The cool sweat of anticipation kept James awake during long nights in the surgeon’s quarters. He knew he would get through the whipping, but the wait was agony. At least he got to stretch out on a cot, albeit chained by one arm to the wall.
Surgeon Ashton felt it was his duty to explain what to expect from the lashes – details James could have done without. He turned his head away as the surgeon spoke. He was always better at facing pain blindly – take it as it comes, keep himself busy, deal with it afterwards – but he didn’t want to shun the man’s kindness.
‘You’ll be up within a week, I expect. Lucky it’s the cane. Not long ago you’d have got the cat-o’-nine-tails. Barbaric –’
‘I’ll be right, doc.’ James felt the need to reassure his comforter.
They looked at each other square for a moment, but James broke away first.
‘Every man gets what he deserves, Stack. I may not believe in this type of punishment, but I believe our Lord has good reason for allowing it. Perhaps He’s using you as an example. You believe in God, Stack?’
‘I do.’
‘What’s your faith?’
‘Catholic.’
‘Catholic.’ The surgeon’s voice lifted. ‘Well, would you care to pray with me?’
‘I do me praying on me own.’
The surgeon stood and looked down at his hands. ‘I’ll be praying for you anyway. Lord knows you Catholics –’ He stopped himself. ‘Do you need anything?’
‘Could do with some air. You think they’ll let me up top?’
‘Feeling sick?’
‘Just want to stop the thinking.’
The surgeon nodded and left without another word.
James knew the surgeon would have fought against the punishment with Fernley. Without hearing a word of it, he knew. He felt sorry for the surgeon and his faith in the goodness of men’s hearts. It could only be a matter of time before it got wrung out of him. He was useful, though, and James was sure the surgeon would enjoy one more battle with Fernley that day.
Sure enough, the surgeon returned with a smile and a guard. James was unchained from the wall and taken up top, where the surgeon pointed to a clearing at the front. There the guard hooked his handcuff to a thick piece of rope that led from the railing up to one of the masts. Nothing that his knife couldn’t cut through if he’d had it.
It felt good to be out in the open. Groups of soldiers loitered while sailors climbed up and down the rigging, easy as rats in a larder. Others unwound thick wet ropes or tightened them with winches. Redcoats began to swarm again; their voices lit up as Portsmouth peeked from behind a round of hillside. Among them James spotted Abel, his face already set with a grand wide smile, his eyes alight as he made his way to where James sat.
‘Jimmy lad. Oh –’ He pointed to the handcuffed wrist.
James half laughed, half sighed.
‘You’re a crazy sod,’ Abel said.
‘That I am. Still, had him, didn’t I?’
‘That you did. Have you seen him? Bruised eye, black as the cook.’
‘The cook?’
‘Yes, the cook.’
‘Black as sin.’
‘Ha, I suppose he is. Don’t think he’d like being called that though. Careful you don’t get into another scuffle.’
‘Humph.’
‘Isn’t she a grand sight, Jimmy? Look. England. Portsmouth, but still England.’
The ship made its way up the channel with the aid of a small tugboat. Dirty smoke puffed from the tug’s neck and turned in the wind, coating their eyes with grit. When it cleared, a line of sheds became visible up ahead. A fleet of fishing boats rocked side by side, tied one to the next, knitted together like a fisherman’s jersey. Behind the boats, long streets streamed down the hills, half hidden by morning mist. Drawing closer, their ship passed alongside the main building. It was magnificent, with large arched columns along the front of the ground floor and golden fish weathervanes on the top of each corner. More golden fish swam across the top floor, as if jumping from the red brick between windows. The street in front of the buiding was alive with stalls, stacks of baskets and trestles full of masses of grey and white fish.
‘We’re going in, Jimmy, to see the ladies.’
‘Are you now?’
‘Shame you’re so busy. You’d like our friendly English girls.’ Abel winked, then skipped over to the ladder, grabbed the rungs and slid down with one swing, his boots landing hard on the deck below.
Three sailors hung over the yardarms above James, furling sails.
‘Hey … what you be calling this side of the boat?’ James asked.
‘It’s a ship, Paddy.’ One of them laughed, and the others joined in.
‘Portside, port of the stern.’
‘Port, you say?’
‘Can you not hear, Paddy? Bit deaf down there?’
‘Pogue muh ho-in,’ James cursed quietly in their direction, then settled back as the Witch edged towards the dock.
This hand, James thought: this hand port, that hand starboard, this hand port.
One of the sailors bent over the railing to speak to someone below, exposing the pink flesh of his lower back. There was a pocket of plumpness on each side of his backbone, pouches of softness on a hard man’s bones. Every man has his weakness, James thought.
Excited voices from Abel’s group disappeared down an avenue. The Witch settled in her mooring at the end of a fish market, where the smell of sour fish and the cursing of the fishwives presented itself – a rotten welcome.
