Far From Botany Bay

by Rosa Jordan

  Mary had almost wept with shame, for it was known that not even the officers had full bellies on this voyage, and if she had extra, it was because gaunt-faced Dr. White had given her some of his rations. From that time on, Mary gave no more thoughts to sharing, but before the doctor’s eyes, wolfed down whatever he brought.

  Pregnancy and what came of it was ever in her mind. Knowing Colleen had traded her body for rum to buy poultices from Matey, Mary watched her anxiously, as Colleen must have watched herself. But by the time they were nearing the southern tip of Africa, Colleen, as she held out her arm for Johnny to lean on, was able to pat her perfectly-flat belly and give Mary a reassuring wink.

  It was more a wonder, Mary thought, that Florie had not conceived, for she lay under one sailor or another almost every night, all for the rum she craved. Mary asked Dr. White why more women were not with child, for he knew, as she did, that many convict women were used thus. She herself escaped the nightly harassment only because Cass’s hammock swung between hers and the hatch. More than once, a drunken sailor heading for Mary had found himself dragged on top of Cass, who took his rum and his member with equal appetite and sent him reeling back the way he’d come.

  Dr. White thrust a basin with the remains of a mangled finger in Mary’s hands for disposal. “Nature knows what she’s about,” he said shortly. “Starving women rarely conceive.”

  Thinking of this, and how it might explain why little Florie, thin as a flower stem, had not got pregnant, Mary emptied the basin over the railing. A mop swabbed round her feet, nearer than necessary. Will Bryant glanced up, pretending to be surprised to see her.

  “Why, it’s that Cornwall girl. The one that don’t get sick at sea,” Will teased. “When’s the baby due?”

  “Any day now,” Mary said serenely.

  “He’ll be a sailor, sure.”

  “Sure she will,” Mary retorted, and was pleased to see his blue eyes light with surprise and laughter. She might have stayed to chat, just to let his Cornwall accent caress her ears, but a patient had entered the surgery. Dr. White would be needing her, and she needed Will Bryant not at all.

  On September 8, 1787, Mary, squatting as Cass had directed, and supported on either side by Colleen and Florie, pushed a slimy little body out of hers and into Cass’s capable hands. Cass grunted with satisfaction and brought the babe close to Mary’s face so she could see its sex.

  “A girl,” Colleen cooed. “A wee slip of a girl.”

  Colleen helped Mary into her hammock. Cass laid the infant in her arms. Florie put a cup to Mary’s lips. “Here, love, have a sip of rum.”

  But Mary turned her face away, and slept.

  A bare twenty-four hours later, Mary struggled through the hatch and made her way to the surgery. Dr. White looked up in surprise. Mary moved back the rag from the newborn’s wrinkled red face for the doctor’s inspection. Something—not a smile, but certainly satisfaction—softened his expression. But all he said was, “Ugly little brat.”

  Mary smiled. “She is that. But healthy, as am I.”

  “If you’re thinking of coming back to work, forget it. I’ll not have a mewing—.”

  Mary interrupted. “The woman, Colleen, who nursed the man they had in irons, she’ll clean for you these next few days. Then we’ll trade places. She’ll tend my babe and I’ll go on working as before.”

  White opened his mouth to contradict her, but his mind, quicker than his words, recognised the value of her plan. He bent to lace up his boots, then rose and left the surgery. He hadn’t said yes, but he hadn’t said no. Mary smiled. She knew that when Colleen appeared in the surgery next morning, Dr. White would treat her with the same feigned indifference he showed to everyone else.

  During the few days of rest Mary took following the baby’s birth, a great peace, interlaced with sadness, settled over her. The weather was fine and the ship sailed smoothly, allowing her to spend all her waking hours on deck.

  “’Tis a pleasant sight you make, Miss Broad,” James Brown greeted her as she sat in the morning sunshine nursing the baby. “How nice it would be if all on this voyage were as contented as your little one there.”

  Mary smiled up at him. “Thank you, Mr. Brown.”

  “What did you name her?”

  “Charlotte, for the ship. Praying she’ll be free, same as it, and can go home again.”

