Petals on the River Read online

  “Come on now, Mistah ‘Arper,” Potts cajoled, waggling his head from side to side. “Here we be, ’bouts ta be given shore leave, an’ I gots an itch in me crotch ta finds meself a doxy or two ta scratch meseif ‘pon.”

  “You’ll stroll no further than the limits of the cable locker for the next five days,” Harper rumbled, seething with rage. “Now, Potts, have you anything further to complain about?”

  The pig eyes narrowed with almost tangible hostility, but the swabber had no choice but to obey or see his sentence lengthened by several more days. “Nary a thing, Mistah ‘Arper.”

  “Good! Then report to the cable tier at once.” Scowling darkly, James Harper briefly marked the huge swabber’s progress, then signaled another seaman to follow and lock Potts in the forward compartment. Curtly dismissing the tar from mind, Harper faced the bosun’s mate and lent his consideration to the matter at hand.

  “The male prisoners’ve been accounted for, sir,” the younger man announced as he handed over the list. Then he added for Harper’s ears alone, “Minus the thirty-one what died en route.”

  “ ‘Tis an uncommon loss the London Pride has suffered, Mr. Blake,” Harper muttered.

  “Aye, sir, an’ seein’s as how ye begged the cap’n not ta let his missus limit the prisoners’ rations afore we left, I figures ye gots good reason ta fret. Another week at sea an’ there wouldna’ve been enough o’ them poor devils alive ta pay for the crew’s vittles, much less our wages.”

  Harper’s jaw tensed as he recalled the numerous times he had been required to order the convicts’ bodies hurled overboard, all because the ship’s owner, J. Horace Turnbull, had grown suspicious of the Pride’s accounting from previous voyages and had insisted his daughter accompany her husband on this particular crossing to make a proper evaluation. Having given Gertrude unprecedented authority to examine the ship’s ledgers, the old shipping baron had further instructed her to curb whatever costs she might consider superfluous, a mandate which had reaped dire consequences.

  “One must imagine that when Mr. Turnbull gave his daughter leave to use her own judgments, he had no idea he’d be losing more on this voyage than in the last five years we’ve been delivering prisoners to the colonies. In her eagerness to save her father a few shillings, Mrs. Fitch has mindlessly managed to murder no less than a fourth of the prisoners. That should shorten the old man’s profits by several hundred pounds, at least.”

  “If Mr. Turnbull thought there was thievin’ goin’ on afore this here voyage,” Roger Blake mumbled grimly, “ye can bet he’ll be thinkin’ it for certain this time.”

  “And will no doubt send his precious daughter on the following voyage to take another accounting.” Harper frowned at the gloomy prospect.

  “Was Mr. Turnbull right, sir? Be there a thief among us?”

  James Harper heaved a laborious sigh. “Whatever the truth, Mr. Blake, I prefer to keep my suspicions to myself.” He shrugged as he added, “Still, if I were to discover the identity of the culprit, I’d be loath to ferret him out for Mrs. Fitch. She’s made it evident she suspects us all of swindling her father.”

  “Aye, ta be sure, sir,” Roger Blake heartily agreed. Mrs. Fitch definitely had a way of making an honest seaman feel less than worthy of respect and trust. Even the captain wasn’t excluded from her criticism. She had, however, seemed peculiarly inclined to lend an attentive ear to the babble of Jacob Potts, although that vile tar had the distinction of being despised by their small company of officers and a goodly share of his shipmates.

  Casting a glance toward the bridge, Roger Blake mentally laid odds that he would find the older couple locked in another verbal fray and smiled ruefully as he won his bet. The portly pair were at it again, and he knew by experience that Mrs. Fitch would not desist until she had gotten her way. Thankful that he was not encumbered with the likes of that great white whale for a wife, Roger returned to his duties.

  Shemaine was able to enjoy a vague sense of relief after the banishment of Potts, but it was not long before the murmuring voices of the other women began to intrude into her awareness. Their fretting comments and morbid speculations on what further hardships they would experience under the authority of their new masters began to trickle down into her consciousness, heightening her dread with a pungent taste of grim reality. Despite the adversities she had been forced to endure since leaving England, she had sought to bolster her courage by clinging to a frail fragment of hope that, by some miracle, her parents or even her fiancé would find out where she had been taken and arrive in time to save her from the fate of being sold as an indentured servant. But as yet, no beloved face had appeared and only a few moments remained before that humiliating event was set to begin.

