Colleen McCullough: Morgan’s Run

“It affects him far more than it does me,” said Kitty when Stephen related what had happened. Richard had gone off to the bath pool he had made, there to wash himself clean of the sawpits and Thomas Restell Crowder. “I am sorry that Kate’s name is not Morgan, but who could deny that she is a Morgan? What is marriage anyway? At least half of us convict women are not officially married, but that does not make us any less wives. I do not repine, Stephen, truly I do not.”

“Richard is a churchgoing believer in God, Kitty, and thus he finds it extremely difficult to deal with the fact that his progeny are bastards in the eyes of the Church of England.”

“They will not be bastards after Lizzie dies, and she is old,” said Kitty comfortably.

How to explain to her that marriage later could never remove the slur? Stephen decided not to bother trying. Instead he grabbed at Kate. “Hello, my peach! My darling angel!”

“Kate is not an angel-she is exactly what you called her, a shrew. Strong willed! Goodness, Stephen, she is but six months old and already she rules us with a rod of iron.”

“Nay,” said Stephen, holding the mite’s serious stare with smiling eyes, then kissing her on both plump cheeks, “she needs no rod of iron to rule Richard. A wisp of thread or a feather would do equally well. Is that not so, my Kate? Where is your Petruchio, I wonder? In what guise will he come?” He handed Kate back.

“Petruchio?”

“The Shakespearean gentleman who tamed Kate the shrew. Take no notice, ’tis just my whimsy.”

A silence fell. Stephen contented himself with contemplating this Norfolk Island madonna, a study in rag-quality calico. No matter where her life may have led her, Kitty would always have been best at this, mothering a child. Here was this powerful baby who ought to be filled with thundering rages, yet with Kitty for a mother she was a peach, an angel. Good tabbies have good kittens. A good tabby is our Kitty.

What else was she? Not intellectually brilliant, but not stupid by any means. The mouse who had hidden in the forest had long gone. During the two years she had lived with Richard Morgan she had blossomed into a plain-faced, fabulously seductive woman. The trouble was, did Richard have her love? Stephen was never sure because he fancied she was never sure herself. What she feels for Richard is sexual enchantment. That binds her to him, as babies do, but still… She does not see any allure in him-why, I will never know. Is it his years? Surely not! He carries them with as little effort as he saws.

“D’ye love Richard?” he asked.

Those ale-and-pepper eyes looked sad. “I do not know, Stephen. I wish I did, but I do not. I am not educated enough to make those sorts of judgments. I mean, how do you know that you love him?”

“I just do. He fills my eyes and my mind.”

“He does not do that to me.”

“Do not hurt him, Kitty, please!”

“I will not hurt him,” she said, jigging Kate on her knee, then smiled and patted his hand. “I will stick to Richard through thick and thin, Stephen. I owe it to him, and I pay my debts. That is what transportation is supposed to teach us, and I have learned all my lessons. Except that somehow I never get around to reading and writing. House and babies come first.”

When Kittytold him she was with child again, Richard was appalled. “Ye cannot be! It is too soon!”

“Not really. There will be fourteen months between them,” she said placidly. “They will fare better if they are close in age.”

“The work, Kitty! Ye’ll be old before your time!”

That made her laugh. “Gammon, Richard! I am very well, I am young, and I am looking forward to the arrival of William Henry.”

“Kitty, I was happy to wait, truly-oh, damn that word, I am picking up the habit of it!”

“Do not be angry,” she pleaded. “Olivia said that I would not fall while ever I gave Kate the breast.”

“An old wives’ tale! I should have waited.”

“Why?”

“Because another one will be too much for you.”

“I say another one will not be too much for me.” She handed Kate to Richard and picked up an empty bucket. “I am off to get water for the house.”

“Let me get it.”

Her teeth showed, her eyes blazed. “For the hundredth time, Richard Morgan, will you stop fussing and clucking? Why do you never want to give me the credit I deserve? I am the one grows the babies! I am the one says when that will be! I am the one lives in this house for all of my days and nights! I am the one decides what is too much for me and what is not! Leave me alone! Stop making all my decisions for me! Let me do as I want without forever plaguing me-this is too much, that is too little, why did I not ask you to do it-I have had enough! I am not an orphan child anymore, I am grown up enough to have babies! And if I want another one, I will have another one! You are not my lord and master, His Majesty the King is!”

She marched off with the bucket, radiating rage.

Richard sat down on the top step with Kate on his knee, both of them silenced.

“I think, daughter, that I have just been put in my place.”

Kate sat bolt upright, unsupported, and looked at her father out of speckled eyes neither William Henry’s nor Kitty’s; hers were a fawnish grey which tended to disguise the presence of the dark dots peppering them. Those who found them had looked deeply. Her beauty was manifest, though perhaps it was simply the beauty of babyhood, but her coloring, like Richard’s two dead children’s, was striking-masses of black curls, finely marked black brows, thick black lashes around those widely opened storm-hued eyes, a full red mouth and Richard’s flawless brown skin. Kitty was right, she was definitely a Morgan. A Morgan named Clark.

He writhed, cursed himself for the millionth time. All his children would be born bastards; Lizzie Lock was not going to oblige him by dying in a hurry. Of course he could not murder her, but there was no one save God to say that he was not allowed to wish her dead.

Why can we never seem to keep the threads which weave into the pattern of our lives untangled? I did not think when I went into marriage with Lizzie Lock. Or rather, I did not think of myself or the future. I pitied her, I fancied I owed her a debt-I thought like a head man and I still think like a head man. Stephen warned me, I seem to remember that, but I did not listen. The people I have harmed are my own children-the dear soul who is my heart’s wife is dismissed as my “woman.” They never even say “mistress.” The term is “woman.” A word which suggests that she has no identity, absolutely no status of any kind. A simple convenience. I can, as some men are already doing, throw her to one side without any kind of compensation to her. Sentences are up, those who have hoarded enough gold are buying their passages to England, or Cathay, or anywhere else that takes their fancy. Old faces like Joe Robinson’s are disappearing. But so many of them are leaving their women here to fend for themselves. As well that, like Major Ross, Commander King is as willing to grant a lone woman land as a lone man. These sad abandoned creatures do not need to hawk their favors around the barracks of the New South Wales Corps soldiers. What we do to women is unforgivable. They are not whores by nature. We force them to it.

Kate gurgled, smiled, revealed that she was cutting teeth. My firstborn, my daughter. My bastard. Hugging her, Richard put his lips to the unbelievable sleekness of her skin, inhaled the fresh clean smell of it, aware that Kate adored to be adored.

“Kate,” he said to her, turning her within his hands so that she faced him and could give him seductive glances-in that she took after her mother-and he could talk to her as if she understood what he was saying. “My Kate, what is to become of you? How can I ensure that ye’re never reduced to the sort of life God inflicted upon your mother? How can I turn ye from the bastard child of two convict parents into a well-schooled young lady with her pick of every young man in this part of the world?” He kissed her tiny hand, felt its fingers curl strongly around one of his. Then he snuggled her into the crook of his arm, tucked her head beneath his chin and looked into the distance, his mind filled with the dilemma of her fate.