A World Apart (15 page)

Next evening, a little after dark, Harry pulled up his horse at the inn door and handed the reins to the stableboy. He had never been inside the inn before. Now he stood in the doorway, peering into the gloom.

‘Hello, good sir.' A gentlemanly voice hailed him from a corner beside a smoky fire. He smiled in the direction of the voice. Three men sat at a table littered with playing cards. Pewter mugs stood before them. As he watched, a maid carrying a jug walked to the table, filled their mugs, accepted a coin from one of them, curtseyed and left.

‘Won't you join us, sir?' one of the men asked. His voice carried the friendly tone of one who had been drinking for a while, but who was mellow rather than drunk. Harry hesitated.

‘We need another,' the speaker said. ‘To make a four.' Harry focussed his gaze into the gloom, still wary. ‘We're gentlemen, sir,' the voice continued. ‘Join us for an ale. We mean no harm. We are lawyers, come to do the King's bidding. A matter of certain land titles.' Harry
weighed the pros and cons. The men looked and sounded like easygoing gentlefolk, enjoying an ale and a game of cards. And the light in their corner was low. He stepped towards them.

‘I'll buy you an ale,' he said, flagging his acceptance of their company.

‘Nay, good sir.' Another spoke. His words carried the good-natured slur of a gentleman who had drunk his fair share. ‘Be seated and deal the cards. We need a little new blood in our game.' Another beckoned the serving wench. She arrived, placed a mug beside Harry, and filled it from the jug. He slipped a coin to the wench and she left. Harry remembered playing poker with Eliza. Mr Harcourt had taught them the elements of the game, saying it would polish their mathematical skills. He watched as they finished a hand, then introduced himself.

‘Good cheer, sir,' one said, clanking his mug against Harry's. I am Andrew, and this is George. And Robert. A toast to our meeting.'

‘We'll play a round of poker,' George said, sliding the pack towards Harry. He reached for the pack, recalling that Mr Harcourt had often referred to the mathematical odds applicable to a collection of four suits, each of thirteen cards. The words combination, permutation, flashed into Harry's brain. What did they mean? Simply that he could calculate the odds of winning with every card he played. He fanned his hand of cards as he held it close, and watched as the others did the same. Within minutes, George had won.

‘What say you to a little wager, gentlemen,' he said. ‘A guinea a hand?' The men nodded, pulled wallets from their waistcoats, laid their coins on the table as if they were pennies. They must be well-to-do. Their dress, their manners, said as much. They seemed honest enough. And they had accepted Harry as an equal, trusted him with money that would have been a tempting sight for a petty thief. Harry would play along. He slid a guinea from his near-empty pocket and set his mind to calculating the odds that he might win a hand with the cards she held.

Too soon, he had won the hand. The men looked down into their now empty mugs. Harry took the hint. He gestured to the wench, who filled the mugs and took the guinea he offered with a grateful smile and a low bow.

In a couple of hours, Harry had won eighty guineas. By now his friends were showing signs of wear. George slumped forward, snoring as his head eased onto the table. Robert stood.

‘I go to splash my boots,' he slurred. ‘No more cards for me. Thank you for your good company, Harry.' With a smile, Andrew rose, bowed in his direction, then began to unbuckle his belt as he lurched after his friend.

Harry waved, slid from his bench, and headed for the door. His pockets bulged with eighty golden guineas as he waited for his horse at stables. Perhaps a useful sum to make a cautious play on the London Stock Exchange.

The
Swan
, a floating prison for upwards of three hundred convicts, had been built to carry coal from Newcastle to London. Now moored at the London docks, she floated square and squat at anchor in the wet chill of the early morning, her short bowsprit pointed upwards like a button nose, giving her the air of an elderly matron of the seas. As the light dockside breeze played through her rigging, she lurched and creaked like an old woman with rheumaticky hips. The convicts filed up the steep gangplank, most clutching bundles of clothes and food — gifts from those ashore. Their leg-irons clanked a dirge that paced their shuffling progress. Once on board, as many as could crowded onto the deck, jammed against each other to the point of breathlessness.

The air was foul. Most of the prisoners, all women, had lain in their hulks for weeks or months without benefit of bathing or clean clothes — many coughed and wheezed with illnesses contracted during their detention. Not a few doubled up and moaned, tormented by the grip of the flux. The crowd on the dock shouted farewell messages to their mates on board.

