Remember Me - Lesley Pearse [43]
‘Reckon you can handle most kinds of folk,’ Will said. ‘I can too. We’ll get by.’
It was only a few days later that Tench spoke to Mary up on deck. He asked if she was enjoying the voyage, and explained that he hadn’t had much opportunity to be on deck as he had many duties elsewhere. ‘Are you feeling well?’ he asked, looking at her intently. ‘The surgeon told me you were expecting a child.’
Mary could only nod. While to some extent she was relieved it was out in the open, she was afraid that he would question her as White had done.
‘I don’t pass judgement on others,’ he said gently, as if guessing what she was thinking. ‘I’m just concerned about you. You are lucky White is aboard this ship, he’s a good surgeon. Are you getting enough to eat?’
Mary nodded again. She didn’t trust herself to speak.
‘If you need anything, come to me,’ he said, patting her on the shoulder. ‘I’ll try and get you some fruit in Rio. Scurvy is a menace on these long voyages. But Captain Gilbert appears to be more aware of all our needs than most sea captains.’
He walked away then, and as Mary watched his slim back, the neatness of his dark hair and the cleanliness of his white breeches, she wished it could have been his child she was carrying.
There were some terrible storms on the way to Rio. The ship pitched and rolled in the heavy seas, and water rushed into the holds, sweeping the women off their bunks. Again and again they thought they would all perish – every crack of the ship’s timbers appeared to be evidence she was breaking up. Even Mary, who hadn’t suffered from sea sickness before, fell prey to it, retching until she had nothing more to bring up, so weak she could barely move.
But the storms passed and then there were periods of calm when the ship barely moved at all. It was on one of those days, as Mary stood at the deck rail watching the rest of the fleet, and keeping an eye out for dolphins and porpoises, that Tench suggested she looked among the male prisoners for a husband.
He didn’t often get the opportunity to speak to her, and even when he did it was never for more than a few minutes, but since the day when he’d told her he knew of her pregnancy, he usually slipped her something when he saw her. Sometimes it was a piece of hard cheese, or a couple of ship’s biscuits; on two occasions it had been a hard-boiled egg. That he cared about her health was enough for Mary. She didn’t want him getting a reprimand from the captain.
‘Have you considered how it will be when we get to Botany Bay?’ Tench began, looking not at her but out to sea and the rest of the fleet marooned in the calm. ‘I mean, have you considered how many more men there will be than women?’
She shook her head.
‘There will be three to every woman,’ he went on, frowning as if deeply concerned by this. ‘I suspect it may prove difficult for you women.’
Mary realized with some shock that he was alluding to the likelihood of rape. ‘Won’t you Marines look after us?’ she asked.
‘We’ll do our best,’ he said seriously. ‘But even with the best will in the world we won’t be able to be everywhere, all of the time.’
Mary shuddered. She knew from Will that many of the men were very desperate characters, but then so were many of the women. Theft of food and belongings was the main thing she’d thought about, but now Tench had made her aware that stealing wasn’t going to be the only problem.
‘You’d do well to consider getting wed,’ he said.
For one brief second she thought it was a proposal, and her heart leaped.
‘Wed?’ she repeated.
‘To one of the prisoners, of course,’ he said quickly. ‘Your baby will need a father.’
Mary knew she was blushing and she hoped he didn’t know why. ‘I hardly know any of them,’ she said indignantly.
Tench looked over his shoulder, checking to see who was watching them.