Behind the Sun

by Deborah Challinor

  There was silence at that.

  James continued, unable to stop himself from adding a little gloss to the prognosis, from offering a measure of hope. ‘Will it get worse? We will have to wait and see. As I said, I’m not an expert in these matters. But in my experience, most patients would have died after such a horrific injury. However, Rachel did not, so I don’t know what to tell you. I did once see a case where the patient recovered from a dreadful head injury — in fact he lived the rest of his life with the shaft of a whaling spear embedded in his skull — with no ill effects whatsoever, but that would be the exception to the rule. And Rachel could prove to be another exception. When we reach New South Wales, ideally she should be seen by a physician better qualified than I am to give a prognosis.’

  ‘Well, that’s not going to happen, is it?’ Friday said.

  James saw the distress etched on the handsome planes of the freckled face. He wanted to offer his sympathies, for Rachel and for their collective predicament as her unofficial guardians, but expected they probably would be rebuffed.

  ‘It’s unlikely,’ he agreed.

  ‘So, what else can you do for her?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘I can certainly make her comfortable. More laudanum for the headaches, of course, soporifics to help her sleep.’

  Friday sighed and pushed her hair back off her face. ‘Christ, who’s going to look after her when we get to Sydney? We’ll all be assigned, won’t we?’

  Sarah glared at her. ‘You’re making it sound as though she’ll be an invalid.’

  ‘Well, she will,’ Friday snapped. ‘Won’t she?’ she demanded of James.

  ‘There’s no need to regard her as such at present, but if she continues to deteriorate, I’m afraid she could be. She certainly won’t be considered fit for assignment as a servant, not even in her current state. There is, however, a hospital at the Female Factory at Parramatta, where you will all go when you first arrive.’

  ‘The thing is,’ Harrie said in a very small voice, ‘it might not just be her.’

  They all looked at her.

  Harrie flushed. ‘Last month she didn’t get her, well, you know, and I thought nothing of it because she said she isn’t always regular, then she missed again this week. And now I’m wondering…’

  Sarah, an appalled expression on her face, counted off on her fingers. ‘Not Lucas then, she’d be out here if it was him. Shit. Are you sure?’

  James watched the exchange with growing dismay.

  ‘No, I’m not,’ Harrie said. ‘She might just have missed because of the shock of everything. You know how it is sometimes.’

  ‘But if she is,’ Friday said, her brow furrowed as she worked it out, ‘and it’s his, she’d only be, what, nearly six weeks? She’ll have to get rid of it.’

  Harrie gasped.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Sarah said. ‘There’s still time.’ She shot a look at James.

  He stared stiffly ahead, refusing to acknowledge he’d heard what she’d said.

  ‘No!’ Harrie exclaimed, her face a picture of despair. ‘It’s a child!’

  ‘It is not, it’s a hideous mistake,’ Friday said matter-of-factly. ‘Be reasonable, Harrie.’

  James couldn’t keep silent any longer. ‘Excuse me, please. Has anyone talked to Rachel about this? Surely she must know what’s going on with her own body. She may not be…in a predicament at all. Harrie, have you actually asked her directly?’

  ‘No, I just noticed she didn’t need any new cloths. I didn’t like to, just in case —’

  ‘She is knapped,’ Sarah finished angrily. ‘For God’s sake, Harrie. Pretending it isn’t happening won’t make it go away.’

  ‘But what if she isn’t?’ Harrie protested. ‘Mentioning it would just bring it all back again.’

  Friday frowned. ‘Would it? Everything to do with Keegan seems to have fallen right out of her head. The rape, him pushing her off the deck, everything.’ And any part Bella might have played as well, so now Friday would never be able to prove it. ‘Is that possible, forgetting like that?’ she asked James.

  ‘Quite possible. A head injury of such magnitude can have a catastrophic effect on memory. You know,’ James ventured, ‘it might have been a good idea if you had raised the matter of pregnancy with her, Harrie.’

  Sarah turned on him. ‘You keep out of this. It’s got nothing to do with you. And don’t criticise Harrie, she’s doing her best. She always does her best.’

