by Meg Keneally
‘I have to watch,’ she said. ‘If I look away I’ll be deserting him.’
The first crack was loud, louder than it normally was. Dan grunted, which Jenny knew he wouldn’t have done if the blow had been delivered with the usual force. He would know, she thought, that his best chance of survival – and hers, and Charlotte’s, and that of the baby who would arrive at any moment – lay in maintaining the respect some of the others still had for him. Men who cried during floggings were expendable.
Dan wasn’t wailing, but somebody else was. Charlotte stood beside her, no longer able to gain a perch that she considered acceptable on her mother’s hip, which had disappeared as her belly grew. The last thing Jenny had wanted to do was to bring Charlotte here. But the whole settlement was forced to attend, so Jenny had no one to leave her with.
Jenny wished, desperately, that Mawberry would come. Perhaps the woman would have consented to take the child into the woods for the day. Perhaps there were other little girls Charlotte’s age who might distract her, while the man she knew as her father was being flayed. Such a thing, though, was not possible.
The night before, their last in their hut – and without Dan, who had been locked in the guard house – she’d tried to prepare the girl. ‘It’s like a play, I suppose,’ she had said, before realising that her daughter had neither seen nor heard of plays. Her stories came into the world without the aid of a playwright to write the parts, or actors to inhabit them.
‘Is it fun?’ Charlotte asked. She was nearly three now, and detested being in the same place looking at the same thing for too long. If she had to stay where she was, she would bring her considerable powers to bear on changing her environment, drawing intricate and meaningless patterns in the dirt with a stick, ripping leaves off trees and sprinkling them where she felt they would sit to best effect.
‘Not fun, no,’ Jenny told her. ‘But . . . it may look as though your pa is being hurt. I want you to know, you are not to be upset by it. It’s a game. One you should never seek to play, but one you don’t need to fear.’
That night, Jenny had cried. Not because of their circumstances, although those were upsetting enough. The tears came because, for the first time, she had lied to her daughter.
Now, when the flail again connected with Dan’s back, Charlotte let out a piercing screech. She started forward, and Jenny knew she intended to race up to Joseph, grab his leg, tell him to stop it, now! Jenny knelt quickly and pulled her daughter back, lifting her and hugging her. Her small body was straining to turn around so that she could see what was happening, and her legs, muscular from constant movement, were kicking wildly so that Jenny had to put her down in case she harmed the baby.
‘It will be over soon,’ she whispered, ‘and Pa will be back with us. Listen, can you hear him crying? He’s not, is he? He won’t want you to, either. You have to show you are as brave as he is, the bravest of sea dragons.’
It was over soon, and Dan was cut down and taken off to the hospital. Apart from the occasional grunt, he had not made a sound.
Jenny and Charlotte went to the huts that housed the female convicts. They were made of wooden slabs and bark, much like Dan and Jenny’s, and while the winds were barely impeded by their construction, at least the worst of the rain was denied entry.
Charlotte was still trembling, and on the walk to the huts had encircled her arms around Jenny’s knee so that they hobbled along as one ungainly organism. When they entered the hut, a place where Charlotte had never been, her imperiousness reasserted itself. ‘We will go home now,’ she said.
‘You are home, duckling. This is where we will be staying.’
‘No, it is not. We will go home.’
Nothing Jenny said could convince her otherwise. Bea sat with Charlotte while Jenny went to find a shared pot in which she could cook their ration. When she returned, the girl was asleep.
But Charlotte was awake when Jenny awoke later. She was looking towards the entrance, waving cheerfully.
Jenny sat up, a process that now required several attempts. Charlotte was smiling. That was good, Jenny thought – perhaps Dan’s scourging had not featured as much in the little girl’s dreams as it had in Jenny’s.
Her relief ended when she saw who Charlotte was waving to. On the other side of the hut, sitting alone, was Elenor. She was returning Charlotte’s waves, and sometimes shaping her hand into a duck then having it nibble on her other arm, which made Charlotte giggle.
