Captain William Hill of the New South Wales Corps did his level best to ruin the departing Major Ross’s reputation by having selected convicts examined on oath before the Reverend Johnson and Mr. William Balmain, surgeon, arriving to take the place of Denis Considen. Hill and Andrew Hume threw a great deal of dirt, but the Major fought back, establishing without much difficulty that the convicts were perjurious villains and Hill and Hume not far behind. The battle was bound to continue in Port Jackson, but for the time being the combatants declared a cessation in hostilities and set about packing or unpacking trunks and bags.
Richard remained carefully out of the way, very sorry that Major Ross was going, and not at all sure whether he wanted to see Lieutenant—oops, Commander—King take the Major’s place. Whatever Ross was or was not, he was first and foremost a realist.
The official changeover occurred on Sunday, the 13th of November, after the Reverend Johnson had taken divine service. The entire huge population was assembled in front of Government House and Commander King’s commission read out. Atlantic was making sail and Queen was retreating to Cascade, the two ships passing in the morning. Major Ross requested of the new Lieutenant-Governor that all the convicts in detention or under sentence of punishment be forgiven; Commander King graciously acquiesced.
“We did all save kiss,” said the Major to Richard as the big crowd dispersed. “Walk a little way with me, Morgan, but send your wife ahead with Long.”
My luck persists, thought Richard, nodding to Kitty that she and Joey should proceed without him. His transaction with Ross to secure the services of Joseph Long, a fourteen-year man, as his laborer and general hand for the sum of £10 per annum had only recently been signed into effect. For after considering a number of men, he had decided that simple, faithful Joey Long was preferable to any other. As several of the recent arrivals were cobblers, Major Ross had been willing to let Joey go. This change of employment was as well for Joey too; Commander King was not likely to have forgotten the loss of his best pair of shoes.
“I am glad of the opportunity to wish ye well, sir,” said Richard, dawdling. “I will miss ye greatly.”
“I cannot return the compliment in exactly the way ye mean yours, but I can tell ye, Morgan, that I never minded the sight of your face nor the words that came from your lips. I hate this place every bit as much as I hate Port Jackson, or Sydney, or whatever they are calling it these days. I hate convicts. I hate marines. And I hate the fucken Royal Navy. I am obligated to ye for the services of your wife, who has been precisely what ye said—an excellent housekeeper but no temptress. And I am obligated to ye for both wood and rum.” He paused to think, then added, “I also hate the fucken New South Wales Corps. There will be a reckoning, never doubt it. Those idealistic Navy fools will let a pack of wolves loose in this quadrant of the globe, wolves who masquerade as soldiers of the New South Wales Corps, which I gather marine wolves like fucken George Johnston intend to join. They care as little for convicts or these penal settlements as I do, but I will return to England a poor man, whereas they will return fatter by every carcass they can sink their teeth into. And rum will be a very large part of it, mark my words. Enrichment at the expense of duty, honor, King and country. Mark my words, Morgan! So it will be.”
“I do not doubt ye, sir.”
“I see your wife is with child.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Ye’re better off out of Arthur’s Vale, but ye were wise enough to see that for yourself. There will be no trouble for ye with Mr. King, who has little choice other than to honor those transactions I have negotiated as His Majesty’s legally appointed Lieutenant-Governor. Of course your pardon ultimately rests with His Excellency, but ye’re out of your sentence in a few months anyway, and I cannot see why ye will not get your full pardon.” Ross stopped. “If this benighted isle ever succeeds, ’twill be because of men like you and Nat Lucas.” He held out his hand. “Goodbye, Morgan.”
Blinking back tears, Richard gripped the hand and wrung it. “Goodbye, Major Ross. I wish ye well.”
And that, thought the desperately sorry Richard as he hurried after Kitty and Joey, is one half of the work done. I have yet to deal with the other half.
It happened as Queen discharged cargo and convicts first at Cascade and then at Sydney Bay; Richard was sawing with a new man because Billy Wigfall was going, and was too busy shouting instructions to his partner below to bother looking up. When the cut was done he noticed the figure in its Royal Navy uniform aglitter with gold braid, unwrapped the rags from around his hands and walked across to salute Commander King.
