How quickly the wheel turned, our fates caught now in the spokes of it, trampling us beneath. We were taken to a holding cell, dank and crowded, but I kept all my attention on Little Egg in the hope it would keep her from the darkness and desperation that surrounded us. She asked for her papa, her arms hot and sticky around my neck, tears leading her to exhaustion. She slumped in my arms that barely had the strength to hold her up with the throb that emanated from them. Amberline. There wasn’t a part of me that wasn’t angry at him; for all the sacrifices made for him, he treated us like any other piece of silver to be melted down for his own purpose. We were but shining things that had caught his fancy, not for what we were but for how we all of us could serve. My father, my mother, myself and Little Egg lost to the fire of his ambition.
All the other bodies pressed around us, their smells overwhelming me. I rested my back on the bars, their cold a comfort, slipped down to the ground and slept. My mother came to me in my dreams, her hand brushing the hair from my face, and I longed for her to speak to me, to hear her voice that had comforted me when I was a child, woken from a bad dream in the vardo, the footsteps of the magpies on the roof as they rattled at the dawn. I woke hearing my own name with a fierce ache. My mother was gone, the vardo was ash and there was no dawn seeping from the horizon.
“Patrin.”
I blinked. Amberline’s mother was on the other side of the bars. “Patrin,” she said and I struggled to understand where I was, disoriented. Little Egg’s tight grip around my neck brought me vividly back to my surrounds.
“Patrin,” she said, “take this.” She thrust a bottle through the bars, but the distance felt too far for me to reach, though she was close enough. My arms felt like anchors. Mrs Stark took the cork out of the bottle and pushed it through the bars again, bidding me drink. This time I managed to reach out my weighted arms and the bitter liquid trickled through my cracked lips, spilling onto my clothes, splashing onto Little Egg’s head, though she didn’t wake.
“Patrin,” she said, but I could barely stay awake. “This is no place for a child. Let me take Eglantine, let me keep her safe,” she said, and I felt all of me spring to alertness, all of me not fuel for the fever just yet.
“A child’s place is with her mother,” I said.
“Patrin, please, think of the child.” She reached out to touch a part of Egg’s exposed soft arm.
“I am thinking of my child,” I said, feeling ears listen amongst the crowded cell, but that didn’t deter me. There was one bucket for thirty or so women to relieve themselves in; we had only the privacy of our own hearts.
“I know what your father did to save him, Patrin. Now let me save your daughter as Josiah saved my son,” Mrs Stark said and Little Egg stirred in my arms.
“What of Amberline? Too much of a coward to come now, too much of a coward to come forward then,” I said, easing my tight grip on Egg’s arm. She sighed in her sleep, her breath feathered on my neck. “I’ll not give her to you, she’s all I have in the world, Amberline’s seen to that,” I said.
Mrs Stark wiped her face with her hands, took what coins she had in her chatelaine and handed them to me through the bars, along with food wrapped in cloth. She kissed her fingers and reached her hand through the bars to my head. “Saint Sarah keep you safe, Patrin, you are more like your mother than you know.”
My tears pricked at my eyes, but I would not let them fall.
The day came for my sentencing. We were led to the court to face the judges and I pleaded my innocence, but what weight did my words have? They fell through the air like dust. The judges dispensed their verdict, banished for life, without return, banished instead of the noose, and they looked at me as if I should be grateful for their mercy from upon high, but all I thought of was my child. How would I keep her safe?
They came for us in the night-time, chained together, human links in life’s necklace, and bid us step up into a boat. Little Egg, scared of the darkness and the sounds of people crying, cowered with terror in my arms, her little hands gripping my neck.
All the city glittered, lamps, candles, lanterns, lights – all the shine for Amberline – spilling out onto the water, a rippling road made of light, though we were headed to the darkness. All this time I had waited for Amberline to come and see us, to come and say the gold was his, that it had nothing to do with us. I had waited in vain for him, he’d no more save us than His Majesty would.
As the boat pulled away from the shore the sound of people wailing increased, the last of England, the last time of walking the ground of their loved ones, no more to see their faces, we were bound for a living death. I wrapped my cloak around Little Egg and prayed to Saint Sarah to deliver us. The boatmen rowed on the river smooth as a conspiracy, aiding our removal from all we knew, cutting through the water and pulling us onwards, out into the darkness, away from the shore. I longed to put my hand in the water and will the spirit of it to keep us safe, to keep us from moving away with the rower’s current, to hold us still and guide us, every ripple and slap of water a patrin, to guide us back to the shore.
In the distance I saw a ship loom out of the darkness and my heart darted in my chest like a swift, Saint Sarah had heard my cry. But as the boat sculled towards it, I saw it was no ship, that it wasn’t even worthy of the name, it was a ship in shape only. All sails, all masts, all gone. It was only a hull. A lantern was lit and hung off the prow, revealing the red coat of a soldier keeping watch. A cry went up from our boat; I covered Little Egg’s ears, she was stiff with fear, mirroring my own. And the prison hulk before us responded, all those already entombed in her sounded a bitter welcome – the striking of wood on wood, calls and cries, snatches of voices, the shout of names, despair meeting despair. A high-pitched whistle rang above it all.
