Dream Time (historical): Book I

by Parris Afton Bonds

  He was there again today, observing her as she made her way to the kitchen larder. The clerk on duty, a beefy man, marked in a ledger supplies issued to each hut. So bedraggled was she, so unkempt and homely and large with child, that he never once looked at her. Not really looked at her.

  The officer did. As he approached her on the veranda steps, she noted first his stripes. A captain, he was. She shifted the heavy burlap bag of potatoes to her other hip. Why would he be interested in her? Then she saw his eyes. Clearly saw the pity there.

  “Can I help you?” His hand was on the railing, his arm blocking her descent.

  Although he was a step below her, they were of the same height. She stared directly into his eyes. “Now why would you be wanting to help me, Captain?”

  He blushed. She was surprised by this reaction, and her writer’s curiosity got the better of her antipathy toward males. She studied him and realized he wasn’t unattractive: tall, lanky, with ruddy cheeks and wayward brown hair. Hazel eyes fringed by stubby, curling lashes peered back at her.

  “You don’t seem like the others.” Shyness made his voice rusty.

  “Oh? Do I seem to possess more than the dumb intelligence of animals? That’s how we’re treated by the likes of you, you know. Like dumb animals. Beasts of burden.”

  His fingers rubbed the wooden railing. “You’re felons. You committed crimes, and so you have to pay for—”

  “Are you so sure each and every one of us really committed a crime?” With a boldness imprisonment had made her forget, she pushed past him and continued to her hut.

  That night, lying on the floor with the men around her in the depths of fatigue-induced sleep, she was awake. She entertained thoughts of the captain. How old was he?

  Twenty-five to thirty, she decided. A young man who was lonely for home and all that reminded him of it. She had judged him shy, but she sensed a certain courage he himself was most likely unaware of having.

  The pity that had prompted his offer of help stung her pride. Yet, as she lay in the dark, her palms curving over the globe of her huge stomach, she decided that, yes, he could help her.

  He could marry her.

  The officer came again two days later. She was ready for him. She had deliberated over the man for the full two-day interval. What kind of man was he? Why would he want a wife? Some men wanted to be waited on, some constantly wanted to be reassured of their wonderful attributes, some merely wanted a son, some married for companionship.

  So they wouldn’t have to face living with their thoughts?

  And this man?

  This man, she decided, was one of those people who only felt good when he was helping. She had seen people like him at her father’s parish church. Always helping, always trying to make things right, getting in the way, getting on one’s nerves. These were the same people who fought revolutions in the trenches, while their leaders issued orders safely behind the line of fire.

  In short, her captain was one of those foolhardy souls with the best intentions.

  She watched him approach her as she carried water pails from the well behind the main house. Knowing the approximate time he arrived in the afternoons, she had dallied until she spotted the small plume of dust churned by his horse’s hooves. The pails’ handles cut into her palms. She set the pails down on the cracked earth and chafed the circulation back into her hands.

  By that time, his bay was cantering toward her. He dismounted. Without looking at her, he said, “If you’ll take the reins, I’ll get the pails.”

  She waited until they began walking, then said, “I appreciate your help. And you need my help, Captain.”

  He looked at her askance.

  She fixed her gaze on his profile, studying it as she talked. “The baby is coming soon. It will need a name— and a father. You need a wife to make a home for you in the wilderness outposts, wherever you are stationed. A wife who is clever, who can withstand hardships, who can help you get ahead in your career. I am that woman.”

  She was honest, if nothing else. She fully believed she could offer him something in return for his releasing her from a sentence of lifetime imprisonment.

  He came up short. Water sloshed over the pails he carried. Behind them, his bay snorted and shifted its stance, as if also awaiting the outcome of this one-act play.

  The officer’s head swerved in her direction. Eyes wide, he stared back at her. “Good God, you are serious?”

  She had nothing to lose if he turned her down. “Captain, I’ve danced in the same room as His Majesty King George.”

  “I looked at your record. You were transported for treason against His Majesty.”

