It was soon apparent to Mary that this was more of a pest house than a hospital. People were sent there in an attempt to contain infection. Those outside in the courtyard were suffering from injuries rather than disease, and often had to wait up to a week to be examined. Most of the inmates died without ever being spoken to, let alone examined, and very few made a recovery. The children’s room was kept reasonably clean by the mothers, but a glance into the adult ones revealed a horrifying sight. Vomit and excreta lay on the rough wood floors, walls were splattered with blood and pus. The cries, screams and delirium of the patients were ignored.
Mary sold her pink dress on her third day there, to buy soup and milk for Emmanuel, and to have some meat and vegetables in the rice for herself and Charlotte. She thought about running away, for it would be easy enough to slip out and mingle with the crowds outside. But she couldn’t bring herself to subject Emmanuel to being carried about in the hot sun, and at least in here it was cooler, with a plentiful supply of water. She had to make his last days as comfortable as possible.
Her isolation was the worst aspect of the hospital. There were as many nationalities as there were in Kupang, but no one she had met so far spoke English. There was no one to turn to for help. Dying children were a fact of life here, it seemed, and even Emmanuel’s ethereal appearance extracted no sympathy. She bathed him with water to cool him down, wrapped him in blankets when he shivered, squeezed water into his mouth drop by drop, but each day he grew weaker.
She desperately wanted to share her anxiety for him with someone. She was terrified to think of what would become of Charlotte if she caught the fever herself. It was no place for a healthy child to be either – daily, Charlotte was subjected to sights that would make even an adult turn pale. It wasn’t fair that she had to spend every day surrounded by desperately sick children. In many ways it was worse for her than being on the ship – at least there she’d had the men to tell her stories and sing to her.
Sometimes Mary thought she might go mad with the noise, smells, heat and filth. She wondered too what she’d do when the money from selling her pink dress ran out. All she could do was blame Will, and vow to herself that when she got out of here she’d kill him.
Towards the end of November, one of the nuns who spoke a few words of English told her Will had been brought into the hospital too. Even if Mary had wanted to see him, she couldn’t, for Emmanuel was far too sick. She had begun bribing one of the other mothers to get the rice and water for her because she didn’t dare leave his side.
On 1 December, Emmanuel died in Mary’s arms. She was rocking him and singing him a lullaby, when he just stopped breathing.
‘What’s wrong, Mumma?’ Charlotte whispered, as she saw tears coursing down her mother’s face.
‘He’s gone,’ was all Mary could say brokenly. ‘Gone to live with the angels.’
She had expected it. She had believed she was prepared. Day by day she had seen his flesh shrink until he looked like a little wizened monkey, yet even in his sickness, his small fingers had felt for hers. Now suddenly those fingers were motionless and cold, and she wanted to scream out her pain.
He hadn’t even survived to see his second birthday, yet in the short time he’d lived, he’d given her so much joy and hope. It wasn’t right that his whole life had been overshadowed by suffering, and that he should have died here in such an ugly, dirty place.
His body was taken from her by one of the nuns, to join others who had died that day, in a communal grave. Mary expected they’d come back for her when the service was due to start. But there was no service, a nun told her later. Too many people died here for that.
The following day, Mary sent Charlotte out into the yard, telling her to stay there till she came back. She was full of rage, and she wanted to find Will to tell him she held him responsible for his only son’s death, before she had to go back to the guard ship.
She found him in a room at the far end of the hospital. The smell coming from it was so evil that she had to cover her nose and mouth when she looked in. There were at least fifty men inside, far more than in any other room she’d seen. They were squashed up together so tightly that they were lying in one another’s vomit and faeces. The groaning and retching was so awful that she was about to turn away when she spotted Will. He was the only one not lying down.
He was almost skeletal, sitting huddled up in a corner wearing nothing but a pair of breeches. His fair hair and beard were matted with filth, his once bright blue eyes pale and red-rimmed with fever. He was twenty-nine, but he looked like a very old man.
