Colleen McCullough - Morgan’s Run

“I have absolutely no idea. Why d’ye ask? Was it something Lizzie Lock said? Was it?” His expression boded ill.

“Lizzie Lock?”

“Mrs. Richard Morgan.”

“Is that her name? What an odd combination. Lizzie Lock. It was you left her, is that not so?”

“I was never with her in the first place,” he said, deflecting her attention from Miss Mollies.

The eyes were bright and sparkling, fascinated. “But you did marry her.”

“Aye, in Port Jackson. ’Twas a chivalrous impulse I have since regretted bitterly.”

“I understand,” she said, sounding as if she actually did. “I think you suffer from chivalrous impulses you later regret. Like me.”

“Why should ye think I regret you, Kitty?”

“I have cramped your style,” she said candidly. “I do not truly believe that you wanted a maidservant, but Major Ross said you must take one of us in. I happened by, so you took me.” Something in his eyes gave her pause; she put her head on one side and regarded him speculatively. “Your house was complete without me,” she said then, voice wobbly. “Your life was complete without me.”

In answer he got up to put his bowl and spoon on the bench beside the fireplace. “No,” he said, turning with a smile that tugged at her heart, “life is never complete until it is over. Nor do I refuse gifts when God offers them to me.”

“What time will you be home?” she called to his retreating back.

“Early, and with Stephen,” he shouted, “so dig potatoes.”

And that was life: digging potatoes.

In fact she loved the garden and was busy in it whenever the wretched sow gave her a spare moment. Augusta had arrived already pregnant by the Government boar, and had the most voracious appetite. If Kitty had preserved sufficient sense to wonder what serving out her sentence might entail before Richard had enlightened her-but she had not preserved sufficient sense-she would never have guessed that it would be spent waiting upon a four-trottered, mean-spirited glutton like Augusta. Since Richard was always absent, she had to learn the hard way how to take an axe and chop down cabbage palms and tree ferns, chip their skins off and feed the pith to Augusta, guzzling away; she carted baskets of Indian corn from the granary; she recited Kentish farmer’s spells over their own Indian corn, coming on nicely. If Augusta was bottomless now, what would she be like when she was nursing a dozen piglets?

Those three months attending Cook in the kitchen of the manor at St. Paul Deptford had proven invaluable, for though she had not been allowed to cook anything, Kitty had watched with interest, and found now that she was quite capable of preparing the simple fare Norfolk Island provided. With no cows and only enough goats for babies and children, of milk there was none; fresh meat was rare now that the Mt. Pitt bird had gone (though Kitty had merely heard of it, came too late to taste it); vegetables varied from green beans to, in winter, cabbages and cauliflowers; Richard had harvested a fine crop of calavances-chickpeas; and, with the arrival of Justinian, there was bread of some kind every day. What she missed most was a cup of tea. Lady Juliana had provided both tea and sugar for its women convicts; though some of them preferred wheedling rum out of the seamen, most enjoyed sweetened tea more than anything else. It had been almost the only thing the seasick Kitty had been able to keep down, and now she missed it badly.

So when Richard and Stephen arrived she had a meal of boiled potatoes and boiled salt beef ready to put upon the table together with a loaf of wheaten bread.

They trooped in laden with pots and boxes.

“Captain Anstis had a stall on the beach today,” said Richard, “and everything I wanted to buy was on it. Open kettles, a spouted kettle for boiling water, frying pans, little pots, tin dishes and tubs, pewter plates and mugs, knives and spoons, unbleached calico-even, when I asked for it, emery powder. Look, Kitty! I bought a pound of Malabar peppercorns and a mortar and pestle for grinding them.” He dumped a wooden box a foot cubed down on the desk. “And here is a chest of hyson tea just for you.”

Her hands to her cheeks, she stared at him tearily. “Oh! You thought of me? ”

“Why should I not?” he asked, surprised. “I knew ye missed a cup of tea. I bought a teapot too. Sweetening it will not be hard. I will cut ye a stalk of sugar cane and chop it into short bits. All ye’ll have to do is crush it with a hammer and boil it to make syrup.”

“But this cost money!” she cried, appalled.

“Richard is a warm man, girl,” Stephen said, beginning to take articles off Richard as he handed them up from the sled. “I must say ye did amazing well, my friend, considering who ye dealt with. Nick Anstis is hard-headed.”

“I slapped gold coin on the board,” said Richard, coming inside again. “Anstis has to wait for money when it is tendered in notes of hand, whereas gold is gold. He was happy to quarter his prices for coins of the realm.”

“Just how much gold have ye got?” Stephen asked, curious.

“Enough,” said Richard tranquilly. “You see, I inherited from Ike Rogers as well.”

Stephen gaped, thunderstruck. “Is that why Richardson would not lay it on when Lieutenant King sentenced Joey Long to a hundred lashes for losing his best pair of Royal Navy shoes? Christ, ye’re close, Richard! Ye must have paid a little something to Jamison as well for insisting that Joey’s mental condition was too frail to sustain the whole flogging-Christ!”

“Joey looked after Ike. Now I look after Joey.”

They sat down at the table to do justice to the food, all three too active to scorn a diet banal and repetitive in the extreme.

“I gather that ye spent today at Charlotte Field, so ye may not have heard what happened to Kitty’s assailant,” Stephen said to Richard when they were done and Kitty stood happily washing their bowls and spoons in a new tin dish-no more bucket!

“Ye’re right, I have not heard. Tell me.”

“Tommy Two did not like being chained to the grindstone in the least, so last night he picked the locks on his irons and absconded into the forest, no doubt to join Gray.”

“With the birds gone, they will starve.”

“Aye, so I think. They will end up back on the grindstone.”

Richard rose, so did Stephen; Richard threw his arm about Stephen’s shoulders and steered him doorward, out of earshot. “Ye might,” he said quietly, “inform the Major that there may be a small conspiracy going on. Dyer, Francis, Peck and Pickett apparently have some purloined sugar cane growing somewhere off the track, and all four were sniffing around Anstis’s stall enquiring after things like copper kettles and copper pipe.”

“Why not tell the Major yourself? ’Tis you who is involved in that sort of activity.”

“Exactly why I would rather not be the one to tell the Major. In that respect, Stephen, I walk very carefully. Were I the one to speak of it, the Major might-should illicit spirits appear among the convicts and private marines-think I had concocted the tale to cover my own guilt.”

What are they muttering about? wondered Kitty, drying the bowls and spoons with a rag and putting them on their shelf before starting to wash the new pewter plates, mugs and eating utensils. Oh dear, I truly do cramp their style!

Though herworld still consisted of Richard’s acre, Kitty was too busy to think of exploring; her only trip to Sydney Town apart from divine service had been to identify her attacker, neither an occasion to take notice of her surroundings. All her farmer’s bones were asserting themselves; Richard could not have picked a better kind of woman than Kitty for the kind of life she was called upon to lead.