Remember Me - Lesley Pearse [56]
‘You’re safe now,’ he whispered, holding her tight and rocking her. ‘I won’t let anyone touch you again.’
A little later it stopped raining as suddenly as it had begun, and the moon came out from behind the clouds. Will continued to hold Mary as she offered Charlotte her breast to calm her. They were soaking wet and covered in mud, but at least it wasn’t cold.
‘I came looking for you when it all got nasty,’ Will explained. ‘I’d seen Sarah and Bessie earlier and they said you was back in the tent putting Charlotte down. I should have come to you then.’
‘I was scared almost as soon as we came ashore,’ Mary admitted. ‘Everyone was so wild.’
‘It was like a madness caught them all,’ Will said, his tone hushed and shocked. ‘I’ve never seen the like afore.’
‘How did you find me?’
He was silent for a moment, and she guessed his conscience wasn’t entirely clear either.
‘I saw a gang going through all the women’s tents,’ he said eventually. ‘I guessed if you were in there you’d get out the back and run for it. So I went that way, and I heard a babby crying.’
‘Will it always be this way?’ Mary whispered. She was shivering with shock, the vivid pictures of what she’d seen down on the beach still dancing before her eyes.
‘I don’t reckon so,’ he sighed. ‘Tomorrow the officers will take control, there’ll be floggings for some, chains for others, it will settle down.’
‘I hope you’re right,’ she said. ‘But I don’t like the thought of living with those London women, they scare me to death.’
‘You scared?’ he teased. ‘A girl who is brave enough to ask a man to marry her?’
‘I wish I hadn’t now,’ she admitted. ‘It must have seemed so forward. It was just that we appeared to have so much in common, I really like you and as tonight proved, women do need some protection here.’
‘They do indeed,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘But I think us men will need a good woman beside us too. So we will get married.’
‘You want to marry me?’ She was so surprised it dried up her tears instantly.
‘Well, I don’t want one of those London harpies full of pox,’ he said with a chuckle. ‘You were right, Mary. We’ll make a good team, you and me. They’ll need someone to fish, a lot of the food they brought with us is rotten. I think I can bargain for us to get a house of our own, my mind’s a bit sharper than most of the others.’
Mary was very aware he wasn’t saying he loved her, only that he thought she was clean and useful to him. Yet he had fought off those men for her, he’d comforted her just when she needed it. This place was going to be a living hell, and she doubted she could survive it alone. She didn’t expect or need romantic love, she’d settle for protection.
Four days after that terrible night, Will and Mary were married by the Reverend Johnson under the shade of the big tree where he’d held his first service. They weren’t alone, other couples married too, perhaps for the same reasons as Mary and Will.
Mary had no finery to wear, just the same shabby old grey dress freshly washed, and an artificial flower in her hair, lent to her in an unusually generous gesture by Cheapside Poll.
Mary had no real expectations, either of her marriage or of this new country. In the four days since coming ashore she had observed that the vast majority of the convicts were bone idle and devious. They would steal anything, cared nothing for the idea of working for the common good, and many were already bartering rations or belongings with the Marines for drink. The Marines were every bit as bad, and there was a lack of organization on the part of the officers and the powers that be who had sent them out from England.
Will had been right in saying some of the food was rotten. Mary had had to eat rice crawling with maggots and the salted beef was almost inedible. Tools were of inferior quality, there were too few women’s clothes, and a complete lack of skilled men.
She wondered how they could farm this desolate place when there were but two men