Evangeline shrugged. It was a question she’d asked herself many times.

Hazel set the candle on the ledge of the berth. “So, Leenie . . . why would ye keep this?”

Evangeline thought of the look on Cecil’s face when he gave her the ring. His boyish eagerness to see it on her finger. “He gave me a ruby ring that had been his grandmother’s. He wrapped it in this handkerchief. Then he went away on holiday and the ruby was found in my room, and I was accused of stealing it. They didn’t notice the handkerchief, so I kept it.”

“Did he return from his trip?”

“I assume he did.”

“Why didn’t he come to your defense, then?”

“I don’t—I don’t know what he knows.”

Olive crumpled the handkerchief in her fist. “I can’t see why you’d want this lousy piece of cloth, after he left ye high and dry.”

Evangeline took it from her. “He didn’t . . .”

But he did, didn’t he?

She fingered the handkerchief’s scalloped edges. Why did she want this lousy piece of cloth?

“It’s—it’s all I have left.” The moment she said it, she knew that this was true. This handkerchief was the only remaining shred from the fabric of her previous life. The only tangible reminder that she’d once been somebody else.

Olive nodded slowly. “Then ye should put it in a place no one’ll find it.”

“There’s a loose floorboard under my berth where I stash some bits and pieces,” Hazel said, smoothing out the handkerchief and folding it. “I can hide it for ye, if ye want.”

“Would you?”

“Later, when no one’s looking.” She tucked the cloth into her pocket. “So what happened to the ruby ring?”

“No doubt on someone else’s finger,” Olive said.

Medea, 1840

Over the next several weeks, the Medea passed the mouth of the Mediterranean, Madeira, and Cape Verde, crossing the Tropic of Cancer and heading toward the equator. By late morning, these days, the sun was hot overhead, the air thick and humid. There was no wind to speak of. What little progress the Medea made was gained by tacking, a job that required great effort by the sailors. The temperature in the lower decks soared above 120 degrees, the humidity so acute it felt like living inside a steaming kettle.

“They’re boiling us alive,” Olive said.

A cloud of malaise hung over the ship. More fell ill. Some women’s feet were covered with oozing black sores, and swollen to double their size. The ones who could read carried their Bibles around with them, mouthing verses from Revelation: And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them. And Psalm 93: The waves of the sea are mighty, and rage horribly; but yet the Lord, who dwelleth on high, is mightier.

The choice for the convicts was to stay on the main deck and endure the unforgiving sun or suffer in the unventilated hold. The heat made the stink even worse. They aired their bedding, burned sulfur, dusted the surfaces with bleaching powder. Sailors fired pistols below decks in the belief that gunpowder dispelled infectious vapors. But the best the prisoners could hope for in the bowels of the ship was merciful sleep. Mostly, they lay around on the main deck, wrapped in perspiration like gauze, their eyes half closed against the unremitting glare. They made bonnets out of burlap and flour sacks to shade their faces. Some women, not particularly stable to begin with, took to banging their heads against the posts of their berths or the ship railings on the upper deck until they were doused with buckets of water. But most were quiet. It took too much energy to speak. Even the farm animals lolled about, their tongues drooping from their mouths.