The Exiles

by Christina Baker Kline

  Evangeline

  Among other suggestions relative to the classification of prisoners we find one recommending the wearing of a ticket by each woman. Each ticket was inscribed with a number, which number should agree with the corresponding number on the class list. . . . In the case of convicts on board convict-ships proceeding to the penal settlements, Mrs. Fry recommended that not only should the women wear these tickets, but that every article of clothing, every book, and every piece of bedding should be similarly numbered. . . . She considered the most thorough, vigilant, and unremitting inspection essential to a correct system of prison discipline; by this means she anticipated that an effectual, if slow, change of habits might be produced.

  —Mrs. E. R. Pitman, Elizabeth Fry, 1884

  The Port of London, 1840

  As the carriage ground to a halt, Evangeline heard the groan of springs under the driver’s seat and felt the tilt of the chassis. When the door creaked open, she winced. The darkness inside framed a too-bright world: a dirt road with a small crowd of people on the other side, and beyond that, anchored in the harbor between water and sky, a black wooden ship with three sails.

  “Out,” the guard barked. “Step quick.”

  Stepping quick was impossible, but one by one the women hobbled to the opening, where he grasped them by the upper arms and yanked them onto the dirt.

  The crowd surged toward them: a few rough-looking boys, a frail old man with a cane, a ringleted girl hanging onto her mother’s skirt. A woman holding a baby cried, “Slatterns!”

  Ahead of them, tied to a dock, was a skiff with two sailors. One of them whistled. “Ay! Over here.”

  As the guard pressed the prisoners forward, the crowd tried to block their way, throwing a rotten cabbage, a spray of pebbles. An egg bounced off Evangeline’s skirt and cracked at her feet.

  “Dirty puzzles, ye should be ashamed,” the old man said.

  “God help your souls,” a woman called, hands clasped in prayer.

  Evangeline felt a sharp pain in her arm and looked down. A rock skittered in the dirt. Blood trickled from her elbow.

  “Nasty buggers!” Olive turned to face the crowd, jangling her handcuffed fists. “I’ll fight the whole boodle of ye.”

  “Settle down or I’ll pound ye meself,” the guard said, poking her hip with his truncheon.

  Evangeline could feel the earth beneath the thin soles of her shoes. She had an impulse to lean down and rake her fingers through it, to clutch a handful of it. This would almost certainly be the last time her feet would touch English soil.

  Far out in the harbor, on the three-masted ship, a line of men leaned over the railing, hooting and clapping. From this distance their catcalls sounded as innocent as birdsong.

  The two sailors at the skiff wore wide trousers and tunics tied with rope. Their forearms were covered in ink. One was swarthy and one pale, with a mop of sandy hair. The sandy-haired sailor leapt out and stood on the dock, grinning as the women approached. “Greetings, ladies!”

  “We’re glad to be rid of ’em,” the guard told him.

  “They’ll have a warm welcome here.”

  He laughed. “No doubt.”

  “That one should clean up all right.” The sailor jerked his chin toward Evangeline.

  The guard made a face. “She’s up the duff. Look at ’er.” He motioned toward her belly. “That one, too,” he said, scowling at Olive, “and she’s a feisty munter. She’ll claw your eyes out.”

  “Won’t be so feisty when we’re done with ’er.”

  “All talk,” Olive said. “I know your type.”

  “Enough outta ye,” the sailor said.

  In the skiff the women were seated side by side, front and back, while the crewmen rowed in the middle. Evangeline sat perfectly still, listening to the splashing of the oars in and out of the water, a bell clanging in the distance. The hem of her skirt was soaked with seawater. As they got closer, she saw the name painted on the hull: Medea.

  From this angle the ship loomed over them, terrifyingly large.

  The sandy-haired sailor appraised Evangeline frankly as he rowed. His small eyes were dishwater gray and he sported a red-and-black tattoo of a topless mermaid on his biceps that writhed as he pulled on the oar. He blew a kiss into the air when he caught her eye.

