They hunched in the semi-darkness, oil lamps swinging wildly as the Isla heaved, rolled and groaned over the rising seas, listening to the wind howl ever more furiously across the deck above and waiting in terror for the storm to overtake them.
And finally it did. With an ear-shattering boom the rain came, crashing onto the upper deck with a noise like a hundred thousand drummer boys, and pouring though the cracks between the planks and into the prison. Soon not a square inch nor a body was dry and the floor of the deck lay knee-deep in water, even though it was spilling on through into the hold below. The women, utterly powerless, lifted what they could and held on tight and prayed.
Hours or perhaps only minutes later, the Isla’s timbers groaned even more hideously as the seas rose higher still. Those not firmly wedged in place tumbled about in peril. Harrie watched in horror as two women and a child rolled off a top bunk onto the floor and were washed towards the stern along with the water as the deck tilted at an angle of almost forty degrees. They came to a jarring halt as one of the women lodged against the base of the companion ladder, skirts rucked around her waist, her lower leg bent at a horrid angle. Grimacing in agony, she clawed at the edge of a bunk and hauled herself onto it.
Friday, her eyes screwed shut and her own long legs jammed against a post at the end of the bunk to keep everyone in, cried out in terrified anger, ‘Lord have mercy, for God’s sake! Fuck!’
The ship pitched the other way and the child in the water reversed direction, screaming his head off. Harrie reached out, scooped him up and dumped him between herself and Rachel. He was hysterical, his face a mass of scrapes and snot. She put her arm around him and held him tight against her.
It went on and on, the ship pitching and rolling at angles far too steep to allow anyone to move deliberately. The noise remained cacophonous: a steady, high-pitched shriek from the wind tearing across the deck and through the rigging, the constant roar of pounding rain, and the relentless smashing of the mountainous waves against the Isla’s hull.
Friday yelled something.
‘What?’ Sarah shouted.
‘What if they’re all dead?’ Friday pointed upwards.
Harrie thought it was the single most cheerless thing she’d ever heard anyone say.
Shouts and shrieks came from farther along the prison deck. Harrie couldn’t see what was happening and didn’t want to. She took hold of Rachel’s hand, pulled the boy closer and closed her eyes.
More time passed. Gradually, the seas became calmer and the rain eased off. The storm was passing. There was no way of telling what time it was, or even whether it was day or night.
Eventually Friday, unable to bear being below deck any longer and bathed in sharp-smelling sweat, every inch of her body aching from nervous tension, declared, ‘I’m going up.’
‘You can’t,’ Sarah said. ‘They locked the hatch.’
‘Then I’ll bang on it ’til they unlock it. I can’t stand it down here!’
She stepped off the bunk into more than a foot of sloshing water, though the level seemed to be going down, but it must still be raining as water was dripping steadily through the upper deck. Or was it sea water? She stuck out her tongue. Salt.
‘Wait for me.’ Rachel scrambled after her, clinging onto the table as the ship continued to roll.
They climbed the ladder with difficulty, slipping on the icy rungs, and hammered on the hatch, shouting to be let out until Friday pushed hard against it and realised it wasn’t actually locked. She managed to raise it several inches, the wind grabbed it and flipped it open and they scrambled up on deck, where a vicious gust almost knocked them off their feet.
Behind them there was a mad rush as relief at not having drowned galvanised the women and they poured up out of the prison onto the waistdeck. Where, like Friday and Rachel, they stopped, open-mouthed.
‘Get back below!’ Captain Holland shouted from the afterdeck where he had been battling with the wheel for almost six hours. He was drenched, utterly exhausted, frozen to the bone and in a filthy temper. And he was frightened. ‘God’s blood, Mr Warren, get them below!’
