Tregarthur's Prisoners: Book 3 (The Tregarthur's Series)

by Alex Mellanby

  ‘In here,’ Tom pointed at two large barrels. ‘Quick, before they search the ship.’ And he stuffed us inside two empty food barrels. It didn’t seem much of a hiding place. But we’d arrived at this port in late afternoon and it was growing dark when we hid. Even with lanterns it wasn’t going to be easy to search very thoroughly and I hoped they might believe we had already taken to the water.

  We heard the sounds of the search. Probably we were lucky that the men on board were the new crew and without the captain they didn’t know the ship as well as Tom and Elijah. Some hours later Tom returned.

  ‘Who is being blamed?’ I asked quietly.

  ‘Soldiers,’ Tom gave a stifled laugh. ‘That new lot thought they could take over the ship. The Port Authority came on board expecting to take you away. They didn’t like being made to look stupid with no prisoners so they’ve taken it out on that officer.’

  We climbed out of the barrels. I was glad to get out. My barrel hadn’t been completely empty and I’d heard scuffling in the bottom amongst a pile of old clothes. Even if I had got used to rats I didn’t want to share that small space with one.

  ‘What do we do now?’ Sam said as he brushed himself down – his barrel must have contained flour because he was white all over.

  ‘Swim,’ said Tom. ‘Swim to the shore.’ He turned to Sam. ‘You can swim?’

  ‘Yes, but in the dark?’ Sam stopped brushing and sounded scared.

  ‘Won’t be seen,’ I added, wanting to let Sam know that it was possible even though I thought it was a crazy idea and I didn’t want to think about sharks either.

  Tom led us to the gun deck. There was just enough light to see the horizon and the lights of the town. Tom pointed through one of the port holes. ‘See that fort on top of the hill?’

  I nodded although it was difficult to see what he meant.

  ‘Make for the fort. Ask for a man called Edward. He lives up there, one of the houses near the fort, there’s only a few so you should be able to find it. Tell him I sent you – he owes me a few favours.’ Tom didn’t convince me that this was going to be easy but I could see we had no choice.

  ‘Take off your clothes and bundle them up – try to hold them over your head,’ Tom passed us a length of twine and carried on with the instructions. I guessed that he must have done this before, perhaps other people had needed to escape from this ship.

  We stripped off and tied our clothes in a roll.

  ‘You’ll have to go through the gun hole. Lower yourselves down and swim for it.’ He handed me the end of the rope and pushed me forward. Without thinking Sam and I scrabbled through the flap through which the guns could be fired.

  ‘Run as far from the shore as you can. They’ll be looking for you,’ Tom said as we lowered ourselves into the water.

  There wasn’t time for thanks. At least Sam could swim as well. We set off for the shore. The sea and sky in complete darkness. The twinkling lights of the town in front. Again I wondered about sharks, about sharks and where we were. Where were we swimming towards? Would this be the place they had sent Jenna and Ivy?

  As Far as You Can Go

  -13-

  The water was warm, but it was impossible to swim and hold my clothes bundle out of the water. I soon gave up and tied the twine to my arm. Just had to hope we could dry out if we made land. That was going to be difficult. On the ship we could see the town lights but swimming through the waves meant we lost sight of where we were going.

  We were moving very slowly.

  ‘What about sharks?’ Sam spluttered through a mouthful of sea water.

  I wished he hadn’t asked me that and I didn’t reply.

  As we got nearer to the shore we passed more anchored boats. We could hear the sounds of men on board, drunken shouts occasionally.

  We paddled on, not some sort of proper swimming stroke, more doggy paddle as we tried to listen for any sound of danger. Exhausting. I wasn’t sure how much further I could go.

  I felt something touch my legs, slimy and wrapping itself around my ankle. I almost screamed, Sam did and must have caught another mouth of water. I had to hold him as he coughed and coughed. That stopped me wondering what the slimy thing was. It was just weed – sea weed. We’d made it. We were nearly at the shore. There were hardly any waves now and it was still difficult to make out the shore line. Soon we were able to put our feet down and waddle through the tangle of weed until we reached dry land and collapsed on the sand.

  We sat at the water’s edge, panting. There was only the thinnest of moons and we were in nearly complete darkness. There were no lights down on the beach. Above us I could see a faint silhouette of the fort Tom had pointed out. It had been the nearest point of land from the ship and we were lucky to have landed anywhere near it.

  We heard noises. Someone was coming.

  ‘Quick. Back in the water.’ I grabbed Sam’s arm and we slid as quietly as we could back into the sea.

  Voices came closer. Slurred voices. A man and a woman. The noises made it clear what they had come for. We had to wait. The water felt much colder. When the pair left we struggled back to land and ran up the beach into bushes. There were a few small boats pulled up on the sand and a few stone buildings. I kept barging into rocks and tree stumps as we tried to get away.

  ‘No good,’ I said. ‘We’ll just have to hide near to one of these buildings and wait for light.’

  We sat down on the sand with our backs to a wall, cold and thirsty. We hadn’t brought any water. It was a long shivery night.

  Dawn seemed to spring up quickly. Dawn and more voices. I guessed it wouldn’t be long before they came to take out fishing boats.

