Another three weeks passed before James could sleep in his hammock, the floor affording more stability for healing and less aggravation. To his surprise, he was the new curiosity among the regiments.
‘Show us your stripes, Stack.’
James would lift the back of his shirt and listen to the whistles. But it didn’t take long before he grew tired of the attention. The scars formed trenches across his back, enemy trenches that were still foreign to him, and he began to resent it greatly when the men tried to touch them.
‘Get about your business and leave me be,’ became his reply, until finally they stopped asking.
By then the Witch had long since left the west coast. The trade winds pushed her down towards the east for Trinidad. The sailing was good and swift until, without warning, everything stopped. No land in sight and no wind – everything dead calm. The Witch sat turning in one place and the heat crept up over her bow.
Within days all soldiers were barefoot and jacketless. There was no reprieve from the energy-sapping heat. The sailors took to wearing fabric wrapped around their waists like skirts, and handkerchiefs about their heads. Cloth stuck like a layer of skin. Drinking water tasted bad and everything dripped; even the sails seemed to melt in the afternoon haze.
Lice were everywhere – in hair, bedding and clothing. On deck, the men entertained themselves by wagering who could catch the most lice from their body in one sitting. Each one was counted by the snap of its popping body between fingernails. The surgeon insisted on more bathing to combat the infestation, so soldiers busied themselves in the early mornings to beat the sun’s heat. As soon as the soldiers had finished bathing, groups of convicts were brought up. The men stripped completely and doused themselves with buckets of seawater at the back of the ship. The women were taken to the front, where blankets were held up for privacy. Most were careful to conceal their nudity, but when the surgeon was out of sight there were some who flashed a lower leg or pressed their wet bodies against the blanket.
Towards the middle of the day the heat belted the convicts below deck. Their voices became a continuous groan. James grew to hate duty down there. The moment he walked into the passage, their moans changed his mood. There was no life in the air, though the portholes were wide open; nothing circulated but the thickness of sweat.
As always, James filled the bucket and took a cup around to each convict. It took hours. Some of them just wanted to dip their hands into the bucket and spill the cup over their heads. He held the bucket out as long as he could, especially for the women, but he’d pull away sharply if they touched him. Despite the daily baths, their skin felt slimy in the heat, as though they were changing into worms underground.
After convict duty, he’d scrub himself from top to toe up on deck. Whenever the surgeon saw him doing this he’d commend him on his chaste ways, though there was nothing chaste about it. It was his mother’s ritual, and a sign of that royal blood he was supposed to have. The scrubbing removed not only the dirt but the association of poverty, of a curse. It set him apart, made him remember he was not a wanderer.
The afternoons were all the same. On deck, the men lay in pockets of shelter beneath shade-sails. There was little movement apart from the scratching of scalps. The sun sat high and the deck burnt the soles of men’s feet. All around was a hush. Even the sea birds gave up their squawking and sat on yardarms.
Sailors and redcoats grew more accustomed to each other in the shared shade. The doldrums, it appeared, was a place where even men melted together. James could hear the shade-sail above him lift from time to time with the promise of coolness, but it was nothing more than stagnant wishes. Strangely, the sound of it lifting often worked its way into his dreams as something else – the crackling fire of home, or children on a swing-rope. Unusual dreams were a common occurrence in the heat.
Abel liked to play with the sleep-talkers, whisper scenarios in their ears, increase the tension of their dreams. Then he’d sit back and watch the dreamer wake with fright, and laugh. James was sure Abel was going to get a beating, but no one would touch him – not with the big angry crust of a scab that oozed pus from the side of his face all day long. A few of the men had these reminders of the Portsmouth ladies of the night.
James lay in the shade next to Abel, avoiding the side with the scab, and always careful to check his friend was asleep before shutting his own eyes. It didn’t take long to doze off. There was lightness to it, slipping away, a trick of security, a reprieve from the heat. As always, the image of Aileen came to him. Usually he would see her skip over the green mound of an Irish hill. He’d run but he couldn’t move, he’d call but she couldn’t hear, and he’d wake with the heaviness of disappointment.
