Page 37 of The Sirens

36

MARY

It was Bridie who first suggested that they break into one of the rum barrels on the prison deck. They were all so thirsty. Some of the women had tried to drink the bilge water, only to add the contents of their stomachs to the mess that swirled and frothed around them.

Mary would never have thought that she would hanker for rum, for the drink that fouled the sailors’ breath and yellowed their teeth. But she had begun to crave something that would dull her mind, turn her thoughts from her memories of Mam. From the changes to her body and what they might mean. The webbed flesh between her toes, the new shine to her skin, the tender ridges on her neck. She had become a creature she did not know.

It took three days and nights to prise a nail from the barrel, the women taking it in turns with pruned fingers.

At last, they yanked the nail free and a ribbon of liquid burst from a tiny crack in the wood. They lapped at it with their tongues, desperate as cats. Bridie tore off a strip of her smock and pressed it tight against the hole so that the fabric turned dark. She leaned over Aoife and squeezed the fabric so that a few sweet drops might fall onto her lips. Mary never thought she’d see the day when Aoife would accept a gift from Bridie, the woman she’d called Sasanach whore . But the long, dark weeks had smoothed away the roughness between them, like water carving rock.

When it was Mary’s turn, she coughed as the liquid burned through her. The rum took her mind to a place she had not been before, but somehow recognised. It might have been the future, or a past so old it was not her own. There was a cave, the walls dark red and curved in the shape of a woman’s body. She was wet and in pain, frightened. But there was magic, too: the sound of a child crying, a warm bundle pressed to her chest. She looked into eyes as dark as the kelp on the shores of Ard na Caithne; tiny fingers clasped her own. Her breasts – her whole body – ached.

She slipped in and out of the dream, so that some moments she clung to emptiness, or woke not to the child’s cry but to the keening of the waves, a longing pulsing through her.

She thought of the day she’d got her first blood, how Da had said she was a woman now. She remembered the village women, the way they carried their swollen bellies in front of them. How she had longed to join them one day, to bring a babe of her own into the world.

The gouges in her neck burned, the strangeness of her body taunting her.

If she lived – if they made it to New South Wales and were not punished for their oddness, their unnaturalness – would she one day have a child? Was her body, with all its changes, even capable of such a thing? Perhaps the child would be sickly, malformed in some way. Poisoned by her womb.

And what kind of mother would she make, she who had no mother of her own?

Even if she were to have a child, she would first have to marry and take a man into her bed. When they arrived in New South Wales, she knew, they would be taken to the female factory, where a settler would pluck them from a line as if he was buying an animal at market. She would be wife or servant, perhaps both.

It would not be like Da, meeting Mam by the shore.

She did not tell Eliza of these thoughts, of how the future frightened her.

After all, her sister would not understand. She already knew how to be different.

They drained the entire barrel of rum before they were discovered. It was Wright who realised, bringing their rations for the first time in two days. She saw him pause after he unlocked the bulkhead, the lantern swinging from his fist, tasting the new sweetness in the air. His eyes travelled over the women, some of whom slept soundly for the first time in weeks, cradled by the rocking of the waves; some of whom smiled and sang, as if they no longer knew where they were. He stepped over the sleeping bodies and began to check the barrels. Soon enough he came to the one they had split open and sucked dry like a summer fruit. Mary felt Eliza begin to shake beside her.

Wright left and returned with two officers and the captain, whose cheeks were flushed with rage. When he spoke, his voice was so loud that the sleeping women startled awake, and the drunken singing died to whimpers of terror. Mary was surprised that such a strong voice might come from such a small man.

‘Who is responsible for this?’

The bunk above her creaked, and she squeezed her eyes shut, not wanting to hear Bridie’s confession, not wanting to think on what might become of her friend.

‘I am. I am responsible.’

But the words were too thin – too frail – to come from Bridie. It was not until Eliza dug her nails hard into Mary’s palm that she realised who had spoken.

Aoife.