Unclaimed Heart

by Kim Wilkins

  “If we see an English ship on her way home, we’ll ask her crew to take letters for us.” He couldn’t bear the idea of stopping. He wouldn’t be able to breathe again until they saw the coast of India. Interminable pauses in the journey would squeeze his heart, make him itch.

  Maitland nodded, then said tentatively, “Sir, why are we going to Ceylon? In such a hurry? With no trading stock aboard?”

  “We are going because I said so,” Henry answered irritably, recognizing the flimsiness of his excuse. Was it embarrassment that kept him from telling Maitland the truth? Or fear that if he began to tell the story, that they were searching for the most precious cargo of them all, his voice would catch and he would be revealed for the sentimental fool he really was?

  “Aye, sir,” Maitland said curtly.

  Henry listened to him stride off, trying to recapture the pleasant feelings he had experienced before the conversation. They had dissolved with the last of the daylight, replaced instead with the uncertain dark.

  Deep in the night, Constance woke.

  She strained her ears. A noise had roused her, but all was silent now. She flipped over so she could see the sky through the window. The night was very clear, and she could see the tip of the Little Bear’s tail, glowing icily. She had no pillows or blankets and had to make do with a rolled-up dress under her head, a long coat and an extra pair of stockings. Despite the lack of home comforts, she found herself very comfortable. The constant motion of the sea rocked her, and she began to drift back to sleep almost immediately.

  Then the noise again. Like wood being roughly sawn. Her eyes blinked open. It was Father snoring.

  She drifted in and out of sleep, the snores periodically waking her. Then came the pains in her stomach . . . hunger pains.

  Gradually they became too much to sleep through. The sky was still dark, but she could sense light gathering somewhere nearby. If she was going to slip to the pantry, now was the time. If only her food hadn’t spilled out at the quay.

  She sat up, determined to make it unnoticed to the pantry and back. But as soon as she sat up, a great wave of nausea broke over her. She lay down again. In a second, the feeling went away. Slowly she rose for a second time, this time making it to her feet. She took a deep breath. Not too bad.

  One foot in front of the other. The sea rolled; her stomach rolled with it. She swallowed hard. All she needed was to get to the pantry, steal some food, then make it back here to her bed. But being upright was proving difficult. She moved to the cabin door, opened it quietly, and listened hard. Nothing. Shuffling forward quietly, her stomach gurgling dizzily, she made her way amidships. Through the main deck steerage, ducking under beams, past a long scarred table. The smell of food gone cold hung in the air. Old trunks were stacked against the wall, a dirt-streaked cannon lashed down beside them. She could see the sky through the windows above. But there was no other light or air, and the nausea swelled inside her.

  Finally she was at the pantry door. It was locked.

  Tears threatened, and Constance let them squeeze out quietly. She could no longer tell if the pains in her stomach were from hunger or sickness, so she hurried back to her cabin as quietly as she could and lay down. The feeling abated slightly.

  Then it rushed upon her suddenly. She climbed up to kneel on her bed, thrust open the window and, shuddering down to her knees, threw up into the vast ocean. Retch after retch, sweat prickling her face, huge acidic waves of it poured out of her.

  Afterward, she sat down, wiping her damp face on the hem of her dress. The shudders started again inside her, so she lay on her back, willing them to subside. They did, but not fully. Father snored on, and Constance curled on her side in the dim room, breathing softly and clutching her bilious stomach.

  Day broke, the wind picked up, the sea grew rougher. At least Father wasn’t in his cabin any more so she needn’t vomit quietly. Every hour or so, she had to put her face to the window and throw up. She tried to drink a little water from the decanter on the table. But then the ship heeled sharply starboard without warning, and the water spilled all over the floor. Hunger made her weak; sickness made her weaker. As the sea grew rougher, it seemed that everything was in motion around her. The lantern swung, the furniture shifted an inch this way and that on its ropes, her trunk skated the floor and back again. Her eyes grew dizzy; she longed for stillness. It was time to be sick again.

  This time the wind had changed, now blowing briskly across the stern of the ship. She didn’t notice, and when she threw up, the wind carried it all back into her face, her hair, and over her bodice.

