‘The bastard doesn’t care that he’ll bring us all down,’ William Moreton admitted to Mary one evening. ‘I wish to God we’d left him stranded in White Bay.’
Mary looked at each of the men grouped around her and her heart ached at their fearful expressions. They had become like brothers to her in the weeks at sea, each sharing some personal story with her, whether about their mother, the crime for which they were sentenced, or a girl they loved back home in England. They had behaved like gentlemen to her, and Emmanuel and Charlotte would go to any one of them for comfort as easily as they went to Will. They weren’t bad men, just boys who went astray for a while and had surely paid the full price for their crimes. They had been semi-starved, savagely flogged and sent to the other side of the world in terrible hardship.
Mary knew she couldn’t just watch and wait while her husband, their so-called friend, acted like a fool and put them all in jeopardy. She had to stop him.
‘I’ll try to talk to him again,’ she said. ‘Stay here with the children. I’ll go up to the port.’
Mary found Will in the third bar she looked in. He was sprawled on a bench, a half-empty bottle of rum on the table in front of him, and several days’ growth of beard on his chin. There were five or six other men near him, yet from Mary’s viewpoint, looking through a dusty window, they didn’t look like real friends, just drinking companions.
It was the first time she’d been to the port after dark, and her heart was pounding with fright, for she’d already been accosted twice by foreign sailors. She knew that most if not all of the women out on the crowded streets were whores. She was frightened to go into the bar, for she couldn’t count on Will protecting her.
Taking a deep breath and tightening her shawl over her shoulders, she walked in and went straight up to Will.
‘Please come home, Will,’ she begged him. ‘Emmanuel’s ill.’
She knew he would be angry when he discovered this wasn’t so, but it was the only thing she could think of which might make him come with her without an ugly scene.
He looked at her suspiciously, his eyes barely focusing. ‘What’s wrong with him?’
‘He’s got a fever,’ she said quickly. ‘Please come, Will, I’m worried about him.’
There was a titter of laughter from the men he was drinking with. Mary realized they probably didn’t speak English and therefore they might think she was a whore offering herself to him. ‘Please, Will,’ she pleaded. ‘Come now.’
His lip curled back disdainfully as he glanced at his companions and the bottle of rum. Thankfully it seemed his son had a greater value, for he got up unsteadily.
‘I’ll be back,’ he said self-importantly to the other men, and they grinned, showing rotten teeth. One made a crude gesture with his fist.
Out in the noisy, crowded street, Mary sped on ahead so Will couldn’t question her, leaving him lumbering along behind. But when they reached the narrow path to the village, Mary had to slow down in the pitch darkness, and it was only then that she became afraid of how he’d react when he found she’d dragged him away from his drink on false pretences.
‘He’s coming,’ she said as she got into the clearing where the men were sitting by the fire waiting for her. Nat’s big eyes were even bigger with fear, Jamie was white-faced, and even Bill, the tough one, was chewing on his knuckles. Mary made a kind of hopeless gesture with her hands, hoping that would warn them she hadn’t yet had an opportunity to talk to Will, and she didn’t expect him to be receptive.
‘Will!’ James exclaimed as he came staggering out into the clearing. ‘Where’ve you been hiding? We need to talk to you.’
‘Not now, Emmanuel’s sick,’ Will retorted, his face tightening to see them all there.
‘He’s not sick,’ Mary said quietly. ‘I said that to get you back here.’
‘You did what?’ Will said, glowering at her.
‘I had to, it was the only way,’ she replied, taking a step back from him in case he took a swing at her. ‘We’re all worried. It isn’t just your freedom you’re risking, it’s all of ours.’
‘That’s right, Will,’ James agreed. ‘We’re all in this together. Or so we thought.’
Will looked slowly round the group of men, then shrugged. ‘I promised to get you away from the camp. I did that, brought you here. Do you expect me to wetnurse you forever too?’
