Away, All Bound Away

It was a beautiful day – almost insultingly so, as if the typically dreary country were mocking her departure with a rare bit of sun. The sky was clear of clouds, save for a few puffs of cotton-like whisps that painted the horizon. Somewhere overhead, a gull let out an arrogant caw as it glided on the gentlest breeze of the season. Even the ocean seemed at ease as it rolled in lazy, shimmering waves.

It was the perfect scene for one setting out on an adventure – perfect for promises, for opportunities, for goodbyes that were really only see-you-soons.

But Bridget carried no promises of tomorrow in her heart; she nursed no hope for the future. All of her goodbyes had already been laid to rest forever in an unmarked, foul-smelling mud pit somewhere between here and Ballyhooleen.

In a crowd of wailing, sweating, stumbling strangers, Bridget stood alone with her tiny rucksack clutched in one grime-ridden hand and her ticket – a thin strip of pink paper tucked safely away in her pocket – slipping between the fingers of the other. She was careful not to rub it too much, else the ink smear and render the ticket useless for her travels. It’d cost her everything – down to her last ha’penny – to secure the damned thing, and she wasn’t about to lose it for anything.

It wasn’t a ticket to America – not like her parents had planned all those nights up late by the fire. Tickets like that were even harder to come by than this one had been, and she’d nearly had to fight her way through a crowd of desperate souls (some so thin she doubted they’d have survived the journey anyway) just to lay her fingers on it. It wasn’t until she’d emptied her pockets and even sold her last pair of gloves to pay for it that she’d realized the ticket was for a Canadian voyage, not an American one.

“Canada’s cheaper,” the clerk, a Red Coat with an upturned nose and eyes that never met those of the crowd, had muttered as an explanation. “You can’t afford an American one.”

Bridget hadn’t prepared herself for Canada. Her mam’s cousin lived in some faraway American city called Chicago, and she’d hoped to stay with him and his family there until she could find work. Canada was a wrench in what was already a very desperate plan.

There was a time when Bridget might have argued with the clerk – a time before the hunger had stolen her resolve as well as everything else. Instead, she had just nodded, tucking the precious slip of paper into her skirts, and slipped away from the crowd before any desperate hands tried to take it from her.

That was three days ago, and Bridget had spent the interim the same way she’d spent the last two years: cold, insatiably hungry, and numb to her very bones. She’d fought the sharpest pangs of hunger with bits of cornmeal that she soaked in rainwater like a dirty, flavorless porridge. The girl she was two years ago – a slip of a child with no stronger ambitions than who her future husband might be – would have given out about the taste, or how it looked, or the way it would clump up and stick to her throat like a thick, grimy cobweb.

The girl she was today was a daughter of an Gorta Mór, and she knew she was lucky to have even this.

She’d swallowed the last of it that morning in a dark corner under the awning of an old ale house, now shuttered like every other shop on its street. It hadn’t rained that evening, so she’d soaked the cornmeal in a small puddle of old beer she’d found stashed in the back, rolling it gently with her hands until it formed a kind of shaggy dough. The dough had hit her tongue in stale, bitter clumps, and as she’d chewed it, she’d struggled not to picture a wad of glue between her teeth instead.

For the last meal she’d ever have in her home, it was a pathetic portion. She hadn’t been able to stop the tears that ran down her sunken, filthy cheeks as she’d consumed it.

It was mid-morning when she’d finally made her way down to the port, her legs wobbling under her with each step. The streets were packed to the brim – not just with her fellow would-be passengers, but also their families, some deckhands and minor officers, and not a few uniformed Red Coats standing rigid and glaring like hellish beacons into the crowd.

But more than them – more than anyone else – there were the Dying.

There were hundreds of Dying swarming the docks and stumbling about with rail-thin, trembling limbs. Their voices echoed around her in various states of agony: no words, just the turmoil of hunger and pestilence vocalized with grunts and groans and horrible wailing. Some lay slouched against the seawalls like forgotten dolls, their bloodshot eyes glazed over as they mumbled prayers with heaving breaths. Others wandered the crowd with open, yellowed palms and cracked, bleeding lips, begging for some shred of charity that those around them either did not have or were unwilling to give.

Watching them, dodging a few here and there with muttered apologies and prayers of “Lord keep ye,” Bridget tried to ignore how much like them she must have looked. Her skirts – once kept so immaculately clean – were filthy, and hung from her emaciated frame in tatters. Her hair, shaved to the skull a few months back, was growing in uneven patches of orange curls that seemed to fall out in clumps as quickly as they’d sprouted. Grime coated her limbs and face, and the patches of skin beneath it were dry and ghostly pale. At nights, she’d marveled at how thin she’d gotten; she found, with muted dread, that she could wrap her whole hand around the thickest part of her arm and bring her thumb and middle finger to touch.

For all any observer would have been able to tell, Bridget herself was Dying. The only thing that set her apart from the others was the delicate strip of paper in her skirts.

