by Mary Hooper
A crate of chickens was carried up the gangplank, all squawking loudly, and I wondered to myself what would happen to the crate they were brought in. Would it go back to the farmer, or be used on board as firewood? If it went back to the farmer, what if someone was hiding inside it?
There must be a way to escape, I thought, or this was like to be the last I ever saw of my native land! I would never see my mother or father again, never make my peace with Miss Alice, never find out what had happened to Will. Before I knew it I was weeping again, and this time it fell to Martha to try and comfort me.
I’d dried my tears by the time Jane joined us. ‘I’ve been told that there are some new young officers coming on board!’ she said. ‘This is the best place to see them.’
Martha – who had soon got the measure of Jane – said, ‘Officers? You seem to set yourself very high.’
‘Indeed I do!’ Jane said, and when the next young man in uniform came across the gangplank she called over to say that she had a speck in her eye.
‘Then ask one of your sisters to remove it,’ came the reply, ‘for a woman’s touch is more gentle than any that I can provide.’
‘Not more gentle than you could be, I am sure!’ Jane called back.
Embarrassed at her forwardness, I looked to see how the young man had taken this, then, horrified, ducked down so I was out of his view. It was the young naval officer I’d last seen in Bridgeford – Miss Sophia’s beau!
Chapter Twenty-Three
I wondered after why I had ducked down, for it was nothing to me whether he was on the ship or not, and I doubted if he would have recognised me anyway.
‘What a most attractive fellow!’ Jane said, staring after him brazenly. ‘An officer, too. And him not above one and twenty, I’ll bet.’ She turned to me and Martha. ‘He’s standing by the gangplank with a midshipman. Do look and tell me if I’m not right!’
Martha sat up and looked across the deck but I did not, pretending interest in a game that Robyn and Betsy were playing. Jane called over to the nearest sailor to ask who the officer was, and was told that he was Lieutenant Mackenzie Warwick, an assistant surgeon, on his third posting overseas.
Mackenzie Warwick was a good, strong name, I mused, and I wondered if Miss Sophia was still enamoured of him. I decided that she probably was, for he was a handsome man, gallant and (I knew from my meeting with him) well mannered, and Miss Sophia was the kind of girl who, having fallen in love once, would see no necessity to fall out of it. Realising this, I thought to myself that I was probably that sort of girl, too, for my dreams were all of Will and the time we’d had together, and it felt to me that he was the only one I would ever be in love with.
All day we sat on the deck, well out of the way, and watched while various livestock came on board: chickens, ducks, rabbits, pigs, sheep, geese, goats – although no cows as yet. The chickens would lay eggs throughout the voyage and be eaten once they stopped laying. The rest of the animals would just breed and be eaten – although the cows, of course, would not suffer this fate unless they went dry. More seamen joined the ship, too: a brace of officers, some midshipmen, young boys to climb the rigging, and ordinary sailors with a golden ring in their ear.
It was a day when we girls were pretty much ignored and, while the ship was being prepared for its long voyage, I spent my time thinking of home. Home: both Bridgeford Hall and the little cottage I’d grown up in.
‘Are you quite resigned to going to a strange country now?’ I asked Martha, for I’d heard no more about her fears of being eaten up by fierce animals or having to fend for herself in alien landscapes.
‘I am,’ she said. ‘And I have thought long about it and am even prepared to marry a man I don’t love.’
‘Never!’
‘Yes, I am, Kitty,’ she said very seriously. ‘And you should be, too. The important thing is that the man you marry should have a trade, a cottage and a piece of land.’
‘But not to love him!’
‘Tush! We will have roofs over our heads, and our children will be cared for. In London I never knew where my next bowl of soup was coming from, let alone where we would lay our heads at night.’
‘Then would you not . . .’ I lowered my voice, ‘. . . think of escaping?’
‘Escaping from this ship?’ She laughed and pointed to our shackles. ‘Of course not. How could anyone do that?’
‘There must be a way!’ I said urgently. ‘I heard the sailors talking of two men who went over the side of a hulk a while back.’
‘Went over the side and drowned, I’ll warrant. And they were two men, Kitty. Men are stronger than us. Men can suffer hardships and fight their way out of places. Men can swim.’
‘I can swim a little,’ I said, remembering how Will had taught me.
‘Not in that water! It would be cold enough to kill you,’ she said, shuddering.
‘Perhaps . . .’
‘Kitty, I’d rather have the promise of a husband and cottage than go over the side. And suppose you were saved and recaptured? What extra penalty would you suffer?’
I went quiet, for this thought had already occurred to me.
Thinking of my swimming lessons with Will, I was reminded of the note Lieutenant Warwick had written to Miss Sophia, and eventually I determined that I must inform him that she had never received it. He might have been waiting for a reply from her all this time and, when it hadn’t arrived, decided that she didn’t love him – and I was sure this wasn’t the case.
While I was thinking of how I could best secure an appointment with him, an opportunity – albeit an unhappy one – presented itself. Melody, a little girl who’d done nothing but weep since arriving on the ship, fell into a deep sleep from which it proved impossible to rouse her. Margaret asked for a surgeon or physician to attend, and it was Lieutenant Warwick who came. I found out later that he’d been assigned to look after the women, while a more senior surgeon would care for the captain and crew.
