Behind the Sun (16 page)

By the time the women came up on deck the sinking sun behind them had gilded the tips of the waves a dull gold and the final stretch of the Thames curved ahead before it widened into the estuary.

‘Where are we?’ Rachel said, gazing across the water, her hand above her eyes like an intrepid explorer. Friday burped loudly, slumped over the rail and was sick again.

‘I don’t know,’ Harrie said, patting Friday’s back. ‘I’ve never been out of London.’

‘I don’t feel any better up here than I did below,’ Rachel complained. ‘Do you not feel ill? Lord, I do,’ she added, and gave a sharp retch.

Harrie shook her head. ‘No, I don’t, sorry. Tuck your hair behind your ears, sweetie, just in case.’

Sarah took Rachel’s arm and led her to the rail, where Rachel leant over and vomited convulsively. Holding on to Rachel’s apron ties, Sarah said to Harrie, ‘Don’t say sorry just because you’re not seasick. You’re always saying sorry. Stop it. You’ve the least to apologise for out of all of us.’

Harrie opened her mouth, then shut it again.

Friday straightened and wiped her face on her apron.

‘
Fri
day, that will smell of sick now,’ Harrie scolded.

‘Don’t think it’s going to matter soon.’ In the dying light Friday’s face, coated with a thin sheen of sweat despite the brisk breeze coming off the river, glimmered a ghostly white.

‘Mr Downey says to drink lots of fluids if you’re vomiting,’ Harrie said. ‘
Not
alcohol,’ she added hastily.

Sarah, who, like Harrie, did not feel unwell, said, ‘I wonder what we’re getting for supper?’

Friday threw up again.

During the night, the
Isla
sailed out into the Thames estuary and, by the time the sun rose the following day, was heading into the unforgiving North Sea. Of the one hundred and twenty-two convict women and children aboard, only eleven did not become seasick.

When James Downey came looking for Harrie, she was tending to Friday and Rachel, both prostrate in the bunk, horribly ill. Sarah, watching, sat very still at the long table, pale and sweaty, holding on to counteract the long, plunging roll of the ship, doing her best to pretend she wasn’t finally feeling sick.

‘How are they?’ he asked, and ducked his head to peer in at them in the dim light.

Harrie felt embarrassed because the entire deck smelt eye-wateringly of sick and worse, and there were women everywhere in various states of undress. She knew they probably didn’t care, especially while they felt so ill, but she wondered if Mr Downey might.

Rachel let out a pathetic little moan. ‘Can you not give us something to make us feel better? Please?’

Friday simply covered her white, sweating face with her arm.

James shook his head regretfully. ‘There is no cure for seasickness, I’m afraid. Drink as much water as you can manage. You’ll find your sea legs soon.’

‘Will they, sir?’ Harrie whispered when he straightened up again.

‘I expect so. Most people do. The first bout is always the worst.’ James moved her a short distance down the aisle. ‘I must say you look remarkably hale.’

His comment sounded to Harrie like an accusation and she felt the familiar heat born of guilt creep across her face.

‘You’re not feeling sick at all?’

Harrie shook her head.

‘Well, that’s good news, isn’t it?’ James said. ‘Because I require someone to assist me in the hospital. I thought you might be rather suitable, especially as you’re not currently indisposed.’

‘No, thank you,’ Harrie replied. ‘I’d rather stay here and look after my friends.’

Realising what she’d said, or, more critically, to whom she’d said it, she clapped her hands over her mouth.

James frowned. ‘I don’t think you understand, Harriet. That wasn’t an invitation. I’m telling you that you will be working for me in the hospital. I need someone with steady hands, a quiet disposition and her wits about her. I believe that is you. You can be of more assistance in the hospital helping with the infants and the seriously ill than you can here. Now, follow me please.’

Her face flaming, Harrie did. She followed James up the ladder and staggered across the waistdeck, where, wrestling with her skirts, she was buffeted and shoved about by the harsh, rain-seeded wind snapping the sails overhead, then down another hatch into the hospital. James pointed out that the prison and hospital were actually connected by a door in the bulkhead dividing them, to provide patient access on occasions when using the ladders was impractical, but kept locked by two hefty deadbolts on the hospital side. There were only two sets of keys: James held one of them; Captain Holland the other.

The hospital certainly smelt better than the prison deck, though the odour of vomit was still detectable. There was already someone there helping: a woman Harrie didn’t know but had seen
before often enough. She was holding a baby, patting it briskly as it mewled and spewed onto a strategically placed square of cloth draped over her shoulder.

