Captain Olsen bent his head and obliged. His voice was deep and pleasant, but it quickly grew faint as a brisk wind sprang up, sweeping his words from the deck and pulling them out along the river. The ropes creaked above us. I opened one eye and saw the sailors with heads bowed, lips murmuring. Ruffled skirts. Hair blown across foreheads.
The prayer blew out to the ocean ahead of us, blessing the air and waters we would travel through, light and tumbling. A bird to make sure of land.
a bolt of black cloth
Sometimes I wonder if I will hear it again, my voice as it was on that day we boarded the Kristi. Surely somewhere that prayer taken up by the wind is still blowing. Somewhere I am still praying. Maybe that is what I am listening for up here in the darkness of the bush: my own sweet voice rushing back at me, offering consolation. Conviction.
Amen. Amen. Amen.
Below, in the valley, the lights are slowly pinching out. I imagine the women in the cottages laying down the clothes they are mending and finally going to bed, letting their fires go out in a way they never did back in the villages where they were born. The night is cool, but not cold. The wind is a bow scraping on the stars.
I will not sleep tonight. I was never someone who fell asleep easily, and now sleep seems gone from me in the same way as so much else. There was a time when wakefulness wound my thoughts into wire. But there is much to love about the night, if you know how to surrender to it.
It took some time for my eyes to become accustomed to the gloom once I had stepped down the hatch to the tween deck. I was bumped by Amalie Schultze coming down behind me on the stair and so groped my way forwards, a hand on Matthias’s shoulder, until my eyes adapted to the low light and I saw the place we were to eat and sleep for the long months of our journey.
It was a long, narrow confinement, the upper beams only a short distance above the tallest of the company. A wooden trestle table extended throughout, benches nailed firmly to the boards beneath it, and on either side of the table, beyond walkways, were wooden berths, one row above another, abutting both sides of the ship. Small lights glowered in heavy, black lanterns.
It was close. The air was already warm and stale with bodies and breathing.
‘Goodness,’ Amalie murmured. ‘How will we all fit?’
I heard Hermine’s familiar wail rise up to my left, where Mama stood peering into a berth, prodding the bare mattress. People kept coming down the stairs and there was soon too little space to move freely. I felt a jab in my side as Hans tried to manoeuvre three large bags through the crowd. He shot me a look of apology as Rosina shouted instructions at him from behind.
‘Silence, please!’ Dr Meissner had his arms extended above his head.
There was a scuffle as Traugott Geschke slipped and fell down the hatch, knocking a young girl to the floor. She started crying, rubbing her head where she had hit it upon the corner of a berth, and several babies started up in sympathy. My heart was racing. There were too many of us, it was too crowded, and still people continued climbing down the hatchway, stumbling over one another, over luggage. There were exclamations of indignation, of disappointment. Arguments broke out.
‘Silence!’
I looked up. Samuel Radtke had climbed on top of the trestle table, head stooped under the low beam. An unlit lantern smacked him in the ear.
‘Brothers! Please, stop. Pay attention to the good doctor.’ He extended a hand to Meissner, offering to haul him onto the table. The doctor accepted reluctantly.
‘Listen!’ His voice was stern. ‘You heard the captain! As your doctor I have command over you for the duration of this journey. You are to conduct yourselves with propriety at all times. All of you are to keep your living quarters in good order, and if I ask you to complete additional cleaning or to stow your belongings in a particular way, you shall do so. You shall do so without question! You must obey my directions in all things, but particularly’ – a low murmuring had broken out and the doctor raised his voice in annoyance – ‘particularly in regards to rations, of which there are a finite supply!’ He waited for silence before continuing. ‘There are twenty-seven barrels apiece of pork and beef, and sixteen of herrings. Cooks shall be designated from amongst your messes, but no barrel nor hogshead shall be opened without my prior consent, and I shall issue instructions as to when these foodstuffs may be eaten with rice, peas or beans.’
The doctor went on, explaining the consequences for drunkenness, for unruliness, for untidiness, until I began to wonder if he did not hold some prejudice against us, or whether he had suffered through previous journeys with the worst of humankind. I could see the elders bristle as the list of offences continued.