by Hope Adams
He held out a hand in her direction as if to guide her, and Kezia went to stand next to him. Would her voice carry, with the breeze that was blowing? Would they hear her? She must make a special effort to be audible and remembered long-ago elocution lessons from a Miss Matilda Brown: “Speak not from your throat, Kezia dear, but from your deepest lungs and stomach.” She and Henrietta used to giggle at the very thought of Miss Brown having lungs and a stomach.
Now, though, she took a deep breath, trying to remember other advice she’d been given. Keep your head up. Remember to breathe. Fix on one person quite close to you and address your remarks to them.
“Good morning, everyone,” she began. She’d thought long and hard about how she should address the convicts. “Ladies” sounded wrong to her. She had also considered “friends,” meaning the word as a tribute of sorts to Mrs. Fry and her Quaker beliefs. In the end, she settled on “everyone” as being both accurate and plain.
“I wish to speak to you about something I want to do on this voyage. I may have mentioned it to some of you already. The Ladies’ Committee, who are active in our prisons, have seen to it that you have each been given materials to keep you occupied while we sail to Van Diemen’s Land. I know that some of you are hoping to make items to be sold when we reach our destination. Others will want to knit and sew to make things for their own use.”
Kezia pushed away a lock of hair that had fallen onto her forehead. “My task on this ship,” she went on, “is to help you in whatever you decide to do. But there is something else, something I’ve been planning for some time, and I hope you will enjoy helping me with it. A coverlet made from patchwork. I’ve designed and made a central panel and, after speaking to a few of you, I’ve chosen those I’d like to help me in this task.” Kezia took a piece of paper out of the small bag that hung from her wrist and unfolded it.
“I’ve written down some names,” she said, glancing up at the crowd in front of her. “Please come forward and gather here if yours is read out.” She pointed at a space on the deck, just below where she was standing.
As Kezia read from the list, she was aware of sailors going about their work: some on the rigging, some in groups on the deck, half listening to her but talking among themselves. They were keeping their voices low. The convict women stood still for the most part, but there were fidgets and gigglers. Kezia knew that everyone’s good behavior would last as long as the captain and his senior officers were beside her. She sensed the women she was naming weaving their way to the front of the crowd. “Joan Macdonald, Hattie Matthews, Emily Paxton, Susan Downer, Phyllis Armstrong, Lottie Marshall, Isabel Croft, Beth Jones, Dora O’Hare, Louisa Taylor, Ruth Elmerside, Elsie Chambers, Alice Hardiman, Tabitha Brown, Rose Manners, Sarah Goodbourne, Ann Skipton, Marion Williams.”
She turned to the captain, who stepped forward rather hesitantly. He seemed at first overwhelmed at hearing so many women’s names read aloud, but he pulled his shoulders back and addressed them in a voice well used to speaking in the face of a howling gale. “Thank you, Miss Hayter. We wish you well with your efforts and it will be . . . interesting to see what you achieve. You may now return to your quarters, except those Miss Hayter wishes to see. Thank you all.”
The gray, brown and black sea of bodies broke up into smaller groups as the women made their way from the deck. Some were laughing now that their enforced silence had ended. A few had their arms around one another and were singing together. Oh, give us your hand, you sailor bold. A few men clustered round the women, pinching them and trying to steal a kiss, till an officer approached and packed them off to their duties.
“Oh, shame on you, sir,” said one woman. “Only having a bit of a laugh.”
“Go below,” said the officer, “or you’ll be on report to the captain.”
“Give us a kiss, duckie,” said another.
The officer shooed her toward the lower deck, pushing her with his hands. “Get down there now,” he said. “Time to go back to your quarters.”
The small band waiting for Kezia looked at her with a light in their eyes that came, she knew, from being selected for this work. Everyone thrives when they are praised and approved of, she thought, and especially when that approval comes with some kind of preferment. Kezia noticed that now the noisy women had gone, the others she’d not chosen had begun to shuffle away. She would try to speak to them, not neglect them in favor of her company.
“Lord love you, Matron.” Tabitha Brown cackled. “Never in me life been picked out to help anyone. Feel like quite a lady. Sewing, you say? Well, I’ll have a go. Don’t mind doing that a bit. Always ready to help, me. Ask anyone.”
“Ssh!” someone said, and the small gathering fell silent.
Kezia smiled at them. “Good morning to you. I’m very pleased to see you here and my hope is that you’ll regard what we’re about to embark on as something that will not only improve your sewing skills but will also be a pleasurable occupation during this long voyage.”
They looked at her with puzzled frowns and pursed lips. She took a deep breath and pressed on.
“There is a verse in the Bible, from St. Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians, which says: Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. That is what you will be doing: making something with your own hands.” Kezia turned her head a little so that her gaze fell on the women to her left. “Those of you I’ve chosen have done some needlework before, and some of you have made patchwork. I know that you have had to work in ways that are demeaning to you in order to feed yourselves, and I know you’d like a chance to improve your behavior. The fault has often not been yours but driven by necessity. What you learn here will help to bring you an honest income. I know that you want to sell what you make, and you’ll have time for that, too, but this is something I want us to make together, as a gift for the Ladies’ Committee.”
