Remember Me - Lesley Pearse [28]
He gave her one of his long, penetrating stares. ‘And what will you do for me, if I do what you say?’
Mary gulped. She hadn’t expected him to bargain with her.
‘Whatever you want, sir,’ she replied.
‘I don’t want you unwillingly,’ he said, and for the first time ever Mary saw a trace of nervousness in his face.
‘I don’t want you to help those down in the hold unwillingly either,’ she said.
He looked away from her, over towards the sea, and Mary could see he was struggling with his conscience. Not so much whether it was right to let prisoners die for want of clean air, but whether it was right to bow to Mary’s demands because he wanted her.
After what seemed an interminable silence he turned back to her. ‘I’ll pass the order that the holds are to be cleaned,’ he said sternly. ‘You will come to me as the other women are sent back.’
It was dark by the time the scrubbing of the women’s hold was completed. The women had been brought up on deck, and the evening soup and bread were dished out there while the guards went down to do their task. For some of the women who had never been out of the hold since they were originally put there, it was almost too much. They crouched on the deck fearfully, shivering in the brisk breeze, their eyes dull as if they were partially blinded by the daylight.
Mary was shocked by the condition of some of them. In the gloom of the hold she hadn’t been able to see the full horror of it. Some were nothing but skin and bone, and all were pale, gaunt and listless, dirt so deeply embedded in their skin and hair that it would take more than one bath to clean them. She saw ulcerating sores where their leg irons rubbed, the lice crawling on them, the bites on skinny arms and legs which could only have come from rats. Sadly, she sensed that the cleaning of the hold wouldn’t help them unless they were given better food. She doubted that all of their number would survive to be transported.
As the guards returned on deck, sweating profusely from their efforts, the smell of vinegar sharp in the evening air, Mary began to tremble with fright at the thought of what was coming to her.
She knew what love-making entailed. In the tiny cottage at Fowey there was no privacy, and she had heard her parents at it in the darkness. During her time in Plymouth she had seen it going on all around her too, so the act itself wasn’t frightening. Thomas used to kiss her passionately, and she would have gladly let him go further if he had pressed her. But there was a great deal of difference between being seduced and being compelled to submit to it.
Apart from her fear of being taken by a man she scarcely knew, there was the information Sarah had passed on. She said that although the officers turned a blind eye to one of their number taking a convict woman, that didn’t always stop them from banding together to flog a woman afterwards if they had some grievance against her. Mary guessed she would be a marked woman now for daring to complain about the holds.
Lieutenant Graham appeared just as the guards were ordering the women back below. He gestured for her to follow him to the stern of the ship, and disappeared into one of the shed-like structures up there.
He closed the door and locked it as soon as Mary was inside. It was very like the room Tench had taken her into before, tiny, with a bunk, a desk and a couple of stools. Graham lit a candle on the desk, and it was then that Mary saw the small bath of water on the floor.
‘For me?’ she asked.
‘Yes. You stink,’ he said, looking faintly embarrassed. ‘Wash yourself all over, including your hair. I’ll come back later.’
‘Will you take these off?’ Mary indicated her chains.
He hesitated for a moment, which suggested to her he hadn’t done this before, then taking a key from his pocket released both her ankles and drew the chain from around her waist. He left her without another word.
For a moment Mary could think of nothing but the sheer joy