JoAnn Wendt by Beyond the Dawn Page B

her on the stairway whenever she hauled bedding up into the sunshine. They made fun of her when winter swells gave her seasickness and she lay in her bunk, green with misery.
    Her few belongings were quickly stolen. She learned never to leave her bunk without taking shawl and cloak with her. Mab had made her a gift of Obadiah’s Bible. This she kept safe, deep in a pocket of her serge apron. For safety and for warmth on the frigid ship, she and Mab shared a bunk. Mab’s five-year-old Sarah Bess slept tucked between.
    The voyage was an endless hell, each day a greater torture than the day preceding. For the first time in her life Flavia knew hunger. Often she found herself praying for the release of death, but in the next breath she’d fervently cancel that prayer. The world might be a desolate place, but it was still the world Garth McNeil inhabited. And her baby, Robert. While her beloved ones lived, she too would cling to life with all the tenacity she could muster. She would never give up. In this she recognized a surprising new strength and will. No longer was she the meek girl who’d gone dutifully to Tewksbury Hall, a bride of barter. She was changing.
    As the hellish voyage went on, measles broke out below deck and grief-maddened mothers lost more children to the sea. Conditions above deck deteriorated, too. When the captain was not about, the hangdog crew exhibited a new surliness. The English crewmen fought with the Dutch. Both grumbled at the captain’s choice of route and cursed the ship’s food, though they fared ten times better than the indentured. At least crewmen got ale to drink and a belly-warming ration of rum each night to help ease the cold and pain. Fearing the captain and his awesome power to punish with the cat-o’-nine, the crew restricted their complaints to muttering in their beards.
    The long voyage stirred in the crew a randy fever. The sailors hungered for a woman. When bondservants took air and exercise upon deck, the crew’s salacious eyes raped even the ugliest crone. Alarmed, bondmen kept a watchful eye on their womenfolk. Flavia no longer went on deck except in the company of a kind Dorsetshire farmer and his family.
    Despite precautions, the worst did occur.
    Grieving for Obadiah and the lost baby, Mab had tossed and turned in her bunk one night, unable to find sleep. So she’d taken her cloak, crept up out of the dark pitching hold and lurched along the safety rope to the indentureds’ deck. There, she leaned over the railing, shivering in the biting wind, searching the cold glittering stars for solace. In her grief, she’d not been aware of the big tar until he grabbed her from behind.
    She screamed, but the scream died in the winter wail of the rigging. The tar clapped a paw over her mouth and dragged her off her feet, pulling her into a candle-lit cubbyhole where three others waited, their eyes twitching, their tongues darting along weather-split lips. Mab knew. She went into a frenzy. She fought, but they were upon her at once, gagging her mouth with her own stocking. They took her, passing her from one to another until the last gleam of lust faded from the wolfish eyes. Then they beat her. Calling her Newgate trash, they warned that the captain would not give a moment’s ear to a slut’s accusations. They thrust her, brutalized and dazed, out onto the deck.
    Flavia woke just as Mab fell against the bunk. In the dim light, Mab’s face was gray. Blood flecked the corners of her mouth. She was shaking. She worked her lips, but no words came out.
    Flavia knew instantly.
    “Mab!” she cried, then choked off her outcry at Mab’s shaking, mute hysteria. Throwing back the filthy blankets, she flung out her arms. Mab fell into them.
    “Oh, no, no,” she crooned, clutching Mab’s icy shaking body. Not knowing what to do, what to say, she could only rock her in her arms.
    Mab began to sob against her breast. But the sobs were thin, keening squeals, like the cry of some small