by Peter McAra
‘The Esmeralda. Where was she wrecked? I do not know of her, yet we at the mission seek to know of all such happenings.’ She waved an arm in a broad circle.
‘Er, a long way that way.’ Eliza pointed north. ‘We had no way of knowing the name of the place.’
‘But why did you walk? Why did you not wait for the English to rescue you?’
‘The Esmeralda was destined for Sydney Town. Alas, no one came to rescue us. Months passed. We walked because we were afraid. Afraid of the wilderness. Afraid that savages might eat us. We believed that if we walked inland, we must find a town.’
‘Indeed, you likely would have. But you surprise me. Sydney Town is but a few days’ walk away.’ Eliza watched the doubt now flickering in Mary’s narrowed eyes.
‘Ever since we were wrecked, Mary, we have not seen any sign of the English. And that for more than a year, perhaps. I…we, have lost count of time. My mistress…’ she pointed to Susannah. ‘She was with child as we sailed — unwell for a long time after she gave birth. We found a cave. Lived there for perhaps months. We ate shellfish, leaves. Until she healed enough to walk. And so now we journey, hoping to find some English souls.’
‘Then follow me, ladies. We are but an hour from the mission. I’m sure Reverend Bentleigh will care for you — you poor suffering women.’ She looked into Susannah’s drawn face. ‘May I carry your baby? I loves little ‘uns. Mayhap I’ll have my own one day.’ Susannah handed Ann to their new friend, allowing herself a silent sigh of relief.
They chatted as they walked. Mary told them she had followed her mistress and her soldier husband from London to Botany Bay, then been left homeless and unemployed when the soldier, then his wife, died of a fever. The mission had taken her in, cared for her. In return she worked in the kitchen, making meals for the native children who attended the mission school by day, along with some of their parents who might visit, or helped with cleaning, and catching game to cook.
As dusk fell, the trio walked into St Mathew’s Mission. The huddle of stone buildings was part hidden behind a rectangular paling fence. A stream wound through a grassy field on which a few cattle grazed. After serving her new friends a meal, and Ann some fresh milk, Mary escorted them to the small but soundly built visitors’ quarters, empty except for two elderly ladies, already asleep.
‘Here.’ She laid two nightdresses on the beds. ‘These should be a mite more comfortable than your dresses. As she turned to leave she brightened. ‘It’s Sabbath day tomorrow. You shall meet the reverend after chapel, ladies. Afore that, I will tell him of your plight. That we made a place for you here.’
‘Welcome to St Mathew’s.’ A smiling Reverend Martin Bentleigh took Eliza’s hand as the trio filed out of the chapel after morning service. Eliza gazed up at the tall, spare man who stood awkwardly in his vicar’s sombre clothing. He smiled, and she took in his blue eyes and golden hair, not unlike her own.
‘Miss Alice Fortescue, are you not? I understand from Mrs Blakemore, my housekeeper, that you have travelled far.’
‘Indeed we have, Vicar. It has been a long, tiring journey. The more so for poor Mrs Pritchard, with her baby in her arms.’
‘Mrs Blakemore has told me of your adventures. I can hardly believe what I heard. You hail from the Home Counties, do you not? And you are companion to Mrs Susannah Pritchard.’
‘Yes sir. The Pritchard family changed houses frequently during my years with them. Mrs Pritchard was wed to Mr Septimus Pritchard; a soldier, then a man of business. He worked with shipping and trade matters. The thriving textile industry — mills, canals, ships, harbours…’
Eliza hesitated. How much longer could she continue to weave this quilt of lies? Any detail of her origins would by now be sufficiently confusing to the vicar. She had long ago mastered a range of accents to suit any occasion. The vicar would never know she hailed from the little Dorset village of Marley, daughter of a humble seamstress and a ploughman.
‘Ah, I know little of such enterprises.’ The vicar waved a limp hand of dismissal. ‘And now poor Mrs Pritchard is a widow, with a baby to care for — that terrible shipwreck. I understand you have attended her as her companion for some years? She mentioned that you are extremely well read, knowledgeable in many disciplines.’