  James stared at her coolly. ‘May I remind you again that you are speaking to an officer of the Crown. Rachel Winter is one of my patients. She has a grave medical condition and this latest development may have a serious bearing on her welfare. May I also remind you that you approached me for advice. Please do me the courtesy of at least listening to it.’

  There was an awkward silence, shattered after several seconds by a hoot of laughter from Friday.

  ‘That’s telling you, Sarah!’

  Sarah continued to glare at him.

  Then Harrie did what James had observed she did far too often — she apologised. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Downey, we didn’t mean to be rude.’

  Indulging in a somewhat childish game and refusing to drop his gaze first, he looked at Sarah properly and saw not just anger in her eyes but pain and a great deal of frustration. It occurred to him she must also be capable of considerable compassion, to attract friends the calibre of Harrie, and yes, even boisterous Friday Woolfe and fey little Rachel. He decided to take a risk.

  ‘I understand that Rachel’s state of health, and now this new potential complication, are very worrying, Sarah, but what is really upsetting you?’

  Sarah regarded him for so long he thought she wasn’t going to answer. She looked down, picked at her thumbnail, then said at last, ‘It’s that bloody Keegan. You know what he did, don’t you? What he really did?’

  James was aware he was suddenly on trial. ‘I know that he beat and sexually violated Rachel Winter, then caused her grievous harm by, I strongly suspect, deliberately pushing her off the foredeck.’

  ‘So you do believe she was raped?’

  ‘I do.’

  Sarah’s eyes flashed with outrage. ‘So why is he being allowed to get away with it? Rape is a capital offence.’

  The short answer to that, James thought, is Josiah Holland doesn’t want his crew to mutiny. ‘I can’t answer that, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Can’t or won’t?’ Sarah demanded.

  ‘Can’t, because it isn’t my decision. Or jurisdiction. Captain Holland is master of this ship, not me.’

  ‘Sounds like a pile of shite to me.’

  ‘I’m sure it does,’ James said. ‘But Gabriel Keegan isn’t exactly walking free. Have you seen him up on deck lately? He has voluntarily spent the last six weeks in his cabin.’

  The girls looked at each other. Keegan had indeed become a pariah, shunned most notably by Matthew Cutler though also by the Seatons, who the surgeon suspected of distancing themselves out of fear for their own reputations. James knew Keegan was sitting in his quarters, drinking himself senseless, seeing only James himself, who visited dutifully once a week, and the deeply unpleasant Amos Furniss, with whom Keegan seemed to have struck up a friendship. Keegan no longer attended the weekly dinners in the great cabin, rarely mixed with the crew and had only appeared on the foredeck once since the day he had pushed Rachel Winter. He might as well be locked in solitary for all the difference it would make to his life aboard the Isla. All the while he continued to profess his innocence in the matter of the rape and the assault. James, however, had stopped listening to him, sickened by the man’s selfish arrogance.

  Sarah snorted. ‘So? And then what? We’ll get to New South Wales and he’ll just step off the ship and walk away!’

  ‘Not necessarily. I will be submitting my report to the appropriate authorities.’

  ‘Will Captain Holland?’ Harrie asked.

  ‘That will be up to him,’ James replied.

  But he doubted
it. And he doubted the British government would act upon anything he put in his report concerning an assault on a convict woman by a civilian, especially a civilian whose father had such illustrious connections as did Gabriel Keegan’s. He would, however, try.

  ‘In the meantime,’ he added, ‘I really do suggest you talk to Rachel about her condition as soon as possible.’

  But Rachel didn’t want to talk about it. It was a secret and she wasn’t going to share it. At least, not yet.

  It was a lot colder now they were sailing through the Southern Ocean. She wore her boots every day, with lovely stockings Harrie had knitted from some of Mrs Fry’s wool. They were made up of different colours and a bit scratchy, but that didn’t matter because they were nice and warm and went right up over her knees and Harrie had made them for her especially.