Mary had told herself she would laugh if he was dying, she would speed his end by berating him for what he’d done to her. Yet as she stared at him, she wondered why it was she didn’t feel appeased by finding him in such obvious misery.
A memory shot into her mind of him carrying her down to the sea to wash her after Emmanuel was born. He’d been so gentle and loving with her, making her forget she was a convict. That day, and on many more besides, she’d felt equal to any honoured wife and mother back home.
It had become very easy for her to believe Will was all bad. She had made herself forget that he had saved her from rape, married her to protect her, and that his skill and hard work at fishing had kept her from starvation. He had often given Charlotte part of his supper, pretending he wasn’t hungry. She had been proud to be his wife, and despite Will saying he was going to get a ship home when his sentence was up, he didn’t.
All at once she knew she must nurse him. Maybe she wouldn’t be able to forgive him entirely, but for all that they had been to each other in the past, he deserved better than to die like a dog without one kind word.
Mary picked her way gingerly through the filth and bodies to his corner.
‘It’s me, Will,’ she said softly as she reached his side.
She was appalled that such a big, strong man could end up like this. It reminded her of the way the convicts on the Second Fleet had been when they got them off the Scarborough.
‘Mary!’ he said weakly, trying to lift his head. ‘Is it really you?’
‘Yes, it really is me, Will,’ she said, bending towards him. ‘I’ve come to take care of you. First I’ll get you some water, then I’ll get you into a room which isn’t quite so dirty and crowded.’
He caught hold of her hand. ‘Emmanuel! How is he?’
She was touched that his first thought was for their son.
‘He died yesterday,’ she said abruptly.
‘Oh no,’ he groaned, squeezing her hand tighter. ‘I am to blame.’
Part of her wanted to agree, to ease her own pain with spite, but the greater part of her felt soothed by having someone to share her grief with.
‘No,’ she whispered. ‘It was the cruelty of that Captain Edwards, this stinking place, and bad luck.’
He opened his eyes wider and tears ran down his cheeks. ‘You can say that after the way I treated you?’
Mary didn’t trust herself to answer that question. ‘I’ll get some water,’ was all she said.
‘Charlotte! Where is she?’ he asked, looking stricken.
‘She’s fine. I told her to wait outside while I came to see you.’
‘Thank God for that,’ he said, crossing himself.
She got Will drinking water, helped him into a cleaner room, then washed him all over. It was horrifying to see his once big, strong body so emaciated, and she browbeat one of the nuns into giving her a clean shirt for him so that at least he still could have some dignity.
Mary knew he was going to die; since being in this place for three weeks she’d learned the signs. But she told him he would get better, stroked his forehead until he fell asleep and then crept away to get Charlotte.
As she went out into the backyard by the well, she paused for a moment, suddenly aware that this was a perfect time to escape, before Emmanuel’s death was reported and Captain Edwards sent guards for her. She could sell her good boots, buy some provisions, then
take off into the jungle with Charlotte. She had made friends with the natives in Kupang, and she could do the same here. Maybe in a few months, with a false name and a plausible story, she could get on a ship out of here.
Mary took a few steps towards Charlotte who was sitting on the ground making mud pies in the damp earth around the well. She was dirty, thin and pale-faced and moved lethargically. She hadn’t been that way in Kupang, and it hurt Mary to see what the prison regime on the ship had done to her. It was another very good reason to run for it now while they still could.
‘Did you see the man?’ Charlotte asked, looking up.
That question caught Mary short. All she had said to the child when she told her to stay out here was that ‘she had to see a man’. If Charlotte had known who the man was, she would have wanted to see him too. She had been asking, sometimes several times each day, when they were going to see Dada again.
Will had always treated Charlotte as if she were his own daughter. When Emmanuel was born he’d made no distinction between the two children. Even when they had rows, he never once used Charlotte’s parentage as a weapon. Will loved Charlotte, and that was evident today when, sick as he was, he wanted to know she was safe.
