Remember Me - Lesley Pearse [47]
Charles sighed deeply. There were so many unknown factors in this grand idea of emptying out the prison ships and sending all the undesirables to the other side of the world. No one really knew about the country’s climate and its native people, or whether the land could be cultivated. It was a huge gamble, not just with the prisoners’ lives, for precious few people back in England cared a jot about them, but with those who were sent to keep them in line.
Captain Arthur Phillip, the commanding officer of the whole fleet, had himself expressed concern that there weren’t sufficient provisions, tools and clothing in the supply ships, and that the quality of them all was poor. Nor were there many skilled craftsmen among the prisoners.
Charles stared gloomily at his unwritten diary. If all the prisoners had been like Mary Broad and Will Bryant, intelligent, resourceful people, then the project might have a chance of success. Sadly, a huge proportion of them were complete scoundrels, the slime at the bottom of England’s barrel. In truth, the idea was doomed before it had even started.
As the ship sailed towards the port of Cape Town five weeks later, Mary stood at the rails with Charlotte in her arms and marvelled at the beauty of the scene before her.
The sun was setting, the sky pink and mauve, and all eleven ships were close to one another now, their sails billowing in the wind. The sea was turquoise, and a school of dolphins were leaping and diving around them, as if putting on a special show. They had been seeing dolphins and whales too for some days now, a sight Mary never tired of.
‘And you aren’t even watching,’ she said tenderly to Charlotte, who was fast asleep, wrapped in the blanket Tench had given her.
The horrors of her daughter’s birth were quite forgotten now. Mary had ample milk and Charlotte was thriving. But then Mary devoted her entire attention to her child.
She never would have believed that she could feel so much for her baby. She rarely put her down, for she didn’t trust the other women not to stick their dirty fingers in her mouth, or drop her if they picked her up. One of the sailors had made a little crib for her to sleep in, but though Mary would put her in it up on deck during the day, with a cloth hung over it to keep the sun off, at night she was too worried about the rats, and kept Charlotte firmly in her own arms.
Captain Gilbert had said she could be baptized when they got to Cape Town, as the clergyman for the fleet would be coming on board there. That had touched Mary: she had expected that a prisoner’s child would be treated with disdain, as if it wasn’t quite human.
‘We’ll be able to see Table Mountain by tomorrow morning, I expect,’ Tench said suddenly by her elbow. Mary hadn’t seen or heard him coming towards her. ‘It looks just like a table too,’ he went on. ‘Flat on the top, and when there’s mist hanging around it makes a tablecloth, at least so I’m told. I haven’t been to Cape Town before.’
‘You’ll be able to explore it,’ Mary said wistfully. ‘See all those wild animals and things.’
She knew Tench liked exploring and writing in his diary about where he had been and what he’d seen. She had never met a man with so much enthusiasm for new places and strange things.
‘You won’t always be a prisoner, Mary,’ he said, his voice soft with sympathy. ‘Once the settlement in Botany Bay is thriving, and your sentence is up, there will be opportunities for a woman like you to make good.’
‘You’ll have gone home by then,’ she said, trying to keep her tone light.
‘I expect so,’ he said. ‘But you’ll be part of a new community, and I’ve no doubt you will be married too. Perhaps little Charlotte will have a brother or sister.’ He bent his head closer to the baby in Mary’s arms and kissed her forehead. ‘Go for Will Bryant, Mary, he’s the best man for you.’
Tench had said nothing more about Will since long before Charlotte was born, but the fact that he’d obviously kept it in his mind proved to Mary he was completely serious about it.
‘How would I go about it, just supposing I thought that