When Elenor saw Jenny was awake, she stood up and came over. She sat down in front of them, smiling at them both. When her face turned to Jenny the smile elongated on one side, showing a few broad teeth. ‘A good day’s work by my Joseph,’ she said over Charlotte’s head.
‘More days’ work like that, and some may decide he belongs on the other end of it,’ said Jenny.
‘Ah, they won’t decide that. For he has the governor’s ear.’
Jenny snorted.
‘Well, they think he does,’ said Elenor, tilting her head at the centre of the hut. ‘Amounts to the same thing.’ Then she turned back to Charlotte.
Jenny tensed and drew her arms around her daughter, flicking her eyes over Elenor to see if any of the folds of her skirt might be concealing a knife.
Elenor noticed. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she snapped. ‘She’s a child.’
It was true that Jenny had never seen or heard of Elenor or Joseph harming a child. They reserved their poison for the fully grown.
Elenor did seem to have a genuine desire to distract Charlotte. She taught her the same clapping game that Jenny had, one both women had learned twenty years ago in different parts of Cornwall. Charlotte clearly already knew the rules, which didn’t stop Elenor from teaching them again while she exclaimed at how quickly the girl was picking them up.
Jenny was so tense her body began to hurt. She crouched unsteadily so that she could be ready to move should she need to, ready to intervene should the woman begin to look as though she intended harm.
Elenor did intend harm, naturally. But no amount of vigilance from Charlotte’s mother could have prevented the blow landing. By the time Jenny realised that the violence would be verbal instead of physical, it was too late to reach out and block the little girl’s ears, or scoop her up and run from the hut.
‘Charlotte,’ Elenor said, ‘where’s your pa?’
‘Pa’s out with the fish,’ Charlotte said, because that was what Jenny had told her when she’d asked for Dan.
‘Pa’s not with the fish, and won’t be for some time,’ said Elenor. ‘He’s in the hospital. He might die there.’
‘He will not, and nor is he close to it,’ said Jenny, pulling Charlotte back into her and moving to block her ears.
But before she could, Elenor landed the blow. ‘It’s odd that you call him Pa. He is not, did you know that? Your pa is a pig-nosed, lice-ridden gaoler in Plymouth who doesn’t know you’re alive, and would not care if he did. Over here – and it’s a long way, Charlotte, such a long way, you could sail until Christmas and still not get back – over here you have no pa.’
She reached over, smiling and patting the little girl’s knee, then aimed another snarl at Jenny before standing and walking out of the building.
CHAPTER 17
Jenny was waiting for Elenor when the woman returned from the shore with armfuls of officers’ clothes, wet and perhaps a bit more frayed than they had been.
Bea had been sent off that day to collect oyster shells and had taken Charlotte with her, pretending they would be looking for sea fairies in each shell they picked up.
Jenny was grateful. She had a job to do, and she did not want Charlotte to see it.
She had stood outside the hut, pacing a little around one of the cooking fires, dead now in the middle of the day. She doubted herself, for a moment, when she saw Elenor, Suse and some of the others walking up with the clothes over their arms. Jenny wondered if the clothes Elenor carried belonged to Mr Corbett. Whoever owned them was likely
to need to borrow some shortly. Elenor would not be expecting her to act, clearly thought she had Jenny under her control now – with Elenor and Joe the reigning king and queen of the huts, able to tip poison into a little girl’s ear with impunity.
Elenor’s smile came back as soon as she saw Jenny, a look of vicious narrow-eyed delight. She walked right up, handed over the wet clothes and said, ‘Hang these out.’
Jenny took them, looking at the ground. Made to shuffle over towards the lines, reaching into her pocket with her free hand and closing it around the rock she had been hiding there. Mr Black had always told them to hold something heavy if they could, if they had to use their fists. She stretched out her arm, pretending to reach up to drape the white breeches she was holding on the line. They nearly made it to their destination, too, and Jenny could feel the credulous joy of Elenor as she watched the queen of the highway obey her.
Then Jenny dropped the breeches, and pivoted, and the hand holding the rock connected with the side of Elenor’s face.
The force of the blow set Elenor on her backside, and blood streamed from her mouth.
