do that. Who’ll be watching yours? Let’s go, Harrie, there’s a terrible smell in here. Could it be, yes, it is, it’s the stink of…betrayal. I need some fresh air.’

‘You’re cutting off your freckle-beshatted nose to spite your face, Woolfe,’ Bella spat after them. ‘You can’t work either!’

‘No, but I don’t really care.’

‘You’ll pay for this!’

Friday whirled around, her face contorted with fury. ‘And if you’ve done what I think you’ve done, you’ll fucking pay as well.’

Bella smirked, suddenly in control again. ‘I’m afraid I’ve
no
idea what you’re talking about.’

‘You’re a dead woman, Bella Jackson, if I can prove it. And I will.’

Reaching for her cigarillo case, Bella shrugged. ‘Go on, then. Except your little friend is in the hospital, isn’t she? With half her brains missing? I’ve heard she can barely even remember her name.’

Harrie, her face growing redder by the second as realisation dawned, exploded. ‘What an utter bloody bitch you’ve turned out to be! And to think I actually defended you!’

Bella struck a match and held it to her cigarillo. ‘That’ll teach you.’

July 1829, Southern Ocean

Sarah ducked, but the next missile — Rachel’s boot — hit her square in the back, causing her to spill her tea all over the table.

‘Ow! Rachel, that hurt! Friday, do something!’

Friday swivelled around on the bench, stepped over it, reached into the bunk and dragged Rachel, screaming and thrashing, out by her bare ankles. By the time she was all the way out, Rachel’s skirt was up around her ears as she swore the air blue and hit out wildly at Friday. Friday picked her up and sat on the edge of the bunk, holding Rachel on her lap so firmly she could barely move while Harrie got out the bottle of laudanum.

‘
No!
’ Rachel shrieked. ‘
No, I don’t want to go to sleep!
’

Harrie blinked back tears as she poured a spoonful. ‘It’s for your own good, sweetie.’

‘
I don’t want it!
’ Rachel kicked out and sent the spoon flying.

Someone retrieved it from beneath the table and Harrie tried again. Everyone was watching now; this was the third time in three weeks that Rachel had erupted in a fit of temper.

Sarah left the table to stand behind Rachel and hold her head back, careful not to touch her scalp where the scar was still tender and some of her hair was only about an inch long. She gripped a longer strand and gently pinched Rachel’s nose closed. She hated
doing this, but it had come to be her job; Friday was the only one of them strong enough to actually hold on to Rachel while she was having one of her fits and Harrie was so soft-hearted towards her she could barely poke the spoon into her mouth.

The laudanum went in, but was spat out again immediately.

Harrie sighed. ‘Oh, Rachel, please, do be a good girl and swallow it.’

‘
No! No! No!
’

Sarah sighed as well and exchanged a glance with Friday. They both thought it was pointless babying Rachel when she was like this because it didn’t get them anywhere, but Harrie always did it.

‘Try again, Harrie,’ Sarah said. ‘Come on, hurry up.’

‘I am hurrying.’

The next spoonful went in and Sarah clamped her hand over Rachel’s mouth so she couldn’t spit it out. There were a lot of angry ‘Mmmmm!’ noises then she finally swallowed and Sarah managed to get her hand away without getting bitten. It was a huge relief. Rachel would go to sleep in about fifteen minutes and hopefully stay that way for four or five hours, and an even bigger crisis would be avoided.

The first time she’d had a fit like this had been a fortnight after her injury. She had complained of a bad headache and the fit had come on an hour or so after that. They were accustomed to Rachel’s bad moods of course, she’d had them since they’d first met her in Newgate, but these tantrums were on a different scale altogether and involved screaming, breaking and throwing things, hitting, and swearing that impressed even Friday. When asked later Rachel said she couldn’t remember much at all except that her head had really hurt, as though it was caught in a vice and was being relentlessly squeezed.

During her first fit, Rachel had gone up on deck and caused such a fuss the captain had ordered her put in solitary, and when the tantrum had receded she’d been utterly terrified. After that Harrie
had taken her to see Mr Downey, who had prescribed laudanum to sedate her should she have another episode of mania, as he termed it. He understood that putting her in solitary would only make her worse, and the laudanum was to make sure she didn’t end up there again. She’d had two more fits since then. But it was very odd because between the fits, Rachel was her ordinary self. Well, as ordinary as she could be given what had happened to her over the past five weeks.

