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

by Alex Mellanby

  Jenna dropped her washing, leapt towards me screaming as she came and squeezed me hard enough to take away any words I might have wanted to say. Tears streamed down my face as I hung on to her, tears and laughter. I held on, expecting someone to come and drag us apart. I wasn’t going to let go, until I heard Sam’s cough.

  Jenna pulled back from me and bit her lip as she looked at Sam.

  ‘What…?’ Sam looked so scared.

  Jenna opened her mouth and no words seemed to come out. She looked back at the house, then back at Sam.

  Jenna’s face seemed to screw up, as though she was too worried to say what needed to be said, and we heard the noise. The smallest cry. A baby’s cry.

  Sam went for the door. We watched him duck under the door frame and disappear into the darkness inside.

  Jenna was still holding on to me as she pulled her head back and whispered, ‘Boat. Happened on the boat.’ As though I would know what that meant and I suppose I did really although I was going to need to have it fully explained. I made a move to pull away from Jenna and follow Sam.

  She held me back, shaking her head, ‘Give them a minute.’

  I knew this was going to be more than just difficult and I wanted to stay and hold on to my Jenna, but I had to find out. Jenna nodded and we went towards the door.

  Small windows and lines of washing made the room dark and musty. Slowly I made out Sam standing at one side, and as my eyes adjusted I saw Ivy clutching her little bundle, gently rocking the baby as tears streamed down her face. No words were said.

  I had no words to say either, nothing I could think of would make this different or better or change anything. Jenna gently pulled my arm, taking me back outside.

  ‘Let’s walk,’ she said.

  I followed her out and onto the shore. Jenna told me in halting words, often stopping to look into my eyes to see my reaction. She told me about their boat trip. About the other women prisoners. About the male crew. What surviving meant. What you had to do if you wanted to eat.

  ‘Ivy got taken by the first mate.’ Jenna stared out over the sea. ‘No choice. She didn’t find out she was pregnant until we were half way here. She had the baby just after we arrived in Australia.’

  ‘What about the first mate, is he here?’ I asked.

  Jenna hesitated. ‘He’s not around anymore…can I tell you about that when we get back to Ivy? He was a foul violent man.’ Her chest heaved with those words.

  I nodded and we walked on in silence for a while. I didn’t ask any more about the first mate because there were other things worrying me. And Jenna seemed to have guessed.

  ‘Do you need to ask?’ she said as we stopped, having come down to a strand of beach. She held my arm and turned me to look at her. ‘Do you?’

  My mind went blank. Did I want to know how Jenna had survived on the convict boat? What my Jenna had to do to survive. Then I thought about Jenna, thought about the things I had learnt from her, maybe just learnt to think before I spoke.

  So I did think. ‘Do you need to tell me?’ I said with a trace of a smile.

  She gave me a poke. One of her hard pokes and we both laughed again. Jenna stepped back and looked me over. ‘Not bad,’ she said eventually. We both laughed again. This was too good a moment not to laugh. Jenna let out a big sigh, took my hands and said, ‘So what’s the plan?’ And our laughter was rather frantic, rather hysterical.

  How could there be a plan? Jenna and I had made the crazy decision to stay together all that time ago in the world of the cavemen, a time we had survived so many terrible events. It had never been a good idea and much worse as we were dragged further into Miss Tregarthur’s awful schemes as she tried to get her revenge. We had both wanted to stay away from homes that had never been homely. Now all we wanted to do was to get back to our own time, to places we knew.

  I felt sure we could cope with anything if we could get back…that seemed impossible. Jenna never did ask me what a plan was unless she had some small idea that I might have something already in my mind. I did have an idea and it was going to depend on Jenna and her memory and right now I didn’t want to talk about that. I nodded at the house.

  ‘Tell me about Ruth,’ I said as we started back.

  Jenna told me how Ruth seemed to know how to handle things on the convict ship. Ruth had decided right from the start to get friendly with the captain, very friendly, and she had persuaded him to stay in Australia, to make a new life with her. Jenna explained that she and Ivy had taught the women how to read. How Ivy had helped the ship’s purser to keep the books, keep check of stores.

