Convictions (3 page)

Although several candlelit lanterns hung along the centre passageway, very little light managed to press through the few grimy portholes. And those were barred like the windows of a prison. The constant rocking of the boat kept Jennie off balance. Voices around her cried out in alarm and uncertainty as she and her companions stumbled along in the gloom.

Guards stationed at intervals along the passageway prodded them with muskets, as the women lurched against one another. Someone pushed Alice sideways, crushing her into two sinewy women. Jennie pulled her free. Alice clung to Jennie’s arm, as Sarah drew them both toward her.

“Order!” yelled a formidable voice above the din.

All attention focused on the dark, commanding form of a uniformed officer, who hung partway down the ladder.

When all became quiet, he shouted, “I am Lieutenant Yates, second in command. I speak on behalf of Captain Furlee, master of this vessel. He will tolerate no disorder on board. Now give heed. We intend to arrive with all two hundred and thirty-five of you. Your condition at that time depends entirely on how you behave.”

He pointed to another officer farther down the rungs. “Second Mate Meadows is in charge to see that you do. He will give further orders.” Yates disappeared up the narrow ladder as swiftly as he’d come.

Meadows climbed up a few steps, his tall muscular body filling the space where the Lieutenant had been. He bellowed, “Reverend Ernest Brantford is here for your spiritual redemption.”

Jennie pressed through the crowd of women until she could glimpse the stick-like man with bony hands and long narrow skull Meadows indicated, standing at the bottom of the ladder to the right. The tight, white collar around the reverend’s neck prevented him from giving more than a slight nod in their direction. Jennie shivered. He resembled a skeleton that she’d seen once in the back of an apothecary shop.

“The surgery,” Meadows said, signalling two warders to hold lanterns inside a small ten-by-twelve-foot space near the hatchway.

Jennie craned to see inside. Equipped with six bed planks and a cradle, there was also a table, a chair, and a narrow shelf against the far wall which held quart bottles containing powders of some sort.

A man stepped forward as Meadows bellowed an introduction. “Once we set sail Surgeon Superintendent Dr. Weymss will choose three of you as his attendants. You will do his bidding.” The surgeon was the man who had taken their names above deck. He was shorter than Jennie had thought, now that he was standing.

“Over there are the privies.” Meadows indicated four wooden buckets, two on each side of a plank. “You will see to their emptying.”

Around her, the women gasped. Jennie shuddered – there weren’t nearly enough to serve all of them!

All became silent when Meadows bellowed again to get their attention.

“Take note of the brig at the far end.” He pointed his sword over their heads toward jail cells. “You will join your unruly companions there, should you become disobedient. So be fairly warned.”

Someone whispered behind Jennie. “Behind them’s where the second-rate officers that looks after the ship stays.”

“The gun room is back there too,” rasped someone else. “And where the guards have their berths.”

“Aye, and look. The dividing wall has holes for the guards to fire on us if we get rowdy,” said the first woman.

“Too close for my comfort,” said the other.

A rustle of muttering swept through the hold, but ceased when Meadows commanded, “Hold your noise!”

He further focused their attention with his cutting words. “You’ll remain chained below deck until we’ve set sail and reached open water. You’ll receive further orders then.”

Meadows signalled again to the warders. “Nate and Walt, take the lanterns and call the others to get these women in their berths forthwith.”

So the young warder’s name is Nate,
Jennie noted. And right behind him, walking with a slight limp, was Walt, the man with the wizened face. Jennie kept her head slightly bowed as Nate, ramrod straight, headed her way. His expression was hard to read, obscured as it was by the glare of the lamp he held at arm’s length.

Before her in the shadowy light, Jennie could just make out a row of berths divided into wards, running the length of four or five portholes on each side of the ship. Iron bars divided the wards into square sections with two tiers of bunks in each. The bunks didn’t look much wider than Jennie with both her arms stretched out at her sides.

