‘Who’s Davy Jones?’ asked Molly.
Long Meg made a scary face. ‘He is the devil of the sea,’ she said ominously. ‘He has red burnin’ eyes like saucers, horns, a pointy tail, hunnerds o’ sharp teeth, an’ blue smoke comin’ out o’ his nose.’
Molly shivered with delight. Hannah rolled her eyes.
‘You’ve been spending too much time with the sailors,’ she said. ‘What nonsense.’
Long Meg winked at Molly. ‘I likes the sailors.’
Molly gathered all the tiny white specks of paper in her palm, and blew them towards Hannah. They drifted down and settled on Hannah’s lap.
‘It’s snowing!’ said Molly.
‘Get out of here, you monster,’ said Hannah, brushing off the paper. Molly squealed, and scampered away to the other end of the room.
Meg made a rude noise. ‘Ooh-er, look what’s got up her ladyship’s nose.’
‘I don’t know why you let her hang around you.’
Long Meg raised an eyebrow. ‘What made you cross as two sticks? It must be hard on ’er, so young an’ all. No mama or papa. Funny little thing.’
‘She didn’t seem so young or so funny when she stole my money back in London.’
‘Have some pity,’ said Long Meg. ‘Not all of us had the luxuries that you had, growin’ up.’ She nodded towards Molly. ‘And with a mug like that, she’d have had no choice but to steal. Ain’t no gentleman that’s going to pay to spend a night with that face.’
Hannah said nothing, rolling over onto her stomach. Meg put down the Bible for a moment, got out her spoon and, with the flat end, started to scratch the twenty-first notch in the wood above her bed.
‘How long will it take, Meg?’ Hannah asked, looking at the notches.
Long Meg shrugged. ‘The winds ain’t good,’ she said. ‘One of the boys tells me it’s been slow goin’. We is barely past Spain.’
Hannah tried to remember the jigsaw map of the world that she and Thomas Behr had played with. Then she thought about the question that had been sitting at the back of her mind. She’d tried to ignore it, but it wouldn’t go away.
‘What happens when we get there?’
‘ If we gets there,’ said Long Meg.
Meg picked up the Bible again.
‘I dunno,’ she said. ‘We’ll prolly be made servants to rich folk. Or sold as slaves to the natives.’ She shuddered.
Hannah tried to imagine what it would be like. She thought about the strange animal that Thomas Behr had made in the snow. A kangaroo. Would there be buildings? Or would everyone be living in tents? The colony in New South Wales had been around all her life, but how civilised was it?
‘I also heard about a place called the factory,’ said Long Meg.
‘The factory?’ said Hannah. ‘What sort of factory?’
Long Meg shrugged. ‘Dunno,’ she said again. ‘But it’s where the bad women go.’
Hannah had read about factories in her father’s newspaper. It was where you made a lot of things all at once. She wondered what they made in the factory in New South Wales, and what the women did.
There was a groan from one of the other beds. Sally was sick again, covered in a film of sweat.
‘Should someone fetch Dr Ullathorne?’ asked Hannah.
‘He’d slit her throat soon as look at her,’ Meg said. ‘Probably eat her unborn child as well.’
Meg raised her eyebrows at the expression of disgust on Hannah’s face.
‘He’s a snake,’ she said. ‘Deserves to have his slithery black tongue cut out.’
‘You shouldn’t make him so angry,’ said Hannah. ‘He’s an officer. You’re a prisoner. You know you can’t win.’
Long Meg rolled her eyes. ‘ He’s an officer!’ she mimicked. ‘You got stars in yer eyes, missy. Officer ain’t some ticket to bein’ a gentleman. They is all the same. Snakes and animals, the lot of them. Yes, even your precious James Belforte,’ she said, catching the look on Hannah’s face. ‘Animals. They’ll strum you until your strings break, grind you down to nothing. That’s all your lieutenant is after. Something to tickle his tail.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ said Hannah, feeling sick. Long Meg was clearly a liar. She had probably made up the story about the doctor, too.
‘Don’t, then,’ said Long Meg. ‘Why don’t you come up and see for yourself one night?’
Hannah shivered. ‘Why do you do it then?’ she asked. ‘If you hate them so much, why do you go up there?’
‘It’s a negotiation,’ said Meg. ‘I gives them what they wants, they gives me what I wants.’
