A Far Distant Land: A saga of British survival in an unforgiving new world (The Australian Historical Saga Series Book 1)

by David Field

  ‘Go to Hell yourself!’ Cunningham roared back.

  George shrugged. ‘As you can see, the numbers have now been re-balanced and by my calculation at least fifty of you will drop with musket balls in your chests on my giving one simple command. You may play dice with your own souls, if you wish, but what about the others you have misled to this point in their lives?’

  ‘And if we surrender?’ asked the man standing next to Cunningham, speaking for the first time.

  ‘Then there will be no need for anyone to shoot,’ George told him.

  Cunningham appeared to be about to make another rude response, but the other man grabbed his arm.

  ‘He has a point, my friend. We’re outgunned and if we walk away from this now, there’ll be other opportunities, surely?’

  ‘You’d trust the word of an English bastard?’ Cunningham demanded.

  ‘No,’ his companion replied, ‘but I’d trust the word of a priest.’ He nodded towards Father Dixon, who so far had said nothing.

  Cunningham thought for a moment, then nodded grudgingly and withdrew a pistol from inside his shirt, which he handed up to George. The other man took a similar weapon from his jacket and threw it onto the dusty ground.

  George and Lieutenant Miles dismounted, drew their pistols from their tunics, held them up at the heads of the two surrendering rebels and advised them that they were under military arrest. But George turned a blind eye and walked away as the men sought revenge on their fallen comrades by opening fire on the surrendered convicts.

  The footsore prisoners were marched into the Domain and handed over to others to await their fates. After a hearty dinner, the officers drew up the lists and nine of them were hanged that same afternoon. A party was sent out to the Prospect road with a corpse and a gibbet to remind every passing traveller of the military superiority of the governor of New South Wales and to Daniel fell the stomach-churning duty of overseeing the many floggings that took place as the sun began to set on one of the worst days of his life. Two of them were ordered to undergo as many lashes as they could survive without any danger to their lives and towards the end Daniel was obliged to duck behind a store shed in order to vomit.

  It was a silent and surly Daniel who rode alongside George on his return to Annandale the following morning. Lieutenant Miles had obligingly agreed to supervise the Domain Barracks in return for the opportunity to occupy Daniel’s quarters in the company of a convict kitchen hand whose promiscuity was legendary throughout the regiment and Daniel had two whole days off.

  The women came to the door of the Annandale house, the children at their side, as they heard the horses approach. George dismounted first and was eagerly grabbed by Rachel and hugged around the neck. Martha was clearly waiting to do something similar, but as Daniel dismounted and looked across at his beautiful wife, his helpless young son with a toy in his hand and tiny Rebecca rubbing the sleep from her eyes, he felt his legs refuse to move further. He could see Martha staring at him in curiosity mingled with apprehension and he simply shook his head silently.

  She ran across the narrow lawn and crushed him to her as the tears rolled down his face and he clung to her like a life raft. ‘Please don’t make me go back there, darling. In the name of God, if you love me, don’t make me be a soldier anymore!’

  18

  Martha cradled Daniel in her arms until he finally fell asleep and murmured reassuringly to him when he woke three times from a fitful slumber to cry out in alarm and despair. She slipped out of bed just as day broke the following morning and sat on the front veranda until Rachel appeared as usual to supervise her children’s breakfast. Rachel sat down beside her and handed her a mug of tea, then put her arm across Martha’s shoulders.

  ‘What happened to Daniel out there?’ she asked.

  Martha shook her head. ‘He won’t say, but whatever it was it’s devastated him. I don’t think it’s fear — he’s too brave for that — but I think it’s connected with what he was forced to watch.’

  ‘Do you think he’ll resign his commission?’

  ‘I sincerely hope he does, if that’s what’s eating into his soul. But if I know my man as well as I hope I do, he won’t be prepared to face the accusation of cowardice.’

  ‘Martha, dear,’ Rachel assured her, ‘no one who witnessed how he faced up to those natives could ever accuse him of cowardice, least of all George.’