None of the other Dying could have afforded a ticket – and even if they had, none of them would have survived the journey, anyway. Bridget herself was unsure she’d ever actually see Canadian shores, but she counted herself blessed regardless for even securing a ticket in the first place.

Lucky. The word arose, unbidden, in her mind. Bridget watched as a skeletal elderly woman dressed in urine-stained rags shuffled past, her eyes glazed with fever and her skin riddled with sores. She tampered down the guilt that rose like bile in her throat.

There really was no difference between her and the other Dying – only that she’d gotten a ticket, and somehow, she hadn’t gotten sick yet. To her, those were barely any differences at all.

As she made her way down the row of docks, her bleary eyes scanned the sides of each ship for the name printed on her ticket. Her da had never taught her how to read, but she could recognize letters and patterns enough to find her way.

She was halfway down the port when she found it: smaller and flatter than its neighbors, her ship bobbed lazily in the waves as a long trail of passengers marched drearily up the gangplank. They were all dressed in finer clothes than Bridget was, though they were clearly not well-off by any means; many had rucksacks much like hers, with only slightly more weight to them than she had.

None of the other passengers were as thin as she was, though. Or as dirty.

“Oi! Bugger off, wench!”

Bridget jolted at the sudden shout to her left, and spinning around found herself staring up at a tall, scowling, uniformed Red Coat.

“You ‘ear me?!” he barked, leaning down so he could peer into her face beneath his cap. “This ship ain’t fo’ you, filthy bitch! Ge’ back to the sewers!”

For a moment, Bridget found herself frozen under his stare. She’d never faced a Red Coat in uniform before, and the sight of the rifle hiked over his shoulder made her blood run cold. As he began to reach for her arm to drag her away, however, she snapped to her senses and held up the ticket from her pocket.

“Ay, sir! It’s mine!” she squeaked, holding the bright pink ticket up to his nose to inspect. “I bought it wi’ me own money!”

The guard blinked, clearly surprised at the sight of a Dying woman with a real, valid ticket clutched between her grimy fingers. He took the ticket gingerly between his forefinger and thumb and held it up to the sky as if the sun would burn away a trick in the paper.

“Tha’s a real one,” he muttered, still squinting at it against the sun. “Where’d ye pilfer this, then?”

“I didn’t,” Bridget insisted. “I bought it, I swear. Jus’ down the road there, yer man with the badge sold it to me at the office.”

The Red Coat broke his gaze from the ticket to glance at her out of the corner of his eye. She could tell he was inspecting her, piecing out whether she could be lying – or, just as likely, whether she was even fit to make the journey, ticket or not.

“Do ye know what boat this is, wench?” he grunted, still holding the ticket well out of her reach.

“I can’t read, sir,” she admitted, her cheeks going rosy with embarrassment.

The Red Coat barked a nasty laugh. “Can’ read!” he chortled, clenching the precious slip of paper in his sweaty, red fist. “These bloody Irish, none o’ them can fah-kin read!” He then turned back to her, and Bridget couldn’t help but recoil at the manic expression that stretched his face into a violent grin.

“Irish filth need the English to teach ‘em!” he exclaimed. “Tha’s the only way!” Then he shoved the ticket in her face and pointed at the space where she knew the ship’s name was written.

“See tha?!” the guard laughed, his finger jabbing and slightly tearing at the paper. “Tha’ there says ‘Blue Lady’! Can the little bitch say tha’? Can she say Buh-loo Lay-dee?!” Each word was sounded out with mockery as the guard stuck out his fat, pink tongue and pulled his face in strange, terrifying expressions. He bent so close to her that she could smell the stink of beer still clinging to his gums and see the tiny red blotches of skin that lined his neck under his collar.

Bridget began to panic. This Red Coat didn’t seem keen to give her ticket back, and he might even have her detained if she couldn’t get away –

“Oi, Wilson! What’s that you’ve got?”

The sound of a second voice filled Bridget with dread; one Red Coat would be difficult to escape, but two would be impossible. As the second man appeared from around the first, however, a blossom of hope bloomed inside her.

This second Red Coat was a clerk, younger than the officer and rather handsome in his pressed breeches and waistcoat. As his soft, hazel eyes met Bridget’s, she watched his gaze soften in sympathy, and he offered her a soft wave and the first smile she’d seen in months.

“Ah don’ bother, Brinks,” the guard – Wilson – sneered. “Just a wee peasant bitch tryin’ her luck. I was jus’ sendin’ her back to her lot –”

“I’ve a ticket!” Bridget yelped, raising her clasped hands to plead with the newcomer. “I bought it wi’ me own money! I swear it!”

“Shut up, ye – ” Wilson began, but the young clerk stopped him.

“That’s enough, Wilson,” he admonished. “Give the girl her ticket back and get back to your post. I can handle her.”

Wilson, now nearly as red in the face as he was in attire, merely scoffed and threw the ticket back at Bridget, who fumbled clumsily to catch it.