But the women ignored him. Stormclouds the colour of tin plate lay so low there was no distinction between sky and ocean; they were adrift in a great, lightning-slashed dome of greyness and water. And no more than a thousand yards to port rode a decrepit-looking vessel, her mouldering stern gallery looming as she gathered way, gun ports visible along two crumbling decks, wisps of low cloud drifting through remnants of torn and ragged sails hanging limply from her towering masts. She seemed to hover for a moment, the waves breaking through gaping black holes in her hull, and then she was gone, dissolving into the rain and spume.
A shriek came, then more, before the sound was torn away by the wind.
‘I said get them below!’ Holland bellowed until his voice cracked.
So back down the women went again, the crew easing their own fear, and their anger at being pulled from their posts, by shoving them hard and delivering the odd sly kick.
Waiting at the bottom of the ladder for the aisle to clear, Friday said to Sarah, ‘Did you see it?’
‘See what?’
‘That…whatever it was. You must have.’
‘It was the Flying Dutchman.’ Rachel’s eyes sparkled with excitement. ‘The ghost ship! Matilda was talking about it the other day. She says the crew are doomed to sail the high seas for eternity.’
Sarah snorted and took a splashing step along the flooded aisle as someone pushed into her from behind.
‘I saw it,’ Rachel insisted. ‘Matilda says the phantom crew sail around looking for folk to deliver letters addressed to loved ones long dead, and if you accept one you’ll have terrible misfortune until the day you die.’
‘Let’s hope Matilda was offered one,’ Sarah said.
Rachel looked at her, then giggled.
‘I don’t believe you didn’t see anything,’ Friday said, clutching at a bunk post as the ship rolled steeply.
Sarah shrugged. ‘I don’t believe ghosts exist.’
Friday turned to Harrie. ‘You saw it, though, didn’t you?’
‘I saw something.’ Harrie shuddered. ‘It made the hairs on my arms stand up. Do you really not think ghosts are real?’ she asked Sarah.
‘No, I don’t,’ Sarah said, and turned on the girl behind her. ‘Will you stop pushing me!’
‘Well, move along then, my feet are getting cold,’ the girl complained.
Sarah stood on her tip-toes to see what might be causing the hold-up. She couldn’t. ‘Friday, why aren’t we moving?’
Friday didn’t need to stand on tip-toe. She peered over the heads of the women waiting to get back to their bunks. As always the light was dim and the air still hazy with pipe smoke and the usual greasy emissions from the oil lamps; all she could see was a knot of figures around one of the lower bunks towards the end of the deck.
Less than a minute later they heard: Liz Parker was dead.
Thirteen
August 1829, Southern Ocean
15th of August, 1829
My Dearest Emily,
It has been several weeks since I have found time to put pen to paper, though you will not notice that of course, receiving these letters in a single large bundle as you will.
It has been a somewhat eventful few weeks, the highlight of which was perhaps the dreadful storm we encountered on the last day of July. I have been extremely busy tending to patients with various sprained and broken limbs since then. The storm itself was harrowing enough, but at its passing it was discovered that one of the prisoners had died. This, as I have recounted to you on several occasions, is not an unexpected occurrence during severe weather events at sea. Folk fall or are struck by unsecured items, crew are swept overboard, but the demise of this woman has left a distinctly unpleasant taste in my mouth. Her name was Liz Parker and, without wishing to speak ill of the dead, she really was rather an unsavoury character.
Most of the prisoners had bee
n up on deck watching the tail end of the storm and when they returned below she was found wedged against the hull at the rear of a berth, apparently dead from asphyxiation. I did not perform a post-mortem, but I did carry out a thorough external examination of the corpse.
James put down his pen, wondering how much he should tell his wife. He didn’t want to upset her. He could have done a post-mortem on Liz Parker but there had been no need for one; it was obvious from the blue tinge around her mouth that she had suffocated and, frankly, given her size, she could easily have been cast face down on the mattress and fatally jammed against the hull during the panic and crush of the storm. It was a cause of death he would have been happy to enter onto the certificate had he not also observed the pair of livid, thumb-shaped bruises on her throat and the grossly ruptured blood vessels in her eyeballs.
