One of Us Buried

by Johanna Craven

  Two of the soldiers strode past and I found myself taking a step closer to Hannah. She gave my wrist a squeeze as we followed the marines down the main street.

  “Just keeping walking,” she murmured.

  And so I kept walking. For what else was there to do?

  We were led to the government food store, a sandstone warehouse on the edge of the settlement. Soldiers turned through our indentation documents and scrawled our names on their ledgers. And here was our food for the week, wrapped into packages as small as our fists. I looked down at the bundle in my hand. I had little thought of what was inside it. But one look at its miserable size and my stomach was already rolling with hunger.

  The factory was nothing more than two long warehouses above what I would later learn was the men’s jail. Up the stairs we went, herded by the soldiers who had lavished us with food.

  It was the stench of the place that hit me first; the same filth and damp, and unbreathable air we had languished in on the prison ship. The floorboards were misshapen and dark, the blackened bricks above an unlit grate marking all there was of a kitchen. The place was a chaos of rattling looms and whirring wheels, punctuated by the shrieks of young children. Women hunched over spinning wheels, their babies in baskets, strapped to their backs, tottering across the muck and straw that carpeted the floor. The carding machines and looms sighed and thudded steadily, my muscles tensing as the jagged rhythm moved inside me.

  Here came the superintendent, with his beak of a nose and cloud of white hair. Waistcoat straining against a puffed-out chest. He looked over us, clustered at the top of the stairs like lost sheep.

  “Plenty of them,” he said to the soldiers in a thick Scottish accent. “The men not like what they saw?”

  One of the marines chuckled. “A bad bunch perhaps.”

  The superintendent led us into the second warehouse through a sea of blue-striped dresses. Some of the women peered at us, as though inspecting, calculating. Others kept their eyes on their spinning, seemingly oblivious to our arrival. What were we to these other women, I wondered? Potential friends? Rivals? Nothing more than an inconvenience?

  The bad bunch of us was divided; some to the carding machines at the far side of the warehouse, others to the looms. I was shunted by the superintendent to an empty stool in front of a large spinning wheel, a sack of colourless wool dumped at my feet. I watched some beastly black insect crawl through the mass of it.

  “See she knows what she’s doing,” the superintendent said to the woman next to me. Then his heavy footsteps clomped off towards the other new arrivals. I gave the young woman next to me little more than a glance.

  “I know how to spin,” I mumbled.

  In truth, I’d had little cause to do such a thing in the past, but I didn’t want to speak, or sit by that mangy sack of wool and be taught the ways of my new life. Tears were stabbing my throat, and I knew if I spoke again they would spill. For all its chaos, there was an empty, hollow feeling to this factory above the jail. A sadness that pressed down upon the place, wrought by the regret and grief of these striped-skirted women. I felt an ache deep within my chest that I was to exist in a place filled with such sorry creatures. And at the realisation that I was now one of them.

  I shot a quick glance at the woman beside me, watching as she sat rolls of carded fleece on her lap and teased it onto the yarn that was gathering on her wheel. Yes, I thought, I remembered this from some long ago, barely accessible part of my childhood. An aunt’s house. A spinning wheel in the parlour. I let the memory in my hands take over.

  Slowly, I pedalled, then faster, eyes on the wheel to avoid even a glance at this horror that was now my life. At the feel of the wool sliding through my fingers, and the mesmerising cycle of the spokes before me, I felt my tears sink back below the surface.

  An hour, perhaps two, and heavy footsteps sounded up the stairs, the rhythm a counterpoint to the clattering of the looms. Here was the soldier I had seen at the river. He strode across the factory floor towards the superintendent. Bent his head and spoke in a murmur.

  His presence seemed to suck the air from the room. I felt my eyes pull towards him.

  “No,” hissed a voice beside me. “Don’t even look at him.”

  The woman next to me at the spinning wheels was sharp-eyed and slender. A few years from thirty, I guessed; close to my own age. Strands of brown hair hung out the sides of her cap, the lines of her face precise and angular.