This time was different. She stood in front of him completely naked. Her body was not that of a girl any more. Her breasts and her thighs were full, rounded and voluptuous, her skin the dark blue of an evening sky. Her long hair waved around her, red flames licking at her cheeks, wrapping around her body. Her eyes he couldn’t fix; they remained a blur as she drew closer.
‘James,’ she said, ‘don’t be telling them you’re me brother.’
He tried to answer but his voice was lost.
‘Come, be me husband.’ She held both arms out to him.
James’s chest no longer rose and fell; his breath was at peace within him, as if he were in the depths of the Lough Leane, just as he had imagined as a child. It wasn’t like suffocation or drowning; he didn’t feel any sense of being trapped or alarmed. In fact, he felt free, as though the water opened out in front of him and he could leave his body and go, go to Aileen. But he wasn’t ready. He hadn’t found the way to her; she had come to him. Fear pulled him back; there was something wrong.
‘Come to me,’ she called.
‘No, Aileen, it can’t be,’ James muttered.
‘James?’ She tilted her head. ‘You promised you would. Come to me.’
‘No, Aileen, not yet. I’ll meet you. I promise I’ll meet you. Wait for me.’
‘James!’ Her voice lifted and he felt the pain of its scrape. Her hands retracted, her hair swooned about her, wrapping around her neck and face. She reached for James once more, her palms stretched, and he woke calling her name. Abel sat calmly beside him and tapped his shoulder.
‘Did our Aileen drop by?’
James turned to him, and for a moment he wondered if his friend had been playing his tricks. But Abel didn’t laugh. James lowered his head into the fold of his arm. Sweat from his brow soaked into the sleeve.
‘Don’t worry. We’ve all had a dose of the bad dreams. Just our minds getting bored and playing tricks is all.’
Something about the dream taunted James. Aileen was a woman. The image of her rounded body was still in his mind. His face flushed. He needed something, anything to keep her from invading him.
A young sailor had positioned himself under the sail not far from James. His hands moved quickly, flicking a thick piece of rope that wrapped about itself until it formed a small nest of a knot.
‘That’s called a double sheet bend.’ He’d noticed James watching.
‘Show me again?’ James asked.
The sailor undid the rope and knotted it again slowly.
Abel tucked himself in beside James to get a closer look.
‘This goes around there and over that, see? Then through. Here, give it a go.’
James took the rope and turned it in his hands.
‘No, round that way. And … over. That’s it.’
James undid the knot and retied it again and again until he had it down pat. Then Abel gave it a try.
‘You ever tied a noose?’ the sailor asked. ‘I had to tie one for real once. Show you if you like.’
‘That’d be grand,’ Abel said.
Just past midnight the moon sat half hoisted, chalking a path across the sea. The fiddler had long stopped playing, the men had downed the last of their rum and gone to their hammocks. James stayed behind for middle-watch. It was the best duty, up on deck without anyone else to bother him, the slight drop in temperature, the quietness.
A scuffle of men tiptoed up onto the deck. Their muffled laughs bounced in the still night air.
‘Shhh …’ One of them signalled and pointed to four women who had come up with them, hidden beneath grey blankets.
‘What you doing?’ James whispered, but no one answered.
He didn’t see where the men went, but he heard them tumbling about, caught the women’s rum giggles towards the bow. He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do. If the surgeon heard the commotion he would surely come up, and then what? Who had let them off the chains? For hours he kept to the stern, where he could ignore the noises.
A veil of navy-blue sky started to liquefy in the morning light. James went about kicking men’s boots to get them off his deck before shift change, thrusting at their ribs with the barrel of his musket if they moved too slowly. Once they were gone, he let off the one-shot wake-up call to signal that morning had broken.