“Never heard of ’em!” someone said. “Who says they deserve a gift? I can think of several beaks and warders I’d like to send something to, but you’d only find it floating about in a pisspot.”
A few of the women snorted with laughter. Kezia steeled herself against the coarse remark and replied as calmly as she could, addressing everyone in a level voice: “You’ll find as you get to know me better that I don’t dignify foul talk with an answer. You seek to shock me but I’m not shocked. Let’s continue as though you never spoke.” She smiled benignly at Rose Manners, who, she thought, had been the one to make the remark. Perhaps she was always foulmouthed. Kezia hoped that no one could detect the discomfort she still felt at such crude language. She was determined to be attentive to Rose’s speech when they were together, but she also knew she must become accustomed to such expressions and not flinch when she heard them spoken.
She continued: “I know each of you a little and will know you all well, soon enough, but for today, please raise your hand as I say your name. Thank you.” She began to read from the paper she was holding, like a teacher taking the register. The women answered, “Here, Matron,” as each was mentioned.
* * *
* * *
Kezia sighed. Her hope was that the women would find a piece of work growing under their hands, and marvel that their own efforts were making it beautiful. And when they saw the possibility of beauty, what other discoveries might they make? What other changes to their situation might they seek?
Kezia had thrown herself into the preparation. First, she had made a series of small watercolors in which she imagined the finished article, though she knew this would change. She painted birds, colored bright scarlet and lapis lazuli, or emerald and gold. She copied flowers from nature and from printed sources. She drew garlands of leaves and tipped the edges of the petals with the palest green. Kezia had hidden these pictures among the pages of St. John’s Gospel. Then she had searched every shop that sold chintz
es, looking for suitable designs to match those she’d imagined. She had cut out flowers and birds and sewn them with tiny herringbone stitches onto a backing of plain calico in the style known as broderie perse. The work had obsessed her and she’d spent many hours on it, stitching and stitching far into the night, imagining it as the central panel of something bigger that the women would make alongside each other on the voyage. She’d composed some words of dedication to be embroidered on the central panel. Over the last few days she’d summoned these images to her mind whenever she felt overwhelmed by all that lay before them.
These had also been the sentiments of the Ladies’ Committee. They had come with her to distribute to each of the nearly two hundred transported women the bundles that contained everything deemed necessary for the voyage. As well as aprons and caps, needles and threads of various colors, there was knitting wool, though not in large quantities. There were spectacles, a comb, scissors, a thimble and, in each bundle, two pounds of assorted fabric, mostly roll ends and oddments from the cotton merchants of Manchester. Kezia had her own bag of materials, including a short length of chintz in a heart-lifting shade of pale yellow, patterned with tiny roses, which dearest Mrs. Pryor had presented to her as a particular gift. “Because it is such a pretty color,” she’d said. “Like pale winter sunlight.” She had silks, some pieces of cotton dyed in Turkey red and other bits she’d begun collecting as soon as she knew she would be traveling on the Rajah.
Kezia believed passionately that transportation was a means to improve these women’s lives. Far away from the circumstances that had led them into wickedness and crime, they might, she thought, become new women leading new lives. If they could sew, if they could sell what they had made on the voyage, they would recover some self-respect, leave behind their previous habits and change permanently for the better.
Kezia took the notebook out of the velvet purse she kept it in and looked at the list of names she’d written there, the women she’d chosen. She sighed. If these are the chosen ones, she thought, everyone else is unchosen. Left behind. Would they feel themselves to be of less worth? Would they make life difficult for women they might regard as having been specially favored? I’ll have time, especially once my women are used to the work, to oversee other projects. My women . . . Kezia blushed at her vanity and chided herself. They are not my women. I cannot think of them in such terms. They’re simply the ones I consider will be best to make what I have planned and dreamed of.
She turned her attention to the fabric they would be using. Every day, she thought, we’ll have to cut as much as we need. It wouldn’t be sensible to have small squares and triangles of material fluttering about, getting lost and dirty before they could be used. Each square would be four inches or so, with enough material around it to fold over for seams.
* * *
* * *
That night, Kezia sat down to write to Mrs. Pryor.
My dear Elizabeth,
You would have been proud of me today. I spoke out fearlessly in front of many people: all the ship’s company and the convict women, too.
Kezia put down her pen and read what she’d just written. It was almost true, though “fearlessly” was an outright lie. Her heart had been hammering against her ribs as she’d spoken, and throughout she’d been conscious that Captain Ferguson was watching her. She’d been aware of his gaze, felt it like a warm touch on her shoulder.
Kezia picked up her pen again:
I have chosen several women to help me work on the project we’ve spoken of so often. I hope I can help them improve their situation.
Making sure they aren’t constantly bickering and tormenting one another will take most of my time, she thought. She would be alone among women who had led hard lives. They had been coarsened and hurt by many things that had happened to them. They will be unhappy, she told herself, but I will be both fair and firm.
