Page 43 of The Sirens

42

MARY

A month after Aoife died, the men brought buckets of seawater down to the prison deck.

‘You’re to wash,’ said Wright, raising his lantern high so that he could see their frightened faces. ‘And then we’re to bring you on deck, where you’ll be checked over for lice.’

Some of the women scoffed: lice itched everywhere, from the hair on their heads to the fur between their legs. But fear wormed in Mary’s gut. The captain was trying to make them presentable, as if they had not been left to moulder in the ship’s bowels all these long months. That could only mean one thing: they were almost at New South Wales.

Blood hummed in the ribbed flesh of Mary’s neck. She thought of the scaled skin of their legs, the pearly webs between their fingers and toes. How would they hide such disfigurement from the surgeon’s inspection, let alone from the men in New South Wales?

The men handed out more buckets of seawater: the prison deck was alive with the splash and shriek of women washing. She did not know how much time they had before the men returned with the fetters, ready to take them on deck.

She nudged Eliza forward, to the barrels that rolled and slammed against the hull, forming a narrow gully where they could hide. Rats had made their nest here, and Mary cringed at the smell of their waterlogged bodies, the mulch of shredded cloth and droppings beneath their hands and knees.

The timbers creaked and shuddered with the footsteps of the returning men.

Mary’s mouth was bitter with terror. Eliza’s shallow breathing filled her ears.

The sailors yelled for quiet as they took the women on deck, leaving Mary and Eliza behind. Relief flooded Mary’s body: her plan had worked; they had avoided the surgeon’s inspection.

But they could not hide forever. Sooner or later, someone would see their difference. Their wrongness.

The prison deck hummed with one word as if it were a prayer.

Land.

When they had embarked so many months before, Mary could never have imagined how the word would toll in her heart like a gong. The women’s excited description of what they had seen above deck – the distant flank of a coast through the mist – brought no comfort, only terror.

Mary imagined bone-white cliffs looming ahead, the snap of irons around her wrist. Eliza’s hands wrenched from hers. Medical men with sharp eyes and sharper fingers, prodding and pulling at the mystery of their bodies.

There had been a lamb, she remembered now, born with two heads sprouting from its neck. The villagers had called it an abomination, a sign from the devil. Da had bade them stay away, but Mary had heard from the other children of the tongues that lolled in twisted mouths, the stalk neck that sagged with the weight of two skulls.

The farmer who owned the lamb had put it to death, crushing each skull with a rock. He had burned the carcass rather than risk the curse of eating or selling the meat.

Now, Mary thought of the delicate bones of Eliza’s face, the petals of her eyelids. Her sister’s hair, shrinking and crackling in flames.

That evening’s rations came with a quart of wine, and the sailors opened the hatches and launched the windsail, so that fresh air sighed against the women’s faces. Moonlight poured in like milk.

‘The first thing I’ll do,’ said Bridie, ‘is try to get home.’

She had barely spoken for days, and when Sarah scoffed at the words, Mary knew that tenderness lay behind her smirk, that she had longed to see Bridie return to herself.

‘How?’

‘A Cornish lass made it all the way back to England, I heard.’ ‘That’s shite.’

‘I swear it! She stole a currach and sailed it home.’

‘The English don’t make currachs , you fool.’

‘You’ll be the fool when I’m sitting pretty in some Dublin tavern!’

‘I can smell earth !’ someone shouted, and a cheer went up, so loud it might’ve launched the ship into the air.

Mary could smell it, too. A tang that might have been peat but wasn’t, not quite. It made something tighten in her chest.

The sea grew rougher now that they were close to land, as if it was unwilling to let them go. One morning, a wave curled over the ship just as the hatches had been opened, soaking the women through. Bridie laughed: she seemed to have become giddy with her pain at Aoife’s loss and the relief that their journey was almost at an end.

For days, she had refused Wright’s entreaties: rejected rum, port wine, even the golden promise of an orange. But after a time, as the frenzy of curiosity in the hold built and built, she gave in, as if selling herself for information was some way of making amends.

Mary wished she wouldn’t. The toll was written on her face, in the deep-set lines of it.

‘Two days of sailing left,’ Bridie said, after Wright had ushered her back through the bulkhead. She passed the segments of an orange around: it burst, sweet and miraculous, on Mary’s tongue. ‘Can you believe it? Two more days and I’ll be standing on dry land.’ Bridie spread her arms wide, ragged smock clinging to the outline of her ribs, before bending so low that her hair brushed the wooden planks.

‘I will kiss the land!’ she said. ‘Even if it’s filled with monsters as they say!’

‘Jesus, Mary, help you,’ Sarah muttered.

The ship keeled, knocking Bridie into Sarah’s lap.

‘Oh, I’m sure they will!’ Bridie said, kissing Sarah’s cheek. ‘I’ll put in a good word for you and the others.’

Sarah laughed, and Mary saw real mirth flicker across Bridie’s face, almost as if she was herself again. She could not help but smile with them. She nestled closer to Eliza, pretending just for a moment that it would be all right, that she’d find a way to keep them safe.