Toward the Sea of Freedom (13 page)

Kathleen followed the priest’s finger as it traced the endlessly long path across the globe. She lost all hope as he did. Never, never would Michael find his way back to Ireland. It was completely impossible. Perhaps you could escape a prison, but you couldn’t sail halfway around the world without money or papers.

“And down there”—Father O’Brien pointed to two small islands to Australia’s southeast—“this is New Zealand.”

“That’s, that’s really very close,” she said excitedly.

The priest shrugged. “Something more than a thousand miles, if that seems near to you. But like I said, it’s closer than Ireland, however you look at it.”

“And the country: I’ve never heard about it before. The islands in the South Seas, aren’t they full of cannibals?”

O’Brien laughed. “Well, this one has rather more Protestants, who, in general, show themselves harder for the missionaries to convert. Most of the immigrants are Scotch or English—a few Germans too. I haven’t heard anything about the natives so far. And there aren’t many settlements yet, either, just a few whaling stations, some seal catchers, fortune hunters. I wouldn’t like to see you in their camps, Kathleen. But Ian’ll hardly go to those anyway. After all, they don’t buy many horses.”

“Ian said something to my parents about the Canterbury Plains.”

The priest nodded. “Yes, I’ve heard of it. The Church of England is supposed to be founding a city, and the area is supposed to be good for livestock husbandry. Ian will make money there, in any case. So think about it, Mary Kathleen. Don’t fear; I’ll not marry you to any man you don’t like, regardless of what your parents want. But think about it. As I said, you don’t have many options.”

Kathleen sighed. Then she looked again at the endlessly long way from Ireland to Australia—and the comparative stone’s throw to New Zealand.

“I’ve thought about it, Father,” she said. “I want to go to New Zealand.”

The old priest shook his head. “That’s not right, Kathleen,” he said softly. “It should be ‘I want to take Ian Coltrane for my lawfully wedded husband, in sickness and in health.’”

Father O’Brien married Ian and Kathleen two weeks later in his little church. Beforehand, Kathleen had thought up every possible excuse to delay the wedding. She did not want to marry until she got to her new homeland.

Her mother dismissed this with a disdainful glance at Kathleen’s belly.

“There’ll be no question of that, Mary Kathleen,” she said sternly. “You can’t travel with Ian without being married. And who’ll do the ceremony down there? An Anglican reverend? A blind one if possible, so he won’t notice you’re ready to give birth at the altar? And what if the baby is born on the way? If you give birth on the ocean before you’re married, the poor bastard won’t just lack a father but a homeland too.”

“He’s getting a father. That’s why we’re doing all this, isn’t it?” Kathleen grumbled. She saw that her objections were childish. Father O’Brien was right: Going to New Zealand meant she had to marry. And no matter how close she would be to Michael on the map, once married she would be as far as was possible.

Kathleen was ashamed when she stood at the altar with Ian. She wore a new wide-cut green dress, and she stuck Michael’s letter and lock of hair in her cleavage, so that they were next to her heart. In principle, she was already betraying her husband, but no one would learn of it, of course. Mary Kathleen had long stopped confessing every sinful thought.

Ian had set aside a portion of her dowry for a proper celebration, so at least the good food stopped the mouths of her worst mockers. But it did not matter what people in the village said about Kathleen’s union with Ian. Just three days after the wedding, the young couple would set out for Dublin. From there, a ship would leave for London the next day. And just a few days later, on April 5, the
Primrose
would depart from London for Port Cooper, a harbor near the future pastures of the Canterbury Plains.

Kathleen was not afraid of her wedding night with Ian. Though she had qualms regarding her new husband, his body did not disgust her, and her memories of making love with Michael were all good ones. She had hoped Ian might spare her for a bit; it seemed the baby in her belly would be an obstacle. Ian, however, would not be deterred. He took possession of his young wife that very first night.

Of course he would not have phrased it so, but for Kathleen that was what it felt like. The deal was made, hands were shaken, and now the horse could be ridden. Ian performed this last act with little sense of tenderness. He dispensed with any caressing and pushed very quickly into her. When Kathleen groaned in pain and surprise, he yelled at her. “What’s this? Surely you’re not going to pretend you’re a virgin.”

At that, Kathleen held her tongue and lay still until it was over. She hoped he had not harmed the baby, but she did not worry too much. In the tenants’ tiny cottages, children knew when their parents had sex, however much they tried to suppress every noise. Kathleen’s father had always insisted on his rights until nearly the very end of her mother’s pregnancies. Erin O’Donnell had accepted it; now, Kathleen accepted it—and she had the feeling of finally avoiding a sin.

She would never be able to think of Michael while Ian lay with her.

Goodness

London, England

Van Diemen’s Land, Australia

Port Cooper, New Zealand

1847–1850

Chapter 1

Lizzie Owens would have liked to have been a good girl. She even half knew how to go about it; the pastor in the orphanage had talked about it endlessly, after all. Good girls did not steal and did not tell lies, and they did not give themselves to men for money. That was why everyone treasured them, God was pleased by them, and they went to heaven when they died.

Lizzie’s dilemma was that she was only just seventeen years old and did not want admission into heaven so soon. Refraining from all the forbidden things would have brought a quick death from hunger, and it would have taken her dear friend Hannah and Hannah’s children, Toby and Laura, with her. Try as she might, she simply could not avoid stealing, lying, and whoring, and so she would end up in hell.

On this day, she woke hungry as ever. Even worse, it was cold. She removed the thin blanket and pushed the children carefully aside. Toby and Laura had liked to sleep snuggled against Lizzie ever since Hannah had brought her sweetheart, Lucius, into their wooden shed in Whitechapel. As if that drafty spot in the recess between two stone buildings, which barely protected them from the rain, was not already too small for four people.

