Behind the Sun (14 page)

He then penned the names of the prisoners he had observed keeping company with Liz Parker, and whom Elizabeth Fry had confirmed to be her closest associates: Louisa Coutts, Ruth Bowler, Beth Greenhill, Mary Ann Howells and Becky Hoddle. They were all, he recalled, young, whereas Parker herself was middle-aged. He checked the manifest — yes, she was thirty-five years old. He wondered what the attraction could be. Perhaps the younger women were in need of a mother-figure: if so, he doubted that
Liz Parker really was the most suitable candidate. Unsurprisingly, they had elected to mess together. He could attempt to split them up, he supposed, but to what real effect? They would only spread disorder among the rest of the prisoners, perhaps even managing to inspire rebellion. Or, away from Liz Parker’s influence, would they settle down? It was a difficult decision. No, better to have them all together in one small group where he, and Josiah Holland, could keep a close watch on them.

He massaged the back of his neck, feeling the muscles there knotted beneath his fingers. Suffering tension already — and the ship hadn’t even sailed out of the Thames! He was glad he had kept his hair short, though. He’d had to cut it during his last voyage after he’d caught head lice from the prisoners and had worn it that way since. Emily thought it very modern and said it made him look even more handsome, which made him smile, because he knew he wasn’t a handsome man at all.

He rotated his shoulders to relax them and bent again over his journal. The other name Elizabeth Fry had given him was that of Friday Woolfe, which had also not surprised him. With her unusual height, buxom figure and that abundant copper hair, she was the sort of female a man could not fail to notice, but it was her behaviour that had really caught his attention. Mrs Fry had insisted that the girl’s antics were every bit as disruptive as those of Liz Parker and her crowd, and they probably were, but James didn’t think Friday Woolfe and Liz Parker really shared much else. Friday Woolfe was common and cheeky and very irreverent, but he could not see any malice in her. Perhaps he was being a fool.

In fact, he was. During her examination, he’d smelt gin on her breath and she had suggested to him, none too discreetly, that a deal might be struck in which he might have access to her personal charms throughout the voyage in exchange for medicinal alcohol. His face flaming, he’d declined her offer, which she’d apparently found very entertaining. He should have reported both matters to
the captain — the alcohol on her breath and the offered bribe — but he hadn’t. The girl had already suffered a night in one of the dreadful little cells in the hold and the ship hadn’t even left Woolwich. If she was a habitual drunkard she had probably brought alcohol on board with her, but that would soon run out. The captain had decided not to search for contraband; after months of living in Newgate the women would be experts at concealment and to find it all would require virtually stripping the ship back to her framework. There would be the usual shenanigans when Friday Woolfe, and no doubt a number of the other women, attempted to elicit alcohol from the crew, but James expected this. Many prisoners he’d superintended had demonstrated an unhealthy fondness for alcohol, particularly the gin they called Blue Ruin, which, as far as he could determine, did in fact ruin them. But the crew had been threatened with severe punishment if they obliged and the hatch to the prison deck would be locked every night, so their attempts would be in vain.

Friday Woolfe had come aboard in a group of four and they seemed determined to maintain closed ranks to the extent that they had resisted the addition of two extra women to their mess and had only got away with it because the numbers had worked in their favour. But James expected that would change once the
Isla
reached Portsmouth and the Bristol prisoners embarked. Josiah Holland seemed very fond of his precisely calculated shipboard schedules — and they were, truth be told, the only way to maintain any semblance of order — and if he wanted six women per mess, James was confident there would
be
six women per mess.

Included in Friday Woolfe’s quartet was Rachel Winter, so at least, in Woolfe, the young Winter girl would have a protector of sorts. The other two in the group were also interesting characters. During her initial medical examination, Sarah Morgan had struck James as somewhat sly — indeed, almost unnervingly intelligent. In fact, at the conclusion of the examination he’d been left with
the uncomfortable sensation that
he’d
been interviewed by
her
, and it had been most disconcerting. She had very dark eyes and he had deliberately avoided looking into them — except for when he’d shone his torch at her retinae — because of an irrational notion that she would know what he was thinking. She was smart, very observant and, of the four, he suspected, most likely to be a professional criminal, a probability borne out by the fact that this was her second conviction.

