The surgeon had his hands full. All the beds in the infirmary were occupied. Heatstroke, seasickness, diarrhea. Delirium, ulcerated tongues, dislocated limbs. He treated constipation with calomel, made of one part chloride and six parts mercury. For dysentery he prescribed flour porridge with a few drops of laudanum and a tincture of opium. To reduce fever he shaved women’s heads, a treatment they feared more than delirium. For pneumonia and tuberculosis, bloodletting.
Word of Hazel’s miracle cure had spread. Convicts who didn’t want to see the surgeon or who were sent away untreated began lining up to see her. She scrounged herbs from the cook and planted some of the seeds she’d smuggled on board with her in a box of manure: arnica for pains and bruises, mandrake for sleeplessness, and pennyroyal, a flowering mint, for unwanted pregnancy. For dysentery, egg whites and boiled milk. For fainting spells, a tablespoon of vinegar. She created a paste from lard, honey, oats, and eggs as a salve for chapped hands and feet.
“That girl, Hazel, with her witchy powders and potions . . . ,” the surgeon said irritably to Evangeline as she stood at the railing late one afternoon. “I’m afraid she’ll only make things worse.”
“You have plenty to do. Why should you mind?”
“It gives the women false hope.”
She gazed out at the water. It was clear and green, as smooth as a mirror. “Surely hope isn’t a bad thing.”
“It is if they forgo proper medical treatment.”
“The sailor who fell from the yardarm is much improved. I saw him shimmying up a mast.”
“Correlation, causation. Who’s to know?” His mouth tightened. “There’s something about that girl. An insolence. I find it . . . off-putting.”
“Have pity,” Evangeline said. “Imagine being her age, condemned to this.”
Giving her a sidelong look, he said, “The same could be said about you.”
“She’s much younger than I am.”
“How old are you, then?”
“Twenty-one. For another month, at least.” She hesitated, not sure whether it was appropriate to ask. “And you?”
“Twenty-six. Don’t tell anyone.”
He smiled, and she smiled back.
“Hazel’s life has always been hard. She’s never seen . . .” She struggled to find the words. “The . . . good in the world.”
“And you have?”
“Of a sort.”
“It seems to me you’ve had a rather rough go of it.”
“Well, yes. But the truth is . . .” She took a breath. “The truth is, I was rash and impulsive. I have no one to blame for my misfortune but myself.”
The wind was picking up. Sunlight splintered brightly in shards across the waves. For a few moments they stood silently at the railing.
“I have a question,” she said. “Why on earth would anyone choose to be on this ship if they don’t have to?”
“I’ve wondered that many times myself,” he said with a laugh. “The easy answer, I suppose, is that I’m restless by nature. I thought it would be an interesting challenge. But if I’m honest . . .”
He’d been a shy only child, he told her, raised in Warwick, a small village in the Midlands. His father was a doctor; it was expected that his son would join the practice and take over when he retired. He’d been sent to boarding school, which he loathed, and then to Oxford and the Royal College of Surgeons in London, where he discovered to his surprise that he actually did have a passion for medicine. On returning to the village he purchased a charming cottage with a housekeeper and set about expanding and updating the practice. As an eligible bachelor, he became a frequent guest at banquets, balls, and shooting parties.
Then disaster struck. A young lady from a prominent landholding family was brought in complaining of stomach pains and shaking with chills, and had a high fever. His father, having never seen a case of appendicitis, diagnosed typhoid, prescribed morphine for the pain and fasting for the fever, and sent her home. The heiress died in great agony, vomiting blood in the middle of the night, to the disbelieving horror of her family. Their heartbreak required a villain. The doctor and his partner-son were shunned, the practice ruined.
Some months later, an envelope arrived in the post from his roommate at the Royal College. The British government sought qualified surgeons for transport ships and would pay handsomely. It was a particular challenge to find surgeons for the female convict ships because, “to be frank,” his roommate wrote, “the ships are rumored to be floating brothels.”