  Shemaine ran her slender fingers beneath the iron band that encircled her wrist in an effort to ease the constant chafing. It was cruel irony that she was even there, but after sipping the bitter draught of English justice firsthand she had ceased to believe that she was the only prisoner aboard the Pride who had been unjustly condemned. Others had received equally harsh sentences for nothing more dastardly than stealing a loaf of bread or expressing a political view, which some of the young Irish hotbloods were wont to do. In spite of the frailty of their crimes and the sheer absurdity of their convictions, their departure as unsavory rabble from the shores of England had been expedited by pompous, bewigged magistrates who had enjoined the gaol keepers to offer royal pardons to any and every felon who would agree to a term of indentured labor in the colonies. The alternatives had made such proposals seem magnanimous. It was either bound servitude beyond the shores of England or a choice between two extremes: a hanging at Triple Tree for more grievous crimes or, for lesser offenses, the probability of rape, murder, or mutilation in the foul pits of Newgate Prison, a place where absolutely no attempt was made to distinguish between or to separate prisoners by gender, age, or severity of offenses.

  It was impossible for Shemaine to forget the trauma of being snatched from her family’s stable and, like the foulest offender, hauled into a court of law by an ugly slip of a man who had identified himself only as Ned, the thieftaker. A short, stint in Newgate had taught her the futility of tearful supplications and desperately spoken promises of reward to anyone who would travel to her father’s warehouses in Scotland and take her parents news of her arrest. It had been absurd to think that anyone would believe her guarantee of a weighty purse when she had been confronted by no kinder visage than the stony faces of criminals, gaolers, and their helpless victims.

  Later, after she had come aboard the London Pride and witnessed firsthand the travails of others, she had lost all hope of ever finding a sympathetic benefactor. She had seen suckling babes torn from the breasts of desperately pleading mothers, like Annie Carver, who had not foreseen the possibility of her infant being snatched from her arms and sold to a passing stranger. Mere children, with haunted eyes and runnels of unchecked tears streaking down their thin filthy faces, had been left behind on the docks while they watched their only kin led across the gangplank in chains. Other youngsters, convicted of fretfully feeble crimes, had been shackled alongside hardened whoremongers and thieves. The only two to board the Pride had not survived.

  Such sights had been an outrageous affront to Shemaine’s sensibilities and carefully nurtured upbringing. She had not even imagined the like of such barbarism until she had seen and experienced it for herself. En masse they had been treated like common vermin, something detestable that had to be spewed forth from the shores of England to make the country fit and clean for a more genteel class of people, no doubt that same breed of aristocrat who had hired a thieftaker to seize her and to concoct a crime that would see her condemned to seven years in prison, just to prevent her from spoiling her fiancé’s sterling heritage with her own Irish-blended blood.

  Of late, Shemaine’s memories of her past bliss had grown dim and strangely distant, as if she had but dreamed the princely Maurice du Mercer had asked her to marry him
. After all, Maurice was a titled Englishman and could have chosen from a vast assortment of young maidens of the same noble standing as he, whereas she could claim no loftier status than being the solitary offspring of a marriage between a hotheaded Irish merchant and a gracious English lady.

  “Impudent little peasant,” countesses had been inclined to whisper whenever Maurice had swept her around in a promenade. Yet the wealth of her father probably would have staggered the wits of self-exalted aristocrats who were so eager to boast of their highly esteemed titles but in truth could lay claim to very little of actual monetary worth. Maurice, on the other hand, had not only been heir to the vast fortunes, estates, and title of his late father, the Marquess of Merlonridge, Phillip du Mercer, he was also the grandson of Edith du Mercer, a most formidable matron and protectress of a lineage well fortified with impeccable credentials.

  Still, if the copious bribe which had been offered to her by the elder had not been motivated by bigotry, Shemaine pondered bitterly, why was she here aboard this convict ship and why had she suffered all the degradation of a condemned criminal after her refusal to leave Maurice and England behind her forever? Had she but agreed to the Grand Dame’s terms, it seemed unlikely she would have come to this precise end.