  I frowned, taken aback by her brusqueness. “Who is he?”

  “That’s Lieutenant Blackwell.” The woman’s voice was dark, despite the gentle Irish contours of her speech. “He’s the worst of all them lobster bastards. Full of hate.”

  Heat prickled my neck. But curiosity had me glancing back over my shoulder.

  The lieutenant was somewhere between thirty and forty, I guessed. His hair was coffee-coloured and straight, slightly overgrown. A sculpted, faintly handsome face, but one that held neither kindness nor malice. There was a blankness to him. An emotionlessness. He looked too empty to be capable of hate.

  His pale eyes shifted, catching mine. I looked away, my heart jolting. I pedalled the spinning wheel harder, focusing on the steady rhythm of the thing until the soldier’s footsteps disappeared back down the stairs.

  “I saw the raft come in this morning,” the woman beside me said once my chaotic spinning had slowed. “Were your journey all right then? Did the most of you survive?”

  I nodded. “The most of us, yes.” We’d lost just four women on the journey; a number I knew enough to be grateful for. Their deaths had not been announced to us, nor were we allowed on deck for their burials. We’d just assumed them dead when they’d never returned from the surgeon’s cabin.

  “You’re English,” said the woman, making it sound like something of an insult. “Your ship come in from London then?”

  I nodded.

  She made a noise from the back of her throat. “What’s your name?”

  “It’s Nell,” I told her. “Nell Marling.”

  Her hazel eyes shifted, as though debating whether to trust me. “Lottie Byrne,” she said finally, giving me a ghost of a smile. The warmth of the gesture filled me with relief. I hadn’t realised how much I was craving kindness.

  “You’ll be all right, Nell,” Lottie said, her eyes back on the wheel. “We do our best to look out for each other. There’s no one else going to do that for us.”

  *

  When dusk fell over the factory, bells rang and spinning wheels slowed. Women climbed from their stools and spread out around the edges of the room, claiming their belongings, their squares of floor, their children. Some, I saw, had brought their threadbare blankets from the prison ships. Others upended sacks of oily wool and curled up on them between the spinning wheels.

  No beds in the factory, but room on the floor for perhaps thirty. Room for less than half the women whose hands were red and raw from weaving Parramatta cloth. No space for any of us who had just climbed off the barge. The superintendent herded us towards the stairwell.

  “Where are we to go?” Hannah asked.

  “I don’t care. Find yourself lodgings somewhere in town.”

  A humourless laugh escaped me. This was a joke, surely. Find lodgings? With what money? All I had to my name were my shin-length skirts and a pair of old stockings.

  I stepped blankly out of the factory, flanked by the other women from the Norfolk. I followed them over a rickety wooden bridge, back towards the main street. After the stench of the factory, the air smelled fragrant and clean. Birds shrieked, swooping and zigzagging through a pink and lilac sky.

  I had been expecting bars and locked gates, like the cell I had languished in at Newgate. But my incarceration here was disguised as freedom. I saw then that there was little point in restraining us. In the fading daylight, the surrounding forest was a shadow. But I could see there was no end to it. The land was so vast it was dizzying. Only a madwoman would turn her back on the meagre secur
ity offered by the settlement.

  I heard Lottie call my name. I spun around, achingly glad to see her.

  “How do we go about finding lodgings?” I wrapped my arms around myself, wishing for a cloak or shawl.

  She nodded to the street ahead of us. “They have lodgings.”

  Word of our arrival, it seemed, had reached the men of Parramatta. They stood on the edge of the street in clusters, reminding me of the men who had come trawling through the Norfolk in search of wives. But these were no well-dressed settlers, or soldiers with polished buttons. These men were grime-streaked and ragged, with scruffy beards and unwashed skin. Men, I knew with certainty, who had been sent here on His Majesty’s pleasure. I recognised the dejected slope of their shoulders, the dulled anger in their eyes.

