Scatterheart

by Lili Wilkinson

  She crawled away on her hands and knees, keeping her eyes tightly closed to stop the spinning. She bumped into someone, who hauled her to her feet.

  She looked up and found herself staring up at Davy Jones, his head still cowled and his face still obscured. A cigar burned red in his mouth – the burning eye she had seen before, and gave off long plumes of blue smoke. He reached up and took the cigar out of his mouth and grinned at her. Hannah could make out a flash of teeth, stained with black saliva.

  Molly was standing behind him, her face a blank mask of terror.

  ‘Dr Fell,’ she whimpered.

  Hannah grabbed her hand, and they ran to the ladder that led to the lower deck, and clambered hastily down. They ran down the low-beamed wooden corridors until they reached James’s cabin.

  The door was shut, and Hannah stood outside staring at it, panting. She didn’t want to open it, for fear of what she might find inside.

  Molly squeezed her hand. Hannah reached out, turned the handle, and pushed the door open.

  There was no one in the cabin. A shirt and a pair of breeches were neatly folded on the bed. Hannah closed her eyes for a moment. Then she looked at Molly.

  ‘We have to go down and check,’ she said.

  Molly shook her head violently. ‘I won’t go back,’ she said.

  Hannah nodded. ‘Then you go back to your bed and I’ll meet you there soon. Be careful on your way back.’

  Hannah took a deep breath, and made her way down the stairs to Dr Ullathorne’s surgery.

  When she found Long Meg, all feeling seemed to drain out of her.

  She felt she should cry, or feel sick, or angry, or something. But she felt numb.

  Meg’s naked body was stretched out on the operating table, pale and lifeless. For a moment, Hannah stared at it, feeling only a vague fascination at Meg’s full, soft breasts, and the tangle of dark hair between her legs.

  Then she thought of James. If there’s one thing I can say for sure, it’s that Lieutenant James Belforte is no gentleman.

  Meg’s head was rolled to one side, her eyes staring unseeingly at the wall. The twin slashes on her cheeks had been joined by dozens of others, all over her white, cold body. Her hands lay limply at her sides. Her legs were turned slightly inwards, so her big toes touched. Black marks encircled her neck. Hannah thought of Dr Ullathorne’s long white fingers. She thought of James’s soft hands, his perfect white crescent-moon fingernails.

  She stepped forward and ran her hands gently over Meg’s stubbly head. She touched her grey lips, and closed her sightless eyes. She felt as if she should say something. But she was empty. It was like someone had dug out all her insides, and left her as an empty shell, or a china doll.

  nineteen

  Scatterheart wandered through the hot, baking sands of the desert, until she collapsed, dizzy and weary.

  ***

  Two days after crossing the equator, and after three months at sea, the Derby Ram hit the doldrums.

  The ship slowed to a crawl, and then stopped. There was no wind in this part of the ocean. Little breaths of air came from all directions, but they took the ship nowhere. The ship’s crew sat around, hot and useless, waiting for a breeze that they could harness.

  It was hot, hotter than Hannah had ever imagined. The heat pressed down on the ship like a damp woollen blanket, crushing and pounding and scorching. Faces turned red and raw. Lips cracked and blistered. The officers discarded their heavy woollen jackets and went around in shirtsleeves. The sailors who usually went shirtless and shoeless covered their backs and feet to protect them from the relentless sun.

  The sails were slackened and hung limply from the masts. Little wavelets slapped against the hull, making the ship rock in a way that was sickening instead of bounding and rhythmic.

  Hannah’s stomach churned, and she cowered in her bed, racked with nausea. Her appetite left her, and any attempt to eat made her stomach clench in agony, as it twisted and heaved to expel the food.

  Molly had taken to sleeping in Long Meg’s bed. Every morning she would take out Long Meg’s spoon and scratch another notch into the wood above the bed, then lie back down and watch Hannah, waiting for her to say something.

  ‘Why won’t you talk about Long Meg?’ she asked one morning.

  Hannah ignored her. She couldn’t talk about her. If she spoke Meg’s name, she knew that the numbness that had settled over her would vanish, and she would break in two. Molly’s good eye was wide and bewildered.

