Salt water filled the back of my throat as I staggered to our berth. I could see Thea’s pale hair spread across the pillow, visible even in the shadows. By the time I reached her, my mouth was filled with the ocean. I pulled myself into the berth and sea water spilled out over the blankets.
I wiped my mouth. I crawled in further, crawled in over her. Thea’s eyes were closed; she did not wake. I sat back on my knees and shook her shoulders.
‘Thea, wake up.’
Disease had pulled the roundness from her face. She looked like someone who had touched her knuckles to death’s door, but she was still alive. The worst had passed for her.
‘Thea, something is happening to me.’
She still did not wake.
‘Thea, please. You have to help me.’
Mutter Scheck walked past, polishing her glasses on a handkerchief. ‘Her fever seems lessened,’ she said. ‘I think it will break.’
Relief swamped me. And then I turned and realised Mutter was speaking to Anna Maria, who sat on Ottilie’s bunk. The last bed I had occupied. The blanket was gone, the mattress stripped. A sick feeling crept through my stomach.
‘I thank God,’ replied Anna Maria.
‘Sleep, if you can,’ said Mutter, sitting down next to her. ‘I can stay with her in case she wakes.’
‘Mutter?’ I climbed back out of Thea’s berth and approached them.
‘No. If she wakes, she will ask.’
‘You want to tell her?’
Anna Maria nodded.
They did not look at me. I dropped to my knees in front of them. ‘Anna Maria. Mutter Scheck. Please listen to me. Please help me.’
‘Would it be best to wait until she is well enough?’ asked Mutter Scheck.
The Wend gestured to the bare mattress behind them. ‘What do I say? How can I lie to her?’
Mutter patted Anna Maria on the shoulder. ‘Well, should you get tired, wake me.’
Her hands rested in her lap. I reached for them, entwined my fingers in hers. I could feel the warmth of them, the strength in them.
‘Anna Maria, can you see me? Where is my blanket?’
She shuddered and pulled her hands to her chest.
‘I mean it, Frau Eichenwald,’ Mutter added. ‘It is not just Thea. I know there are other anxieties on your mind.’
Thea’s mother did not respond. She was examining her fingers as though there were something on them, as though she had been burned.
‘Frau Eichenwald?’ Mutter looked at her, concerned. ‘What is it?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes, Mutter.’ She pressed her fingertips to her mouth and closed her eyes. ‘You’re right. I’m tired.’ She hesitated for a moment, looking around the bow, before returning to her daughter’s side. I watched her kiss Thea’s forehead and then kneel to pray. But even as she praised the name of Jesus, her eyes travelled around the room. Watchful. Wakeful.
I wanted my brother. Matthias would reassure me as he always had. He would recognise me, explain that my mind was still hot with fever and I had wandered from my sickbed. He would smile at me, and I would feel all my fear and uncertainty melt away.
I climbed up the hatchway, back into the light and the smell of rotting fish. Two sailors were heaving spadefuls of congealed herring overboard, neckcloths tied around their faces. A few passengers looked on, pinching their noses.
Where was Matthias?
I made my way to the other side of the open deck, edging around the supplies and barrels packed together in the centre, and suddenly saw, in a gap between two tall, wooden cases, my brother and Hans. They had wedged themselves into the narrow space and were sitting quietly. Matthias’s hand was on his chest, fingers massaging the skin over his heart.
‘Matthias,’ I said, kneeling in the gap. ‘Matthias, it’s me.’
My brother started to pound his chest with his fist.
Hans caught Matthias’s arm, and though my brother tried to shake him off, tried to keep hitting himself, face mottling in pain and anger, Hans was stronger. ‘I know,’ he was saying. ‘I know.’ And then he pulled Matthias close and held him, fiercely, protectively, even as my brother resisted.
I was trembling then.
The fight went out of him. His body went limp. ‘What do I do now?’ Matthias’s voice was muffled against Hans’s shoulder.
Hans pushed my brother back against the packing case and held him there by the collar, as though trying to keep him upright. ‘You live,’ Hans said, and he lowered his head, finding Matthias’s gaze and holding it. ‘You find a way to live your life.’
Matthias closed his eyes and Hans let go of him.
My tongue was thick in my mouth, my body numb. I did not understand what I was seeing, did not know, truly, what Hans meant. I was not ready to know, and so I returned to the hatchway, descending the stairs in a fugue.
A nightmare, I told myself. This is a nightmare.
The trestle table in the tween deck was being laid for the midday meal by Elizabeth Volkmann, Henriette’s sister. A toddler crawled in the walkway at her feet.
‘Elizabeth? Can you hear me?’
She did not look up. Plates laid, she turned and walked in the direction of the kitchens, wiping her hands on her apron.
There was a knife on the table. I picked up the blade, and I held it in my palm across the scar left by the wound that Thea had seen bleed and had healed. I pressed down.
Surely, if I dream, this will be the moment I wake, I thought, hands shaking. Surely, the knife will not hurt me.
I felt the sharp edge in a confusion of senses. I pressed harder; I waited for blood. It came, red, as in life. But as I watched it run a slow rivulet down my wrist and arm, it seemed to issue from my skin in a vapour. It vanished from me like smoke rising from a blown candle.
I lifted the knife from my hand and watched as the wound evaporated.
And then I saw that, though I held the blade, it remained on the table.
There was horror in that.
I placed my hand into a pitcher on the table and felt cool water. I pushed it over. The pitcher rolled and spilled an evanescence of liquid, and when I looked, I saw that the real pitcher remained upright.
You have gone mad, I told myself. This is madness. And I sank to my haunches and pressed my face to my knees. My body shook.
And then the toddler who had been upon the floor crawled through me. I saw her plump hands reach for a dangling blanket, and they moved beyond the boundaries of my skin and I felt nothing but a vague discomfort, a pressing.
I let her crawl through me. I sat on the floor and wept in fear and confusion, and I saw my tears lift in vapour as they dropped from my cheeks. I sat there a long time, crying as people moved around me and through me, finding their places at the trestle table, saying grace and eating. I wept and rocked as they murmured, broke bread, swallowed.