Colleen McCullough - Morgan’s Run

Good, good! His mind made up on the future of Mary Branham and himself, he looked at the Major enquiringly.

“Lieutenant Clark, pray conduct Mistress Clark down the line to see if the villain is among this lot,” said Ross, who had rounded up every convict ever punished.

Talking to her kindly as they went, the Lieutenant led Kitty along the row of sullen men, then took her back to his superior.

“Is he there?” barked Ross.

“Yes, sir.”

“Where?”

She pointed to the man with two mouths. Both officers nodded.

“Thank ye, Mistress Clark. The private will escort ye home.”

And that was that. Kitty fled.

“Tom Jones Two,” said the private.

“That is who Mr. Donovan said it would be.”

“Ain’t none of them Mr. Donovan don’t know.”

“He is a very nice man,” she said sadly.

“Aye, he ain’t bad for a Miss Molly. Not one of your pretty field flowers. I watched him take a man apart with his fists-a bigger man than him too. Nasty when he are annoyed, Mr. Donovan.”

“Quite,” she agreed placidly.

And so went home with the private, Tom Jones Two forgotten.

Richard continued to absent himself in the evenings-not always, she learned, to play chess with Stephen. He was friends with the Lucases, someone called George Guest, a marine private Daniel Stanfield, others. What hurt Kitty most was that none of these friends ever asked her to accompany him, a reinforcement of his statement that she was his servant. It would be nice to have a friend or two, but of Betty and Mary she knew nothing, and Annie had indeed gone to the Lucases. Meeting Richard’s other helper, John Lawrell, had been an ordeal; he had glared at her and told her not to fiddle with his poultry or the grain patch.

So when she noticed a female figure tittuping up the path between the vegetables, Kitty was ready to greet the visitor with her best smile and curtsey. On Lady Juliana the woman would have been apostrophized as a quiz, for she was very grand in a vulgar sort of way-red-and-black striped dress, a red shawl with a long fringe proclaiming its silkness, shoes with high heels and glittering buckles, and a monstrous black velvet hat on her head nodding red ostrich plumes.

“Good day, madam,” said Kitty.

“And good day in return, Mistress Clark, for so I believe you are called,” said the visitor, sweeping inside. There she looked about with some awe. “He does do good work, don’t he?” she asked. “And more books than ever. Read, read, read! That is Richard.”

“Do sit down,” said Kitty, indicating a handsome chair.

“As fine as the Major’s,” said the red-and-black person. “I am always amazed at Richard’s run of good luck. He is like a cat, falls on his feet every time.” Her little black eyes looked Kitty up and down, straight, thick black brows frowning across her nose. “I never thought I was anything to look at,” she said, inspection finished, “but at least I can dress. You are as plain as a pikestaff, my girl.”

Jaw dropped, Kitty stared. “I beg your pardon?”

“You heard me. Plain as a pikestaff.”

“Who are you?”

“ I am Mrs. Richard Morgan, what do you think about that?”

“Nothing very much,” said Kitty when she got her breath back. “I am pleased to meet you, Mrs. Morgan.”

“Christ!” Mrs. Morgan said. “Jeeesus! What is Richard up to?”

As Kitty did not know what he was up to, she said nothing.

“You ain’t his mistress?”

“Oh! Oh, of course!” Kitty shook her head in vexation. “I am so silly-I never thought-”

“Aye, silly is right enough. You ain’t his mistress?”

Kitty put her chin in the air. “I am his servant.”

“Hoo hoo! Hoity-toity!”

“If you are Mrs. Richard Morgan,” said Kitty, growing braver in the face of her visitor’s derision, “why are you not living in this house? If you were, he would have no need for a servant girl.”

“I am not living here because I do not want to live here,” Mrs. Richard Morgan said loftily. “ I am Major Ross’s housekeeper.”

“Then I need not detain you. I am sure you are very busy.”

The visitor got up immediately. “Plain as a pikestaff!” she said, mincing to the door.

“I may be plain, Mrs. Morgan, but at least I am not beyond my last prayers! Unless you are also the Major’s mistress?”

“Fucken bitch!”

And off down the path she went, feathers bouncing.

Once the shock wore off-at her own temerity rather than at Mrs. Morgan’s conduct and language-Kitty reviewed this encounter more dispassionately. Well on the wrong side of thirty, and, under the outrageous apparel, quite as plain as she had professed to know herself. And not, if she had read Major Ross aright at her only meeting with him, his mistress. That was a very fastidious man. So why had Mrs. Richard Morgan come-and, more importantly, why had Mrs. Richard Morgan gone in the first place? Closing her eyes, Kitty conjured up a picture of her, saw things that sheer amazement had veiled in the flesh. Much pain, sadness, anger. Knowing herself a pathetic figure, Mrs. Richard Morgan had presented herself to her supplanter with a great show of haughty aggression that overlay grief and abandonment. How do I know that? But I do, I do… It was not her left him. He left her! Nothing else answers. Oh, poor woman!

Pleased with her deductive powers, she sat up in her bed in her convict-issue slops shift and waited by the dying light of the fire for Richard to come home. Where does he go?

His torch came flickering up the path two hours after night had fallen; he had, as on most evenings, eaten quickly at the pit and hied himself off to the distillery to make sure all was well and personally measure the amount of rum, enter it in his book. Time shortly to close it down. Casks and sugar were running low. All told, the installation would have produced about 5,000 gallons.

“Why are you awake?” he demanded, closing the door and tossing logs on the fire. “And what was the door doing open?”

“I had a visitor today,” she said in meaningful tones.

“Did ye now?”

He was not going to ask who, which rather spoiled things.

“Mrs. Richard Morgan,” she said, looking like a naughty child.

“I was wondering when she would appear” was all he said.

“Do you not want to know what happened?”

“No. Now lie down and go to sleep.”

She subsided in the bed, quenched, and tired enough that lying flat out induced immediate torpor. “You left her, I know it,” she said drowsily. “Poor woman, poor woman.”

Richard waited until he was sure she was asleep, then changed into his makeshift nightshirt. The timber for her room was piling up, and he would begin to pull stones for its piers home on his sled this coming Saturday. A month from now he would be rid of her, at least from the room where he slept. She could have her own door to the outside as well, and he would cozen a bolt out of Freeman for his side of the communicating door. Then he could return to the freedom of sleeping naked and feeling as if he owned some part of himself. Kitty. Born in 1770, the same year as little Mary. I am an old fool, and she a young one. Even admitting this, the last thing he saw before weariness turned into sleep was the lump she made in his bed, silent and unmoving. Kitty did not snore.

“What,” she asked the next day when he came home for a hot midday dinner, “is a Miss Molly?”

The bolus of bread in his mouth was in the act of sliding down his throat; he choked, coughed, had to be banged on the back and given water. “Sorry,” he gasped, eyes tearing. “Ask again.”

“What is a Miss Molly?”