Behind the Sun

by Deborah Challinor

‘Janie Braine.’

  Even though he’d suspected it, James felt a wave of revulsion and dismay roll though him: Keegan would most definitely need to be locked up.

  ‘But why didn’t she report it?’ he asked Harrie.

  But Lil answered. ‘Would you or the captain’ve believed her? Her word against a “gentleman’s”?’ She snorted rudely. ‘Not likely.’

  James knew he really should reprimand her for being cheeky, but he just didn’t have the energy. Anyway, she was right.

  ‘She was tricked, Mr Downey.’ Very, very gently, Harrie stroked Rachel’s cold, still cheek with the back of her fingers. ‘She’s only fifteen and not really the best judge of character. She’s betrothed, to a soldier called Lucas Carew. A lieutenant. They ran off together but he had to leave her in London. She got into terrible trouble with her family for it. She was alone and she was tricked and she ended up in gaol. She’s a good girl, really. She has this great plan. She’s saving up and if he doesn’t come to New South Wales to find her first, when she’s served her sentence she’s going back to England to find him.’ Harrie looked up, tears rolling down her cheeks. ‘That’s a lot of “she’s”, isn’t it?’ She wiped her nose on her sleeve. ‘Apparently Keegan offered her paid work, laundering or the like, but she’s so naive. He just helped himself.’

  James swallowed what felt like a burning coal and looked away. ‘Was she…did you…was she hurt?’ He waved a vague hand at Rachel’s belly.

  Harrie nodded. ‘I did. She didn’t want you to. No offence intended. There was…blood. And bruising. I didn’t know what else to look for.’

  James felt himself reddening. Poor Harrie. Poor him. ‘Er, yes. Well, these things can be very difficult to, well, yes.’ Not that he was an expert, but he had encountered that previous case of forced sexual intercourse on a convict ship and one or two on emigrant transports. And, actually, several within His Majesty’s Navy, now that he thought about it.

  ‘Will she die, Mr Downey?’

  James couldn’t lie. ‘I don’t know, Harrie.’

  Josiah Holland sat at the table in the great cabin, his arms crossed protectively over his painfully bloated belly. He was suffering a severe attack of indigestion, brought on, he was sure, by the day’s unsavoury events and the distress of what he was being forced to listen to now, and wanted everyone to go away so he could dose himself with oil of peppermint and several of the charcoal wafers Downey had prepared for him. But they wouldn’t leave, arguing and demanding for all the world as though they were in command of the ship, not him.

  ‘Surely, Captain, it is clear what has to be done!’ James Downey insisted, leaning forwards and slapping the surface of the table.

  ‘Mr Downey, as I’ve already said —’ Holland began, rubbing the bridge of his nose wearily.

  ‘But he can’t be allowed to just…go about his business!’

  Holland breathed in deeply, which hurt his stomach, and sighed. ‘Look, be rational about this, Mr Downey. What you have is a girl — a convict girl, who is being transported to the colonies for seven years for improbity — who says she was assaulted by a paying passenger. In his cabin. In the middle of the night.’

  Downey almost launched himself out of his chair. ‘No, she isn’t saying it, because she can’t! She’s lying in my hospital because Keegan pushed her off the foredeck and damn near killed her!’

  Reverend Seaton, sitting opposite, said, ‘I find your language offensive, sir.’

  ‘So, who is saying it?’ Holland asked, ignoring him.

  ‘Her colleagues.’

  ‘Colleagues,’ sneered Amos Furniss, standing at the end of the table.

  The reverend threw his hands in the air, the light reflecting off the large yellow stone in the ring he wore on his right hand. ‘I find this entire situation preposterous. I interviewed Mr Keegan myself not an hour ago and he flatly denies any knowledge whatsoever of the female felon in question. In my opinion, the word of a gentleman should be more than enough to settle a simple dispute.’

  Holland held his breath as Downey responded with admirable restraint. ‘With all due respect, Reverend, this is considerably more than a simple dispute.’

  He loosened his collar — it really was getting stuffy in here — and turned to Matthew Cutler to broach the matter that bothered him most of all. ‘And you, Mr Cutler, are maintaining that there is a brothel being run aboard my ship at night?’

  ‘Yes, I am,’ Cutler replied.