  He was asking her to expound. She would explain herself when she was ready. At another time. First, the gaining of her objective. “I’ve supped with ambassadors and generals, including Nelson himself. What pretty lass with half a brain is going to follow you to the mountainous wilds of India”—she flung out a hand—“or to this strange, ungodly wilderness?”

  He fumbled for words. She waited. “I had thought to . . . Mary had said she would wait . . . letters take so long getting here.”

  “Do you know when, if ever, you’ll get back to England again?” she asked softly.

  He shook his head.

  They began walking again. She said nothing more. At the doorway to the hut, he passed her the pails. Without a word, he strode on to the main house.

  The waiting that afternoon was long. She scrubbed and rescrubbed the rough-hewn table.

  Soon Pulykara came in, toting a bag of peas she had been issued from the storage house. “We’d best shell these, if we gonna get them cooked in time.”

  “Not now, Pulykara,” she said, her eye ever on the doorless opening, which gave full view of the veranda. Then she saw him. He had come out onto the veranda and halted at the steps. Indecision showed in his stance, the way his body was half-turned toward the hitching post and half toward her hut; the way his head was lowered, the way his hands rubbed against each other.

  You need me. You need me.

  As if her thoughts empowered his footsteps, he descended the steps and began walking in the hut’s direction. His body blocked the sunlight that had heated the entrance. Pulykara turned toward him. “Yes, suh?”

  “The lady. I would like to speak to her alone.”

  The ever-grateful, ever-protective Pulykara shot her a wondering glance, then rose from her squatting position before the mound of peas and limped past the captain.

  Alone with Nan, he said nothing. She helped him. “The baby is due in a week or so. We should be married by a clergyman soon. I’ll need a midwife. Pulykara will be worth your purchase, also.”

  She saw his dubious expression. “You won’t be sorry, Captain. I’ll be a good wife for you.”

  And she meant it.

  She hadn’t even known his name. Captain Tom Livingston. She gazed at him while he slept. The flickering light of the sperm candle lent him a little-boy look. Yet he had served in what was formerly the American colonies and against Napoleon’s forces in India.

  He had come to her twice this week. Using his rank, he had appropriated a small hut used by a night guard. The hut was filthy and the bedlinens stank, but at least she was sleeping on a mattress for the first time in almost a year. Within a few days, Tom assured her, a house on post would be vacated for them.

  Tom had a gentle touch. Out of concern for her condition, he had not taken her. Out of respect for his condition, having gone so long without a woman, she brought him to a climax. Using her hand and mouth. Acts that would have appalled her a short year ago.

  She drew the sheet up over his sprawled body. The gnats and mosquitoes were horrendous. Tomorrow, she would have Pulykara see about getting netting. Her gaze was almost tender, and she hoped she wasn’t falling in love with him. Her foolish love for Miles Randolph had brought upon her humiliation and degradation that months of captivity had only intensified. She could never let herself be weakened by love again.
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  “Nan?” Tom stirred and flung out an arm across her chest.

  “I’m here, Tom. I’ll always be here for you.”

  He didn’t hear her. He was snoring softly.

  The following week, Nan began having contractions. Pain came unexpectedly, shooting up her belly as she bent over a large staved bucket to wash a pair of Tom’s trousers. At her groan, Pulykara glanced back at her. Seeing Nan’s face contorted by pain, the aborigine woman laid aside the damp clothing she had been hanging on the line of hemp stretched between two golden wattle trees.

  “Your time upon you, baby?” she asked, crossing to Nan.

  Nan grunted an assent and let the black woman lead her to the house. At that moment, she was more grateful than ever to Tom that he had put up little objection about buying Pulykara from bondage.

  If Nan expected the relieving comfort of bed, Pulykara vanquished that idea. “The stool. Sit on it, baby, and whenever you feel the pushing, you move forward and squat.”

  While Pulykara sat on her haunches and observed, Nan went into quiet agony. The pain was ripping her apart. It radiated outward from the lower part of her abdomen, firing through her veins and muscles ever upward, flicking like the overseer’s whip that rent at flesh and blood. Her brain exploded with the pain.

