Preoccupied by the lack of a substantial reason for Maryse’s melancholy, Siana had paid scant attention to her own body.
Vaguely aware she’d missed her regular cycle, because this had happened on other occasions, she paid it little mind. When the second cycle didn’t appear she squashed the little niggle of hope she felt, for Ashley had made his presence known quite early in her first pregnancy, when she had suffered dizzy spells and faintness.
It had been then she’d realized she was in love with two men, her husband and Francis Matheson. She and Francis had kissed on the stairs and declared their love for each other whilst she’d still been married to Edward.
She’d decided she might wait for the third cycle to pass, so she wouldn’t feel disappointed if her womb wasn’t cradling a child for Francis. But this morning, as cold, pewter skies pressed against the window and a wild wind splattered rain against the glass – inside her, Siana could feel a glorious surge of awakening. This morning, she felt different.
Gazing at the blue canopy above her bed, she listened to Rosie bustling about, trying to discover why she felt different. A tiny smile tugged at her mouth. There was a slight queasiness in her stomach, that’s why.
As her hands flattened against her stomach, the pulse under her skin throbbed strongly against her palms. Her little smile grew into a wide one and she pushed all doubts aside. At long last!
It was a disagreeable day, even for November, a day when the gods fought over territory. The air was as irascible as a colony of red ants after a child had stirred their nest with a stick. Thunder growled in the distance, a capricious wind puffed smoke down the chimney. There was danger in the air. Siana could sense it.
Upstairs, the attic door was rattling back and forth, something it hadn’t done for a long time, for she’d had bolts fixed to the door to prevent movement. Someone must have been in there and forgotten to close them.
The queasy feeling in her strengthened into nausea. She began to perspire. Sitting up, she pushed back the bedcovers and swung her legs out of bed. Her head began to swim. Gulping, she staggered to the bowl on the dresser.
Rosie’s arm came around her for support and comfort. ‘Finally got yourself with cheil then, did you? I wondered when you missed your flux.’
Siana wondered at the lack of happiness Rosie displayed. ‘It appears so.’ But no amount of sickness in the mornings could spoil her own happiness, she thought. Nothing could.
She was proved wrong when Rosie handed her a damp cloth to wash her face with. The maid drew in a deep breath. Words spilled out in a rush. ‘I can hold my tongue no longer. Miss Matheson appears to be sufferin’ from the same condition.’
Blood roared in Siana’s ears and her eyes flew open in shock. Nausea forgotten, she gazed at Rosie and said stupidly, ‘How can she be when she’s unmarried?’
Rosie shrugged. ‘I’m not saying she got that way willingly. Signs say different. She’s been sick every morning for the last few weeks, the girl has. And weeping all the time. It could’ve happened the night of the harvest supper, when Josh carried her home. She reeked of cider. I thought someone might have got at her then. ’Twas her dress, see. Fair mucked up, it were, with blood on the skirt and muddied up along the back. The girl won’t even look at it now, let alone wear it. She were shakin’ like a leaf in the wind. Frightened witless if you asks me. The poor little moth. She’s been off her food this last month, too. Eats hardly anything.’
This could account for Maryse’s strange behaviour since the harvest supper. The thought of her being with child was too awful to contemplate – but contemplate it, Siana must.
‘Dear God. Why didn’t you tell me of your suspicions then?’
‘I couldn’t really, could I? Not with her father goin’ away, and all. Her ankle was damaged, right enough, and I might have been wrong about the other – still might be come to that, ‘cept I know fer a fact that things ain’t right with her fluxes.’
‘Have you told anyone else of your suspicions?’
Rosie shook her head. ‘Demons with pitchforks wouldn’t make me blacken that girl’s good name. If she’s been got at, she wouldn’t have been willing, for she’s not some forward wench who would smack and coddle with the village lads.’
Her own sickness forgotten, Siana’s mind began to puzzle over it. Maryse had never shown friendliness towards any lad in particular, apart from her cousins, and—? Her stomach roiled and she gazed helplessly at Rosie. ‘Not Josh, surely?’
