Taming the Wilde (16 page)

After dressing myself I made my way to Roake’s cabin out of a sense of habit, nothing more. I did not anticipate a warm welcome. He had made it quite apparent that he considered me to be nothing more than a flirtatious harlot willing to throw myself at any man in authority. Perhaps I was. I no longer knew and I certainly no longer cared.

I pushed my way into his cabin without so much as knocking. He was engaged in the delicate act of tying his cravat and whirled to face me with a look of irritation, then pity on his face. “You look terrible.”

“Thank you Master Roake,” I said dryly. “You know how to make a lady feel special.”

“What happened?” He approached me, his handsome face drawn in concern.

“I did not sleep,” I said, shrugging the matter off. “It is nothing more than that.”

“Come and sit down,” he said, “you need to rest.”

“I cannot sit, Master Roake. My flirtations saw to that.”

My jibe caught him squarely. “I owe you an apology,” he said, much to my surprise. “I should not have accused you of flirtation.”

“You think if I behave inappropriately with you that I will do so with any man. I understand that.” I was too weary to feel affront. “I will go now if you like. A man of your caliber should not keep company with people such as myself.”

“People such as yourself?”

“You consider me little better than a courtesan, I understand that. It is what most of our number are or will be. Why should you think me any different?” I passed a hand over my brow. I truly was exhausted, but I was loath to show weakness. I did not need his pity, or his apologies for they did not change the opinion of me that had made his behavior so very hurtful.

“Hush Jane,” he said, taking me by the elbow and drawing me into the room. “Lay down,” he said, indicating his bed. “Rest your head.”

I hesitated only a moment before I lay down. His bed was much more comfortable than my own, a great deal thicker and in spite of our quarrel, or perhaps because I was the whore he accused me of being, the masculine scent on the pillow was of great comfort to me. Sleep, which had evaded me all night long, finally came to me.

It was the beginning of a new routine for I soon found that I could not sleep alone in my bed. When I did I saw Lizzy’s cold face and the thrashing waters that had greeted her and I always woke in cold sweats, sometimes screaming loud enough to wake all those on the prison deck.
  Each morning I rose from my bed feeling like the undead and each morning Roake let me lie in his bed and find some measure of rest. It was a great kindness, but it marked a new level of separation between us for we no longer spent our waking hours in the service of education. Conversation became forced and polite. I knew all too well why. He was putting distance between us so as to make it easier when we finally parted ways. It was a sensible measure, one I agreed with.

Adding to my anxiety was the knowledge that we were drawing closer to land. Soon I would depart the ship and then Roake, the only element of security in my life would be gone. That thought caused me more pain than I would ever have cared to admit. I remained sane only
because the ocean still stretched out to eternity. I could not see the land we were going to and whilst it remained out of sight I could make myself believe that perhaps we would never touch it. Perhaps we would sail on and on forever, wanderers on the tides.

My fantasies were soon crushed under the heel of hard reality. I was taking what passed for exercise on the deck one afternoon, sitting on a strapped down pile of barrels, when there was a cheer from the crow’s nest above. It was a sound that made Morrow lift his spyglass to his eye and I saw him mimic the cheer. I did not need to be told what the jubilation that spread quickly through the sailors and guards meant. Land had been sighted and our journey was almost over.

On the following day Morrow had all prisoners assembled on deck. He spoke to us quite cheerfully as he explained what would happen when we ran out of ocean and bumped up against land once more. “We will soon be making dock at Botany Bay where you will disembark and begin your sentences,” he said, looking at us all with an approving eye. For reasons beyond my comprehension, many of our number seemed to share his excitement.

“There are two stages to the matter,” Morrow explained to his eager audience. “When we arrive there will be free men at the docks waiting to choose servants and perhaps wives. Those of you not chosen will be taken to the Parramatta female factory where you will work until such time as you serve your sentence or find a match. Becoming a wife and mother will free you from the bonds of servitude, so consider any offers you receive in that light.”

I scowled. Neither of those options appealed to me, either being taken into a strange man’s home or sent to what amounted to little more than a workhouse. So much for freedom, we were to be sold into servitude, pressed into marriage and forced into work. For a brief, terrible moment I almost thought Lizzy lucky to have perished during the voyage. But I knew she would have survived in this new world. She would have thrived in fact, being no stranger to strange men.

When there was a moment’s peace I made my way to the spot on the railing where Lizzy had been deposited into the ocean. It was the last place I had seen her, though she had not been herself at the time, just a swaddled body bereft of life. I wanted so badly to spend just one more minute with her, to feel as I had felt when she was alive.

“Jane.”

Suddenly, between the little peaking waves, I saw her face in the water. I saw her floating there as clear as day, intact and beautiful, as if she had become a mermaid or some such creature. I blinked thrice and rubbed my eyes, but when I opened them again, she was still there.
  “Lizzy?”

“Come down Jane,” she beckoned to me. “It’s pretty down here.”

“I cannot live under water Lizzy.” I shouted down to her, hoping she could hear me over the rush and swell of the water.

“It only hurts for a moment, Jane.” Her thin voice swept across the ocean. “Then you’ll have peace with me and my babes.”

“Babes?” I asked the question and then saw that she was ringed with smiling cherubic figures swimming all about her, their scales flashing brightly in the sun as they leaped and splashed about. I smiled to see them, such pretty babies Lizzy had borne under the sea.

“Come down
, Jane! It is so nice down here!” She cried out to me. “Slip over the railing, ’t will hurt for only a minute.”

Only a minute... a minute of pain to release me from a lifetime of suffering. Only a minute to save me from servitude or tedious work or worse still, being compelled to give my virtue to the highest bidder. I leaned over the railing, reaching my arms out to Lizzy as she reached hers out to me.