  ‘That got us more food but didn’t keep the first mate away from her,’ Jenna growled.

  We were back outside their house and we both took a deep breath before going in. It wasn’t much different to last time, with Ivy on one side of the room and Sam on the other. There were, however, two big differences. One, Sam was holding the baby and two, although they had both been crying they were both grinning now.

  Jenna pushed me on so I gave Ivy a hug, still with no words. That was partly because I swiped my face on all the washing hanging across the tiny space. The rain might have held off for a while but I soon learnt that this was the rainy season. Drying clothes outside was impossible, and this baby needed a lot of dried clothes even though they were homemade, mostly from sacking or discarded cloth from the other people in the town. All the practical problems of dealing with the baby seemed almost bigger than the emotional mess.

  Jenna saved me from thinking what to say with another poke as she had done so often before. ‘Tell me about this plan,’ she said.

  The Plan

  -17-

  There still wasn’t time to talk about my plan. For something so small, this baby took up a huge amount of time and effort. I guess that Ivy’s ideas about baby care came from back home, where high chairs and that whole range of baby stuff was available from a shop down the road. Jenna and Ivy had done their best to get it sorted in a primitive way. So the baby was wrapped in a shawl holding him to a chair and Ivy sat spooning some gloopy stuff into his mouth.

  ‘What’s his name?’ I asked.

  The girls went very quiet and glanced at each other. Sam mumbled something from the corner of the room. I looked at each of them, looked at their worried faces and wondered why they didn’t answer. It stayed very quiet until the baby spat some of the gloop half way across the room.

  ‘Sam, don’t do that,’ Ivy said loudly, and covered her mouth with her hand as though she had let out a secret that she wanted to keep.

  ‘Baby Sam,’ I laughed.

  Sam went bright red. I suppose I could see why they were all embarrassed about the name. It seemed clear to me that it was the right thing to have done. While the baby’s father might be someone else, some violent sailor, Ivy hadn’t stopped thinking about Sam. That had to be good – didn’t it? Maybe, but with the red faces and the silence there was an awful lot of complicated stuff to deal with.

  I tried another question which I probably shouldn’t have asked, ‘What happened to his…’

  I chickened out half way through asking about the baby’s father.

  Ivy stood up, handed the feeding spoon to Jenna and ran for the door. Sam, not the baby one, followed.

  ‘He’s dead.’ Jenna had decided to tell me even though Ivy had left. ‘I think he had planned to set up house with Ivy, use her as…well just use her. After we arrived in Australia he got into a fight with some of the soldiers guarding the convicts, something about money. They threw him in the sea by the docks. He couldn’t swim. Ivy saw him drown. No one seemed much interested.’

  ‘And Ivy?’

  ‘She was just confused. Did she want her baby’s father around, violent and drunk?’ Jenna spooned some more into the baby’s mouth. ‘After his death we were both going to be
sent to the convict factory with the other women.’

  ‘Even though Ivy was pregnant.’ I wondered if I should be helping with this feeding but Jen shook her head when I stepped closer.

  ‘Even though Ivy was just about to have the baby we were going to be sent to this factory. I don’t think it’s as bad as it sounds…STOP IT,’ Jenna shouted as another mouthful flew across the room, baby Sam had grabbed the spoon and was slapping it into his bowl with a rather happy look on his face. Jenna went on after retrieving the spoon: ‘Ruth.’ Jen saw the confusion in my eyes. It wasn’t about the woman’s name, I saw how difficult it was to feed a baby.

  ‘Ruth,’ Jen said again and I snapped back to listening. ‘She helped. As I said she had her eyes on the captain from the first day and really worked on him. It seems that many of the men take up with convict women – there are a lot more men convicts on the ships than women. Ruth made sure the captain married her as soon as we landed. It kept her away from the factories, pretty much stopped her from being a convict at all.’