Rosie, seemingly shocked by the thought, said in fierce defence, ‘Josh Skinner thinks the world of young Maryse. Besides which, he wouldn’t have had time. You should’ve seen his face when he brought her home – all of a thoughtful pucker, and angry at the same time, as if a haggling matter was goin’ on in his head and he was decidin’ whether to state his dark thoughts to someone, or not.’
‘Thank goodness he didn’t state them to Francis.’
‘That lad ain’t no fool when it comes to sensing the depths of folks and their doin’s. He’s like you in that regard.’
Rosie’s remark about Josh made Siana think. She’d never considered Josh as anything more than her younger brother. But their mother’s Welsh blood was part of him, too, so it was quite possible he’d inherited the same fey sense from their mutual ancestors. Not that he’d ever admit to it, for Josh considered himself very much in charge of his own destiny.
Josh was certainly capable. He hadn’t leaned on her much since their mother had died and, accepting just a room over the stable at the house in Poole and food in his belly, he had managed to keep his independence. Although she knew little of his business affairs, she did know Josh was prospering.
She wavered between doubt and conviction. Of course Josh wouldn’t hurt Maryse. She was ashamed of herself for even considering it. Indeed, she didn’t even know if Rosie’s suspicions were correct.
Yet, the more she thought about Maryse’s current behaviour, the more likely the girl’s condition became. Had it been a foolish act, brought about by ingestion of strong liquor? Worse – had she been raped? The latter seemed more likely.
Oh God! she thought, grappling with the enormity of this problem. Poor, sweet Maryse was trying to live with her hurt tightly coiled inside her. How frightened she must feel. Did the girl know what ailed her? It was more than probable, for although Maryse was young and unworldly, she was a country girl and the method nature used for procreation was both observed and absorbed from an early age.
She grabbed Rosie’s arm. ‘Promise me you won’t tell anyone of your suspicions, Rosie. Maryse will become an outcast. Oh, God!’ Her hand flew to her mouth. ‘What will her father say when he finds out?’
Rosie muttered, ‘Seein’ as you’ve raised the question, some things are women’s business and men are best off being kept in the dark about them.’
Astonished, Siana gazed at the maid, willing to grasp at any lifeline thrown to her. Practicalities took root in her mind. ‘How can she carry an infant and give birth to it without somebody noticing?’
‘It wouldn’t be the first time such a thing happened. The doctor do be absent for several months. You take the girl away somewhere quiet and isolated, so she can birth the infant in secret. Course, you’d have to farm the cheil out when it be born. There’d be plenty of country folk willing to look after a bairn for the shillings it brings them, especially if it happens to be a lad who can earn his keep when his shoulders grow some strength. You and she be due at the same time, in June by my reckoning.’
Closing her eyes for a moment, Siana drew in a deep shuddering breath as she remembered having to farm out her brother and sister after their mother died, and the brutalization they were subject to as a result. She would find it hard to deceive the husband she loved over such a matter, too – but for the sake of Maryse, she would.
‘I’ll talk to Maryse after Pansy has left for her visit with her aunt and uncle. Her condition can be kept hidden until spring. If we let my happy event be known, it will draw attention from hers. By that time, we will have moved into the house at Poole. I know hardly anyone there, so if we go away for the birth, our absence will be less conspicuous – though I shall inform the countess of my trip and ask her to keep Pansy with her longer.’
They exchanged a conspiratorial glance, then Rosie grinned. ‘Your eyes tell me you have somewhere in mind. Out with it, then.’
It would take some planning, but if Maryse was indeed with child, at least she had somewhere to go where nobody knew them.
‘Would Wales be far enough away, d’you think . . . ?’
It was obvious to Francis right from the start that he and Captain McPhee would never get on. As a result, he avoided the captain’s company as much as possible.
The weather had been tolerable during the voyage. Now, its many moods no longer held his interest to any great degree. He’d treated the unwilling passengers for the usual complaints. But despite the exercise and fresh air afforded to the convicts, he’d watched some of them suffer. The overcrowded conditions, poor nutrition and hygiene had worsened complaints that were usually mild by nature.