The surgeon’s faith in the goodness of man took a sharp and unexpected turn. In the incessant heat of the doldrums, the lightness he’d once spread among the men changed into a pervasive mistrust. Sin and suspicion became his focus, and he began checking the women’s chains before turning in at night. It was one of the new rituals. Another was the washing of hands before supper. When the supper bell rang, he would place buckets of seawater in the hall outside the mess for the men to use, though they never did. Then he gave up his trousers and waistcoat for a long black cloak that swished the way women’s skirts do. James supposed it offered his legs more air, though it couldn’t have been comfortable, buttoned up tight around his Adam’s apple.
Every day the surgeon paced the deck, following his own footsteps. No one said anything when he ranted to himself; they’d just nudge each other and snicker. Whenever Officer Fernley saw him, he’d send him below, save him from the eyes of the men.
Sunday sermons were the surgeon’s responsibility since there was no clergyman on board. He was a harsh preacher; his raised voice raked over the holy words and his stories tilted heavily towards sinking moralities. James resented the guilt he made them feel, the heaviness of consequence. It made his skin itch, and it was a challenge to sit through the passion of accusations while all the time wanting to scratch every part of his body, from the soles of his feet to his eyebrows to the crack of his arse.
Afterwards, not one man could lift his head over Sunday supper. The drink was kept tucked away too, but come Monday they’d throw themselves back into it, their guilt sinking to the bottom of the rum barrel while cards were dealt and women fetched in the night.
James was no good with the cards; any kind of luck seemed to pull away from him. Twice he bet his middle-watch duty against pennies and lost. Nor was he good without his evening tot of rum, and this made it impossible to save enough for a night with one of the women. He needed three pennies for that: one for each guard on middle-watch, and a mug of rum for the woman. When his turn for middle-watch came up again, he made sure he wasn’t tempted to play the cards. Instead, he pocketed three pennies from men sneaking up with women. Three pennies: it was enough. He’d get his turn.
Only some of the girls were keen to frolic the night James went down to make his pick. The guard took his lamp around the room, highlighting the interested ones. The light distorted their faces in the flame, and James found himself put off the idea until the light reached the open bodice of a small, dark-haired woman in the corner. Her breasts were newly sprouted, firm with pink nipples. James handed over two pennies and the guard unchained her.
James wrapped his arm around her shoulders. She looked even smaller tucked in to the side of his chest, where he could squash the life out of her with that one arm if he wanted to. Creeping in unison, they made their way above. James handed over the last penny to the middle-watch guard, then his mug of rum to the girl.
‘What’s your name?’ he asked quietly.
She took a large gulp of rum and looked around, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand. ‘Pearl,’ she answered without asking his. ‘Did you bring the bread?’
James hadn’t thought about bringing food. Her rum-dampened hand waved at him to follow into the darkness she knew well. They made their way to the other side of a long-boat where she laid down her blanket.
‘Where you going?’ she asked as he left her.
‘Shhh,’ he replied.
The bathing bucket lowered until he felt it bounce on the sea. He waited for it to sink a little before pulling it up. He felt a bit stupid placing the slopping bucket beside Pearl, especially when she laughed at him, but it was a habit now, the cleaning.
‘Hold me skirts then, daft fellow that you are.’
Pearl raised her skirts. James bundled as much of them together as he could in his clumsy hands while she bent to lower her bloomers. James touched the smoothness of her pallid thighs. She turned and lifted her skirts to her waist in front of him. Water sparkled like tiny stars in her dark pubic hair, and rolled like tears down the inside of her thigh, dripping onto the tops of her tiny feet. James dropped her skirts over his head to lick the drips, further and further up until the tip of his tongue rubbed against the button of flesh that peeked out from within the mound between her legs. Pearl pulled her skirts up and jerked his head away as if he’d done something wrong, then lay down on the blanket in front of him.