‘None of us need wet-nursing,’ Bill growled at him, getting to his feet and clenching his fists. By the light of the fire he looked menacing, but Will didn’t appear to notice. ‘There’s questions being asked about us all around town,’ Bill went on. ‘You’re drawing even more attention to us all by getting drunk and shooting your mouth off. You should be staying here with Mary and your children.’
Will turned to Mary, his face dark with fury. ‘You bitch,’ he spat out. ‘Thought you’d trap me here by getting them all to side with you, did you? Can’t you get it into your thick head I’m sick of you? Next boat out I’ll be on it.’
Without drawing breath once, Will embarked on a cruel verbal onslaught. That he wasn’t legally married to her, that she was a nag, a whore and she brought him down. He claimed he could have sailed off with Detmer Smith but he didn’t because he’d promised to get his friends to freedom. ‘And I did,’ he finally roared out. ‘It was me who sailed us here, and you’ve even robbed me of that by making out you planned the whole thing and kept us all going.’
‘I’ve not said a word about anything,’ Mary said truthfully. She was afraid of Will now, she’d never seen him quite this angry before.
‘That’s right, she hasn’t,’ Sam Broome spoke up. ‘But we all know the truth about what went on at sea, Will. We couldn’t have made it without her. She might not have navigated, but she sure as hell gave us the spirit to keep on. You’re a bag of wind, Will. And that wind will get us all hanged.’
Will drew back his fist and punched out at Sam, knocking him to the ground. ‘Let’s see who’s a bag of wind,’ he yelled. ‘You want her, then take her, you’re welcome to the scheming little witch. Like I said, I’m off on the next ship.’
Bill and Sam grabbed Will, both of them desperately trying to hold him fast until James could talk some sense into him. But Will shrugged them off and backed away towards the path to the port.
‘Don’t come near me,’ he roared. ‘I’m sick of the lot of you, clinging to my shirt-tails one minute, doing me down the next. I can sail out of here, my skill is in demand. None of you have anything without me.’
He turned and went off up the path, and Bill started off after him. ‘Don’t,’ Mary said, putting a restraining hand on his arm. ‘It will only make him more determined.’
‘What shall we do?’ Jamie Cox asked, his voice trembling.
‘Let’s hope he does get the next ship out,’ Mary said, and went to help Sam up off the ground. ‘He’s more trouble than he’s worth.’
It was two days later, soon after dawn, that Mary heard the ominous sound of tramping boots coming towards the village.
She had woken earlier with a strange sense of foreboding, and when she heard the sound she immediately recognized it as soldiers marching. There was no other plausible reason for them to come to the village, it had to be for her and the men.
Her first thought was to grab the children and flee into the jungle, but she quashed this desire immediately, for it would only confirm they had something to hide. So she put on her pink dress, put her feet into the shoes she’d been given and never yet worn, and quickly brushed her hair. Then, picking Emmanuel, still sleeping, up in her arms, she went out to greet the soldiers with what she hoped was an innocent-looking smile on her face.
Chapter fifteen
‘There is no point in denying it, Mary.’ Wanjon sighed in exasperation. ‘I know you escaped from the penal colony, your husband told me.’
At Wanjon’s words Mary felt as if she was tumbling into a black, bottomless pit, from which there would never be any way out.
She and the children had been separated from the men as soon as they arrived at the Castle gaol, so they had no opportunity to confer about what they were going to say. They didn’t know either whether Will had been arrested too. But Mary found herself being treated gently by the soldiers, the cell she was put in was clean, and she was brought water, bread and some fruit, so that gave her every hope.
Yet as she watched the sun rise through the tiny grilled window overlooking the port, and gradually move directly overhead, without anyone coming to her, her heart began to sink.
‘Why have we got to stay here, Mumma?’ Charlotte asked. She had accepted the situation patiently so far, but now she was getting restless. ‘I don’t like it here, I want to go home.’
‘We have to stay because a man wants to ask us some questions,’ Mary said, distractedly running her fingers through the child’s hair. ‘Now, be a good girl and let’s play with Emmanuel.’