Lizzie hated having to duck behind a threadbare curtain with her customers when the children were nearby. Still, she managed to grit her teeth and keep quiet while the men used her. Hannah could not be quiet, however, which was why Lizzie always tried to go out with the children. Or sometimes she would sing to them, but then the men cursed and complained.

Now it did not matter, because Hannah had Lucius and the children knew what the two of them were doing in the second bed near the door.

“But it’s gaining them a father,” Hannah had said, quite matter-of-factly. “Lucius will make money and protect us.”

Yet Lucius was usually too drunk by midday to stand upright. He could not have protected himself, let alone anyone else. He wasn’t in any danger, though, since there was nothing to take from him. Just yesterday, Hannah and Lucius had fought about how he did not work.

Lizzie looked over at the dirty mattress that Hannah and Lucius shared. She had expected to find them in a close embrace, but, to her disbelief, only Hannah was there. Lizzie had not imagined all that noise early that morning. Lucius must have actually gotten up to go to work.

It was not that hard to earn something, in truth. The ships from or bound for overseas had to be loaded and unloaded, and day laborers were hired for that. But you had to be at the harbor by daybreak—and good-for-nothings like Lucius didn’t manage that often.

Lizzie threw on her shawl and went to the stove. She sighed with relief when she found embers still burning. Two logs were there as well; they would provide a little warmth until the children woke and the sun was higher in the sky.

Lizzie stretched. Not a bad day at all. It was not raining; the buckets they placed under holes in the ceiling were empty. She knew a piece of bread had even been left over the night before. She’d save most of it for the children, but a bite or two would fortify her, and then she would walk down to the harbor.

It was likely that ships had landed overnight—and those ships would be full of sailors hungry for a woman’s body. Hannah—who liked to sleep late—did not believe her, but Lizzie often found the best customers in the morning, and she rarely had to bring them home. Before the sun rose, the hourly hotels rented their rooms cheaply.

Lizzie looked for the bread, but without luck. That damned Lucius. He’d taken the last crumb of bread away from the half-starved children.

Her first impulse was to wake Hannah and make harsh accusations, but she could imagine how her friend would defend Lucius: “Is he supposed to go off to find work on an empty stomach?”

There was no talking to Hannah these days. Her love for Lucius had robbed her of reason. Lizzie doubted the rat would even bring a penny home. If Hannah and Lizzie were lucky, he would share his last bottle of gin with them. He never thought of the children.

Lizzie had to change her plans. She was plenty familiar with how to pick up men, and making her smile charming, so she would look beautiful to them, required little energy. But the men did not like it when her stomach growled while they exerted themselves on top of her. She had to eat something, even just a bit of bread.

Lizzie went over to the washbasin and thanked the heavens when she found that Lucius hadn’t used the water she had hauled in the day before. She splashed the cold water on her face, shivered, rubbed herself dry, and brushed her hair.

She always tried to look neat when she left the house, and during the day she refrained from the garish cosmetics of her trade. That did her no harm either. Some of the boys liked going off with a girl who looked as young and honest as she did. As she put on her dress and hat, she occasionally looked in the sliver of mirror little Toby had found in the trash somewhere and given her as a present.

Toby had just turned five, but he already knew what was valuable. When they let him crawl around in the trash cans of the rich, he found glass and scrap metal they could sell and so contributed more to supporting the family than Lucius did. Hannah knew this and often would simply send him out alone to go looking—another thing for which Lizzie reprimanded her. The boy was still too small to fight off the other street urchins. And what was worse, he could be kidnapped by the gangs of men in London who forced small children to pickpocket and beg.

She set in place the handsome little hat she had bought last year at the charity clothing market. Really, she had not been able to afford it, but the vendor woman had fallen for her smile and given it to her for a pittance. Lizzie practiced her smile in front of the mirror. But without breakfast or someone across from her, it did not work.

She wished she could be as beautiful as Hannah had been before she had two children and then gave herself to gin and men like Lucius. Hannah was curvy, pale, and blessed with an abundance of red hair. Her eyes shone blue, and she had thick eyelashes—she was the kind of woman men could hardly resist.

Lizzie, in contrast, was petite, her body scrawny like a boy’s. She had small breasts and doubted, since she was already seventeen, that these would grow any fuller. Her face was round, though her cheeks were sunken and pale. The proportions of Lizzie’s nose suited her face, at least when people saw her from the front. From the side, it seemed a little too long, mischievous but not coy. Her hair was somewhat wiry and a boring dark blonde, her eyelashes and brows were so light-colored and sparse that they were hardly noticeable if Lizzie did not emphasize them with charcoal, and her eyes were a common blue.

Lizzie was not a girl you noticed at first glance, but she possessed a peculiar talent that helped her survive nonetheless. She had the ability to make the sun go up with a smile. Sometimes the air around her seemed to vibrate when she smiled. A radiance emanated from her eyes that people simply had to return—whether man, woman, or child. Their hearts seemed to warm; they talked to Lizzie and joked with her. Merchants sold things to her for less or gave them to her outright.

Lizzie’s smile could open doors otherwise closed to girls like her. Some mean, brutish customers stopped and approached her with respect and care when she offered them a smile. And misers thought twice about running out without paying Lizzie as they often did with other whores. Sometimes the men would take her to a cookshop after her work was done to buy her a pie and gin—just to see a grateful smile.

Unfortunately, she had not possessed this talent for bewitching people when she was a child. Lizzie often dreamed of how differently her life could have gone if she had been an adorable, irresistible little thing. If she could have beguiled the people in the orphanage with a smile, perhaps parents could have been found for her.