by Hope Adams
“Miss Brown, eh?” Tabitha rocked with laughter. “No one’s ever called me that before, I can tell you. Thank you, sir, you’re a proper gent, not like—”
“Tabitha!” Kezia said, her voice uncharacteristically raised. “Sit quietly, please, and let us go on.”
As Tabitha answered the men’s questions, Kezia wondered whether the seven women they would be interrogating had spoken of the matter among themselves. I’ll ask, she thought, when it’s my turn to question her.
“So, tell us again. What did you hear Hattie say? Her exact words, please, Tabitha,” said Charles.
“Well, she wasn’t herself, see? First, she said, ‘Bertie,’ then she said, ‘Not Freddie.’ And she was pointing at Emily to go and get him. Emily’d started walking away but Hattie pointed at her. She was pointing toward the lower deck, really.”
“Are you sure?” Kezia asked. “Why didn’t you say something sooner? That’s a strange thing to say. Who is Freddie?”
“Haven’t an idea who Freddie is. Only know she said it, plain as I’m sitting here.” Tabitha leaned forward and directed her remark to Kezia in a confiding manner. “That’s what I thought, Miss. Not the kind of thing you’d say.”
“Did Hattie say anything else?” James Donovan asked. “Before I arrived?”
“She passed out, sir. Very quick after asking for little Bertie. Broke my heart to see it, I can tell you. Emily fetched him in the end, but she took her time over it, I can tell you. Hattie’d been taken off to the hospital by the time he got there. Terrible, it was. Poor little chap.”
Tabitha put on the saddest expression of which she was capable, which was, Kezia could see, somewhat of a challenge for her. Her face was more comfortable with either of two expressions: vacant or sneering. But even someone as dull as Tabitha must have realized that neither face was suitable for the present occasion and was trying to arrange her features into an aspect that might be deemed more sympathetic.
“Can you tell us anything of the talk among you belowdeck about this matter? Your companions, I mean.” Charles spoke quietly but he looked Tabitha straight in the eye. She lowered her gaze.
She sniffed. “We talk about it, it’s true, but no one has any idea about why. They say all sorts, some of them, but they don’t know nothing.”
“What sorts of things do they say?” Charles was persistent.
“You know . . .” Tabitha made a sound halfway between a laugh and a bark of contempt. “She’s made someone jealous, taken her sweetheart, that kind of thing, or else she was blackmailing someone. Knew something someone didn’t want telling.”
“What sort of thing might that be?” Mr. Davies said.
“If we knew that,” Tabitha said, with some justice, Kezia thought later, “we wouldn’t be sitting here asking questions, would we?”
“You must speak more respectfully,” Kezia interrupted her, fearful of Mr. Davies’s reaction, but surprisingly, he merely nodded.
“You’re quite right, Miss Brown. We would not. So it behooves us to discover what that might be. Thank you. You may return to your quarters. You’ve been very helpful.”
Tabitha stood up, beaming, and bobbed a curtsy in his direction. “Thank you kindly, sir.”
When she’d closed the door behind her, Charles said, “I must say I think Tabitha Brown is right. Hattie knew something. We haven’t given sufficient weight to the words embroidered on that patch of material you showed me. Someone who goes to that trouble surely means what they say, don’t they? We should try to solve that puzzle in order to find our motive.”
“I feel we have lost so much time. If I’d taken it more seriously, we might have prevented the stabbing,” Kezia said. “I feel greatly at fault. I simply asked Hattie if she knew of anyone who might have something against her, and she searched her memory, then said no. I believed her. I still do. I don’t think she was lying.”
“But just imagine for a moment,” said Mr. Donovan, “that Hattie was indeed truthful and had no idea why she should keep silent. It does not follow that there wasn’t something that someone else wanted to be kept hidden.”
“We’re wasting time,” said Mr. Davies. “We have seven witnesses to the crime. This is a very grave crime but it shouldn’t be beyond the wit of the four of us to discover what actually happened. Only one of those on deck could have stabbed Hattie. It is our duty to find out which of these convicts is lying.”