Hannah said nothing.
‘Shocked, yer ladyship?’ Meg chuckled, wrapping her hair around a paper strip and pinning it into place.
‘Do you really think you should be doing that?’ asked Hannah, looking at the emaciated Bible.
‘Doing what?’ asked Meg. ‘Churning butter with Jemmy Griffin upstairs? Or curling my hair?’
Hannah scowled at her. ‘You know what I meant.’
Long Meg shrugged. ‘I likes it curly.’
‘But with a Bible?’
‘Why not? I don’t got no other paper, and I don’t know me letters. Bible ain’t much use to me, exceptin’ as curlin’ papers.’ She paused, and looked thoughtfully at the Bible. ‘I s’pose I could fashion a deck of cards…’
Hannah rolled over, turning her back to Long Meg.
There was a sudden explosion of noise from the women, whistles and cat-calls. Hannah propped herself up on her elbows and peered down the aisle. James was making his way towards her. He smiled at the women who were offering him their services, and stopped in front of her bunk.
Hannah stared at him, not quite sure what to say.
‘Would you like to come up on deck with me?’ he asked. ‘It hasn’t begun raining yet.’
‘Of course,’ replied Hannah.
‘Of course,’ mocked Long Meg, as she turned to James. ‘Hallo, sir. Come to board our ladyship, have you?’
Hannah scowled at her. James helped her down from her bunk, and they made their way back up the aisle.
‘You looks like you could use another dance with a short-heeled wench, mister,’ called Long Meg.
Hannah turned red, but James grinned over his shoulder at Meg.
‘Many thanks, Meg, but I’m not really in the mood for dancing today,’ he said, and touched his knuckle to his forehead in a mocking salute.
The forecastle was eerily quiet. The sailors had done all the preparation they could do, and now had nothing to do but wait for the storm. Most of them were on the lower deck, getting a few precious moments sleep, or steeling themselves for the long night ahead with a stiff drink. One or two stayed on the upper deck, coiling ropes, and a handful of officers stood on the quarterdeck. Dr Ullathorne was there, talking to Captain Gartside.
The sky was hung low with suffocating clouds. The wind whipped Hannah’s hair around her face. James sat down on the deck, and Hannah settled herself beside him.
In the half-light of the evening, James’s pale skin seemed almost blue, his red lips nearly black. A lock of dark hair had escaped its ponytail, and hung over his eyes. He looked delicate and beautiful, like a prince from one of the fairy stories Thomas told her when she was younger.
‘I thought you might have had enough of the other women,’ he said.
‘It smells down there.’
James nodded. ‘That’s the ballast you can smell.’
‘That’s in the bottom of the ship, right?’ she asked.
James nodded. ‘It weighs the ship down and makes it more stable.’
‘Why does it smell so bad?’
‘It’s a mix of sand and gravel. It sloshes around in the bilge-water for years. You can’t clean it, and it collects compost and dead rats and all sorts of other filth.’
Hannah made a face.
‘You should count yourself lucky,’ said James. ‘I’ve been on ships that smelled much worse. On one, the air coming off the b
ilge was so foul that it turned our buttons black.’
Hannah turned her head as the wind lifted her hair from her shoulders. James sighed.
‘That’s what I miss the most,’ he said. ‘Sweet-smelling air. Clean linen. A freshly starched necktie.’
‘Toast,’ said Hannah. ‘I miss toast. In a silver toast rack. Butter in a white china dish.’
‘A decent tailor. Kidskin gloves.’
‘My Abigail to do my hair each morning.’
‘A glass of porter, a fine cigar and a few rounds of piquet at White’s.’
A whistle sounded, and sailors came streaming out of nowhere, shimmying up the ship’s masts and out onto her beams like monkeys. Ropes were slackened, and the air was filled with the booming and flapping of sails and shouted commands.
Hannah watched them. ‘How do they know where we’re going?’ she asked. ‘There’s no land in sight.’
James smiled. ‘There will be barely any land in sight,’ he said. ‘Not until we put in at Cape Town to take on supplies, and after that not until New South Wales.’
‘How long will it take?’
‘Hard to say,’ said James. ‘The voyage can take anything from two to seven months. It’s not the best time of year for it, so I’d say it’ll be six weeks to the Equator, another couple of weeks to get to Cape Town, and then maybe another two months to New South Wales. I don’t see us getting there before September.’