  ‘We need to get away.’ I stood and pulled on my wet tunic. We had to go barefoot and nearly naked until we could dry our stuff. I still had the rest of my bundle tied in its cloth.

  We made our way into more bushes behind the beach. As the light grew stronger we could see men dragging their boats down to the sea, loading their nets and setting off. Soon it was quiet again. We pushed on and started to climb, finding a path. Above us I could make out the shape of the fort. High walls and cannons pointing out to sea. There was no one around, must have been too early for anyone to be about to think about firing cannons.

  ‘How do we find this man – Edward?’ Sam said. ‘Won’t they be looking for us?’

  Two questions at once, I thought. I was about to say ‘no idea’ when we heard the sound of marching men. It obviously wasn’t too early for soldiers. We pushed our way back into the bushes again, well hidden although we were sharing the space with other scuttling things.

  I could see we needed a plan.

  ‘Spread our clothes out to dry,’ I said. ‘You wait here while I go a bit further up and take a look.’

  Sam gave me an anxious frown but stayed where he was. I pulled on my wet pants and crept toward the walls of the fort, keeping low, hoping not to be seen.

  Soon I reached a cobbled road. I stopped to listen. In the distance I could hear the soldiers but no one else seemed to be coming. Looking down the road I could see it led towards the town. Now people were starting to move about. I heard shouts and barking dogs. I thought someone had seen me but it was only a man selling bread – I felt my stomach rumble. I needed to find something to eat and to drink, there was nothing here. It seemed hopeless. This wasn’t like the town we had been taken to from the moor – taken to and sentenced to death. The houses were dotted around, spread out, there was more space here.

  I hid behind a tree trying to make out what was happening. In the distance I could see fields. They were all laid out in rows, well organised. As I watched, I saw a group of men being led towards those fields. They were in chains, with two uniformed men marching them along the road, uniformed and armed men. They looked like prisoners. Could these prisoners be convict
s transported here perhaps along with Ivy and Jenna?

  It didn’t feel safe to go down into the town. Barefoot and wet I would easily stand out. Tom had said they would be looking for us. There was nothing else to do so I went back down to Sam.

  ‘At least I found a stream,’ Sam said after I’d described the scene up at the fort. ‘Just through that bush.’ He pointed. I pushed through and dipped my hand into the water to take a drink.

  ‘Not sure how clean it is,’ Sam said in a loud whisper. It wasn’t clean but I had to drink it anyway. Swimming through mouthfuls of sea water had left me with a dry burning throat. I drank more before re-joining Sam.

  Something moved in the bushes. I froze. Something large. We’d made it through the sea, avoided any sharks. Was I about to be eaten by some wild beast? It hopped into sight. I almost laughed as it hopped off again - a kangaroo! At least that must mean we were in Australia – unless it was some wildlife park. Sam was quite excited about the kangaroo, but we weren’t going to go chasing after it.

  ‘We stay here while our clothes dry, when it gets dark again we go down the road and try to find Tom’s man,’ I said slowly because I could see lots of flaws in the plan. Like barking dogs. Sam didn’t have a better idea so we stayed where we were. It wasn’t long before we both fell asleep. I woke to the sound of whining insects, whining biting insects. I tried to cover myself with my tunic. Hot, itching and hungry, we waited.

  The soldiers left. We heard them march out of the fort and down the road. Marching and with a drum to beat their footsteps. In the distance we heard shouts and more dogs. The fishing boats were back, pulled up on the shore. And as the light faded silence came back to the cove and to the hill with the fort. Silence except for the insects, swatting them away we crept back up to the road. I guess the sea water hadn’t done a lot for our clothes which were stiff with dried salt and cracked as we walked.

  In the evening light we could make out more of the town that spread around the small hills. The fort stood alone and deserted. Who did they expect might attack? Did attacks not happen at night?

  The road led from the fort past a few houses before it reached the town. The houses along the road looked quite grand, not mud huts and none of the squalor of the English town where I had last seen Jenna.

  ‘Just have to hope he lives in one of those.’ I pointed down the road and thought big houses probably meant big dogs.

  This was crazy - to go wandering down this road knocking on the doors. What would we say? ‘Excuse me we are two escaped murderers and we’re looking for this bloke called Edward? And by the way have you seen my girlfriend?’ That was pretty much the only thing we could do so we set off. I’d hoped we could try to listen at the windows, hoping to hear who lived there.

  As we neared the first house I could see it wasn’t quite as grand as it had looked. More fallen down than grand. Once it must have been better, once a white wooden fence had marked out a garden, which was now overgrown with weeds. Several of the windows were broken, chipped paintwork, missing tiles from the roof and before we could slip past…

  Bang.

  A man staggered out of the front door waving a musket and swearing at us. Swearing and staggering. He tripped and plunged into the bed of weeds. He didn’t move. We had stopped and stood completely still, waiting for something to happen. I was about to run when another noise came from the overgrown bed – the sound of snoring.

  I turned to Sam. ‘Drunk?’ I shrugged. ‘Let’s go on. If that was Edward he’s no use to us.’