She had been in reasonable health — undernourished and in need of sustained applications of sunlight and fresh air, but otherwise sound. The smarter inmates usually were the most hale. It was a sad fact that the mentally and physically unsound fared worst in the gaols, as often did the youngest, unless they found themselves a benefactor, as Rachel Winter had apparently managed to do.

Despite being felons, the prisoners he saw weren’t all criminals, in James’s opinion. For some, certainly, crime was a chosen way of life, but he was convinced from his dealings with both male and female convicts that not everyone who had the misfortune to find themselves in front of a judge had made a conscious decision to set out on a lifetime of criminal endeavour. The majority were ordinary labouring people, and many of them in ordinary — badly paid — employment. They broke the law because they couldn’t manage the rent, or feed their children, or repay their debts, or because the interminable misery of their lives drove them to make bad decisions.

Harriet Clarke, he had decided, was an example of that brand of convict. Her crime had been to steal a bit of cloth and thread, but up until that point she had evidently been a law-abiding girl, supporting her family working for a sempstress and hoping only for a better life for them all. Or so she had told him, and he believed her. Why shouldn’t he? She clearly didn’t have connections to any underworld criminals, she spoke well, could read and write and had nice manners, and she seemed mortified by what she had done. It had been a stupid, impetuous act, but he knew she could never otherwise
have saved the money to fulfil her plans and, despite being a pretty girl, she probably couldn’t have married either — or, rather, co-habited, the arrangement many of the labouring poor seemed happy with — not with a sick mother and three young siblings in tow. Despite his natural distaste for her hopefully momentary lapse into sin, he felt sorry for her, which was why he had decided to choose her to be one of his hospital attendants. She struck him as being capable and steady; and the experience might boost her chances of securing a better assignment when she reached New South Wales.

James had also considered giving one of the positions to Rachel Winter, if only so he could keep an eye on her. The thought of what might follow should any of Holland’s crew take a fancy to her really did make him feel uneasy. But, frankly, she was barely more than a child and had seemed so flighty when he’d talked to her he didn’t think she would be suitable at all. He would have to rely on her messmates to look out for her. He had observed the way they hovered about her — like three mother ducks sharing one duckling — and suspected she would be as well chaperoned as she possibly could be.

In his journal he drew a line under Rachel Winter’s name, rolled his blotter over the ink, waited for it to dry, then closed the cover. All that was left for him to do now was organise the prisoners’ bathing and laundry session in the morning — it would be their first and last using fresh water, as only salt water would be available for bathing after they set sail — and check for the final time that the provisions had been stowed correctly and would not deteriorate during the voyage. Then he had to oversee the arrival and storage of his two special orders: one of medicinal leeches and the other of half a dozen bolts of coarse muslin for the women’s menstrual needs. Tomorrow evening he would introduce himself to the handful of free passengers when they embarked and after that he would go ashore and say goodbye, once again, to his poor, patient, long-suffering wife.

On the day before the
Isla
sailed from Woolwich, three things happened: the women of Newgate were ordered to bathe thoroughly; two disembarked in a somewhat memorable fashion; and the
Isla
’s six paying passengers came aboard.

Although the ship’s upper deck had still not yet been completely squared away, James Downey ordered that a framework of canvas be erected to screen off an area about ten feet square. Inside this enclosure Mr Meek and Amos Furniss placed two wooden tubs and sloshed into each six inches of water heated on the galley’s huge cast-iron stove. Captain Holland then ordered all sailors to work below deck, after which James instructed the mess captains to bring their women up one mess at a time.

Standing within the confines of the canvas cubicle fully dressed, her arms across her chest as though she were already naked, Harrie squinted up into the
Isla
’s rigging, not trusting that there wasn’t a sailor hiding up there, peeking down at them like a prurient, overgrown squirrel.