I may have knocked out one of the teeth the scurvy hasn’t taken, thought Jenny. I hope I did.
Elenor didn’t remain stunned for long. She reached a hand behind her and pushed upwards, trying to spring into a standing position so she could return the favour. She glanced at Suse for some help, but the larger woman was backing away, turning, perhaps going to fetch someone. There wasn’t much time left for Jenny to deliver a warning that would be indelible enough to buy her some peace.
Elenor was halfway up when Jenny reached her, shoving in her shoulder so that she again thudded onto the ground. Jenny knelt down, her knees on top of Elenor’s legs, letting her feel the full weight of a mother and an almost-born baby. ‘I will kill you, next time,’ she said.
Suse was coming back now, puffing hard to move her bulk along at a speed that she felt was appropriate to the situation. She had fetched a soldier. The soldier was Mr Corbett.
‘She attacked me!’ screeched Elenor, with a slushiness to her voice that Jenny hoped meant Elenor had at least bitten her tongue. ‘I was coming back with the laundry and she ran at me. Maybe you were keeping her in that hut because she’s too dangerous to have among the decent folk. There’s Mr Reid’s breeches, trampled into the dirt!’
Corbett stood with his arms crossed, making no move to drag Jenny to her feet. He looked at her, both eyebrows raised.
‘She is – and I will never say this again – right,’ Jenny said. ‘She wanted to upset Charlotte, tried very hard to do it. Will not do it again, if I have a say.’
‘Now you are compounding your offence by attempting to grind her into the dirt along with Mr Reid’s breeches,’ Corbett said. He took her hand, grasped her under the elbow and helped her to her feet, then dusted his hands off before reaching out to Elenor.
‘She needs a flogging, so she does,’ said Elenor.
‘You would be happy to see her flogged in this state?’ said Corbett.
‘That belly of hers didn’t stop her whacking me.’
‘Tell me, Elenor. How many times does an argument result in someone getting hit, here?’
Elenor said nothing.
‘Quite a common occurrence, I think,’ he said. ‘Yet I can’t recall Susannah being sent to fetch me or anyone else to intervene. Nor can I recall those with bruises on their faces, put there by you, demanding your flogging.’
‘Suse was in fear for my life, Mr Corbett!’ said Elenor. ‘That one, her husband takes from all of our mouths, and she could have killed me. She could be a murderer. You haven’t seen her, Mr Corbett. You didn’t see her on the highway, the day we were arrested. We begged her to stop, we had the bonnet and the necklace but she kept going. There is a darkness to her, and the next time Suse fetches you it might be to collect my body.’
‘I do have a lot of trouble believing a . . . an experienced girl such as yourself would have any difficulty surviving an attack by one so encumbered. I will, of course, mention this matter to the judge advocate. Flogging does seem a little extreme in this case, though.’
‘Aren’t you going to arrest her?’
‘And take her where, Elenor? Where do you think she will disappear to, if I don’t arrest her? No, I’m sure you can both come to terms with each other. It will go on the list, and if there is any penalty it is out of my hands.’
After he had gone, Elenor grabbed the neck of Jenny’s dress and pulled her as close as her belly would allow. ‘I was right, I was,’ she hissed. ‘He’s fucking you, he must be. If it was me I’d be in the guard house by now.’
‘It would be a great day for you and Joe if one of your rumours was actually proven true,’ said Jenny. ‘But Mr Corbett’s not fucking me, nor I him. He just doesn’t enjoy being fetched like a governess when the children are fighting over the toys.’
‘There will be more to fight over, soon,’ said Elenor. ‘Those ships, they can’t be far off now. And you without your extra ration. A shame you’ll have so many to feed, when you’ve been used to so much.’
Emanuel was born the same week the second fleet started straggling in. The first to arrive was the Lady Juliana.
In other circumstances Jenny might have received attention at the hospital after the birth, but now the surgeon was overrun. Those landed from the Lady Juliana, for the most part, did not have energy for the debauchery that had characterised the landing of the women two and a half years before. Half were ill, and a great many of those scarcely able to move. Naked, lice dripping from them, several drew their last breaths on their first few days in Sydney Cove.