  ‘How come no one else is missing her?’

  Hannah said nothing. Molly sighed, and wandered over to one of the bunks where Cathy was playing a half-hearted game of rummy with a sour-looking redhead called Patty, and Susan, a lumpy woman with a hare-lip.

  ‘Don’t you miss Long Meg?’ Hannah heard her say.

  Cathy turned to Molly.

  ‘Shut your mouth,’ she said, her eyes narrowing. ‘She ain’t comin’ back.’

  Molly frowned, the white shiny skin on her forehead crinkling like paper. ‘I know that,’ she said. ‘But why aren’t we talking about her? Remembering her?’

  Patty scowled and put down her cards. ‘So we don’ end up like ’er.’

  Hannah remembered how, early in the voyage, Long Meg had baited the officers. She would go running up to one, her face frozen in terror.

  ‘Oh sir! Sir!’ she would cry. ‘Sir, help me! There be sommit followin’ me! Sommit large and white! It is always behind me, wherever I goes!’

  The officer would roll his eyes. ‘What is it, Meg?’

  Meg would suddenly drop her look of terror. ‘It’s my arse,’ she’d say, and roar with laughter.

  Hannah didn’t speak to another soul for over a week.

  The few times she left her bed to receive her meagre ration of water, she kept her head down, hoping that she wouldn’t see James. She couldn’t think about him. The image of his beautiful face, the feel of his soft hands, the cultured sound of his voice. These things were so far away from the image of Long Meg lying cold and still in Dr Ullathorne’s surgery.

  Surely James hadn’t had anything to do with it. Surely. He was a gentleman.

  But then she remembered James, laughing and wearing Meg’s pelisse, his cheeks and neck flushed red from drink.

  Hannah remembered her father bringing that pelisse home. It had come in a white box, wrapped in pale pink tissue paper, scented with rosewater.

  After a week, the water rations dwindled to barely a trickle. Hannah’s mouth became dry and tasted foul. Her tongue felt swollen and her gums ached. Sweat poured from her body every time she moved.

  Everything was damp, and a layer of white mould crept over everything – fabric, leather, food. The metal bowls and spoons rusted, and after ten days, the men all sported beards as their razors became useless.

  The ship floated limply in the stagnant water. A pool of effluent spread out around the ship, and the air hung thick with the smell of sewage, rotten food and damp. Strange milky-green seaweed grew everywhere, feeding on the filth in the water and growing larger, climbing up the hull of the ship.

  The orlop deck was putrid. Filth seeped in from the water outside through cracks in the ship’s hold, which had bulged awkwardly from the heat. The stomach-curdling smell of rotten flesh and blood suffused everything.

  Hannah’s knees and wrists ached constantly, and she developed black and blue marks on her skin. Sally told her that it was scurvy, and that she should see Dr Ullathorne, but Hannah weakly shook her head.

  Molten tar dripped from the seams of the deck above, down onto the convict women. Hannah’s face and arms became spotted with black burns.

  After Molly had scratched fifteen notches in the wood above Long Meg’s bed, James came down to see her.

  She turned away from him, but he put a gentle hand on her shoulder. A small part of her was glad he had come. She wondered why he hadn’t come earlier.

  ‘Hannah,’ he said. ‘Let me help you. You could die.’

&n
bsp; She was too weak to protest. He helped her to her feet, and half-carried her up the stairs and onto the upper deck. He still smelled of violets and sandalwood, even though everything else smelled of rotting food and effluent.

  Once outside, Hannah was temporarily blinded by the sun’s glare on the sea. Pitch was boiling on the scorching bare boards of the deck.

  James carefully tied some scraps of fabric around Hannah’s feet so they would not burn on the roasting wood. He led her under a makeshift canvas awning, and sat her down.

  Unlike all the other men on the ship, James was still clean-shaven. He held out a tin mug.

  ‘Here,’ he said. ‘This will help.’

  Hannah’s thirst was unbearable. She took the mug and took an eager sip. She immediately spat it out again. The liquid sizzled on the deck. It burned her gums and tongue.

  ‘It’s vinegar,’ said James. ‘It will make you better.’