  Tears came to blur Shemaine’s vision as waves of anguish washed over her, almost drowning her in a sea of despair, for if Edith du Mercer had indeed connived to have her whisked away from England, then the woman’s schemes had been fully realized. Not only was Shemaine a continent away from home and family, she was about to be cast into bondage and divested of her last shred of hope for deliverance from a way of life for which she was ill prepared. If she did not die of remorse, she would, in all probability, succumb to some other dreaded malady prevalent in the colonies or, if Potts found her, the mayhem he intended.

  A thin arm slipped about Shemaine’s shoulder, snatching her abruptly from her doleful reflections. With a start of surprise she glanced around to find Annie Carver watching her curiously.

  “A fittin’ justice for ol’ Potts, eh, m’liedy?” the young woman ventured with a tentative smile as she sought a reason for her friend’s tears. “Ye can bet he won’t be gettin’ a chance ta do any more o’ Morrisa’s foul deeds afore we leaves the ship.”

  Shemaine was far from convinced that she had seen the last of Potts. “I’d feel considerably more at ease if Mr. Harper would keep that beast locked away in the cable tier until the London Pride sails back to England,” she confided glumly. “Morrisa knows just what it takes to get her bullyboy vexed with me, and she’ll not rest until I’ve been severely punished for defying her these months at sea.”

  Annie mentally agreed. Prior to coming face-to-face with Shemaine aboard the ship, Morrisa had successfully coerced her cellmates into giving her the best and greater portion of what little food had been doled out to them. She had fully expected Shemaine to comply as well, for it had been evident that the girl had lived a sheltered, pampered life far above their own. Yet in spite of the harlot’s threats, Shemaine had stood her ground, resisting Morrisa’s every effort to see her broken or brought down. Shemaine had eventually talked the rest of the women into revolting against the strumpet, deepening a virulent hatred. “Aye, ye managed ta set Morrisa awry from yer first encounter. She’s been in a fair ta frothin’ snit ever since.”

  The strife the harlot had caused Shemaine had convinced her of one thing. “Morrisa would like nothing better than to carve me up with that little knife of hers. Or better yet to get Potts to do her dirty work for her. She seems to enjoy giving orders, but she prefers others to reap the blame and recompense.”

  Annie’s gaze slipped beyond Shemaine and grew noticeably chilled. “Speakin’ o’ the witch, look ‘oo’s comin’.”

  Shemaine followed Annie’s pointed stare and released a bleak sigh when she saw Morrisa’s hip-swinging approach. “The devil’s own, no less.”

  The dark-eyed harlot simpered smugly as she halted beside Shemaine. “Didn’t like yer stay in the cable tier, eh dearie? Well, I can’t says I blame ye none, though I knows nary ‘nother what deserves ’em chambers more.”

  “Oh, I knows one al’right.” Annie cut her eyes meaningfully toward the strumpet.

  Lifting her lip in a cynical sneer, Morrisa bestowed a full measure of contempt upon the tiny woman. “Why, if’n it ain’t the dour li’l crab scootin’ ’round on her belly after her liedyship again, like she was hopin’ for a handout in good looks. Well, dearie, ye’re wastin’ yer time with this here bog-Irish scum. Sh’maine ain’t gots none ta spare.”

  “I knows me friends,” Annie stated in a flat tone. “An’ I knows me foes, an’ ‘tis sure ye ain’t no friend o’ mine. Truth be, I’d sooner be caught a-molderin’ in a bogtrotter’s grave than cavortin’ with the likes o’ some lecher’s tart.”

  Morrisa’s brown eyes flared at the slur, and she hauled back an arm to strike, but she froze in sudden wariness. In contests of brawn she had already discovered that Annie Carver could best any woman twice her size, and a swollen lip or a bruised eye could dissuade a buyer from taking a chance on a bondslave who might prove unruly. Though the urge was great, Morrisa could not bring herself to complete the stroke. Petulantly she lowered her arm and shrugged her shoulders, setting her thinly clad breasts briefly a-jiggle. By the wealth of curves she exhibited, it was not hard to determine that she had suffered no lack of victuals during the long voyage. “Too bad ol’ Potts got carped by the bosun. The bugger might’ve resented ye callin’ me names.”

  Shemaine sighed heavily, making much of her lamentation. “Poor, blind Potts. If he only knew how much you truly hated him. Why, he’d squash you like a bothersome gnat.”