‘Do you two know each other?’ James asked as he brushed rain off his coat.

‘I know her,’ the other woman said. ‘It’s Harrie Clarke, isn’t it?’

Harrie nodded.

Caught off guard, James laughed. ‘Harrie? Is that what they call you?’

Harrie felt herself reddening again. ‘Yes, sir, sometimes.’

James silently debated the issue of protocol for a moment, then said, ‘Actually, I’d rather you didn’t call me “sir”. “Mister” is fine, if you have to call me anything, all right?’

Harrie nodded yet again, feeling as though her head might be about to fall off. But she would nod all day for the next month if it made up for the terrible, rude, selfish thing she had said before. Mr Downey was right — he couldn’t look after all the little children by himself. But, oh, were the others all right? Sarah said she wasn’t sick, but she was and just wouldn’t admit it; Harrie knew she’d soon be throwing up as violently as the others. And she had gone off and left them and they were family now, sisters, and you didn’t just go off and leave family like that when they needed help. You did everything you possibly could for them. Everything.

Alerted by the woebegone expression on her normally pleasant face that Harrie wasn’t very happy, James said, ‘I apologise: that was uncalled for. How would you prefer to be addressed? As Harriet, or as Harrie?’

Harrie blinked, completely flustered by an apology from the sort of person who normally would never even think to say sorry to the likes of her. ‘Um, oh, Harrie. Thank you.’

‘Well, then, Harrie, this is Lil Foster.’

Lil nodded, her hand not missing a beat as she kept up a gentle rhythmic paddling on the baby’s swaddled bottom. ‘You’re in
Friday Woolfe’s crew. I saw you in Newgate. What are you on the boat for?’

‘Shoplifting. Seven years,’ Harrie said, embarrassed to be confessing her crime in front of Mr Downey, even though he knew about it, but accustomed by now to telling other women why she was being transported. For a strange, disjointed moment it felt as though Mr Downey were the one on the wrong side of the bars, not her and Lil.

‘Fancy. You wouldn’t think so to look at you.’

Harrie was getting quite sick of hearing that. Perhaps she should knock out her front teeth and get a few tattoos. ‘And you?’ She didn’t really care what Lil Foster had done, but knew it was the convention to ask.

‘Highway robbery, life.’

‘Really?’ Harrie was quite impressed. Lil didn’t look the type, either. She looked…motherly…and to be in her early thirties. She didn’t say it, however, because no doubt Lil was sick of hearing
that
. ‘Highway robbery’ usually conjured in the public imagination infamous Dick Turpin and Sixteen String Jack and the like, but it referred to theft of property from a traveller using any public road by one or more thieves on horseback. Lil’s involvement could have been little more than waiting to carry the stolen goods to the pawn shop; she needn’t have been the one brandishing the pistols and demanding, ‘Stand and deliver!’ Though you couldn’t be sure of anything on God’s green earth, Harrie was fast learning.

‘They will survive, your friends,’ James assured Harrie. ‘Try not to worry about them. It is only seasickness and, as I said, it will pass. It’s only the very young and those already physically indisposed who are really at risk. As you know I have advised that it is better managed above deck, where there is a view of the horizon. It helps to settle the stomach. But it seems that most prefer to languish below and I don’t blame them. The weather is far from inviting. So we must wait until it eases. And when it does, the
seasickness probably will, too. Until then, I’ll need your help here in the hospital.’

James had brought in the sickest of the small children, three less than a year old and two more still in nappies, and two of the pregnant women who couldn’t keep even water down. Harrie and Lil spent most of their time cleaning up sick and trying to get the patients to drink, because Mr Downey said it was very important, especially for the little ones because they dehydrated so rapidly.

Lil talked a lot but she worked hard as well and time passed quickly, and when Mr Downey told Harrie to have a break she went to check on Friday and Rachel and to pass on the surgeon’s news that they would shortly be heading into the English Channel, where the seas would be likely to settle somewhat.

Sarah had forced herself to go on, wiping Friday’s and Rachel’s faces, giving them water, until finally she’d collapsed herself, dizzy, vomiting and really angry about succumbing. When Harrie found her slumped over the table, sick all over her skirt, she helped her out of her smelly clothes and dragged her into the bunk.

The seas did settle. Slightly. The ship changed direction with a great cracking and snapping of sails and a gentle tilt so that everything slid but didn’t topple, then an hour or so later Harrie felt through the deck a different rhythm to the ocean and the
Isla
seemed to adjust her gait as she turned south to follow the coasts of Kent.

