A Bound Heart

by Laura Frantz

  The doctor came in and clucked his tongue at her sore head, applied a salve, pulled her troublesome tooth, declared her fit to transport, then left. The matron drew back Lark’s hair so severely into a knot her scalp ached all the more.

  Lark finally asked the hated question, afraid of the answer. “What does the physic mean by ‘transport’?”

  “The verdict was read once the courtroom returned to order, but ye’d been knocked senseless and removed,” the matron replied. “Ye’ve been found ‘guilty in art and part’ as an accessory to the crime. Ye’ll soon be taken to a transport ship. I’m not sure where to.”

  Lark’s belly gave a fierce, clawing clench as her mind grappled with the unwanted words. And then her thoughts swung to Magnus.

  “What has happened to the laird of Kerrera? MacLeish?”

  The matron gathered up Lark’s soiled clothes. “The laird’s been taken to the master’s side of Glasgow Cross tolbooth.”

  “The master’s side?”

  “Aye. For indicted gentlemen. Yer on the common side.”

  “Indicted?” She searched the matron’s expression and tone for some cruel jest. “For speaking in my defense?”

  “Nay. For violating the Act of Proscription. His lairdship has been found guilty of wearing his plaid afore this. Two witnesses came forward to swear to such. Now he’s liable to be transported to one of his majesty’s plantations beyond the seas.”

  Transported? Banished.

  Struck dumb, Lark watched her go out, the clink of the keys locking her in once again. How she hated that sound. What was left of her sheltered world—that sacred, inviolate haven made up of Magnus and Kerrera, croft and castle—lay in irretrievable ruins.

  A stiff west wind, damp with salty spray, draped Magnus as he stood on the congested Glasgow pier along the banks of the River Clyde. He peered past the commanding customhouse and shipping office, a large sailcloth company and countless warehouses, to the towering masts of endless ships, each bound for separate ports.

  Beside him stood his longtime confidant and ally, Richard Osbourne, one of the Tobacco Lords who traded with colonial America. His fortune was made in tobacco, sugar, horses, and slaves. Magnus could not make peace with the latter but was glad his influential friend stood beside him this day. Only the Almighty could have crossed their paths at such a time, allowing Magnus’s letter to be carried to Osbourne’s Glasgow residence with a holy haste.

  “Here’s what I discovered, having been denied my appeal that the lass in question be pardoned.” Osbourne gestured to the nearest sloop. “Miss MacDougall’s to be put aboard the Neptune with one hundred thirty other women convicts. As for yourself, I hope to secure a place aboard the Bonaventure, one of my frigates refitted to carry stores to the Sugar Islands.”

  Magnus withheld a wince. “So there’s little more to be done for Lark MacDougall.”

  Osbourne sighed. “I did what I could to no avail, short of bribing the attending physic to declare her unfit for transport. Sadly, the jury was likely swayed by your late wife’s father, so Miss MacDougall’s conviction stands. She’ll not be branded, but she’ll be indentured.” He cast a baleful eye on Magnus. “For the moment, I’m most concerned about you.”

  “Mayhap yer appeal of my case will go through.” Magnus struck a hopeful tone though his spirits sagged. “Yer request that I leave tolbooth on a pass for two hours’ time was granted this day.”

  “Aye, but the presiding judge you encountered for Miss MacDougall’s trial is rabidly anti-Jacobite. And if he gets wind of what we’re after, he might deny both requests.”

  “He’s a kilt hater. I suspected as much. And pro-Hanoverian to boot.”

  “Aye on both counts.” Respect rode Osbourne’s features. “’Twas bold of you to walk into an unknown courtroom and defend a condemned woman like you did.”

  “Mayhap foolhardy. But I could do nothing less. She’s an islander like myself. Our family histories have been entwined for generations. And the truth of the matter is that she had nothing to do with my wife’s death. I canna stand by when her very life is in jeopardy on my account. ’Tis a notorious miscarriage of justice.”

  “Aye, that it is. The whole affair is a flagrant violation of the biblical command to not bear false witness. The courts are nothing but bribes and perjury and more.” He squinted into the glaring, sunlit water. “If you gain passage on the Bonaventure and arrive at my plantation in Jamaica as I hope, you can act as factor, something that may well suit you. At the end of your two-year term you can return to Scotland.”