  As they reached the ship, bumping lightly against the side, the whooping of the men at the railing above them grew louder. The sandy-haired sailor jumped onto a small platform attached to a ramp and began tugging the prisoners out of the skiff.

  The women were clumsy in their shackles. “Bloody chains,” Olive grumbled as she clambered onto the dock. “Where the hell d’ye think we’ll escape to?”

  “Watch your mouth or we won’t take ’em off at all,” the sailor said.

  She snorted. “Don’t go actin’ all superior. You’re an ex-con yourself, no doubt.”

  “Mind your own—”

  “As I thought.”

  He yanked the chain between her hands and she stumbled forward. When she caught her footing, he pulled her close to him, like a dog on a lead. “Listen, tart. Ye’ll do well to remember who’s in charge.” With a sudden movement he jerked the chain down and she fell to her knees. He twisted it so the upper half of her body hovered over the water alongside the platform. “These irons are heavy. All I have to do is let go. Ye’ll sink like a stone.”

  Olive made a small noise. A whimper. “Please.”

  “Please, sir.”

  She opened her hands helplessly. “Please, sir.”

  “Kind sir.”

  She was silent.

  Evangeline, behind her in the skiff, leaned forward. “Olive. Just say it.”

  The sandy-haired sailor looked at the other sailor and winked. Then he nudged Olive’s legs with his knee, pushing her closer to the water.

  The men above them quieted. The only sound was the screeching of seagulls.

  “Kind sir,” Olive whispered.

  The sailor pulled the chain up, and with it, Olive’s body, so that she hung suspended over the water. He seemed poised to let go. Without thinking, Evangeline cried out and stood up. The skiff rocked wildly side to side. “Fer Chrissake, wench, will ye go overboard too?” the sailor behind her said, pushing her roughly on the shoulder so that she fell hard on the wooden bench.

  The sandy-haired sailor yanked the chain back toward him, and Olive collapsed on the platform in a heap. For a few moments she lay at the base of the ramp. Her wrists were scored with blood. Her back heaved oddly up and down, and at first Evangeline thought she was laughing. Then she saw that Olive’s eyes were squeezed shut. Her body was shaking, but she didn’t make a sound.

  After the four prisoners had been transferred to the ship, they stood on the main deck, waiting to be unshackled. A shirtless sailor with a scaly green-and-black dragon inked across his torso held up a ring of keys. Except for Cecil, in the shadowy light of a bedroom with the drapes closed, Evangeline had never seen a man without his shirt, not even her father in his dying days. “You.” The sailor gestured to Evangeline, motioning for her to sit on an overturned bucket.

  A small crowd of sailors had formed. She’d never seen men like this, with faces leathery and as creased as walnut shells, hawklike eyes, sinewy arms covered in elaborate tattoos. The guards at Newgate had been contemptuous, but they didn’t lick their lips in lascivious revelry, making obscene noises with their tongues.

  The locksmith instructed another sailor to hold the chain between Evangeline’s manacles, then he knelt down and opened the irons around her ankles before unfastening the ones around her wrists. When her shackles fell to the ground, the men around her yelled and clapped. Evangeline shook out her sore hands.

  The locksmith jerked his head toward the others. “They’ll settle down. It’s always like this with a new group.”

  Evangeline looked around. “Where are the other prisoners?”

  “Most of ’em are down there.” He raised his chin toward a dark, square o
pening from which a handrail jutted out. “In the bowels. The orlop deck.”

  The bowels. Evangeline shuddered. “Are they—caged?”

  “No shackles on board. Unless ye do something to deserve it.”

  It surprised her that prisoners were allowed to move freely, but then she realized, of course. Unless they chose to leap into the water, there was nowhere to go.

  She couldn’t swim. But for a brief, wild moment, she considered leaping.

  “Name is Mickey,” a midshipman told the women after the last of them was released from her chains. “I won’t remember yours, so don’t bother telling me. The ship’ll be docked in the harbor another week or two, until they reach the quota. Quarters are tight and getting tighter. You’ll take sponge baths—clothes on, mind ye—on the main deck once a week, to keep it bearable on the orlop deck.”