“A gross exaggeration, as I now know,” Dr. Dunne hastened to add. “Or at least . . . an exaggeration.”
“But you signed on anyway.”
“There was nothing left for me at home. I would’ve had to start somewhere new.”
“Do you regret it?”
The corners of his mouth turned up in bitter comedy. “Every day.”
This was his third voyage, he said. He spent little time with the rough sailors, the boorish captain, or the alcoholic first mate, whose excesses he’d already treated several times. There was no one he could really talk to.
“What would you do, then, if you could do whatever you chose?” she asked.
He turned to face her, one arm on the railing. “What would I do? I would open my own practice. Maybe in Van Diemen’s Land. Hobart Town is a small place. I could start again.”
“Starting again,” she said with a catch in her throat. “That sounds nice.”
“Ye should charge for your services,” Olive told Hazel on a rare afternoon away from her sailor. “People take advantage.”
“How’re they gonna pay?” Hazel asked.
“Not your worry. Everybody’s got something to barter.”
Olive was right. Soon enough Hazel was in possession of two quilts, a small store of silver pilfered from sailors’ trunks, dried cod and oat cakes, even a down pillow made by an enterprising convict who plucked geese for the officers’ meals.
“Look at all this,” Evangeline marveled when Hazel lit a taper in a small brass candlestick with a finger loop—another bartered item—and pulled out a sack she’d stuffed under her berth.
“Want something? Help yourselves.”
Evangeline sifted through the sack, with Olive peering over her shoulder. Two eggs, a fork and spoon, a pair of stockings, a white handkerchief . . . wait—
She snatched the handkerchief out of the sack and ran her thumb along the embroidery. “Who gave you this?”
Hazel shrugged. “Dunno. Why?”
“It’s mine.”
“Are ye sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. It was given to me.”
“Ah, sorry, then. Nothing’s safe, is it?”
Evangeline pressed the handkerchief on her bedtick, smoothing it, and folded it into a small square.
“What’s so special about it?” Olive reached for the handkerchief and Evangeline let her take it. Holding it up to the candle, she peered at it closely. “Is this a family crest?”
“Yes.”
“This must be from the cad who . . .” Olive gestured toward Evangeline’s stomach. “C. F. W. Lemme guess. Chester Francis Wentworth,” she said, affecting a snooty accent.
Evangeline laughed. “Close. Cecil Frederic Whitstone.”
“Cecil. Even better.”
“Does he know you’re here?” Hazel asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Does he know you’re carrying his child?”
Evangeline shrugged. It was a question she’d asked herself many times.
Hazel set the candle on the ledge of the berth. “So, Leenie . . . why would ye keep this?”
Evangeline thought of the look on Cecil’s face when he gave her the ring. His boyish eagerness to see it on her finger. “He gave me a ruby ring that had been his grandmother’s. He wrapped it in this handkerchief. Then he went away on holiday and the ruby was found in my room, and I was accused of stealing it. They didn’t notice the handkerchief, so I kept it.”
“Did he return from his trip?”
“I assume he did.”
“Why didn’t he come to your defense, then?”
“I don’t—I don’t know what he knows.”
Olive crumpled the handkerchief in her fist. “I can’t see why you’d want this lousy piece of cloth, after he left ye high and dry.”
Evangeline took it from her. “He didn’t . . .”
But he did, didn’t he?
She fingered the handkerchief’s scalloped edges. Why did she want this lousy piece of cloth?
“It’s—it’s all I have left.” The moment she said it, she knew that this was true. This handkerchief was the only remaining shred from the fabric of her previous life. The only tangible reminder that she’d once been somebody else.
Olive nodded slowly. “Then ye should put it in a place no one’ll find it.”
“There’s a loose floorboard under my berth where I stash some bits and pieces,” Hazel said, smoothing out the handkerchief and folding it. “I can hide it for ye, if ye want.”
“Would you?”
“Later, when no one’s looking.” She tucked the cloth into her pocket. “So what happened to the ruby ring?”
“No doubt on someone else’s finger,” Olive said.