So Emanuel’s birth was attended by Bea, as Charlotte’s had been, in the women’s hut. Without her, he would have been unlikely to survive. The thick blue and purple rope that emerged with him was looped around his neck. Bea lifted it over his head, jiggling him, while Jenny, her legs still open, sat on her elbows and watched the floppy wet creature.
‘Breathe!’ she yelled at him. ‘Breathe, breathe!’
Charlotte, sitting nearby, joined in. ‘Breathe, breathe, breathe, breathe, breathe!’ she commanded her brother.
He gulped in the air and became pink in an instant, trying out a halting cry that grew in strength. Within a few seconds everyone close by knew that Jenny had had her baby.
Still holding the naked child in the cool air, Bea looked up and beamed at Jenny. ‘Aren’t you a clever one?’
‘For God’s sake, wrap him in something,’ Jenny said.
Bea frowned, reached out and took a piece of rough cloth she’d set aside for the purpose, swaddling him quickly and handing him to Jenny.
Charlotte waddled over and made to head around to the business end. Perhaps she wanted to see the cavern from which her brother had emerged, for surely he was much too big to have come from her mother.
Jenny snaked an arm around her, drawing her in. ‘This is your brother.’
Charlotte studied him. ‘He’s very ugly,’ she said.
‘I think he is very handsome,’ said Bea, smiling. ‘He looks like his father.’
‘My father, mine,’ Charlotte said and began to wail, until Bea offered to take her down to the shore to look for mermaids’ necklaces.
Dan was congratulated by officers and convicts alike. Some remembered not to clap him on his still-healing back.
‘You’d think you were the one who did all the work,’ said Jenny. ‘That you lugged him around for nine months and tore yourself open bringing him into the world.’
‘I was the one who kept you all fed,’ Dan said.
He had smiled when Emanuel was presented to him, picking his son up for a moment and jiggling him the way he thought babies should be jiggled. Then he’d handed him back. There was no word of congratulation, no question as to how Jenny was faring.
‘I hope he survives,’ was all Dan said.
The scarred men had been right: Dan was diminished.
Their quarrels, now, were
hardly worthy of the name. They sank into the river of loud abuse and quiet secrets that flowed through the place.
Jenny was almost grateful for these quarrels, and for any sign at all that Dan still breathed. Because when Joe had taken the skin from his back, he had taken something of Dan with it. Whether it was the flogging that changed him, or the removal of his control over the fishing operations, or the loss of the hut, she didn’t know. But quiet sniping was as close as he got to demonstrating any vigour.
When the governor saw the catch diminish precipitously, Dan was put back on the boats. But he was under the direction of John Carney, simply part of the crew and no longer vested with any authority.
The governor was wise enough to reinstate Dan at just the right time, as more fish than ever were needed after the second fleet landed. Its other ships, as they dribbled into the port, disgorged convicts who were in a similar condition to those who had stumbled or been carried off the Lady Juliana, while another ship, the Justinian, had brought some stores but not enough.
There was a farm, now, up the river to the west where the land was somewhat more cooperative than that to be found around the cove. But after a few years it still wasn’t producing anything like the quantity of corn needed.
At least the new convicts and marines brought news from England.
Jenny wished she could get word of her mother and sister. They might be dead. Dolly may have married and had children. They might be staring at Cornwall through the same grey eyes that Charlotte used to examine a kangaroo.
Jenny had also wondered what was happening on a larger scale. London might have burned down again. The King might be dead. England might be at war with France.
None of these events, it transpired, had occurred. Instead of a war breaking out between France and England, France was at war with itself.
Elenor, who had been assisting Surgeon Drummond, had some of the more lurid details from newly arrived patients and did not mind sharing them, even with a group that included Jenny at its fringes. ‘The King himself! Down his head plopped, into a basket like it was a cabbage. Then they took the French Queen’s head, and those of a great many lords and ladies. And now those running the country are as common as muck, like us. Some of us more than others.’ She aimed that last comment over the heads of her listeners towards Jenny.