  Holland, to his dismay, actually tended to believe Cutler about this — after all, it wasn’t as though there hadn’t been precedents on previous transports, though not his ships — and one or two comments he’d inadvertently overheard from the crew now made sense. He noted, however, that Silas Warren, standing near the door, looked as perturbed as he felt himself.

  ‘I even saw one of the women,’ Cutler added. ‘On deck, the night Rachel Winter was attacked.’

  Furniss sniggered knowingly and Holland’s gaze slid back to him. If there was any prostitution going on, he knew bloody well who would be at the bottom of it. He shifted in his seat, trying to ease the pain in his belly: he was in a very uncomfortable position, both physically and metaphorically.

  If he accepted the story that the convict girl — what was her name, Winter? — had been assaulted, he would have to arrest Keegan. But if the crew had been merrily paying to have sex with some of the women for God knew how many weeks, they would have little feeling for a prisoner claiming she’d been raped. Their sympathies would more likely lie with Keegan, so who could be relied upon to guard him? None of their number could be spared anyway; he was running a tight ship as it was. Neither could Keegan be kept in irons or in the brig for the next twelve weeks, or however long it took them to reach Sydney. He, Holland, could well find himself up before the judge for that; Gabriel Keegan was just the sort of well-connected toff who could bring pressure to bear to see to it.

  And there was the other matter, too, dreaded by all ships’ masters. Furniss was a thug, which was why Holland hadn’t promoted him to first mate, but he wielded a lot of power aboard the Isla and Holland knew it, though he certainly didn’t like it. Should the crew take against their master because of a decision concerning Keegan, Furniss had the ability to push them that little bit further and Holland might find himself in the quarterboat, alone, in the middle of the icy Southern Ocean.

  Holland sighed for roughly the fifth time. Furniss had said at the time that Keegan had shoved the girl, though Furniss would say anything if it suited his agenda, and God only knew what his agenda was regarding this affair. Deflecting attention from himself, probably. Hester Seaton was adamant about not seeing what had happened on the foredeck, though Holland couldn’t understand how she hadn’t: she and her daughters had evidently been standing right beside Keegan and the girl. James Downey and Cutler had been farther away, up near the head rail, and said it had looked like he’d pushed her, though he’d had his back to them, and that it was true she had attacked him first. They weren’t prepared, however, to swear he’d shoved her off the foredeck deliberately, though clearly they strongly suspected he had — in an effort to stop her accusing him of rape, they were insisting. There was no doubt they had very much taken against him.

  So what was he to do? Whatever decision he made he would be damned by one party or another. The Isla, however, was his ship; his sole objective was to sail her to Sydney and back to England again. And he could feel, even without looking, Furniss’s malevolent stare burning into the side of his head like the sun through a magnifying glass, daring him to chance his luck.

  Deeply aggravated by the position in which he now found himself, he sat up straighter in his chair and glared at the men assembled before him.

  ‘Until the injured prisoner can speak for herself, Mr Keegan will remain at liberty.’ He lifted his hand in warning as James Downey rose out of his seat yet again. ‘No. I am in command of this ship, Mr Downey, and I will brook no argument. Mr Warren, please have Mr Trent c
hange the lock on the prison hatch this afternoon, then bring all of the keys to me.’ Stifling a painful, acid-laced burp, he added, ‘Now, will you please all leave. I have work to do.’

  Sitting alone minutes later, sagging with relief as the draught of bicarbonate of sodium in peppermint oil made its way down his tortured oesophagus, it occurred to him to wonder: if his crew had been buying sex from the prisoners, what had they been using for money? They probably had a little with them, but they didn’t get paid until they arrived in Sydney. He must check the claret, port, brandy and whisky shipments in the hold.

  Rachel had been in a coma for three days, suffering, Mr Downey said he suspected, from something called a cerebral haemorrhage. Harrie had washed most of the blood out of her hair, carefully avoiding the stitches, given her a sponge bath and put her into a clean shift. She lay now in one of the hospital beds, tucked up under several blankets: Mr Downey said it was important to keep her warm as she couldn’t generate her own heat because she wasn’t moving. She peed where she lay and every time she did Harrie changed everything all over again, giving the soiled things to Sarah and Friday to wash. It rained on the second day and nothing would dry and they soon ran out, but Janie and Sally Minto, and some of Sally’s and Lil’s friends, lent their things, and there was enough.