  Bowl slapping and sprays of yucky stuff went on as Jenna tried to talk, interrupted by high pitched squawks and yells from baby Sam. I wasn’t sure I could have taken this on and Jenna seemed to have more patience than I had ever remembered. Jenna at school would have been so different, I thought.

  ‘Anyway Ruth took us both in until Ivy had the baby, I suppose I was lucky to tag along.’ Jenna looked at me and I could see there were so many thoughts hidden in her look. If it had been her baby how would I have reacted? I didn’t know what Sam would want to do.

  ‘I don’t understand why Ruth was helping you.’ I tried to clear my mind of more impossible worries.

  Jenna took a moment to answer. ‘Ruth might have been a convict but not many of them were really what you’d call dangerous criminals. Ruth had been driven to stealing a loaf of bread for her starving family – that’s all she did to get sent away from them all. She had no idea what’s happened to them back home.’ Jenna stopped, as though she had forgotten my question and was thinking about home and families.

  ‘And she helped you, why?’ I prompted. Somehow a thought about my dad crept into my mind, something he said, ‘Everyone tells you they’re innocent.’ Maybe that was harsh.

  Jenna shook her head, coming out of her thoughts. ‘I suppose it was because of teaching her to read and write. There was a lot of time with not much to do on the ship. Ruth could see that being able to read, write and a bit of adding up and stuff would help persuade the captain that she was worth marrying. And it worked - they’re setting up business together, something to do with importing tea.’

  ‘Must be with the man who helped us to get away.’ I was wondering what would have happened if none of these people had helped us. Sam and I would have ended up on the scaffold and the girls stuck in convict slave labour. ‘How did you get away?’

  ‘They’ve stopped sending convicts to this town – Albany. The people here want it to be a free place without all the army.’

  ‘I guess that’s lucky for Sam and me.’ I didn’t think the magistrate had spent much time trying to find out if we were escapees, probably he didn’t want the trouble that might have caused.

  Jenna went on: ‘There’s a boat that stops here first, on its way to the new colony they’ve set up further along the coast. Ruth got us a place on it, not sure how she did it – might have been because they didn’t much want to have the baby around.’

  I told Jenna how we had got here, but there didn’t seem time to talk about my plan. Sam and Ivy came back and they found a lot more to do putting the baby to bed, even big Sam helped. I had the feeling that this was probably overkill compared to the normal child care round here – that’s if there were any children as I hadn’t seen any yet. I was sure that mothers round here weren’t jumping around in the same way that Sam, Jenna and Ivy did every time small Sam let out a whimper.

  At last they seemed happy and we went on to eat.

  ‘More Jenna stew,’ I cried out as she put a bowl of it in front of me.

  ‘You’ll need to help if we want to get more food,’ Ivy said and she was looking more to Sam than me.

  Jenna went on to explain how they survived, doing some more teaching and growing a few vegetables in the space around the house, ‘The soil is pretty useless round here so we’ve been adding cow manure when we can find it.’

  I didn’t think that made the stew any more tasty.

  ‘Ivy has started using herbs and things as medicine, haven’t you?’ Jenna said.

  ‘There are two local tribes round here, not convicts, they are the people who used to live here years before the rest of us came,’ Ivy explained. ‘There’s no medicine like we know it, the locals know all about different plants and I’ve picked up things from them.’

  ‘Friendly are they?’ I wondered how friendly I would have been if a load of criminals and soldiers tried to take over my homeland.

  ‘Mostly friendly,’ Ivy laughed.

  ‘Even though they’re a bit scary with their spears and painted faces,’ Jenna added.

  ‘They’re just as keen to learn to read and I sort of trade that for learning which plants are useful for treating some illnesses, it’s only a tiny bit helpful but the new residents here all seem to be hypochondriacs and are keen to swap my medicine for food. They like to think it comes from me and not from the real locals.’ Ivy cocked her head, listening for sounds of the baby, and after a small squeak all was quiet again.

  ‘What do you suggest we could do?’ asked Sam.

  ‘Farming and fishing is all there is,’ said Jenna. ‘They go out and catch seals and whales. Pretty brutal and dangerous stuff.’