“Four of you in each,” snarled Scarface. He steered a group of women into the nearest lower berth and handcuffed them to the vertical metal bars. “The last of you will take the hammocks,” he shouted over his shoulder.

The women crowded forward, scrambling to make sure they found a berth space. The hammocks were gnarled and frayed and had no mattresses. Each was meant for at least two, and no one wanted to share and be rolled into the middle together when it sagged.

Sarah tottered ahead of Jennie and Alice. She grasped at the first open bunk she came to with space for all of them, but it was on the second level several feet off the ground. Alice scampered up, but the middle-aged woman looked down at her bulk.

“I’ll never get up there,” she wheezed.

Jennie helped her companion into the next bottom bunk that already held three other women in a space barely meant for two. As Sarah wedged herself onto the plank berth, the others grumbled about her girth.

“You can surely move in tighter,” Sarah gasped. She clung to the edge of the bunk, her body threatening to roll off.

“Wish we could get you in here too, Jennie,” she grunted, her face flushed.

“That’s fine, I’ll go up with Alice.” But by
that time, Alice was squashed against the far wall of her berth by three others who had joined her.

Jennie tried to enter the lower one next to Sarah, but a stout grey-haired woman dug her fingers into Jennie’s arm.

“You’re young. Go to the top,” she ordered, before ducking back into the bottom compartment where there was still some space.

Jennie gave her a look of surprise, and began to climb. A pockmarked, gangly woman in her mid-twenties thrust her foot out from above.

“There’s no room,” she growled, though there was only one other youngish woman with her.

Jennie recognized them both as the ones Alice had been crushed into earlier.

“Yes, there is,” she said, climbing upward again.

“Not for the prissy likes of you!”

Jennie slid back down. With the throng of woman surrounding her, there seemed nowhere else for her to go and still be near Sarah and Alice.

A fight erupted between the women farther along the passageway.

“Only the elderly and mothers with babies and children are allowed the bottom bunks,” bellowed Walt, separating the tangle of women. He shoved them in opposite directions. “Make room.”

Jennie attempted to climb up again, but the other tough woman – a scraggly blonde – joined the pockmarked one in blocking her ascent.

“We’ll have none of that, lest you want a flogging.” Scarface approached from the other direction with a snarl, smacking his billy club at the obstinate women. He grabbed Jennie and lifted her up by the waist, thrusting her into the adjoining upper bunk amidst three sweaty bodies. The three others complained loudly, as they disentangled arms and legs. Jabbing Jennie, they pushed her to the back. She moaned, feeling every injury anew. The guard stepped on the edge of the bottom bunk and stretched over to snap handcuffs on their wrists, securing them to the metal bars at their heads.

Jennie squirmed to get comfortable on her side, though she was squished tight against the wall. She took several anxious breaths. The constant swaying of the ship lapping at its moorings helped calm her, as did concentrating on listening to the rest of the women find berths along the full length of the ward section. Finally, everyone seemed to have eked out a space, the last claiming the tatty hammocks. The guards finished handcuffing them in place and secured the threadbare lee cloths meant to keep them from rolling out of their bunks.

With the dousing of the lanterns, the sounds in their quarters dulled to murmurs, broken only by the occasional baby’s cry or whimper from a child and several hoarsely whispered prayers. From the jail-cell end came the sobbing of a woman who seemed unable to stop.

Jennie lay rammed into the narrow berth with her bedmates. The thin straw pallet did little to cushion her injured body. Her shoulders and back were in pain from the clubbing, and her ankles and wrists throbbed. Every muscle in her body ached. There was no pillow, only a threadbare blanket, which she pulled up to her chin, careful not to touch her swollen jaw.

A bony elbow dug into her ribs, and the smell of unwashed bodies was overwhelming. Jennie cowered away from the other women, pressing tightly against the hull of the ship. She squirmed suddenly when she felt something nibbling at her legs. She couldn’t reach to scratch with her hands. She brushed her legs against one another in small movements, praying she’d be able to knock off the bedbugs or spiders or whatever crawled on her.

