Christina Kline - The Exiles

Standing at the railing with the other convicts as the Medea reached the Thames estuary, Evangeline rubbed the tin disk between her fingers, running her hand along the cord, worrying the metal hook in the back. She watched the brick buildings, carriages, and mud-roofed huts recede, the people on shore turn to specks. All of them going about their daily lives without so much as a glance at the departing ship. She’d been on the ship for nearly ten days. In Newgate for three and a half months. In service to the Whitstones for almost half a year. She’d never ventured farther than forty miles from the village of her birth. She reached a hand into the mist: England was literally slipping through her fingers. A few lines from Wordsworth drifted into her head: Turn wheresoe’er I may, by night or day. The things which I have seen I now can see no more . As a young woman she’d been stirred by the poet’s lament that when he became an adult he was no longer attuned to the beauty of nature; he saw the world through different eyes. But it struck her now that metaphysical melancholy was nothing compared with physical displacement. The world she knew and loved was lost to her. In all likelihood she would never see it again.

Evangeline found Olive near the bow, sitting in a circle of women who were ripping apart their Bibles, folding the pages into rectangles to make playing cards and twisting them into curling paper for their hair. Olive looked up, holding her tin disk between her fingers. “From now on ye can call me one twenty-seven. My new friend Liza says it’s a lucky prime, whatever that means.”

A lanky woman with jet-black hair beside her grinned. “Number seventy-nine. Also a lucky prime.”

“Liza’s good with numbers. Managed the ledgers for a boarding house. Though how good are ye if ye get caught cooking the books?”

The women in the circle laughed.

Evangeline spotted Hazel sitting alone on a wide wooden crate, leafing through the Bible on her lap, and went over to her. “This cord around your neck feels strange, doesn’t it?”

Hazel squinted up at Evangeline. “I’ve got used to worse.”

Within the hour Evangeline’s skin was clammy, her mouth full of saliva. Bile rose in her throat.

“Keep your eye on that line.”

She turned.

Beside her was the surgeon. He pointed toward the horizon.

She followed his finger but could barely focus. “Please—stand away—” she said, before heaving the contents of her breakfast over the side. Glancing down the railing, she saw other prisoners leaning over, retching streams of liquid down the side of the ship and into the choppy water.

“Motion sickness,” he said. “You’ll get used to it.”

“How?”

“Shut your eyes. Put your fingers in your ears. And try to move with the ship—don’t fight it.”

She nodded, shutting her eyes and putting her fingers in her ears. But his advice didn’t do much good. The rest of the day was miserable, and nightfall brought little relief. All around her in the darkness of the orlop deck, women moaned and retched. Olive, above her, muttered curses. Across the aisle Hazel was silent, curled like a shrimp toward the wall.

Evangeline had thrown up so many times she felt faint with exhaustion, yet could not sleep. Once again, she sensed the roiling in her gut, her mouth filling with spittle, the sudsy wave rising in her throat. She’d been aiming into her wooden bowl, but now it was full and sloshing. She didn’t care anymore. Leaning over the side of her narrow bed, she emptied what little remained in her stomach in a thin stream onto the floor.

Hazel turned over. “Can ye not control yourself?”

Evangeline lay there dully, without will to speak.

“She can’t help it, can she?” Olive said.

Hazel leaned across the aisle, and for a moment Evangeline thought she might slap her. “Put out your hand.” When Evangeline complied, Hazel put a small knobby bulb in her palm. “Ginger root. Scrape the skin off with your teeth and spit it out. Then take a bite.”

Evangeline held it to her nose and sniffed. The scent reminded her of desserts at Christmastime: glazed cakes and hard candies, gingersnaps and puddings. She did as she was told, breaking the skin with her teeth and spitting it on the floor. The chunk of root was fibrous and tasted sharply sour. Like vanilla concentrate, she thought: seduced by the smell, betrayed by the flavor.

“Chew slowly ’til nothing’s left,” Hazel said. “Hug the wall. And give it back. It’s all I got.”

Evangeline handed her the root. Closing her eyes, she put her fingers in her ears and turned to the wall, concentrating only on the nub of ginger in her mouth, which softened and mellowed as she gnawed it. In this way, finally, she drifted to sleep.

By the time Evangeline emerged from below decks the next morning, a few hours after breakfast, the Medea had left the Thames and was heading into the North Sea. The water was choppy and white-capped, the sky above the sails a dull white. A thin finger of land was visible in the distance. Evangeline gazed out at the vast, glistening ocean. Then she sat carefully on a barrel and closed her eyes, listening to a cacophony of sounds: a woman laughing, a baby fussing, sailors calling from mast to mast, the squawk of gulls, a bleating goat, the slap of water against the hull. The air was cold. She wished she’d brought her blanket upstairs with her, stained and reeking as it was.

“How was your night?”

She blinked into the brightness.

The surgeon was staring at her with his gray-green eyes. “Feel any better?”

She nodded. “I did what you said. Fingers in my ears and all. But I think it was ginger that made the difference.”

He gave her a quizzical smile. “Ginger?”

“The root. I chewed it.”

“Where’d you get it?”

“That redheaded girl. Hazel. But she took it back. Do you know where I might get some more?”

“I don’t. In the cook’s galley, I suppose.” His mouth twitched. “I’ve always considered it an old wives’ tale. But if it seems to help, by all means continue with it. I tend to be skeptical of miracle cures.”

“Well, I don’t know if it’s a miracle cure, but I do feel better,” she said. “Maybe those old wives knew what they were talking about.”

At times through strong headwinds, at others carving smoothly through the waves, the Medea journeyed the rough waters. The convicts gathered on the deck as the Medea passed the chalky Cliffs of Dover, as cleanly sliced as almond nougat, before heading into the lower Channel.

The cell at Newgate had been so crowded that all Evangeline had wanted was distance from other people. But now, to her surprise, she realized she was lonely. Every morning she rose with the clanging of the bell and lined up with the other women, who joked and complained and cursed as they stood with their dented cups and chipped spoons. She gulped her tea and gnawed hardtack, scrubbed the deck on her hands and knees. On temperate evenings, after her chores were finished and before the women were herded down to the orlop deck, she often stood alone at the railing and watched the sun drop in the sky and the stars appear, faintly at first, as if bubbling to the surface of a vast lake.

One morning, after chores, Evangeline found Hazel sitting alone, her curly hair half covering her face, whispering to herself and tapping at words in the Bible open in her lap. When she looked up and saw Evangeline, she shut it quickly.

“Do you mind if I sit?” Without waiting for an answer, Evangeline perched on a corner of the crate.

The girl gazed at her. “I have chores.”

“Just for a minute.” Evangeline cast about for something to talk about. “I keep thinking about Psalm 104: ‘There is the sea, vast and spacious, teeming with creatures beyond number—living things both large and small.’ You know the one I mean?”