‘Don't lie with no savages, Poll. Thine ugliness might fright them unto death.'

‘Watch out for those sailor boys, Meg.'

‘No. Hey there, sailor boys, watch out for Meg!'

As the vessel slipped away from the dock, every soul on ship and shore stood silent. The layer of false bonhomie wrought by the crowd on the dock evaporated like a rising mist before the ship was a cable's length from the land. Nothing was left but the cold finality of their parting. The realisation smote the consciousness of everyone on board like the sound of a single drumbeat on a still night. Tears beaded down many a cheek.

Soon the huddle of people on the shore grew indistinct to the straining, tear-misted eyes of the voyagers. The sharper-eyed convicts saw some members of the dockside crowd making their way back to their business on shore, not respecting their friends sufficiently to wait till they were lost to sight round a bend in the river. The ship gained way as it made the middle of the stream and caught the outgoing tide. The landscape slid by; an ungainly assemblage of grey docks, hulks, warehouses, chimney stacks, derelict buildings, the arching ribs of wrecks beached and decaying in the mud.

Eliza watched, thinking that every soul on board would be capturing this tableau in their minds, would remember it as the last they would see of London in their lifetimes. The ship, too, seemed to resent the parting, protesting by its slow progress that it was improper to send a portly matron on a six-month voyage to the end of the world, groaning to the gunwales with the discards of a violence-weary society.

Slowly, slowly, the ship drew away from the land. Eliza, watching the horizon, noticed that the ship had begun to dip slowly up and down in the calm water. The convicts on the deck were herded below.

‘Come, my fine beauties,' Sam Thompson, the Chief Warder, called. ‘Look lively.' He took a position beside the rail, making an effort to stand erect, pot belly straining at the buttons of his uniform. Clearly, he aimed to make an authoritarian first impression on the women who would be in his charge for the next six months.

‘And don't expect no favours from me, my lovelies, nor my trusty lads. The captain of this ship be one of the old school. He don't believe in these new-fangled notions of giving the prisoners feather beds and sweetmeats, spite of what you may have heard. This ship be an old ship, and we be used to the old ways. So get that under your bonnets afore you're a minute older.'

The women jostled to be assigned berths near to their friends. Money was passed to warders to buy a favoured spot. This might be near a companionway, or an aisle where there was an illusion of privacy or a breath of air. The berths stood five deep on a deck, shelves in a chest of drawers built to store miserable humanity rather than clothes. Unhappy choices were made between top berths, with their claustrophobic closeness to the deck above, or the lower shelves which would bear the endless comings and goings of climbing feet for six months or more.

Eliza found herself three layers from the bottom, with Susannah in the berth below her. The berth was edged with low planks and held a mattress filled with straw. An iron cup dangled from a nail by each berth. Eliza took this to be for rations of gruel. A bare twelve inches of space separated each berth from the one above, requiring some adroitness in getting in and out. Eliza eased her spare body in without undue trouble. When her head touched the headboard, her feet reached the far end of the berth. She tried folding her legs this way and that, hitting her head and knees on the berth above.

She heard older and less supple women cursing as they strained to squeeze into their berths, hobbled by leg-irons.

‘Cheer up, Betsy. Thou'll be slenderer soon enough,' one cheerful soul told her neighbour. Within minutes of this prophecy, the ship began to roll. In the hush which blanketed the dark space, the splat-splat of vomit landing on the deck began to punctuate the creak-creak-creak of the old ship. An acid smell choked the air. The stench was enough to trigger seemingly hundreds of other stomachs to eject their contents. Groans and retching fused into a dismal chorus. A thud announced a warder's arrival.

‘My God! It stinks like the pits of hell down there,' the warder called from the open hatch above. ‘At our chundering already are we, me beauties? Dinner is served.' Groans from the stacked humanity sandwiched into the berths told Eliza that few souls would take up the warder's invitation. ‘This be the rostered mealtime for your mess, so step lively. Bring your cups.' The warder must have a sense of humour. Eliza was one of the few to climb from her berth and make her hesitant way to the food barrel guarded by two warders.

