Blackwell’s wife, I wondered? I’d never been bold enough to take the conversation in that direction. I clicked the locket closed, and tucked it back beneath the clothes.
I felt a hollowness inside me, though I couldn’t fathom why. Guilt, perhaps? Or the inexplicable envy that his thoughts might have been on that curly-haired beauty while he was sitting at the supper table with me?
I regretted going through his things. I closed the lid and went back to my sleeping pallet, bringing my arms up over my ears to block out the chaos in the street.
CHAPTER NINE
“The Enemy hath so completely possessed himself of the minds of all ranks and orders here; that it is a matter of doubt with me, that His power will be ever seen in this place.”
Letter from Rev. Samuel Marsden to Mary Stokes
October 1795
On Sunday morning, as I laced my boots for church, I said, “You’re a man of God.” My thoughts were with the Bible on the shelf. The crucifix within the chest. With a murmured prayer before each meal.
Blackwell buttoned his jacket. “Does that surprise you?”
I sat back on the chair, watching a tiny lizard dart under the door. “Sometimes it feels as though God has been forgotten here. At least within the factory walls.”
He ran a comb through his hair and peered into his shaving mirror. “My father was the vicar of our parish,” he told me finally. “So yes. I suppose I am a man of God.”
I felt a faint warmth in my chest. It was the first time he had offered me a scrap of information about who he was.
I stood up and smoothed my skirts. “You go first,” I told him. “I’ll follow.” I was always careful to distance myself from him when the colony was watching. I knew being seen with me would only bring him shame. There was talk of course; whispered at the spinning wheels and hollered over rum at the river. Talk of the factory lass who’d found a bed beneath the roof of an officer. I refused to speak on the subject; refused to give any weight to the rumours. I was afraid that if the gossip came too close, Blackwell might see the error of his ways and send me back to the street.
I pulled the door closed and made my way to the church. And into formation us government men and women went; lining up like children before we were herded into the front pews. Redcoats stood at either end, rifles at the ready. Sunlight blazed through the windows, making dust motes dance above our heads.
Reverend Marsden strode to the pulpit. Though the morning was cold, his cheeks were pink with exertion. His thick fingers curled over the edge of the pulpit as he looked out over the congregation.
I wondered if Maggie would make it into his sermon. A prayer for the departed. An acknowledgement that a crime had been committed. An acknowledgement that Maggie Abbott, a rough-spoken factory lass, had existed.
If anyone was going to speak out against Patrick Owen, I knew it would be the reverend. If there was anything Marsden despised more than the factory lasses, it was the croppies.
Maggie did make it into the sermon that day.
A loose woman, the reverend called her. A harlot. His steely gaze moved along the front row where the factory lasses were sitting. He looked into our eyes as he spoke of the perils of carnal immorality. Of the way a woman’s active sexuality threatened the very order of society. Upset the precious balance of masculine and feminine.
I stared back at him, forcing myself to hold his gaze. The person I was in London would have nodded along with Marsden. Yes, a sinner; a loose woman who deserved all that came to her. But the day I had stepped out of the factory with nowhere to sleep, I had come to see that there was not always a choice.
“The immorality of this colony is a thing you should all be ashamed of,” he said. “The extent of which will become clearer in the coming days and weeks.”
Murmurs rippled through the congregation.
I turned to Hannah, who was sitting beside me. “What do you suppose he means by that?”
She snorted. “Don’t waste your time dwelling on it. When you ever heard anything but drivel come out his mouth?”
“Behave yourselves,” a well-spoken man called down to the convicts.
“You behave yourself,” a young woman snapped back. I hid a smile.
“1 Corinthians 14,” the man boomed down at us, like he was trying to be the very voice of God himself, “it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.”
I returned to the hut before Blackwell, and gathered up my dirty clothes. I took the washboard down to the river and crouched on the edge in the pale winter sun. My boots sank into the muddy bank as I dipped my apron beneath the surface. For a moment, I just held it between my fingers, watching it float ghost-like through the bronze haze of the water.
I scrubbed my clothes along the washboard until my fingers were numb, hanging each piece from a tree; marking the forest with my fleeting scrap of civilisation. The washing helped take my mind off things. Helped take my mind off Maggie Abbott’s blank eyes staring out from within the scrub. Helped me stop wondering what Marsden had meant by revealing the extent of the colony’s immorality.
I bundled my wet clothes into my arms and went back to the hut, draping my shift and petticoats over the table, wet stockings spread out across a chair. I felt as though I was possessing the place, making it my own. Strewn about Blackwell’s hut like this, my clothes felt almost as inconsonant as they had hung up among the wilderness.
His footsteps behind me made me start. I spun around to find him holding out the book he had been reading a few nights earlier. I’d not even heard him come in.
“I’ve finished if you’d care to read it,” he said.
I murmured my thanks. There was something alluring about escaping into a fictitious world for a time. A precious thing here.
He glanced at the ghostly shapes of my washing. “It’s the Lord’s Day. You ought to be resting.” He nodded to the book. “Read it. I think you will enjoy it.”