Sadly, he pronounced that little could be done.
‘The very fact that she has not eaten or drunk since coming on board is enough to foretell her death,’ he said. ‘But I will have her moved to the infirmary and keep a watch there.’
‘Is there anything we can do to aid her?’ Margaret asked.
He shrugged. ‘Perhaps chafe her hands and feet to try and bring some heat to them.’
He left, and I followed him up the ladder and out of the orlop.
‘Excuse me, sir,’ I said, when he made to go into the officers’ quarters. ‘May I speak with you a moment?’
He turned. ‘What is it?’
‘I fear you don’t remember me.’
He looked at me uncomprehendingly. ‘I don’t believe so.’
‘I was the milkmaid at Bridgeford Hall, sir.’
Startled, he looked at me again and nodded. ‘I do remember you – although you have changed somewhat since then. But what are you doing on this ship?’
I shook my head. ‘It is too long to tell, sir. I went to London on an errand for Miss Alice and . . .’ my eyes filled with ready tears, ‘. . . and it all went wrong for me.’
‘For you and these many other girls,’ he said, waving around the ship. ‘But perhaps you can make a fresh start in Botany Bay.’ He took a step, then turned back. ‘But would you mind telling me if you have any news of your mistress?’ he asked in a low voice. ‘How fares Miss Sophia? Is she well?’
‘Sir, it was she I came to talk to you about.’
‘Is she . . . betrothed?’
I shook my head. ‘No, sir. Not to my knowledge. But you remember the last time I saw you, you gave me a message for her.’
‘I do remember. A message she never replied to.’
‘Indeed, sir. She could not reply because she never received it.’
‘What?’ he said.
I shook my head. There was no need, I had already decided, for him to know of my carelessness at letting the message fall to pieces in the river. ‘When I g
ot back to the hall with it that evening, I found that Miss Sophia had already been sent away.’
He gasped. ‘So that’s why she didn’t come to me as I asked!’
‘She was sent away to her uncle in Bath,’ I said. ‘She travelled there under the supervision of her aunt, and wasn’t to be allowed to return to Bridgeford Hall until the new year.’
‘Oh! So she never knew I had written asking her to go away with me?’
I shook my head. ‘She did not.’
‘And because she didn’t come, I presumed she didn’t . . .’ And his final two words were only a murmur.
‘I’m so sorry, sir.’
‘Was there any further news of her before you left?’ he asked eagerly.
I shook my head again. ‘Only that Miss Alice and Milord and Lady went to visit her, and she refused to be introduced to a young Army officer of their choosing.’
A little smile creased his lips. ‘Then there might still be a chance for me. Even if she is still in Bath, I could write a letter to await her return to Bridgeford.’
‘You could, sir,’ I said, and did not have the heart to tell him that, whether she had already arrived home or not, Lord or Lady Baysmith would probably seize the letter and have it destroyed.
He sighed. ‘But I will be a year out on the Juanita, and a year home. Will she wait for me, do you think?’
‘I’m afraid I couldn’t say, sir,’ I said as gently as possible. How could anyone know such a thing?
I went back to Martha and told her all that had happened and she, though admitting it was thrillingly romantic, said that she was of the opinion that a young girl of good family should always be guided by her mother and father.
Melody died that evening and her body was moved from the infirmary to the chaplain’s cabin to await burial at sea. Margaret told me that there had been another death that same night, a woman who had died of gaol fever, whose body was to be buried at the same time. The authorities at the port were insisting, because of the risk of the highly contagious fever spreading, that these rites should be carried out at sea.
‘There will be many more deaths amongst us before we reach Australia,’ Margaret said. ‘ ’Tis a sad fact, but true.’
I spent a while dwelling on her words, looking around and wondering who would be next to fall ill and die, but then something happened which took my mind entirely away from such things.
I received a note.
One of the children brought the note to me: a little girl named Hope, newly arrived at the ship from one of the West Country gaols with her mother.
‘A man gave me a ha’penny to bring it,’ she said, holding the shiny coin and staring at it in wonder.
‘A man. You mean a sailor?’ I asked.
She nodded.
‘What was he like?’
She shrugged, as if to say that they all looked the same.
‘Did he know my name?’
She shook her head. ‘He pointed at you. He said to give it to the girl in the grey dress with wavy hair.’
As Hope ran off, I was minded to throw away the small, folded missive without reading it, for one of our girls had received a note from a sailor the day before which had contained a number of crude suggestions.
Martha smiled at me. ‘You have caught the eye of someone fine, I’ll be bound.’
‘Someone fine would use a quill and parchment!’ I said, for the note was written in pencil on the meanest scrap of paper.
‘It is surely not that officer,’ said Jane, rather disgruntled, for she had spoken of little but Lieutenant Warwick since setting eyes on him.