  ‘Great,’ Sam sounded as though he really could do this.

  I huffed. ‘I’ll get straight down to the whaling boats tomorrow morning, come back sometime maybe. At least it’s better than being hanged, I suppose.’

  Jenna must have seen that I was returning to thinking dismal thoughts, which were likely to be the only real thoughts, so she asked again, ‘Tell us about your plan.’

  ‘It all depends on how much you can remember about that school project,’ I started, and watched Sam’s reactions.

  ‘My project,’ Jenna interrupted as though the idea would be ridiculous. ‘Do you mean the one about baby Jesus?’ Jenna laughed, probably having babies on her mind all the time. ‘I did that one in primary school.’

  ‘No, the one about evolution,’ I said, staring at her, hoping to see some sign of her remembering.

  ‘Eh? Jenna’s face suggested that I really was crazy rather than her recollecting anything.

  ‘Didn’t you see the name on the boat that brought us here?’ Sam chipped in.

  ‘Bit busy,’ Ivy and Jenna said together and Jenna went on: ‘We had no idea a ship had arrived.’

  ‘It’s the Beagle,’ Sam announced as though the name would trigger astonishment.

  ‘The bagel?’ Ivy said, deliberately mistaking the name.

  Jenna was obviously thinking, her face creased as I hoped she was remembering her project done all that time ago, back home, back at school.

  ‘Beagle, Darwin, evolution,’ Jenna said eventually. ‘Ok, so what’s the plan?’

  ‘He hasn’t got there yet,’ I said. ‘Darwin’s only a young man. He doesn’t know about evolution yet. Sam recognised the ship’s name and tried to talk to him and I guess that was really confusing especially since we didn’t know a lot about the subject.’

  Sam nodded. ‘He’s going round the world collecting specimens.’

  ‘I’ve been drawing some of them for him,’ I interrupted.

  ‘Drawing.’ Jenna laughed. ‘Alvin drawing?’

  I looked down, just a bit hurt.

  ‘Sorry,’ Jenna muttered and gave me a hug. ‘How does my school project
fit in?’

  ‘It’s years before Darwin comes to the conclusion about evolution,’ I said. ‘You just have to feed him a bit about it to get him interested and he might let us stay on the ship and take us home.’

  ‘Home.’ Ivy gave a sob. ‘Where’s that?’

  That stopped all the conversation. We might get ourselves back to England, even back to the moor, but where would that eventually get us?

  ‘Have to try,’ I said, and I wasn’t sure that all the others felt that I was right.

  Yambup

  -18-

  Testing my plan wasn’t going to be easy, even if I thought it would work at all. It wasn’t just getting to talk to Darwin that was difficult. Thinking was nearly impossible in this tiny house with baby Sam screaming his head off most of the time. It rained and it wasn’t too hot either. Out at sea it had been warm enough working on the rigging or down in the cabin drawing specimens where it was stuffy and hot – bringing back my feeling of sea sickness. Here on land the sun was warm enough but the breeze brought a chill in the air and I didn’t have any warm clothes.

  We needed to get more food and that meant doing something to either get paid or in exchange for whatever food there was available. Jenna suggested that Sam and I went out looking and she said the man at one of the larger houses might take us on.

  ‘He grows a lot of vegetables,’ Jenna said. ‘Seems to be much better at it than the rest of the people here.’

  So we walked in the direction Jenna sent us, it was a little distance from the sea up near a hill and surrounded by trees. It looked like a farmhouse – again a bit like the houses we had seen on the moor. We found the man – odd looking bloke all dressed up with a fancy waistcoat. I think he was waiting for Darwin and more important people from the boat because he looked a bit disappointed to see us. Even so he was keen to have us work on his fields and didn’t need any explanation of who we were. So he set us to digging and planting in a patch of unused land back nearer to the harbour. It reminded me of the fields we had cleared once before in another place. I told Sam about that but he was too preoccupied with his thoughts, which I guessed were about Ivy and that baby.