So how could Mary run out on this man and leave him to die alone?
She lowered the bucket down into the well, filled it and pulled it back up.
‘Let me wash you,’ she said, pulling a rag out of her pocket. ‘We’re going to see Dada.’
The heat seemed to increase with every day, and Will became weaker and weaker. Mary sold her boots to buy food for the three of them, but he never managed more than a couple of spoonfuls before falling asleep again.
When he was awake he would lie there looking at Mary, just the way Emmanuel had. He found it too much of an effort to talk, but he would smile when Mary told him stories about her old neighbours in Fowey, of smuggling yarns she’d heard from her father, and described the harbour and the people who worked there.
Every day, at least two people in the room died, and their places were quickly filled again. When Will was asleep, Mary would wash the others and give them water. It made no difference to her whether they were natives, Chinese or Dutch, they all had that same pitiful, childlike expression in their eyes, and at least when they took their last breath they weren’t alone.
The nuns looked at Mary as if they thought her mad. Yet sometimes they brought Charlotte an egg or some fruit, which seemed to indicate they also had some sympathy for the English convict woman who was risking her own health staying in such a hell-hole to nurse her husband.
‘Is it Christmas yet?’ Will croaked out one evening just as the light was fading.
‘Three more days,’ Mary said.
‘Ma always used to make a plum pudding,’ he said.
Mary smiled, for she could visualize her own mother stirring ingredients in a big basin at the kitchen table.
‘And mine,’ she said.
‘Ma used to tell us all to make a wish as we stirred it,’ Will said in little more than a whisper. ‘If I had one now I’d wish that I told you I married you because I loved you.’
Tears prickled at Mary’s eyes and she wished she could believe him.
‘I’m telling you the truth,’ he said. His eyes were red-rimmed and sunken with the fever and he looked old and haggard, nothing like that big, handsome man she’d married. ‘I fell for you on the Dunkirk. Even if all the beauties in England were lined up for me to choose from, I’d still have picked you.’
Mary’s tears began to fall faster. If this was true, why couldn’t he have told her before?
‘I’m such a fool,’ he sighed, as if knowing what she was thinking. ‘I thought if I told you, you wouldn’t value me. That’s why I used to say I was getting a ship home too. I wanted you to say you couldn’t live without me.’
‘Oh, Will,’ she sighed, and took his hand and kissed it. She knew it was true now, Will wouldn’t dare go to his death with a lie on his conscience.
He drifted off into unconsciousness again then, clearly the effort of talking was too much. Mary lay down beside him and held his hand for some time, thinking over what he’d said.
When she was a young girl, she’d always imagined this thing people called love hit you like a ripe apple falling on your head. Her wild desire for Tench confirmed this idea. Yet was that really love? Wasn’t it more likely that she only felt that way about Tench because he was kind and interested in her at a time when she desperately needed something lovely to take her mind off reality? Would she have continued to feel such passion for him if they’d been able to live together forever?
The circumstances that led up to her marrying Will were hardly romantic. Yet despite her belief it was purely a marriage of convenience, there was passionate love-making, a warm and comfortable relationship, they could talk about anything together, they laughed a great deal. They were friends.
She thought most intelligent people would define that as love.
The first rays of daylight were slanting through the window when Mary felt Will tossing and turning. She touched his forehead and found he was burning hot again, yet shivering at the same time.
‘I’m here,’ she whispered, sitting up and reaching for the cloth and the bucket of water to cool him down.
‘I’m so sorry about what I did,’ he gasped out.
‘It doesn’t matter any more,’ she whispered back, laying the cooling cloth on his brow and stroking back his hair. ‘I’ve forgiven you.’
All at once she realized she had. Like love, it had crept up on her unnoticed.
‘Keep Charlotte safe,’ he managed to get out with great difficulty.
She knew then that this was the end.
