Colleen McCullough - Morgan’s Run

“Ye cannot do that alone, Richard! I will find ye a man.”

“I am a man, Tommy, but thankee for the offer.”

RICHARD MORGAN • CONVICT OFF ALEXANDER had been lettered large on every one of the box’s six sides, but there was no shipper’s name.

That afternoon he pulled it home. There were still some hours of daylight left; the nature of the work meant that the sawpits closed earlier than common labor. He was, besides, a free man, at liberty to go home early once in a while.

“You bloom more beautiful each time I see you, wife,” he said to Kitty when she came skipping down the steps to greet him.

They kissed lingeringly, her lips promising lovemaking that night; physically, he knew, he enchanted her. Fearing harm to the baby, he had wanted to stop, but she had looked amazed.

“How can anything so lovely hurt our baby?” she had asked in genuine puzzlement. “You are not a hell-for-leather rammer, Richard.”

His mouth had tugged into a smile at her choice of words, which occasionally reflected that long sojourn aboard Lady Juliana.

“What is inside?” she asked now as he removed the box from the sled.

“As I have not yet opened it, I do not know.”

“Then do so, please! I am dying!”

“It came on Queen rather than Atlantic from Port Jackson, but on Gorgon from England. The delay in Port Jackson is a mystery. Maybe someone wanted to know the name of the shipper.” Richard used a claw hammer to prise the lid off-too easily. Without a doubt the box had been opened and its contents examined.

As he suspected, books. On top of the books and deprived of whatever had surrounded it as packing-clothes, probably-sat a hat box. Jem Thistlethwaite. He untied the tapes and took out the hat to end all hats, of scarlet silk-covered straw with a huge, warped brim and a profusion of black, white and scarlet ostrich feathers fixed under a preposterous black-and-white striped satin bow. It tied under the chin with similarly striped satin ribbons.

“Ohhhhh!” said Kitty as he lifted it up, her mouth sagging.

“Alas, wife, ’tis not for you,” he said before she could get any ideas. “ ’Tis for Mrs. Richard Morgan.”

“I am so glad! It is very grand, but I have not the height or the face-or the clothes-to wear it. Besides,” she confided, “I think people like Mrs. King and Mrs. Paterson would deem it dreadfully vulgar.”

“I love you, Kitty. I love you very, very much.”

To which she returned no answer; she never did.

Stifling a sigh, Richard discovered that the hat box also held a few small items wrapped in screws of paper, all of which had been opened, then closed again. How odd! Who had opened the box, and why? The hat could have bought the least attractive male in Port Jackson a year with that place’s best whore, yet the hat had not been appropriated. Nor the objects wrapped in paper. Unrolling one, he found a brass seal attached to a short wooden handle; when he mentally mirrored its emblem he saw that it consisted of the initials RM entwined with unmistakable fetters or manacles. The other six papers contained sticks of crimson sealing wax. A hint.

On the bottom of the hatbox sat a fat letter, its JT-and-quill seal definitely unbroken, though fingerprints upon its outside said that it had been carefully felt and squeezed. At which moment he understood why his box had been opened, and by whom. In Government Stores at Port Jackson, by a high official in search of gold coin. Had any been found, it would have gone into the Government coffers, very short of gold. Richard knew that the box did contain gold, though he very much doubted from its condition that gold had been found. High officials did not have much imagination.

He found Jethro Tull’s book on horticulture and a set of the second edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica; three-volume novels by the dozen, a whole collection of Felix Farley’s Bristol Journal and several London gazettes, the works of John Donne, Robert Herrick, Alexander Pope, Richard Dryden, Oliver Goldsmith, more of Edward Gibbon’s master-work on Rome; some parliamentary reports, a ream of best paper, more steel pens, bottles of ink, laudanum, tonics, tinctures, laxatives and an emetic; several jars of ointments and salves; and a dozen good candle molds.

Kitty hopped from one foot to the other, a little disappointed that the box held books rather than a dinner service by Josiah Wedgwood, but very pleased because Richard was pleased. “Who is it from?”

“A very old friend, Jem Thistlethwaite. With inclusions from my family in Bristol,” said Richard, the letter in his hand. “Now, if ye will excuse me, Kitty, I am going to sit down on the doorstep and read Jem’s letter. Stephen is coming for dinner, then I will tell both of ye all my news.”

Kitty had planned on bread and salad for dinner that day, but rose to the occasion by producing a salt pork stew with peppered dumplings; the meat was excellent and newly done, for it was their own produce.

When Stephen saw the hat he roared with laughter, insisted upon setting it on Kitty’s head and artistically tying its ribbons. “I fear,” he said, still chuckling, “that the hat wears you, not you the hat.”

“I am aware of that,” she said loftily.

“How are your family?” Stephen asked then, replacing the hat.

“All very well, save for Cousin James-the-druggist,” Richard said sadly. “His eyesight has almost failed, so his sons have taken over the business and he has retired to a very nice mansion outside Bath with his wife and two spinster daughters. My father has removed to the Bell Tavern around the corner because the Corporation is in the throes of another building orgy and has pulled the Cooper’s Arms down. My brother’s oldest boy is with them-a great comfort. And Cousin James-of-the-clergy has been awarded a canon’s stall at the Cathedral, much to his joy. My sisters are thriving too.” A shadow crossed his face. “The only death among those I knew is that of John Trevillian Ceely Trevillian, who died of a surfeit-what sort of surfeit is a mystery.”

“Soporifics and ecstatics, most likely,” said Stephen, who knew the story in its entirety. “I rejoice.”

“There is a lot of general news, and many flimsies to plump the news out. France did indeed have a revolution and abolished its monarchy, though the King and Queen are still alive. Much to Jem’s surprise, the United States of America continues to be an entity, is drafting a radical kind of written constitution and fast regaining its moneys.” Richard grinned. “According to Jem, the only reason the Frogs revolted was because of Benjamin Franklin’s fur hat. What does Jem write?” Richard shuffled the pages. “Ah! ‘Unlike the Americans, who have scientifically calibrated a system of parliamentary checks and balances, the French have decided to institute none. Logic will perforce have to do what the Law does not allow to be done. As the French have no logic, I predict that republican government in France will not last.’ ”

“He is right about that.”

Kitty sat with her eyes going from one face to the other, not really following very much, but delighted that Richard and Stephen were so absorbed in things at the right ends of the earth.

“The King was very ill in 1788 and certain elements tried to have the Prince of Wales installed as regent, but the King recovered and Georgy-Porgy failed to lift himself out of his mire of debt. He still refuses to marry suitably, and Roman Catholic Mrs. Maria Fitzherbert is still his great love.”

“Religion and religious differences,” Stephen said with a sigh, “are the greatest curses of mankind. Why cannot we live and let live? Look at Johnson. Insisted the convicts marry each other but gave them no opportunity to get to know each other first because fornicating is a part of knowing. Pah!” He suppressed the flash of temper and changed the subject. “What of England?”