‘Indeed sir. I taught for some time in village schools. My late father was…a teacher. He had amassed a library of considerable diversity. With his encouragement, I, from my early years, became a bookworm.’
‘You like teaching?’
‘Well…yes, sir.’ Eliza winced at the fate she now saw looming. Back in Marley, she had gritted her teeth every morning she walked to the schoolhouse. Now she watched a glow spread across the vicar’s sculptured features.
‘Excellent! I see the hand of The Lord at work, Miss Fortescue. As you will have learned already from Mrs Blakemore, we conduct a school here at the mission. We aim to educate our, er, sable brethren in the ways of The Lord, and so we teach them to read and cipher. Indeed, we sincerely hope that some will find The Lord, and become missionaries to their race. We too have a library, though it must surely be more modest than your late father’s. Would you like to teach in our school?’
‘Er, yes, sir. I should find that…most interesting.’
‘Very well. Perhaps you could visit the Vicarage tomorrow morning at ten?’
‘Thank you, sir.’ A line of waiting parishioners had formed in the chapel doorway. Eliza curtseyed and walked back to the visitors’ quarters, provided by the church elders in their wisdom, for itinerant preachers and such.
Later Eliza broke her sobering news to Susannah, who had fallen asleep with her tired child during the service.
‘So now as you’re a schoolma’am, Eliza.’ Susannah grinned, shrugged. ‘You won’t have time to be my companion no more.’
‘Hush, Mrs Pritchard. You must call me Alice, remember.’
‘Very well, Alice. But what of your new calling as schoolma’am?’
‘Perhaps Vicar will require my services only occasionally. I sincerely hope so. I’m sure I told you I hated my teacher’s job at Marley.’
‘Well then. We won’t always be beneath your touch, Miss Teacher. I look forward taking tea with you whenever you can spare the time.’ She smiled, an expression which could only be described as wicked. ‘And I declare, Vicar Bentleigh is devilish handsome. Would that I were a schoolma’am, with him close by all day.’
Eliza reflected. Yes, the vicar was handsome, in a sad, careworn way. His lean, erect body, his sculptured features, had doubtless turned the heads of many women back in England. And yet…what long buried memories had sparked in her brain the moment she first looked up into his face? In the quiet of her new bedroom that night, she might remember.
‘And Mrs Blakemore tells me as he’s a widower,’ Susannah bubbled on. ‘Came to Botany Bay to mend a broken heart, she says. There must be many an Englishwoman in these parts as fancies him. But then Mrs B tells me there be a shortage of women in these parts. It’s men, men, men, and nary a woman to be seen. First, it were the soldiers, thousands of them shipped here over the years. Right from the year 1788. Then convicts — a dozen or more men to every woman. And those men, when they served their time, they took up land and became farmers. Leastwise, most of them. Others became bricklayers or gardeners, even architects, boat builders. So all those men… Mrs B thinks as Ann and I won’t be left waiting too long.’
While Eliza walked to the schoolroom to spend her morning with Vicar preparing for her teaching position, Susannah rode by on the mission cart with Mary as it left for the nearby town to buy supplies. ‘She wants for to show me the places hereabouts,’ Susannah called cheerily as she farewelled Eliza.
That evening, Susannah returned bubbling with excitement. ‘There is much happening in these parts — armies of men building roads and bridges and goodness knows what else. Men, men, men.’
A month passed. Eliza bent to the task of educating the tribal children recruited into the mission’s
school. Many were bright, if unlettered and not fluent in English. Soon she realised that teaching them was a long way more interesting than the village school in Marley. She fell to wondering whether some of her charges might one day become leaders of their race — men and women of substance who would stand tall in Australian society alongside the English.
Reverend Bentleigh slowly emerged from his vicarly formality to become a warm friend. She sensed a bonding which grew like a healthy garden as they shared diverse snippets of knowledge. They discussed, with mutual earnestness, details of the movements of stars in the heavens to the gems of wisdom cut by ancient Greek philosophers. Sometimes, as she sat in the library, he entered and draped a fatherly arm about her shoulders. On one such afternoon, when she smiled up at him from her table of books, she fancied his lips shaped into a kiss, which he might bestow in the next seconds by bending his head a mere few inches. She quickly turned away. Her heart was bonded to Harry; would ever be. Kisses from other men would be…abhorrent. Yet still he lowered his head closer, his blue eyes burning into hers.