Should I write about my own feelings? Kezia had been grateful to be sent to Van Diemen’s Land; perhaps Elizabeth and Mrs. Fry had noticed how unhappy she was.
For months before coming aboard, Kezia and her mother had quarreled constantly. Her mother had been eager for Kezia to marry a man she did not love in the least, and it was possible Elizabeth had guessed.
She would never have bowed to her mother’s wishes, but how difficult it would have been for Kezia to face London society, to be thought an ungrateful daughter, and a failure at the very ordinary business of making a good marriage. I’ll be glad, she thought, to be far away from England and happy with any progress we make on the stitching.
9
NOW
6 July 1841
Ninety-two days at sea
KEZIA
Marion was flanked by two sailors, and Kezia wondered how the sight of the burly men appearing in the convict quarters to march her to the captain’s cabin had affected her. Marion was nervous at the best of times.
Kezia went to take her seat next to Mr. Davies and wished she had brought her folding fan with her. The cabin was stuffy and perspiration was visible on every brow. They were lucky. At least, Kezia thought, it is warm here. Down in the convict quarters, it was often chilly, now that the Rajah was nearing her destination. Marion looked pale, and to Kezia, it seemed as if someone had smudged charcoal beneath her eyes. The woman stared at the thin rug spread over the planks of the cabin floor, meeting no one’s gaze.
“Thank you,” Charles said to the sailors, as they moved a chair and set it in front of the table.
“Good morning,” Mr. Davies said, looking at Marion, then at the log in front of him. “Please will you give us your name, age and the crime for which you are sentenced?”
“One moment please,” said Charles, and leaned over to whisper in the clergyman’s ear. Mr. Davies nodded and looked at Marion again. He frowned and pulled at his cuffs to show his displeasure.
“Well, I disagree with him but the captain has said that your name alone will be enough. Other details we have already, of course, in the register that was completed when you came aboard the Rajah. That had slipped my mind. So. Your name, please.”
“Marion Williams,” she said.
“Marion with an o or with an a?”
“An o, sir,” Marion whispered.
“Please sit down, Marion,” said Charles.
She was hesitating, so Kezia nodded at her encouragingly and, at last, she was seated in front of the four of them. We must look frightening to her, Kezia thought. As though we are judges on a bench and she is in front of us to prove her innocence. Not one of the women aboard the Rajah would have good memories of men on benches, sitting in judgment.
“There’s no need to be frightened, Marion,” said the captain. “We’re only here to discover who wanted to harm Hattie. I would like you to tell me what happened on deck yesterday. Let me begin by asking where you were when you heard Hattie cry out.”
Marion squeezed her eyes closed, as if to shut out the horror of the memory. “I was on deck, on my way below, when I heard her scream, like a pig having its throat cut.”
“So you were facing away from where Hattie fell?”
Marion nodded.
“And when you heard the scream?” Mr. Davies looked up from his writing.
“I ran to her. We all did. To where she was. She was lying there. She’d stopped screaming. We tried, all of us did.”
“Tried?” the captain asked.
“To help her. Help Hattie. We lifted her up a bit, tried to see where she was hurt. Someone wanted to unfasten her clothes, but there was so much blood. We got it all over us . . .” Marion’s voice faded to nothing. She sniffed and wiped a sleeve across her nose. Kezia saw that she was biting her lip and trying to calm herself, but she recovered and began to speak more freely, as though she was seeing the whole scene before her eyes while she spoke.
“Covered in blood, we were. Didn’t know what to d
o. Poor Hattie wanted Bertie. That was what she wanted. Someone asked her who’d done that to her but what she wanted was little Bertie. We were shouting at Emily, ‘Go and fetch Bertie. She wants Bertie.’” Marion paused and stared in the direction of the window. “But when he came, that was later and Hattie’d gone. First Miss Hayter came, then Mr. Donovan, and some men to take her away to the hospital. Poor Bertie! It was dreadful to hear his cries.”
Marion’s voice shook and she twisted her hands together in her lap. Kezia saw that she was doing everything in her power to control herself. She took a deep breath.
“Why did you all choose Emily in particular to fetch Bertie?” Kezia asked.
Mr. Davies turned to Kezia, frowning. “Surely,” he said, “that’s a question of no consequence whatever. A very trivial question, if I may say so. In the circumstances. Perhaps it would be better to leave the questioning of witnesses to the captain.”
Kezia struggled to find a response that would avoid rudeness while making clear to him that she had every intention of asking any question she saw fit.
But then Charles spoke: “Miss Hayter’s question is not trivial in the least. She may ask whatever she wishes. She, more than any of us, knows these women and we need her assistance if we’re to arrive at the truth in this affair.”
“Very well, then,” said Mr. Davies, and asked the question again, as though it were his own.
“I’m not rightly sure, Miss,” she said. “Emily and Hattie were close, right enough. Everyone knew that. I’d say Emily was Hattie’s best friend.”
“Is there anything else you’d like to say, Marion?” the captain asked her. “Do you know where someone might have found a knife?”