  James stood there, the silence both separating and connecting them. Finally he said, “A wee one she is, to be in the world without a father.”

  Mary said nothing. Again there was a silence, longer than before.

  At last James cleared his throat. “The captain can perform marriages, you know.”

  Mary sighed. Although she and James Brown rarely spoke, she had often felt his gaze upon her. She had sworn to Florie that she craved no man, but something in his eyes caused a pang of hunger for some inexplicable thing. It was as if he had thoughts on many things, which, if she but had the confidence, she might ask him to reveal. However, the thought he now revealed was one she had guessed even before he got up his nerve to say it. She only wished she had known how to tell him to hold his tongue and spare them both their pride. Now that it was out, there was nothing for it but the truth.

  “Ah, James,” she shook her head sadly. “When I was a girl back in Cornwall, I was open as a flower for any decent man who’d bed me in marriage. But with all that’s passed, I tell you straight, I am not fit to be a wife.”

  “Aren’t I the one to decide that?” he asked stiffly.

  “No, Mr. Brown, you are not.”

  “I see.”

  “I doubt you do. But ‘twas kind of you to ask.”

  James stared long at her but she kept her eyes lowered, not wanting to see his shame, or him to see hers. She couldn’t bear to reveal her sordid history and, if she did, what decent man would want her?

  Nevertheless, James’s words gave Mary reason to think on the matter of a father. She thought of the guard, Spence, on the Dunkirk who had planted his seed. And an eon before that, the vicar’s son, Adam, whom she had eyed from behind her hymnal when she was a bashful teenager. Was it really so far-fetched to imagine that they might have married? Had not Adam, in riding off to university on his father’s fine grey mare, tipped his hat to her in passing?

  “You’ve eyes like your sweet daddy,” she cooed to the baby. “No, yours are bluer than his. But you have the same long lashes. They lie against your cheek same as his, when his head was bowed in prayer.”

  Colleen’s laughter burst behind her. “Bowed in prayer? What fairy tale are you telling that child, Mary?”

  “That her father was a parson’s son.” Mary’s voice turned wistful. “And might’ve been, had I not gone astray. Adam was his name. Adam Ash. He would’ve loved her so.”

  “You should be ashamed,” Colleen chided, but her tone was more sad than critical, “to corrupt the innocent with lies.”

  Even as the fantasy faded from her mind, Mary tried to hold it in her heart. “Some love in such a way, they say, as cannot die. Like you and Johnny.”

  “’Tis true,” Colleen agreed. “But be a sensible lass. Never waste your time or hers with thoughts of what might have been. It weakens the spirit, and makes it that much harder to do what must be done in the here and now.”

  “I suppose.” Mary sighed, and felt the dream slide away. “How is your Johnny?”

  Colleen looked pained for an instant. Then she took her own advice and turned her thoughts away from what might have been. “His body will never be what it was, but at least he’s alive. Oh, Mary, how can I ever thank you?”

  “You could stand for my daughter.”

  Colleen laughed aloud. “Why, you’re crazy! You know I’m Catholic.”

  “True,” Mary smiled ruefully. “But Florie’s never sober and Cass claims she’s the De
vil’s own, so where’s the choice?”

  Colleen leaned down and kissed the baby. “I’ll teach our Charlotte the religion of rebellion, I will!”

  A month later they sighted the west coast of Africa, and dropped anchor at Table Bay. Lieutenant Tench told Mary that as soon as a priest could be brought aboard, her baby could be baptised. Mary had wanted to ask James Brown to stand for her daughter, along with Colleen, but she feared he would take it as an encouragement, and she did not want to hurt him with another refusal. After turning the matter over in her mind, she asked Dr. White. He looked at her as if she were mad.

  “I am not a religious man.”

  “That’s why I have chosen you,” Mary persisted.

  “I fail to follow your logic,” he grumped. “Not that one expects logic from a woman.”

  Mary pinned him with one of her steady blue-eyed gazes. “Would I wish the man who stands for my babe to be one who teaches her, in years to come, what a sinner her mother was?” She saw that the doctor took her point, and added. “Better he is a non-believer who teaches her nothing, but lets her be. As you have let me be.”