  “There’ll be naught to return to.” The thought was so overwhelming Magnus could hardly speak. “I well ken what happens to Jacobite property seized and sold.”

  “True enough. ’Tis been the fate of many a Highlander and Lowlander too.”

  Magnus fixed his gaze upon a departing barge lying low in the river. “Tell me more about the voyage. What the Bonaventure is carrying. The date of departure.”

  “That depends on several factors. My Jamaican plantation is in need of men and supplies. I’m keen on acquiring a few men skilled in agriculture and horticulture to make the voyage, and I’ve been given leave to carry a few male felons suited to the task. A special garden is being built on her quarterdeck. Room enough for pots of various vegetables, fruit, even herbs to use for food or physic in Virginia—my main estate—or Jamaica once there.”

  Magnus offered up a silent prayer before plunging ahead. “Miss MacDougall was the mistress of Kerrera Castle’s stillroom like her grandmother before her. Keeper of the castle’s bees too. Highly skilled. Why not arrange for a woman to oversee yer shipboard garden?”

  “Why not, indeed.” Osbourne looked at him intently, a wry smile tugging at his mouth. “Perhaps it’s not too late. I shall try to have her transferred from the Neptune then. A female prisoner is far more manageable than a male. Perhaps the arrangement will benefit us both.”

  They fell silent as a commotion from behind made them turn. A coach was passing, a dozen women roped to the outside seats. A gaol turnkey sat atop the box, spewing tobacco and keeping an eye on his charges. One woman held a baby who was crying so piteously Magnus set his jaw. The coach lurched to a stop by a lighter bobbing at the edge of the pier, waiting to row the women over to a waiting ship.

  Again Osbourne smiled rather wryly as he scrutinized the ship in question. “Could the Neptune be before our very eyes? Not to mention the lass in question?”

  Stung by amazement, Magnus looked hard at the wagon. Lark was the sixth woman to step down. Nearly unrecognizable in Quaker garb, she glanced his way absently, then looked back again with wide-eyed surprise.

  “Keep yer eyes down,” the turnkey snapped. The women were marched across the dock then hauled into the lighter, a precarious business with each in manacles.

  Lark looked to her shoes while Magnus stood riveted, overcome by a strange mix of fury and helplessness as she was rowed away across the expanse of churlish water.

  A scowling sailor waited to pull them over the side of the enormous vessel. Shoulders bent, the women formed a line at an anvil to have the rivets knocked from their irons one by one. The jarring clank rippled over the water above the cries of gulls and shouts of the crew. Once the turnkey was paid his fee of a half crown a head, he returned to shore in the empty lighter.

  “A miserable business,” Osbourne concluded. “Even bound for fair Virginia.”

  16

  True happiness consists not in the multitude of friends, but in the worth and choice.

  Ben Jonson

  As the hated manacles fell noisily from her wrists, Lark looked over the ship’s rail to where Magnus stood beside an important-looking gentleman on the crowded quay. Her heart turned over. He’d looked no less stunned than she on seeing him in such plain clothes. Gone was his handsome Scots garb with its heather blues and grays, his sporran and sgian dubh, the kilt hose and brogues. What had been done to them? Why was he allowed out of the master’s side of the t
olbooth? Could it be because he’d been freed? Or was it simply because he had powerful friends?

  The lack of details added to her angst. She might never see him again. ’Twas so undeserved, his gaoling. Banished for being clad in the garb of their people. Or did it have more to do with his untimely defense of her?

  From the very beginning she’d tried not to rail at God. But as fear became commonplace and hope was lost, the future loomed large enough to entertain black doubts. She was innocent, not a convict to be condemned to a wild, unwanted land. All she held dear was on Kerrera. ’Twas the worst sort of sentence to leave all that was beloved. Why did the Lord allow such things? Had she not prayed hard enough? Trusted God enough? Was He punishing her?

  The wailing at her side ended her painful ponderings. A baby, as bonny as his mother was sallow and frail, reached out to Lark with bare, plump arms. Lark took the wee fingers in her own, unsure of his mother’s reaction. His damp smile was her reward, a welcome reprieve from his tears.