  They called out to us. Shelter and fire. Four shillings a week. Come on lass, you can do no better.

  “We’re to lodge with these men?” I coughed.

  “Four shillings a week,” Lottie said flatly. “For shelter and fire.”

  “Four shillings a week?” I repeated. “How am I to pay that?”

  Lottie said nothing. My jaw tightened as the reality of the situation swung at me. We were that precious commodity of soft skin and curves. A novelty here in this land of men.

  “They’re willing to bargain,” she said finally. “They’ll give you a little coin as well as extra food and lodgings.” She gave me a wry smile. “A fine deal.”

  “You do this?” I asked. “Sell yourself for a bed?”

  She pressed her lips into a thin white line. I wondered if I had offended her with my sharpness.

  I swallowed the sickness in my throat. “I’ll sleep on the street.”

  “Don’t be mad. You want to be torn to pieces by the savages?”

  A hot ribbon of fear ran through me, but I pushed it away. I’d heard talk of the savages, of course; wild warriors who could throw four spears in the time it took to load a flintlock pistol. I’d convinced myself they were little more than a myth. The savages hiding in the dark was a fear I didn’t have room for.

  Head down, I began to walk. Away from the factory, away from the men. I had no thought of where I was going. There was nothing in this place. I just needed to keep moving.

  “Do as you like,” Lottie called after me.

  I closed my eyes, feeling a cold wind up against my cheeks. This place had taken my freedom. But it would not take my dignity. Not any more than it had already.

  Huts of mud and bark lined the road, stretches of farmland behind them. I knew well I’d find nothing beyond the rim of the town but more of the trees and dark that had flanked us down the river.

  “Where you off to, lass?”

  I spun around to see a tall, dark-haired man standing a few yards behind me. His cheeks were pock-marked and leathery, thick stubble across his square jaw.

  “You’ll not find much out that way.” His voice was rough and Irish. “Two hours to Toongabbie.” He chuckled. “That’s if the dragons don’t get you.”

  I kept walking. “Leave me alone.”

  “I’ve a bed if you need it.”

  “No. I’m not interested.”

  He reached suddenly for my wrist and yanked me back towards him. “You think you’re too good for us?” Breath stale against my cheek. “Look at yourself, lass. Just look where you are.”

  Fear shot through me and I pulled away. “Get away from me.” I changed direction abruptly and strode towards the dark spires of the church. I heard the man’s laughter behind me.

  “You think a factory lass is welcome in a house of God?”

  I began to walk faster. My cloth bag swung on one shoulder, carrying the creased mess of my spare dress. Animal sounds rose from the darkness; screeches, rasps, and the blessedly familiar lowing of cows.

  In the falling dark, the church was empty. Through the narrow windows, I could see nothing but shadow. I pushed against the door, but it refused to move. Perhaps the man was right. Perhaps the factory lasses weren’t welcome here. A locked door to keep out the lags.

  I made my way around the back of the building, where shadows lay thick and allowed me to hide. The roof was slightly overhanging; perhaps half a foot of shelter. I leant wearily against the wall. Laughter floated out of a crooked hut I assumed was a tavern. The women from the Norfolk had disappeared, lured into houses for four shillings a week. I glanced into the street for the dark-haired man. Was glad to find him gone.

  The sudden stillness struck me. When was the last time I had been alone? On the Norfolk, there had been not a scrap of privacy. In seven months, I’d not done so much as relieve myself without another woman watching. This sudden isolation felt disorienting.

  My legs were aching, and my fingers stung from hours at the spinning wheel. Exhausted, I let myself sink to the ground.

  The acrid stench of my food package hit me the moment I opened my cloth bag. I pulled it out warily, unwrapping the brown paper. The sliver of salt pork was discoloured and gnarled, the smell of it turning my stomach. I hurled it into the darkness. At the bottom of the package was a small cup of flour. Unspoiled, as far as I could tell. And what, I wondered, staring blankly down at my food rations, was I to do with a cup of flour and not so much as a candle flame to bake it into bread?