  Yet she bit back her screams. In silence she suffered, because she knew to be weak now would lose her Pulykara’s respect. Nan needed that authority. Some sense of control of her life. She needed a friend, even if it was an aborigine woman.

  “Talk to me, Pulykara. Distract me.”

  Pulykara talked of sandalwood trees with wood so heavy it would barely float and of great herds of seals, the whereabouts of which only her tribe knew, and of course of the Dreamtime. For her, it was a real place.

  For Nan, it was an endless journey, this Dreamtime. An imaginary place where one might find oneself. Like the outback, Pulykara’s Never-Never, this Dreamtime must be a deep interior where the soul was free in an inner outback, a land beyond Disappointment and Good-bye and Alone.

  Hours later, as Tom was returning from duty, she gave birth. Pulykara turned with the infant in her arms to Tom. He put away his scabbard and his shakar hat. With wonder, he stared down at the squalling mite of a human being.

  From the bed, Nan said weakly, “Tis a girl.”

  “Are you all right?” he asked, taking his gaze off the baby to fix on her. “You don’t look well, Nan.”

  “I’m tired. That’s all.”

  “What will you name her?”

  Nan turned her head toward the palisaded wall. “I won’t. I’m giving her away.”

  “You cannot be serious about this,” he said. “The babe will die without your milk.”

  Nan’s breasts ached with their heavy fullness, although scarcely six hours had passed since she had given birth. “No, the baby won’t die. Pulykara says she knows of someone who has breast milk.”

  Tom stared at the aborigine, who was tearing strips of muslin to bind Nan’s breasts. “Pulykara knows,” Nan said. “I don’t understand how news is passed along by these people with nary a written word, but some woman gave birth yesterday to a stillborn.”

  Tom asked, “You are certain the mother will want this child?”

  She shrugged. “She’s a mother who has lost a child. She’ll want the—”

  “But so are you.” Perplexity puckered his thick brows. “I’m stupefied. I can’t understand how you would so easily give away your own flesh and blood. It’s unnatural.”

  “Come here, Tom.” She stretched out her hand to take his and draw him down on the bed beside her. She had to convince him of the wisdom of her decision. Should he doubt her at the beginning of their marriage, she would never be able to steer their relationship through threatening waters that would undoubtedly besiege their marriage from time to time.

  She rubbed his palm, feeling the calluses and comparing it to Miles’s smooth one, the palm of a gentleman. Bemused, Tom watched her fingers. “Tom, dearest, the baby deserves the best possible upbringing.” Her voice lowered, as did her lids. “I cannot help the pain I feel when I see her and remember . . . remember that the man”—she drew a ragged breath and went on—“the man who was responsible for fathering her was also responsible for my imprisonment.”

  “You have told me so little about what happened—”

  “I was beguiled, Tom. Like a foolish woman who has never been courted, I let my heart overrule reason. I wrote pamphlets that infuriated his mentor’s rival—Pitt.”

  “Not William Pitt!”

  She was glad Tom momentarily forgot the issue of the child. “Aye. I was accused of being a Jacobin, and Pitt neatly arranged for me to be found guilty of treason. By loving a scoundrel of a man, I lost not only my freedom, but I was left to bear the child of a man who had used me only for political purposes. Should I keep”—she nodded toward the squalling infant—“the baby, I think I would always look upon it with resentment. For me, it represents the treachery of love and, worse, the demeaning of my soul and . . . well, another woman will love the baby far better than I.”

  He shook his head and rubbed his lantern-jawed chin. “I don’t understand you, Nan. This child is healthy and what’s another mouth to—”

  “Tom, think of the baby.”

  With a sigh, he rose. “I suppose you’re right.” He picked up his saber. “Tomorrow, I’ll go and talk to my commander about placing the baby.”

  She knew Tom was hoping she would change her mind. After the door shut behind him, she allowed herself to turn her gaze on the baby. The child was healthy. And so tiny. A mite of a human being. Reluctance to give away the baby constricted the muscles in her throat. She found it difficult to speak but forced out the next words. “Pulykara, get your belongings together.”