  She climbed down from the bed, holding back sobs. She struggled out of her dress and wiped her face on it. The sour smell of sickness was everywhere. Her hands were shaking, and her face felt cold and sweaty all at once. She collapsed onto the bed, wishing she had never set foot on Good Bess.

  Henry sat down to dinner in the cuddy dining saloon, well pleased with their progress. Only two and a half days at sea and they had already cleared the Scilly Islands and were making fast pace towards the Bay of Biscay. Old Harry, the cook, was so used to life at sea that, despite his crippled left leg, he stuck to the deck as though nailed, even in the most tempestuous of conditions. He plopped down a roasted chicken that swam in its juices on a pewter plate. Potatoes skidded along next to it.

  Matthew Burchfield, the ship’s surgeon, peered over his spectacles at the meal.

  “Jus’ killed today,” Old Harry said.

  “Quite,” Burchfield replied.

  Henry was glad to see Burchfield and Maitland on time for dinner, but Hickey, the second officer, was late as usual.

  “We’ll start without Hickey,” Henry said, picking up the carving knife. “Maitland, I’ll need you to have a word with him. I like to run a tight ship, and—

  The door slammed open. The ship rolled. Henry looked around startled.

  In the threshold, white as a sheet and wearing a filthy stained dress, was his daughter Constance.

  “What the blazes?”

  “Father, I’m . . .” she gasped, before collapsing in a heap on the deck.

  Chapter 4

  FROM THE BAY OF BISCAY

  In the days that followed, Constance suffered a fever that turned her thoughts into a confused, nightmarish fog. Imagined spiders gathered in the corners of her cabin, old tales of Indian gods and goddesses wove themselves into dreams of jungles and fires, a growling bearded monster—not unlike her father—waited behind her eyelids if she dared to sleep. She called for Aunty Violet, disoriented and frightened. In rare lucid moments, she was aware of a thin man with spectacles, the ship’s surgeon, who attended her carefully, if coldly. Father came once; he barked questions at her but was removed by the doctor when she started to cry. After that she slid back into her jungle dreams and didn’t emerge for what seemed like weeks.

  In fact, it was only two days later that the fever broke, and she woke feeling weak but comfortable. She was alone in her cabin. Somebody had brought her sheets and a duck-down pillow. She still wore her dirty dress, and the smell of vomit hung sourly about her. On the table a decanter stood, with a cup next to it. Water. She smacked her lips together, pulled back the sheet and rose slowly.

  The nausea was gone. Good.

  The ship rolled underneath her; she caught herself on the back of the chair. The door opened, and the thin man came in.

  “Back to your bed,” he ordered.

  She scurried back to bed, pulling her sheets up again. He filled a cup with water and brought it to her. As she drank, he stared at her with flinty grey eyes.

  “Thank you,” she said meekly.

  “I am Matthew Burchfield, the ship’s surgeon.”

  “I know. We’ve met before. When I was just a child.”

  “You are still a child,” he said, with condescending amusement.

  The water tasted sweet. Her stomach rumbled with hunger.

  “How long have I been seasick?” she asked.

  “You
’ve been abed two days. But you weren’t seasick. Perhaps initially that’s all it was, but you’ve had a fever, quite a serious one. Your father has been very worried.”

  Constance almost laughed. Her father saw her for a dozen days in every year. If she died, he’d barely notice.

  “Mr. Burchfield,” she said hesitantly. “I wonder if I might . . . eat something?”

  He lifted his eyes in a world-weary expression and sighed deeply. “I shall speak to Old Harry.” He moved to the cabin door, and his nostrils twitched. “When you are feeling strong enough, I’ll find you a bar of marine soap and a tub of seawater to wash your clothes.”

  As soon as he was gone, Constance rose and went to her trunk. She pulled out one of the other dresses: a short-sleeved muslin dress with a satin ribbon. It was splattered with mud, but at least it didn’t stink. She quickly changed, then returned to her bed. The little effort required had exhausted her.