I will spare you the unpleasant details, my dear; suffice to say I did find unsettling evidence suggesting she may have been throttled.
Naturally I reported the matter to Captain Holland, together with my supposition that no one of slight stature would possess the strength to choke the life from a neck as bullish as that of the deceased. However, no men were on the prison deck at the time — all were above deck battling the storm.
We are now facing a quandary. Not unsurprisingly, no one has confessed to killing Liz Parker, and no one has helpfully accused another of killing her, so do we hold the entire contingent of prisoners responsible? The captain favours recording her death in the manifest as ‘accidental’, but Captain Holland, as I have already complained to you, has proved himself to be a somewhat weak character. In fact, he refuses to launch an investigation for fear of stirring up the women when we are so near the end of our journey. The matter, however, falls under his jurisdiction, therefore I must let it rest at this moment, though I most certainly will be providing a full report to Governor Darling when we reach Sydney Town.
Of much lesser importance, but still worthy of note, is another incident that occurred in the dying moments of the storm mentioned above. I did not witness the ‘event’ myself as I was tending a crewman with a fractured forearm in the hospital, but evidently a number of folk on deck saw a vision of the Flying Dutchman. I attribute this to mass hysteria brought on by the excitement of the storm coupled with the extraordinary atmospheric conditions we were experiencing at the time. Needless to say, a significant number of the crew swear they saw the mirage too — no sailor worth his salt would admit to not having seen it.
The captain says, all things being well, we will reach port at the end of the first week of September and I for one will be greatly relieved when this voyage comes to an end. The death of the Parker woman coupled with the incident concerning the young girl I recounted in my previous letters have conspired to make this the most unpleasant posting I have endured.
I have talked of this before, my dear, but I think the time has come for me to consider retiring from the navy and seeking a position ashore. You will, I know, be delighted with this notion. As I am still a relatively young man there is plenty of time for me to establish myself in private practice. I am assuming you are still agreeable to the possibility of emigrating to Australia? I am convinced the warmer climate there will far better suit your delicate constitution than the rains and heavy winters of England. In anticipation, I will make tentative inquiries about private positions while I await my ship back to England.
I miss you and, as always, look forward to the day I am again by your side.
Yours with love,
James
Friday had had a complete and utter gutful. Being stuck on this stinking, rat-ridden boat in the middle of the ocean was sending her mad, she was desperate for a decent drink and would give her left arm for a jug of gin, Rachel was still refusing to say whether she was pregnant or not, and everyone was suspicious and jittery as a result of Liz Parker’s death.
She knew vindictive fingers were being pointed at her, because she was big and strong and everyone knew she’d hated the bitch, but she hadn’t done it — she’d been first up on deck and everyone had witnessed that. But it certainly served Parker right for being such a nasty piece of work. Friday had seen the corpse, though, when they’d carted it up, and it hadn’t been a pretty sight. Parker’s ugly mug had been dark purple, the tongue sticking out and the eyes bulging like a frog’s.
The gabble and accusations had started straight away, naturally, and were still buzzing round the prison deck and making everyone look twice at who they sat next to, but no one was any closer to finding out who’d topped her. Not that anyone seemed to be trying very hard — and not that it mattered: she’d been a mean, trouble-making old tarleather. She wouldn’t be missed and her girls had already settled in with other messes, while a core of tough nuts, namely Becky Hoddle, Louisa Coutts and Beth Greenhill, had shifted their allegiance to Bella Jackson.
But Friday knew prisons, and Parramatta Female Factory was a prison by another name if what she’d heard back in Newgate was true, and there’d be another Liz Parker there without a doubt. There always was. There was one on the Isla, in fact, and a much smarter, nastier and more predatory version than old Liz Parker to boot. So bugger Liz, may she rot in hell: there were much more important things to worry about than her.
