Colleen McCullough - Morgan’s Run

“Why Kate?” asked Kitty.

“Because in this part of the world ’tis better to be a shrew than a mouse.” Stephen grinned. “Do not blanch so, little mother! Some man will tame her.”

“What if it is a boy?” the little mother enquired.

Richard answered. “My first boy will be William Henry, and he will always be called all of it. William Henry.”

“William Henry… I like it,” said Kitty, pleased.

Head bent over his mug, Stephen concealed a sigh. So she did not know. Would she ever know? Richard, tell her! Admit her as an equal, I beg you!

“I have news too, Lieutenant-and may ye be an Admiral of the Blue one day,” Richard announced, toasting Stephen. “Tommy Crowder has been ordered by Mr. King to start a register of land and land owners. I am to go down in it as Richard Morgan-free man-possessed of twelve acres in his own right and not by power of the Crown. I am also to have ten acres at Queensborough on part of the treeless area. That will come next June or thereabouts as a grant from the Crown. So I will grow wheat on Morgan’s Run and Indian corn at Queensborough to feed my pigs.” He lifted his mug. “I drink a second toast to ye, Lieutenant Donovan, for all your many kindnesses through the years. May ye command a hundred guns in a big sea battle against the French before ye become an Admiral of the Blue. Kitty, turn your back and do not peek.”

The twenty gold coins were slipped into Stephen’s palm; he raised his brows, then put them into the pockets of his canvas jacket. When Kitty was told that she could look, she found them laughing, for what reason she did not know.

1792 camein dry, though there had been the usual rain around Christmas, luckily just after reaping had ended. Kitty grew heavier, but she was not one of those women who looked as if they might burst; she carried small and could keep busy without too much extra effort.

“You know, Richard, it truly ought to be you having this poor baby!” she said to him, exasperated. “You fuss and cluck so!”

“I do think that ye ought to go into Arthur’s Vale and stay with Olivia Lucas,” he said anxiously. “Morgan’s Run is isolated.”

“I am not going to stay with Olivia Lucas!”

“What if the baby comes earlier than ye expect?”

“Richard, I have had a long talk with Olivia- I know all about it! Believe me, I will have plenty of time to let Joey know and let you know and let Olivia know. This is a first baby. They do not come in a hurry,” she said firmly.

“You are sure?”

“Truly,” she said in the voice of a dying martyr, walked to a chair lithely, sat down without making a difficulty of it, and looked at him very seriously. “I have some questions to ask you, Richard, and I insist upon some answers,” she said.

An air of authority surrounded her; fascinated, Richard could not take his eyes off her. “Then ask,” he said, sitting down where his face was on full display to her. “Go ahead, ask.”

“Richard, shortly I am to have your child, but I know next to nothing about your life. What little I know is thanks to Lizzie Lock. What she told me amounts to a pinpoint, and I think I am entitled to know more than Lizzie Lock. Tell me about the daughter who would be my age now.”

“Her name was Mary, and she is buried next to her mother in the burying ground of St. James’s, Bristol. She died of the smallpox when she was three. One reason why I would rather my children grew up here. The worst we have to worry about is dysentery.”

“Did you have other children?”

“A son, William Henry. He drowned.”

Her face crumpled. “Oh, Richard!”

“Do not grieve, Kitty. It was all a very long time ago, and in a different country. My children will not grow up with the same sort of risks.”

“There are risks here, and drowning is the most common one.”

“Believe me, the way my son drowned could not happen here. His was a death happens in cities, not on small islands where we all know each other. There are bad folk here and we do not mix with them, but when a school is organized, we parents will know a great deal more about the schoolmasters than Bristol parents do. William Henry died because of a schoolmaster.” Head to one side, he looked at her quizzically. “Any more questions?”

“How did your Bristol wife die?”

“Of an apoplexy, luckily before William Henry went. She did not suffer at all.”

“Oh, Richard!”

“There is no need to be sad, my love. You are why it happened, I am sure of it. In that I was not meant to know the joy of a real family in Bristol, where I never knew the joy of living in my own house. All I ask from you is that ye keep a small corner of your heart for me as the father of your children. That and the children will be enough.”

Her mouth parted, she almost said that he had more than a small corner of her heart, but she closed it with the words unspoken. To say them would be a promise, a commitment that she was not sure she would be able to honor. She liked him enormously, and, liking him, did not think it decent to imply that he was more than he truly was. No music in her heart, no wings on her soul. Did he give her those, it might be different. Did he give her those, she would be able to call him “my love.”

February wasblowy and wild, hurricanes lurking. At least the crops were all in and the grain under shelter; a harvest big enough to feed every person in Norfolk Island, though there would be none to spare for New South Wales. Just a lot of lime, a little timber.

On the 15th of February, Richard hurried home, late and very anxious because the Lieutenant-Governor had delayed him with more questions than Kitty could think of in a week. Kitty was not yet due, but the head had engaged, so Olivia Lucas had told him, and Joey Long was nobody’s idea of a midwife. Comforted by Olivia’s and Kitty’s assurances that first babies did not come in a hurry, he headed down the track to the house. No smoke issued from the tall stone chimney; his pace quickened. Even at almost nine months, she still insisted upon baking her own bread.

Not a sound.

“Kitty!” he called, bounding up the three steps to the door.

“I am here,” came a small voice.

Heart drumming a tattoo against his rib cage, Richard burst through the door, taking in the room with a single glance. Not a sign of her. In the bedroom-Christ! It had begun!

She was sitting on the bed propped against two pillows, her face turned toward him with a beatific smile. “Richard, meet your daughter,” she said. “Say good evening to Kate.”

His knees sagged but he managed to reach the bed, sit on its edge heavily. “Kitty!”

“Look at her, Richard. Is she not beautiful?”

A pair of work-scarred hands offered him a tightly wrapped bundle-oh, it was not fair that his hands should be better cared for by far than hers! He took the bundle and delicately pushed the swaddling away from a tiny folded face, its mouth a perfect O, its puffy eyelids shut, its skin too dark to be red, surmounted by a shock of thick black hair. The ocean of love opened and swallowed him whole; he sank without a protest back into that magical realm, leaned forward to kiss the weeny creature upon her forehead, felt the tears come.

“I do not understand! Ye were so well when I left for the afternoon. Ye said nothing.”

“There was nothing to say. I was truly well. It happened all in a muddle, I had no warning. My water broke, I had a gripey pain, and then I felt her head. So I spread a clean sheet on the floor, squatted down and had her. The whole did not take above a quarter of an hour. As soon as the afterbirth came I found some thread, tied the cord and cut it with my scissors. She was screaming-oh, what a voice! I cleaned her, tidied up the floor, put the sheet in to soak, and bathed myself.” Bursting with pride, she beamed complacently. “I truly do not know what all the fuss is about.” She pushed her calico house shift aside and displayed one exquisite breast, its dark red nipple beaded. “My milk has come in already too, though Olivia said to wait a while before giving suck. Am I not clever, Richard?”