“Should the supervisor of sawyers actually saw himself?” King asked, staring at Richard’s chest and shoulders with some awe.
“I like to keep my hand in, sir, and it informs my men that I am still better at it than they are. The pits are all working well at the moment and each has a good man at the helm. This one—your third pit, sir, d’ye remember?—is where I saw myself when I do saw.”
“I swear ye’re in far finer body than ye were when I left, Morgan. I understand ye’re a free man by virtue of pardon?”
“Aye, sir.”
His mouth pursing, King tapped his fingers a little peevishly against his brilliantly white-clad thigh. “I daresay I cannot blame the sawpits for the shockingly bad buildings,” he said.
The gulf yawned, but had to be leaped. Richard set his jaw and looked straight into King’s eyes, more aware these days that he possessed a certain power. Thank you, Kitty. “I hope, sir, that ye’re not about to blame Nat Lucas.”
King jumped, looked horrified. “No, no, Morgan, of course not! Blame my own original head carpenter? Acquit me of such idiocy. No, ’tis Major Ross I blame.”
“Ye cannot do that either, sir,” said Richard steadily. “Ye left this place twenty months ago, a week or two after the people in it had jumped from a hundred and forty-nine to more than five hundred. During the time ye’ve been away, the population has gone to over thirteen hundred. After Queen, more, and Irish Irish at that—they’ll not even speak English, most of them. ’Tis simply not the place ye left, Commander King. Then, we enjoyed good health—we lived hard, but we managed. Now, at least a third of the mouths we are feeding are sick ones, and we have besides Port Jackson’s leavings when it comes to utter villains. I am sure,” he swept on, ignoring King’s mounting indignation and annoyance, “that while ye were in Port Jackson ye discussed with His Excellency the terrible difficulties His Excellency is suffering. Well, it has been no different here, is all. My sawpits have produced thousands upon thousands of superficial feet over the last twenty months. Much of it ought to have been seasoned for longer than it did because the new arrivals kept coming and coming. Ye might say that Major Ross, Nat Lucas, I and many others here have been caught in the middle. But that was nobody’s fault. At least not on this side of the globe.”
Eyes still fixed on King’s, he waited calmly. No servility, but not a trace of impudence or presumption either. If this man is to survive, he thought, then he must take notice of what I have said. Otherwise he will not succeed, and the New South Wales Corps will end in ruling Norfolk Island.
The mercurial Celt struggled with the coolheaded Englishman for perhaps a minute, then King’s shoulders slumped. “I hear what ye’re saying clearly. But it cannot continue thus, is what I meant to say. I insist that whatever is built is constructed properly, even if that means some have to live under canvas for however long it takes.” His mood changed. “Major Ross informs me that the harvest will come in magnificently, both here and at Queensborough. Many acres and none spoiled. I admit that is an achievement. Yet we have to put men on the grindstone.” He gazed at his dam, still holding up very well. “We need a water-wheel, and Nat Lucas says he can build one.”
“I am sure he can. His only enemies are time and lack of materials. Give him the latter and he will find the former.”
“Aye, so I think too.” His face assumed a conspiratorial look as he moved c
ompletely out of earshot. “Major Ross also told me that ye distilled rum for him during a time of crisis. That rum also saved Port Jackson from mutiny between March and August of this year, with no rum and no ships.”
“I did distill, sir.”
“D’ye possess the apparatus?”
“Aye, sir, very well hidden. It does not belong to me, it is the property of the Government. That I am its custodian lies in the fact that Major Ross trusted me.”
“The pity of it is that those wretched transport captains have not been above selling distillation apparatus to private individuals. I hear that the New South Wales Corps and some of the worst convicts are distilling illicit spirits. At least Port Jackson can grow no sugar cane, but here it grows like a weed. Norfolk Island is potentially a source of rum. What the Governor of New South Wales has to decide is whether to continue importing rum from thousands of miles away at great expense, or to start distilling here.”
