Across Captive Seas

by Michele du Barry

  Scott told her to follow the doctor’s orders and take care of herself and their child. And when she read his letters Angela alternated between laughing and crying. Only fourteen years, Scott wrote, she would be a mere girl of thirty-four when he returned; then he wildly promised to escape at the first opportunity. Angela determined to follow Scott to Australia and somehow get the governor to pardon him so they could make a new life for themselves. And oddly, when she wrote it down, sure Scott would reject the idea he didn’t.

  Jane swept into the room without knocking, her agitation clearly visible in her manner and countenance. She had argued violently with Keith over whether to tell Angela or not, and decided she must no matter the consequences. She would find out soon enough in any event when the messages ceased.

  “Jane?” Angela looked at her apprehensively, the dark blue of Jane’s dress only emphasizing the colorlessness of her face.

  Jane bit the inside of her cheek to keep from crying and wordlessly thrust the thick envelope into Angela’s eager hands. She sank down onto the edge of the bed and watched as Angela quickly scanned the letter, her aqua eyes widening until they eclipsed her face.

  “He’s gone,” she said with trembling lips and her hands shook so that the pages of the letter rustled loudly in the quiet of the room. A lump rose up so hard in her throat that it threatened to stop her breathing and she almost wished it would. “Scott said he would meet me in Botany Bay,” Angela choked out, forcing a smile to her face. “Always the optimist!”

  She was forsaken, deserted through no fault of Scott’s and although they hadn’t seen each other for the past month the finality of parting struck as swiftly as an arrow. There would be no more letters, no more messages sent through Jane. The cell he had occupied was empty now or housing another prisoner. He was on a ship, somewhere at sea, the distance between them growing wider with each passing hour.

  In the past few weeks Angela had read everything she could get her hands on about New South Wales. The voyage was treacherous, especially for the convicts. They were chained between decks in darkness and filth, and if disease didn’t get them first, starvation was waiting to claim them. The food was rancid or nonexistent and the water green and slimy.

  That was only the beginning. There was vile weather to contend with and freezing cold. In storms the convicts’ quarters were awash in the heavy seas and there was always the possibility of shipwreck. All that before even arriving in Australia; and many did not see the end of the voyage.

  Once there, the dirty, ragged specimens that still clung to life were distributed among the government and the settlers. They worked on farms, built roads and buildings and could be given up to a thousand lashes as punishment. They had no legal rights.

  Angela almost regretted finding out so much about what Scott would have to go through. She would be tormented by her own thoughts of his journey until she received word that he was safe; and that could take years. He would be so far away, at the very end of the earth, in a harsh desolate upsidedown world. When it was summer in England it would be winter in Australia, and even the stars that shone down on him would be different than the ones here. It was a land of strange animals, savage aborigines and harsh masters.

  “Are you all right?” asked Jane shaking Angela’s too still figure just staring tragically into space.

  “No, I will never be all right again. I feel as if my heart has been ripped out of me and I am nothing but an empty shell. How can I go on living without Scott? He is my reason for existing, my very life. And now there is nothing, nothing!”

  “Don’t talk like that!” scolded Jane, disturbed by her wild eyes and lack of tears. “You have Lorna and Robert, and the new baby; you have your parents and your friends, people who love you and depend on you.”

  “I wish I were dead!”

  “Maybe now you do,” Jane said with understanding, “but as time passes you will pick up the pieces of your life and manage to go on somehow. Why don’t you cry. You’ll feel much better.”

  “I wish I could,” Angela said, her voice devoid of all feeling. “If only, but no, it’s too late for ifs.”

  Tears slipped silently down Jane’s cheeks and Angela touched her face and hair, gently as she would a child. “Poor Jane,” she whispered, “you love him too. At least we had a year together. You had nothing.”

  And she comforted her until she ran out of tears, and all the while Jane knew she should be the one solacing Angela.

