The Night Flower

by Sarah Stovell

  I did not say any of this, of course. Instead, I said, ‘I hope life in Van Diemen’s Land will be good for you.’

  She looked at me blankly, as if I might as well be speaking in a foreign tongue.

  I feared it would be years before Van Diemen’s Land was civilized.

  Later that day was fine and hot, and the ship had to dock in an African port to repair a broken mast. I was up on deck with Oliver and several others – convicts and officers together – when all of a sudden, there was a commotion on board, and several of the convict girls started screaming and trying to run away to the lower decks.

  A ship full of Negroes was pulling in beside us. I knew immediately that was what they were, though I’d never seen any before. They were locked up in chains. Many had sores all over their bodies and faces, and several of them were crawling with enormous lice. My father had never told me what the conditions were like for slaves being transported, though I’d heard the anti-slavery arguments and read about the slave ships a few times in newspapers. The newspapers always referred to them as a human cargo, but I could see nothing human in these creatures at all.

  In the end, I turned away from the sight.

  14

  We set sail again and started on our way to Cape Town, what we come to about a month later. It wasn’t meant to of took so long, but we come into some bad weather and rough seas. A lot of folk on board got sick. Not me, though. I was coming to realize I was made of a different sorta material to other folk: I seemed to be a lot tougher on the inside than what they all was. But this wasn’t all kushti because being tough on the inside don’t get you a lot of lying-about time.

  When we come at last to Cape Town, there was a long sorta stopping-off like there’d been in Tenerife. This time, Katie-May had herself the kushti luck of getting off the ship and going merry-making with her sailor man, but for all that freedom she was getting, she wasn’t looking much happy about it.

  When she come back, four or five days later, she looked like a girl of the palest and most frightened sort ever what I’d seen. It was so different to the bold Katie-May I was used to. ‘You all right, Katie-May?’ I said, and I was surprised how much I proper cared about the answer.

  She didn’t say nothing. I could see how there was more tears coming into her eyes. Ma Dwyer looked at her and nodded her head in a way what showed she knew a thing or two about the world. ‘You got yourself in a spot of trouble, Katie-May?’ she asked.

  ‘I ain’t sure,’ Katie-May whispered and pushed the hair back from her face. I saw then how there was a purple-looking bruise on her cheek and wasn’t sure if the trouble was meant as being a sailor man or his baby.

  Ma Dwyer took Katie-May by the hand and started giving her all kinds of advice, of a sort what made my eyes go wide as I listened to it. First, she talked about money and not giving nothing to no one what wasn’t paying her for it. Then she started on about avoiding particular days in a month because they was unlucky days for a girl what was loving a sailor, and then later on, when we was back down in the decks together, she give Katie-May a sponge and a pot of salt and said, ‘Mix it up with water. Use plenty, and it’ll see you right in future. Let’s hope it ain’t too late.’

  After Cape Town we headed towards Van Diemen’s Land. This was the last bit of the journey, though it was still gonna take us a good lot of weeks to get there. One of the crew men reckoned we’d been sailing sixty-two days so far, and we was probably about halfway now, but there wasn’t no more land or other countries to stop at between Africa and Parts Beyond the Sea, so if we run outta food, then that was gonna be that. Or at least, that was gonna be that for the convict folk. The crew men and all the officers’d be all right. They ate kushti enough, that was certain.

  We went sailing on a few more weeks, and the winds come and blew us all about. There wasn’t a lot of standing round the top deck to be done, so we’d gotta get our religious learning some other way. They sent us off in smaller groups and give us our classes near to where the officers and crew men all lived. I could see then why them ladies wanted to get took for a sailor’s wife – there was seats for sitting on, beds for lying on, space for walking in, and the whole deck got filled up with the kushti smells of food, a lot nicer than the plain old rice and beans what we got given.

  After the skies cleared up and the seas got calm, life got a bit easier. I tried not to think about all them days and weeks ahead of us. Every hour on that ship turned out even longer than the hours they’d give us at the reform school.

  Katie-May wasn’t herself, by what I mean she was quiet and not showing off all the time about being a sailor’s whore. She was working proper hard, too, and when we went on the top deck for exercise she jumped and leaped about like some sorta crazy horse.

  Ma Dwyer kept on watching her, and then she said to her in a low voice one day, ‘You ain’t gonna get rid of it like that, Katie-May.’

  And Katie-May’s eyes got full up of tears and she sounded proper desperate when she spoke. ‘How, then?’ she said. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do for you, child,’ she said, and looked sorry about her face, like it wasn’t no easy thing.

  That night, Katie-May stayed below the decks with us, instead of going back to her sailor man, and she lay down on the floor with a stinking old blanket over her belly while Ma Dwyer set to work on her with such things as I couldn’t see and didn’t much want to see, neither. I had to cover up my ears with my hands, because Katie-May was doing a lot of screeching. It wasn’t a happy thing for a girl to listen to. Now and then, Ma Dwyer’d speak softly. ‘Just hold still, lovey. We’re nearly there.’