  Martha looked across at her close friend with pleading eyes. ‘I think George may be the key to all this. If he could only persuade Daniel that there’d be no dishonour in resigning his commission, all might be well.’

  Rachel nodded in agreement and gazed across the lawn, to where uniformed marines were beginning to emerge from the accommodation hut in order to replace the night watch. ‘What do you think he could do instead?’ she asked.

  Martha shook her head in uncertainty. ‘I’ve lain awake half the night wondering about that. From what he’s told me, his only other experience was in a tobacco enterprise in Bristol — perhaps we could start growing tobacco or something.’

  Just then, George walked out chewing on a piece of bread and watching his men assemble for the morning roster. It fell silent and as he looked down at the two women seated near the front door he spoke softly. ‘I heard you talking about Daniel — I think he’s had it with the marines, but I’ve been thinking. Is he up to talking, Martha?’

  ‘He certainly did a lot of it in his sleep last night, but I’m not sure that he’ll be quite prepared yet to discuss his problem with his commanding officer.’

  ‘Then we have to hope that he’s prepared to do so with a friend,’ George replied as he walked past them, across the lawn and down towards his hut.

  Robert appeared at the front door, demanding his breakfast and Martha realised that it wouldn’t be long before Rebecca made the same demand and would probably leave her room in order to wake Daniel to do so. Martha followed Rachel inside and into their main bedroom. She looked down at the bed and saw that Daniel’s eyes were open and fixed on the ceiling. He looked across at her and smiled thinly.

  ‘Sorry for over-sleeping. We should make the best of every hour I’m home and here I am, wasting the first day out of two.’

  Checking that Rebecca was still in the land of infant dreams, Martha sat on the side of the bed next to Daniel, stroked his forehead and then leaned down to kiss him. ‘Does it have to be only two days?’ she asked.

  Daniel frowned. ‘Don’t tempt me, sweetheart. I can’t leave poor old Miles out there for more than the two days he generously offered to cover for me, but perhaps you might have a word with Rachel, who’s George’s real commanding officer and then he might be persuaded to extend my leave and send someone else out there.’

  ‘How about making that leave permanent?’ Martha suggested.

  Daniel slid from under the sheets and searched the bedroom floor for the uniform breeches he’d discarded the night before. Martha watched him for a moment, then giggled. ‘If men weren’t so eager to drop their trousers in the company of a woman, they might remember where they’d left them when they come round the next morning. They’re in the laundry basket, since you don’t need them today. I’ve put your smart brown civilian ones over the chair in the corner.’

  ‘Where would I be without you?’ Daniel said.

  ‘Without me, you’d be going back to something you’ve obviously grown to hate. But with me, there’s hope that you’ll find your true role in life.’

  Daniel looked back at her with a puzzled expression. ‘It’s too early in the morning for riddles and guessing games. What are you getting at?’

  ‘Come and have some breakfast and I’ll tell you.’

  ‘Would you like eggs this morning?’ the housekeeper Sarah asked when Daniel had sat down at the table. ‘That old broiler finally realised what God put her into this life for and I got three from underneath her before she pecked me half to death.’

  Daniel shook his head. ‘No thanks, Sarah — just some bread and
some of that lovely cumquat jam of yours, if George hasn’t scoffed the lot. And perhaps some more tea — I think it could be a three mug morning.’

  ‘They say that over twenty of those escaped convicts were shot dead,’ Sarah prattled breezily as she attacked the loaf with a bread knife, her back to the table. ‘Do you by any chance know if one of them was a Michael Flynn? I got right friendly with him when he was on the hospital detail.’

  Daniel’s face froze in the horror of the remembrance and Martha got up quickly from the breakfast table and took the knife from Sarah’s hand.

  ‘I’ll see to the breakfast, Sarah,’ she assured her. ‘There’s some washing in our laundry basket, if you’d be so good.’

  Sarah left the kitchen with a puzzled frown, wondering if perhaps she’d inadvertently said the wrong thing and in the awkward silence Martha continued slicing bread as if she had a regiment to feed. Eventually it was Daniel who broke the silence.