I took the book and went back to the river. Followed it downstream a few yards to where the mangroves gave way to a battalion of broad trees. There was a chill in the wind, but the sun was struggling through the clouds. I needed to be out in the daylight, not in the endless shadows of the hut.
I opened the book and stared at the first page. The words swam in front of my eyes. My mind refused to be drawn into the story. I had already been transported into another realm that I would have believed fictitious had I not been living it.
I became aware that Blackwell had joined me by the river. He had changed out of his uniform into dark trousers and a faded riding coat. There was a clay pipe in his hand. I’d not seen him smoke often. He looked upwards.
“These trees are very beautiful,” he said. “Redgums.”
I nodded.
“I come here sometimes,” he told me. “For a little space.”
“I’m sorry.” I moved to stand. “I’ll leave. I—”
He held up a hand to stop me. “I didn’t mean for you to leave. I simply meant to say this place helps relax me.”
“Why do you need help relaxing?” I knew it a foolish question. Maggie’s murder. The Irish rebels. Owen’s upcoming trial.
“You put me on edge,” he said finally.
I looked up at him in surprise. “Why?”
“Well,” he said after a moment, “there’s the matter of my storage chest, to begin with.”
I felt my cheeks colour with shame. How did he know I had gone through the chest? Had I not put things back neatly enough?
“I’m sorry,” I said, meeting his eyes. “That was unacceptable.”
His face was unreadable. He gestured with the pipe to the grass-flecked earth beside me. “May I?”
I nodded.
For several moments we sat in silence, Blackwell’s long legs stretched out towards the river, mine folded neatly beneath me. Water burbled in the stillness.
After a moment, he gestured back to the redgums. “I used a little of this wood in the roof of the hut.”
“You built it yourself?”
“Mostly,” he said. “I learned a little construction when I was at school. I’ve always found it most rewarding. A way of leaving your mark on a place.” He chuckled lightly. “Although I can’t imagine that hut lasting too many generations. Each time the sky opens I fear the rain will carry it away.”
I ran my fingers over the faded leather cover of the book in my lap.
“You’re not enjoying it?” he asked.
I lowered my eyes. “In his sermon today, Reverend Marsden spoke of revealing the colony’s immorality. Do you know what he meant by it?”
“A muster,” Blackwell said shortly. “Nothing more. The governor likes to keep track of who is holding land, how many colonial-born children have arrived. Which prisoners are on and off stores…”
“What does any of that have to do with immorality?”
He puffed a line of smoke towards the clouds. The pipe didn’t suit him. He looked like a young man trying to whittle away the years. “Reverend Marsden is also to register the females in the colony. The service will take place next Sunday.”
“Register us?” I repeated. “And? We are catalogued by our place of birth? Our ages? Our children?”
“Yes,” said Blackwell. “Among other things.” He jammed the pipe back between his teeth.
“What other things?” I looked at him through narrowed eyes. “How does the reverend catalogue us, Lieutenant Blackwell?”
“You are to be catalogued by your marital status,” he said finally. “Wife or concubine.”
He spoke the words carefully, gently, but I felt the sting of them. I was not a wife. So it left no doubt as to what I was in Reverend Marsden’s eyes.
As to what I was in the colony’s eyes.
Once I had been a wife. But my husband had died and his spilled blood had led me to New South Wales. Now I spent each night lying on the floor beside a member of His Majesty’s Army.
Concubine.
“What do you think of this?” I asked, my voice hardening.
He shrugged. “It is what it is.”
“That is not an answer.”
“I’ll not fight with you, Eleanor,” Blackwell said calmly. “I’ll not be a dumping ground for your anger.”
“I don’t want to fight. I just want to know what you think of this muster.”
He lowered his pipe. “Reverend Marsden is doing what he thinks is best for the colony. And the women within it.” His words sounded rehearsed.
“Is that what you truly believe?” I asked. “Or is that just what you think you ought to say to me?”
He looked taken aback by my boldness. “The reverend has been pushing for a women’s barracks to be built. He believes the factory lasses’ plight will be eased with a safe place to sleep each night. And he hopes the muster will support his cause.”
“That may be so,” I said, “but that’s not what I asked. Do you think for yourself, Lieutenant? Or do you follow Reverend Marsden blindly?”
Blackwell’s voice rose slightly. “What exactly do you mean by that?”
I gave a small shrug. My words had come spilling out half formed. But I was glad I had finally gotten a rise out of him. Glad I had finally seen a little emotion. I sat up on my knees so my eyes were level with his. “Do you believe us all immoral harlots, Lieutenant? Us factory women who curl up on your floors? You’re a man of God. And the Bible says we must only do such a thing in the presence of our husbands. Is that what you’re thinking each night I sleep beside you?”
Blackwell’s neck reddened. And I saw then that my opinion mattered to him. What a strange thing, I thought distantly, that the views of a convict woman might hold such weight to a military officer. Perhaps I was not so insignificant. Perhaps none of us were.
“Reverend Marsden is not everything I believe in,” Blackwell said shortly. He emptied his pipe into the river and disappeared inside the hut. I hugged my knees to my chest and watched the silver streaks of ash float away on the tide.
