Remember Me - Lesley Pearse [129]
Mary didn’t understand what he meant then as she had imagined Batavia would be much like Kupang. A month’s sea voyage must mean it wasn’t so very far away, and she’d heard Batavia was the centre of the Dutch East India Company’s operations. But she was soon to discover the difference. The first thing she saw when she was taken up on deck was dead bodies floating in the water, and she vomited over the side.
Kupang was a place Dutch East India Company employees felt fortunate to be posted to. It might be noisy and crowded with people of every nation, but the air was clean and invigorating, the climate perfect. It was also very beautiful just beyond the town, with jungle, mountains and idyllic beaches.
But Batavia sweltered in a hot, steamy atmosphere. The Dutch had built canals through the town, and the stagnant, putrid water bred diseases that killed Europeans like flies. Mary saw that the ship’s crew were reluctant to go ashore, a sure sign it wasn’t a good place. She overheard one of the English sailors who had been here before claim that even the healthiest ship’s crew would be decimated by fever within weeks.
As Mary was led away by two guards, carrying Emmanuel in her arms, with Charlotte trailing along behind, she looked back at her friends on the deck and tears filled her eyes.
They were all gaunt and filthy. The only touch of colour in the group was Samuel Bird’s red hair, but even that was muted by dirt. Nat Lilly and Jamie Cox, the two smallest, looked like little boys. Bill Allen was making a show of looking tough, and James Martin was rubbing his eyes with his fists. Sam Broome and William Moreton were supporting each other. Then there was Will standing apart from them all, swaying on his feet with the fever.
Mary’s heart sank. They all looked so sick that she felt sure she was never going to see any of them again. But the guards dragged her away, and she felt even more demoralized, for the teeming hordes of small, brown-skinned natives who milled around them were sickly-looking too.
The surgeon’s words about Batavia came back to her as she saw crudely constructed shanties instead of fine houses. The sticky heat, the revolting smells and the flies which bombarded her made her feel queasy and terrified for her children.
Her first impression of the two-storey hospital was that the builders had left it only half built. A few windows were shuttered, but the rest were just holes. There was a foul-smelling bonfire smouldering in the yard in front of it, and at least a hundred people were sitting or lying outside. Many of them had filthy, bloodstained bandages around their heads or limbs, flies had settled on those too weak to swat them off, and the sound of their wailing and groaning was terrible to hear. Charlotte clutched her mother’s dress, whimpering with fright, but the guards prodded Mary on through the door, which suggested to her that the people outside were in better condition than those within.
The smell inside made Mary recoil in horror. It was utterly evil, so thick she could barely breathe. She knew then that nothing short of a miracle could prevent Emmanuel from dying. Even on the ship he’d given up crying, he just lay in her arms staring up at her. She had kept trying to make him drink, but he couldn’t keep anything down. One moment he was so hot she could have fried an egg on his forehead, the next he was shivering violently.
An aging nun with a filthy apron over her white habit came forward. The guards said something to her in Dutch, and she peered at Emmanuel, making a tutting sound with her tongue, and indicated that Mary was to follow her.
As they passed several rooms, Mary saw that each held thirty or forty adult patients lying on mats, but she was led into a room at the far end of the hospital where there were only babies and small children being nursed by their mothers.
The nun left after pointing out where the spare mats, washing