‘Bless me. Here's a pretty one, Jem,' the bearded warder smiled as he saw Eliza step forward to the barrel, cup in hand. She must keep away from his hands. ‘Give us a kiss, love,' the other, a thin, clean-shaven man said. ‘And I'll give thee two biscuits.' She stood away from him and held out her cup.

One warder splashed a lump of salt beef into her cup, and the other held out two ship's biscuits. She took one.

‘The biscuits will keep, my darlin'. It's a long voyage,' the clean-shaven one said. ‘Young for a fallen woman, aren't ye. Methinks ye'll grow up a little afore the voyage is done, me pretty.' As she stepped aside to make way for the next convict, he caught a wisp of her golden hair, tugged at it.

Standing in the small space, jostled by the waiting women, Eliza ate the biscuit and part of the beef. She would save a portion of it for Susannah, who lay below in her berth, groaning and vomiting. Holding her cup, Eliza found her way to the water barrel. It was late evening. The lights of the land could be seen winking through the twilight. The fresh wind lifted her hair and she smelt the clean salt smell of the sea. She lingered by the barrel. A warder bore down on her. He smiled.

‘Hello, pretty lass. Let Sam Bentleigh be your friend, then.' She skipped aside and descended through the hatch. In the dark, she heard Susannah groaning softly in her berth.

‘I brought you some food, Susannah. Though it's poor stuff. Could you try it? A little food in the stomach gives you strength.'

‘No! God, no, child.' Susannah whispered, her voice faint with seasickness. ‘Get it away from me! Let me die!'

Eliza put the cup in the corner of her berth and made her way to the privy. Already, not a day out from London, it was a loathsome experience. Two planks, spaced two handwidths apart, were suspended over the bilge to make a long seat. As the ship rolled, foul liquid slapped the sides of the hole. The movement pumped a stench up into the face of anyone sitting on the planks. What would it be like after six months?

Back at her berth, Eliza saw that Susannah was asleep. The food Eliza had stored in her berth was gone. She was glad she had taken her cup with her to the privy. She retraced her steps in the blackness, climbed the companionway, found the water barrel, and filled her cup. If Susannah woke, she would be desperately thirsty. Eliza made her perilous way back, contriving to save a goodly portion of the water as she clung to any support she could feel in the dark. Once back to her deck, she climbed into her berth. All about her were asleep.

As she lay down, she felt a rising nausea. Gripping the sides of her berth, she clenched her teeth. Sweat trickled down her temples. The nausea subsided. She changed position. It returned. She would lie still. Eventually she felt her grip relax, and knew sleep would visit her soon.

One day at sea had passed. There could be near two hundred more before the ordeal was over. She curled her fingers into her palm and thought of Harry. Blameless, sweet natured boy; God grant that he would never know of her suffering. Soon she would be half a world away from him — as far apart as it was possible to get on Planet Earth. And they would likely never see each other again. She let her tears flow. Would that in nights to come those tears might wash away her longing for him. That was as likely as the stars falling to earth, she told herself. How could any woman ever forget her first love?

Grey drizzling days crept by. The ship's tossing became less noticeable as the convicts found their sea legs. In the wilder weather, it rolled frighteningly, spilling belongings onto the foul passageways between the berths. But mostly, the ship's movements were tolerable. Freed of their seasickness, the women sat in groups, talking hour by hour. As they began to move about, the leg-irons cut into their ankles — all too effective in subjugating their wearers. A convict could walk while in irons, but with pain, and slowly. Some women developed ulcers on their ankles, and could not take a step without whimpering. Sometimes their friends carried them about the ship during the rostered times when movement was permitted.

Eliza, likely the youngest and healthiest on board, had not paid the toll that years of dissipation and disease had cost her sisters. Her ankles developed calluses which enabled her to
walk, albeit painfully. She learned a skipping gait as she willed herself to walk about the cramped ship whenever she could. It would slow the muscle wastage she knew would come from giving in to the pain. While some succumbed, and spent most of their time in their berths, others seemed to keep almost well. As the weeks progressed, Eliza often saw a sailor take a woman against the ship's rail in the dark of the night, lifting her skirts for the moments required for the act. Some of the women, paid in coin for the pleasure they had nonchalantly given, bought treats of dried fruit and maybe a swig of rum with their money.