“Most of these women are illiterate. It is my hope that you will share the gift of reading,” Mrs. Fry said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I have some things to ease your journey.” Mrs. Fry picked up the bundle. “A knit cap for the cold—you won’t need it now, but you’ll be happy to have it later—an apron, and a shawl. Made for you by Quakers who believe in the possibility of salvation.” She set the bundle down and gave Evangeline the sack. “In here you’ll find all you need to make a quilt. For your child, perhaps.”

Evangeline peered inside: a thimble, spools of thread, a red cushion pricked with pins and needles, a pile of patchwork pieces tied with string.

“Remember, my dear: we are but vessels,” Mrs. Fry said. “You must labor to keep yourself humble, meek, and in a self-denying frame, that you may be fit to follow the Lord Jesus, who invites such to come to Him. Only through sorrow do we learn to appreciate kindness.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Evangeline said, though she hardly needed to labor, these days, to keep herself humble and self-denying.

“One last thing.” Reaching into the trunk, Mrs. Fry pulled out a flat disk on a red cord and held it on her palm.

The disk appeared to be made of tin and was as wide as her thumb. A number was stamped into the metal: 171.

“From now on, you will be known by this number,” Mrs. Fry said. “It will be printed on, or sewn into, every item you possess, and kept in a ledger that will be passed from the ship surgeon to the warden of the prison. You will wear this ticket for the duration of the journey. With God’s blessing.”

Evangeline frowned, feeling a flash of defiance. After all she’d been through, all she’d had to accept.

“What is wrong, my dear?”

“To be known by a number. It’s . . . degrading.”

Touching Evangeline’s hand with her fingertips, Mrs. Fry said, “It’s to be sure that you are accounted for. That you are not lost to the winds.” Holding up the necklace, she said, “Bend your neck, please.”

Evangeline felt like a horse resisting a bridle. Resistance, she knew, was pointless; the horse always ends up in the bridle. And so would she.

Medea, 1840

Early in the morning of June 16, the Medea shifted off her anchor and lurched forward, towed down the Thames by a steamer. Seagulls circled above the ship, cawing and squeaking; a Union Jack fluttered from the stern. Sailors shouted to one another above the lapping river, the heaving deck, the flap and slither of the canvas sails, the creaking masts. They scrambled hand over hand up the ropes to the wooden platforms four stories in the air and to the top of the yardarm, swinging like squirrels.

Standing at the railing with the other convicts as the Medea reached the Thames estuary, Evangeline rubbed the tin disk between her fingers, running her hand along the cord, worrying the metal hook in the back. She watched the brick buildings, carriages, and mud-roofed huts recede, the people on shore turn to specks. All of them going about their daily lives without so much as a glance at the departing ship. She’d been on the ship for nearly ten days. In Newgate for three and a half months. In service to the Whitstones for almost half a year. She’d never ventured farther than forty miles from the village of her birth. She reached a hand into the mist: England was literally slipping through her fingers. A few lines from Wordsworth drifted into her head: Turn wheresoe’er I may, by night or day. The things which I have seen I now can see no more. As a young woman she’d been stirred by the poet’s lament that when he became an adult he was no longer attuned to the beauty of nature; he saw the world through different eyes. But it struck her now that metaphysical melancholy was nothing compared with physical displacement. The world she knew and loved was lost to her. In all likelihood she would never see it again.