But Mary had no heart to encourage Emmanuel to toddle between the two of them, and tell him what a clever boy he was for walking unaided. She was terribly afraid that this tiny cell, less than four feet wide by six feet long, was going to be their home for the unforeseeable future.
Charlotte looked so pretty now, dark curls framing her small sun-tanned face, her bare arms and legs plump and dimpled. She reminded Mary very much of her sister Dolly, for she had the same pouting lips and turned-up nose. All the care and attention over the last two months, and the company of other children, had given her more confidence; she’d even learned many of the native words.
It seemed to Mary that Charlotte had left babyhood behind and become a little girl now. Only a few days before she had refused to put on the dull grey dress she had been given when they first arrived here, and insisted on wearing a brightly coloured one her mother had made from a length of locally produced material. Mary had wanted to keep it for best, as she did her own pink dress, but Charlotte had made such a fuss that she’d given in.
Clearly Charlotte had forgotten that back in Sydney Cove she had only one dress, so worn, faded and patched it had fallen apart on the boat. Mary was very glad her daughter appeared not to remember the colony, or how they all were when they arrived here, fainting with hunger and thirst, their skin and hair crawling with lice. Mary had managed to blank it out too, but now, faced with the possibility they might be sent back there, it was back in the forefront of her mind again. It was bad enough imagining herself living that way again, but how could Charlotte stand it now that she knew a different kind of life? As for Emmanuel, his little stomach couldn’t possibly take a harsh prison diet. He wasn’t strong, just the slightest variation in his food brought on sickness again.
Later, when both he and Charlotte had fallen asleep, their heads on her lap as she sat on the floor, Mary stroked Emmanuel’s blond hair back from his eyes and choked back her tears. He was almost too pretty to be a boy, with his pure blond hair touching his shoulders, eyes like periwinkles, and translucent fair skin. She had kept him alive by sheer will-power on the boat, but if they had to stay in this gaol, or be sent back to the colony, how could she find that strength again? She knew that back home in Cornwall he’d be one of those babies people called ‘a special one’. That meant the child had the look of an angel, and therefore was not long for this world.
Mary could tell from the length of the shadows outside the window that it was about five in the afternoon when the gaoler unlocked the door of her cell. He was swarthy-skinned, with almond eyes, and he said something unintelligible to her, beckoning for her to follow him. Holding Emmanuel in her arms, and taking Charlotte by the hand, she was finally taken to Wanjon.
He was in one of the upper chambers of the Castle, a gloomy, cool room which presumably was his office for along with a desk there was a lamp and books on shelves, and many personal items, like a painting of a woman who was perhaps his wife, and a snake made of beads adorning a wooden bowl of fruit.
The white jacket Wanjon had been wearing the previous time she met him was slung on the back of his chair, his white shirt was crumpled and he smelled of sweat. Mary had thought him very personable and pleasant at that first meeting, but now he looked tired, hot and irritated. He was small and stout, with jet-black hair slicked down with oil and parted in the middle. She assumed from his name, almond eyes and coffee-coloured skin that he was native to this country, but he must have been well educated, probably in Holland or even England, as he could speak both English and Dutch fluently, along with the local language.
He began to ask her questions about the whaling ship: how many hands there were, the master’s name, where the ship was registered, and the last port they’d called into before the ship was wrecked.
Everything except where the ship was registered had been rehearsed by them all back in the cutter. But even as Mary began to spill out that the master was from Rio de Janeiro, his name was Marcia Consuella, there were eighteen hands, and they’d sailed out of Cape Town, she knew none of it would stand up to close scrutiny. When Emmanuel began to cry, she hoped that Wanjon would be irritated enough to give up.
Sadly, the only effect it had was to make him stop wasting any more time and come out with what he really believed.
‘This is all lies, Mary,’ he said, getting up and pacing up and down the room, his hands behind his back. ‘You were not on a whaler. You have never been on a whaler. You stole the boat back in New South Wales. You are escaped prisoners.’
