Barney and the Secret of the French Spies

by Jackie French

  ‘So the French might want a colony in New South Wales too?’

  ‘Exactly. Captain Phillip knew of Captain la Pérouse’s expedition, just as they knew of ours. It was no coincidence that they met at Botany Bay. Two expeditions meeting by accident in the vast Pacific Ocean? The French knew exactly where we were headed. They have their spies too.

  ‘But the French did not know how long we’d been here, or what defences we had set up, or how many navy ships and cannons we had to defend us — and Captain Phillip made sure they didn’t find out. As soon as the lookout saw those sails, Phillip ordered us to sail immediately for Port Jackson, which he and Hunter had just discovered. The French couldn’t see us through the narrow gap in the Port Jackson cliffs and realise how easily our colony might be taken.’

  ‘So we left Botany Bay to hide from the French?’

  Mr Johnson shook his head. ‘We left because there was little fresh water and none of the good grass and straight trees Sir Joseph Banks had promised and that we had crossed the world to find. And worse — the bay itself gave little protection from the southerly winds. It was God’s miracle that we found our great harbour so close to that ill-natured bay. Captain Cook had missed it because the gap between the heads is so narrow and the wind was too strong to allow him in to investigate. But yes — we left so quickly, despite the bad winds, to hide our true position from the French.’

  ‘There isn’t a French colony in New South Wales now is there, sir?’ There were lots of crazy rumours up and down the river: that China was only a few days’ march north; that an enormous golden city stood just across the mountains. But I had never heard even a whisper of a French colony.

  ‘No. We’d have been at war with a French colony long before this, if there was one nearby.’ His look turned serious. ‘And wiped each other out, most probably. War is one of the great sins and tragedies of mankind, Barney. We are all the children of God. God’s children should be brothers, not enemies.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I said, thinking of Elsie again. If she’d been on one of those French ships, why had she stayed in New South Wales? And how had she ended up in our colony, alone? ‘So the French never came in to Port Jackson?’

  ‘Not that we know of. Our officers made many visits back to Botany Bay to show the French where they might find fresh water and to offer them any stores we might have that they might find useful, as they offered us stores too. Captain la Pérouse gave Governor Hunter — just a lieutenant then — his log books to send back to France. And it was a good thing that Captain la Pérouse did, for his whole expedition was never heard from again once they left here. All the knowledge from the expedition would have been lost with them if those log books had been on the ships that sailed away. The poor wretches must have foundered on some unknown shore or rocks.’

  I shivered. No one who has felt like a twig tossed about on the ocean can feel anything but horror for those who lose their lives at sea. ‘They were explorers as well as spies, then?’

  ‘More explorers than spies, just as Captain Cook was. There were certainly many men of science among them.’

  ‘So Elsie could have been on the French ships?’ It was too big to fit properly in my mind. Elsie was . . . Elsie! Not French. And still weak and recovering, and I should have stayed with her . . . but Mr Johnson was speaking again.

  ‘I thought of that, but it seemed impossible. Women can sail on English ships — a captain may bring his wife on the ship with him. Our marines brought their wives and even their children here. And sadly sailors bring . . . other women too. But the French king passed an edict that no woman could ever sail on a French ship.’

  ‘But the French king is dead! The revolutionaries cut his head off!’ I cried.

  ‘Poor doomed monarch. God rest his soul and forgive those who so cruelly slayed him. But His French Majesty was still alive when la Pérouse sailed.’

  So Elsie was French. An enemy. But she couldn’t be one of those French. ‘Did any other ships land here back then?’ I asked.

  ‘Not that we know of. And you know how closely we watched the horizon for sails. The lookout would have seen any ship that came close enough for a girl to come ashore.’

  I nodded. More ships came from other ports these days, even bringing free settlers. It would be easy enough for a girl like Elsie to arrive now. But not back then.

  A sudden hope seized me. ‘Sir, young ladies learn French, don’t they? Mrs Johnson speaks some French. Maybe Elsie learned some French years ago and it just came out in a muddle when she was sick? Maybe she’s not French at all?’