James undid himself and waited for her to stop fiddling with the strings of her bodice. Something was tangled, but he couldn’t wait – he reached across and pushed her hands out of the way and slid himself between her thighs. The plumpness of her opening welcomed him, encompassed him, and even Aileen escaped his thoughts. It was the first time he’d been inside a woman, and he erupted far sooner than he’d have liked to.
Afterwards they lay side by side, hot and wet, James laughing as he tried to catch his breath. Every muscle in his body rested. His vulnerability was laid bare before God – yet it was a pleasure even God must know about, he decided, since He created it. James stroked Pearl’s thigh, but she was unresponsive, her face sunk into the mug of rum, her grey petticoat ballooned about her hips.
‘No bread, huh?’ she asked again.
James groaned and wrapped his hand around her ankle. He was dark against her, which perplexed him. In daylight they looked the same colour.
‘Bring some down tomorrow,’ he promised, though he doubted he would.
Pearl sighed as if she knew, but James didn’t care about her disappointment; she was his for the night, he’d paid for it, and he flattened her against the blanket with the weight of his body, taking her once more before the rum was gone. Afterwards he fell into a deep, satisfying sleep, wrapped around her curled body beneath the blanket.
Without warning, James woke with a solid boot to his thigh.
‘God Almighty!’ He rolled about in pain.
‘Blasphemy!’ the surgeon yelled, bending over him. ‘Blasphemy, fornication, lies and lust! You have bathed in iniquity tonight. What say you, soldier?’
James did not answer.
‘And what of the diseases these women carry? Do you not give a thought for self-preservation of any sort?’
‘God himself knows a man’s need,’ James replied.
‘Ah, Stack is it.’ Surgeon Ashton moved in for a closer look. ‘God himself knows a man’s greed. What are you then? A dog that takes his pleasure at will?’ He said it again for everyone to hear. ‘Is that it? Are you all nothing but dogs following each other down the path of destruction? Animals! And what of the rest of us? Do we not all bear the brunt of your misdeeds?’
The surgeon let out an aggrieved cry, then ran about the deck, attempting to kick anything that shifted in the dark. Before long Captain Mollison appeared, his long-johns stark in the lamplight. James wrapped the blanket around Pearl’s shoulders as if to protect her, and the two of them ducked behind the long-boat.
‘This must be stopped, Captain,’ the surgeon bellowed.
‘That’ll do,’ Mollison warned. ‘Who’s on duty here?’
The guard moved tentatively towards him.
‘Get the women downstairs. Surgeon, make your way back to your cabin and I’ll ask you not to come up in the night again or I’ll lock you in. I can do without this kind of disturbance.’
‘Can you not see what’s going on?’ the surgeon asked.
‘Keeps them from buggery, does it not? Off to your berths the lot of you.’
James turned to Pearl again. ‘Come lass.’ He held out his hand to her. ‘No need to be scared. Doc means well, just lost his mind is all.’
‘We’re all losing our minds.’ Pearl pulled away from him and made her own way downstairs.
James stayed on deck and thought about the surgeon. He didn’t fit in with the company of the Witch. He should be at home, in England, with a pretty wife and healthy children. Not there, with them: sailors, prostitutes, criminals and soldiers.
He threw the bucket over the side and pulled up the salty water. He found one of the brushes used to clean the deck, the one with the handle that would reach right down the middle of his back where his skin tingled with anticipation. He needed to get her off him now; she was dirty, nothing more than a wanderer, and he could bury her.
James felt the heat of the sun before he opened his eyes. Abel tossed him some bread and asked about the night before, but James was too tired – Abel would have to gather his gossip from someone else.
It was midday before he woke again, or his stomach stirred and he remembered the bread. By then it was pressed into a pat from being rolled against, but still edible.
James stretched his braces and released them with a snap onto his shoulders. His shirt caught on the sweat of his back. His lips were dry, but the water from the barrel was so foul he spat it on the floor. There was nothing for it: he’d have to make his way down to the mess for some coffee. It was something he always tried to avoid on his own.
