Anatomy of a Heretic by David Mark

Author:David Mark [Mark, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781800244009
Publisher: Head of Zeus

22

Husband,

I am afraid.

Oh, Boudewijn, what sweet relief to confide such a shameful feeling. What a fragile, sugar-spun creature you must think me to be so undone by my first steps beyond the Provinces.

Please, be not alarmed to receive such unhappy confidences. I swear to thee that I have done naught to dishonour you. I conduct myself daily as the dutiful wife of a gentleman and I trust that were you in my company you would be well satisfied at having such a serene and self-assured wife. And yet I confess that each day brings fresh apprehension. Each dawn I find myself increasingly afraid. My sleep is peopled with strange and unsettling nightmares. I cannot face food and it would be no hardship to imbibe nothing but wine and brandy were I to permit myself.

There are few moments during the interminable day when it does not feel as if my strength is failing me. I am dizzy every moment I spend trapped in the thick, sweaty air of this cabin. I feel confined, shut in like a bird in a too-small cage. I tire of the noises of travel; the murmurings of other lives pressed up too close against my own. Recollections of our own blessed children thwart me in my every attempt to keep occupied. I have sought to employ my own humble talents for nursing the sick and the needy, but each passenger whom I bandage or bathe – or to whom I might offer a gentle word – is transformed into the vision of our own lost children. I wipe the sweat-wreathed faces of strangers and I see our lost infants.

I will endeavour to find the strength to persevere in the duties I have taken upon myself, but how I yearn for the comfort of a warm embrace from one who loves me as I love them.

I miss you with such fire, husband, even as grief chills me down to the bone.

Ah, what blessed respite I find in disclosing these truths to thee, my love. I pause here: emboldened, quelled, breathing slow and deep as I gather myself to proceed.

What, I wonder, would you seek to absorb of our voyage? We are here at the close of the year. I repeat for your absorption words that I have heard but do not truly comprehend. We are at the limits of what Jacobsz calls the horse latitudes and will soon experience our first taste of land since Texel. We will put in at the Cape for fresh supplies and I shall find opportunity to stretch my legs upon dry land and to look upon the people whom we so glibly think upon as “savages”. I am told that the port is a cesspit of sickness and disease and that no white man should consider stepping ashore if he has hopes of seeing his native land again.

I am perhaps alone of those on board who trusts in the good commandeur, though I am openly mocked when I speak in his

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