Devotion(51)

‘What?’

‘Burning down,’ Ottilie muttered. She seemed not to be aware of her nose; I could hear the patter of blood on our mattress.

‘Wake Mutter Scheck,’ Thea said, crawling out of the bed. I did as she said and together we all managed to lift Ottilie back to her berth.

‘Tip your head back,’ Thea said, placing a cloth to Ottilie’s face. She looked up at Mutter. ‘I don’t think she knows where she is.’

‘Tell Johann,’ Ottilie was saying. Her eyes were closed. ‘Please tell him. He must not breathe the smoke.’

‘Who’s Johann?’ I whispered.

Mutter Scheck was grim. ‘Her dead husband.’ She returned to her berth and began to dress. ‘I shall wake the doctor,’ she said. ‘Don’t leave the bow. See if you can get her to drink some water.’

Thea grabbed at Mutter Scheck’s wrist. ‘Not the doctor. Fetch my mother.’

Mutter Scheck hesitated, looking at Thea with apology. ‘I’ll fetch the doctor first,’ she said gently. ‘Then we shall see.’


Dr Meissner bore the rumpled, wide-eyed look of a man trying to rouse himself from inebriation. ‘A blood nose, you say?’ He kneeled at Ottilie’s bedside and Thea and I exchanged a look. He smelled strongly of brandy.

‘And a terrible fever,’ Mutter Scheck added. She regarded the doctor with consternation. ‘She has had a malaise for over two weeks now, Doctor. She has hardly risen from bed.’

‘And now this delirium.’

Ottilie began to cry.

‘Girls, best you go back to bed now.’ Mutter Scheck took the bloodied cloth from Thea’s hand and gently flapped her away. ‘Dr Meissner and I can manage here.’

We watched the doctor place his ear to Ottilie’s chest. The ship suddenly rolled, and he fell sideways. There was the sound of glass breaking.

‘Damn it,’ he muttered, trying to rise.

Thea bent and picked up a small vial. The top had shattered, spilling white powder. She handed it to Dr Meissner and watched him clumsily pick out shards of glass from the bottle.

‘Thank you, Thea,’ Mutter Scheck said. She extended a hand to the doctor as he stumbled against the tipping of the swell. ‘Go on back to bed.’


The next morning, I woke to the sound of Thea scrubbing the foot of our mattress.

‘I can’t get it out,’ she said, looking up. She was crying.

‘What? What is it?’

‘The blood.’

I looked down at the stained pattern at the foot of our bed. Ottilie’s bunk was empty.

‘Did your mother come?’ I asked. ‘I didn’t see her.’

Thea shook her head and took something out of her pocket. It was a folded piece of paper. She gave it to me. ‘Open it.’

I did so and saw the words Thea had uttered to me weeks earlier, written in Anna Maria’s neat print: the invocation of Adonay.

‘Magdalena and Rosina found this when they moved Helbig’s body,’ she said. ‘They will tell the pastor when we arrive in the colony.’ I glanced across the bow to where Christiana was braiding her hair, determinedly facing away from us.

‘He will understand,’ I said, kneeling next to Thea. ‘He will know Adonay is another name for God.’

Thea flung the wet rag into the bucket. ‘I hope so,’ she said. ‘I hope so.’


The funerals for Ottilie and the man Helbig were held jointly that morning upon deck. The weather remained sultry, the air thick and hot. I noticed that the passengers stood in two groups, Anna Maria in the centre of one, Magdalena in the other.

The deaths of two adults had proven what many had already suspected: there was disease on the ship. The six elders roused the doctor from his cabin and escorted him down to steerage, where they demanded he diagnose the other passengers. At first Dr Meissner refused to confirm that the sickness was anything more than scurvy. But they pressed him, listing the symptoms they found common amongst the ill. Fevers. Delirium. Headaches and malaise. The children itched. The doctor examined each of the sick passengers as the elders looked on, and by evening prayers, everyone on board knew that it was as Anna Maria had warned: there was typhus on the Kristi.





whale


Life on the ship took on a strange intensity. With the bunks already so crowded there was not sufficient space to create a ship’s hospital. The sick remained where they were and those who could bear it joined the passengers already sleeping above deck to give more room and air to those below. More would have gone, but the sea had grown rough again, and waves sometimes broke against the boat, sending foam and spray across bedding and blankets. On occasions of very heavy weather, sea water spilling across the deck would reach us in steerage, where it swilled anything loose upon the floor into corners. The humidity remained stifling. Gottfried Volkmann recounted his experiences of typhus in the wars against the French and was shouted down. No one wanted to hear about the smell of the bodies he had seen. Traugott Geschke and Samuel Radtke came to blows as a long-running feud over a bull was reignited, and Papa was forced to come between them and mediate. The doctor, people noticed, was nearly always drunk. He confused passengers, forgot their names. Amalie Schultze nearly took medicine she did not need because he believed her to be a different woman.