Friday, who already had her boots and stockings off, tested the water with her foot. ‘It’s actually warm! It’s lovely.’ Suddenly her smile dissolved. She turned to the others and said quietly, ‘Don’t undress. Don’t move.’

Casually, she bent and picked up a scrubbing brush, stepped towards the edge of the canvas enclosure and hurled it over the other side. There was a thump and a clatter, followed by a barrage of swearing, then Friday ducked out of the cubicle and took off, her bare feet pounding across the deck.

She was back a few minutes later. ‘That dirty bloody Furniss cove was peeking through the gap. I’ve told Downey. Furniss’ll be up before the master — you’ll see.’

‘Are you sure no one else will creep up on us?’ Harrie asked nervously, peering around at the cubicle screens as though expecting to see the entire crew lined up outside.

‘I am,’ Friday replied confidently. ‘Downey’s having a go at the tars now.’

She pulled her calico blouse over her head, yanked her skirt to her feet, wriggled out of her shift and stepped into the tub.

Everything about her was spectacular, Harrie thought enviously, trying not to look. Even her muscular tattooed arms had a garish sort of beauty about them and if her lovely white skin was marred in places by the purple smudge of healing sores, well, everyone had those. The pattern of fine silver lines on her gently curved belly, though, could only have been caused by one thing — Harrie had seen them often enough on her own mother’s stomach.

Rachel shrugged out of her clothes. ‘I’m having a good long soak. We won’t be getting fresh water to bathe in after this, will we, Friday?’

‘Wouldn’t think so.’ Friday reached for a square of soap left on an upturned bucket and energetically began to make a lather in her hands, her full breasts jiggling.

‘You’re not,’ Sarah said, hands on hips. ‘You’re to get in, wash, then get straight out. The other messes have to have a turn yet.’

Rachel, one foot in the tub and one out, glowered. ‘You’re not my mother.’

‘No, and thank Christ for that. But I am the mess captain — you elected me — so do as you’re told and hurry up.’

Rachel put both feet in the tub and stood there, sulking. Her white-blonde hair, a few shades lighter than her sparse bush, fell almost to her waist above round white buttocks. Her belly was flat and her breasts small and upturned. She looked like some sort of grumpy little water nymph. Harrie, averting her eyes, passed her the soap.

‘Come on, Harrie, hurry up and get in.’ Sarah stripped off and stepped in beside Friday. ‘Christ, it’s not
that
warm. Not when you get your clobber off.’

‘I’m not.’ Harrie looked down at her boots.

‘Not what?’

‘Getting in.’

Friday stopped lathering her hair. ‘Why not? It’s your last chance of a decent wash for months. Not to mention your first. What’s the matter?’

Harrie risked an overt glance at the nude bodies of her three friends and bit her lip. If they were animals instead of girls, Friday would be a tiger, Rachel would be a new fawn and dark, slender Sarah would probably be something like an otter or a mink. Harrie strongly suspected she herself might be a hedgehog. She’d never been naked in front of them before. She’d never been naked in front of
anyone
, except her mother when she was a small child.

‘I don’t really feel that grubby,’ she lied.

‘Well, you smell it,’ Sarah said. ‘Come on, we won’t look. We promise.’

Harrie sighed: she knew she stank. She nodded reluctantly and waited until they’d turned away, then took a deep breath, undressed quickly and stepped into the tub next to Rachel. She looked down at herself, at her white body and her nipples sticking out like acorns because she was cold, and closed her eyes with embarrassment.

‘Oh, Harrie, you’ve a lovely little figure,’ Sarah said gently. ‘Really pretty.’

Harrie’s eyes flew open: they were all staring at her.

Friday grinned and handed her the soap. ‘What’s so special about you anyway, Madam Modest?’

Harrie couldn’t think of a valid answer. She started to laugh, which turned into a squawk of alarm when the cubicle’s canvas opening was whipped aside.