They had anchored in Sydney Cove for repairs, because the ship had been taking water for several days. With no time for a proper overhaul, and with the captain eager to discharge his human cargo, some caulking was hastily replaced and they were on their way again.
By this time, every one of the convicts was infested with body lice, and most of them with intestinal worms. Francis had treated festered wounds inflicted by the cat-o’-nine-tails, a barbaric weapon which flayed the skin from the backs of both recalcitrant convicts and crew alike.
He meticulously recorded each case, but avoided making adverse comments, for the log was inspected by McPhee on occasion, and Francis didn’t want to inflame the man’s uncertain temper.
As they grew closer to the journey’s end, the food became rancid and the water fetid, so there had been several cases of dysentery.
Recently, they’d crossed an expanse of water named Bass Strait, a churning, unpredictable maelstrom, across which enormous walls of water moved without purpose, unless that purpose was to collide and create mayhem. Several of the convicts had sustained broken limbs, and were now kept below.
After a total journey of five months, plus six days out from Sydney Cove, Francis was heartened by the sight of an island. But it was not their destination. The next evening, the long dark mass of Van Diemen’s Land was sighted on the horizon, and the sailors set up a cheer.
‘We’ll keep the land in sight on the starboard side and should round the peninsula and sail into harbour tomorrow evening,’ the captain informed them at dinner the same night. ‘But we’re shipping water again and there are heavy seas under us, so keep vigilant, gentlemen.’ He gazed at Francis with a grudging smile to match his praise. ‘Not a soul lost during the passage, Doctor. Well done.’
But although none of them knew it at the time, those words proved to be too much of a challenge to fate.
Francis’s downfall – and saviour, as it turned out, for if he hadn’t been on deck at the time to raise the captain’s ire he wouldn’t have survived – came in the form of Fanny Perkins, the young girl he’d taken under his wing.
Discovering the loss of some scissors and a needle and surgical thread for stitching wounds, he duly reported it to the captain. A subsequent search of the female quarters revealed the instruments hidden amongst Fanny’s possessions. She’d been using them to patch a ragged skirt.
‘Ten strokes of the birch,’ Captain McPhee said, staring hard at the girl, who stood trembling between two marines.
‘Fanny is only a child,’ Francis protested. ‘She intended to return the instruments before we anchored.’
The captain’s eyes flicked up to his. ‘Are you attempting to usurp my authority, Dr Matheson?’
‘I’m asking for leniency in this case.’
‘I am being lenient, Doctor. The punishment for this crime is usually fifty strokes. Back off, I have a ship to run and the weather is worsening. This is not some simple serving wench. The lassie murdered her master in his bed.’
‘It was my bed, and he was forcing himself on me,’ Fanny protested, then she began to sob. ‘I’m afeared, Doctor.’
The captain nodded at the sergeant. ‘Carry out my order.’
Francis placed a hand on his arm. ‘Show her some mercy, Captain.’
For a moment, Francis thought he’d made an impression, for the man hesitated. Then he gazed down at his hand.
Francis removed it.
The eyes that came up to his were like angry wasps. ‘Mercy, is it? Now there’s a concept. Perhaps the proud aristocrat would be willing to take the lassie’s punishment upon his own shoulders.’
Francis looked at the weeping girl. She was too thin, and the cane would lay her sparse covering of flesh open to the bone. This could be one of his own daughters, and he couldn’t allow her to undergo such punishment. He inclined his head in agreement. ‘Aye, I’ll be willing to do that.’
‘Twenty strokes, then, Sergeant. It might teach the good doctor to be more vigilant in his duties, as well some humility.’
Ten minutes later Francis found himself tied to one of the open hatch covers, his back bared. A couple of the marines gave him a sympathetic glance, but most of the crew were being kept busy in the rigging as the ship battled her way through the capriciously rough seas.
The convicts were in their quarters, the solid hatches had been battened down, to keep the seas from pouring into the holds. Fanny had been sent below with them.