CHAPTER TEN
They blamed Maggie’s murder on the blacks. Who could pretend to be surprised?
The verdict of Owen’s trial had filtered through the factory that day. His version of events, which we had for days believed nothing but a garbled lie, had become the truth; Maggie had left his hut after supper the night of her death, with too much liquor under her skin. Wandered into the bush to be set upon by natives.
And perhaps that was all the Rum Corps believed she deserved.
“You don’t know it a lie, Nell,” said Lottie.
We were out in the prison yard, eating the slivers of bread we’d brought for mealtime. Clouds hung low, threatening rain.
“Her feet were bare when I found her,” I said sharply. “Why would she have gone wandering into the bush without her boots?”
“She were a drinker,” said Lottie. “You know that. She probably weren’t thinking clearly.”
“And what about the bruises on her arms?” I asked. “She didn’t do that to herself.” I wrapped my hand around my teacup, craving its warmth. I never felt Maggie’s absence more acutely than when I was out in the jail yard with Lottie and Hannah. Without her brassy interjections, our conversations felt painfully incomplete.
“The bruises,” said Lottie with a sigh. “I told you before, they don’t prove anything.”
“I know you and Maggie weren’t the best of friends,” I said. “But—”
“That doesn’t mean I’m happy about what happened to her,” Lottie said pointedly. “It sickens me as much as it does you. But Patrick has been found innocent.”
I whacked the arm of Hannah, who was sitting on the bench beside me. “Would you make her see sense?”
Hannah jabbed the remains of her bread in Lottie’s direction. “Ain’t no making this one see sense.”
I pulled my eyes away from Lottie’s glare. I could feel our friendship beginning to strain under the weight of our disagreement. For the sake of our relationship, I knew I ought to keep my mouth shut. I had already lost one friend that month. I couldn’t bear to lose another. But nor could I not just sit back in acceptance while Patrick Owen walked free.
“I suppose it doesn’t matter who killed her, does it,” I said bitterly. “Because Maggie Abbott was nothing but a concubine.”
“You still on about that damn muster?” Lottie asked. “It’s just Marsden’s blathering.”
“It’s not just Marsden’s blathering. Lieutenant Blackwell says the register is to be sent back to England. Imagine what they’ll think of us there.”
Hannah gave a short laugh. “Sorry to say it, Nell, but whatever it is, I’m sure they’re already thinking it.”
Two days earlier, the women in the colony had been corralled outside the church before the service. We had presented ourselves to Reverend Marsden’s secretary, and become nothing more than entries scrawled on a page. Name, age, marital status.
Widow, I’d said. But I knew when that register made its way back to England I would be listed upon it as concubine. I tried to tell myself it didn’t matter. What difference did it make what men ten thousand miles away thought of us out here? But it mattered more than I wanted to admit. There was every chance the muster would be read by men who had known my father, known my husband. Men I had walked among at soirees and Christmas parties. The shame of being transported had been crushing enough. And now beside my label of convict, I would also be marked as a concubine.
I looked between Hannah and Lottie. “Doesn’t this bother you?”
“Are you truly surprised by it?” asked Lottie, her mouth still half full of bread. “People like us, we’re nothing. When are you going to realise that?”
Her words stung.
As a girl, I’d been led to believe I was a prize. Something to be awarded to the gentleman with the biggest income or the best family connections. I was preened and polished like a jewel, my dowry added to, my skills and etiquette polished until they shone.
But as we were herded back
upstairs by a pimply soldier who looked half my age, I realised Lottie was right. We were nothing. Our names, our stories, our pasts; none of that was important. We were just marks on Marsden’s register.
Concubine one.
Concubine two.
Three, four, five.
We could disappear, die at the hands of another, and who was there to care? We were just hands to weave the cloth. Wombs to carry the next generation. And there would always be more of us where we had come from.
“The blacks?” I demanded when I got back to the hut that night. Blackwell was dressed in full uniform, sitting on a chair and polishing his boots. I couldn’t fathom why. They’d be caked in mud again the second he stepped outside. “You truly believe she was killed by the blacks?”
Blackwell didn’t rise to my anger. It made me even more furious. I slammed my hand hard against the table, forcing him to look up. “Blame the blacks. Because it’s easy. Isn’t that right?”
“There was not enough evidence to charge Patrick Owen,” Blackwell said, pressing the lid onto the pot of polish and setting it back on the shelf.
“Maggie was lodging with him.”
“That’s not evidence.”
I paced back and forth, hot with anger. Anger at Owen’s freedom, at Marsden’s labelling of us. At Blackwell’s calmness and his stupid need to polish his boots.
“Do you think him guilty?” I demanded.
Blackwell sighed as he stood up.
I planted my hands on my hips and glared as I waited for an answer. Somewhere inside, I suppose I knew this wasn’t his fault. At least, not entirely. But seeing him there in his lobster coat, all I could think of was the officers on the jury who had let Owen walk free. The skewed authority, the injustices. Everything that was wrong with this place. Besides, I had to take my anger out on him, because who else would listen?
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