It was Matilda Bain. ‘Yous are to hurry up. We want our baths,’ she said, and let the canvas drop again.

It took almost four hours and twenty tub refills for all the women and children to bathe — longer than James Downey had expected. Those who refused had to be threatened with suspended rations until they succumbed. Once at sea, the prisoners would perform a quick, daily ablution on deck using a bucket of sea water, but he’d insisted they bathe properly this once to rid themselves of the filth and vermin of the gaol before they set sail. Laundering of their civilian clothes would have to wait now until they were underway as Holland’s crew could not put to sea tomorrow with the deck festooned with drying washing, and it could not be taken below in a wet state, where it would immediately sprout mould.

Much to their disappointment, the women were sent to their berths when the last of the
Isla
’s passengers were rowed out to her mooring, hoisted aboard via the bosun’s chair and installed in the four available cabins. James Downey, however, and an inwardly grudging Captain Holland, who couldn’t care less about paying passengers as long as they
did
pay, were on deck to receive them.

The Reverend Octavius Seaton, a minister with the Church Missionary Society, came up first. A fleshy man of medium height with red cheeks that looked scraped rather than shaved, he dismounted inelegantly from the chair and staggered about briefly in response to the rolling of the
Isla
’s deck. Taking pity on him, James held his elbow in a steadying grip as they waited for Mrs Seaton to appear. She was even more stout than her husband, and required the assistance of two crewmen to get off the chair, though James
noted that for such a round woman she had an improbably neat waist. This was surprising as he had always assumed that vanity — including the overt use of corsets — was frowned upon among clergy in the CMS.

Reverend and Mrs Seaton’s daughters followed: two rather attractive, cinnamon-haired girls of thirteen and eleven, each spinning around in the chair and giggling, much to their mother’s disapproval. Introduced to James and the captain as Eudora and Geneve respectively, they stood on the deck, the brims of their bonnets catching the wind, eyes bright, gazing excitedly about.

Next to board was a young man who swung agilely off the bosun’s chair and offered a hand first to Josiah Holland then James, introducing himself as Matthew Cutler. He was smartly if not flashily dressed in light-coloured trousers, white shirt and a well-cut frock coat with matching waistcoat; he looked, James thought, vaguely uncomfortable, as though the whole outfit were new and he wasn’t accustomed to wearing it. He had rather exuberant sandy hair, bright blue eyes and a ready smile. James liked him immediately.

The final passenger to board was Gabriel Keegan, the last entry on the ship’s manifest. At twenty-six he was a year older than Matthew Cutler, tall and athletic in build and possessed what James expected women would regard as striking looks in the form of dark eyes, a strong nose and jaw and black hair. He also evidently favoured dressing in the style made fashionable by Beau Brummell, but James saw no reason to hold that against him. For his first afternoon aboard the
Isla
, Keegan was wearing white trousers tapered at the ankles and disappearing into square-toed shoes, a smart linen shirt with a standing collar, a silk cravat tied in an intricate arrangement, a cutaway coat with a shawl collar and patterned waistcoat, and a rather tall top hat, which James suspected would end up in the sea if Mr Keegan wasn’t vigilant. Costume aside, Gabriel Keegan seemed a positive sort, cheerfully
introducing himself to the crew and offering to help carry luggage to the cabins as it was winched aboard.

James spent the next hour assisting the new passengers to settle into their cabins. The two single men seemed happy enough with their tiny quarters: each measured roughly six feet by five and was fitted with a single narrow bunk bed, a console on which to write that opened to reveal a mirror and wash basin, a chair, shelves and a porthole.

Mrs Seaton, on the other hand, was horrified, though the other two cabins were a little larger, declaring that she couldn’t possibly be expected to live in such cramped quarters for up to four months. Matters weren’t improved when Reverend Seaton announced, clearly without prior discussion with his wife, that he intended to appropriate one of the two for himself, as he required the extra space to meditate, write sermons and spread out his scriptures. At this, Mrs Seaton looked distinctly mutinous and the daughters didn’t look much happier, so James retired and left them to it.

