Angel Meadow Asylum, 18^th September 1852

He said he had read all about me. He knew that I had been sent to the scaffold, but had survived. My crimes, he was convinced, were small in number, but far worse than those of many of my fellow prisoners. I was no sneak thief, no pickpocket; I was a murderer and an arsonist, a burglar and the daughter of a common whore. I told him I was none of those things, that I was the daughter of a seamstress, a victim of sorrow and the wickedness of men. I had done all I could to improve myself, I said, and yet here I was. I delivered my speech in my finest voice. I wrote my name down for him in my best copperplate handwriting — Catherine Devlin. He noted all this down and smiled, crinkling his eyes and pursing his lips. I thought he might prove himself my friend – Joshua Milner was a doctor and had been one of the kindest and most generous of men, would not Dr Rutherford prove to be the same?

How mistaken I was.

Some time after that we crossed the line – the equator. We heard that this was a time of carousing and jollity, that Neptune would enter the ship and anything might happen. I heard later that such rituals were quite usual, though I cannot believe that what took place on board the Norfolk was commonplace throughout the Bay Fleet. Perhaps I am simply naive.

That morning I was called to Dr Rutherford’s cabin, where I found him holding my blue dress, the one I had stolen from Miss Day, and had brought all the way from England. His cabin was small, but grand and spacious compared to the stinking hutches below decks where we passed the night. There were no birds and rats cut into bits, and no dead bodies. I looked about for the corpse of Jane Calloway, but there was no sign of her anyiuhere.

‘I want you to put this on,’ he said, lifting the dress. He laughed as he spoke, and handed me a glass of rum. ‘Your health, my pretty Miss Devlin,’ he said. ‘They say Neptune is coming amongst us today, will you not raise a glass to him?’ His face was red from the sun, the lines on his long neck thick and leathery. I did not like the way he stared at me, and I refused his rum. He appeared unperturbed. ‘Look,’ he said, pulling open a door. ‘I have a bath for you too.’

I have no idea where and how he produced an item of such luxury on board that stinking vessel, but behind the door, in a small room lined with polished wooden panels, was a canvas bath filled with fragrant water. ‘Will you not bathe,’he said, ‘and luash your hair in honour of the sea god?’

‘Not while you are here,’ I replied. He smiled at that and went out.

The water was cool against my skin, and I wallowed in it. I should have enjoyed it, but something made me uneasy. I could not say what.

When I came out I found he had taken my convict dress and left only the blue one. I was thirsty now too, for the day was hot and still, so I drank down the rum and water he had left for me. The blue dress looked neat and clean after my rough convict smock, and I put it on. Just as I was fastening my bodice, there was a knock at the door. Two women entered. I recognised them as two of the free passengers, a pair of trollops from County Kildare who were hoping to find work and new lives across the ocean. They had taken up with two of the soldiers soon after we left England and spent much of their time performing the offices of wives, though I could not see what good it would do them in the long term for I understood that the soldiers were already married.

The girls were drunk and giggling. ‘Are you ready, miss?’ one of them said as she came in. She dropped me an elaborate curtsey and sniggered.

‘Ready for what?’ I said.

‘We’re all waiting,’ said the other. They laughed again. At the time I hardly noticed for I was filled with a raging thirst and I seized the rum bottle from the table where Dr Rutherford had left it and took a deep draught. They each took one of my arms and led me up onto the deck.

The sun was brighter than ever in the sky that day, so that it seared my eyes and made me want to lie down and sleep for ever. I felt thirsty again, and dizzy, and I took another gulp of rum, anything to assuage the dryness in my throat. The two women propelled me forward until we were standing in front of a tarpaulin that had been stretched across the ship’s deck. It was tied to the foremast, and to the portside gunwale, so that it was raised at the corners to form a large canvas hammock. It had been filled with water. There were people all around – soldiers mostly, and some of the paying passengers, both men and women. I recognised one or two of the most favoured convicts amongst them too. All of them were wet and laughing and drinking rum, and the heads of some had been crudely shaved. They cheered when they saw me led forward by those two drunken slatterns, and to my right a trumpet sounded.

