Convictions Read Online Free

loudly, as they disentangled arms and legs. Jabbing Jennie, they pushed her to the back. She moaned, feeling every injury anew. The guard stepped on the edge of the bottom bunk and stretched over to snap handcuffs on their wrists, securing them to the metal bars at their heads.
    Jennie squirmed to get comfortable on her side, though she was squished tight against the wall. She took several anxious breaths. The constant swaying of the ship lapping at its moorings helped calm her, as did concentrating on listening to the rest of the women find berths along the full length of the ward section. Finally, everyone seemed to have eked out a space, the last claiming the tatty hammocks. The guards finished handcuffing them in place and secured the threadbare lee cloths meant to keep them from rolling out of their bunks.
    With the dousing of the lanterns, the sounds in their quarters dulled to murmurs, broken only by the occasional baby’s cry or whimper from a child and several hoarsely whispered prayers. From the jail-cell end came the sobbing of a woman who seemed unable to stop.
    Jennie lay rammed into the narrow berth with her bedmates. The thin straw pallet did little to cushion her injured body. Her shoulders and back were in pain from the clubbing, and her ankles and wrists throbbed. Every muscle in her body ached. There was no pillow, only a threadbare blanket, which she pulled up to her chin, careful not to touch her swollen jaw.
    A bony elbow dug into her ribs, and the smell of unwashed bodies was overwhelming. Jennie cowered away from the other women, pressing tightly against the hull of the ship. She squirmed suddenly when she felt something nibbling at her legs. She couldn’t reach to scratch with her hands. She brushed her legs against one another in small movements, praying she’d be able to knock off the bedbugs or spiders or whatever crawled on her.
    “Quit fidgeting!” The woman beside Jennie poked her.
    Weak and queasy, Jennie closed her eyes, trying to ignore the crawling bugs. She listened to the crews hollering orders as they prepared the ship for sailing. At the other end of steerage, a deck below them, the livestock bellowed and bleated. Men cursed as they lashed the last of the cargo into place.
    A cannon shot thundered from somewhere overhead. Shortly afterwards, Jennie heard shouted orders to hoist the sails. Moments later, the ship trembled into life.
    Jennie’s eyes sprang open as the ship tilted and then swayed back again. She lay paralyzed, staring wide-eyed into the dark void, listening to the groaning of the ship. Then a bell clanged, sounding like a death knell.
    June 29, 1842 was a date she would never forget.

Chapter Three
    Darkness engulfed her.
    Moaning softly, Jennie pressed harder against the rough hull, away from the women sharing her berth. Although she was surrounded by women, they were strangers and she’d never felt so alone. The dank, cramped bowels of the ship closed in on her. This was worse than anything she had imagined.
    The ship’s creaking, the bumping and bawling of the cattle below and peculiar banging noises mingled with shouts of the sailors above board horrified her. Even more, the terrified whispers of her companions, the furtive scratching of rodents and the rocking of the ship created an overwhelming sense of danger.
    Everything seemed to be closing in on her. The berth was like a shared coffin. The sweaty bodies in her berth smacked against each other with a scant eighteen inches to call their own. Even if Jennie could turn on her other side, the space was too shallow; the ceiling only few inches from her face. Desperation crept through her as she thought about the horror of spending the next four or five months in these confined, coal-black depths.
    Her breathing came in short, quick bursts. In a panic, Jennie jerked upwards on one elbow. She whacked her forehead on the top beam. The short wrist fetter yanked her down again, and she cracked the back of her head