‘September?’ said Hannah. ‘But it’s only April.’
‘New South Wales is far away. I don’t know if you can get any further.’
Hannah shivered. ‘Do you think we’ll get lost?’
‘No,’ chuckled James. ‘Mr Dollard, the navigator, is one of the best. He may well look like a drunkard, but he’s following a track that none of us can see, all the way from Portsmouth to the other side of the world. Thirteen thousand miles that just look like salt water to us, but he can see the road beneath us as clear as I can see you.’
‘Parts Beyond the Seas,’ said Hannah. ‘How does he do it?’
James smiled. ‘Calculations, charts, compass,’ he said. ‘And there’s always the stars.’
‘The stars?’
‘You can navigate by the stars. If you were to come up here one night, I could show you.’ He glanced at Hannah, and she looked away, blushing.
‘So…’ she said hastily, ‘if it’s the wind that makes the ship move, doesn’t that mean that when the wind changes direction, we’re sailing the wrong way?’
James laughed. ‘It doesn’t matter which way the wind is blowing,’ he explained. ‘We can harness it to take us wherever we choose.’
‘But how do you know when it changes?’
‘See that man up there?’ James pointed to the quarterdeck, where an officer was looking up at the sails. ‘He’s watching the wind.’
‘Watching the wind?’
He nodded. ‘At every hour of every day and night, an officer watches the wind. If there is any change, he tells the mate. The mate tells a midshipman, who in turn tells the bosun. The bosun blows out the code on his pipe, and the seamen trim the sails.’
Hannah looked up again at the men, who had spread out all over the ship, to the top of the tallest mast. They looked like the acrobats she had seen at Vauxhall Gardens with her father.
‘And what about you?’ she asked. ‘What exactly is your job on this ship?’
‘I’m a lieutenant,’ he said. ‘ The lieutenant, actually.’
‘What does that mean?’ asked Hannah.
‘I make sure that Captain Gartside’s commands are carried out. He tells me what needs to happen, and I make it happen.’
Hannah was impressed. ‘So, you’re the second in charge?’
James nodded.
‘Will you be a captain, one day? Like Captain Gartside?’
‘I will never be like Captain Gartside.’ James adjusted his cuffs. ‘He may be a captain, but I’m a gentleman. I’m only here because my fool of a father wrote in his will that I had to serve for three years before I could inherit. My time will be up in a year, and then I’m off this rust-bucket and back to civilisation.’
‘Your father is dead?’ said Hannah. ‘I’m very sorry.’
‘Don’t be,’ said James, his eyes growing hard and cold. ‘He was a fool. Had all sorts of ridiculous notions about work and earning a living. He was always uncomfortable with his money.’
‘You remind me of my father,’ she said, but the memory was shadowed by the last meeting her father had had with Thomas.
‘Something wrong?’ asked James.
‘I was just thinking of my tutor. He didn’t understand either. What it means.’
‘What it means to be a person of Quality,’ said James.
Hannah nodded.
‘You don’t belong here, do you, Hannah Cheshire?’ James said softly.
‘Toad goes a-courting!’ said a crackled voice. Hannah looked up to see Tabby emerging once more from behind the foremast.
‘Fickle Toad. Mucky Toad.’ Tabby scowled at James, and levelled a piecing gaze at Hannah. ‘There is many a fair thing full false,’ she said.
The ship lurched suddenly, and Tabby went sprawling on the deck. She grunted as she tried to get up, but her old body was too brittle and frail. Her fall caught the eye of Dr Ullathorne.
James reached out a hand, but Tabby shrank from him.
‘Take him up there with his five eggs, and four of ’em rotten,’ she muttered.
James shook his head. ‘Let me help you up, grandmother.’
Tabby spat onto his hand.
‘Fickle. False. Grey and clammy is the Toad in a mucky pond.’
James went pale. ‘You will show me proper respect.’
Dr Ullathorne climbed the steps to the foredeck and made his way over to them. James met him a few paces away. Hannah couldn’t hear their conversation as she helped Tabby to her feet. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ she asked.
‘’Tis dear bought honey that is lick’d from a thorn,’ Tabby said.