“Na worth me time anyhow,” the Red Coat spat before slinking away.

Once he had vanished back into the crowd, Brinks turned back to her and offered another smile.

“Sorry for him,” he said, his London accent just barely audible above the din of the crowd. “He’s good for his job and not much else.”

Bridget, in spite of herself, giggled. “That’s clear, mister. But I’m right grateful fer yer kindness.”

Brinks waved a hand in dismissal. “It’s nothing, miss,” he assured her, before turning back to the ship – the Blue Lady – and beckoning her to follow. “We’re nearly ready to go, so I’ll take your ticket and details and get you sorted.”

Brinks guided her to a small table positioned beside the gangplank and held out his hand. “Your ticket, please.”

It was with some trepidation that she handed yet another Red Coat her most precious possession, but he took it with far more gentleness than Wilson had. Brinks inspected it for a moment, squinting at the smudged ink that remained from the scuffle with Wilson, before nodding and pressing a small, black stamp to the corner.

“If I could,” he said as he handed the slip back to her, “I need to take some information from you for the records.”

“Like wha’?”

“Well,” Brinks cleared his throat as he took up a quill pen, “your name would be a start.”

“Bridget Murphy,” she replied, tucking the ticket away in her skirt.

“Birthplace?”

“Ballyhooleen. Cork.”

  “Age?”

“Sixteen.”

He glanced up at that answer, his eyes softening with pity. “Your family’s not going with you?”

Something hard caught in her throat – some traces of breakfast, perhaps – and she swallowed it quickly to answer: “None left ta come wit’. Fever took ‘em all just two months back.”

Brinks stared at her for a moment with an unreadable expression, something between shock and sorrow that made her skin crawl. She turned away to watch a pair of gulls fighting over a scrap of cloth.

“Sixteen,” Brinks muttered finally, laying his quill down on the table. “That’s too young to leave your home, isn’t it?”

Bridget looked back at him, and as she met his eyes she finally recognized what expression he wore.

Guilt. It was guilt written all over his face, as clear as the day. Guilt for what, she wasn’t sure – but perhaps it was the same as her, the same guilt she’d felt watching the Dying wandering the port and knowing she had the privilege of leaving them behind.

The same guilt she’d felt kneeling on the edge of her family’s grave, her skirts and fingers stained with mud, as she looked down on their ashen faces piled together and wept.

“Ay,” she whispered, the word escaping her as barely more than a whisper. “I’d say it is.”

Brinks was silent for several moments; then he stood, pushing himself up from the desk with a heaving sigh. Meeting her eyes one last time, the Red Coat held out his hand – pristine, uncalloused, unstained – and smiled.

“Good luck, Bridget Murphy,” he said. “You carry your home with you, now.”

Bridget failed to meet his eyes and match his smile, but she pressed her filthy hand to his and shook it.

“Good-bye, Mister Brinks,” she said. “Lord bless ye.” Then she turned away, unable to bare his guilt any more, and began her climb up the gangplank.

The trip to the port that morning was long, but her march up that narrow passage was infinitely longer. With every step, she felt the distance grow between her and everything she had ever known.

One step – gone was her da’s farm, the land his family had tilled since even before he was born.

Another step – gone was her mother’s voice in the mornings, waking her with gentle encouragement.

One more – gone was the rain rumbling along the cottage roof as her baby brother napped by the fire.

Just one more – gone was the wild lavender that bloomed in the spring, wrapping her and her sisters in an aroma so sweet they could almost sing.

Gone…gone…

Gone was the sad little mud pit in an old shepherd’s field where six bodies kept eternal sleep, no longer tortured by the long, crooked hands of cruel, careless famine.

By the time she stepped onto the deck, the tears she’d fought to suppress had broken free and were falling in freezing streams down her face once more. She paid no mind to the ship’s crew scrambling around her, and they in turn did not have care enough to pity her.

“Gone,” she sobbed quietly to herself, her back to the shore. “Gone, gone.”

“Bridget Murphy!”

The sound of her name made her start, and she turned to peer back down the gangplank. Brinks stood at the foot of it, waving and shouting with the warmest smile on his handsome face.

“Good luck, Bridget Murphy!” he called to her. “Godspeed!”

Through the tears, she mustered a smile and a small wave back. But as she turned away, her eyes caught the horizon – and she gasped.

Over the tops of the houses and shops that lined the shore, Bridget caught one final scrap of home: beautiful, rolling hills the color of living, breathing earth rose above the urban scape and met the perfect blue sky in gentle, evergreen waves. Somewhere nestled between those hills, she knew, lay home – a home that was gone, a home that would live forever, a home whose song she heard with each fluttering beat of her heart.

You carry your home with you, now.

Bridget kept her eyes fixed on the horizon, on the very point where she knew her family lay sleeping together, as she slipped down below deck into empty, stifling darkness. One last glimpse – then the door swung shut over her head, and everything was gone.