Toward the Sea of Freedom (16 page)

Her magic had worked on the doctor too. He attested to Lizzie’s malnutrition—which was the case but also applied to most of the other imprisoned women—and prescribed better food for the voyage. Now for the guard . . .

“But you don’t need to chain us up, sir. What trouble would we cause? You don’t really believe that women as little as we are could take the ship by force and free all the prisoners, do you?”

Lizzie managed to look afraid of the men belowdecks. Really, she thought the men were harmless—just desperate ne’er-do-wells like the women. Though that was far from certain. Even among the women there were a handful of serious criminals—murderers, most of them sentenced to death before having their sentences commuted to a lifetime of hard labor in the colonies. The colonies did not like to take these people in, and even the captain feared them. During the voyage, they were lodged deep in the ship’s hold, where no light and hardly any fresh air entered, and they were kept in chains. Lizzie had seen that the cruel fighter, the terror of the holding cell, had been taken belowdecks.

The guard looked almost sympathetically at the three young women. His gaze first paused on the beautiful Velvet before landing on the smiling Lizzie.

“A ship taken under such lovely force wouldn’t be the worst thing,” he said, grinning. “But it’ll cost you, my sweet. Might I pay you a visit once we’re at sea?”

Lizzie sighed in her mind but maintained her smile.
So much for a life pleasing to God
, she thought. She should not have even tried flirting with him. But if she rejected him now, he would become angry, and she could not afford that. She needed an ally on the ship.

“If you think it’d be fun among all the girls here,” she said softly. “I’d be a little embarrassed, myself.”

The man laughed. “Be embarrassed, will you? Are you that fine a girl? Well, I’m sure there’s a little spot where we can be alone, never fear. Now just hold still, my sweets, and don’t scream or howl when we weigh anchor. It might also get a little stormy tonight.” He stole a quick kiss from Lizzie. “Take it as a taste of sweeter storms to come,” he whispered.

She wiped her mouth as soon as he left. She was already disgusted. No doubt there would be no opportunity during the voyage to wash herself after sleeping with her new admirer.

“Getting an early start,” a disapproving voice remarked from the bed across the way.

Lizzie lay just a couple of feet away from her neighbor at the same height. In the dreary light that came through the spaces in the deck planks, she saw an older woman. Even in these circumstances the woman wore her hair tightly tucked under a bonnet, and she had been permitted her dress and the modest head covering. So she could not be entirely without means.

Lizzie realized that her new admirer hadn’t chained the women who had been fighting in the berths across from hers.

“Sooner or later,” Lizzie answered calmly, “the boys do what they want. Besides, aren’t you happy you weren’t chained up?”

“I don’t care either way,” said the woman. “They could have hanged me for all I care.” With that, she turned her face to the wall.

Lizzie closed her eyes and tried to imagine herself out of the stuffy tween deck. She did not succeed, of course. She could not help thinking of the men and women who were chained up even deeper down. She listened to the dozens of them who wept and prayed.

She was only leaving Hannah and the children behind, but most of the other women were mourning husbands, lovers, and children of their own. She did not wonder what or whom the woman next to her was leaving behind or how she had ended up here. She did not look like a criminal, but Lizzie did not feel guilty herself either.

Finally, she tried reading the Bible, hearing the calls and commands from the deck above, the rustling of unfurling sails, and then the droning of the wind caught in them. Most of the women screamed when the ship began to move—as did the few men in the hold.

Michael Drury had screamed along with the other prisoners when his ship had left Ireland. Now, however, he was silent. For him, England was just as foreign and perhaps more hostile than far-off Australia. He had been lucky that in London, he had not seen more than a length of harbor wall. Originally, the prisoners from Ireland were supposed to be put on one of the prison hulks that lay at anchor in Woolwich. But then some space had been found on this ship, which was transporting women to Van Diemen’s Land.

They had moved the Irish prisoners directly from one ship to another, and now Michael, in chains for half a day, lay on his pallet in the darkest corner of the darkest deck in the
Asia
. The captain had given the men transport only on the condition that they remain strictly separated from the female prisoners at all times. So they could not hope for much freedom of movement. And yet no one had thought to provide the men with chamber pots or bottles into which they could relieve themselves.

In every row, there was at least one man frozen in silent agony who did not respond to the calls of his fellows. Billy Rafferty was among them. The young man had fallen into a sort of numbness after screaming and crying for hours during the departure from Ireland. He had already suffered occasional fits of claustrophobia in his cell in Wicklow, and the tightly sealed dark rooms belowdecks on the rocking ship to London caused him to lose his mind. Now he lay next to Michael in chains, whimpering.

The stench on the lowest deck quickly became worse and worse, the air stuffier. Michael was happy when the ship finally began to move. Maybe they would finally remove the prisoners’ chains now.

Indeed, that was the case on the tween deck, but Michael and his companions in misery remained fettered. Adding to the existing stench came that of vomit, for the first days at sea proved stormy.

“The English Channel,” the man in the berth next to Michael’s explained. He was a sailor who had killed another man during a brawl. “As far as the Bay of Biscay, it’s mostly rough weather. The molls will be puking their guts out. But damn it, I’m hungry anyway. Is there nothing to eat around here? Even any of those dry crackers?”