Rachel’s fits were getting worse and there was something new now — she wouldn’t stop talking about the ghost ship they’d seen. Or thought they had; Friday still wasn’t sure what it was. She’d shrieked her head off along with the rest of them, but to be honest her poor nerves had been stretched so tight after the storm she would have screamed at almost nothing and perhaps she had. What they’d seen may have been little more than the ‘phenomenon’ the captain had described at muster on the day following the storm — a dense patch of low-lying cloud strangely illuminated by receding lightning — and the way he’d said it had implied they were all fools to imagine they’d encountered anything else. She’d noticed he’d given his crew a good hard look when he’d said it, too. But ghosts were a fact of life, whether Captain Holland — or Sarah — liked it or not.
However Rachel was still going on about it, in between pitching her fits, which seemed to be getting worse every time she had one. Friday was at her wits’ end about how to help her, and feeling more and more frustrated because it was her job to sort it out. She was the boss of her little family, which was how she thought of them now. No one else had ever cared about her the way Harrie, Sarah and Rachel did, not even her gin-sodden mother. What would Megsie Woolfe have done about Rachel? Left her to fend for herself, probably, which was all she’d done for Friday.
If Rachel carried on like this much longer people would think she was a lunatic, especially when they got to New South Wales. Were there lunatic asylums in Sydney? Was that where she would end up? And if she was pregnant, God — Friday couldn’t think of a worse pickle. It was Keegan’s fault and no doubt that evil cow Bella’s as well, and every time she thought about Keegan lounging in his comfortable cabin calmly waiting to walk off the ship and into his new, free life, her fists clenched and she felt her blood pounding in her head. It was eating a hole in her — Rachel’s crumbling health, the failure to make Keegan pay, being stuck on this ship — all of it.
And there were still weeks to go before they reached New South Wales.
Hester Seaton was thoroughly sick of attempting to teach slowwitted and, frankly, wilfully idle convict women to read and write. She had tried her utmost and there still remained a good proportion who could not even string together enough letters to form their own names. Really, she did wonder whether some were only attending her school for letters to avoid daily chores or to fill in time. And they were paying even less attention now that there were glimpses of land to be had from time to time, and other signs that they were finally, after all these months at sea, nearing their destination.
Of course — she had to be truthful — a handful were doing remarkably well and she must assume that those who had chosen not to attend at all could
already read and write, and there were a surprising number of those. But really, the novelty of bringing the gift of education to the underprivileged was wearing off and she had in fact tired of it some time earlier. A temporary effect relating to the confines of shipboard life, no doubt. Also, the atmosphere had been somewhat tense since the unfortunate incident involving Gabriel Keegan. Once her feet were back on terra firma and any taint of scandal left behind on the Isla and her daughters as far away from Mr Keegan as possible, she would feel differently, she was sure.
Thank the Lord that in just over two and a half weeks, if Captain Holland’s calculations were correct, they would be dropping anchor in Sydney Cove.
Harrie took off her apron and dropped it into the laundry hamper, grateful she didn’t have to wash it herself; one of the children had been sick on it and the vomit had been a hideous yellow colour and eye-wateringly smelly. Her shift was over and she was very tired. As she crossed the floor Mr Downey came out of his cubicle.
‘Harrie, I have something for you.’ He held out a letter folded and sealed with wax.
Nonplussed, she looked at it but didn’t take it. ‘What is it?’
‘It’s a recommendation.’
‘Oh. What for?’
‘I thought it might help you obtain a suitable assignment. I don’t make a practice of this, but you really are very good with children, and in the hospital in general.’ He flushed slightly. ‘I thought it might help you.’
Harrie, blushing herself, took the letter and ducked her head. ‘Thank you very much, Mr Downey. I’m very grateful.’
‘Yes, well.’ He cleared his throat, embarrassed. ‘I’m aware that female convicts aren’t always assigned to positions that make the most of their vocational strengths. It would be a shame if you couldn’t use yours.’
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