Amidst the gut-wrenching stench of unwashed bodies, rotting food, excrement, vomit and vermin, a young woman feels her baby coming as she tries to find some comfort on the wooden shelf bed she shares with three other women in the darkness of a prison ship’s hold.
Miles from home and afraid, without words of encouragement from the village wisewoman, without any old wives’ pain relief; Mary Broad gritted her teeth as her baby bore down. Did Mary imagine the lush green countryside of Cornwall as another contraction filled her body? Or all the times she and her father sailed his little fishing boat around the Fowey Estuary? With every deep breath did she pretend she was inhaling the clear and pure air of her homeland, instead of the putrid stink that permeated her entire being?