Those a little less sensitive to the rolling of the ship managed to throw off the worst effects of seasickness as the
Isla
picked up a fair nor-nor’-east wind and sailed past The Downs, Deal and Dover, then, still hugging the coast, Hastings, Eastbourne and Brighton. Captain Holland’s intentions of managing his prisoners by employing a strict daily timetable, however, were in tatters, as half the women were still laid low. On the other hand, James Downey organised new rosters to facilitate the extra laundering of soiled bedding and clothing. As a result, the upper decks were daily festooned with drying blankets and items of clothing flapping stiffly in the wind, while mattresses were draped over everything, hampering Captain Holland’s men while they worked. Resignedly, the captain held his tongue — it was always this way at the start of a voyage and in rough seas. You could expect little else from a ship packed to the gunwales with landlubbers.

They were not at ease, though, the convict women. They were distressed at being transported far from England, and the drowning of Mary Ann Howells had unsettled them even further. Her pale wraith had been seen floating just beneath the surface of the water on several occasions — and once even hovering some feet above it, level with the scuttleholes on the prison deck, imploring to be let in to rejoin her friends — and Matilda Bain had woken one night
to the sound of her name being called by a thin, sorrowful voice beyond the
Isla
’s hull. Hysteria, Captain Holland muttered to James Downey, and James agreed, but a hysteria born of trepidation and despair, and so not entirely invalid.

On the seventh day of May, to the relief of most of those who sailed on her, the
Isla
dropped anchor at the Mother Bank off the Isle of Wight. There they harboured for five days while more provisions were brought on board and while they waited for the thirteen extra prisoners to arrive from Bristol gaol. Though it was not that the prisoners were late — it was because Captain Holland was early, having decided not to hang about at Woolwich.

Amos Furniss told Lil Foster, who had dark eyes and a proper, womanly figure, that the captain had only shoved off early from Woolwich merely because the winds had been favourable. He reasoned that if he shared privileged information with her, a lowly convict, she might feel beholden to him and let him take liberties. It was also another little strike in his private campaign against Josiah Holland, who had humiliated him once too often in front of the crew, and who’d appointed Silas bloody Warren first mate over Amos, even though Warren was younger and a less competent seaman.

Lil told Amos Furniss to bugger off. And, having not had the chance to say goodbye to her man and their children because of the captain’s arbitrary decision to leave early, she passed on to everyone else Furniss’s gossip. The mood below deck, therefore, was fairly volatile by the time the Bristol prisoners finally did arrive.

They were ferried by lighter over from Portsmouth and winched up one by one in the bosun’s chair. The Newgate women, however, did not witness this as they had been sent below to clear the decks. Their humour had not been improved by the fact that Mr Downey had told them that, to make room for the thirteen extra prisoners, they could no longer spread out on the prison deck, some until now enjoying the luxury of only two to a bunk.

‘I bet they’re as rough as guts,’ Friday said, cleaning under her toenails with one of her earrings. ‘Bristol’s a mean town.’

Harrie asked, ‘Have you been there?’

Friday shook her head. ‘It’s a port city, though, isn’t it? And I’ve known a lot of tars.’

‘London’s mean, too,’ Sarah remarked. ‘Can’t see how Bristol can be any worse.’

‘Different sort of mean,’ Friday said, inspecting her feet. They looked like bleached prunes. Perhaps she’d go barefoot if the weather got warmer. She put her earring back in.

‘Here they come,’ Rachel said excitedly, as footsteps thumped overhead and a shadow blocked the hatchway.

One by one the women from Bristol descended the companion ladder backwards, bringing with them an assortment of bags, sacks, baskets and even several trunks. But when they reached the deck, instead of moving along the aisles, they waited, eyes darting about, taking in the Newgate contingent’s silence and impassive stares. A sense of expectation swelled the air. No one moved; no one made a noise. Even the children were quiet.

‘That’s only twelve,’ Rachel said in a whisper to Friday. ‘There’s supposed to be thirteen.’

But Friday was watching the ladder.

After what seemed suspiciously like a deliberately staged interval, a pair of smart, pale grey leather boots appeared on the top rung. As they stepped down, a heavy velvet skirt of dusky rose became visible, revealing a swish of petticoats as the wearer turned and deftly descended the ladder. Reaching the pool of sunlight at the bottom, she turned around again and paused, as though inviting everyone on the prison deck to take a good look at her.