  They were few enough. A blanket, a tin cup, a woven reed basket of trinkets, which she ascribed to as a source of power.

  Nan watched the baby’s tiny fists beat against empty space until Pulykara caught them in the folds of the blanket in which she wrapped the baby. “You want me to find a place for her now?” she asked.

  The aborigine’s eyes held no reproach, yet Nan felt guilty. She was feeling maternal pangs. No, her decision was the right one. The child would be better off growing up in a household where it was loved.

  She turned her face to the other side of the pillow. “Pulykara, you are to stay with the baby. I helped you once, now you must help me. Guard the infant as your own for as long as the child lives.” Tears dampened the pillow. “Promise me this.”

  Over the strips of tattoos, the luminous black eyes were sorrowful. “I promise, baby.”

  § CHAPTER FIVE §

  The Reverend William Wilmot watched his young wife suckle the infant in her arms. Her round face glowed. At that moment, she resembled a Botticelli Madonna. At seventeen, she was fully a woman.

  When he had married her, she was a mere thirteen, a child. A child who had been sentenced to seven years for plucking cucumber plants from a private garden.

  He had been thirty and sent out by the London Missionary Society with his wife. Clara had died en route, and he had ended up rescuing the elfin Rose from servitude through marriage to her.

  His eyes fell on her breasts, engorged with milk from the stillborn she had lost two days earlier. He recalled how hard had been his struggle over that first year of marriage to restrain his growing passion for her. Then had come the night she had turned to him in bed and begun caressing him. All hope of restraint had vanished the moment her hand had found his manhood.

  “I know ’tis shameful of me,” she had whispered, “but I cannot be helping meself, husband.”

  He had taken her in lust and should doubtlessly spend the rest of his life repenting. But he wasn’t yet, God help him.

  Rose looked up at him. “Oh, Willy, h’aint’ she lovely?”

  “Isn’t, dear. Isn’t she lovely.” His long, bony fingers ruffled Rose’s deep red hair, then he gingerly touched the b
aby’s pitch black, downy fuzz. “She is, indeed, beautiful. And nigh as bald as I. At least, I have teeth.”

  Rose chuckled. In the candlelight, her freckles glinted like half-pennies. “You say the drollest things, Willy.”

  “We must remember in our prayers the mother. One of the convict women, most likely. The Lord knows how they suffer so. Does the aborigine woman give you any clue about the mother’s identity?”

  “Nary a word. Like I told you, she just trotted out of the woods with the bundle like one of those dingoes.”

  William thought of the aborigine woman, squatting outside their timber-and-stone cottage. The cottage was on the edge of Sydney in a rural area known as Wooloomooloo for the mobs of gray kangaroo that inhabited the area. Dingoes that howled in the night, kangaroos that boxed like Welsh prize fighters, and aborigines that would have no qualms about slitting the throat of an Englishman who befriended them. That was Australia. A wild land with wild people. Still, this black woman was one of God’s creatures.

  “What shall we name ’er, Willy?”

  “I suggest something biblical.”

  Rose’s little nose wrinkled. “Bible names are so . . . so . . .”

  “Unimaginative?” He mused a moment, then, leaning over the rocker to better study the precious gift, said, “What about Amaris. It means ‘whom God hath promised.”

  “Amaris?” She rolled the name on her tongue. “I like it, Willy. I like it.” Her short finger tickled the sleeping baby’s dimpled chin. “Well, daughter, Amaris you are. Amaris Wilmot.”

  Within that first uneasy week of marriage Nan had discovered that her amiable and good-hearted husband had a serious flaw in his character Tom was not ambitious.

  Hers and Tom’s military quarters were little better than the hut to which she had been assigned, only the single room with an attached kitchen shed. A lieutenant fared better, earning the privilege of two rooms. Nan smiled to herself. With her subtle guidance, Tom would earn a lieutenant’s ranking.