  His mother turned dull eyes on Lark. “Ye’ve no babe o’ yer own?”

  “Nay.”

  “He favors ye, wee Larkin does.”

  Larkin, was it? Lark tried to smile despite the moment’s misery, gazing over the babe’s thatch of ginger hair to Magnus on the quay. He’d turned his back on her, and his stance, however unintended, rent her heart.

  “Ye can hold him if ye like.” Frail arms offered the babe to Lark.

  She took the infant, going wide-eyed at his weight. A ruadh-headed handful he was. He gave a chortle of delight, and the knot of women looked relieved, spared of his fretfulness. His dimpled hand brushed Lark’s flushed cheek, his bright eyes on her face.

  “Yer a braw laddie,” Lark crooned near his ear, nostrils stung with the smell of urine and soured milk.

  She longed to give him a bath. Dress him in a clean shift. Amuse him somehow. Both he and his mother were missing a single plaything. How he’d love the coral beads. They’d fallen from her pocket when she’d readied to bathe, but the kindly gaol matron simply looked the other way, letting her keep them.

  As she lost sight of Magnus on shore, her thoughts veered to the captain. What had become of him? By now he might’ve hanged. The hollowness inside her widened as rain began spattering down, causing even the babe to look up.

  Her gaze roamed the strange ship. The quarterdeck was raised, a railing enclosing the officers. Far below was the cargo hold, the befouled orlop deck a horror. Long ago the captain had explained the parts of a ship to her when he’d procured the Merry Lass. Remembering, Lark bounced the babe on her hip as the women were led to a locked hatch and then farther below to a place where wide sleeping shelves hung from both sides of the hull.

  She breathed in the sharp scent of wood shavings, refreshing after the rancid straw of the gaol cell. The stores in the hold on either side of their quarters was plain enough. Coffee and spices and tobacco mingled in the damp air. But she knew, too, that during their two or more months at sea the fresh newness would quickly wear off, the stink of the bilge unbearable.

  For the moment, she felt sharp concern for the babe’s mother. Droplets of sweat beaded the woman’s brow, and when she reached for the ladder that led them past the hatch, a shaft of light called out a dull red rash splotching her neck and the tanned skin above her fraying bodice.

  Gaol fever?

  Granny believed such was spread by the bites of lice and fleas. Lark’s own skin was nigh eaten up before her recent bath, and no hartshorn was to be had.

  “Ye look bound for the sick berth, ye do,” one of the women murmured to the babe’s mother, taking a step back.

  “She canna leave her bairn,” another said, looking to wee Larkin who contentedly chewed on one of Lark’s bonnet strings.

  “He isna mine but my sister’s,” the woman confessed, wiping the sweat from her face with a begrimed sleeve. “She died in childbed. I’m his only kin.”

  “Who’s his da?”

  A shrug. “Some say he’s a man o’ some standing in Edinburgh. But she was one of them disorderly girls.”

  A dismayed murmur overshadowed them. “How’ve ye gotten nourishment for ’im?”

  “He’s right fond o’ goat’s milk.”

  “There’s no goats here,” clucked the oldest among them.

  Lark sighed, knowing he’d soon need feeding. Chin shiny with drool, he smiled up at her, his pink gums sporting one pristine tooth. Her heart squeezed. Here he was, blooming like the heather in their soiled, sordid world, unaware of their grim circumstances.

  He’d surely not live long in such brutish conditions. The pecking order soon came clear. With over one hundred women bound for the hold, a few vied for first place. Trinkets smuggled aboard were demanded or threatened or stolen by day’s end. Never before had Lark heard such curses or bullying.

  Coral beads secreted in her pocket, Lark kept to her shadowed corner, the babe with her while his ailing aunt slept. But Lark was still privy to the women’s thieving and threats, their insults and abuses. Bett, deprived of a blanket by Nance, complained to the officers, only to be set upon in the darkness and beaten nearly senseless at midnight.

  The next day the most troublesome of the convict women broke into the bulkhead and guzzled several bottles of port before they were discovered. This earned a dozen stripes from a cat-o’-nine-tails, and the voyage had not yet begun.