‘No, of course it isn’t,’ I said, and thought of the contrast between the groomed and fragrant Miss Sophia and myself, and smiled. I was torn between screwing up the slip of paper or throwing it overboard, but curiosity got the better of me.
‘Meet me by the first lifeboat after dark.’ I read it out to the girls around me, and was rewarded by some gasps and giggles.
‘ ’Tis but a joke,’ I said. ‘For certain I’m not going.’
‘Why ever not?’ Jane asked.
‘Because I don’t want any Jack tar sailor to try and tumble me!’
‘Ha! Hoity-toity!’ she said. ‘He might be a good and comely fellow.’
‘You may go instead then.’
‘I thank you, but I can find my own sweetheart,’ she said pertly.
When I went up on deck, I threw the paper over the side. I did ask Hope later if she could describe the sailor who’d given it to her, but she could tell very little, only said that he was ‘tall and dark’ – which description applied to near every man on board.
‘For as much as it has pleased Almighty God to take unto himself the souls of our sisters here departed, we therefore commit their bodies to the deep, in sure and certain hopes of the resurrection to eternal life . . .’
As the chaplain stood at the side of the ship intoning the words of the funeral service, a few girls watched from the top deck. There weren’t many of us, for we were now only too aware of the proximity of death and most did not need reminders of how it was lurking in wait for us.
The service over, we saw Lieutenant Warwick being rowed off into the morning mist with an oarsman and two bodies – those of Melody and the girl who’d died of gaol fever – sewn into shrouds of canvas. We were rather subdued after that.
A further note arrived for me later that day. And yet another the following morning, saying the same thing, addressed to me by name (though spelled with an I at the end: Kitti) and stuck in the top of the hatch.
‘He has discovered your name!’ said Martha.
‘ ’Tis not hard. He would only have to ask one of the children,’ I said.
However, I spoke to Betsy and Robyn later, and they said no one had asked them anything. I could not help but be intrigued. I didn’t want to start a liaison with anyone, but I did want to know who was writing to me. What if I stayed hidden on deck, I thought, just to look at the fellow? It was vain of me, I knew, but I was flattered by this mystery man’s attentions, for it had been a very long time since anyone had taken the slightest notice of me.
When dusk came, then, and they rang the bell for us to go down to the orlop, I asked Martha if she would see Betsy settled to sleep, while I stayed, hidden, on the deck. When it got dark I crept (undercover and holding on to the manacle around my legs to prevent it from clanking) not to the first lifeboat, but to a hidey-hole I’d come upon behind a gigantic coil of rope. From here, by the light of the oil lamp hanging above the gangplank, I could see if anyone came to the meeting place.
The ship was rocking gently, the sea plashing against the sides, and I fear that, after an hour or so, and despite the carousing coming from the crew’s quarters, I fell asleep. When I woke up, it was to feel that someone had one hand across my mouth whilst the other was holding my two wrists in a tight grip.
Terrified, I began struggling. The person who held me was behind me and in shadow, so I could only see the shape of him.
‘Are you Kitty?’ he asked in a low, gruff voice.
I nodded, shivering with fear.
‘Why have you come here?’ he asked, then loosened his grip around my mouth a little, so that I could reply.
‘I . . . I received some notes,’ I babbled. ‘Someone asked me to meet him.’
He began to say something in reply, but I seized the opportunity to sink my teeth into the hand that was around my mouth. He let go of my wrists with an oath, and I jerked around to look him in the face.
It was Will.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I had oft thought of what I’d say and how I’d act if I ever saw Will again, and it was then that I found out. My first reaction was one of total fury, and I turned on him like a wildcat.
‘How dare you! How could you?’ I hissed through gritted teeth, flailing my arms and trying to punch and scratch him. ‘You are the most heartless and wicked devil that ever walked this earth!’
‘Hush! Hush!�
� came the only reply.
‘I will not hush!’ I kicked at him in the darkness. ‘I will put it about that you tried to kill me!’
‘Kitty –’
‘I’ll have you taken to Newgate! I’ll see that you hang!’
‘Quiet!’
I managed to reach his face and scratch it. ‘I’ll have you put in irons.’
‘Kitty,’ he said quietly. ‘I am already in irons.’
I stopped my tirade.
‘See.’ He caught hold of my hand and put it on his calf, so I could feel that he was wearing manacles.
I straightened up, squinting under the dim light of the lantern high above, and stared at him. It was the same Will, but thinner, browner, his hair scraped back in a pigtail like that of the sailors, a red kerchief around his neck and a new little white scar in a vertical line through his lip. The fact that he was in manacles meant little to me then, for I was still intent on killing him.
‘You are beyond wicked!’ I said, so choked with fury that I could hardly get the words out. ‘Betsy and I could both be dead for all you care! You left us – left us . . .’ And then I could manage no more before I broke down completely.
He put his arms around me while I pounded my fists against his chest.
‘I will never, ever forgive you,’ I said, shaking all over. ‘You left me with Betsy, and we came to London to find you, and then I was taken to Newgate, which was terrible in the extreme, and now we’re here and set for Australia and I will never see my mother and father or my home again!’
‘Kitty, listen to me: I was pressed.’