  We crept on, keeping to the side of the road. I worried that the gunshot would bring other people out into the road but it stayed deserted and there was only one other house ahead. If you lived out here and heard a gunshot probably you didn’t go out to see what was happening. That sounded familiar to me, just like home.

  The next house was well kept. Even in the faint light I could see it looked like someone had money who lived here. Was that Edward? We hadn’t found out from Tom why this man was indebted to him. Tom obviously didn’t have a lot of money or he wouldn’t have ended up being flogged nearly to death on some badly run naval vessel.

  We stopped just before we got to the fence. This one was properly white painted and surrounded a neat well-kept garden. Lanterns had been lit inside the house and curtains drawn.

  ‘Round the back,’ I whispered to Sam and pointed to a narrow path that led into the bushes at the side of the house. There were several large trees, large white trunks picking up light from a lantern burning outside the house, light that picked us out as well.

  ‘Stay right where you are,’ commanded a voice and a large man stepped from the shadows pointing two guns directly at us. So somebody had come out after the gunshot and kept himself hidden.

  I turned, ready to run.

  ‘I will shoot.’

  I believed him. So I raised my hands. I had to hope we would get a better chance to escape, even so where was there to go? If this was where they sent convicts they’d be pretty strong on what to do with anyone who tried to escape. They were probably quite ok with shooting anyone who looked odd or out of place.

  ‘Your name’s not Edward is it?’ Sam tried in a voice that wavered.

  The man twitched. Sam’s words had shaken him.

  ‘No,’ he said, but he didn’t sound so certain of himself now.

  A sudden thought smacked into my brain. If this posh bloke in his grand house knew Tom perhaps he hadn’t always been so posh or always used that name. This needed more of my family drug dealing overconfidence. ‘Good name Edward,’ I said. ‘Makes me want to say it again, louder, EDW …’

  ‘Shut up,’ he hissed at me and raised the gun.

  A little while later we were herded through the back door. That was after he’d made sure we called him Thomas. A common name. The name he went by here in his posh house. The same name as old Tom, whose name had definitely saved us. We met his wife and two young daughters. They looked at us as though we were … oh yes they looked at us as though we were escaped criminals! Thomas told them to keep away from us. That was as we ate his food. It was clear he wanted us to leave.

  ‘Can’t go,’ I said through a mouthful of bread. I stared at him, pretty sure that he would know about us. In a convict town like this they must have ways of spreading the word about escaped men.

  ‘You can’t stay here,’ he said looking quickly at the door through which his wife had left.

  ‘Does she know about Edward?’ I asked with my best attempt to sound threatening.

  ‘Shhh,’ he said back at me and slumped his head forward with a defeated look.

  I could only guess what Edward and Tom from the boat might have done – illegal and had brought him a load of money.

  He was right that we couldn’t stay there. I don’t know what I had imagined we would do even if we found Jenna and Ivy. These soldiers weren’t going to stop looking for us. Although Australia might be one of the largest countries on the planet it didn’t mean we could escape and live happily ever after here. But that was too big a plan, I had to stay with the idea of trying to get to see Jen again. For me that was good enough even if it all went wrong again after that.

  ‘Look Thomas,’ I said in my best friendly drug dealing murderer’s voice. ‘We don’t want to cause you any trouble.’ I had to stop and cough. The bewildered look Sam gave me nearly made me burst out laughing. ‘We just want to find someone.’

  I explained about Jenna and Ivy, how they had been sent off on a convict ship and how we needed to find them before we were taken away and hanged. Ok, I didn’t have anything to say about what we’d do after we found them except I told him we would get out of the way if he helped us and we’d never mention the ‘Edward’ name again.

  I wasn’t sure how he could help us but that turned out to be quite easy.

  ‘J
ust give me the name of the boat and I’ll check with the governor’s records,’ said Thomas/Edward.

  ‘Lady Maun,’ answered Sam. I was glad he remembered the name that Hugh had told us, the name of the convict boat. Somehow it had slipped out of my mind.

  Thomas explained how all the convicts arriving had their details noted down in the ledger kept in the governor’s house. ‘Every one of them,’ Thomas sighed. ‘Like cattle.’

  It made me think that Thomas had probably only just escaped becoming a convict himself or Edward had, whoever he was.

  At least we got a bed for the night. First bed since death row and no fleas, except the ones we probably brought with us. We heard a few shouts in the rest of the house. Thomas was trying to make sure that none of his family told anyone about the two rough boys staying the night.

  Crated

  -14-

  ‘He talks in his sleep.’

  The next day Thomas had left the house saying he was going to search the records and would be back later. He’d left us in the house with his wife and two daughters. The girls kept looking suspiciously at us. Mrs Thomas – she said her name was Elspeth – busied around, gave us food, and later in the morning found us some clothes so we ended up looking quite respectable. I wondered what Jenna would make of me. I had started to believe that this would work and I would see her again soon. It was after finding us the clothes that Elspeth told us about her husband’s tendency to talk in his sleep.

  ‘So I know most of it,’ she said. ‘I haven’t told him. It keeps him from being difficult.’ She laughed. ‘Thinking he has to keep it from me and worrying I will find out.’

  ‘What did he do?’ asked Sam.