Remember Me - Lesley Pearse [103]
That night they all slept well, huddled together in their shelter, the fire just outside. As Mary lay there, waiting for sleep to overtake her, Will curled against her back and the children tucked in between her and Sam, she felt warm, well fed and really happy. It wasn’t just that she was freed from the penal colony, more that something inside her had been set free.
As a child she’d always wished she’d been born a boy, purely so she could go fishing, climb rocks and have adventures. Girls just didn’t get opportunities to do anything more than ape their mothers, waiting on the menfolk. She supposed that when she went off to Plymouth that would change, but of course it didn’t. All these years since she was first imprisoned, she’d had to yield to men’s superiority, just to survive. But here she was with eight men, and she knew in her heart that in the weeks to come they were going to become dependent on her. She already sensed their admiration for her. She saw in their eyes and their manner that they knew she had dreamed up the plan, however loudly Will boasted otherwise. When she’d taken her turn at the tiller, they realized she knew boats almost as well as Will.
But her trump card was her passionate determination to get to Kupang. The men might believe they shared it, but Mary knew they weren’t driven by anywhere near such a powerful force as she was. That force was her children, and she would put up with any hardships, brave every peril to keep them alive to find permanent safety. She slid her arm right over both Emmanuel and Charlotte, the warmth from their small bodies comforting her and adding to her determination.
‘How long have we been sailing now, Will?’ Nat Lilly asked one afternoon, his voice weary and jaded. He no longer looked so cherubic, his once golden hair was matted and dull with salt, and his fair skin was a mass of blisters from the sun and wind. ‘It seems like a year.’
Will kept a log, which he assiduously wrote up every couple of days, and but for him none of them would have known what day or even month it was.
‘It’s well over a month,’ Will replied, pulling hard on the oars as there was little wind that day. ‘It’s the 2nd of April today.’
‘So how much more of this coastline can there be?’ Nat asked, his full lips curling petulantly as he looked towards the shore. Not an hour since, he had pointed out that it rarely looked any different however far they’d gone in a day.
‘Don’t ask damn fool questions like that,’ Will replied irritably. ‘How would I know, it’s not charted is it?’
‘Well, whoever sailed it before must have known if it was one thousand miles, or five,’ Nat said sullenly.
‘Daresay they did, but they didn’t bother to mention it,’ Will said tersely. ‘Now, shut up and row faster.’
Mary was at the tiller, Emmanuel on her knee, and Charlotte at her feet, playing with a doll James had made her from a piece of rope. She heard what passed between Nat and Will, just as she’d heard each of the men at other times questioning exactly how far Kupang was. They all needed a rest and she hoped against hope they would find somewhere soon where they could stay for a couple of days.
Since they made their first stop in what they’d called Fortunate Cove, they had stuck to a pattern: a few days’ sailing, then a rest for two days when they found somewhere with fresh water. Tension grew all the time while they were on the boat; they got stiff, cold and sharp with one another. But as soon as they got ashore all the bad feeling seemed to vanish.
Will was getting more and more worried about the boat, though, for it was taking on water badly now. William Moreton kept mentioning the monsoons too, he said he thought they were sailing towards one. The boat might have been fine sailing around Sydney Bay, but it wasn’t intended for a long voyage packed with so many people.
Late that same afternoon they came to a big bay as fine as Sydney, and everyone immediately became more cheerful.
‘We’ll have to get the boat out of the water and caulk her seams,’ Will said, then looking at Mary he added,