  A dark wind rattled the windowpanes flinging white flakes of snow against the glass to melt on the warmth. The fire was dying but the room was cozy, not the garish master bedroom with its erotic paintings but a smaller room done in gold, blue, and brown. The other room was being redecorated now that Angela was in residence.

  She stirred uncomfortably beneath the thick down comforter, sleep at bay though the hour was late. It was always the same. Thoughts whirled through Angela’s head like the dancing white flakes outside. Where was he now?

  She was obsessed every waking moment of the day and when sleep finally came there were the dreams. At least in the daytime there were distractions. Jane was living at Harrington House now to look after her and Keith popped in and out all day, busy thinking up surprises and diversions to make her forget. But that was impossible. The children helped; if it hadn’t been for them Angela didn’t know how she would have gone on. But the terrible, aching void inside didn’t go away.

  So she made a pretense at living for the children, for Jane and Keith. She smiled and talked, ate and pretended an enthusiasm at their amusements but it was a facade. She was a shell that just existed, lying day after day in her bed, longing to be with Scott.

  Angela let the book she had been staring at for an hour slip to the floor. She wasn’t reading it anyway, it a as still opened to page one. Nothing mattered any more, or ever would again.

  Her apathy was shattered as a searing pain pierced her and she doubled up in agony, writhing upon the bed. Gasping for breath Angela waited for it to subside as the others had before. But another one tore through her and with a trembling hand she reached for the bell on the bedside table. It was a million miles away and seemed to waver and recede from her seeking fingers.

  Sweat broke out, beading her forehead, and her nostrils flared as the third pain struck swiftly upon the heels of the last one. As the sticky warmth of blood soaked her thighs and nightgown Angela’s mouth opened and she started screaming. The bell fell onto the floor and Jane flung the door open dressed only in her nightgown, golden hair falling into her shocked eyes. She was at the bed in an instant and Molly appeared, and other faces.

  “You forgot your robe, Jane, that’s not like you,” Angela whispered, slightly amused and wondering why everyone should suddenly be in her room in the middle of the night.

  “She’s fainted!” cried Molly.

  “Send for the doctor,” ordered Jane competently taking charge. “I’m afraid she has lost the baby.”

  “Keith, what’s wrong?” asked Jane as he bolted out of Angela’s room practically knocking her over in the hall.

  “She’s been talking again.”

  “Angela has a fever. She’s delirious. You must not pay any mind to what she says.”

  “We sent for her parents, didn’t we?” said Keith angrily. His sapphire eyes, so like Jane’s, glittered dangerously and she sympathized with the way he felt. “She called for her mother and we paid attention to that! Well now she’s calling for him!”

  “Don’t get into such a state! What good will it do? We can no more change the way Scott and Angela feel about each other than we could stop the sun from rising every morning.”

  Her shadowed eyes showed the pain as she mentioned Scott’s name. It hadn’t been easy caring for Angela and having to hear her ramblings. Most of the time she made no sense, but sometimes the disjointed sentences connected up and were understandable. The strain of the long hours by her bedside showed in Jane’s wan face and tired dragging footsteps. That and the fac
t of Scott’s transportation combined to make her lose her appetite and lie sleepless no matter how tired she was physically.

  “It’s completely beyond me,” muttered Keith, “how she can love him after everything he did to her. It is inconceivable!”

  “Is it really? They are so much alike—too much, with their tempers and audacity. Their personalities were bound to clash. But is hate so very far from love? They have both done and said things to hurt each other terribly and still, inevitably, they end up together. That must prove something. We Montgomerys aren’t made of the same stuff. We don’t have that vital recklessness that makes anything possible in love—or in hate.”

  Keith’s expression was far away and a grimace twisted his almost perfect features. His eyes turned as hard and glitteringly blue as sapphires—vicious, something Jane had never seen in him before. And for a moment she was afraid of him, her own brother! A shiver ran through her as if someone had walked over her grave.