Mary jogged Emmanuel up and down in her arms as she protested he was badly mistaken. And it was at that point that he informed her Will had told him everything.
It took Mary some time to come to terms with the shock. She had asked the guard earlier if her husband was being held here, and he’d said he wasn’t. Of course the guard had only a word or two of English, and her knowledge of his language was about the same, yet he appeared to understand what she asked. Will stood out in Kupang because of his size and blond hair, and Mary was sure that if he was in the Castle, everyone would know. She’d begun to think he might have made good the threat he’d come out with two nights ago and signed on a ship.
‘My husband, though it grieves me to admit it, likes to brag,’ she said wildly. ‘Perhaps he thought that was a more exciting story to tell than the truth.’
‘I have seen the log he kept,’ Wanjon responded wearily.
It was all Mary could do not to scream when she heard that, for she had begged Will to destroy the log, even before they arrived here.
‘This is all somewhat embarrassing for me,’ Wanjon went on as he continued to pace around the room. ‘You see, but for the arrival of Captain Edwards, I would have put you all on board the very next ship bound for England. But Captain Edwards wanted to know more about you all, so I had to bring in your husband and he told me everything.’
‘Will peached on us?’ she asked incredulously.
‘Peached?’ Wanjon frowned. ‘What does that mean?’
‘Told on us. Turned King’s evidence,’ Mary said.
‘Yes, he told on you,’ Wanjon nodded. ‘Some men have no loyalty when they think they can save their own skin.’
Mary broke down then, she could no longer hold back her tears. ‘Please, sir,’ she pleaded with him, ‘don’t send us back there. Emmanuel still isn’t well, Charlotte has only just recovered. They’ll die if we have to go back.’
‘My dear, this is beyond my jurisdiction,’ Wanjon said with a dismissive wave of his hand. ‘Your English naval officer, Captain Edwards, is the only one with the authority to decide what is to be done with you.’
He opened the door and gave an order to the guard.
‘You will go back to your cell now,’ he said, turning back to Mary. ‘You will be brought food and water. I am not a cruel man, Mary. You and your children will be treated well during your stay here.’
Wanjon stared out of the window for some time after Mary had been led away and his heart felt heavy. He had accepted the men’s story about how they made it here after their ship
was wrecked, purely because it was so similar to what had happened to Captain Bligh two years earlier. It didn’t even cross his mind that they might have escaped from the penal colony in New South Wales. Who would think a bunch of mere convicts could make a journey of some 3,000 miles in an open boat?
Even Captain Edwards, for all his seamanship, had come to grief in the Torres Straits, but then he was a bull-headed man who thought he knew enough to sail through such dangerous waters at night. The man clearly had no heart, for he had put his fourteen captured mutineers into a box-like structure on the deck, leaving them there in all winds and weathers, their legs and arms shackled. When his ship was going down he refused to let any of the crew unchain them, and it was only thanks to one of the men who ignored the order that ten of them survived.
Wanjon sighed deeply. It grieved him to hand Mary and her companions over to Edwards, for he knew they would suffer sorely at his hands. Mary was an exceptionally courageous woman, and whatever the crime that led her to be transported, she had already paid dearly for it. As for those innocent little children, they had been a hair’s-breadth from death when they arrived here in Kupang. What right had any government, be it English, Dutch or any other nationality, to send them somewhere where their early death could be the only outcome?
It was over a week before Mary got to see any of the men. She was told by one of the guards who spoke a little English that they were being kept in one cell, Will included.
Wanjon had been as good as his word to Mary. She’d received wholesome food for herself and the children and was even brought a sleeping mat, a blanket and water to wash with. Daily, she was taken down to the yard with the children so they could have some fresh air and exercise in the Castle courtyard. Sometimes she even allowed herself to believe the Dutch Governor would intervene and let her go free. For surely a man who could treat her and her children with such kindness would not send her away to be hanged, and leave Charlotte and Emmanuel orphaned?
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