  ‘We can’t simply not talk about it. After all, it was George who let it happen.’

  ‘And George who has to answer for it in his conscience,’ Martha reminded him. ‘But if you’re only going to be home for two days, can we not find something more cheerful to talk about?’

  ‘It wasn’t the shootings anyway,’ Daniel persisted. ‘I didn’t have to watch that, thank God. But if you’d been forced to stand and watch the floggings afterwards…’

  ‘Don’t!’ Martha said. ‘And that’s an order — from your commanding officer. And from the woman you married, the woman you hopefully still love and the woman who wants her man to be happy when he’s home.’

  ‘Home,’ Daniel repeated in a distant, reflective, tone. ‘How I wish to God this were my real home and not some sort of pleasure palace that I visit on leave.’

  ‘Couldn’t you get a transfer?’

  ‘I’m sure George would be able to wangle something, but I’m afraid it’s gone beyond that. This regime is evil, Martha — the strong brutalising the weak, the fortunate ruling the lives of the unfortunate. Surely I don’t have to explain that to you, given the circumstances in which we first met?’

  She slid into the chair next to his, all thought of cutting bread abandoned. ‘But it won’t always be like this, will it? According to what George tells us over supper every evening, this new governor he works for wants to build a new society out here and then surely it won’t just be a matter of convicts being guarded by marines? Every new arrival brings a boatload of free settlers, determined to start a new life where here’s no class distinction.’

  ‘And every new boat brings us a fresh supply of convicts,’ Daniel reminded her. ‘The Corps is recruiting more men daily and Rebecca will be a married woman with children of her own before the governor realises his empty dream. The present reality is hangings and floggings.’

  Martha’s hand slid gently over his, as she looked up into his eyes. ‘I want you here every day, Daniel. And so do Matthew and Rebecca. If you disapprove so strongly of what you’re being forced to do, why don’t you do something else?’

  ‘Like what, exactly?’ Daniel laughed ironically. ‘I’m only fit for brutalising my fellow human beings and now it seems that I don’t have the stomach for even that.’

  ‘Your life before you became a soldier — weren’t you in some sort of commerce and can’t you use that experience out here? They tell me the governor’s desperate to establish a real society out here, like the one in London and surely there’d be a place in it for someone like you?’

  Daniel laughed again. ‘In commerce, you need contacts — “patrons”, if you like. The only people I know out here are soldiers and here I am dreaming of leaving the only sort of society I really know. None of those could give me a commercial opening, could they? And in any case, I only know the tobacco trade — we don’t have one out here, as far as I’m aware. We don’t even smoke the stuff ourselves, apart from George and that dreadful pipe of his.’

  ‘Leave that side of things to me,’ Martha replied with the glint of battle in her eye. ‘Right now, your first priority must be getting out of the army.’

  At that moment Matthew appeared in the kitchen doorway, complaining of a sore tummy and Martha hustled him back out with a stern warning that if this was another of his ploys to avoid being available when the childrens’ tutor arrived for the day, he’d be in serious trouble. Daniel smiled, remembering his own childhood strategies to avoid the village school and found himself reflecting on the conversation he’d just had with Martha. Perhaps if he’d paid more attention to his studies, he might now be in a position to offer the colony something other than bayonet and noose. He shuddered again at the memory of Parramatta and wandered outside.

  George appeared by his side as he sat on the veranda sipping tea and munching on dry bread. Both men gazed silently across at the uniformed men lounging around their hut and talking idly, before George voiced his thoughts. ‘Maybe one day we’ll make something of them, but it’ll take a miracle to create an officer between them.’

  Daniel sighed. ‘Is this your less than subtle introduction into a conversation about me bottling it yesterday?’

  ‘Do you want to talk about it?’ George asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well I do. I have to make a full report to old Pompous Pants today and I need your input on how the reprisals went.’

  Daniel swallowed hard, then let fly. ‘It was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever had the misfortune to witness, George. Grown men reduced to strips of bleeding flesh and screaming to God for mercy. Is that what our governor calls “reprisals”, because if so I’d be delighted to let him supervise the next flogging he orders. Right now, if I could throw my commission into the creek at the back there, I’d happily do so. What’s the going rate for cowardice? Court martial, followed by dishonourable discharge? Put my name down for one of each when you go across the water this morning.’