“Take my hand, Jane!” She cried out to me, her hair floating about her face in a beautiful fan. “Take my hand and join me!”

I reached out still further to touch her fingers as they rose from the water. “Touch me Lizzy, take me with you!” I was happy to surrender myself to the water, happy to join Lizzy. Lizzy had always known how to live best. In her company I would never be sad or lonely. We could swim the seas for eternity, never touching land or being tyrannized by man. I fancied I could almost touch her, almost feel her fingers on mine. Almost...

“Jane!” Roake’s arms reached around my waist and hauled me forcibly back onto the deck. I hated him for it, I hated how powerful he was, what light work he made of destroying my chance to be reborn with Lizzy as a water baby. 

“No!”
  I screamed, flailing furiously in his arms. “Lizzy, I want to see Lizzy!”

“Are you mad?” He took my face none too gently and made me look toward him, but the moment his fingers clamped on my cheeks his anger drained away. “You are burning up!”

“Lizzy,” I cried weakly. “She is waiting for me in the water.”

“Mad with grief,” somebody said.

“She is running a fever.” I heard Roake say the words as he pressed his hand to my brow, but I did not pay much mind. Lizzy was standing on the deck now, blue and cold and dripping everywhere. She did not look so well out of the ocean, there were deep dark rings under her eyes and her hair was knotted all about her face. She looked at me hollowly, her mouth open in a silent cry that echoed my own.

“Lizzy!” I cried her name out again and reached for her, but Roake gathered me up in his arms and carried me away to the depths of his cabin. That panicked me more than anything and I began shrieking. “Lizzy he is going to hit me! Save me Lizzy, save me!” But Lizzy did not save me. She stood on deck as sailors walked all around her without so much as acknowledging her. It was very rude of them and I chastised them for it in no uncertain terms as Roake carried me into the depths of his cabin, shutting the world out with the closing of his door.

“My poor Jane,” Roake’s deep rumble went right through my body as he laid me down on the bed, shaking and jumbling things about inside me. I couldn’t quite feel my body, everything was warm and liquid and the motion of the ship made me feel as if I was falling apart, drifting away and becoming one with the water and the wind. I did not know how long I stayed in that state, but it seemed to be an awfully long time. Roake spoke to me in the mornings and then again in the evenings but I usually did not understand what he was saying. He didn’t speak the language of the sea like Lizzy and I did.

She visited me often, sometimes as a water sprite, other times looking as solid and hearty as she had when she was alive. We had long conversations, Lizzy and I, about many things. She told me of her life below the waves and I told her of the horrors awaiting me on Australian shores.

At some point, I knew not when, my fever broke and Lizzy went away. I became aware of my surroundings again, of Roake’s bed, his cabin and his face peering down at me with concern. I did not need him to tell me that Lizzy’s visits had been hallucinations, nor that we were close to port. I could feel that the ship had settled in her movements, she was sailing smoothly towards the bowels of the earth and taking us all with her.

“I am not going to Australia.” I made the declaration with all the passion my weakened body could muster. My voice croaked and was dry, for I had barely supped a thing since the illness had taken hold of me.

“Oh Jane.” Roake mopped my brow. “Please do not make this so difficult. You have made yourself ill with worry.”

“I doubt that is how the body works,” I said, trying to sit up in bed. I had been quarantined in Roake’s cabin, which was a clear sign that my illness was not regarded as being purely emotional.

He handed me some broth, which I drank quite gratefully. I was ravenous and with something in my stomach I felt much better. My time with Lizzy had convinced me of the need to fight for my freedom I would not go quietly down to the docks and be chosen by a man, or forced to work until such time as whatever authority taking charge of me might see fit to release me.

“I implore you, Jane,” Roake said. “Resign yourself to your fate and take it with grace.”

His advice was ridiculous in the extreme. I was not given to resigning myself to my fate and well he should have known it. Perhaps he was as desperate as I was. I did not know what feelings, if any he had regarding the events that would soon overtake us both.

“What do you care,” I said, laying my bowl aside. “You will be well on your way back to Merry
Olde England soon and you will never think of me again.”

“I will always think of you, Jane,” Wilde said, sitting at my bedside.

“Well thoughts are free and floating like the clouds,” I said. “You heard what Morrow said. You know what is to become of me. I will be forced into marriage or my virtue will be taken in payment.”

Roake looked furious. “Miss Wilde, that is not necessarily true...”

“But you know it is a possibility. You know why we were sent here. Not for any real crime but to use our loins in the service of the king.” I became impassioned. “I will not allow that, Master Roake. I will sell my life before I allow my virtue to be taken.” The master of discipline grew grim, but I was not finished speaking my mind. “You should have let me fall from the railing. You should have let me join Lizzy. Better to die pure than to be ravaged by some filthy convict man made free to take a wife from among our number.”

“Enough, Miss Wilde!” Roake thundered the words. He did not want to hear what I had to say. He did not want to think of what would become of me. He wanted to imagine that he had done his duty well and that the future would take care of itself. I recoiled in the face of his anger, afraid that he would turn his ire on me. He had blamed me for events out of my control in the past and no doubt it would be easier for him to blame me for what was done to convict women than to admit that for all his chivalrous intentions and honorable words he was delivering me directly into the lion’s den.

As I beheld the stubborn expression Roake’s dark eyes I felt that all was lost. It was plain to see that he could barely think about what would happen to me when we made land, let alone discuss it. I was desperate however, and a desperate woman will say that which is not wise and do that which is never done. I made one last plea to the man who had become more than the master of discipline to me, who had shown me rare and increasing kindness in the course of our association.