The ignominious birching was carried out in front of the officers, without ceremony, and efficiently fast by the sergeant himself, who nearly lost his footing when the ship crabbed sideways on a couple of occasions.
‘Put some effort into those strokes, Sergeant,’ the captain bawled.
‘A pox on the Scottish bastard,’ the sergeant cursed under his breath.
The fact that Francis stopped himself from crying out with each stroke was sheer bloody-mindedness. He hadn’t been caned since childhood, and couldn’t decide which was worse, the embarrassment of it, or the pain. He decided it was pride as his fury rose with each stroke.
The thin cane brought fire to the surface of his skin, which eventually became one big area of raw pain. He grunted as the next stroke brought blood welling. Sweat beaded his brow despite the cold wind. Mercifully, the beating stopped on the count of twelve, when the deck was swamped by a wave and the ship nearly keeled over. There was a loud crack when she sluggishly righted herself.
‘Cut him loose,’ the captain shouted. ‘About your duties, men, the ship isn’t responding to the wheel. Lower the mainsail, she’s taking too much strain.’
Taking advantage of the confusion, Francis pulled on his shirt and jacket, but was knocked off his feet by a roll of water over the deck. Below him, he could hear a babble of screams and cries coming from the convicts.
The ship spun broadside to the waves. A second wave surged over them, plucked him from the deck and carried him high on its crest. It dumped him just as easily. Tossed and turned in foaming turbulence, Francis surfaced several hundred yards away from the ship. Fighting to haul some air into his lungs on the next crest, he discovered the Adriana was floating keel up. She appeared to have broken her back, and was in the process of being splintered and crushed by the roll of the breakers. In contrast to the air, the water was powerfully cold.
Cresting a wave and about to slide down a truly terrifying slope of water into an abyss, he saw the ship’s boat coming up to meet him. The breath left his body as they collided. He managed to clutch the side and haul himself painfully into the bottom of the little craft.
Flimsy though it was, when compared to the awesome might of the ocean, Francis was thankful for the solid wood beneath him. When he found the strength to look again, the Adriana had gone, leaving surprisingly little debris, in an empty sea, in a wide horizon.
He tried not to think of the drowned convicts and crew as he drifted at the mercy of the mountainous waves. He hoped Fanny hadn’t suffered. And although his back throbbed from the whipping he’d taken, the pain served to remind him that he’d survived. The salt water, no matter how badly it stung him, could only be beneficial, for it would prevent infection settling into his open wounds and help them to heal.
Presently, night fell. The wind keened like a banshee over the dark, shifting water. The night was black, the moon a thin scimitar slicing through the clouds. His body bitterly cold, Francis had never felt quite so alone.
He’d seen people die from the cold, falling asleep and slipping peacefully away. He struggled to stay awake, trying to conserve as much warmth as he could by exercising his arms and legs. Finally, he fell into a fitful sleep.
When he opened his eyes it was to see a gull perched on the side of the boat. Its head was cocked to one side as it observed him through bright eyes. It squawked in alarm when he sat up, flying into the sky to glide gracefully amongst the air currents.
He looked around him, flicking his dry tongue over even drier lips. There was a large island to his left, and he was between that and the shore. Although his navigational knowledge was almost nil, from the remarks he’d overheard on board he realized that if he didn’t make landfall he could easily sail on past Van Diemen’s Land.
During the day he sighted two ships under sail, but they were too far away for him to attract their attention. That night he drifted a long way and when he woke the shore was closer. It was too far to attempt to swim to it, but in any case the shoreline was formidable in places, and he wasn’t foolhardy enough to even try. He was aware that the current was edging the boat nearer to the coast, and tried to keep his optimism high.
The next day, the weather and seas calmed. He spent the hours knowing what hunger, cold and thirst felt like, despite the heartening warmth from the sun. The third night seemed to be endless. He saw a tiny flicker of light on shore, a small comforting beacon. It meant another human being was near. But the light was suddenly extinguished. The whisper of hope it had afforded him changed to despair.
‘No!’ he shouted out and, giving in to his fears, he laid himself down in the black womb of the night and curled in on himself.
