Devotion(57)

Spare her, I thought. Spare her.

I imagined Thea’s lungs, willed them full. Held my breath to take in less air so that she might breathe a little more.

I wondered where Anna Maria had put her book.

Hours passed. It was hell. My vision became starred with creeping darkness, heart pounding through my body so that I felt my flesh pulse with the echoing beat of it, the ricochet of blood. I soon became insensitive to anything other than my struggle to breathe. The heat was a hand over my mouth. We would all die. We would all be smothered. We would drown in air or water.

I was vaguely aware of the captain’s voice and the answering cry, ‘Have the hatches opened again or we will all suffocate!’ before slipping into unconsciousness. My last sight was Thea, white candle-flame in the darkness.



Water from the storm ruined nine sacks of bread. I know this, because it is the last thing I remember clearly before the warp of illness upon my memory.

Mutter Scheck stands at the foot of my berth with a brush. She tells me the storm has ruined some of the supplies. Nine sacks of ship biscuit have turned in the humidity, and it is the captain’s orders that passengers go above deck to scrub them of mould so that they might yet be eaten.

I tell her I will rise, or I think I tell her. I am unsure if I have spoken; my mouth is so dry I cannot properly swallow. There is a fist about my throat. I see Mutter look at me, then drop the brush and place a hand on my head.

Her hand is cool, deliciously cool, and when she removes it, I hear myself whimper for the loss of such soothing.

She fetches water. I drink, and feel it come up again, whiskey water, turned water. My pillow is wet. I turn my cheek into it to cool the fire in my skin, to halt the thrumming pulse in my temple.

Mutter leaves. I feel the weight of the brush against my foot.

Nine sacks of bread, I think. Bread of life. Water of life. Flesh and blood, all turned, all ruined.


I remember other things, too, but I cannot know if they happened.

I remember being lifted from my mattress and carried. I remember the pressure of hands under my body and the discomfort of that. It must have happened. I remember opening my eyes and seeing Thea beside me. They must have moved one or both of us. I know we were placed together. A sick ward? Were there others? I remember only her eyes and the ocean in them and the flare of love I felt knowing she was still there, still alive, still with me.

Mama’s hands at my mouth, fingers at my teeth, prising them apart, and the sound of my own voice protesting. I know now she was perhaps hoping to feed me. The smell of broth in my pillow. Pork bones.

Darkness. Lights in places I did not expect them. A man’s voice and the hair in his nostrils as he looked upon me. Adam’s apple held in check by a neckcloth; the sight of it made me feel as though I were being choked, as though there were pressure upon my own neck.

Heat coming from Thea’s body beside me. Sun. Fire. Exploding star.

Lamps lit and extinguished. A terrible thirst. Coarse, grinding hours of darkness that I sweated into, saw shapes emerge from. Figures. Rats running across my neck, biting my lips. Thrashing and screaming for all the rats upon me, hearing my own voice and thinking it was a stranger’s, feeling pity for the poor soul screaming.

Anna Maria kissing me on the forehead. The sound of her kissing Thea.

My mother’s voice. Her hands around spoon and vial. Words of prayer around me. Fresh cold air spilling across me, the feel of Mama’s hands sliding beneath my neck, raising the thick weight of my head, fingertip at my mouth. A spoon upon my tongue, hard edge against my teeth. Liquid. A gritty bitterness.

I swallowed it down.


This is how it happened. There was a storm, and then there wasn’t. I was well, and then I wasn’t.

There was pain, and then there wasn’t.

That I remember with clarity. The sudden absence of pain. Such sweeping relief, such blessed reprieve, I fit my lips around the name of God.

Breath upon me. A swimming light filled with faces. Damp palms of love. Paper tucked against my heart.

‘God be praised on high, she will be well. She thanks her Saviour.’

Mama’s voice. I understood that she had been weeping. Mama, who never cried.

Leaning into the curve of her hand as though healing might flow from it.

‘She thanks her Saviour.’


I remember.

Thea next to me. Eyes shining with the effort of dying. Anna Maria, howling like a wolf, face hidden in her hands. A male voice saying, ‘Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord.’



I remember looking at Thea and everything fading from us. The splintered deck and the bowls of water and the mould brushes for the bread and mothers choking on their love. It all faded. There was the ocean pressing hungry against the ship, and there was Thea, and I stared into her eyes and knew deeply, deeply, that we were for each other.

Somewhere, in the wide water below us, I could hear a whale singing.

Thea did not speak, but I knew she did not want to die.

Somehow my hand found hers.

She blinked at me then, pale lashes dipping. Peace washed through her.

The whale song grew louder. I felt the tremble of it through the water. I felt the song strike the ship, felt the wood carry the notes, felt the ripple in the beams until the song reached our bunk. The fibres of the woollen blanket carried the whale cry into my body, and then I was the song. I was the tremble. I was the cry. The whale was in me, inhabited me. My blood turned to songwater and my heart stopped to listen.