Remember Me - Lesley Pearse [136]
The dizziness suddenly grew far worse as she stepped off the gang-plank on to the deck, which was crowded with people and boxes. Her legs felt as if they were made of rubber and, afraid she would drop Charlotte, she stopped, leaned against a packing case and closed her eyes for a moment to gain her equilibrium. Then she heard someone calling her name.
The voice was so familiar, but in her befuddled state she couldn’t place it. She opened her eyes, but everything was a blur.
‘Are you sick, Mary?’ she heard the voice say as if from a great way off. ‘Let me take Charlotte.’
She could only suppose she fainted, for the next thing she knew she was lying down on the deck and someone was dabbing at her forehead with a wet cloth.
‘Charlotte!’ she called out in alarm, trying to sit up.
‘She’s being taken care of,’ a man said. ‘Drink this.’
The drink was rum, and the man offering it to her had to be a sailor, judging by his white ducks and shirt. He had curly fair hair and a sun-blistered face. Mary was in a patch of shade now, and her vision seemed to have returned to normal.
‘Who was that who spoke to me and took Charlotte?’ she asked.
‘That ’ud be Cap’n Tench,’ the man said.
‘Tench!’ she exclaimed. ‘Watkin Tench?’
‘That’s right, me lovely,’ he said with a broad grin. ‘And I take it you’re the one he’s been fretting about since we got told you was to sail ’ome with us?’
Mary lay on a bunk, Charlotte asleep beside her. She was bewildered, unable to make up her mind if she was really in a cabin, complete with open porthole, or if she was dreaming.
The cabin certainly looked real enough, very small with just the bunk, a kind of washstand, and a couple of hooks on the wall for clothes. Her bundle was on the washstand, beside it a pitcher of water. Through the porthole she could see barnacle-covered timbers, which had to be the sides of the wharf.
If it was a dream it was a lovely one, for she seemed to think the sailor who gave her rum had said Watkin Tench was on this ship.
She certainly hadn’t dreamed about the rum, she could still taste it in her mouth. But maybe she’d drunk it too fast, for the events after that weren’t clear at all. Could Tench have been one of the two men she’d heard talking by her? She was sure that one of them said, ‘She’s been through enough. I want her put in a cabin with her child. That way at least they’ll stand a chance.’
Mary lifted herself up a little to look at Charlotte. Her breathing was laboured, her skin felt hot and dry and she was so thin every bone in her small body stood out. It didn’t look to Mary as if she stood a chance. She had the same look Emmanuel had towards the end, and Mary had become all too familiar with the signs of approaching death during her time at the Batavia hospital to believe it was mere coincidence.
A rapping on the door woke Mary later. ‘Come in,’ she said weakly, surprised that anyone would treat an escaped convict with such deference.
The door opened, and there was Watkin Tench, looking exactly the way she remembered, slender, lean-faced, his dark eyes full of concern. Tears filled her eyes. So it hadn’t been a dream! He had come back into her life to rescue her.
‘Mary!’ he exclaimed, and moved closer to her, leaving the door open. ‘You cannot imagine my shock to hear you were travelling home on this ship. It is the most extraordinary coincidence.’
To Mary it was far more than coincidence. Only God could have worked this miracle.
‘I thought I was dreaming when I heard your voice,’ she admitted. ‘Then I found myself in this cabin.’
‘You have Captain Parker to thank for that,’ Tench said. ‘He is a good man, and when he heard the circumstances and saw how ill both you and Charlotte were, he gave the order. The surgeon will be along to see you both soon, and much as I want to know everything that has happened since we last saw each other, you must rest.’