  He doled out coarse yellow sponges, bricks of lye soap, wooden spoons and bowls, tin cups, and gray burlap shifts, and showed the women how to roll everything into horsehair blankets.

  Pointing at a pile of bedticks, he said, “Each of ye, grab one of those.”

  The bedticks were heavy. Evangeline smelled hers: it was mildewed, filled with wet straw. But at least it would be better than the hard stone floor at Newgate.

  Gesturing at the women’s feet, Mickey said, “When it’s not freezin’ ye should go barefoot on the main deck. It can be rough at sea. Ye wouldn’t want to pitch over.”

  “Does that happen?” one of the women asked.

  He shrugged. “It happens.”

  Motioning for them to follow, he disappeared down the rope ladder. “Ye’ll get the hang of it,” he called from below as they crept down the ladder with their unwieldy bundles and bedticks. Pointing out the officers’ quarters, he led them down the narrow hall to the lip of another opening. He dug a candle stub out of his pocket and lit it. “Hades, this way.”

  Struggling to balance their bulky loads, the women followed him down an even flimsier ladder into a low, cave-like space, weakly lit by swinging candle lamps. As soon as Evangeline reached the bottom rung, she dropped her bedtick on the floor and covered her nose with her hand. Human waste and—what could it be? A rotting animal? How quickly she’d recovered from the stench of Newgate and acclimated to fresh air.

  Mickey gave her a lopsided grin. “Orlop’s just above the bilge. A stew of filthy water. Fragrant, in’it? Add to that the chamber pots and stinky candles and god knows what else.” Pointing at her bedtick he added, “I wouldn’t set that on the floor if I was ye.”

  She snatched it up.

  Gesturing toward the narrow sleeping bunks, he said, “There’ll be close to two hundred women and children down here at night. Cozy quarters. I advise ye to keep your soap and bowl under your mattress. And hide anything ye care about.”

  Olive claimed an empty top berth. “Need me privacy.” She heaved herself up, grunting.

  Evangeline dumped her bedtick onto the berth below Olive’s and unrolled her blanket. The space was half a yard high and half a yard wide. No room to sit up and not long enough to stretch out. But it was hers. After unpacking her things, she took Cecil’s handkerchief, smoothed it out on the blanket, refolded it with the crest and initials hidden, and pushed it deep under the mattress behind her tin cup and wooden spoon.

  “The captain steers the ship, but the surgeon runs it.” Mickey pointed toward the rafters. “He’s your next stop. Can any of ye read?”

  “I can,” Evangeline said.

  “Ye first, then. Dr. Dunne. On the tween deck. Name on the door.”

  She made her way to the ladder and clung to it tightly as it swayed from side to side. In the narrow hallway she knocked on the door with the brass plate. From behind the door she heard a curt: “Yes?”

  “I was told to . . . I’m a-a convict.” She blanched. It was the first time she’d identified herself that way.

  “Come in.”

  Cautiously she turned the knob and entered a small oak-paneled room. A man with short dark hair sat at a mahogany desk facing the door, flanked by bookcases, with another door behind him. He looked up with an air of distraction. He was younger than she expected—perhaps in his late twenties—and was dressed formally in a double-breasted navy uniform braided in gold and lined with brass buttons.

  Beckoning with his hand, he said, “Close the door behind you. Name?”

  “Evangeline Stokes.”

  He ran his finger down the page of the ledger in front of him and tapped it. “Fourteen years.”

  She nodded.

  “Attempted murder, larceny. . . . These are serious charges, Miss Stokes.”

  “I know.” She looked at the surgeon’s crisp white collar and gray-green eyes. The silver monogrammed cup and round glass paperweight on the desk. The Shakespeare volumes lined up neatly on a shelf in the bookcase behind him. This was a man she might’ve been acquainted with in her previous life.

  He pursed his lips. Shutting the ledger, he said, “Let’s get started, shall we?”

