Colleen McCullough - Morgan’s Run

“Are the two boys or girls?” Kitty asked, happier with this kind of conversation than the serious subjects Richard chose.

“Twin girls a year old-Mary and Sarah. I am carrying this one differently, so I expect it will be a boy.” She fanned herself with her homemade shady hat. “Richard says ye mentioned a young girl named Annie who is here somewhere, or about to be landed. I am of a mind to take her in as help if I can get to her first-if, that is, ye think she would be happier in the bosom of a family than with a man.”

“Of that I am sure, Mrs. Lucas. Annie is like me.”

The large brown eyes narrowed. So, Richard, that is how things stand, is it? Stephen said ye’d fallen head over ears, and today I thought to find ye happy at last. What woman would be fool enough to spurn a man like you? But here she is, not a woman at all-a silly girl and a virgin to boot. Ye’d think gaol and transportation would make them grow up in a hurry, but I have seen Kitty’s like before. Somehow they escape the taint, largely by being mice. In Port Jackson they are the first ones to die, but in Norfolk Island they live to learn what neither gaol nor transportation has managed to teach them: that the most a convict woman can hope for is a good, kind, decent man. Like my Nat. And like Richard Morgan.

Smothering these thoughts, Olivia Lucas proceeded to instruct Kitty in women’s matters and how she should conduct herself in this place of too many men.

The conversation broke up with the arrival of Stephen and Johnny Livingstone carrying a bed; Olivia squawked and hurried home, leaving the three men and Kitty to eat Sunday dinner, a makeshift affair of pooled resources-pease cooked with a little salt pork, a dish of rice and onions, corn bread and a dessert of bananas from Richard’s palms, several of which had the peculiar habit of bearing different-looking fruit early.

Kitty sat and listened to the men talk, realizing that in all her life she had not been exposed to masculine talk or the company of men. Half an hour of it humbled her; she knew so little! Well, to listen and remember was to learn, and she was determined to learn. They did not gossip in the manner of women, though they could laugh heartily over a story Johnny-how beautiful he was!-recounted about Major Ross and Captain Hunter, who apparently had fallen out very badly. Most of the talk revolved around problems of construction, discipline, timber, stone, lime, grubs, tools, the growing of grain.

Stephen, she noticed, was a toucher. If he passed by Richard or Johnny he would rest his hand on a shoulder or back, and once he jokingly rumpled Richard’s short hair in exactly the same way he rumpled MacTavish’s coat. But if he passed her by he was very careful to steer a wide berth around her chair, and never drew her into the conversation. Nor, for that matter, did the other two.

I think I am forgotten. Not one of them looks at me as I would have Stephen look at me, with fond love. If they do look at me, their eyes move immediately away. Why is that?

It was always Stephen who drove the talk, never allowing a silence to develop; Richard, she fancied, normally contributed more to the discussions than he did today. Today he spoke only when spoken to, and then sometimes absently. When they got up to move outside for an inspection of the pigsty, Kitty started clearing away the few dishes and tidying what she thought she would not get into trouble for moving. Only then did she understand that it was her presence had inhibited them, and that this was particularly true of Richard.

The Commandant’s insistence that we be taken in by men with a house or hut has spoiled Richard’s leisure-probably Stephen’s too, since they are such good friends. I do not matter. I am a nuisance. In future I must find excuses to leave them alone.

That night Richard had a bed to sleep in, constructed in the same way hers was, a wooden frame connecting a lattice of rope, but when he ordered her to bed shortly after dusk he took a candle to the table he used as a desk, propped a book on a lectern and started to read. Whatever crime he committed, she thought drowsily, he has been schooled and brought up as a gentleman. The master of the St. Paul Deptford manor did not own such fine manners.

On themorrow, Monday, she saw little of Richard, who was off shortly after dawn to his work in the sawpits, came home for a hasty lunch of something cold with a pair of shoes for her, and spent most of his break at the pigsty, growing rapidly. It was about twenty feet on each side and consisted of wooden palings atop a course of stone.

“Pigs root,” Richard explained as he labored, “so they cannot be confined as sheep or cattle are, within a simple fence. And they must be shaded from the sun because they overheat and die. Their excrement stinks, but they are tidy creatures and always choose a corner only of the sty as their privy. That makes it easy to gather for manure-it is very rich manure.”

“Will I have to gather the manure?” she asked.

“Yes.” He lifted his head to give her a grin. “Ye’ll find that baths are very necessary.”

In the evening he did not come home. Her rations were hers to do with as she pleased, he told her; he was used to caring for himself and usually ate with Stephen, who was a stern bachelor and did not care for women in his house. They played chess, he explained, so she was to go to bed upon darkness without waiting for him or expecting to see him. Naive though she was, this seemed odd to Kitty. Stephen did not behave like a stern bachelor. Though, come to think of it, she had little idea how a stern bachelor behaved. However, that Sunday dinner had taught her that men liked the company of men and were hampered by the presence of women.

On Tuesday a marine private appeared to summon her to Sydney Town, where she was required to identify the man who had molested and robbed her. The view from Richard’s house was limited; Arthur’s Vale, opening out and out, astonished her. Green wheat and Indian corn grew up the slopes of the hills on either side, waved in the vale itself; there were occasional houses perched at the edges, several barns and sheds, a pond harboring ducks. Then all of a sudden she emerged from the vale into a large collection of wooden houses and huts arranged in proper treeless streets, an expanse of vividly green swamp separating them from bigger structures at the bottom of the hills; she passed by Stephen Donovan’s house without recognizing it.

Two military officers-she did not know a marine from a land soldier-waited for her outside a big, two-storeyed building she found out later was the marine barracks. A motley group of male convicts had been lined up nearby, and the officers were correctly dressed down to wigs, swords and cocked hats. The convicts all wore shirts.

“Mistress Clark?” asked the older officer, piercing her to the soul with a pair of pale grey eyes.

“Yes, sir,” she whispered.

“A man accosted ye on the road from Cascade on the day of the thirteenth of August?”

“Yes, sir.”

“He tried to force himself upon ye and tore your dress?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Ye ran into the woods to escape?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What did the man do then?”

Cheeks burning, striking eyes wide, she said, “He seemed at first to think of chasing me, then came voices. He picked up my bundle and bedding and walked in this direction.”

“Ye spent the night in the woods, is that so?”

“Yes, sir.”

Major Ross turned to Lieutenant Ralph Clark, who, having heard the story from Stephen Donovan and verified it from Richard Morgan, was curious to discover what his namesake looked like. Not a whore, he was relieved to see; as gentle and refined as Mistress Mary Branham, taken advantage of by a Lady Penrhyn seaman and delivered of a son in Port Jackson. She and the infant had been sent to Norfolk Island aboard Sirius; Clark had become interested in her after she was put to work in the officers’ mess. Adorably pretty, much in the mold of his beloved Betsy. Now that he knew Betsy and little Ralphie were safe and well in England-and especially now that he had his own comfortable house-it might be easier for Mary to look after just one officer and one house; her little boy was walking now and making rather a nuisance of himself. Yes, to take Mary Branham in would be doing her a good turn. Of course he would not mention this arrangement in his journal, which was written for darling Betsy’s eyes and could contain nothing might shock or perturb her. Slighting references upon damned whores were permissible, but approval of any convict woman was definitely not permissible.