Before the guards had distributed a meager ration of hardtack that morning, they had sent a few women down from the tween deck with buckets and mops to wash up at least the worst filth. A watchman stood next to each of the women as if, despite their chains, Michael and the other men might jump them.

“At least your beds aren’t stacked on top of each other,” one of the women said, trying to comfort Michael, “or you’d have to wipe it off your face. Happened to a few of us. And the seasick ones still don’t always make it to the privy. How long does a trip like this take?”

“About a hundred days,” the imprisoned sailor informed her.

The men groaned.

“I thought four weeks maybe,” mumbled Michael. “Like to America.”

The sailor laughed bitterly. “New York is a stone’s throw compared to this. But they’ll take us up on deck. They can’t let us rot here for three months. The queen, she’s a good woman. She wouldn’t allow it.”

Michael did not comment on this. After Queen Victoria had let half of Ireland starve without a word, he couldn’t attribute much goodness to her. But perhaps she at least showed mercy to her landsmen. The majority of prisoners in Van Diemen’s Land were Englishmen, after all.

Michael yearned for light and air, but even more to be able to stretch his legs. He was already feeling the pressure of the hard wooden pallet to which he was chained. Like most of his fellow prisoners, he was undernourished, and his shoulder blades poked out and quickly became sore from lying on the pallet. Worse still were the barely healed welts on his back, which burned after the women emptied a few buckets of seawater over the fettered prisoners. Now, the men were clean but wet, and though it was humid in the belly of the
Asia
, it was not very warm. Likely, it would be days until Michael’s linen pants and shirt were dry, and then they’d be filthy again.

Lizzie and the other women in the tween deck also struggled with seasickness, but at least they had a bucket on hand for every six women. In Lizzie’s partition, it had hit Candy and two other women the worst. Velvet didn’t seem to notice anything happening around her, and the older woman—after two days of silence, she had finally introduced herself as Mrs. Portland—was apparently too busy to be sick.

It appeared it was Mrs. Portland’s self-appointed duty to care for the other women. She ran from one to the next with pitchers and buckets full of drinking and wash water, forcing them to eat at least a little bit of the hardtack but not complaining when they immediately vomited it up.

“A few are so weak,” she explained to Lizzie, “I’m afraid they’ll die of exhaustion.”

Following Mrs. Portland’s directions, Lizzie was tending to Candy. “So when will this get better?”

“When the sea calms down,” replied a man’s voice.

Lizzie spun around. For four days she had been expecting the guard with whom she had flirted during embarkation to claim her services, but apparently he’d had too much to do on deck.

“Sometimes it also gets better when you get out in the air. How about it, sweet? Want to take a walk with me?”

Lizzie would have done anything to get out in the air, but on the other hand . . . “These two are doing a lot worse than me,” she said, pointing to Candy and another of the women.

This woman was tiny and could hardly be more than fourteen years old. She would not survive long if she continued spewing all her food.

The guard thought a moment. “First, be good to me,” he finally said, “and then we’ll see. It’s about time you all went on deck anyway. I’ll speak with the lieutenant.”

Giving him a gentle smile, Lizzie followed him up the stairs. Cold, damp Atlantic air struck her immediately. She held her face happily into the wind and looked around curiously. Lizzie was not the only girl on deck. Apparently, a few of the guards were giving one another alibis so they could go topside with the girls of their choice. Lizzie’s guard—he introduced himself as Jeremiah—had even thought of protection from the rain. He pulled her into a lifeboat over which he had spread a tarpaulin. There was a blanket for bedding, and what was more, he produced a bottle of gin from under the planks with a triumphant grin.

Lizzie took a long swig; the alcohol warmed her body and calmed her stomach. Then she let herself sink, content, onto the blanket. She had plied her trade under less conducive circumstances before. Though she found it difficult to feign passion when Jeremiah finally entered her, he fortunately proved easy to please. The man also proved to be normally sized—it did not hurt too much, though she was anything but ready for him. Lizzie let the business pass over her and then asked him for the promised walk. To her surprise, Jeremiah agreed. He seemed to be truly thankful to her; perhaps he had even fallen for her a bit.

He led her across the deck, showing her the structures for the passengers’ cabins and the crew’s quarters. By the end, Lizzie’s hair was wet from the rain, and she felt refreshed. It was almost too much when, on top of that, Jeremiah handed her the bottle of gin, still more than half full, and a small bag of flour.

“Here, it’s good for the stomach. Perhaps you can get the little one in your partition back on her feet. Mix the flour with water; it’ll help her.”

Lizzie thanked him profusely. When she got back to their stuffy, stinking lodgings, she put the bottle to Candy’s lips first. Candy drank greedily and seemed to feel better immediately.

“Mrs. Portland?” Shyly, Lizzie held the bottle out to the older woman.

Mrs. Portland looked disapprovingly at the gin. “I’ve avoided that my entire life,” she said, “but what’s to be done? When in Rome . . .” She looked at Lizzie, then took the bottle and sipped. She coughed and struggled for air.

“I don’t drink it for fun either.” Lizzie felt she had to defend herself. Her instinct told her this was a good woman who had lived a life pleasing to God. Lizzie would so have liked to know how she had ended up on the ship. “Do we still have water?” she asked.

The guards distributed the drinking water to the partitions in pitchers, though it hardly sufficed. Again and again, ugly scenes arose; in some of the partitions, the women were fully at odds. They begrudged each other every sip of water and every bite of bread.