  I wrapped up the package and set it back inside my bag. Curled up on my side and tried to find a little sleep.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “During the night these women spread themselves through all the town and neighbourhood of Parramatta, and [some] are glad to cohabit with any poor, wretched man who can give them shelter for the night.”

  Rev. Samuel Marsden

  An Answer to Certain Calumnies

  1826

  At the spinning wheels the next morning, Lottie asked questions. Where did I go last night? Did I sleep? Who took me?

  After rolling around in the dirt all night, I was too tired to speak. But her last question sparked something inside me. “No one took me,” I said sharply. “I slept on the street is all.”

  “On the street?” she demanded. “What about the savages?”

  “I didn’t see any savages.” I turned back to the spinning wheel. My eyes were stinging with exhaustion and Lottie’s questions were getting under my skin. Hunger was gnawing deep into my stomach.

  “So what then?” she said, after not nearly enough silence. “You going to spend your whole sentence sleeping in the street? Seven years without a roof over your head?”

  I didn’t answer. I couldn’t contemplate the rest of my sentence. All I could think about was what I would do that night. That morning, I’d walked back up the stairs to the factory to find the door unlocked. Perhaps, I thought, I could creep inside at dawn and manage an hour of sleep on the staircase before the bells rang for the workday to start.

  “What d’you do?” Lottie asked. “Thieving?”

  I kept my eyes on the wool gliding though my fingers. “Yes. Thieving.”

  “And me,” she said. “I asked a cobbler the price of a pair of shoes. He took one look at me and told me I couldn’t afford them. So I pinched them.”

  I flashed her a smile. “Sounds as though he deserved it.”

  The superintendent stopped by the spinning wheel of a dark-haired woman in the corner of the room.

  “Stand up,” he said sharply.

  The woman stood, arms held protectively around her swollen belly. The superintendent clicked his tongue in loud disapproval.

  “Took him long enough,” Lottie murmured. “Poor thing’s about to drop right here on the factory floor.”

  “Who is the father of your child?” the superintendent asked.

  The woman looked at him squarely. “Reverend Samuel Marsden.”

  A snort of suppressed laughter went through the room. I felt a small smile on the edge of my lips.

  Lottie caught my eye and chuckled. “Never in my life have I met a man with as many children as the good Reverend Marsden.”

  When I stepped
out of the factory that evening, three soldiers were approaching the building. I recognised the tallest as Lieutenant Blackwell.

  I put my head down and quickened my pace.

  “You. Stop.”

  My chest tightened. I froze, looking ahead for Lottie, but she had disappeared. Two of the soldiers continued into the jail, but Blackwell took a few steps towards me, boots crunching on the road. Despite the dust, his uniform was immaculate, brass buttons gleaming and the braiding on his jacket inexplicably white. My heart began to speed.

  “You came in on the Norfolk,” he said. It was not a question. His voice was deeper than I had been expecting. I could feel it in my chest. “I passed you this morning,” he said. “Saw you sleeping behind the church. There’s no need for that.”

  I felt a flush of embarrassment.

  “I know the system here is not so easy for…” He hesitated. “New arrivals.”

  I almost laughed at that. Was he not part of the system, this polished officer in the New South Wales Corps? I kept my eyes on the ground, as though I might save myself from turning to stone by avoiding his eyes.

  Somewhere between London and Parramatta, I had trained myself to not be afraid. I’d spent months in abject terror; a tearful mess in my Newgate cell, weak legged in the courtroom dock. I had no strength, because I’d come to believe it was my place to be weak. To let the men in my life carry me; to pick me up when I fell.

  But one morning, in the dark and damp bowels of the prison ship, I came to see there was no one coming to rescue me. If I was to survive in this new life, I would have to find a way through my terror.

  And so I steeled myself against my fear. Found some long-hidden part of me that vaguely resembled strength. The filth of the Norfolk, the mountains of ocean, whatever awaited me in New South Wales; I would find a way through it. Because my only other option was to die.