CHAPTER 25
One balmy Saturday afternoon, after the mission school had closed, Reverend Bentleigh asked Eliza to take a walk with him ‘to discuss matters of the soul’. She agreed, and dressed for the occasion in a light grey cloak, a matching hat, and workmanlike walking boots, all of which had been bought for her by Mary in nearby bustling Campbelltown. He led her along a path she had not seen before, following a placid stream. They reached a log, and he waved an arm towards it.
‘Let us sit awhile, Alice.’ He slumped onto the log. ‘My poor heart, the surgeon tells me I must rest it frequently if I am to live to a respectable age.’ Slowly, his panting breath eased. ‘The Lord has spoken to me about you, Alice. Often. Clearly, He has observed your mind growing in wisdom, and the precious gifts of knowledge you dispense so generously, so sweetly, to your pupils.’
‘Oh, sir. I enjoy making those gifts, as you call them.’
‘And Alice,’ now he looked into directly her eyes, his face a puzzling mix of happiness and nervousness. ‘The Lord…’ He stopped, drew a shaky breath. Then resolve; earnest, convinced, swept away the uncertainty in his eyes. ‘Over past weeks, I have come to feel a profound love for you.’
Eliza fought to strangle a cry of shock, narrowly succeeded.
‘As time passes, I feel each day, each night, the hand of The Lord at work. For weeks, I have prayed,’ he continued, his confidence surging, taking advantage of her stunned silence. ‘And He has gently urged me. Our union would be seen as perfect by Him. Our twin intelligences will forge a mighty sword for us to take into battle for him. A sword to battle the dark forces which have swept over this land with the coming of the white man.’ Now he paused, looked into her eyes. ‘The Lord has told me you and I should wed.’
Eliza reeled. The vicar had proposed to her! She coughed, looked down, away. She cleared her throat. ‘Sir — ’
‘Please, Alice. Do not call me sir. Call me by the name sanctified by The Lord, my Christian name, Martin.’
‘Very well…Martin.’ She drew a long breath. ‘I thank you for the great compliment you have bestowed upon me. But I cannot consider your proposal.’
‘Why not, Alice?’
‘Because…’ A thousand excuses popped into her still-lurching brain. The vicar, no, Martin, was a lovable man. A handsome, kindly, thoughtful man. And now, it would appear, a man who had grown a passion for Mrs Susannah Pritchard’s former paid companion Alice, as he saw her. She would tell the truth, embroidering it to the minimum.
‘I love another, Martin. A gentleman from…the Home Counties. And I believe he waits for me.’
‘But your shipwreck? Your gentleman, having heard of it, must surely have concluded you are dead. In the months you have survived, living on beaches and in caves, you could not have written.’
‘Alas, no.’
‘And do you intend to?’
‘Charles, my sweetheart, he was always apt to travel. France, Germany, the Continent at large. And I suspect that by now he will have fallen out with his parents and vacated the family mansion until they die. So…’
‘Ah, Alice. I see the hand of The Lord at work. Again.’ He smiled down at her. ‘Please. Take time to consider my troth. In time, you may come to see that your affections will adjust to circumstance. In all fairness, I find it difficult to believe that you will ever see your young man again in this life. Let me recall that wise old saying, “The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small.” In quiet of the small hours, when Our Lord has loving intimacy with our souls, He tells me He has ordained that we must wed.’ He smiled as he took her hand for a moment, then released it. ‘I am a patient man, Alice.’
A month passed, then another. Susannah had long since decamped to Sydney Town. In her last letter to Eliza she had waxed overjoyed.
I am keeping company with a widower, Sir Archibald Beauchamp — a more kindly gentleman you never did see. He has a new-built mansion in Newtown, but a mere mile from Sydney Town, the centre of all society’s comings and goings. He entertains all the gentry from The Town, and all know him as a decent, kindly, and indeed wealthy fellow. And he is become besotted with my Ann. When she smiles at him from her basket, and reaches her little hands up to him, he near melts with fatherly joy. Ah, the life of a woman kept by a rich man! There is talk of our betrothal. I shall write again soon.