  And then all the shuffling around and wailing stopped, and there come to be just silence, what Katie-May filled with some quiet weeping.

  *

  In the morning, there was a lot of blood where Katie-May’d slept, and Katie-May was pale as anything. For all that, she was still alive and looked like she was gonna stay that way to me. I couldn’t help feeling sorry for her, for all what she wasn’t nothing more than a bundle full of trouble.

  ‘You all right, Katie-May?’ I said.

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Did Ma Dwyer get rid of the baby?’

  ‘I hope so. But I ain’t that sure.’

  ‘When will you know?’

  She shrugged and got a desperate look about her, and then we went upstairs for our kitchen duties, even though Katie-May was still a bit weak-looking.

  After that, Katie-May went back to her sailor man, and I didn’t see her for another four days. Ma Dwyer and me was getting worried, and Ma Dwyer – who was a brave sorta lady, what’d had a lot of experience dealing with nasty men – went charging after him one afternoon when we was all on the top deck together. ‘Right, mister,’ she said ‘Where’s that poor young lass? What’ve you done with her?’

  He got a sorry look about him. ‘She’s just resting. That’s all.’

  Then an officer who had overheard joined in. ‘But she got herself into a spot of bother, didn’t she?’ he said. ‘She’ll need punishing for it.’

  Katie-May’s sailor looked away and didn’t say nothing.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Ma Dwyer asked.

  ‘There’s rules on this ship,’ the officer said. ‘One of which is that no lady is allowed to get herself in trouble, and any who does will be dealt with.’

  And that was all what he’d say about it then, but the next day that high-up officer brung Katie-May up to the top deck where the wind was blowing, and made her take off her dress – what she did in a proper obedient way, like what I hadn’t never seen her do before. He took a whip from where he’d been hiding it up his sleeve and brung it down on her back as if she wasn’t nothing more than an animal for the market.

  She cried.

  Well, the sight and the sound of it made me gasp and turn my head away. Ma Dwyer shouted out, ‘You bastard! You leave that child alone!’

  But no one was listening
to her. There was other crew men and officers, all of em standing around watching like they reckoned this was a normal sorta thing to happen, and not something cruel.

  He kept on bringing that whip down on Katie-May’s back, and although I wasn’t counting how many times, it was certain more than five, and probably about ten, and when it stopped and I looked at her again, her back’d been pretty well opened up like a flower.

  Then the officer looked at all of us what’d been watching and said, ‘Let that be a lesson to you ladies.’

  And off he went.

  Well, Katie-May come back down the decks to live, and me and Ma Dwyer tried our hardest to make her feel better. We got ourselves sheets what we tore up and soaked in water and, in the evenings, we lay down next to her and bathed her wounds with as much care as if she was a precious baby. But there wasn’t nothing we could do. She was lost – disappeared away into a sad world what she certain wasn’t gonna come back from in no hurry. And we wasn’t even sure if there was still a baby growing in her, or if it’d come out. We wasn’t gonna know the answer for a good long time yet, and Katie-May wasn’t doing well with all the not-knowing of it.

  So the days went by and the mornings kept on coming round. The vicar still give us all his lessons about God, and the crew men still took us up on the top deck for exercise. Katie-May was pretty well better now after all the bleeding, and her back’d healed itself to dry scars. After a few weeks of being out, she come back and joined the exercising, too.

  The exercise was harder than what it used to be, even though we should of been getting better at it now we’d had so much practice. But the sky above that deck was hot and the sun cruel on a body what’d got no choice but to run and jump about. They made us run from one end of the deck to the other and back again, and then they threw in a bit of jumping for good measure, and once we was all puffed out and sweating, we stopped. And that was that until tomorrow.

  This day, when it come to be Katie-May’s turn for exercise, she went and danced again, like what she’d done that time months ago, before we’d even got so far as leaving England, and when she was trying to catch herself a sailor. She danced like she knew she was good, and like dancing was bringing some of that old life back in her, and it made me happy inside and I clapped my hands with the joy of it. Ma Dwyer clapped, too, and before very long all the convicts on the deck was clapping their hands and watching Katie-May dance, and there come to be a feeling like a party or something like that.

  And when she went swaying past the crew men, I could see the bold in her eyes. She was moving fast and I s’pose that was why no one understood what she was doing when she went slithering up the side of the ship – the bit what kept us from falling in the sea. She did it facing us, so we all got to thinking it was just part of the dance, though a couple of the crew men stood up quick. They didn’t want to see no convict so close to the edge because they couldn’t afford no accidents. Losing convicts cost em big.

  As the men started going over to bring her back down again, Katie-May suddenly flipped backwards, and then she wasn’t on the ship no more. Folk gasped and the crew men shouted. I thought for a while what she was gonna come back, but the boat kept on moving and no one jumped in to save her.

  The sea was rough. I stood at the back of the ship and watched Katie-May as the waves come crowding past her. There wasn’t no way of fighting em. I watched and watched, but I wasn’t crying. I just stared till the waves come and swallowed her away and I couldn’t see nothing of her no more. And then I took a deep breath, right down to the bottom of my lungs, and I breathed out some of that tree pretty I’d gulped when we was leaving England, and I blew it out and sent it back to her.