In the heat of the mess, the cooks’ silhouettes were dark against the fires. It took a while for James to make out the large shark stretched across a bench, its belly split and spewing onto the floor. One cook was holding a shiny blade laced with blood. Another scooped the shark’s guts into a bucket. The stench made James sick, so he grabbed a biscuit and a mug of coffee and left as quickly as he could.
Up on deck, Abel was coming off duty.
‘Give us some coffee, Jim?’
‘Get your own. Fair stinks down there and I ain’t going back for more.’
‘Did you hear what happened?’
‘The shark? Aye, I saw it.’
‘No, the women.’
‘The women? What of it?’
‘Five of them, been put in the black hole.’
‘What for?’
‘The surgeon came up while they were bathing. Started yelling at them. He told them that if they continued to behave like harlots he would have them thrown overboard. Called them heathens and shameful hussies.’
James shook his head and growled deep within his throat.
‘I didn’t see who started it, but before I knew it they were all wrestling. It was a sight, I tell you, five near-naked women on top of one man. They were going to throw him over. Nearly did too, till we stopped it.’
‘And Fernley?’
‘Fernley was furious. The convicts have to be bathed in chains now. The surgeon’s banned from the deck.’
James dipped his biscuit into the mug of coffee and wondered what his mother would make of black men killing great grey sharks, and naked women throwing men of God overboard.
‘Not good – bad omen, that shark, you can be sure.’
Abel laughed and swiped James’s mug, spilling coffee over James’s trousers.
‘Look, what did I tell you?’ James reclaimed the mug before Abel could drink from it.
That night James had duty on the convicts’ deck. Dysentery had set in, and one of his tasks was to gather full buckets and place them outside the door to be emptied. The acid smell of it sat heavy in the humid air. James tried covering his mouth and nose, but that made it difficult to breathe – he just had to bear the smell, try to block it from his thoughts.
Each time the door opened he heard the cries of the women in the black hole. In the early hours of the morning their pleas dragged him out into the passageway, to a closet door tucked under the stairwell, less than half the size of a regular door and heavily bolted. All five of them were crammed in there. No air. No room to stand. James longed to open the door and let them out, even for an hour, but only Captain Mollison had the key. He wanted to tell the women it would be all right; they’d be out soon enough. But if he spoke, they would stir again and their cries, he was sure, would drive him to madness.
He moved quietly back to his post and shut the door behind him. He leaned into one of the portholes and breathed new air. But there was no movement in it, not even the smallest breeze. He turned and slid down the wall into a crouch, pulled his knife from his pocket and dug it into the floorboards, then lifted it out and dug it in again and again.
James was on deck when a squall of dark clouds approached from portside. It all happened in a matter of minutes, as if God suddenly remembered something He’d forgotten to do. The wind whipped up in a fury. Shade-sails flapped hard against their fastenings. Hailstones hit the deck like tiny pellets of lead that shushed against each other as the ship rocked.
‘All hands!’ A sailor unfastened ropes in a fluster.
Small knife-sized rips stretched across the canvas from the force of hailstones. James undid one corner of the sail above him, then held on. The sail pulled, and he fought to keep his feet on deck. It took the weight of three sailors at his corner to stop the sail lifting. One hailstone stung him below the eye, but he didn’t let go, not until the squall left – and it did. Quick as it came, it disappeared.
James pitched in with the task of clearing the deck, shovelling hailstones into all available buckets and water barrels. Two large sails were rolled up and taken below for mending. The chorus of ‘Cheerily Man’ rang out among the sailors as they hauled up the anchor. James didn’t know the words, so he hummed – it was enough, he was part of it too. He scooped melting ice onto his shovel with the first beat of the song, then dumped it into a barrel with another beat, over and over, until the deck was clear.
A southbound blast had picked up, and even the sea seemed to roll with excitement. The stagnant pond had been resuscitated by the squall. It was time to move, time to head for Australia, time to find Aileen.