  Hannah looked at the deck where she had spat the vinegar. It was red with blood from her mouth. Her gums felt spongy. She ran her swollen tongue over her teeth and something came loose. She spat again, and a white tooth hit the deck. It was followed by a long trail of bloody saliva which hung from Hannah’s lower lip.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw James wince. She closed her eyes in shame.

  ‘Drink the vinegar, Hannah,’ he said. ‘Please.’

  She lifted the cup to her lips and drank. The vinegar burned and stung, and her throat tried to close to stop her swallowing. She dropped the cup and bent over, retching. James pulled her hair back, and stroked her forehead. ‘There, there,’ he said. ‘You’ll be all right now. I’ll look after you.’

  Hannah dimly remembered the look on his face as he had whirled her around at the crossing of the line. She gingerly ran her tongue over her swollen gums. There was a gap between two of her upper teeth, on the left-hand side. She looked at the white tooth on the deck, surrounded by blood and saliva that was already drying in the heat.

  ‘You lied to me,’ she said, her voice hoarse and cracking. ‘About Long Meg.’

  ‘I did,’ said James. ‘I’m sorry. I tried to save her, but she was dead by the time I got there. There was nothing I could do. I didn’t want to tell you … I didn’t want to upset you.’

  He gently took her hand in his. ‘I’d never do anything to hurt you, Hannah.’

  Hannah blinked. The harsh brightness of the sun made her eyes ache. She felt the vinegar sloshing around in her empty stomach.

  ‘You knew,’ she coughed. ‘You knew I’d find out before long. Everybody knows.’

  James stroked her hand with his thumb. ‘They think she died of an infection. It’s better that way.’

  The heat beat down hard. She felt claustrophobic, like it was crushing her beneath its terrible weight.

  ‘Dr Ullathorne…’ she started.

  James sighed. ‘What he did was wrong,’ he said. ‘But we need him, Hannah. He is the ship’s surgeon. There are more than sixty people in the infirmary at the moment: convicts, sailors and officers. We won’t survive this voyage without him.’

  Hannah licked her lips, trying to moisten them.

  ‘Hannah,’ said James, then stopped. He squeezed her hand. ‘I want to take care of you.’

  ‘Why?’ said Hannah. ‘Why do you want to take care of me?’

  ‘Because I love you.’

  Hannah wondered if someone who could be so cruel, who did what James did to Long Meg, could really love. What had she done to make him feel like this about her?

  ‘Why?’ she said. ‘Why do you love me?’

  ‘I know who you are, Hannah,’ he said. ‘I know who your father was.’

  Hannah frowned. ‘He was a scoundrel,’ she said.

  ‘He was Quality,’ said James. He squeezed her hand. ‘I know I can make you happy.’

  Hannah’s head swam as she remembered Thomas Behr saying exactly those words to her. It seemed like another life.

  Her heart began to ache, and she felt the numbness slip away. Misery welled up inside her. She clamped down on it, trying to hold onto the deadness that had blanketed her emotions for the past few days.

  ‘Please, Hannah,’ said James. ‘Come up to my cabin. I’ll look after you when we get to New South Wales. I’ll marry you. We can go back to London and I’ll buy us a house in Mayfair with forty servants and six carriages.’

  Hannah stayed completely still. A rumble sounded from overhead. She opened her eyes, and looked at James. His uniform was crisp and unrumpled. There was no sheen of sweat on his brow. He was like an angel, floating above the ship while rest of them sweated and burned and festered.

  She thought about Thomas Behr, and the way his shirtsleeves were always too short for his long arms. She thought about the great white bear, and a shadow passed over James’s face, as if he could read her mind.

  She knew he was lying about Long Meg.

  He was just like her father. Hannah remembered how outraged Thomas Behr had been when Hannah told him that Arthur Cheshire had fired a serving maid because she made his cup rattle in its saucer. Hannah hadn’t understood why Thomas was so upset. Now she knew.

  Her father hadn’t cared about her. He’d loved her, but it wasn’t the same thing. James didn’t care about her either, but he would do anything to make her stay with him, even if it meant murdering every other convict on the ship.

  Hannah had thought that James was a gentleman, like her father. A man of Quality. Long Meg had been right. James was not a gentleman, and not just because his father sold buttons.

