Page 39 of The Sirens

38

MARY

Afterwards, Mary wondered if that awful sound – the kiss of the whip on Aoife’s back – would echo through the rest of her days.

Aoife’s blood had run down the mast, staining the deck. The captain had ordered twenty lashes; the surgeon watched, face tight with disapproval. Even some of the sailors had looked away.

‘It’s wrong,’ she heard one of them say, gruff voice carrying on the sea breeze, ‘to whip an old woman like that.’

Mary had not looked away. She had borne witness. It seemed the least she could do.

They had been ironed for the spectacle, the metal around their wrists and ankles reminding them of their captivity. As if, confined in the blackness below, they might have forgotten.

Bridie’s sobs carried on the wind, pitched high as a bird call. Sarah pressed Annie into her side, covering the child’s ears with her body. Eliza stood silent, her skin greenishpale. Her hair hung in filthy clouds about her neck, but Mary, knowing where to look, could still see the pulse of movement at her throat. Their legs, at least, were covered in filth, cloaking the skin that was somehow rough and smooth. She curled her own hands into fists, so that no one would see the webbing between her fingers. Strange, to think the light – something she had once longed for so fiercely – had now become a threat.

Thwack. Thwack. The whip tore through the air.

Mary’s eyes blurred, but still she did not look away from the pale figure of Aoife clinging to the mast, the skin of her back blooming red. She wondered if this was why the sight of the shark’s carcass had tormented Aoife so. If it had been some portent of her own suffering.

Later, in the prison deck, Aoife swam in and out of consciousness. Together, the women had lowered her gently into a berth.

Mary did not know why Aoife had offered herself up to the cat-o’-nine tails. They had all stolen the rum; even little Annie had pressed her mouth to the crack in the wood and drunk. Why had Aoife – the frailest – taken the blame?

Bridie knelt over her, combing her fingers through the dry wisps of the old woman’s hair, braiding it as if she was a maiden on her wedding day. Her tears fell onto Aoife’s back where the skin was split, revealing the red gleam of flesh.

‘Why, Aoife?’ Bridie said, the words heavy. ‘It was my fault. Mine.’

She bent her coppery head and kissed the other woman’s wounds.

Silence throbbed in their corner of the prison deck. Sarah hushed Annie, told her to say her rosary for Aoife. Next to Mary, Eliza cried softly.

For a time, Aoife did not answer Bridie’s question, and fear squeezed Mary’s heart. There had been so much blood over the deck. Even now, it hung in the air, coppery sweet on Mary’s tongue.

Aoife was so still, so small on the berth. Mary thought of her dry, rasping voice, the skin that was veined as a fallen leaf. All the years she’d seen, all the rest she’d earned. And instead, this torture in its place.

‘Why?’ Bridie murmured again, and when still Aoife did not answer, Eliza gripped Mary’s hand tight.

She is already dead, Mary thought. Eliza knows it, she can feel it.

But then: a tiny, miraculous rise of the furrowed back, a slight movement of the head.

‘It makes no difference to me,’ Aoife said, thin and faint. ‘I will not see another winter, and certainly not one in the colonies. You,’ she took a long, shuddering breath, ‘might be godless, and whorish. Sleeping with a jackeen .’ She laughed softly, the sound of it breaking Mary’s heart. ‘But you’re young. You have a chance.’

‘So do you,’ Bridie murmured. ‘We’ve come this far, Aoife. You can’t give up yet. You can’t.’

‘You would not understand,’ she said. Her breath came in little shudders, now, and Mary realised that she was crying.

‘Perhaps we might,’ Eliza said softly. ‘If you told us.’

She knelt, groped for Aoife’s hand then clasped it to her chest. Mary crouched next to her. Aoife smelled strangely sweet, like flax left out to rot. Mary thought of the air in the prison deck, thick with the soil of their bodies. She imagined that grime working its way into Aoife’s flesh, sending poison fingers to her heart.

‘We should wash the wounds,’ she murmured to Eliza, though she did not think they had enough water to do so. There was barely enough of it to drink.

‘Wait,’ Eliza whispered in response. She lifted Aoife’s papery hand to her mouth and kissed it.

‘Please, Aoife,’ she said. ‘Help us to understand.’

The older woman let out another hiss of tired breath.

‘Those first days,’ she murmured, ‘those first days, you told stories. Why you were here, what you had done. I did not. I did not want to confess.’

They waited. The ship rose on the crest of a wave then fell again. Mary, Eliza, Sarah and Bridie held Aoife’s limbs gently in place so that she would not tip from her berth. Annie nestled her straw doll – now a wet, stinking thing, but still the girl’s most treasured possession – in the space between Aoife’s neck and shoulder.

‘We are all criminals, Aoife,’ Bridie said, with something of her old humour. ‘Even Sarah, though she doesn’t care to admit it.’

Aoife shook her head; the movement made her whimper in pain.

‘It was not bread I stole, or lace. It was a life. They would have hanged me, but for my age. My husband, he was cruel. I had,’ she struggled for breath again, ‘no choice. Foxglove. It was growing on the cliffs … a sign … purple as the bruises he gave me. I have felt safe here, with all of you. I want to die feeling safe.’

‘You are safe, Aoife,’ Bridie murmured. ‘We will keep you safe.’ Sarah said a prayer, and Eliza kissed the woman’s hand again.

Mary struggled inside herself for some words of comfort, but found nothing. Only fury, building in her like a song.