Our boat saddled aside the hull and a series of ropes was sent down and fixed with knots before we were forced to climb a rickety staircase that ran up the side of the boat like a badly stitched wound. Faces stared at us from close range through the portholes, distorted by the lack of light and the glass. Above a soldier shouted and like cattle we were placed on deck, the chains hitting the wood. Little Egg, exhausted, slept on my shoulder; the creep of fever still swirled in my limbs, but I willed it away, the weight of her head the only thing that kept me tethered. I would keep her safe. On an old and rotten rope whipped someone’s laundry stretched out between two broken masts. The whip and blow of it the most normal sound in the world, but out here in the middle of the waters it sounded like the lungs of death. I looked up at the night sky and every star was extinguished with cloud. They called our names and counted us then led us below. We were the Empire’s slaves.
Down below the deck the smell rushed at us – all the sweaty, sick and crowded were caged together like animals and we to join them. Somewhere someone was singing too-ra-lai and Little Egg whimpered in her sleep, all the while my arms burning, the fever licking up me like a flame.
How many days were we kept from the light? How many days did I lie on damp straw, Little Egg in my reach? She held her doll to her chest while she layered it a bed of straw, her glass earrings catching the light. When I woke again, someone was holding a cup of water up to me, but it was not even a raindrop. I could have drunk the whole river if I put my lips to it.
One night I heard our names being called, coming to me across the water, quiet at first, then insistent. The river called my name, I was sure of it. The spirit of the water had come to deliver me. Patrin, it cried, Patrin. I staggered to my feet and peered through the porthole, where I saw a lantern swaying like a wrecker. Amberline was there, standing at the helm of a boat, the oars still, a veil of rain coming through to drench me.
“Patrin!” Amberline cried.
Amberline’s words were like salt when I craved water.
“Hurry, pass Eglantine out to me, Patrin, before the soldiers come,” he said and I stood and looked at him. Little Egg was asleep on the straw, her hair crowned with it, wrapped in my own cloak. Could I give her up? Someone cried out in their sleep and it startled me. This was only the start, here on this prison ship; we had the voyage to survive, not to speak of the country they would banish us to.
“Patrin,” Amberline called again.
All of me longed to keep her, but gently I lifted Little Egg into my arms, happy to feel that weight of her, the hot warm life of her in my arms, and I began to tremble. How would I be able to give her up? I buried my nose in her neck, her hair, the soft plumpness of her cheek. If only it were possible to place her back in the safety of my body, I’d be able to keep her safe, but what was my body, damp and broken, I could barely hold her weight. I tucked her doll in her pocket, she’d not be without it.
Amberline reached towards her, his hands clutching around her tight. I saw in his face that he loved her, but what of my love? My love was stronger than oceans, stronger than water, stronger than rope. Her little shoe fell off into the dark lap of waters below with a little plink.
“For God’s sake, Patrin, jump,” Amberline shouted. The guards were coming, their shouts echoed out across the water. I squeezed out of the porthole, feeling my clothes tear, the threads holding me, I kicked against the air. Shouting came from behind me. The water rushed up to me as I fell; Amberline’s hands reached for me, trying to steady the boat in the water. Little Egg woke, her little voice calling, “Mama!” All of me reached for her, though the river was as cold as I was hot. Behind me a splash, a guard swore as he too entered the water, his scarlet coat turning black as it soaked up the river.
“Hurry, Patrin,” Amberline shouted, but the guard was a stronger swimmer than me. The water creased from his pounding stroke, close to reaching for me.
I pulled at the cord around my throat, not daring to break the knot. She and I were both strands meeting, she and I of the same thread, my daughter and I. My love was like an end of the knot, the more you pulled at it, the tighter it became. I threw Amberline the putsi. The guard was so close I smelled the rum on his breath.
Little Egg’s head rose and fell with the lap of the waters, so close but I couldn’t reach her. “Mama,” she cried again and somewhere along the riverbank a curlew woke and replied to her.
Amberline’s hands hesitated on the oars. “Go!” I screamed. What good would it be for all of us to be taken? “Keep it for her. Tell her that I loved her. Keep her safe,” I said and felt the whole river swell beneath me, my hands shaking, all of me already longing for her. The guard’s arm was on me then, pulling at me, I had no strength to struggle against him. The river knew me and I knew it. I owed it as much as I did my father.
“I promise,” Amberline said. “God keep you safe, Patrin.”
Amberline gathered the oars to himself and began to row, lost in the shadow of the hulk. I watched the clouds part, the stars spitefully revealing nothing, but I heard the movement of the water in their wake, the startled sob of her cry winnowing out in the darkness, until I was washed with a wave.