  But what choice did she have? James could offer her comfort and security. Otherwise, where would she end up? A servant in Sydney Town? Working in the factory? Hannah shuddered. James would look after her. Hannah bit her lip, and inside she apologised to Long Meg, and begged her forgiveness. Everything was going dark, like a curtain had been drawn over the sun.

  She took a breath.

  The sky opened up and hurled down water, so much that for a moment Hannah couldn’t tell where the sea finished and the rain started. The tropical downpour was warm and made Hannah’s dress cling to her body uncomfortably. The deck hissed and spat as the water hit it.

  ‘Belforte!’ called out a voice.

  Hannah looked up and saw Captain Gartside, shirtless, with his hair hanging around his face in wet clumps. His face was cracked and red, his nose peeling. Water ran off his face in rivulets.

  In a moment, sir,’ said James, not turning away from Hannah.

  ‘Not in a moment, sir, now!’ yelled Captain Gartside. ‘The staghorn!’

  James paused, looking at Hannah, then climbed to his feet and ran off into the rain.

  The rain lasted for only a minute, and before long the baking sun had steamed away any water, and the deck was once more like a furnace.

  James was still on the quarterdeck, giving orders to scurrying sailors. He still looked perfect, like the rain hadn’t touched him. Captain Gartside was down on his knees, bracing himself against the main mast, hauling on a piece of rope. Sweat poured from his forehead.

  Hannah sighed. She should wait for James. He would take her to his cabin and bring her water and real food. But the rain had washed something away from Hannah. Perhaps she deserved to be a servant in Sydney Town, or a factory girl.

  Everything suddenly seemed too hard, too much. She didn’t want to speak to James. She didn’t want to think about Long Meg, or make any decisions. She just wanted to curl up on her bed and sleep. She wanted to sleep forever.

  twenty

  As Scatterheart lay on the sands of the desert, she thought longingly of the ice-garden and the white bear. She opened her eyes and was surprised to find herself in a lush green valley. She looked around and saw a castle before her. Scatterheart cried out with joy – it was the white bear’s castle!

  ***

  Hannah crawled back to her bed and collapsed there. The well of misery inside her overflowed, and hot tears appeared in her eyes. Everything was wrong. It had al
l turned out wrong.

  She felt as if she were lying in hot soup. The air was thick with humidity and sweat. She lay on her back, staring into blackness. Her clothes were damp against her skin, and every part of her was hot and itchy. She tried to fan her face with her hand, but the air was so sluggish that it barely moved. She closed her eyes, hoping for sleep, but all she could see when she closed them were faces.

  Her father’s face, almost purple with fear.

  Thomas’s face as she had slammed the door.

  Molly’s one eye wide with terror as the doctor stood over her.

  Long Meg’s face, white and cold and empty as stone.

  James’s drunken face, laughing and dancing in Long Meg’s dress while she lay dead in the infirmary.

  She longed to turn her head and see Long Meg lying on her bunk. She would scratch the louse-bites on her stubbly head.

  ‘The light troops are in full march,’ she would say, looking over at Hannah.

  Hannah sighed.

  ‘What’s wrong with you, Missy Lollpoop?’ Long Meg asked.

  Hannah’s eyes ached, but she had no more tears. ‘I miss you,’ she said.

  Meg rolled her eyes. ‘You must be Josephus Rex.’

  Hannah came to with a start. Had she been asleep? Something was different. She felt alert and awake, more so than she had felt for many days. Was she dreaming? She put out a hand and felt the reassuring rough wood of the ship’s hull.

  Something stirred.

  For the briefest moment, Hannah felt the air around her move. She held her breath. The faintest breeze, a touch of cool on her brow. She clambered out of her bed and put out a hand to steady herself. She felt her way along the rough timbers, taking tentative steps in the blackness. When she reached the stairs that led to the upper decks she felt it again. A whisper of air tickling her cheek. She grasped the rail and pulled herself up.

  The lower deck was silent. None of the sailors stirred. Hannah wondered if everyone else on the ship had died. She climbed onto the upper deck, and caught her breath.

  The ship was covered in ice.