Part of Catherine agreed with her, but the other part wanted to know desperately what became of her mother. Why hadn’t she been in the house to begin with? She wanted to think that her mother had somehow survived the attack and was safe. Maybe she got out with several others and they were all rebuilding the village. Catherine knew they were only far-fetched dreams but she clung to them like a blanket.
“You know it’s funny,” she mused to Mary as the ship rocked back and forth and back and forth until she thought she would lose her mind. “I would have been a married woman by now.”
“Was the lad a good one?” Mary asked.
“Hopefully he was better than mine,” a voice on the other side of Catherine said. She hadn’t even noticed another girl was beside her listening. “I saw mine cut down in the attack. Good riddance to him.”
Mary gasped at the woman’s words as she leaned forward and shoved her dirty blond hair from her face. “That is a terrible thing to say about your dead husband!”
The other woman leaned forward too and smirked. Her pale blue eyes narrowed to slits as she said, “Not when the bastard used me as his personal hitting post for three years. No, I was happy to see him go.”
Catherine wasn’t sure why, but she started laughing. She laughed long and loudly…she couldn’t stop and was holding her side, aching from the use of muscles she hadn’t felt in a very long time. The other woman joined in until they were both cackling like old hags while Mary looked on confused.
“I’m Charlotte,” the woman said and held out her hand.
“Catherine. And this is Mary. I am sorry it seems you fell from one bad life into another.”
“Life is always full of its ups and downs. At least now before I die I can say I went on an adventure in the belly of a great beast, across the vast waters, and landed on a faraway shore where I met a handsome lord. We fell madly in love and lived happily ever after in his mansion,” she said then sighed. “That is the story I am going to tell myself every day of this God forsaken journey.”
Catherine smiled, closing her eyes to picture such a future. If only that was what would happen. There was always a glimmer of hope that they weren’t going to be taken somewhere dreadful. It was a very tiny glimmer that grew dimmer every day they were out to sea. None of the women seemed to have any ideas as to where they were headed. Who would want a ship full of young men and women? Catherine had grown up on stories of people being kidnapped and taken away in the night, but she’d never learned where they actually wound up.
She just knew they never came home.
When the last bit of laughter died down and the smile faded from Catherine’s face, she wondered how her brother Liam was holding up. He was a tough lad, but he was impulsive to a fault. She prayed that he would survive the journey and they would be reunited again when they landed.
A sharp cry cut through her thoughts as Charlotte groaned next to her and muttered. “Not again.” Shaking from the rocking of the ship, Charlotte got to her feet and found her way around the other women in the hold. Curious, Catherine followed her and Mary too.
At first, Rose’s whimpering and constant crying was annoying, but she really couldn’t blame the girl. She had no one left to look out for her and though Catherine was alone in this hold, she at least still had a living sibling.
“Rose, we talked about this,” Charlotte was saying quietly. “You can’t keep getting on like this. It’s not good for you.”
“Just kill me now and be done with it,” she sobbed.
Catherine peered around Charlotte to see a girl around her age with long, tangled red hair and eyes that were filled with tears as they darted back and forth. Her whole body shook as she rocked herself, crying as if she would never be able to stop.
“What’s wrong with her?” Mary asked, and Catherine hurried to shush her.
“It’s alright, Mary,” Charlotte said. “This is Rose. She’s taken this all a bit harder than the rest of us.”
“I can’t do this, I just can’t,” Rose whispered. “I don’t want to be here!”
“Look around us Rose, do you really think any of the hundred or so women in this stinking hell hole want to be here?” Charlotte said sarcastically as she sat down beside Rose and held her close.
Catherine and Mary sat in front and reached out to rest their hands comfortingly on her arms. “We’re all here together, though. You’re not alone.”
Rose glanced around at their faces and Catherine could see a bit of the panic slipping away. But she could tell the girl was weak minded. She’d seen one like her before in their village. The girl had lost her entire family to sickness. Father John had tried to help her through it, but the pain had been too much and the girl had died of a shattered heart. If the other women did not find a way to pull Rose out of this darkness, she would die before they ever reached their destination.
After a while the four girls drifted off to sleep, still holding onto one another as the waves rocked the ship, moving them ever closer to where destiny awaited them. Catherine struggled to keep her eyes opened, but they slid closed and she dreamed of home again, the green fields in the morning and the barley that surrounded their village. She wanted nothing more than to be home again and feel the soft earth beneath her fingers. It was all she could hope for now.
More days passed and the women fell into the same daily routine, numb to all else around them. Several women fell sick, coughing and hacking, crying out for mercy day and night. At first they had torn at Catherine’s heart, but after a few more days, weeks, she just wanted them to die and be done with it. They were horrible thoughts and she hated herself for them. When the women did finally pass, the sailors would crawl down into the hold and take their thin and wasted bodies up above to be thrown overboard along with the buckets of waste. It was like nothing Catherine had ever thought to experience.
Once a day they were brought up above to eat the tiniest amount of food possible, if it could even be called food. It was a hard and stale bread of sorts, barely filling their stomachs. Catherine ate what she was given. Water was sparse as well. A few large gulps and that was it for the entire day. Every time the ladle was taken away from her, Catherine wanted to follow it and drink the whole bucket, but she saw the other women around her were just as desperate. They were all in various degrees of starving and sickness. She wondered if the captain even cared that half his cargo might be dead before they made it across the ocean.
She only wished they were able to see the others, but the men were always brought up after the women had been returned to their hold.
Catherine took what she could get from their time above, letting the harsh sea wind blow across her face. Some days it chilled her to the bone, but it kept her alert, let her know she was still alive.
Though like Rose, she was starting to wish she was dead. This was not a life. This was merely surviving and as their time above deck ended once more, she wondered if maybe it was even worth it to try and stay alive.