  15

  The girl I’d spoken to was dead. There were rumours that Ma Dwyer had tried to remove the baby from her, and that it had gone badly wrong, and in desperation, the girl jumped overboard. I was shocked at the gruesomeness of it all – the wicked attempt to kill a baby, and the dreadful consequences for the girl, who might have carried out a horrifying act, but surely did not deserve to die.

  There were times on that ship when I wondered whether the Lord had deserted us.

  At night, I kept dreaming about the slave cargo. The sight of it stayed with me, and nothing I did could push it away. There was a service on deck for the girl who had died. I stood at the back and tried to pray, but kept having to stop. I did not know what I was praying for.

  I’d read once, a long time ago, how slaves would sometimes jump overboard on their way to America. It was a bad thing for my father, if that happened, because it meant one less body to sell at the other end, and lower profits. Now, I overheard two officers talking about the girl who’d died.

  ‘Not a good cargo, this one. A load dead from the flux, and now one suicide …’

  ‘Captain’ll have to put it down as illness. It’ll need accounting for. He can’t be getting fined for losing a girl like that.’

  I didn’t know what was wrong, but I could barely stop crying. I wondered whether Charles Murray was right about me.

  16

  And so Katie-May was gone. I expected to feel sadder than ever before, but I was just empty inside, like maybe my heart’d give up and faded away without even going and breaking proper first.

  We was getting closer all the time now to Parts Beyond the Sea, but things was going on just the same on that ship. Now we was sailing through the Southern Oceans. Things was right enough the first few weeks after we’d left Cape Town – back when Katie-May’d still been with us – but we come to the gales eventually, and as soon as we did, I saw why they’d kept us so busy with sewing a new set of sails for the poor Marquis of Hastings. I wasn’t sure how just one spare set was gonna be half enough to get us to where we was heading.

  It was cold now. That was the first thing. The cold come in on the air and it come in on the water, too, because once the gales started up, the sea didn’t stay where it was meant to be no more, and giant waves come bursting over the sides and into the ship’s belly faster than crew men and convicts together could pump it out. The noise that sea made when it got caught in the decks was just about the scariest noise I’d ever heard – a wave’d go rolling down one end of the ship to the next, loud as thunder as it come past, then it’d disappear off before rolling back again, and it wasn’t no easy thing on the nerves of a girl.

  So with all the wind outside and all the water inside, us convicts was a wet, freezing, miserable bunch. Even them coarse and vulgar folk what was normally always shouting come to be silent as the dead, and pretty well all you could hear was the chattering of teeth and the groaning of the ship as it lurched forwards on waves what was mountains high and no less rocky, neither.

  That old sea was still pouring over the ship and down through the floors, even though the top deck was full up of crew men trying hard as they could to pump it away. Not even a crowd of twenty or thirty shouting men was enough to fight a sea what’d got itself worked up into something as fierce as all this.

  So there wasn’t no stopping the water, and there wasn’t no way of us keeping ourselves dry, so my clothes was wet and stuck to me. Then the sea found its way into all the cooking stoves, so there wasn’t no hot dinners to be had, neither. It was a miserable sorta time we spent in them Southern Oceans.

  *

  The storm blew itself out after a week or so. The sea calmed down and for a while things got better, though no one wasn’t never much happy on board The Marquis of Hastings, because it was no happy place to be. But misery was an easier sorta thing to live with when it wasn’t cold and wet.

  I never much saw Katie-May’s sailor man after Katie-May’d jumped off, except for once, when I was on breakfast-making duties in the kitchen, and he walked past me on his way to somewhere else. As he did, his arm brushed mine, but he didn’t look at me or do nothing. I wasn’t even sure if he knew it was me, but then I reckoned he must of done, and he just knew better than to speak, because he was the sorta man what’d only speak t
o a girl if he had favours to ask her and he wasn’t gonna be getting none of em from me.

  I wondered if he was feeling sad or guilty inside about Katie-May going off and dying like that, but then I s’posed he probably wasn’t. All the crew men on this ship seemed to reckon a girl what ended up in a difficult way was a girl what needed beating, and any other bad things what happened as a result was a punishment off the Lord.

  So the rest of the journey got itself a pattern, what was two weeks of calm seas and then a storm, and that pattern went on and on repeating till everyone’s nerves was broke and we was starting to get sick in our spirits. Then, right as I was thinking to myself how I wasn’t gonna be able to make it through the next storm, the air started getting warmer again. The sun was back and there come to be a sight of land ahead of us. One of the sailors told us it was an island – just a small one without no name – and it was quite near to Van Diemen’s Land.

  Well, at that, a whole lot of cheering and happy went up among the convict folk, because we’d all come to thinking we wasn’t never gonna get off this ship. We went sailing on by that island in calm seas, and there was a hot sun shining, and all the sailors and crew men on board started behaving like their spirits was light and their burdens’d got lifted.