  Morrisa smirked contentedly. “He wouldn’t believe ye, dearie, even if ye told him. Ye sees, Sh’maine, I knows how ta handle ol’ Potts. ‘Sides, he may be useful ta me in these here colonies. The bloke’s even been talkin’ ’bout jumpin’ ship an’ stayin’ on with me instead o’ sailin’ back ta England. Wouldn’t the two o’ ye be surprised if’n he did?”

  Shemaine mentally shivered at the thought. Indeed, she could almost hear the banshees whispering her name. Despite the prickling dread that crawled up her nape, she made a point of growing thoughtful and voiced a possible solution to such a problem. “Perhaps I should warn the one who buys you that he’ll likely get his throat slit by you or your lackey on a leash. I’m sure your master would be able to keep you adequately fettered and out of trouble, at least for a while. Besides, when Potts ceases to be of use to you, you’ll find another buffoon to fetch and carry for you. I doubt that you have it in you to remain loyal to any man longer than it takes for him to hand over your fee.”

  Morrisa’s haughty smirk twisted into an enraged grimace. “Ye don’t know when ye’re well off, do ye, Sh’maine! Anyone else would’ve learned by now, but not ye! I has ta pound it inta yer ugly noggin!”

  Morrisa lunged at Shemaine with fingers curled into claws, having every intention of gouging those green eyes from their sockets, but the bosun’s shout rang out for a second time, foiling another fight.

  “Start anything, ladies,” James Harper warned, using the title loosely, “and I’ll have the both of you keelhauled ‘til your tempers cool!”

  Morrisa’s glower conveyed her unabated fury, but the bosun was a man of his word, and such a dreadful threat from him gave her cause to reconsider. Her fingers finally relaxed, and with a flippant toss of her raven mane, she sauntered off, dragging her chains behind her.

  The keening cry of a sea eagle pierced the blustering breezes, drawing Shemaine’s gaze to the turbulent clouds churning overhead. Beneath their dark and looming shroud, frightened gulls wheeled on black-tipped wings and dove close to the water in an effort to escape their nemesis, but the erne seemed indifferent to the smaller birds as he casually rode the currents on widespread wings. Mesmerized by his free-spirited flight, Shemaine could almost envision herself mounting to the air on similar wings to escape the
ordeal of what the coming moments or even the next seven years would bring. But harsh reality was only a heartbeat away. Chained by iron fetters and forever bound to earth, she could only watch in helpless dismay as the eagle soared beyond her restricted view. His freedom to wander hither and yon brutally mocked the constraints that she and the other prisoners had been subjected to since being convicted in an English court of law.

  Annie sighed wistfully beside her. “I’ll be happy ta leave the ship, m’liedy, but I’d be gladder still ta be bought by some kindly folk what gots a wee one or two for me ta tend.”

  “Perhaps you will be, Annie.” Seeking encouragement for her friend, Shemaine climbed atop the hatch cover and stretched her own slight frame upward until she could see over the railing. Her gaze flitted over the colonials waiting on the quay for the shipboard sale to begin. To be sure, she was not greatly heartened by what she saw. The chance of Annie being purchased by a young family seemed ridiculously farfetched when she considered the potential buyers. Gray-haired men with pallid skin and short, plump wives; landowners with bald pates; and spinsterish-looking women with thin, hatchet faces seemed the primary choices. Only one man stood apart from the rest in both distance and appearance. He was definitely young enough to lend some hope for the gratification of Annie’s aspirations, yet his sharply brooding scowl was formidable. The other settlers eyed him furtively, as if afraid of meeting his stoic gaze, which did little to ease Shemaine’s own speculations about the man. Yet, for all of the others’ diffidence, he seemed to be the main reason for their incessant chatter.

  James Harper approached the women and took a ring of keys from his belt as his gaze flitted over them. Gertrude Fitch had not allowed the female prisoners to come on deck and bathe in sight of the men in preparation of the sale. Instead, she had sent down a scant bar of soap and two buckets of water which they had immediately fought over and wasted. Three months at sea had taken its toll, for they looked no better than the poorest beggars of London. The odds of getting a fair price for any of them seemed remote, which of course would serve Turnbull’s meddling daughter her proper due for not supplying ample rations and being so rigidly opposed to the crew viewing a naked breast, buttock, or two. When the women were all so scrawny and starved looking, a skeptical eyebrow was probably the most a glimpse would have raised.