The few redcoats left on duty lingered on deck. Fernley’s desk was brought up top, and once again the convict carts rolled in. Two women dressed in black stood at the gangway, their bodies stiff in tightened corsets. Black bonnets covered their hair – no lace trim anywhere. One of them smiled slightly as she handed blanket-wrapped packages to female convicts; the other wore a constant frown.
By early evening, groups of redcoats were weaving back to the Witch, some needing help up the gangway. James laughed at the state of them, especially Abel, who wore the most stupid drunken smirk he’d ever seen. The returning sailors seemed more melancholy, with arms around each other’s shoulders, singing in waxing and waning tempo of the sadness of leaving loved ones.
‘Fernley wants to know if you want the whipping tonight or tomorrow morning?’
James was startled by the soldier’s question – for a moment he’d almost forgotten why he alone had been left on deck. He looked down at the emptying dock. Mist had begun to roll in.
‘Get it over with,’ he said without looking up.
The soldier carried the answer back to Fernley, and James was left alone with a weight in his lungs. Beggar boys scoured for leftover fish or pennies along the dock. The sleepy tide licked the side of the Witch, and she released a groan each time it lifted her, each time it tugged at the ropes that squeezed her joints. He thought of Abel and the ladies, the ladies asleep, with money for a bed and beer in their bellies. He thought about asking Fernley to be let ashore, to be given his freedom after all. But then what? And what of Aileen? She was already three weeks ahead of him. He had to go, he had to find her. He couldn’t leave her out there on her own. Female convicts could be released, he’d heard, if they found employment or if someone wanted to marry them. Would they release her to a brother? He could pretend she wasn’t his sister, but how would that work? Perhaps Abel could marry her. He was a pleasant sort of fellow and easily convinced.
James crossed himself with his free hand and prayed to Mother Mary for strength. Twice he thumped his chest to dislodge the lump, but it didn’t work. He breathed slowly to steady his heart, but that didn’t work either.
‘God damn it, man, hurry up,’ he said to the empty deck, hoping speed would act like the cold and numb something, anything.
Fernley’s office was full of redcoats in for a look. The drummer boy stood at the front with the long cane; the head drummer stood behind him with a shorter cane. James looked directly at the drummer boy, but he turned away.
A human passage ushered James to the front, where three beams formed a tripod, fastened at the top with a bolt and chained to the ceiling. James’s chains were removed, then his jacket and shirt. Each wrist was tied tight with rope to the top beam. His feet, barely able to touch the floor, were spread and fastened at each corner of the lower beam. Fernley sat at his table to the side, dragging on his pipe. Beside him, Surgeon Ashton closed his eyes as if to pray.
‘Private Stack,’ Fernley bellowed. ‘You have been found guilty of misconduct in the ranks. You are to receive fifty lashes. Punishment administered under the authority of Her Majesty, Queen Victoria. Are you ready and willing to take your punishment like a man?’
‘Get on with it,’ James retorted.
‘Evans.’ Fernley addressed the drummer boy. ‘If your whips are deemed insufficient, you yourself will receive one, are we understood?’
‘Yes sir,’ Evans said, a little too keenly.
‘Commence.’
With a whistle the first strike landed high on James’s shoulders. His mouth opened with shock and a rush of sound escaped. On the second strike, he held his mouth tight and clenched his eyes shut, but on the third his mouth opened again. Water swirled around his eyes. By ten, the strikes had lowered to his arse, which wasn’t quite as shocking as the back. By fifteen, the drummer boy had been struck himself by the cane behind him, and the strikes rose in height and strength again. By eighteen, James felt he could bear no more. The desire to escape his own body was intense and he pooled all his fury into his arms, pulling himself up to receive the next two blows. At twenty, Fernley called for a pause in the proceedings.
The surgeon came around and opened each of James’s eyes wide. The man’s face moved around in circles before him. He seemed so far away, yet his hands were so close when they touched his face. The surgeon gave the all clear.
‘God help me,’ James murmured.
As the blows began, James twisted his body against the ropes, against the ringing pain that filled his head. By thirty lashes, he let go his grip, his body hung and his mind slipped into caves of unconsciousness. By forty, he was out cold and the proceedings paused again. A bucket of seawater splashed over him, stung his open wounds and slapped him back from the depths of oblivion.
‘Only ten more,’ the surgeon urged. ‘It’ll be over soon enough.’
Beneath James’s heavy lids was the image of Jesus on the cross, his body limp against nails and wood, his head bowed. Blood trickled down his face but the pain was gone; Jesus was in that beautiful cave, waiting, away from his body. James wanted to stay in that cave too. Death, he decided, was no more than another room, and as the next blow struck he wished he could find the entrance.
Voices came and went, and two more buckets of cold water did nothing to raise him. James felt the release of pressure from the ropes when they untied him. Death would have to wait after all. He focused what energy he had into his legs as his arms dropped from the whipping frame, but there was no strength left, nothing to keep him from hitting the floor.