  Her head hurt a lot these days. It had been sore on and off before her accident, but, Lord, it was a lot sorer now. It was a funny thing but she couldn’t really remember the accident, or what had come before or after it, not for quite a while in either direction. The last thing she could remember clearly was dancing on the deck at dusk, and then one day she woke up in the hospital with the most enormous headache and a line of prickly stitches across her skull. But when she tried to think about the bit in the middle, all she got was a nothingness, as though that part of her life were a page in a book with a big hole burnt in it. If she thought about it hard enough she could even see the scorch marks around the edges, but perhaps she was imagining those.

  After she’d woken up Harrie had asked her over and over about what she could remember and she’d answered nothing, which had been the truth. Why was she in the hospital? And Harrie had said she’d had a bad fall and split her head open. But when she was well enough to go back to the prison deck — and that had taken nearly two weeks because she’d been quite barmy there for a while and couldn’t even hold her own spoon — Liz Parker had come up to her and called her Gabriel Keegan’s whore. And Friday and Sarah this time had given the mean old cow a real beating and there had nearly been a riot by the time Liz’s girls had got involved.

  And then Harrie had sat her down and held her hands and told her she might not realise it but Gabriel Keegan had done something really nasty to her, and told her what. Harrie had been crying but she, Rachel, had just been confused. She didn’t remember anything at all happening like Harrie said Keegan had done — and if it really had happened, she was pretty sure it would have stuck in her mind. So as far as she was concerned, it hadn’t. And that was that. Forever. Lucas would understand about her falling off the foredeck, but he’d be very upset by anything else.

  The others — Friday, Sarah and Harrie — were treating her as though she were poorly. She didn’t know why. Yes, she had the fits, and once they’d passed she could only very vaguely recall anything about them, but she wasn’t what she would call ill. She knew it wasn’t very pleasant for them, because they told her what a roaring little witch she’d been, but it wasn’t really her fault. Was it? It felt as though something bad took possession of her body so that there was only a tiny bit of her real self left — not enough to tell the bad thing to go away. And then she would sleep for a while and the bad thing would go away and she would be all right again. But she wasn’t poorly. Except for the headaches.

  They always started at the back of her head, not where her scar was but on the right, halfway up her skull, just above the knobbly bit. First would come a pinprick, not even of pain, just a little shaft of sensation telling her a headache was coming. Then, within the hour, it would flare into a burning mass and burrow into her brain with teeth of shattered glass and claws of fire, gouging out a hollow where it would settle and throb like a new heart for more than a day and a night. Sometimes the pain would get so bad she would take a needle and push it into the meaty pad at the base of her thumb, just to cause herself more hurt to distract herself from her sore head. Now, though, she could have Mr Downey’s special medicine whenever she wanted it and what a difference it made! The headaches hadn’t gone away, but now she could sleep through them. It was a blessing.

  It meant she felt more rested and less worried about being a drain on poor Harrie and the others, and she could do her chores again, which she really quite liked, except for cleaning the water closets. Though Mr Downey said she wasn’t allowed to go near the ship’s rails. Under any circumstances.

  She liked being up on deck, wrapped in her jacket and snug in her boots, though the wind did make her ears sing and the cold went straight though her. Yesterday there had been whales again, great gleaming beasts with backs the colour of thunderclouds, and darting porpoises, and a high, wheeling albatross that made the sailors curse. She liked the porpoises, in particular the way they seemed to laugh up at her when they leapt out of the waves, as if to say, we know your secret, yes we do.

  She was expecting Lucas’s baby. It was only very tiny, nestled there all warm inside her tummy, but she knew. She’d missed two courses now and felt squiffy in the mornings though she hadn’t actually spewed up, and her bubbies were sore, and she knew. Lucas was going to be so pleased with her and she could just see the smile of happiness on his beautiful, handsome face. He said he wanted lots of babies, boys and girls. It might even be born by the time he came for her, and together they would go back to England, a perfect little family, and start again.

  Harrie was going on at her, though. And Friday and Sarah. Asking her if she’d been on the rag yet, did she feel sick, on and on as though her expecting a baby was something to worry about. But it wasn’t. Janie had a baby. She had two, in fact, now poor Evie had died. And other girls on the ship not much older than fifteen had babies. Why couldn’t she have one? She was betrothed to Lucas, after all. It was silly. She would tell them, but not until…it was too late.