As Kezia went to join her women under the awning, she wondered again, as she had wondered often before, might someone other than one of their suspected women have knifed Hattie and run away? Before the others who rushed to her side were even aware of it? Should she mention this possibility? There were so many places to hide on the Rajah that she found herself walking about the vessel nervously, aware of unusual noises and glancing behind her often, especially after dark. Anyone could be hidden behind a barrel, a crate or a coil of rope.
17
THEN
Cotton piece: Turkey red printed with a regular pattern of large dark squares, containing either six small rectangles or a smaller square
April 1841
CLARA
I suppose you could say we’re rubbing along now, getting used to one another. When Miss Hayter gathered us together there were seventeen of us: too many to sit crammed into a circle, especially in the space around our berths. Emily left us for a short while every day to teach the children, but she sat with us for much of the time. There were days when this or that person took to her bunk because she was seasick or on her monthlies. Joan sometimes joins us late, I’ve noticed, and yesterday Miss Hayter asked her what she’d been doing, but Joan only said she was sorry and offered no explanation. We all knew she had duties in the hospital, helping Mr. Donovan, but there were days when she seemed to me to be flustered and a little pink in the face, even though she soon recovered. Most of the time, there’s about fourteen of us working on the stitching.
“When we reach warmer latitudes,” Miss Hayter told us, “and when the work has grown a little, we can sit together, but for now, it’s easier if you do your sewing in smaller groups.”
So we’ve pushed some benches into a rough circle, near the place where the daylight spills into the quarters from the door that leads to the companionway. I feel the sunlight, when there is sunlight, on my back and that’s pleasant. The first few days on board were hard. The very motion of the ship was frightening to most of us, as though we were sailing on a living creature, with a mind of its own, not on an assembly of wood, canvas and metal. Even though the weather wasn’t really rough, there was the constant thick and horrible smell of vomit on the lower deck as some of the women emptied the contents of their stomachs and moaned fit to wake anyone who’d managed to fall asleep. It was hard to keep the place clean. No sooner had someone thrown up than the rest of those in her mess had to set to and clean it away. Some were better at that than others, and the whole company paid the price for inadequate swabbing with water. During the day, we walked about, stumbling, with some of the weaker ones among us unable to keep properly upright. From the beginning I didn’t mind the motion of the ship and now I feel it mostly as a rhythm in my body. We women have become allies, if not exactly friends, even though there are still irritations and occasional quarrels between us.
When we first started working together, Miss Hayter handed out fabrics taken from the sacks the merchants had sent to the ship with the Ladies’ Committee. Alice and Susan were put in charge of cutting the cloth into squares. Each has a template in stiff card and they’re at work every day, making squares and triangles for the rest of us to stitch together. Miss Hayter also handed out a few fabrics of her own, some of which are prettier than the contents of our own bundles, patterned with flowers or leaf-bearing twigs. At first, I sat next to Alice but she seemed eager to talk to me and ask me questions. I prefer to do the asking. After a while, I moved to sit next to Joan, who i
s the opposite of a blabbermouth, which pleases me. I’m hard at work on my sewing, doing my best to make my stitches as neat and small as everyone else’s. It’s been a long time since I picked up a needle. Threading the cotton through its eye is hard, with the ship’s movement unsteadying even the hands of the more experienced women. And I’m not used to matching colors or patterns according to what pleases me, or the edges of one piece of fabric with another, binding them together tidily so they’ll lie flat. I understood, even after only a few hours of the work, that in another life, beside a fire in a comfortable room, this would be a pastime I might grow to enjoy. Aboard the Rajah, it’s more a task than a pleasure, but it passes the time and takes my mind from my worries.
Some of the others are laughing. Tabitha has made a remark that has them clutching their sides. I don’t draw attention to myself by seeking to know what was said. Alice and Susan seem angry. They’re frowning, so the joke was probably lewd. Even Joan is smiling a little.