  A brief knock at the door. She assumed it was Old Harry with her food, but before she could call, “Come in,” her father strode in, thunderclouds on his eyebrows.

  “Father,” she yelped, pulling the sheets up defensively.

  “Constance,” he replied sternly, sitting himself on the chair next to the table and folding his arms across his chest. “You are well, then?”

  “Still weak,” she replied. “And very hungry.”

  “So I hear. My crew are, at this moment, running about trying to find food for you. When they should be doing other things.”

  Constance opened her mouth to say, “I’m sorry,” but sensed it was too early. He would give her much more to apologize for yet.

  He stood and began to pace. As he did so, a small glass object fell from his pocket. He didn’t notice, and she didn’t mention it, bracing herself for the onslaught.

  “What on earth were you thinking?” he said angrily. “You have caused me untold embarrassment and inconvenience.”

  “I wanted to come with you to find Mother,” she said simply, in case he had forgotten that she had overheard the original conversation.

  “That much is clear. But your desires are not the only engine driving the globe, Constance. You should have stayed at home, as any dutiful daughter would, and waited for news from me. Instead, you have followed your silly impulses and within an eye’s blink created pandemonium on my ship. The crew are laughing at me behind my back. What a great joke: Henry Blackchurch can control a crew of eighteen sea dogs, but he can’t control his daughter. I had thought you an intelligent girl, Constance. But only a selfish ninny would act as you have.”

  Constance dropped her head forward so he wouldn’t see the tears pricking her eyes.

  “Well you might hang your head in shame, girl. So, you are aboard now and, as you no doubt reckoned, I’m not turning back. Who knows how long it could delay me?”

  She didn’t know whether to feel relieved by this knowledge or not.

  He stopped pacing next to her bed. “Here are the rules that you will now follow. You will be invisible. Stay in here. Do not come near the cuddy saloon or the great cabin. I will ensure meals are brought to you twice a day. Every evening, you may take a turn about the poop deck for your health. But keep away from my crew, do not speak to them, do not ask them questions. God willing, they will forget you are even here. If you need anything, you speak to me directly.” He nodded, once, definitively. It was her cue to speak.

  She lifted her head. “Yes, Father,” she said. “I am truly sorry for—”

  “Silence! You are not sorry. You are glad you did it, and you would do it the same again,” he said.

  He was right, and although her mouth moved to deny it, her heart wouldn’t let her.

  “Yes, I thought so.” He turned on his heel, striding towards the door again. “Food will arrive soon. Burchfield recommends another day in bed. I think some fresh air up on deck this evening might do you good. I expect you will make up your own mind.”

  The door slammed behind him, shaking the thin walls. Constance lay back on the soft pillow, telling herself to be brave. He would have found her out eventually, and he wasn’t sending her home or—worse—putting her off with some dreadful acquaintance in a foreign country. Yes, he was angry, but his displeasure wasn’t such a mighty thing to be feared: it wasn’t as though he ever took pleasure in his daughter’s company after all.

  She turned; the shining object caught her eye. She flipped back the sheets and bent to pick it up. A brass and glass compass, small enough to sit in the hollow of her palm. She rolled it over in her hands. Tiny words were engraved on the base. She took it to the window, so the light could make the inscription clear. Her heart picked up a beat. She knew it would be from her mother, a message of love: come and find me.

  It wasn’t. It was from Violet, his sister. A safe return always, V.

  Disappointed, she took the compass to the cabin door and made to follow her father. Voices within stopped her. She remembered her father’s warning, that she must be invisible. Instead, she slipped into his cabin and placed it on the dresser.

  As she was leaving, she noticed Father’s bed. No pillow, no linen. She felt mingled guilt and surprise. Her pillow and sheets had not come out of storage: there was little room to store such things on a ship. He had given her his own.

  It was a clear night, cool but not cold. Good Bess carved through the waves resolutely, a strong north-westerly hard against her sails. Henry stood on the quarterdeck with Maitland at the wheel, gazing up the mighty mast.

  “We’ve been blessed by good winds,” Maitland said, reading his mind.

  “Somebody up there likes me,” Henry joked gruffly.