Sarah stepped out of the way as Friday sat Rachel on the bench facing the bunk, keeping a good grip on her. She was reaching the maudlin stage now: her face was crumpling but there were no tears yet. She kicked viciously at a post, barking her bare toes against the hard wood, so Friday flicked out a leg and tucked her little feet behind her own, keeping them out of harm’s way.

‘Show’s over, ladies,’ Sarah announced to the fascinated audience and went back to her mug of tea, even though most of it was all over the table. She took the lid off the teapot and swirled the contents around inside, pretending she didn’t care that their business was being aired for the entire prison deck to observe and gossip about. There was some tea left so she poured it into her mug, relishing the strong, bitter smell. The daily tea allowance was the single redeeming feature of life aboard this stinking ship — it was more than she’d ever been able to afford in London. She sighed and said to Harrie, ‘I think we need to talk to your Mr Downey. I think she’s getting worse. She can’t keep doing this and neither can we.’

‘I know.’ Harrie straightened the things on the table that had been knocked around by Rachel’s flying boots. ‘I’m worried sick.’

‘You’re always worried sick,’ Sarah said, but she didn’t say it to be unkind. Harrie was the one who looked after them, and they let her — it felt as though it were her job. They were a family and she was the mother. Friday looked
out
for them, which was quite a different thing, and she, Sarah, did the ducking and diving, getting them whatever they needed to make their lives less unpleasant.
Harrie’s embroidery cottons, for example — for weeks Sarah had been trading and buying different-coloured threads from the other women, mostly gleaned originally from the bags Mrs Fry had gifted them. And last week she had managed to approach Silas Warren and trade a good clay pipe, stolen from Louisa Coutts, one of Liz Parker’s crew, for a new set of prison slops for Rachel, as she had all but destroyed hers during her last fit. Sarah knew she didn’t have Friday’s outgoing and undeniably mesmerising character, and she certainly couldn’t calm and soothe the way Harrie could, but if there was a deal to be done, above board or not, she was the one to do it.

Rachel was nodding, the effects of the energy-sapping tantrum and the laudanum conspiring, as hoped, to send her to sleep. But she was fighting it. She stood up.

Friday pulled her back down. ‘Sit down, Rachel, there’s a good girl.’

‘Don’t talk to me like a
child
,’ Rachel grumped. She rubbed her eyes and yawned, then cupped the back of her head where the raw scar lay. ‘Fuck me, I’ve
such
a sore head.’ She turned sideways, rested her forearms on the table and let her head sink onto them.

Friday waited five minutes until she was sure she was asleep, scooped her up, lay her on the bunk and pulled a blanket over her.

‘God almighty,’ she said as she joined the others at the table. ‘We can’t keep shoving that shite into her, you know. We’ll be turning her into an inebriate.’

Harrie nodded. ‘Sarah thinks we should go and talk to Mr Downey.’

‘You already did,’ Friday said, frowning into the empty teapot. ‘And all he did was give her that bloody medicine.’

‘Only so she wouldn’t run amok and end up in the brig.’

Friday made a face that made her top teeth stick out and her chin recede. ‘“Run amok”. That sounds like one of your Mr Downey’s toffey sayings.’

‘Will you stop calling him “my Mr Downey”?’ Harrie snapped. ‘You’re just angry with him because he wouldn’t prescribe you medicinal rum for your “problem”.’

Sarah laughed, then so did Friday. ‘That’s true. I am. Doesn’t make him a good doctor.’

‘Well, I think he is,’ Harrie said. ‘And so does Sarah. Don’t you?’

‘I didn’t say that,’ Sarah replied. ‘But I can’t say he’s a bad one either. And we have to do something.’

They all looked at each other.

‘Yes,’ Friday said eventually. ‘Yes, we do.’

Liz Parker had watched the shenanigans at the table with the Winter girl along with everyone else and thought, good job. That would teach the little bint for thinking she could beat Liz Parker at broads and get away with it. Now all she had to do was get revenge on Bella Jackson for dobbing her in for cheating and the score would be settled. Except for the money of course, but she might have to wait until they got to that women’s gaol in Sydney before she stole that back again. Waiting was all right — the Woolfe bitch and her motley lot couldn’t spend it on the ship.

What annoyed her most about Bella Jackson was she’d admired her when she first came aboard. She was a cool customer and had a reputation to match. They were very similar in a lot of ways, her and Bella Jackson — both canny and sharp, both notorious. She’d even been thinking of inviting the woman to join her crew. Not as an equal of course, but maybe as her lieutenant. But then Jackson had ruined that idea by making a fool of her and now she was honour-bound to retaliate.