  Mr Johnson shook his head. ‘Elsie didn’t just speak a few French words, Barney. I doubt any English child as young as she must have been could learn enough to speak the way she did when she was ill.’ He looked at me solemnly. ‘Elsie has always been a mystery, and until now it didn’t seem to matter. But if she truly is French, we need to know so we can protect her from any accusation that she is a spy. Elsie trusts my wife and me. I think she loves us, as we love her. But she may think we would not love her if we knew she was French. She knows I am employed by His Majesty’s government. She may think I’d feel it was my duty to tell the governor that a French girl lived in the colony, that she knew where the guns are placed in the harbour, where the colony’s farms stretch and what ships we might call on to defend us. There is only one person she would trust with her secret, Barney.’

  ‘Me,’ I said.

  We looked at the farms instead of each other. Because we both knew what had to happen now.

  As soon as Elsie was strong enough, I had to ask her.

  Who was she really? How had she come here?

  And did she really want to stay in an English colony . . .

  . . . and with me?

  CHAPTER 6

  Elsie Answers

  Frozen cobwebs dangled from the sheep pens back at my farm. The sheep looked reproachful, like it was my fault their feet were chilly and the winter grass didn’t taste as good. Luckily I’d dried plenty of sweet hay for them, and they got a good feed of it every evening, to keep them from straying too far off.

  ‘All’s in good shape,’ said Bill as we sat with our stocking feet up on chairs before the fire, the flames snickering up my new stone fireplace. ‘Half the gang can’t believe their luck, getting a master as good as you.’

  ‘And the other half?’

  He grinned. ‘Lazy, vicious or thieves. I sent ’em back to Parramatta and got some better ’uns. They’re happy as troopers. Most of ’em never ate good meat before, much less a kangaroo stew with hunks of potato, not to mention slept in proper bunks in huts, wiv kangaroo-skin blankets. And a master who won’t give them the lash either, just send ’em back to the road gang if they try any funny business.’ Bill hesitated. ‘I’m right sorry about your Elsie, Barney. But she’ll come good now, surely.’

  I nodded, a bit uncertain. Sometimes congestion of the lungs lingered for years, even killing people a long, long time after they first got sick. Elsie was strong and had been well fed and healthy: I was pretty sure she’d recover all right. But pretty sure isn’t the same as really sure, and I wanted to be there . . .

  ‘And I thought we’d put potatoes in the new paddock,’ said Bill. He raised an eyebrow. ‘You ain’t listening, are you?’

  ‘No,’ I admitted.

  ‘Then you go back to Sydney Town and your Elsie. I can manage here.’

  And he could. Bill was older than me and had been farming all his life — it was only the corn failure back in England that had made him turn to crime, to steal bags of seed for his dad to sow the next season. I paid him wages now, even though he was legally still a convict for another few years, and he’d sent some money back to his family, as well as saved some for the farm he’d get of his own next year maybe, when I married Elsie.

  If I married Elsie.

  If she wanted to marry me.

  ‘Yes,’ I said heavily. ‘I need to go back to Sydney Town.’

  There were thi
ngs I had to sort out first: where to move the sheep in the next couple of weeks, because I wasn’t sure when I’d be back, and which of the ring-barked hills needed cleaning up first, and to make sure to put bigger tree guards around the fruit trees as soon as they showed new spring growth, so the wallabies didn’t rip them apart, and warn the new chums about snakes if we got warm weather, because snakes wake up grumpy and snappish.

  One of the new gang had the shakes from being out in the bush — he’d hardly ever been out of a town. Some convicts never can stand what they see as ‘all that emptiness’. Empty? With the hills clothed in trees, and every tree a home to birds and lizards and o’possums, not to mention a thousand roos peering out, waiting to grab my corn crop?

  I put him in the long hut with six others, instead of in a shepherd’s hut further out, and told Bill to put him to weeding the house garden, the onions, leeks, cabbages and turnips, and hoeing the swedes — sheep and goats love a few hunks of swede among their hay at night. The second day he made friends with my two goats, and by the third he was milking them, and chatting to them just like they were his mates from London Town, and as proud of his buckets of milk as if he’d been entrusted with the Crown Jewels. I showed him how to stir the rennet in to make goat’s cheese — Mrs Johnson had taught me that — and, by the time I left, he’d settled in like a good ’un.

