Colleen McCullough - Morgan’s Run

She giggled. “That sounds like experience.”

“It is. I have two elder sisters.” He stretched like a cat, elongating every fiber. “I am very glad that they are all well in Bristol, though my cousin James’s sight is a grief. Like Jem Thistlethwaite, he was the saving of me. I never suffered the illnesses most convicts do, especially in a gaol or on board a transport. That is why, at three-and-forty, I can labor like a much younger man. And make love to you like a much younger man. I have kept my health and vigor.”

“But you went as hungry as the rest, surely.”

“Aye, but hunger does no harm until it chews away a man’s muscles beyond repair, and my muscles I suppose had more substance than most. Besides, the hunger never lasted quite long enough. There were oranges and fresh meat in Rio-meals on a Thames dredge-an occasional bowl of fish-chowder-a man named Stephen Donovan who fed me fresh buttered rolls stuffed with Captain Hunter’s cress. That is luck, Kitty,” Richard said, smiling, his eyes half-closed. Today seemed to be a day for memories.

“I cannot agree,” she said. “I would rather call it some quality many men do not possess, but you do. So does Stephen. And I always fancied Major Ross had it too, from listening to you and Stephen talk. Nat and Olivia Lucas both have it. I do not. That is why I am glad ’tis you is the father of my children. They have a chance of inheriting more than I am.”

He picked up her hand and kissed it. “That is a very pretty compliment, wife. Perhaps ye do love me just a little.”

She huffed a sound of exasperation and turned to look at the tables and chairs, strewn with books. One chair held the hat box. “When will you deliver Lizzie’s hat?” she asked.

“I think you should deliver it and heal the breach.”

“I could not!”

“I will not.”

The question of the hat was still undecided when they went to bed, Kitty so tired that she fell asleep before she could make overtures of love.

Richard dozed for two hours, his half-dreams a parade of old faces transformed and distorted by the years between. Then he woke and slid out of the bed, donned trowsers and stepped outside softly. Tibby had been joined by Fatima and Charlotte by Flora; the two pups and two kittens stirred until Richard hushed them. They were curled together inside a piece of hollow pine Richard had thought an ideal kennel; more dogs and cats having the run of the house would discourage them from ratting. MacTavish was a law unto himself, too late to change his habits now. And he was still the sole male, ruler of the roost.

The moon was full and rising into the eastern sky, snuffing out the blazing stars as its cold pale brilliance poured upward; one could read by it easily when it was overhead. Not a cloud in the sky and the only sounds the gurgle and gush of the spring, water pelting away downhill, a great murmur from pines, the skreek-skreek-skreek of a pair of white fairy terns in black silhouette against the silvered heavens. He lifted his head and inhaled the night, the clean purity of it, the comfort in its loneliness, the distance, the utter peace.

On Sunday after divine service he would write to his father, to the Cousins James and Jem Thistlethwaite to tell them that he had managed to make a home for himself in this southern immensity. He had hewn a niche, helped by a little gold, for which he had to thank them. But gold or no gold, he had hewn it with his own hands and his own will. Norfolk Island was home now.

In the meantime there was a box to examine before Kitty and Joey Long took it into their heads to chop it up for kindling or use it to hold mulch for the garden. Rather than walk up the cleft, he walked down it; Joey’s tiny house was just inside the Queensborough road boundary of Morgan’s Run along the edge of the track down to the main house. Joey and MacGregor were his sentinels, his first line of defense in case of predators. Not that he expected any yet. But who knew how many and what kind of convicts His Excellency would send here as his task over there in New South Wales grew ever harder?

Having found a cleared patch in the moonlight he began to attack the box with a chisel and a small hammer, tapping quietly; sure enough, once the heavy border was removed, the space between inside and outside skins sprang into sight as white lint wadding. Not many minutes later the box was in pieces and he had amassed £100 in gold. Removing his trowsers, he piled the coins into their middle, gathered up the fragments of wood, put the trowsers on top of the pile, and walked back to his house. Kitty had said it was not luck. For himself, he was never sure whether he had luck or the grace of God. Though was there any difference?

When building his house he had thought of this eventuality; around the back and against the western slope he had randomly chosen one stone pier and constructed it with a hollow center. No one knew, and no one would know. Retaining twenty of the coins, he put the other eighty into his hiding place, then padded silently inside and into bed. Kitty murmured, purred; MacTavish’s tail thumped against the blanket. Richard patted the dog and folded Kitty’s back into his front, stroked her flank and closed his eyes.

The hatbox was still on the chair when Richard went to work in the morning; it sat reproaching Kitty as she moved about the room, dusting, washing, tidying books, preparing the ingredients for a cold lunch; too hot to eat the main meal in the heat of the day, and perhaps if she took Joey and walked into Sydney Town she could find Stephen, persuade him to join them for a hot supper.

Oh, how thoughtful Richard was! The remains of the box were stacked in the kindling heap to one side of the front door, chopped to precisely the right size to start the stove fire-too hot to light it now, she would wait until mid afternoon, then bake bread. This typical kindness from him gave her pause; already outside, she turned back to look into the room and at the hat box. Sighing, she went back to pick it up and started the walk to the Queensborough road. Joey was chopping pines; Richard was determined that he would clear enough of Morgan’s Run to plant several acres of wheat and Indian corn next June, and though Joey could not saw, he could fell timber competently. MacGregor warned him of her advent-no danger of dropping a tree in the wrong place with MacGregor on duty!

“Joey, do you mind walking me to Sydney Town?”

Puffing, the simple soul looked at her with adoration and mutely shook his head. He snatched his shirt off a nearby branch and donned it eagerly, then the pair of them set off toward Mount George, MacGregor and MacTavish frisking around them.

“My own errand is to Government House,” she said, “and while I do that, Joey, find Mr. Donovan and ask him to come to supper this evening. I will meet you here. Do not dawdle!”

Government House was in the throes of huge alterations and additions. Men were crawling all over it, Nat Lucas was barking instructions and the others were very quick to obey. It was a stupid convict took his time over work for the Commandant himself, and surprisingly few convicts were stupid. These renovations were of a temporary nature; Commander King had still not made up his mind whether Government House should remain on its present knoll or move to the other knoll where Richard said the original gardens had been. Never having been to Government House, Kitty did not know whether as a convict she ought to find a back door, or whether all traffic went to the front door, facing the sea.

“Who are ye looking for, Kit-kat?” Nat Lucas asked.

“Mrs. Richard Morgan.”

“In the kitchen house. Around there,” he said, pointing and giving her a wink.

She walked along the side of the main house to the separate building which housed the kitchen.