  It was very cold, though, and she knew she’d got thinner while she’d been in the hospital. Her hip bones stuck out now and Sarah said she looked as scrawny as when they first came on board the Isla. She was worried that if it got any colder she wouldn’t be able to keep the growing baby inside her warm enough. It was even cold down on the prison deck, despite them all being jammed in there at night. It was the temperature of the sea around the ship’s hull, according to Mr Meek, but anyone could have worked that out. They saw icebergs nearly every day now, towering mountains off in the distance to starboard, glittering green and white in the harsh sunlight. The crew said only one eighth of an iceberg could be seen above water, but she didn’t know if she believed them. It was all very strange and beautiful.

  But it was still bloody cold. She had Harrie’s stockings now, and was wearing the new set of slops Sarah had found for her over the patched and repaired skirt and blouse she’d wrecked during one of her fits, but still she shivered, especially during the day. At night it wasn’t so bad, tucked up snugly in the bunk between the others, but during the day and up on deck she felt the cold in her bones. Harrie had sewn a lining of duck into her jacket, and that helped, but she did wonder if she would ever be warm again. They were saying New South Wales had a balmy, sunny climate, and Captain Holland said yesterday at muster he thought they would reach port in seven weeks, so that wasn’t much longer to wait, she supposed. Seven weeks. She would be thirteen weeks gone by then and perhaps a month after that she could expect to feel the baby quicken inside her.

  And when that happened she could write to Lucas every day and tell him all about what their baby was doing.

  Captain Holland lowered his spyglass. Not that he needed it; the columns of charcoal-hued storm clouds roiling on the western horizon were so ominous there could be only one course of action. Already there was a hard following sea and spume flickering across the deck, and above his head the mizen sails cracked like whips.

  ‘All hands!’ he bellowed as he collapsed the spyglass. ‘Trice up and trim sails, we’ll outrun her!’ He gestured at the prisoners milling about staring up at the strange, yellowing sky and ordered Silas Warren, ‘Get them below and lock
the hatch.’

  ‘Is that wise, sir?’ Silas ventured.

  Holland barked, ‘They can’t stay up here!’

  Silas grabbed at his hat before the wind snatched it away and extended an arm towards the mass of black cloud to the west. ‘No, sir, I meant running.’

  ‘No choice, Mr Warren. Now snap to it.’

  Silas Warren passed the order to Joel Meek, who swung down the companion ladder to the waistdeck and herded the women, beginning to panic now at the looming storm and sudden flurry of activity from the crew, down into the gloom of the prison deck. Struggling to suppress his own fear, he closed the hatch after them, neglecting to slide the bolt home.

  Friday, a balloon of terror swelling in her chest, threw herself onto the bunk and blurted, ‘Bloody hell, did you see those storm clouds? I’ve a terrible feeling, a terrible, terrible feeling.’ Her voice, already shrill, went up a notch, competing with wails of alarm from the other prisoners. ‘We’ll be trapped in here if the ship goes down and we’ll not get out and we’ll go down with it and we’ll drown and —’

  Sarah slapped her.

  ‘Ow!’ Friday’s hand went to her cheek. ‘What was that for?’

  ‘You’re panicking.’

  Harrie sat on the edge of the bunk beside her. ‘Take lots of slow, deep breaths. In and out, that’s right.’

  Friday tried hard, but still a little scream welled up and squeaked out. ‘Fuck it, where’s my pipe?’ She dug around in her things until she found it, furiously tamped in tobacco wheedled from Joel Meek and lit it, her face and shoulders relaxing visibly as she sucked in the smoke.

  Around her, other women followed her lead and took the opportunity to break the rules and smoke below deck. What did it matter, if they were all bound for watery graves? The shouting and babble died away as smoke began to fill the long cabin and the women hunkered down to ride out the storm. Those with children drew them close. Janie Braine abandoned the top bunk and squeezed in below with Harrie, Rachel, Sarah and Friday, jammed against the hull with her two infants wrapped in a blanket and tucked in her arms. Sally Minto, not keen on being flung about in the top bunk by herself, climbed down and squashed in with four of her friends in another bunk. The temperature, already low, dropped even further.