  George took the seat next to Daniel’s and relit his pipe — a common tactic of his when taking time to think. ‘I’ve been in the service for damned near twenty years and I’ve learned to judge men by all sorts of standards, including their courage. The sort of courage required when you’re facing a line of enemy muskets is one thing, but the courage to sit alone on a beach with the enemy at your back, armed with spears, in the hope of earning their friendship, is another kind of courage altogether. Don’t call yourself a coward, Daniel, just because you have the humanity to shrink from the pain of others.’

  ‘How have you managed to stand it all these years?’ Daniel asked. ‘I can’t carry on as a marine, after yesterday — I just can’t!’

  George rested a consoling hand on his shoulder. ‘You won’t be going back to Rose Hill, you can be assured of that. Bill Miles may be a good soldier, but he’s bloody dreadful at paperwork and the governor’s forever bending my ear to replace him with someone who can tell the difference between an urgent despatch and a goat’s arse. From what the men were telling me on the way home, he’s as happy as a pig in muck being shacked up with a doxy who bangs like a barn door in a howling gale, so he can stay where he is and you can join me at the Governor’s Mansion, reassuring the old misery that he still retains full control of his colony.’

  ‘And how long will that last?’ Daniel asked suspiciously. ‘I’ve been in the service long enough to know that duties have to be rotated regularly.’

  ‘Not once you’re working for the governor they don’t,’ George reassured him. ‘If he’s happy with your work, he’ll hang on to you like a drowning man to a lifebuoy. For long enough for you to resign your commission and get a real job, anyway.’

  ‘And what sort of job would that be?’

  George nodded towards the paddock between the garden fence and the creek, in which a fine herd of plump cattle were grazing contentedly on rich pasture. ‘I’ve got nearly two hundred head of Herefords out there and while they feed themselves, they don’t sell themselves. I’ve been thinking for some time of employing someone to search out markets
in England, or maybe the Cape. But I know about as much about marketing cattle as I do about playing the piano, whereas you — or so your wife tells me — have been known to sell tobacco.’

  Daniel smiled to himself. Martha had clearly wasted no time. But it surely wasn’t going to be that simple. ‘Presumably you couldn’t afford to pay me a first lieutenant’s salary?’

  ‘Of course not. You’d be selling cattle, not gold. But I’m probably not the only one in need of sales assistance. Macarthur’s expected back shortly — he’s got even more problems in that department than I have, or so his dreadful harpy of a wife was bleating on about the last time she cursed us with her company. No doubt he could employ your talents as well.’

  Daniel spent a few moments in thought. He reminded himself that it was the only immediate way of avoiding a return to Parramatta and that Martha would not thank him for throwing away her first lifeline. ‘Very well, George,’ he agreed. ‘The day after tomorrow I’ll join you in the cutter and do my best to impress the governor in my new duties and then in a few weeks I’ll resign my commission and live on half-pay enjoying your charitable hospitality here in Annandale.’

  ‘You got that half right at least,’ George confirmed. ‘You start tomorrow trying to make sense of my sales records in the office in the back room of where you’ll be living as part of your remuneration as my Sales Manager. As for the governor, you won’t be renewing your acquaintance with him until after the week’s leave that I just granted you.’

  A week to the day later, Daniel looked out beyond the bow of the cutter, as it made its way across the harbour, at a Sydney he barely recognised. Where there had once been huts there were now brick buildings, in between which lines of convicts were hammering wooden cobbles into the earth in order to improve the road quality under the hooves of horses and the wheels of coaches and wagons. There was a governor’s Domain here, as well as the one at Parramatta and the governor’s coach was drawn up ready for their arrival at the quayside. Uniformed men saluted them in the doorway to the mansion and their boots almost glided down the highly polished floorboards as George ushered Daniel to his desk in the Aide’s Room, as it was called, upon which piles of documents awaited his attention.