  Lark looked on, dazed. Fighting the urge to scream, she weighed jumping overboard as fear gained another foothold. Would death not be preferable to this ongoing agony? This terrible wonder of what would befall them next?

  Lord, what will become of us all after two months at sea?

  She resisted a shudder, her homesickness fierce, her questions mounting. How was Granny? What about Magnus? Would he be released from the tolbooth and returned to Kerrera? What of the captain? She’d lost all track of time. When was it she’d last seen him?

  The present pressed in, the frenzied preparations on deck at a peak. Sailing was imminent. Lark waited for the telltale lurch of the ship, her last hope for a petition of clemency dissolving. The sick berth filled, and two women died of gaol fever by the third day. Braziers of herbs burned between decks, and even gunpowder was charged to dispel the miasma.

  Would Larkin’s aunt survive? The listless woman lay on her bunk, refusing so much as a sip of water. Though one of the other older women had offered to help tend Larkin, his aunt refused all but Lark.

  Did she believe Lark a Quaker in her plain garb? A worthy guardian for her wee nephew?

  The babe sat on Lark’s lap, rosy cheeked and often babbling. His simplicity and innocence tugged at her. How content he was to just be held and sung to, satisfied with her portion of gruel or sips of water. She herself felt ravenous, starved for sunlight and clean air and solid ground. Her stillroom and croft. Granny’s quiet company. A place not sullied by coarse talk and curses.

  Bereft of even the smallest trunk, all she had were the borrowed Quaker clothes and the captain’s coral beads. And a baby.

  But even these could be taken, snatched away in the blink of an eye.

  She fixed her eye on a roach crawling across a floorboard. Her whole being recoiled. How would she survive?

  Lord, all I have is Ye. Make that enough.

  A few well-placed words. More than a few gold guineas. Magnus knew something had been accomplished by Osbourne’s glad expression as he faced him in his transport cell the next morn, iron bars between them.

  “The appeal’s gone through. Miss MacDougall is to be transferred to the Bonaventure as an indenture.”

  Magnus leaned into the bars, almost light-headed with relief. “When will it happen?”

  “In the forenoon. She’s to leave the Neptune by lighter no later than ten o’clock. They’re to sail soon after so the exchange must be quick.”

  His prayers had been answered—again. Few appeals were granted by the Scottish judiciary. At a time when women were still burned at the stake for petty theft,
Lark’s deliverance seemed nothing short of miraculous. Still, the tight timeline, the imminent sailing, begged further worry. More praying. But if it all came off . . .

  “I owe ye,” Magnus said.

  “Nary a ha’pence I’ll take, especially if she’s as skilled as you say she is.” Osbourne took a vial from his pocket and waved the smelling salts beneath his nose, then passed the vial to Magnus. “You’ll have need of it till your own transfer tomorrow afternoon. The turnkey will deliver you to the docks no later than three o’clock.”

  “When do we sail?”

  “Once the livestock pens on the foredeck are finished and stocked and the ship’s watered.” He reached for his pocket watch, a flash of ornate silver in the gloom. “I expect the ship shall depart Glasgow two days hence.”

  Even a crowded ship seemed preferable to gaol. In just a day their number increased, though a few female prisoners, like Larkin’s aunt, were removed to the infirmary. Lark cajoled, bounced, sang, and begged milk from a steward, her back aching from toting the babe.

  The next morn, a harried ship’s surgeon faced her, expression doleful. “The wee laddie’s kin is dead.”

  Lark sat on the edge of a sleeping platform as a hush descended on what now numbered nearly one hundred twenty convict women.

  “God rest her soul,” one said.

  “Amen.” Benumbed, Lark looked to the sleeping lad in her arms. “A prison ship is no place for a babe.”

  “Nay, but the law is all those six years and under be aboard whilst those older remain in their native land,” the surgeon said.

  “So yer saying the babe’s banished too.”

  He wiped his hands on a rag dangling from his waist. “The woman’s dying words were meant for ye. Said she bequeathed ye the babe and no other.”

  Larkin awoke and howled. Lark rearranged him, tucking his perspiring head beneath her trembling chin. ’Twas all she could do not to fall to pieces. However would she manage a needy bairn?