“Esther has beautiful ideas of death,” she said. And they had both looked at her. There was an unearthly beauty about the girl; her spiritual strength shone in her eyes for her belief was invulnerable.
“But Esther, how can you be sure?” demanded Carolan, irritated.
“How can you be not sure,” asked Esther, ‘when you know?”
“You do not know!” said Carolan, impatient.
“Who has ever told you? Your father? Your mother? But what did they know?”
“They knew.” said Esther.
“I could not bear not to believe.”
“It is comforting, doubtless,” said Carolan. Marcus put his hands on her shoulders.
“But Carolan, do we want comfort? I do not think so: not unless we know it to be truth. We cannot accept things because they are comfortable. Why, Dammed, our forefathers doubtless thought it was comfortable enough living in their uncivilized way. It is the uncomfortable things which make the world progress.”
Esther shook her head.
“I wish I could make you see it as I do.”
“Ah, Esther!” said Marcus.
“We are neither of us saints, Carolan and II” “No,” said Carolan, ‘we are sinners … angry sinners. We cannot accept cruelty because God decided that we should. No, we will fight against God; we will fight for ourselves!”
Marcus laughed. How his eyes glittered! She thought. He is already contemplating escape when he gets to Botany Bay. And she warmed towards him; they were much of a kind, he and she. Everard was of a kind with Esther. Everard was ever constant in her mind. Everard who had not come for her, who had accepted cruelty as God’s will. Perhaps he had wanted to come; she imagined his mother’s begging him not to … and Everard’s fighting with himself. Everard the parson. Everard the lover. She had always suspected the parson of being the stronger of the two. Perhaps that was why she had suffered so deeply in the van which had taken her to Portsmouth, for then she had known that Everard was not coming; that was why. in the open van on the Portsmouth Road, she had despaired.
And when she had thrown that rotten apple back into the crowd, she had been throwing it at Everard and Everard’s mother. Had she been unshackled, she would have leapt from the van and fought them with her hands. She was not the sort to suffer in silence, to pine away and die; she was the sort to fight, to hurt herself, to hate… “I wish I were dead.” she said again, remembering.
And then there had been the comfort of seeing Marcus in the Portsmouth jail. That jauntiness of him, that glitter in his eyes! Rogue, thief, philanderer that he was he was more her sort than gentle Everard.
One pain will subdue another. There was poor Mamma getting weaker and weaker, and thinking of Mamma it was possible to forget Everard a little.
The last weeks had changed Kitty beyond recognition. She was like a flower that has been cherished in a hothouse, and is thrown onto a dung heap. No flower could be expected to last long in that condition. When they had come on board and had stayed on deck while farewells were said, Kitty had sat propped up against the rail unable to move. Her face was a greenish colour, her eyes bloodshot, her tongue thickly coated, and her lips twice their usual size. She was, Carolan knew, unaware of her situation, which was perhaps not a matter for regret in itself.
All about them were their ribald companions of the voyage, men, women, boys and girls; murderers and highwaymen, people who had stolen a loaf, of bread, river thieves, counterfeiters the innocent and the guilty. Gin flowed freely. Old songs were sung.
Some sang of their joy to be rid of their country; some were sentimental in a maudlin way about leaving it Men and women embraced openly; young boys and young women, mere children, followed their example. Conversation was as obscene as they knew how to make it. Some danced; some sang; some wept;
some laughed. And Kitty sat there, propped up, seeing nothing.
When the ay of “Clear ship!” went up, Carolan and Esther between them managed to get Kitty below. There they had all remained since in the fetid atmosphere, among the rats which were tame and insolent and had no respect for this rag-tag shipload of convicts. The hatches had been secured; and the only light and air came through one hatchway, and at night there were candles in iron lanterns. Sometimes though, the hatches had to be removed, for the captain did not wish to arrive at the settlement with a cargo of dead prisoners.
Days and nights merged into one. They ate their meagre allowances of food. Kitty had given up eating hers. She lay languid, with her eyes wide open … but they weren’t like Kitty’s eyes.
“Ah!” said the woman who shared their berth, and who had told them she was known to the taverns of Thames-side as Flash Jane.
“She’s a bright one! Hi! Wake up, me lady, and let’s run me blinkers over you.”
“Please do not touch her,” said Carolan.
“She is very ill.” The woman shrugged her shoulders, muttering something about fine ladies’ manners. She would have them know she was of the real quality of a prison ship; none of your half and halfs. Why, curse them, she had been brought up before. She was no newcomer to Newgate. She had robbed many a fine gentleman, she had; ah, and slept with many more. Highwaymen and lords … they were all one to her. River thieves and gentry. Ah! There were things she could tell about them all, but why they wanted to coop her up with a gang like this, she couldn’t be saying. She thought things were managed better than that at Newgate and on board. She had a friend outside who was looking after her. she had; he had come on board to take his last farewell. “Come back in seven years time, Jane,” he said.
“I will not be the one to forget you.” He was good to me, Jem was … And I was good to nun. Here you … Got long ears now, have you not?” She leaned over and pulled the ear of the trembling girl cowering in the corner. The child was misshapen. alarmingly ugly… almost not like a child. Flash Jane began to whisper to her of her adventures with highwaymen and lords and Jem and others. The child shrunk back into her corner, listening.
“Esther!” cried Carolan.
“How can we bear this!”
Esther said: “We go through the fire, Carolan, that we may be tried, and if we come through safely are we not cleansed?”
“You make me angry. Do you call this a cleansing process?”
Esther tried to reason: “You are suffering more keenly now. Carolan. I have got over the worst. The worst for me was in Newgate when I was alone and friendless. Now I have your friendship I can never be so unhappy again.”
Carolan fought back her tears.
“Oh, be silent, Esther!” she snapped; and then suddenly, putting her hand over Esther’s thin one: “Forgive me! I am so tired of living. I wish the boat would go down.”
“Ah!” said Esther.
“You waited for your lover, and he did not come.”
“What a lover!” cried Carolan.
“I was in Newgate, and he did not come for me. Esther, let me talk to you of him. Let me try to show him to you as he was. So tall, so dear-eyed, so gentle in his talk, so understanding, so mild, so good! I first loved him when I was a frightened little girl. I think I was no more than five, and my cruel half-brother shut me inside the family vault and I was frightened. Everard opened the door and came to me. I loved him from then on. I must go on loving him till I die. And, Esther, I shall never see him again. I am an exile from England for seven years, and what will those seven years bring, Esther? Why did he not come? They say people have escaped from Newgate; I used to dream that he came and rescued me from Newgate as he did all those years ago from the dark tomb.”
To rescue you from Newgate would have been well nigh impossible, Carolan.”
“Still … some would nave attempted it!” She was thinking now of Marcus with his jaunty smile and his blue eyes in his wrinkled face, and the glitter of those eyes … the recklessness of him.
“What use to attempt it, Carolan? Greater trouble would have followed.”