  Opening the door behind his desk, he ushered her into a smaller room with a raised bed in the middle. She stood against the wall while he measured her height and around her waist with a cloth tape, checked her eyes, and asked her to stick out her tongue while he peered into her mouth. “Reach toward the ceiling. Now arms straight ahead. Good. Try to touch your toes.” Feeling around her midsection, over her apron, he molded his hand around the bump as if palming a grapefruit. “Six months, give or take. This child will almost certainly be born in my care.”

  “Does it seem healthy?”

  “If the mother is healthy, the child should be too.” Looking her over, he said, “You’re underweight and your skin is sallow, but your eyes are clear.” Placing the wider end of a hollow wooden tube against her chest, he inclined his ear toward the other end.

  When he removed it, Evangeline asked, “What is that for?”

  “It’s a way to check for tuberculosis, or what we used to call consumption. The scourge of any ship. You show no signs of it.”

  “And if I did?”

  “Back to Newgate, into quarantine.”

  “No transport?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “Perhaps I’d be better off.”

  He set the tube on a shelf behind him. “The voyage is a long one. And convict life is, no doubt, a . . . trial. But transport can, for some, be an opportunity.”

  “It will be a long time until I’m free.”

  “It will. But you’re young. And with good behavior you may earn your ticket of leave sooner. The most important thing is not to succumb to despondency. ‘Though much is taken, much abides.’”

  “‘Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will,’” she said, almost without thinking.

  He raised an eyebrow. “You’ve read Tennyson?”

  She blushed. “I was a governess.”

  “How . . . unexpected.” He gave her a funny smile, as if he couldn’t quite absorb this bit of information. Then he stepped back. “Well. I suppose I must inspect your fellow travelers.”

  “Of course.” She straightened her apron. She felt a little lightheaded, as if emerging from a trance.

  Ascending the rope ladder to the main deck, she thought of those children’s tales in which humans are transformed into frogs and foxes and swans, and only when someone recognizes them for who they truly are is the spell finally broken.

  That was what this felt like: a faint glimmer of recognition.

  Medea, The Port of London, 1840

  Within a few days the convicts’ routine was established. They were roused at six in the morning by a series of bells and the unbolting of the hatch, a shaft of light piercing the darkness. Evangeline would lie in her berth for a few minutes listening to the slap of water against the hull, feeling the tug of the ship against the anchor that moored it, beams creaking as it rolled. Women waking, chattering, groaning. Squalling babies. Olive slept heavily, snoring above her, seldom woken by the bell, so Evangelin
e got in the habit of rapping on the bottom of her bunk until Olive groused, “All right, all right, I hear ye.” They dressed quickly, tucking tin cups and bowls and spoons into apron pockets. Unless it was raining, the prisoners were expected to bring their blankets up the ladders to the main deck, where they’d hang them on netting to air.

  After breakfast they queued for the surgeon to inspect their eyes, look inside their mouths, pour a thimbleful of lime juice mixed with a little sugar and wine into their cups, and watch them drink it. “For scurvy,” he said. “It’s sour, but better than losing your teeth.”

  Though it was a new experience for her, Evangeline had adjusted fairly easily to working for the Whitstones in St. John’s Wood, deferring to them and submitting to their whims. She, and they, existed within a clearly defined social order. But she had little familiarity with people who were gratuitously cruel, driven by anger or boredom or revenge. People who got away with bad behavior because they could.

  The sandy-haired sailor, she learned, was named Danny Buck. The sailors called him Buck. It was rumored he’d slit a woman’s throat. He’d been sentenced to transport himself, as Olive had guessed, and became enamored of the sea on his own crossing. As soon as he’d served his time, he signed on to a crew that sailed back and forth between London and Hobart Town, the port city in Van Diemen’s Land, Australia, ferrying female convicts.

  One foggy morning, scrubbing the deck on her hands and knees, Evangeline heard voices from across the water. She stood and went to the railing. It had rained through the night; the water was the same dull hue as the sky and the air smelled of rotting fish. Shielding her eyes with her hand, she could barely make out the skiff leaving the dock. As it got closer, she could see Buck and another sailor in the middle seats, flanked by four women huddled like pigeons against the damp.