  “I was thinking it was a pity that we had no cargo to trade. It might have been our most lucrative journey ever.” Maitland forced a smile, twitching his moustache up at the corners. “That’s not a criticism of your motives, Captain.”

  “I know.” But Henry was not unaware of the discontent that laced Maitland’s words.

  He grew irritated, dropping his voice to a harsh whisper. “Loose talk like that won’t do, Maitland,” he continued. “The crew aren’t saying such things, are they? I hope nobody has forgotten that my daughter is aboard.” He hooked his thumb over his shoulder and Maitland glanced up to the poop deck, where Constance sat on a chicken coop, star-gazing.

  Maitland cringed. “Sorry, Captain. I didn’t know she was there.”

  Henry was bemused by this statement. Constance had been told to become invisible, and she had achieved this admirably. Days could pass without him seeing her. Old Harry left meals at her cabin twice a day. Henry had no idea what she amused herself with down there. He had given her what books he could find, but there was little room on a merchantman for reading material.

  For the last two weeks, with Constance aboard, he had been in a state of persistent anxiety. His thoughts were scattered, making him short-tempered with his crew. His daughter would never guess how much vexation she had caused him. All it would take was one idle conversation, between her and one loose-lipped sailor, and everything would come undone. Each party had secrets about him that he wanted to keep from the other. He was afraid of being exposed both as a sentimental fool and as a flint-eyed scoundrel. That all of it was Faith’s fault was a detail not lost on him.

  A crosswind flapped the sails. Sensing the change, Maitland gave a softly uttered order to harden up all sheets to keep Good Bess sailing at best speed. Henry turned and made his way aft and up the ladder to the poop deck. The rush of the water masked his footfalls. Constance, still gazing at the constellations, hadn’t heard him. He paused, watching her a moment. Much had been made of how closely she resembled him: her eyes and hair, her skin, the slight flair of her nostrils, the upward tilt of her eyebrows. But Faith was there too: the proud uprightness of her back, the grace of her movements, the gestures of her hands. Aspects of her mother that Constance had never seen or couldn’t remember, but which had been passed to her through blood.

  Constance turned. He
r eyes widened as she saw him, but she didn’t smile. Nor did he. She probably suspected that he was a bear, an ogre, a villain. Yes, he was all these things, and so it was better for both of them if they had little to do with each other. He nodded once, then made his way back down the ladder without a word.

  As their journey progressed, Constance’s cabin began to grow warm and stuffy during the day. She was at the window, trying to gulp the air, when her door opened without a knock. She looked up. Walter, the ship’s boy, stood hesitantly in the threshold, a hessian sack at his feet.

  “You ought to have knocked,” she said.

  He stared at her, wordlessly.

  “Can I help?” she asked. It was odd—extremely odd—for one of Father’s crew to be here in her cabin.

  “I . . . ah. Sorry, miss. It’s just we seen a ship, miss, an English ship on her way home. Cap’n said I was to ask all aboard if they had any letters to go back wiv her.” He removed his hat and scratched his mousy hair. “But now I’m not sure if I was supposed to ask you as well.”

  Constance deduced from this that the crew of Good Bess had been told to stay away from her, just as she had been told to stay away from them.

  “I do have a letter,” she said, thinking of the pages and pages she had written for Daphne. “But it might take me a moment to finish it and address it.”

  “The ship’s close, miss. There’s not much time. And . . . only, I can’t wait, like. I think I should . . . go.” He kicked the hessian sack towards her. “When you’ve written your letter, put it in there and leave the sack outside your door.”

  “Good idea, Walter. Thank you.”

  He retreated, and she quickly sat up at her writing desk and scratched a few hasty lines to end the letter. She folded it and sealed it, then opened the bag to slip it in. Lying on top of the mail was a letter addressed to Aunty Violet.

  Cautiously, Constance plucked the letter from the bag and turned it over. She knew it was written by Father, and wondered what he had written about her. She wished her eyes could see through paper, for she had no intention of actually opening the letter. But then the door to her cabin opened again and Father stood there. She hastily tucked his letter to Violet in her skirts, lest he discover her examining it.