  White made no reply. As he was wont to do when in agreement but not inclined to say so, he left the room. Mary smiled after him, and was not surprised, when the priest came aboard a few days later, to see Dr. White come stand beside Colleen. First Colleen in an amused voice, then White in snappish tones, took vows to act as the child’s godparents.

  Mary, mindful of Colleen’s comment about how one so innocent was deserving of the truth, at the last instant christened the baby Charlotte Spence, thereby recording the true name of the man whose lustful blood flowed in her daughter’s delicate veins.

  During the fleet’s stay at the Cape there was constant confusion as livestock and other supplies were loaded aboard. Mary, having just finished cleaning the surgery, heard Charlotte wail, and knew that she was hungry. She went out onto the deck where Colleen sat tending her, and took the baby to her breast.

  Will Bryant and a balding, middle-aged carpenter named Cox approached, lugging a heavy keg. Seeing the women, they stopped. Behind them, bow-legged Matey and a black man from Barbados struggled with a similar keg. The black man was forced to halt to avoid bumping into Will and Cox.

  “Damn you, Bados, keep moving!” Matey swore.

  Then he saw that it was Will and Cox who blocked the way as they stopped to chat with the women. “Wouldn’t you know?” Matey muttered. “Bitches must be in heat.”

  Cox made an obscene gesture at the old seaman, whose crime, it was said, was scavenging, then turned a hungry gaze on Colleen. Her red hair and blooming good looks had a way of catching a man’s eye, but Colleen had eyes for Johnny alone, and never returned the men’s glances. Florie though, responded to Cox’s warmth as a cat to a hearth. “It’s a nice day, isn’t it, Mr. Cox?”

  Will reached out to stroke the baby’s cheek, not-so-accidentally touching Mary’s breast. Mary flinched, and handed the baby to Colleen. “Dr. White’s needing me”, she murmured.

  “Come, little one.” Colleen lifted the infant high and smiled into its tiny face. “I’ll teach you a bit of Irish brogue while your mum’s back is turned.”

  At that moment a sailor bawled at them. Cox and Will picked up the keg and continued across the deck. Florie gazed after the carpenter wistfully. She had lain under any number of men and would have been glad to oblige Cox as well, though rare it was that a convict would have the wherewithal to bribe guards to let them visit the women’s quarters. The wispy, worn-out girl knew instinctively that only Cox or someone like him could offer the protection she had never had. Like every person on this voyage, Cox had lost weight, but he was still a bigger man than most, and Florie longed to feel his bulk wrapped around her frail body.

  The loading of supplies went on for nearly a month, for the fleet must carry not only enough to get itself across another great ocean, but enough to sustain more than a thousand souls for at least one year, until crops could be planted and harvested to feed the colony.

  Mary stood in the door of the surgery watching hogs being driven aboard by Luke, an easy-going country man from the north of England. Pip was aiming to help, but the hogs kept trying to trample him, and sometimes succeeded. Will Bryant, who appeared to have no knowledge of livestock, was not much help either.

  “Bryant, you dolt, its hogs we’re moving, not a boat,” Luke chided. “You got to do more than point them in the right direction!”

  Cox shoved Will aside. “Out of the way, Bryant. One of these porkers goes over the side, it’s our hide they’ll fry. Scrapper, get behind and keep ‘em moving.”

  Scrapper, a street bully older than Pip, gave the smaller boy a whack on the side of the head and, with the same stick, whacked the backsides of the hogs.

  “You, Bryant,” called Lieutenant Clark, “Over here.” As Will hurried toward him, the officer asked, “Can you cipher?”

  “Aye, Mr. Clark.”

  “Give Brown a hand with these kegs. I want a double count of every one that comes aboard.”

  “Yes sir!”

  Will looked over Brown’s shoulder at the list. “I say, mate, you got numbers running down that page clean as any clerk.”

  “Clerking is what I know. Here.” James Brown handed him a paper and pen. “Check the size of each container against this list.”

  “It’s a clerk you were? Where was that?”

