Colleen McCullough - Morgan’s Run

In the act of reaching for another piece of bread, her hand fell limply into her lap; her eyes widened, revealing that they were only partially William Henry’s eyes-his had been set in with a sooty thumb, hers with a crystal one. “Of course,” she said slowly. “Of course. Oh, how idiotic I am! Except that I was so sick, and before that, so shocked and confused. There are no workhouses or factories at the far ends of the earth. No gentlemen’s waistcoats to embroider… That is what I did at the Canterbury workhouse. You mean that we have been sent here as wives for the convicts?”

His lips set. “ ’Tis more honest to say that ye’ve been sent here as conveniences. I do not pretend to know the official reasons why this experiment had been put into practice, save that a great many men have been removed from England who might otherwise have become a population to be reckoned with. Mutinies have happened, men with nothing to lose have escaped into the English countryside. Whereas at the far ends of the earth it matters not to England if men mutiny or escape. They do not threaten England. The only folk who have to be protected are their gaolers and their gaolers’ wives, children.” He paused to fix her gaze. “Men without women sink to the level of beasts. Therefore women are a necessary part of the great experiment, which is to turn the far ends of the earth into a vast English prison. Or so I have come to believe.”

Frowning, she listened to this and tried to assimilate it: he was saying that the only reason she had been transported was to be a pacifier of men. “We are your whores,” she said. “Is that why Lady Juliana’s crew called us whores? I thought it was because they thought we had all been convicted of prostitution, and I wondered at that. Most of us were convicted of stealing, or having stolen goods, or attacking someone with a knife. It is not a crime to be a prostitute, some of the women insisted-they used to grow angry when they were called whores. But what the sailors meant was that we were future whores. Is that it?”

He rolled his eyes at the ceiling, sighed. “Well,” he said finally, smiling at her wryly, “if my daughter were alive, she would be about your age. Just as ignorant-as a good father I would have made sure of that. What are your circumstances, Kitty? Who were your parents?”

“My father was a tenant farmer at Faversham,” she said proudly, lifting her chin. “My mother died when I was two, and my father had a housekeeper to look after me. He died when I was five. His farm went back to the manor because he had no heir. I was given to the parish, and the parish sent me to Canterbury.”

“Ye were the only child?”

“Yes. Had Papa lived, I would have been taught to read and write, and been brought up to marry a farmer.”

“But instead ye were sent to the poorhouse and ye never did learn to read or write,” said Richard gently.

“That is so. My fingers are nimble and my eyes keen, so they put me to embroidering. But it does not last forever. The work is too fine for hands that are grown. I was kept until after I turned seventeen, when suddenly I grew. So I was sent to the manor at St. Paul Deptford as cook’s maid.”

“How long were ye there?”

“Until I-I was arrested. Three months.”

“How did ye come to be arrested?”

“The manor had four below-stairs maidservants-Betty, Annie, Mary and me. Mary and I were the same age, Annie was sixteen, and Betty five-and-twenty. The master and mistress were called up to London very suddenly and Mr. and Mrs. Hobson got drunk on the port. Cook locked herself in her garret. It was Betty’s birthday, and she said we should all walk to the shops for an outing. I had never been to the shops before.”

Oh, this was awful! He sat there like the Master at the workhouse, a figure of age and authority, listening to this silly story with no expression on his face. It was a silly story-too silly to tell at the Kent assizes, had anybody asked. No one had.

“Did ye never go abroad from the workhouse, Kitty?”

“No, never.”

“Surely ye had a day off sometimes at the St. Paul Deptford manor?”

“I had a half-day once a week, but never with one of the other girls, so I used to walk into the fields. I would rather have gone to the fields on Betty’s birthday, but she mocked me for a rustic because I had never been into a shop, so I went with them.”

“Were ye tempted in a shop? Is that it?”

“I suppose it must have been like that,” she said doubtfully. “Betty brought a bottle of gin with her and we drank it as we went along. I do not remember the shops, or going into them-just men shouting, the bailiffs locking us up.”

“What did ye steal?”

“Muslin in one shop, they said at the trial, and checkered linen in another. I do not know why we stole either-the dresses we wore were of the same sort of stuff. Four and sixpence the ten yards of muslin, the jury determined, though the shopkeeper kept roaring that it was worth three guineas. They did not charge us with the theft of the linen.”

“Were ye in the habit of drinking gin?”

“No, I had never tasted it before. Nor had Mary or Annie.” She shuddered. “I will never drink it again, that I know.”

“Did ye all get transported?”

“Yes, for seven years. We were all on Lady Juliana almost as soon as the assizes were over. I suppose the others are here somewhere. It is just that I was so seasick-everybody loses patience with me, so they did not wait. And it was dark in Surprize.”

He got up abruptly and walked around the table, put his hand on her shoulder and rubbed it. “ ’Tis all right, Kitty, we will not speak of it again. Ye’re a child, as only English parish charity can make a child out of a young woman.”

MacTavish bounced in, having breakfasted on two juicy young rats. Giving her a final pat, Richard did the same to the dog, and sat down again. “The time has come to grow up, Catherine Clark. Not to lose your innocence, but to preserve it. There are no manors or workhouses here, ye know that. Had ye stayed at Port Jackson ye would have gone to the women’s camp, but Norfolk Island’s commandant, Major Robert Ross, is not willing to segregate the women. He is right, it only leads to worse trouble. Each of ye who came on Surprize is to be taken in by a man having a hut or house, though some will go to homes like that of Mrs. Lucas to help with the chores and children, and some will go as servants and conveniences to the officers and enlisted marines, yet others to Sirius men.”

Her skin paled. “I am yours,” she said.

His smile was very reassuring. “I am no rapist, Kitty, nor do I intend to plague ye with hints or wooing. I will keep ye as my servant. As soon as maybe, I will build a room onto this house to give each of us a meed of privacy. All I ask in return is that ye do whatever work ye’re capable of. Yon structure I am building is a sty for the sow Major Ross will give me, and one of your responsibilities will be to look after the sow. As well as the house, the chickens when they come, and the vegetable garden. I have a man, John Lawrell, who looks after my grain and does the heavy work. The community will regard ye as mine, which is all the protection ye need.”

“Have I no choice?” she asked.

“If ye had, where would ye rather be?”

“I would be Stephen’s servant,” she said simply.

Neither face nor eyes changed, though she knew that something happened inside him. All he said was, tone ordinary, “That is not possible, Kitty. Do not dream of Stephen.”

The restof the day passed with bewildering swiftness; Mrs. Lucas came to visit, puffing a little.

“I fall,” she announced, flopping into a chair, “as soon as my Nat hangs his trowsers on their peg. Two so far, and a third well on the way.”