When he returned to request they attend the hospital for their medical examinations, necessary even though they were free passengers, he noted that the matter seemed to have been settled, and that Mrs Seaton and her girls had indeed settled into one cabin together while the reverend had magnanimously taken the smaller of the two available for himself. The girls, James noted, would be sleeping in officers’ hammocks strung from the ceiling of their quarters — quite a good idea, actually, as, in his experience aboard ship, hammocks were more practical and comfortable than a bed.

The medical examinations revealed nothing unexpected or alarming. Reverend Octavius Seaton, aged thirty-nine, had the physical constitution of a man ten years older: he was overweight, had gout and a skin complaint in the order of psoriasis around the elbows, knees and groin area but was otherwise in reasonable health. He had, he told James chattily during the examination, high hopes
of rising through the church’s hierarchy, seeing himself perhaps as Samuel Marsden’s right-hand man in the not-too-distant future, now that his reverence was getting on in years, even if that meant having to go somewhere Godforsaken like New Zealand for a little while, like poor Henry Williams had. He understood, of course, that his goals were of a magnitude that could not be achieved overnight, but in the meantime there were souls to be saved, good works to be done and plenty of acreage to be acquired in this wonderful new land of opportunity. Indeed, James said, and made a note to prepare two and half drachms of chrysophanic acid with ten drops of oil of bergamot in a simple ointment for Reverend Seaton to apply to his private parts.

Hester Seaton wasn’t as scaly as her husband, but she was slightly fatter. On her, though, the flesh was marginally more appealing, lending her otherwise unremarkable features a sort of pillowy pink bloom, further enhanced by her abundant caramel brown hair, of which — again unlike a good missionary — she seemed very proud. She was thirty-three, she declared, and flushed and simpered when James asked whether there was any likelihood she might be expecting a confinement.

‘Oh, no, my child-bearing years are well behind me,’ she replied, giggling as though James had told a particularly clever joke.

James wondered why, if she was only thirty-three. One of the women he’d examined the other day who would deliver during the voyage was thirty-seven.

‘Are there any physical matters you have concerns about?’

‘No, I’ve always been blessed with good health.’ A shadow passed across Mrs Seaton’s face and she looked down at her chubby hands. ‘Our first child died, when he was only five months old. George Edwin, we named him. He contracted whooping cough.’

‘I’m very sorry to hear that, Mrs Seaton,’ James said. He was, too, but it was a rare family that hadn’t experienced the death of an infant, no matter its social rank.

He examined Mrs Seaton’s eyes, ears and mouth, noting she was missing several back teeth and had evidence of gum disease, which wasn’t at all uncommon, and palpated her limbs, belly and internal organs. Nothing was amiss, except for the extra weight she was carrying.

‘You do seem to be in good health, Mrs Seaton, as you attest. I would suggest, however, that you take every opportunity to walk about the deck that presents itself.’

Hester Seaton took the hand James offered to assist her off the examination table. ‘Why would that be, Mr Downey? Surely you are not suggesting that I need to be mindful of my figure?’

James couldn’t tell if her question was posed in a jocular spirit or not. He suspected it wasn’t. ‘Not at all, Mrs Seaton. I’m advising all charges to exercise whenever possible, even those as hale as you clearly are. Enforced inertia can actually be very demanding on the constitution. Now, I assume you wish to chaperone your daughters during their examinations?’

Hester Seaton did. Both Eudora and Geneve were rudely healthy. Geneve had a slight cough, but it had come on only recently and Mrs Seaton thought it was nothing more than the result of a chill caught travelling in the coach down to London from their home town of Watford. James listened to Geneve’s chest and agreed.

‘If it worsens, or does not improve, tell me and we’ll begin a course of treatment.’

Geneve had seen the jars where James kept his leeches, their currently pin-thin bodies pressed slimily against the glass, and her face paled slightly. ‘Will it be leeches?’ she asked almost in a whisper. ‘I don’t like leeches.’