“Quit fidgeting!” The woman beside Jennie poked her.

Weak and queasy, Jennie closed her eyes, trying to ignore the crawling bugs. She listened to the crews hollering orders as they prepared the ship for sailing. At the other end of steerage, a deck below them, the livestock bellowed and bleated. Men cursed as they lashed the last of the cargo into place.

A cannon shot thundered from somewhere overhead. Shortly afterwards, Jennie heard shouted orders to hoist the sails. Moments later, the ship trembled into life.

Jennie’s eyes sprang open as the ship tilted and then swayed back again. She lay paralyzed, staring wide-eyed into the dark void, listening to the groaning of the ship. Then a bell clanged, sounding like a death knell.

June 29, 1842 was a date she would never forget.

Chapter Three

Darkness engulfed her.

Moaning softly, Jennie pressed harder against the rough hull, away from the women sharing her berth. Although she was surrounded by women, they were strangers and she’d never felt so alone. The dank, cramped bowels of the ship closed in on her. This was worse than anything she had imagined.

The ship’s creaking, the bumping and bawling of the cattle below and peculiar banging noises mingled with shouts of the sailors above board horrified her. Even more, the terrified whispers of her companions, the furtive scratching of rodents and the rocking of the ship created an overwhelming sense of danger.

Everything seemed to be closing in on her. The berth was like a shared coffin. The sweaty bodies in her berth smacked against each other with a scant eighteen inches to call their own. Even if Jennie could turn on her other side, the space was too shallow; the ceiling only few inches from her face. Desperation crept through her as she thought about the horror of spending the next four or five months in these confined, coal-black depths.

Her breathing came in short, quick bursts. In a panic, Jennie jerked upwards on one elbow. She whacked her forehead on the top beam. The short wrist fetter yanked her down again, and she cracked the back of her head against an iron bar. She yelped and gulped back sobs.

“Hush her up, Hildy,” said the woman lying two positions over.

“Stuff it, Flo. Why should it be me?” Hildy griped.

“You’re closest.”

Jennie whimpered again.

“Give ’er a slap,” said the youngest woman on the outside of the berth. “That’ll stop the bleedin’ ’ysterics!”

“Give her one yourself, Gladys,” Hildy snapped, as she butted her bony shoulder against Jennie. “Stop the whining or you’ll have the billy clubs down on us.”

“Shh. Don’t distress yourself, dearie,” Sarah comforted from a berth below. “It’s of no use.”

“I’m scared too.” Alice’s trembling voice reached Jennie’s ears.

Jennie felt ashamed of herself. Alice had to be even more terrified than she was. She took in a long quavering breath to steady herself.

“Don’t mind me, Alice. I’m better now.” Jennie tried to reassure the youngster, though her heart pounded hard against her chest.

“We’ll get through this together,” Sarah promised, as Alice choked back a sob. “Don’t fret now, Alice. I’m close by.”

Jennie added hollowly, “We’ll come out right.”

“Hmmph,” grunted Hildy.

“Shows how little she knows,” muttered Flo.

“All we have now is our prayers,” said someone with the high-pitched voice directly below Jennie.

“Is that you, Iris? Fat lot of good prayers ’ave done,” Gladys scoffed. “Look where they’ve brought us!”

“Prayers work. You must believe,” Iris said, her voice rising indignantly.

“Imagine where we’d be if the prayers
didn’t
work,” Flo scoffed.

“We’d be swinging from the three-legged mare,” barked an elderly voice.

“Cheerful ruddy thought that, Dottie!” said Hildy with a sniff.

“At least we can be thankful that’s not our fate,” said Sarah.

“It’d be better than living in this stinking hole,” volleyed
back one of the tough young women from the bunk next to Jen
nie’s head.