  But today, and it was the middle of the afternoon now, Rachel hadn’t peed once. Harrie and Lil had tried to make her drink, first a little broth and then just water, but it hadn’t worked. The liquid had gone in but had either dribbled out the side of her mouth or she’d choked. So they’d stopped trying. She had coughed, though, and Mr Downey said that was a good sign.

  But Harrie wasn’t so sure about that; she wondered if it wasn’t more of a natural sort of thing to do, to cough if you were choking. She was also starting to suspect that Mr Downey was just declaring things to be a good sign to make them feel better. If he was, it wasn’t working.

  They hadn’t said it out loud, not even among themselves, but they thought she was going to die. Her face was as white as rice flour, except for her lips, which had gone a faint lilac colour, and her arms and legs seemed boneless. And her breath was awful, worse even than Newgate Gaol breath. She had talked, though. Yesterday afternoon she had mumbled ‘magpies four a berth’, and, late last night, something that had sounded like ‘devil’s own’ something. Friday said she must be talking about Keegan, but it hadn’t really sounded as though there’d been anything behind the words: her mouth was just saying random things.

  Harrie fussed about straightening Rachel’s blankets, then kissed her cold cheek and moved to the next bed to check on Evie Challis. Evie was enormously pregnant, due to give birth in three weeks or so, but had been ‘showing’ for the past week, and so prescribed bed rest. Evie was delighted, as she’d worked as a laundress right up until the day she’d given birth with her last two and felt as though she were being treated like a queen this time round, especially as someone else was looking after the next littlest one on the prison deck. Her elder child had been left behind in England as she was eight and too old to be allowed to be transported with her mother.

  ‘All right, Evie?’ Harrie asked.

  ‘I think so.’ Evie awkwardly manoeuvred herself onto her side like a cast cow. She began to cough, a dry rattle that had worsened during the voyage.

  ‘I’ll just check, will I?’

  Evie flipped open the sheet and Harrie ducked her head and pulled back the folds of cheesecloth between Evie’s legs. They were stained with blood, but not a lot of it. She would tell Mr Downey when he came in next, but she didn’t think the bleeding was getting any heavier.

  She popped the cloths back into place. ‘Do you need anything?’

  ‘Some oysters would be nice. Or winkles’d do. And mebbe a muffin or a crumpet? Toasted, mind.’

  Harrie laughed. Poor Evie missed the food of London’s street-sellers desperately. Perhaps her appetite would return to normal after her baby arrived.

  ‘Evie Challis, you’d be completely round if you ate everything you fancied,’ Lil said, then swore ripely as she dropped one of Mr Downey’s leech jars.

  Harrie rushed over to help her. ‘Oh no, Lil, we’re not supposed to touch those.’

  ‘I was only giving it a wipe.’

  ‘Quick, take the lids off the other two jars.’

  Six or seven leeches were making a break for freedom, squirming their way blindly across the deck boards. Harrie snatched up a pair of tweezers, gingerly picked them up one by one from the wreckage and dropped them into the jars.

  ‘Harrie?’

  ‘Hold on, Evie,’ Harrie said over her shoulder as she grappled with the last furiously writhing escapee.

  ‘I never said that,’ Evie said. ‘She did.’

  Harrie and Lil, crouched on the floor, skirts clamped tightly around their ankles, looked at each other, then slowly stood.

  Rachel was sitting up, watching them. She licked her dry lips.

  ‘Harrie, my head hurts.’

  ‘Bella wants to talk to you.’

  Harrie jumped. Concentrating on her sewing, she hadn’t noticed anyone creeping up on her. It was Lucy whatever-her-name-was, one of Bella Jackson’s girls.

  ‘Me? She wants to talk to me?’

  Lucy nodded.