A curtain of tarpaulin was thrown aside to reveal a man, a sailor, dressed in black with a piece of pale rope about his neck, in the crude semblance of a curate or parson. I noticed then that a packing case had been set up on the deck before him, a piece of netting draped over it, upon which were a few dead sea creatures – starfish, a sea urchin, a gull and two rotten fish. Still laughing, the two Irish girls marched me forward to stand before it.

‘Who taketh this woman?’bellowed the sailor-parson.

‘I do,’ shouted a voice from behind me. It was rough with drink and lust and it made my blood freeze in my veins. From the crowd came the sound of laughter, catcalls and lewd shouts. My head was throbbing now, and I could turn it only slowly.

Dr Rutherford stood upon the deck, the crowd of leering faces at his back. He was in his shirt sleeves, the removal of his coat his only concession to the raging heat of the sun. At his side was the man who had claimed me. I did not know who he was, one of the sailors, I presumed. He was stripped to the waist, with a swab upon his head for hair, and another tied over his ears to hang down his face in the manner of a long, straggling beard. Upon his back he wore what looked like the skin of a sea creature – one of the sharks that followed us, perhaps, or a porpoise. It was bluish-grey in colour, wrinkled and dry and vile. Dead starfish had been tied into this hideous cloak; weed scraped from below the water line was draped over his shoulders and shells and more weed tangled into his hair and beard.

‘Welcome amongst us, Neptune, Master of the Deep!’ cried the sailor-parson. There was more clapping and shouting. ‘And who giveth her away?’

‘I do,’ said Dr Rutherford. He stepped forward, and smiled at me. That smile – how I came to loathe the sight of his thin cadaverous features. For here was no drunken reveller, out of his wits with rum and boredom. Instead, here was a man who was sober, fully sentient of what was about to take place and, in the name of entertainment, quite prepared to condone it.

‘Then plight your troth, sir,’ cried the sailor-parson, handing Neptune a bottle.

Neptune took a swig, then put the bottle to my lips too. I was so thirsty that I gulped it down – I could not help myself – the sounds of cheering and laughing echoing in my ears. I tried to speak, tried to ask what was happening, but I could not form the words. I wanted to sit down – I had to sit down or I would fall down. Hands took hold of me and propelled me behind another flap of canvas. A chair awaited me, and I was pushed into it. A ragged posy of weed and starfish and frayed rope was thrust into my hands. The sun burned my eyes, my throat screaming again for water, and even in my stupefied state I knew that Dr Rutherford had drugged me. But there was nothing I could do about it now for my limbs were unable to obey me, my hands felt as though they were made of wood, and my voice was dead in my throat. The stink offish filled my nostrils till I thought I might be sick. I tried to look up, but the deck rose and fell before me. I saw Dr Rutherford tall against the sun; I saw his camera box, its brass eye trained upon me. I felt something hard grip the back of my head and my hands and feet were bound to the chair, the posy lashed to my hand when my fingers proved unable to hold it.

‘Hurry up,’ shouted Neptune. I noticed then that a thick rope-end was swinging heavily from his groin. He seized it between his hands and danced lewdly forward.

‘Don ‘t move, my dear,’ said Dr Rutherford in my ear. His breath was sour, his long thin fingers cold as they brushed my cheek.

I did not move, I could not. I tried to clear my mind, but my head felt heavy and thick, and I could make sense of nothing. An eternity seemed to pass while I sat there, my head clamped, my arms and legs bound to the chair, the reek of that decaying posy wafting into my face. All at once I heard voices, counting down. Before me, standing beside the camera, I could see Dr Rutherford holding up his hand; a gold pocket watch balanced upon his palm shone in the sunlight, as though he were holding a living flame. He snapped it closed and there was a cheer. Someone released the vice that gripped my head, and unbound my hands and feet. Sea and sky lurched and wheeled in an arc above me, until I could not tell one from the other.

I fell, slipping from the chair to sprawl before the baying mob. The deck felt warm against my cheek; rough, but smooth with the passing of so many feet, and the smell of brine and tar was thick about me. A shadow fell across the sun, and I smelled again the stink of Neptune – rum and dead fish, dried weed and sweat. I felt my skirts being lifted, so that the sun was hot on my thighs. I heard cheering and clapping and lewd voices, and I felt a pain like a knife between my legs.