  “Canada,” Brown replied shortly.

  Mary listened to their exchange with interest. She had wondered from the first day she came aboard the Charlotte at James Brown’s odd accent and learned handwriting.

  “They say the Canadians are as bad as the Irish when it comes to mucking about in politics,” Will jibed.

  “Could be,” James replied easily, “though they never caught me directly. Nailed for a missing case of cinnamon, I was, though that was none of my doing either.” He pointed his pen at Will. “Mind you keep that tally straight.”

  James looked up and saw Mary watching him. He dropped his eyes and turned away. Mary felt a stab of loneliness, and again the certainty that this, the one man she had ever met who stirred something deep inside her, would not wish to touch her or be touched by her if he knew her crime and how hard she had been used by other men.

  The warm spring month they remained in Table Bay, there at the southern tip of Africa, was the closest thing to a pleasant time that mariners and convicts had yet experienced on the voyage. There was fresh food and, for all the work, Captain Phillip saw to it that his crew had ample leave. The sailors always returned to the ship in high spirits. Mary listened to their tales and thought it possible, amidst the confusion, to bolt. But what back in Río had been the weight of a babe in her belly was now the weight of a babe in arms. It would not be easy to get from ship to shore with a newborn, but there must be a way!

  One day James Brown, who was much trusted by the officers, was sent ashore on some errand. Upon his return, Mary found an occasion to speak with him.

  “Did you find your stay in Cape Town pleasant, Mr. Brown?”

  James looked at her curiously. Mary had not spoken to him since the day of his proposal, and rarely took the initiative in conversation with any man.

  “The French have lately joined the Dutch in defending Cape Town,” he said. “Their presence lends an air of gaiety to this dour Dutch settlement.”

  “I have heard it said that some settlers have taken Hottentots for wives,” Mary ventured.

  James must have seen where her musings had taken her. She was thinking that if these European men were so in need of a woman about the house, that perhaps she, even with a babe in arms, might be taken in, if not as a wife, perhaps by a family wanting a servant.

  “This Africa is a harsh land and, from what I’ve seen, these settlers are harsher than the land.” There was cautio
n in his tone. “The Dutch have brought with them uncommonly strict religious beliefs.”

  Someone called his name and he started to move away. Then he looked back at Mary and added, “Watch, when the Afrikaners bring supplies aboard, how they treat their oxen and their slaves. It is said that their women fare but little better.”

  Mary knew nothing of the Dutch religion, but she watched, as James had suggested. When she saw how the farmers flogged their animals, and treated their slaves as badly or worse, she knew it would be unwise to throw herself on the mercy of such men. If they had any kindness in them, she reasoned, they saved it for their own.

  At last the First Fleet weighed anchor and set sail around the Cape of Good Hope. This would be the longest part of the voyage: sixty-five hundred miles across the Indian Ocean and to the opposite side of a great unknown continent, to a place Captain Cook had named Botany Bay. When they lost sight of the African mainland, Captain Phillip told his crew that it would be nigh onto three months before they sighted land again.

  What he didn’t tell them, but they learned soon enough, was that the monstrous swells in this new ocean would be unlike any they had known before. Convicts who had overcome seasickness in the Atlantic now vomited until they retched bile from empty stomachs. The smell below deck was beyond bearing, causing Mary to stay on deck whenever she was allowed. Other women chided her for taking an infant into the night air, but Mary paid them no mind. More than a dozen prisoners had already died on the voyage, and for sure there would be others. Whatever sickness travelled aboard this ship, she knew it to be in the stinking hold, not borne on a fresh ocean breeze.

  One night as she walked the deck with a fretful Charlotte in her arms, she encountered Will Bryant. Like Mary, Will was a trusted prisoner and allowed to move about the ship with a fair degree of freedom. Will pulled back a corner of the baby’s wrap to look into its face. “A bit fussy, is your wee one. Might she be sick?”

  “No,” Mary replied. “Just restless.”

  “Like her mum.” Will nuzzled the baby’s face with his own, which, lying as it was on Mary’s shoulder, put his breath into her hair. Mary’s body shuddered away from him.