“I doubt His Excellency Governor Phillip would consent.”
“Aye, but he will not be governor forever.” King looked very worried. “His health is breaking down.”
“Sir, there is no point in fretting about events which still lie very much in the future,” Richard said, relaxing. He had leaped the chasm, things would be all right between him and King.
“True, true,” said the new Lieutenant-Governor, and hied himself off to spend an hour or two in his office, with perhaps a tiny drop of port to palliate the monotony.
“Ye’ve a box at Stores,” said Stephen not long after this encounter. “What is it, Richard? Ye look exhausted for someone who thinks nothing of ripping a dozen gigantic logs apart.”
“I have just spoken my mind to Commander King.”
“Ooooo-aaa! Well, ye’re a free man, so he cannot have ye flogged without trial and conviction.”
“Oh, I survived. I always do, it seems.”
“Do not tempt fate!”
Richard bent and knocked on wood. “This time, anyway,” he amended. “He had the sense to see I spoke naught but the truth.”
“Then there is hope for him. Did you hear the first thing I said, Richard?”
“No, what?”
“There is a box for you at Stores. It came on Queen. Too heavy to carry, so fetch your sled.”
“Dinner this evening? Then ye can help me explore the box.”
“I will be there.”
He collected his sled at midday and was led to the box by Tom Crowder, taken under Mr. King’s patronage at once. Someone had broken into it—no one here in Stores, he decided. On Queen or in Port Jackson. Whoever had inspected it had had the courtesy to hammer the lid back on. Pushing at the box, he decided from its weight that little had been confiscated, from which he assumed it contained books. A great many books, since it was bigger than a tea chest and made of stronger wood. When he bent to pick it up and heft it onto the sled, Crowder squealed.
“Ye cannot do that alone, Richard! I will find ye a man.”
“I am a man, Tommy, but thankee for the offer.”
RICHARD MORGAN • CONVICT OFF ALEXANDER had been lettered large on every one of the box’s six sides, but there was no shipper’s name.
That afternoon he pulled it home. There were still some hours of daylight left; the nature of the work meant that the sawpits closed earlier than common labor. He was, besides, a free man, at liberty to go home early once in a while.
“You bloom more beautiful each time I see you, wife,” he said to Kitty when she came skipping down the steps to greet him.
They kissed lingeringly, her lips promising lovemaking that night; physically, he knew, he enchanted her. Fearing harm to the baby, he had wanted to stop, but she had looked amazed.
“How can anything so lovely hurt our baby?” she had asked in genuine puzzlement. “You are not a hell-for-leather rammer, Richard.”
His mouth had tugged into a smile at her choice of words, which occasionally reflected that long sojourn aboard Lady Juliana.
“What is inside?” she asked now as he removed the box from the sled.
“As I have not yet opened it, I do not know.”
“Then do so, please! I am dying!”
“It came on Queen rather than Atlantic from Port Jackson, but on Gorgon from England. The delay in Port Jackson is a mystery. Maybe someone wanted to know the name of the shipper.” Richard used a claw hammer to prise the lid off—too easily. Without a doubt the box had been opened and its contents examined.
As he suspected, books. On top of the books and deprived of whatever had surrounded it as packing—clothes, probably—sat a hat box. Jem Thistlethwaite. He untied the tapes and took out the hat to end all hats, of scarlet silk-covered straw with a huge, warped brim and a profusion of black, white and scarlet ostrich feathers fixed under a preposterous black-and-white striped satin bow. It tied under the chin with similarly striped satin ribbons.
“Ohhhhh!” said Kitty as he lifted it up, her mouth sagging.
“Alas, wife, ’tis not for you,” he said before she could get any ideas. “ ’Tis for Mrs. Richard Morgan.”
“I am so glad! It is very grand, but I have not the height or the face—or the clothes—to wear it. Besides,” she confided, “I think people like Mrs. King and Mrs. Paterson would deem it dreadfully vulgar.”
“I love you, Kitty. I love you very, very much.”
To which she returned no answer; she never did.