Joan’s happier. I see this in the way she stands, walks and talks to the women she thinks of as her friends. I’m one of these, simply for speaking kindly to her as we sailed out of London. Her shoulders, as she walks on deck now, aren’t bent under the weight of her sorrows. Joan’s skilled with her needle, and she’s often set to help the strugglers. She finds the right piece of fabric for them, the best one to sit next to the one they have in their hands. Ruth and Susan sometimes draw blood, which falls onto the cloth and marks it. Miss Hayter encourages them, and others like me, who aren’t as neat as the rest, to choose dark fabrics and avoid visible stains. Perhaps Joan’s been sent to sit next to me so she can help me, but she hasn’t yet said anything about my sewing. She’s humming a tune under her breath. I say, “You’re happy,” before I’ve even thought what I’m saying. I regret the words almost as I speak them. Who am I now? The woman who isn’t Clara Shaw, not a bit like her in any way, wouldn’t say such a thing. She’d make a quiet joke, or keep her own counsel.
“I am,” Joan answers. “More than I was when we left England.”
I think she’ll go on sewing and say no more, but she continues. “You don’t gossip like the others.”
I nod. She whispers, “Then I can speak of this to you, can’t I?”
I nod again. She’s going to tell me a secret. “I won’t tell anyone else,” I mutter, under my breath, and feel a little ashamed of myself for being so eager to find out what she has to tell me. When I was Clara Shaw, I heard many confessions from the poor young women who begged me to release them from their predicament. I kept the secrets men whispered to me in bed. What I most miss is gossip, confidences and womanly chatter. Others on the Rajah never stop whispering in quiet corners, but because I have too much at risk—too much for others to discover—I try to keep away from such talk.
“D’you know who Isaac is? Isaac Margrove.”
“I do,” I say. Everyone knows Isaac. He’s a presence on the ship, seemingly always at hand when there’s work to be done. We convict women like him because he makes no difference between us and anyone else, greeting everyone just the same. “Morning, all,” he says sometimes, or “A fine morning indeed!” as though we were his shipmates, not criminals condemned to transportation.
Joan leans toward me as I bend over my sewing. Anyone looking would think she’s helping me.
“He’s declared himself to me,” she says.
I’d like to ask a thousand questions. How could it have happened so quickly? I say, “We’ve been at sea scarcely more than a week, Joan.”
“But I met Isaac before we sailed,” she answers. “He gave me a kerchief when I was crying. Don’t you remember?”
I don’t reply. Isaac must have found a way to speak to her. I know nothing, I realize, about what kind of person Joan might be when it came to men. I’d have wagered she was modest and shy, but I’ve learned that you can’t guess how a woman will behave when it comes to lust. But what form did their meetings, their friendship, take? If the captain found out that one of his sailors was close to a convict woman, he’d surely be punished severely. And when did the two of them find the time to be together often enough for a declaration? Joan’s with us in our living quarters on the lower deck. She sews with us and eats with us and sleeps beside us. Could she climb the companionway when the rest of us are asleep? During exercise, as we walk the deck during the hour set aside for this, who would notice if one of our number slipped away to . . . to where? Where to hide? As I think about it, I realize that if I’d made up my mind to disappear, I’d find somewhere: between huge coils of rope, behind large trunks and boxes stowed on deck. And I would find a moment here and another there, and soon I would find more . . .
“He’s a good man,” she adds. “He was kind to me from the beginning of our voyage. He makes me happy.”
How has he made her happy? I wish I could ask but I’ve found that if you wait, and keep your lips sealed, someone who wants to confess will often spill out the whole story with no need for prompting.
“We’ve spoken often since then. I haven’t been in any conversation with a man since my husband died. Years, it’s been. I’m not accustomed to their ways, but he’s made me . . .”