She was tall, taller even than Friday, and very slender, the fine cut of her black grosgrain jacket emphasising her slim hips. Friday decided immediately she was either sick or liked being that thin:
she’d been in Bristol gaol but still possessed her finery, which meant she had money and could afford to eat if she wanted to.

Considered individually, the woman’s facial features were a bit ordinary — a strong, crooked nose with a high bridge, curved lips and heavy-lidded, very dark eyes below plucked, arched brows. But combined, they somehow lent her a disconcerting sort of beauty. She wore kohl and lip stain, and her face was very white. Friday was putting her money on rice powder. Her hair, worn in heavy ringlets to her shoulders, gleamed like black jet, and on her head a squashy red velvet hat decorated with a white ostrich feather sat at a jaunty angle. A silk scarf was knotted around her throat and her fingers glittered with several large rings. She stared coolly back at the faces studying her, then, so suddenly that those near her jumped, she flicked open a black lace fan and flapped at the air in front of her face.

A child squeaked, ‘Mam, who’s that lady?’ and was silenced by a muffled slap.

The Bristol women parted to let this last of their number through and the woman set off slowly down the aisle, hat in hand now to avoid crushing the feather against the low ceiling. Her gait already accommodating the roll of the ship, she looked left and right, peering into every berth and poking at mattresses with a long finger. Apparently transfixed, nobody stopped her, not even Liz Parker.

Bemused, Sarah said, ‘What’s she doing?’ It came out quite loudly.

A Bristol prisoner cringed and touched a finger to her lips. ‘Hush. She’s deciding where she wants to sleep.’

Incredulous, Sarah exclaimed, ‘What’s wrong with one of the empty bunks?’

The girl flinched. ‘Don’t upset her! She’ll go mad.’

Sarah and Friday exchanged a glance. Friday snorted. ‘Who the hell does she think she is?’

The girl, noticeably pregnant and with something not quite right about her face, gave them a funny look. ‘She doesn’t think, she knows. That’s Bella Jackson.’

‘I’ve heard plenty about her,’ Friday said, blowing a series of short, sharp smoke rings now that she was above deck, ‘but I’ve never met her. Stupid thing to do, if you ask me.’

‘What is?’ Sarah could see Friday was annoyed.

‘Putting her and Liz Parker on the same boat. Shit will fly.’

‘But why?’ Rachel asked. ‘I’ve never even heard of Bella Jackson.’

‘You wouldn’t, shovelling cowshit in Guildford.’ Rachel blinked, and Friday patted her hand. ‘Sorry, love. That was mean. You know how Liz Fat-Arse Parker ran her own crooked little kingdom in Newgate and thinks she’s going to keep on running it while we’re at sea? Well, Bella Jackson ran a
real
kingdom before she was arrested, up in Birmingham. She was abbess of one of the busiest brothels, owned two or three more, not to mention a couple of dollyshops, and ran probably the biggest crew in the city. She had interests in gaming, broads, counterfeiting, all sorts of rackets. The watch have been after her for years. Very cunning article.’

‘So what’s she doing on a convict ship, then?’ Sarah asked.

‘I heard someone sold her up the river. I hadn’t heard she’d be getting transported with us, though.’

‘Perhaps it’s a secret,’ Rachel said, her eyes shining. ‘Perhaps she’s been sneaked on so no one can help her escape, like Ikey Solomon did.’ Like most of England, she’d heard about the notorious criminal’s daring escape from custody, aided by his father-in-law, on the way back from the Court of King’s Bench, after which he’d apparently vanished into thin air.

Friday and Sarah looked at Rachel and Friday laughed. ‘You know, you could be right about that.’

Rachel beamed.

‘Is she from Birmingham originally?’ Sarah said.

Friday shrugged. ‘Nobody really knows. Apparently, she just sort of appeared there about ten years ago. Some say she hails from Bristol, some say Liverpool and others swear Cornwall.’

‘You’d think it was Windsor Castle, the way she’s carrying on,’ Sarah said disparagingly.

Bella Jackson had commandeered two bunks, one above the other, her crew turfing out the original occupants. Within half an hour, a curtain had been erected right around the lower bunk, behind which Bella had disappeared, along with the trunks that belonged to her, without saying a word to anyone.

Two of the Bristol women had been allocated to join Friday, Rachel, Harrie and Sarah’s mess, to make their numbers up to six. One was named Sally Minto, and the other, the pregnant girl, Janie Braine.