The doctor came over to them and grabbed Tabby by the arm. She swore at him.
‘Disgusting vermin,’ he said. ‘You’ll have your rations suspended for the rest of the week.’
‘You can’t do that,’ said Hannah. ‘She’s old – she’ll starve. We barely get enough as it is.’
Dr Ullathorne turned his cold gaze on Hannah. ‘That is the punishment for insulting an officer.’
‘But she didn’t mean it. She’s just a bit mad.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘Rules are rules,’ he said, and dragged Tabby off by the arm.
Hannah looked up and saw James watching her. He nodded curtly, and then left for the quarterdeck where she could not follow.
thirteen
Scatterheart took the copper acorn and walked on, not bothering to thank the sawdust-woman. After a long, long time, she reached another cliff, where a woman of middling age sat. She was made of glass, and held a silver acorn. Scatterheart asked her if she knew the way to her father’s house.
***
Long Meg was drunk. Not happy-drunk, or muddled-drunk, or sleepy-drunk. She was roaring drunk. It had been raining for three days and the women were going stir-crazy. Fights broke out over the smallest slight, and the hold stank of sweat and stale vomit. The ship was being buffeted by rain above and savage ocean below, and the stuffy air did nothing to relieve the seasickness that nearly everyone was experiencing.
Long Meg lay sprawled on her bed, telling bawdy jokes, and laughing raucously. A dangerously empty glass bottle was clutched in one hand. It was after lights-out, and the women’s sleeping quarters were lit only by the odd stuttering candle. Hannah was terrified someone would hear Meg, and come down to investigate.
‘A party! A party of one,’ Long Meg squealed, waving her bottle around.
‘Shush!’ hissed Hannah. ‘Where did you get that from, anyway?’
‘Get what?’ asked Meg, pulling an innocent face, then snorting with la
ughter. ‘I don’ knows of which you speak.’
Hannah shook her head. ‘I don’t know how you managed to get so drunk in such a small amount of time.’
‘Drunk?’ slurred Long Meg. ‘I is not a bit drunk.’ She giggled. ‘I is a lot drunk. I is as drunk as a lord. No, as a emperor. Drunk as a wheelbarrow.’
She grabbed Hannah by the front of her dress and breathed boozy breath onto her.
‘Don’t do that face at me, y’ladyship.’ She belched. ‘I is as drunk as Davy’s sow.’
‘Enough,’ said Hannah. ‘You need to go to sleep.’
Long Meg shook her head. ‘No. No. I needs to tell you about Davy’s sow. You are–’ she waved a hand around, searching for the right word. ‘You are … somefing. Bonnets an’ ribbons an’ invitations. You know what I mean. High tea an’ little cakes with icing flowers. You don’ know about Davy’s sow, and I needs to tell you.’
Hannah laid a hand on Meg’s arm. ‘Maybe you could tell me in the morning.’
Long Meg shook off Hannah’s hand. ‘Now. You needs to hear it now.’ She closed her eyes for a moment, concentrating. ‘Davy was a Welshman. An’ he had a piggy. An’ a wifey. An’ the piggy, she had six piggy legs.’ Meg paused, and gave Hannah a meaningful look. ‘Six, and not a leggy less. An’ his wifey, she had two legs. An’ she was a nazy mort, much addicted to drunkenness.’ Meg giggled. ‘Like me. Excepting as she was ashamed. And I is not.’
Hannah heard the tread of officers’ shoes above their heads. ‘That’s a lovely story,’ she said hurriedly. ‘But I think that’s enough, don’t you?’
‘One day,’ continued Meg, as if Hannah had not spoken. ‘One day, the wifey got herself as drunk as day, an’ was much afeared of what her man would say. So she turned out the piggy, an’ laid herself down in the sty to sleep herself into…’ Meg had lost another word. ‘Into being not-drunk-anymore. But Davy came home, and he had a friend with him who wanted to see the piggy with all the piggy legs. ‘Look you!’ said Davy, full o’ pride an’ love for his six-legged piggy. ‘Did you ever see such another sow?’ And here, you must know that Davy was not a very clever cove, not knowin’ the difference between his wife and a piggy. So Davy’s friend, who was really quite clever, said that it was the drunkenest piggy he had ever beheld. And whence the woman was ever after called Davy’s sow.’
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