The trouble was, Bella Jackson so rarely came out of her compartment it was proving very difficult to get in there to steal anything or find something suitable for blackmail purposes. God knew Becky and Beth and Louisa had been trying for weeks. It
was just so bloody tricky to do anything on the sly on this piddly little boat.

This afternoon, though, the prison deck was almost empty. Woolfe and her crew had apparently gone off to see that molly surgeon and nearly everyone else was up on deck making the most of the sun. Not that it was that warm any more. In fact, it was getting bloody cold. And Jackson had gone up, too: she’d been standing at the bottom of the ladder just after dinner, wearing a mantle with a fur collar. Bloody fashion plate. Well, she’d gone somewhere and there weren’t that many choices, were there? So here at last was the perfect chance to turn over her things.

Liz heaved herself off the bunk, noticing not for the first time she’d lost a bit of weight since the
Isla
had set sail. It was the atrocious food they were getting. No pies, no muffins or hot cross buns dripping with butter, no tasty saveloys or oysters, no fresh raspberries swimming in cream. Some days when she stood up she felt distinctly light-headed! She’d eaten better in bloody Newgate.

She made her way around the end of the table, not bothering to keep quiet as it was always noisier down here than a blacksmith’s foundry, and started up the other side towards Jackson’s compartment. Actually, there
were
a few women still below, sleeping, and a handful of kids. She’d better keep an eye on her things — light-fingered, the lot of them.

She stood before the curtain concealing Bella Jackson’s bunk and thought about what best to take. Her clothes? That would hurt: she loved her clothes. Money? Or should she look for something incriminating she could threaten to take to the captain? The possibilities were endless.

She glanced around to make sure no one was watching then twitched open the curtain. And just about died: Bella Jackson
hadn’t
gone up on deck.

A heavy crystal tumbler flew straight at Liz’s face. She reared back, dropping the curtain, but not quickly enough. The tumbler
struck her temple and then the table, shattering into countless diamonds twinkling in the lamplight.

She hurried away, her heart pounding madly, wiping a trickle of blood from her eye, but she was smirking. She’d just seen
exactly
what she needed.

‘Got ya,’ she whispered.

James sat in his cubicle writing up his notes from the morning’s surgery. He had been busy, the women as always making the most of having access to free medical consultations, some with real complaints, others with maladies fabricated with an eye to getting them excused from chores for a day or two.

It had been the usual procession of complaints concerning mostly costiveness or flux, lumbago, worm fit, oedema, bules, colic, various forms of corruption, cephalalgia, foul tongue, nostalgia and anxiety of mind. The digestive problems stemmed from the low-fibre shipboard diet. He normally treated the problem with a purgative such as calomel, and recommended extra oatmeal and exercise. Constipation was, unfortunately, a fact of life for everyone on long sea voyages. On the other hand, conditions on the prison deck were generally unsanitary, despite strict measures concerning hygiene, and this, coupled with the prisoners’ own less than ideal sanitary habits, quite frequently resulted in stomach ailments such as diarrhoea. This he treated with an emetic followed by a purgative, which was usually successful. If not, he admitted the patient to the hospital for further treatment. Children and infants with diarrhoea he admitted immediately as they were more susceptible to complications than adults.

Cephalalgia, or headaches, lumbago and foul tongue tended to clear up along with bowel problems, and the other complaints were also often related to poor diet and hygiene, but nostalgia and anxiety were maladies for which he really had no effective remedy. They were disorders of the mind and, he sometimes suspected, of
the character; and if his patients felt badly about the fact that they were being sent sixteen thousand miles across the seas from their homes and loved ones for years on end if not forever, he couldn’t blame them. To those he suspected of malingering he prescribed chalk and peppermint tablets, no matter what they claimed was wrong with them, allowed no time off, and told them to come back in a week if their symptoms had not abated.

He had also seen Janie Braine’s infant Rosie that morning, and was pleased to see she was doing very well, as was Janie herself. Very robust girl, Janie Braine, despite her wall eye, and quite bright. She would make someone a good domestic when she arrived in New South Wales, if she could manage to keep her mouth buttoned. He hoped she would be permitted to take the child with her, though he doubted that would be the case; either both would remain in the Female Factory for some time or Rosie would be sent to the Orphan School. Evie Challis had delivered late a week ago and her infant was also doing reasonably well, though Evie herself was not. She had developed some form of childbed fever: she had a very high fever and a foul-smelling discharge from her womb. Her baby, a boy and not yet named, was presently in the care of Janie, who had generously offered to wet-nurse him. Which reminded him, he would have to arrange with Reverend Seaton to get the child baptised, something Evie had spoken about before she had fallen ill.