Fourth Queen

Helen lowered the bundle she was carrying onto the floor and stared around the ship's passenger cabin. It was crammed with people, blundering about in the semidarkness, tripping over one anothers' belongings, laying claim to the strange cloth beds that hung like strings of onions from the walls. She sank back against the wall. She'd imagined little round windows, splashed with saltwater; perhaps a few neat partitions to separate family groups. Not this creaking barn, with its slimy, swaying floor. To stop herself crying, she closed her hands into fists and forced her nails into the flesh of her palms. She'd no one to blame but herself. If she hadn't run away, what's the worst that could have happened? Meg couldn't have stayed angry with her forever. She thought of her old box bed at home, the blankets smelling of sweet hay and woodsmoke. If she left now she'd be back at Muthill in less than a fortnight. Below water level the only daylight came from two trapdoors with ladders leading up to the main deck. She could smell rancid butter and rotting fish, and a midden stink was already seeping from the close-stools behind the screen in the corner. Vomit nudged at the back of her throat. She had to spend the next twelve weeks in this place, buried with a hundred other souls like worms in a coffin. She squeezed her fists tighter and her nails bit deeper. Why did she never think before she did things? Going to John Bayne's house in the middle of the night, barefoot, like a hussy. Did she expect to be treated like a lady? No wonder he'd taken her to his servants' quarters. Retching into her shawl, she blundered toward a ladder and scrambled back up toward the light. Outside there was shouting everywhere. Men were rolling barrels toward holes in the deck or spidering high overhead in a web of ropes and poles. Others leaned over the side hauling sacks up from the skiffs bobbing far below in the water. A man with porridge skin spied her standing there, young and dazed and pretty, and started toward her grinning like a dog. Stumbling over a coil of rope, she turned and fled toward the side of the ship. There was still time. She could persuade one of the skiffs to take her back to the Greenock quay. Leaning over the railings, she looked down at the unruly flotilla nudging at the ship's belly like puppies. She thought of hailing one and scrambling. down a rope ladder. Then what? She'd no money for the stagecoach to Perth, and no one to go with. Her traveling companions, Betty and Dougie, were still in the cabin; they'd never go back with her. There was nothing back at Muthill for them but digging neeps for a pittance for the rest of their lives: this journey to the Colonies was their only hope. Pressed against the ship's railings, Helen felt cornered. She thought of the sturdy, well-ordered cottage she'd left behind; of her father, Muthill's blacksmith, his big kind hands and leather apron; of the gray kirk school; of the river skipping over clean pebbles by the mill. How could she have run away from all that? And the weans; and Meg, her stepmother, for all her fierceness. Meg was right to be angry with her, sneaking home with bruised lips at five in the morning. But she'd have calmed down eventually--if Helen hadn't slammed out of the cottage. And seen Betty and Dougie in the distance, setting off on the first stage of their journey to America. Now it was too late. Now she was trapped on this ship and there was no going back. Her chest tightened and panic clogged her throat. She needed somewhere to cry; somewhere no one could see her. Climbing over a pile of lumpy sacks, she squeezed behind a stack of hen coops and crouched down out of sight. The hens jostled and pecked at one another in their cramped quarters. Helen watched a smashed egg ooze slowly out between the bars and began to feel calmer. After a while she knelt up and peered cautiously out. Soon she noticed a small grouTaylor, Debbie is the author of 'Fourth Queen', published 2003 under ISBN 9781400049257 and ISBN 1400049253.