  Bill and I worked out which parts of the river flats we’d put down to pumpkins and which to corn and potatoes. I wasn’t going to try growing wheat, even though the colony always needed more wheat flour. You can store corn on the cob as long as it’s shucked and you have a place to hang the sacks, but wheat needs a proper granary, not to mention a threshing floor. Roos won’t touch pumpkins, nor potatoes neither, but it’s hard to keep ’em from corn — and even harder to keep ’em out of wheat. I reckoned I was safer concentrating on the sheep and wool . . .

  My mind kept drifting, though. Ever since I first dreamed of owning a farm, I’d seen Elsie there too. Maybe she’d like a dairy, with some cows to make hard yellow cheese, not just the soft white goat’s cheese. Yellow cheese and butter were worth more than gold in the colony back then. And hens for eggs — Elsie would have to have hens. And another room on the house for a convict girl servant, or two or three maids if Elsie wanted them . . .

  I netted a couple of lyrebirds before I left. I didn’t kill them — lyrebirds are too tough and skinny to eat unless you’re starving. I wanted their tail feathers to make a fan for Elsie. The lyrebirds stalked off, embarrassed by their bare behinds, but they’d grow more feathers soon. And lyrebird feathers were as grand as any seen at the French court.

  Or were they? Who was Elsie, apart from being French? A nobody like me, or the daughter of a gentleman? Maybe she had even been to the French court!

  I don’t even know her real name, I thought as I hefted my bundle into the canoe I kept for going up to Parramatta, where I could catch a bigger boat up to Sydney Town. But she’d said she loved me, once.

  At least I did have that.

  I liked the quiet, paddling up to Parramatta. A few Indians passed me in their canoes. They kept their distance till they recognised me — the Indians were wary of us colonists now. An Indian family had turned up during my second year on the farm to help harvest my corn crop, but they hadn’t come back now that I had more men working for me.

  The land felt lost and a bit empty without them, but I knew they were right not to trust the new chums. I might be able to keep my convict gang off the grog, but the convicts didn’t know the Indians like I did, having shared a house with Birrung back when the Johnsons rescued her as well as me and Elsie. And, when you came down to it, every convict here had been a crook, even if, like Ma and Bill, it had only been from desperation.

  I paid a penny at one of the warehouses in Parramatta to store my canoe and keep it safe, then caught the ferry up to Sydney Town. I don’t know what I felt that day: happy to be seeing Elsie, and Mr and Mrs Johnson too, but terror as well.

  What if what Elsie really wanted was to go back to France?

  Cold orphan kids in rags held out hands at the docks at Sydney Town, hoping for a halfpenny or whatever foreign coin I might have, or a crust of bread. I tore up the damper loaf I’d brought with me and shared it out. I wasn’t much of a cook, but they gobbled it down. I remembered too well what it was like to be a small child and hungry.

  The road was empty as I trudged up the hill towards the Johnsons’, the men on work patrols elsewhere. It was a proper road now, paved with rock by convict gangs. The gardens on either side were mostly fenced, to keep goats in, or to keep goats out of vegetables or fruit trees. Smoke drifted up in a blue haze from the chimneys.

  The new servant, Maggie, opened the door when I knocked, and even bobbed a curtsey. I reckoned she’d been in service before. ‘The master is away at Parramatta, Mr Barney, and the mistress down at the school, with the children. Will you be staying?’

  ‘For a night or two, maybe,’ I said. ‘How’s Elsie?’

  ‘She’s doing much better. I’ll go and make your bed up for you.’ She smiled at me — a pretty smile. ‘I’ll put a hot brick in to warm it too, and make sure the sheets are aired against the damp. Elsie’s in Mr Johnson’s study, where the fire’s lit to keep the books dry,’ she added. ‘The mistress says Elsie needs to rest for a while yet.’