  “You weren’t there that night, you didn’t see what he did to her. It was awful! And I had to watch, helpless, while he beat and raped her. No, I don’t understand how she can love him and never will. Unless—” Keith’s voice grew thoughtful. “There are some women who enjoy—”

  “Stop it! It will do no good to rehash ancient history. I know what happened. I saw the marks on Angela. He hurt her but she hurt him in the past too. There are some things, Keith, that you don’t know about Angela and someday maybe you will find out the hard way! She isn’t the perfect angel you think she is. But enough, we can’t judge them.” Jane gave a harsh laugh. “It’s rather amusing in a way; you are in love with Angela and I love Scott. I would say the last of the Montgomerys are suffering from an incurable case of unrequited love!”

  “Oh, hell!”

  “And one more thing, brother, you wouldn’t be alive today if Scott Harrington was as black as you paint him. The ball from his pistol should have hit your heart instead of the ground. You are fortunate he didn’t feel about you the way you feel about him.”

  Jane brushed past Keith into Angela’s room more invigorated than she had felt in a week. She went to the bed and looked down at Angela’s flushed face and wide unseeing eyes that sparkled with the intensity of the fever.

  “I’ll take over now, Molly,” she said taking the damp cloth and dipping it in a basin of cool water. “Try and get some rest. You look worn out.”

  She placed the cloth on Angela’s forehead smoothing back the tendrils of damply curling black hair. The fever had to break soon or else—no she couldn’t think negatively. No wonder Scott loved her, even sick she was the most gorgeous woman in the world.

  “Scott, darling!” Angela thrashed on the bed and Jane held her down lest she injure herself. “Oh, love—”

  Dark images appeared and disappeared: Brightling Castle, daffodils, long winding passageways to nowhere, ships, autumn leaves, Seafield, the Bratach Sith vanishing into a stormy sky. Sweetheart Abbey, wild rides on Pegasus, the smell of peat smoke, dragoons with coats as red as blood, purple heather-hazed hills, stars hanging like huge diamonds in the night sky. And always Scott in his many moods: his face dark and dangerous with anger, the boyish crooked smile, golden-brown eyes flashing with passion. Kind and considerate, cruel, her friend, husband, lover, and enemy. Other faces appeared briefly: Jack, Molly, Keith, her parents, Lorna, Robert, Jane, Percy.

  Her eyelids felt like lead but Angela struggled to open them. She was tired and thirsty, frowning as she saw Jane sitting in a chair by her bed. It was dark and a single candle illuminated the bedroom. She stared at the small flickering flame reaching ever upward to a point, yellow shading to apricot and then blue at the very bottom. The flame moved, alive, and Angela wondered what it was searching for in its ever changing upward surge toward darkness.

  Jane stirred in the golden glow, the very fluttering of her lashes in the still room making the candlelight dance. Angela stretched out her hand, searching, turned her head to find emptiness beside her where Scott should be. Then she remembered; he was gone across many seas, elusive eons away, and she had as much chance of finding him again as the flame had of reaching the stars.

  “You’re awake!” Jane moved quickly to Angela’s side, wide awake in an instant, a smile quivering on her tired face. “How do you feel?”

  “Thirsty.” Angela’s voice was a hoarse whisper and it was a supreme effort to speak.

  Jane got her a glass of cool water and helped Angela drink. She drank three glasses before sinking back wearily onto the pillows.

  “You have been very sick, Angela,” Jane explained smoothing the blankets, “but you are all right now. So sleep. That’s right, close your eyes and rest. You have to regain all your strength again.”

  Jane gently disentangled her hand from Angela’s but her eyes flew open again, aqua pools of beseeching loneliness.

  “I won’t go, I promise. I will stay right here by the bed while you sleep.” Jane took her hand and squeezed “When you wake up I will be by your side.”

  Angela was much improved in the morning and was able to eat some broth while Jane watched over her like a mother hen with one chick.

  “The baby?” asked Angela and Jane shook her head sadly.

  “Gone.”