Stifling a sigh, Richard discovered that the hat box also held a few small items wrapped in screws of paper, all of which had been opened, then closed again. How odd! Who had opened the box, and why? The hat could have bought the least attractive male in Port Jackson a year with that place’s best whore, yet the hat had not been appropriated. Nor the objects wrapped in paper. Unrolling one, he found a brass seal attached to a short wooden handle; when he mentally mirrored its emblem he saw that it consisted of the initials RM entwined with unmistakable fetters or manacles. The other six papers contained sticks of crimson sealing wax. A hint.
On the bottom of the hatbox sat a fat letter, its JT-and-quill seal definitely unbroken, though fingerprints upon its outside said that it had been carefully felt and squeezed. At which moment he understood why his box had been opened, and by whom. In Government Stores at Port Jackson, by a high official in search of gold coin. Had any been found, it would have gone into the Government coffers, very short of gold. Richard knew that the box did contain gold, though he very much doubted from its condition that gold had been found. High officials did not have much imagination.
He found Jethro Tull’s book on horticulture and a set of the second edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica; three-volume novels by the dozen, a whole collection of Felix Farley’s Bristol Journal and several London gazettes, the works of John Donne, Robert Herrick, Alexander Pope, Richard Dryden, Oliver Goldsmith, more of Edward Gibbon’s master-work on Rome; some parliamentary reports, a ream of best paper, more steel pens, bottles of ink, laudanum, tonics, tinctures, laxatives and an emetic; several jars of ointments and salves; and a dozen good candle molds.
Kitty hopped from one foot to the other, a little disappointed that the box held books rather than a dinner service by Josiah Wedgwood, but very pleased because Richard was pleased. “Who is it from?”
“A very old friend, Jem Thistlethwaite. With inclusions from my family in Bristol,” said Richard, the letter in his hand. “Now, if ye will excuse me, Kitty, I am going to sit down on the doorstep and read Jem’s letter. Stephen is coming for dinner, then I will tell both of ye all my news.”
Kitty had planned on bread and salad for dinner that day, but rose to the occasion by producing a salt pork stew with peppered dumplings; the meat was excellent and newly done, for it was their own produce.
When Stephen saw the hat he roared with laughter, insisted upon setting it on Kitty’s head and artistically tying its ribbons. “I fear,” he said, still chuckling, “that the hat wears you, not you the hat.”
“I am aware
of that,” she said loftily.
“How are your family?” Stephen asked then, replacing the hat.
“All very well, save for Cousin James-the-druggist,” Richard said sadly. “His eyesight has almost failed, so his sons have taken over the business and he has retired to a very nice mansion outside Bath with his wife and two spinster daughters. My father has removed to the Bell Tavern around the corner because the Corporation is in the throes of another building orgy and has pulled the Cooper’s Arms down. My brother’s oldest boy is with them—a great comfort. And Cousin James-of-the-clergy has been awarded a canon’s stall at the Cathedral, much to his joy. My sisters are thriving too.” A shadow crossed his face. “The only death among those I knew is that of John Trevillian Ceely Trevillian, who died of a surfeit—what sort of surfeit is a mystery.”
“Soporifics and ecstatics, most likely,” said Stephen, who knew the story in its entirety. “I rejoice.”
“There is a lot of general news, and many flimsies to plump the news out. France did indeed have a revolution and abolished its monarchy, though the King and Queen are still alive. Much to Jem’s surprise, the United States of America continues to be an entity, is drafting a radical kind of written constitution and fast regaining its moneys.” Richard grinned. “According to Jem, the only reason the Frogs revolted was because of Benjamin Franklin’s fur hat. What does Jem write?” Richard shuffled the pages. “Ah! ‘Unlike the Americans, who have scientifically calibrated a system of parliamentary checks and balances, the French have decided to institute none. Logic will perforce have to do what the Law does not allow to be done. As the French have no logic, I predict that republican government in France will not last.’ ”
“He is right about that.”
Kitty sat with her eyes going from one face to the other, not really following very much, but delighted that Richard and Stephen were so absorbed in things at the right ends of the earth.