Your friend till death us do part,
Susannah.
The letter turned Eliza’s mind to her own circumstances. Although she had woven a blanket of lies around her feelings for Harry as she explained her situation to Martin, he had enunciated a fundamental truth. It was, at best, unlikely she and Harry would ever meet again. Meanwhile, she might live out a life of lonely spinsterhood, in a land where the chronic shortage of marriageable women meant men would compete with each other in trying to build happy lives for the women they might marry.
She thought of the battles between rival peacocks displaying their dazzling tails to disdainful females who scratched the ground for worms nearby; of bellowing bulls clashing horns to win a cow who munched unconcerned in the fields; of stags locking antlers as they fought over a coy doe. She recalled Susannah’s joy as she took her newborn babe in her arms… The day might come when Eliza should put her gilded memories of Harry in a safe, reverent place, then forge a new life for herself in this abundant new land. ‘The last thing to die is hope,’ she remembered reading in some forgotten book. Perhaps it was now time for that vainly lingering hope to die.
During her many sleepless hours during the nights that followed, Eliza considered Martin’s proposal, and prepared herself for their next meeting. He was a kindly, decent man; handsome, caring. Though she would never love him, they could create a happy enough life together. She would accept him. So it came to pass that one Sunday afternoon, a little before Evensong, she told him she would be his bride. As he hurried away to prepare for the service, she felt she had chosen the time well — there had been no opportunity for…closeness.
Plans for the wedding became tucked under the wing of the ever-meticulous Mrs Blackmore, who had somehow taken the place of the bride’s mother. She arranged for Vicar Thompson, from a neighbouring parish, and a longstanding friend to Martin, to conduct the service. Meanwhile, Martin clucked about his bride-to-be like a busy cockerel in a yard of pullets. Whenever they met, he greeted Eliza with affectionate handholdings, embraces, bows. Oftentimes in the early stages of their courtship, he made to kiss her, but always she declined. She failed to understand why her instincts made her turn away from him. But she told herself that there were times it was appropriate to follow one’s blind animal instincts. Their moments for…intimacy would come when they were duly wed, and not before.
Eliza felt her cheeks take on a maidenly glow as she walked up the aisle of St Mathew’s in her gown of white lace. Soon she stood beside her eager bridegroom as the joyous notes of the bridal march swelled from the organ.
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The pair stood before the smiling vicar, and he launched into the marriage service.
‘…I now pronounce you man and wife,’ he finished in suitably sonorous tone, and set down his prayer book on the lectern.
The organ burst into joyful music, and the couple repaired to the vestry at the rear of the little building to sign the register. Mrs Blakemore had insisted that Eliza complete a practice signing some days before the wedding.
‘We do not need the bride to make some slip of the pen as she signs, my dear. Remember, your signing will be preserved long after you are dead. So it must be correct in every detail.’ Eliza had completed her practice conscientiously enough. The looming moment held no threat.
‘We now undertake this sacred act, my beloved,’ Martin said as he escorted Eliza into the small windowless room, lit by one candle. ‘You will notice we are quite alone. I have chosen to dispense with the usual witnesses. I am, after all, a trusted member of the community. I will ask a couple of local dignitaries to sign as witnesses later.’
‘Very well.’ Eliza fought to control her trembling hand; the hand that would in a moment take up the pen.
‘Since you do not ask why I turn away from this time-honoured convention, I will tell you, my beautiful wife.’ Martin’s voice dropped to a whisper. ‘I wish our marriage to be honest before God. And I trust that you wish it so also.’
‘Indeed I do, Martin,’ Eliza whispered, glad that he had seen this sacred act as verifying his passion for truth.
‘And I now confess to you, my beloved, that during my time in New South Wales, I have lived under a fictitious name. Which I now abandon.’ He took the pen and signed. Though suddenly curious as to why he would have adopted a name not his own as he ministered to his flock of native parishioners, Eliza chose not to peer over his shoulder. To do so would compromise the sacredness of his commitment to total honesty before God. She watched as he signed the page in the thick leather-bound book, then handed her the pen.