‘I married you because I loved you,’ she said, and kissed his hot, cracked lips. ‘I still love you, and I don’t want to live without you.’
She didn’t know if he heard the words he’d always wanted to hear, for he slipped into unconsciousness again. She stayed beside him holding him, her head so close to his heart that she felt it when it stopped beating an hour or two later.
Chapter sixteen
It was nearly four months after Emmanuel and Will died in Batavia that the Horssen, a Dutch ship, sailed into Cape Town with Mary and Charlotte aboard.
‘I think that’s the ship that’s going to take us home, Mary,’ Jim Cartwright said over his shoulder while pointing towards the harbour. ‘Come and look! The sight of one of His Majesty’s ships will cheer you.’
Mary smiled weakly. Jim was one of the crew from the wrecked Pandora. In the last few weeks of the voyage from Batavia, when both she and Charlotte came down with the fever, he had taken it upon himself to try to cheer her. Sometimes it was with different fruits or nuts, but more often it was with jokes or chat. Mary was very grateful for his kindness, but because of her fears for her daughter, she often found it difficult to respond.
Leaving Charlotte lying on a mat on the deck, Mary went over to the rail to look. It was cheering to see Cape Town again, for she had good memories of Charlotte’s christening here. Of course she had hope then, to be a pioneer in New South Wales had seemed more of a huge adventure than a punishment.
But the thirst for adventure was long gone. All she hoped for now was that Charlotte would recover, and to be treated kindly on the last leg of the voyage home.
Yet despite her jaundiced views, she couldn’t help but feel some emotion at seeing an English ship. The Gorgon was graceful, its deck scrubbed almost white, rope neatly coiled and brass gleaming in the sunshine. She reminded Mary of similar ships she had admired in Plymouth – foreign vessels never seemed to be so spruce and polished. With Table Mountain as its backdrop, she couldn’t imagine a prettier sight. Yet however lovely the Gorgon looked, the chances were she would have to endure hardships aboard just as great as those she’d experienced on the way here.
She did see Will buried, and heard a prayer said over him, even if it was a communal grave and the prayer in Dutch,
so she couldn’t understand it. But just as she was putting her few remaining possessions together and thinking of escape again, the guards appeared. They chained her, right there in the hospital, and took her and Charlotte to the guard ship where the other men were being held.
Mary’s grief at Emmanuel’s death, which she supposed she’d contained while she nursed Will, erupted as soon as she was locked up again. James and the other men were distraught at the death of Emmanuel, but they had no such sympathy for Will. To be imprisoned with them again, in stifling conditions, for almost a month, with water rationed to only a couple of pints a day and hearing them constantly blaming Will for their predicament, was too much to bear. She got so low that she even wished for death.
She rallied a little when she heard that she and Charlotte were to go on the Horssen to Cape Town, along with the crew of the Pandora. James and the other men, along with Captain Edwards and the mutineers from the Bounty, were to go on the Hoornwey. Despite the strong bonds she had with her friends, she was relieved that she and Charlotte would at least be alone together, away from the men’s bitterness.
But fever had slunk aboard the ships, along with the provisions for the journey, and it showed no distinction between prisoners, officers, their wives and children, or crew. Almost daily Mary heard that yet another man, woman or child had gone down with it. It wasn’t long before both she and Charlotte became ill too.
Fortunately for Mary, the captain of the Horssen was humane, and brave enough to defy Captain Edwards’s orders that all prisoners were to be shackled and kept below for the entire voyage. When he was told that Mary and Charlotte were sick, he had Mary released from her chains so she could take care of her child.
It was only then, touched by this act of kindness, that Mary began to worry about how her friends were faring on their ship. All of them had looked appalling back in the guard ship and it was some wonder, after being kept below for weeks in fetid conditions, that they hadn’t already succumbed to the fever. She knew Captain Edwards wouldn’t show any of them mercy, and she was desperately afraid that not all of their number would survive to see Cape Town.