A silence falls between us. Joan is stitching at her patch, but she’s frowning and her lips have tightened. She’s trying to find a way to say what she wants to tell me. I’ve seen this look many times. Women who were ashamed of what they’d done but longing to confess; women who wanted to talk about their child had told me of the better life their baby deserved, that he or she was worthy of special treatment. I wonder if I ought to say something and decide not to. It wouldn’t do to appear too eager.
At last she says, “It started with talking. He seemed to want to know my thoughts. About ordinary things. No man’s ever asked my opinion before about anything. My Jack was a good man, a kind man, as far as he understood kindness, but he never wanted to know my thoughts on any matter. He loved me, but maybe in the way you’d love a dog you were fond of, who could cook and clean for you. He spoke to give instructions or ask questions about the running of the household. Isaac . . . takes account of me.”
I long to tell her what I’ve learned of men. Of how they want us chiefly to quench their lusts. Of how lucky and rare it is to find one who sees you as an equal. I say nothing. Around us, the others are chattering and working.
“I tried to keep it to talking but it soon . . .”
She falls silent. I say nothing but fix my eyes on the cloth I’m stitching: a red background with a pattern of dark blue squares. One stitch. Two stitches. Will Joan say more?
“He kissed my hand at first. As if I was a lady. I let him. That was how it began. I tried to see harm in it, but I grew fond and silly.”
I nod. More stitches. In and out with the needle. Joan has slowed the rhythm of her sewing. I haven’t. I am doggedly stitching in and out of the cloth, a trail of thread growing shorter by the minute. My needle will soon need threading again.
She sighs. “I can’t help myself with him. It’s like being drunk. Not in control of my senses. I don’t know what to do now. After last night.”
“What happened?” I say, hoping she’ll go on, although I can guess.
Joan’s face and neck are scarlet now. Her voice falls. She whispers a few words, and just at that moment, Tabitha says: “Oi, Susan, you clumsy baggage! Mind where you’re putting your elbow!” Her brassy voice rings out, drowning whatever Joan’s tried to say.
I catch the end of it. “. . . he kissed me. We were in the shelter of the boxes stowed on the afterdeck. It’s so many years since anyone has kissed me in that way . . . I would wish him to kiss me again, on other occasions, but it’s wrong and if we’re caught, he’ll be . . . punished dreadfully. And me? I don’t know myself when I’m with him . . .”
I speak gently. “I’m sure you’ve nothing to be ashamed of, Joan.”
“I didn’t stop him.
”
Silence. I go on stitching and she speaks at last. “I let him put his hands on me and I should have stopped him. I’m not some young thing, but a grandmother. But it was good to be kissed. I liked it, and I like the way Isaac talks to me. I didn’t want him to stop kissing me. I was happy.” She takes her scissors out of her bundle and snips the thread. “I’ve not been with a man for so long. I’d forgotten. It was . . .” She cannot find words to describe it.
“I won’t tell anyone,” I whisper, while Joan is threading her needle.
Her eyes are shining. “He’s fond of me, you know,” she adds. “He told me so. No one has said such words to me in years.”
“I’m sure he is,” I say. I’m threading my own needle now.
“I could love such a man,” she says wistfully.
“I wish you both well,” I tell her. I mean it, though I fear they may be acting rashly. Many things could spoil what they’ve found together.
* * *
* * *
When I was very young, after my parents died, and after the brother I thought would take care of me showed himself uncaring and turned me out of his house, I was taken up by a gentleman in his middle years, called Samuel Leigh. He found me alone and shivering with cold on a bench in the street and offered me shelter. I say I was young then, but not too young to know what he’d expect from me. I hadn’t led a sheltered life. My parents tried to hide from me the worst things that went on in the streets around our small draper’s shop, but I saw what I saw and my childhood companions talked constantly of this woman or that being “on the town,” and every one of us knew what that meant.
In those days I had a certain look about me, though I may not have been beautiful. The girls and women I noticed back then, disappearing into dark alleys and coming back dishevelled and sometimes bruised, were not who I wanted to become.