Colleen McCullough - Morgan’s Run

“Are you all right?”

He gulped the water down, nodded, grinned. “I have a stove for ye, Kitty, with a baking oven.”

“Captain Monroe had his stall!” She got to her feet and inspected the new arrival eagerly. “Richard, I will be able to bake my own bread! And make cakes when I have enough crumbs and egg whites. And roast meat properly-oh, it is wonderful! Thank you, thank you!”

A hoist was rigged on one of the roof beams, so getting the big stove off the sled was not as difficult as had been keeping it from whizzing off the end of the brake slope into the valley below. He and Kitty walked together to the crest, where she found all the fabrics, threads, sewing apparatus.

“Richard, you are too good to me.”

“Nay, that is not possible. Ye’re carrying my child.” He began to load the sled for another trip down the slope with the chimney, which of course Kitty had dismissed as uninteresting. That delivered, they walked home down the Queensborough road with Richard pulling a much lighter sled.

Robert Ross, standing outside Government House to appreciate a magnificent sunset, watched them get the sled down Mount George. He had seen Richard expending his Saturday hauling it up that cruel hill several hours ago, marveling at the stamina of the man. So clever! He was a Bristolian, of course. A city of sledges. If ye cannot have wheels, have runners. I doubt a mule has more pure strength, and he with only two legs. I am but eight years older than he, but I could not have done that at twenty. The girl, he decided, was Morgan’s indulgence. A sweet wee mite, and oddly genteel. A workhouse brat, Mrs. Morgan had informed him, sniffing. But then, workhouse brats from strict Church of England workhouses like the girls’ in Canterbury (he had her papers) usually were genteel. Morgan himself was an educated man from the middling classes, so a workhouse brat was a comedown. But not, thought the Major cynically as he turned away, as big a comedown as his legal wife was.

Richard andKitty moved house on Saturday and Sunday the 27th and 28th of August, 1791. The several working bees had gotten beams, scantlings and cladding up, shingles on the roof and a path from the front doorstep down to the spring; for the time being they would finish only the ground floor, deal with upstairs when an upstairs was necessary. There was a long way to go before his new home looked as nice as the old, but Richard did not care.

They had several tables, a kitchen bench, six fine chairs, two fine beds (one with a feather mattress and pillows), shelving for all Richard’s bits and pieces, and a stone chimney with a big hearth. The iron stove sat within the fireplace, its steel smokestack thrust up into the chimney’s maw; from now on they would have no open fire, which would darken the interior after nightfall, but was much safer.

Housewarming presents were tendered from folk who had little to give save plants or poultry. Richard and Kitty accepted them with full hearts, knowing their real value. Nat and Olivia Lucas gave them a female tortoise-shell kitten, Joey Long another dog. The two more prosperous members of the Morgan circle were typically generous: Stephen donated an oak kitchen cabinet that he had bought from Surgeon Jamison, and the Wentworths a cradle. The cat they named Tibby and the new female pup Charlotte because it looked like a King Charles spaniel. MacTavish approved of both; he remained the sole male animal.

The pigsty and privy were difficult to site until Richard thought of a way to determine the course of the underground stream which fed the spring; nothing must contaminate it. Remembering what Peg’s brother had done when he had needed to dig a new well, Richard cut a forked rod from a sappy green shrub, held on to each fork with a hand, and attempted to divine. The sensation was curious when it happened, as if suddenly the wood shivered into life and fought him gently. Yet Kitty could not make the tip stir any more than could Stephen.

“It is our skin,” said Stephen, ruefully eyeing his palms. “Hard, dry and calloused. Your skin, Richard, is soft and moist. I think the diviner’s skin completes the water chain.”

Whatever lay at the root of the magic in it, Richard had no choice other than to site both pigsty and privy north of the house; there were underground streams everywhere south of it.

The saddest consequence of the move no one could have predicted, though Richard blamed himself for not foreseeing it. On the very Sunday that they said an unregretful farewell to the acre at the head of Arthur’s Vale, John Lawrell was caught by a married marine corporal playing cards with William Robinson Two in his hut. Major Ross had told the marine that he might shift himself and his family into the vacated house for the last few months of his duty, and the fellow had eagerly rushed to see it. Fervently religious, he was scandalized by what he saw as he peered through Lawrell’s hut door. Playing cards on Sunday! Lawrell and Robinson were sentenced to 100 lashes each for gambling on a Sunday.

“Oh, it is too bad!” Richard cried to Stephen. “They meant no harm to God or men. It never occurred to me that there was anything wrong in it, they are simply friends who spend Sunday afternoons with a deck of cards. Not gambling, just amusing themselves. If I spoke to the Major-”

“No, you cannot,” said Stephen firmly. “Richard, leave it go! Since his near-mortal illness the Major has had a bee in his bonnet about God and our lack of a chaplain here. He is now quite convinced that the rising incidence of local crime is thanks to godlessness and improper observance of Sundays. Well, he is a Scotchman, and much influenced by that pitiless Presbyterian ethic. Lawrell is no longer under your protection-nothing ye could say will alter the Major’s decision. In an odd way it reflects well on you, or so the Major sees it. You depart, Lawrell sins.”

“I want no approbation at the cost of another man’s flesh,” said Richard bitterly. “Sometimes I hate God!”

“’Tis not God ye hate, Richard. ’Tis the fools of men who call themselves God’s servants ye really hate.”

Salamander arrivedon the 16th of September carrying 200 male convicts and more men of the New South Wales Corps. By the time she sailed the population of Norfolk Island had risen to 1,115. Both deaths and floggings had soared since Mary Ann; the first death from illness or natural causes had not occurred until the end of 1790, when John Price, a convict off Surprize, had expired from the after-effects of his awful voyage.

Now the ratio of males to females increased dramatically in favor of males, but not strong, healthy males. Many of the new arrivals were so sick that they would eventually die, while some of the less enfeebled ones preyed constantly upon gardens or tried to rob the Stores, after anything to make life more comfortable. Governor Phillip’s intractables gravitated immediately into the Francis-Peck-Dyer-Pickett camp, joined by scarred and disillusioned men like Willy Dring, whom Richard remembered from Alexander as not a bad sort of young fellow. Fierce quarrels broke out every day and the gaol was always full, the grindstone fully powered. The sight of ironed men, even an occasional ironed woman, became more common. Sydney Town, Queensborough and Phillipsburgh were good places to be out of. Nat Lucas, closest to Sydney Town among Richard’s friends, had commenced to clear the upper slopes of his increased Arthur’s Vale portion and was building a new house as far from the flat as he could.

Of course Richard had brought cuttings and small offshoots of his bamboo and sugar cane, having removed enough of the grown bamboo to provide himself with several fishing poles. He no longer went to Point Hunter to fish with a hand-line; Stephen had also abandoned that site. Too many used it, and it necessitated a walk through Sydney Town besides. More and more Sydney Town looked as Richard fancied Port Jackson must, except that the buildings were wood. Norfolk Island lime had gone back to His Excellency in Port Jackson aboard Mary Ann and Salamander to provide mortar for bricks and sandstone blocks; Port Jackson, more usually called “Sydney” these days, was also expanding.