  Harrie hesitated. What on earth could Bella Jackson want with her? She didn’t want to speak to Bella, especially not by herself. She had done them all a kindness by announcing Liz Parker’s perfidy, but that didn’t mean Harrie felt comfortable at the thought of being alone with her. Friday and Sarah had gone up on deck — perhaps she could wait for them to come back. It was annoying, too, as she’d been up with Rachel in the hospital half the night, and this was the first bit of time she’d had to herself since yesterday. She had made Janie’s baby a gown from a piece of white lawn from Mrs Fry’s scraps donation, and now that Rosie had been born she was embroidering a rose on the bodice. Over the past few weeks she’d amassed enough different-coloured thread to make up a really pretty pattern and she was hoping to finish it today.

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Yes, now.’

  ‘About what?’

  Lucy shrugged. ‘I dunno, do I?’

  Harrie sighed, put down her sewing and followed Lucy along the aisle to Bella’s compartment. Lucy stuck her head behind the curtain for a moment, said something, then pulled it aside, revealing Bella sitting on the bunk.

  ‘Good morning, Harrie,’ Bella said pleasantly. She patted the blanket beside her. ‘Please, do sit down.’

  Harrie perched gingerly on the very end of the bunk. Bella was wearing a velvet turban and an embroidered satin robe, the value of which Harrie placed at roughly two years of the salary paid her by Mrs Lynch. The skin of her face was dusted quite heavily with rice powder and there was rouge on her cheeks and lips.

  Bella said, ‘I won’t bite, you know.’

  Harrie wasn’t so sure about that. She waited in silence for Bella to get to the point.

  ‘I’m told you’re doing a sterling job in the hospital.’

  Harrie blinked. She didn’t know what she’d been expecting, but it hadn’t been this.

  ‘He must hold you in quite high regard.’

  ‘Mr Downey, you mean?’

  Bella nodded.

  Harrie said, ‘I suppose. Well, I’m not sure. He’s happy for us to look after the patients when he’s not there.’

  ‘So he trusts you.’

  ‘Well, he must do.’

  ‘What else does he trust you with?’

  For the first time, Harrie really noticed Bella’s very pale skin, the exaggerated blackness of her eyes and the jutting collarbones beneath the scarf she wore at her throat. And, with a dismayed little jolt, she realised that Bella Jackson quite possibly had an intemperance of some sort. For the poppy, perhaps?

  ‘Oh, no, I’m sorry, I can’t get you anything from the hospital. If you need…something, you’ll have to see Mr Downey yourself.’

  Bella laughed.
Harrie noticed she had several teeth missing from her upper jaw at the back. ‘Oh dearie me no, I’m not asking you to procure for me, Harrie.’

  ‘Well, what do you want?’ Harrie said. This was starting to get annoying.

  ‘I want to borrow something.’

  Harrie stared at her. ‘Borrow what?’

  ‘The use of a key.’

  ‘What key?’ Harrie bit her lip: she was sounding like a parrot.

  All traces of conviviality disappeared from Bella’s face. ‘The key to the door between the hospital and the prison.’

  ‘But…what for?’

  ‘Thanks to the trouble your little friend has caused, there is now a new lock on the prison hatch, my girls can’t get out at night and my business is suffering.’ Bella’s voice became harsh. ‘You and your witless crew owe me a debt. You make sure that door is open every night so my business can continue and I’ll consider the debt paid.’

  Friday whipped aside the curtain, almost giving Harrie a heart attack. ‘And if she doesn’t?’

  Bella also jumped. She hissed a curse, her fists clenched. ‘Then I promise you, you’ll be watching your backs for the rest of your lives.’

  Friday smiled coldly. ‘There’re four of us, Bella: we can do that. Who’ll be watching yours? Let’s go, Harrie, there’s a terrible smell in here. Could it be, yes, it is, it’s the stink of…betrayal. I need some fresh air.’

  ‘You’re cutting off your freckle-beshatted nose to spite your face, Woolfe,’ Bella spat after them. ‘You can’t work either!’

  ‘No, but I don’t really care.’

  ‘You’ll pay for this!’

  Friday whirled around, her face contorted with fury. ‘And if you’ve done what I think you’ve done, you’ll fucking pay as well.’

  Bella smirked, suddenly in control again. ‘I’m afraid I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘You’re a dead woman, Bella Jackson, if I can prove it. And I will.’

  Reaching for her cigarillo case, Bella shrugged. ‘Go on, then. Except your little friend is in the hospital, isn’t she? With half her brains missing? I’ve heard she can barely even remember her name.’