  ‘Thank you, Maggie.’ I took off my hat and jacket and hung them on the rack, then knocked at the study door and went in. It was warm there, the fire kept lit for most of the day to keep the mould from all of Mr Johnson’s books, thousands of them, in shelves from floor to ceiling, books he had brought across the world so convicts and Indians learning to read could borrow them.

  Elsie sat in Mr Johnson’s hard wooden chair, but someone — Mrs Johnson probably — had placed pillows around her, and her feet were up on a footstool. She put down her sewing as I came in and smiled at me, that glowing Elsie smile she never gave to other people.

  ‘Hello, Elsie,’ I said awkwardly.

  She looked at me enquiringly. Elsie could say more with a tilt of her head than most people could in half an hour of talking.

  I put another log of wood on the fire, then pulled up the other chair and sat down. I was just going to speak when the door opened again. Maggie brought in a tray with two tankards of sarsaparilla tea and a plate of hearth cakes on it. She smiled at me again. ‘I thought you might be hungry after your journey, Mr Barney. The mistress says your farm is a fine one,’ she added. ‘I’d love to see it one day.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said as she put the tray on a stool by the fire. ‘Maybe you can come down one Sunday with Mr and Mrs Johnson and Elsie.’ Maggie gave me another smile as she went out.

  I glanced back at Elsie. She had the look on her face that meant, ‘Maggie wants a husband with a good farm and the governor’s favour, which will get him even more land and men to work it.’ I hadn’t realised I was getting to be the sort of man women might want to marry, not because of who I was, but for what I had and what more I might make.

  And then I forgot about Maggie, because Elsie was looking at me with her brown eyes and for a second they filled the world.

  ‘Elsie,’ I began. ‘I need to ask you a question —’ I paused, for her face twisted, like she was going to cry. She held up a hand to stop me.

  I shook my head. ‘Elsie, I need to know —’

  Elsie shook her head. I kept talking anyway. ‘— because we all heard you speaking French while you were sick. Speaking like a French person, Mr Johnson said. Speaking like you had no problem talking at all.’

  Elsie stared at me. Whatever question she had been expecting me to ask, it wasn’t about speaking French. My heart crumpled. Did she think I was going to ask her to marry me, and was asking me not to, because she’d say no?

  Elsie put her head on one side, questioningly. I forced myself to keep talking.

  ‘Mrs Macarthur heard you too. But don’t worry. She promised she wouldn’t tell anyone. She really
likes you. She’s a good woman, Mrs Macarthur, despite her husband. And the Johnsons had you taken to the isolation hut before anyone else could hear. But, Elsie . . . please . . . who are you? You can trust me,’ I added. ‘And the Johnsons and Mrs Macarthur. Whoever you are, we’ll never betray you.’

  Elsie put her hands in her lap, with the sewing. For a moment I thought she still wasn’t going to speak. ‘Barney . . .’ Her voice was low and soft, as if she was trying it out. She had gone so many years, guarding herself from speech. It must be like finally feeling the breeze beyond a prison’s walls, I thought. ‘Barney, I . . . I have so much wanted to talk to you. Right from the first, when you found me among the rocks.’

  I wanted to say I’d longed to hear her voice too, not just the few whispered words she’d said. I wanted to say her voice was just like I thought it would be, but even more beautiful, like a lyrebird singing, all lilting music. I thought I’d never heard anyone speak as beautifully as she did.

  But it was me who couldn’t speak now. The words were in my head, but my mouth wouldn’t say them.

  I reached over and took her hand instead. To my relief she held my fingers tight. ‘But back then I knew only a few words of English.’ Her words were almost whispered. She coughed a little, then spoke more strongly.

  ‘I was afraid, so very afraid at first, that someone would take me to the governor and say I was a French spy. Or that they wouldn’t even take me to the governor. I had heard so many stories about English privateers, selling women to slavery and worse.’ Elsie met my eyes. ‘And some things I saw when I first came to the colony were so very bad.’

  She had been right to be frightened. We’d seen young convict women auctioned here in the colony by the officers of the Corps, sold to any man who had the money or rum to buy them. And so much more . . .