Waves breaking on the shore and the raucous sound of gulls, jerked him awake. Bright sunlight squeezed his eyelids into a painful squint. Through the squint he observed a balm of green vegetation, which stretched into a halo of misty light.
‘Heaven,’ he whispered, overjoyed to think there was such a place after a lifetime of doubting.
Then he was engulfed by the flurry of water and was hurtled towards the shore. Sand grated under the keel, the boat canted sideways and was broached by a wave. He floundered about in the shallows in panic before rediscovering the wit to lift his head from the water.
Crawling on to bleached, bone-white sand, he flopped face downwards, laughing and crying until his throat was too sore to continue. So much for his great discovery! Light-headed from lack of food, he rested for a while, his body absorbing the sun’s warmth.
After a while he allowed himself to think. He needed food and water. Water was no problem. He could see a trickle of it dampening the face of a rock. The terrain looked rugged, but at least he had shoes on his feet, kept in place by the stirrups on his trouser bottoms. He marvelled that they’d stayed there throughout his ordeal.
Francis rose, staggering a little from his weakened state. Wandering to a rocky outcrop covered in oysters he smashed them open with a rock. He knelt and, inserting his tongue into the rough shells, sucked them dry. They slid, wondrously cool, down his throat.
Gulls flew threateningly around him as he headed inland, as well they might, for he was in a predatory mood and their nests were not well guarded. The eggs he found had an oily taste that made him gag. He swallowed them down with water, which trickled over rocks into a pool. It was the sweetest he’d ever tasted.
The deeper he got into the terrain the more dense the vegetation became. He stumbled across a place of great beauty, where water gushed down a mossy sheet of rock to pool in a natural basin set amongst ferns, before becoming a brook heading towards the sea. Trees stretched upwards, higher than he’d ever seen in his native land, as if competing for a place in the sun.
He took his fill of the cool, sweet water, lapping it up like a thirsty dog then, running a hand over his salt-encrusted whiskers, he began to laugh with the euphoria of just being alive. Washing the blood from his shirt, he hung it on a branch to dry and, after fashioning a bed out of the fallen leaves, he lay painfully on his side, covering his body with his coat for warmth, then fern fronds for protection against biting insects. Closing his eyes, he fell into a deep and untroubled sleep.
He dreamed of Siana, of her sweet face, of her smile. She was standing on the hill overlooking the sea, her father’s carved walking stick clasped in her hand. How enticing she was. He moved closer to her, to discover she was crying. Suddenly, she raised the stick and poked it in his chest.
The pain of it made him gasp, and brought him awake to discover it was a rifle barrel positioned over his heart. A uniformed man stood over him.
‘What is it?’ he mumbled, his eyes widening as another man jerked him to his feet. Automatically, he struggled against the grip of his handler.
A rifle butt smashed against the side of his head.
When Francis next woke, his head was splitting, and he found his wrists had been manacled together.
‘What the hell d’you think you’re doing?’ he shouted.
‘A merry dance you’ve led us since you escaped, Philip Piper,’ the soldier grunted. ‘I shouldn’t be surprised if you didn’t get another flogging for your trouble.’
Francis offered him a hard stare. ‘You’re making a mistake. I’m Francis Matheson, youngest brother of the Earl of Kylchester, and I’m a doctor by profession.’
The two exchanged an unbelieving laugh. ‘With stripes like that on your back, d’you think we was born yesterday? A doctor now, is it, and an aristocrat and all? Well, we all know what a con man you are, Piper, but this time you ain’t tricking spinster ladies out of their savings with your silver tongue.’
‘I suggest you check with the shipping agent. I was aboard the Adriana, which overturned in heavy seas, and sank.’
The second man pushed him forward. ‘Your scheming won’t work on us, so shut your bloody trap else we’ll shut it permanently for you. It wouldn’t take much for me to put a bullet in your gut and leave you to rot. It’ll be Port Arthur for you, now, and glad to see the back of you.’
Francis decided it would be judicious to keep his explanations for their superior officer as they began to lead him away.