  Angela turned her face to the wall and long moments later said mournfully, “Everyone that I love best is being taken from me. The flag, that dreadful flag!” She began laughing and Jane bent over her sure Angela had slipped back into her delirium because she made no sense. What flag? Why was she laughing when she should be crying?

  “Don’t you see, Jane?” Her eyes were haunted with a great unhappiness though her lips curved up. “It’s all a big joke, the curse for tampering with fate. I wonder what will happen next?”

  Exhaustedly Jane let Molly take over and she descended the stairs to the morning room. Keith rose instantly and went to her, his arm warm and comforting around her shoulders. Settling her into a chair he poured a cup of tea and handed it to his sister. Her hands shook with fatigue as she raised the hot delicious brew and sipped, letting the warmth spread through her body. Only after the cup was drained did she lean back letting all the tension drain away.

  Keith had kept silent but there was a strained worried look about him now that she took the time to notice and she had the feeling she didn’t want to know why he was upset.

  “Angela is better; the fever broke during the night and this morning she ate something.”

  Keith’s face brightened considerably. “Does she know about the baby?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did she take it?”

  “I don’t know. It was so strange. She was very quiet for a few minutes and then she started talking about a flag and a curse, a joke—she laughed! I really don’t know what to make of it, unless the high temperature affected her in some way.”

  Keith’s eyebrows knit together thoughtfully over his nose, slightly crooked now because it had been broken, but in no way impairing his good looks. That was a strange reaction but then Angela hadn’t been acting rationally since she had returned from Scotland. It was as if that far away land had changed her in some imperceptible way. He picked up the newspaper, debating whether he should tell Jane now. She looked utterly done in and he had worried about her for the past weeks as she grew thinner and the circles beneath her eyes grew more pronounced.

  “What is it, Keith? You might as well tell me now and get it over with. I can always tell when you are upset.”

  “It was in the paper, front page. A ship went down two days ago. There were only three survivors.” He cleared his throat nervously.

  “Well, go on,” she prompted, recalling Angela’s supposition on what disaster would occur next.

  “There is a list of casualties. Here.” He handed Jane the paper and watched as her eyes found the article. “The eighth and ninth names down.”

  “No, no, I can’t believe it! Oh lord, what are we going to do now?”

  “We can’t tell her,�
� Keith said practically. “This on top of losing the baby and Scott. It would be too much for Angela.”

  “You’re right. We must keep it from her.” Jane’s face reflected the horror she felt at the appalling news. “But how can she bear this on top of everything else? Even when she is well again—how can we tell her that her parents are dead? I feel as if it’s all my fault for sending for them. If only—”

  “Stop it, Jane! You did what was best for Angela. What happened was an accident, a horrendous ill-timed coincidence.”

  He went to the cabinet and poured a large quantity of brandy into a glass. “Here, drink every bit of it. Come on,” Keith said over her weak protests. “You need it. You are dead on your feet and upset. It will make you sleep.”

  They kept the dreadful secret as the weeks passed and Angela gradually regained her strength and health. The servants were cautioned not to drop a hint and all newspapers were carefully screened before being sent upstairs. Angela began taking an interest in life again, especially the children and the cold winter days would find the small room full to overflowing with Robert, Lorna, Keith, and Jane.

  Keith brought her flowers every day, and fruit and sweets to tempt her appetite and put some flesh back on her pitifully thin body. They read and sang and played games, all the while dreading the approaching time when she would have to be told the truth.

  Angela was not unaware of an undercurrent in the house. Keith and Jane frequently exchanged mysterious looks and went silent or changed the subject. Molly and the servants tiptoed around as if treading on thin ice. She had started to ask a dozen times what was going on but somehow was always sidetracked by something else.

  Lorna was almost five years old and Angela was anxious to begin her formal education. She would be brought up as Angela had with proper schooling in every subject, although the trend was not to overeducate girls. That view was ridiculous, a girl was just as smart as a boy and in such modern times a highly educated woman had more and more opportunities open to her to use her brains.