“It will be a long time until I’m free.”

“It will. But you’re young. And with good behavior you may earn your ticket of leave sooner. The most important thing is not to succumb to despondency. ‘Though much is taken, much abides.’”

“‘Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will,’” she said, almost without thinking.

He raised an eyebrow. “You’ve read Tennyson?”

She blushed. “I was a governess.”

“How . . . unexpected.” He gave her a funny smile, as if he couldn’t quite absorb this bit of information. Then he stepped back. “Well. I suppose I must inspect your fellow travelers.”

“Of course.” She straightened her apron. She felt a little lightheaded, as if emerging from a trance.

Ascending the rope ladder to the main deck, she thought of those children’s tales in which humans are transformed into frogs and foxes and swans, and only when someone recognizes them for who they truly are is the spell finally broken.

That was what this felt like: a faint glimmer of recognition.

Medea, The Port of London, 1840

Within a few days the convicts’ routine was established. They were roused at six in the morning by a series of bells and the unbolting of the hatch, a shaft of light piercing the darkness. Evangeline would lie in her berth for a few minutes listening to the slap of water against the hull, feeling the tug of the ship against the anchor that moored it, beams creaking as it rolled. Women waking, chattering, groaning. Squalling babies. Olive slept heavily, snoring above her, seldom woken by the bell, so Evangeline got in the habit of rapping on the bottom of her bunk until Olive groused, “All right, all right, I hear ye.” They dressed quickly, tucking tin cups and bowls and spoons into apron pockets. Unless it was raining, the prisoners were expected to bring their blankets up the ladders to the main deck, where they’d hang them on netting to air.

After breakfast they queued for the surgeon to inspect their eyes, look inside their mouths, pour a thimbleful of lime juice mixed with a little sugar and wine into their cups, and watch them drink it. “For scurvy,” he said. “It’s sour, but better than losing your teeth.”

Though it was a new experience for her, Evangeline had adjusted fairly easily to working for the Whitstones in St. John’s Wood, deferring to them and submitting to their whims. She, and they, existed within a clearly defined social order. But she had little familiarity with people who were gratuitously cruel, driven by anger or boredom or revenge. People who got away with bad behavior because they could.

The sandy-haired sailor, she learned, was named Danny Buck. The sailors called him Buck. It was rumored he’d slit a woman’s throat. He’d been sentenced to transport himself, as Olive had guessed, and became enamored of the sea on his own crossing. As soon as he’d served his time, he signed on to a crew that sailed back and forth between London and Hobart Town, the port city in Van Diemen’s Land, Australia, ferrying female convicts.