Janie appeared now, wearing her new prison outfit. The stiff apron stuck out over her belly, giving her the appearance of being eight months gone rather than the six she said she was.

She sat down on a barrel, knees apart, her face pale. ‘Makes your tummy feel squiffy, doesn’t it, the ship moving.’

‘You wait until we set sail,’ Rachel said.

Close up, in full daylight, they could all see what was wrong with Janie’s face — she was blind in her left eye, which looked resolutely forwards, regardless of what the other eyeball did. And like Friday, she was tattooed — in Janie’s case on the back of her right hand.

‘Jane Braine: that’s an unusual name,’ Sarah said, the exaggerated tone of contemplation in her voice not quite masking the sarcasm.

‘Jan
ie
,’ Janie said. ‘Not Jane. It does sound daft if you just say Jane.’

Rachel nodded at Janie’s stomach. ‘You’ll miss your husband.’

‘Only if I had one.’

‘Oh,’ Rachel said.

‘You’re not below attending to Queen Bella,’ Friday remarked.

Janie made a face. ‘It’s a relief not to be. Where’s that other girl, the nice one?’

‘Harrie? She’s working in the hospital,’ Rachel told her.

Friday asked, ‘Were you in Bristol Gaol with Bella Jackson?’

‘Not for long. She was brought down from Birmingham, all the way in a coach, handcuffed to the door. Her and half a dozen girls. They had a week in Bristol with us, then we came down here.’ Janie glanced furtively over her shoulder. ‘I think she’s a witch. I think she’s cast a spell on the others. They’ll do anything she tells them to do.’ She shuddered. ‘She just gives me the shits.’

Rachel’s eyes were huge. ‘Has Sally Minto been bewitched?’ Aghast, she turned to Friday. ‘What if we get a spell put on us?’

Friday patted her hand reassuringly. ‘Then we’ll cast one back. Is she one for the ladies?’

‘Sally Minto?’

‘No, Bella Jackson.’

Janie thought about it. ‘Haven’t noticed. Keeping it quiet if she is.’ She glanced up at the foredeck. ‘That toff up there’s been gawping at you for ages, Rachel. He your fancy man?’

They all turned to look; there was indeed a man standing on the foredeck watching them. It was Mr Keegan, one of the paying gentlemen, and today he was togged out in a burgundy-coloured cutaway with a wide collar, a smart waistcoat, a starcher, fawn trousers and his usual top hat. The general opinion among the women was that lifting a leg to him as a potential source of income would not be a hardship. The fact that he was back aboard the
Isla
suggested they would shortly be setting sail: the paying passengers had all gone ashore when they’d dropped anchor on the Mother Bank a week earlier.

Mr Keegan waved, touched his hand to his hat brim, trotted athletically down the companion ladder and disappeared through the door that led to the passenger cabins.

‘No, he is
not
my fancy man!’ Rachel protested. ‘I’m betrothed.’

‘Fat lot of good that’s going to do you, transported to New South Wales,’ Janie said. She cocked a hand behind one large, pink ear. ‘What’s that I hear? Could it be the sound of a galloping knight in shining armour? Oh, no, it’s just me guts rumbling.’

Friday tried not to, but she laughed.

On the verge of tears, Rachel shot back, ‘You’re a sarky cow, you are, Janie Braine. And
you’re
no help either,’ she added to Friday.

‘I’m sorry, love,’ Friday said.

Contrite, Janie said, ‘Sorry, didn’t mean to upset you. And you’re a lovely-looking thing, I’ll say that. Whoever he is, he’s a mug if he
doesn’t
follow you.’ She gestured towards the cabins. ‘You know, you could make yourself a bit of money on the way, start saving up to come back once you’ve done your time. Big money, too, with your looks.’

‘Ew, that’s revolting!’ Rachel exclaimed. ‘I couldn’t have another man near me. Not after Lucas.’

But it did give her an idea. Several, in fact.

Becky Hoddle, reclining on the bunk, was suddenly alert. ‘Watch out,’ she said to Liz Parker, who was dozing, her bulky body sprawled across the mattress beside her.

Liz woke up with a start. ‘What?’

‘Here comes that little Winter girl from Woolfe’s crew.’

Peering down the aisle, Liz muttered, ‘What’s she want?’

‘Likely off to the bogs.’

But Rachel wasn’t off to the bogs. Parking her small bum against the table she said, ‘I’ve got a proposition for you, Liz Parker.’