Dream Time (historical): Book I

by Parris Afton Bonds

  Disgust curled her lips. “You drop to the other side, goose.”

  The young girl bit her lip, nodded, and taking a deep breath, followed Amaris’s instructions. When Amaris felt the slight weight lift from her shoulders, she glanced up to check on her protégé. Balanced precariously, Celeste was clutching the spikes in a death grip.

  Disregarding propriety, Amaris lifted her skirt and, drawing her tattered petticoats between her legs, quickly tucked them into her skirt waistband like the women who cleaned fish at the docks. Then, with an economy of motion, she began to scale the gate. Beneath the weight of both girls, it swung slightly on its hinges. Celeste drew in a sharp breath. Her creamy skin paled.

  Amaris pushed off and landed on the far side, purposely making the gate shift slightly. With approval, she noted that the frightened girl didn’t cry out. She looked up at her. “Go ahead, jump. It’s not that far down.”

  Eyes squinched shut, Celeste let go—and fell atop Amaris.

  “Damn!” she said in a whoosh of breath. Amaris pushed the welter of limbs and crinoline off her. “Don’t you know a bloody thing about climbing up and down things?”

  Her lower lip trembling, Celeste shook her head. “Mama says a lady doesn’t climb.”

  Amaris pulled the younger girl to her feet and started down the hill toward the cove.

  Celeste hurried to catch up. “Where did you learn to swear so wonderfully?”

  “In brothels and pubs along the wharf.” It sounded impressive, she thought; only the curse words came, for the most part, from the vagrants who let one slip occasionally when panhandling for food at her father’s door. Only a few were acquired during her infrequent ventures down to Sydney’s wharves.

  Sydney was an unplanned straggle of shacks that perched on the rim of the shining, amethyst harbor. Discounting the Randolph mansion and a few other grand homes, the remainder of the buildings looked more like pigsties. There were no hospitals, and, like her father’s church on the outskirts of Sydney, the few other churches were little more than huts.

  The main road she and Celeste took to the wharves was a dusty track, and after a rain it was a creek bed. Celeste daintily lifted her skirts to sidestep the sewerage that ran down the center of the street. Amaris strode on, unheeding of the filth and stench.

  The new governor, Macquarie, was zealously attempting to reconstruct Sydney into a Georgian city, financed with rum, by giving building contractors a trading monopoly on the spirits.

  An ant string of convicts was working on a general hospital and the Hyde Park Barracks, designed to house all convicts employed by the government in Sydney.

  Celeste’s enthusiasm waned as they bypassed each gang of sweating, stinking, grunting men. With draught animals few in the colony, the human body served to move the quarried rock to its destination. The little girl’s gaze fell on bloodied hands and tears rushed to her eyes. She turned on Amaris. “Why are they working so hard?”

  Her wide mouth set in a grim line, Amaris nodded toward the end of the line, farther down the hill, where the overseer played out his lash on bare backs. “That’s why, and you don’t see them all teary-eyed. Tears don’t get you anywhere, so stop your sniffling. I would never submit to being beaten.” In dismissal, she turned her back on the motley waste of men dressed in coarse dingy-white woolen paramatta trousers.

  ‘Would you fight that man with the whip?”

  “Wouldn’t need to. Escape is too easy here. Those convicts aren’t chained, and the overseer is far at the other end.”

  “How would you escape?”

  “You ask too many questions.”

  “But how would you?” Celeste persisted, fascinated by the knowledgeable older girl.

  “Well, I’d wait until a whaling captain put in and stow away. The American whalers are always needing new crewmen.”

  Celeste wiped her eyes. “This isn’t fun.”

  “Come on. We’re not there yet.”

  The wharves excited Amaris’s senses. The brilliant colors, smells, and sounds washed away the drabness of the town climbing the hill around the multi-lobed bay. Overhead, in an acid-blue sky, sea gulls shrieked. Corked nets draped fishing boats so they looked like clove-studded hams. In the turquoise water, dead fish bobbed alongside refuse. Salt-laden air tingled her skin and tantalized her mind about the far places from which the wind had come. Caged cockatoos and rosellas plumed in gaudy reds and greens shrieked among the overflowing fruit stalls.

  Determinedly she put away the sight of the silent caged men just off the convict ship and began to shoulder her way through the people of every color and race who thronged the wharves.

  Then she realized Celeste wasn’t with her. She spun around, her gaze darting from the water’s edge to the ships and back to the stalls and shops. In front of the parrot cages stood Celeste, her little mouth pen in awe. Amaris grabbed her hand. “Come on, we don’t have long.”

  “It talks. The bird talks.”

  “No telling what all it says.”

  “Your legs are too long.”

  “I doubt it says that.”

  Celeste doubled her steps. “No, your legs are too long. I can’t keep up.”

  She shortened her stride. “Don’t you want to see the Rocks?”

  Its name was well deserved as the rowdiest and most dangerous thieves’ kitchen in the colony. The two girls strode through it with innocent impunity, oblivious to the stares.

  Nantucket whalers, Chinese traders, Portuguese sailors, and the jetsam of Australia’s five thousand souls vied for the charms of doxies. They dressed in remnants of British finery donned with disregard to color, pattern, or material. Frayed plumes, shabby satins, and battered chapeaus were flashed in enticing movements designed to catch the eye of prospective customers.

  “Oh, they’re beautiful,” Celeste whispered.

  “They’re whores.”

  “What’s that?”

  She decided that Pulykara’s explanation would not do for a seven-year-old. “Whores are women who take money to make men happy.”

  “Oh. Could we make money making people happy? I think that would be ever so nice.”

  “Not the way they do.”

  “How do they do it?”

  “You ask too many questions, Celeste. There it is, what I wanted you to see.”

  Celeste halted alongside her and stared at the monkey and the street musician. An enthralled smile played across her cherubic face. “Oh, Amaris! A real capuchin.”

  “A what?”

  “The monkey is a capuchin. My tutor has a drawing of one.”

  Amaris’s education at William Wilmot’s knee was less eclectic and more philosophically oriented. That a five-year-old should know more than she dampened her spirits. “Well, ’tis time we started back afore you’re missed.”

  “What about you?”

  “Pulykara thinks I am—”

  The rest of her words never reached her tongue as she stumbled on her trailing strip of tattered petticoat and went sprawling. The wharf’s wooden platform scraped her palms with splinters. Hands beneath her armpits hauled her to her feet. “Thank—” She looked up into eyes that were as blue—and empty—as a summer sky. Shivering, she staggered backward.

  “A colleen who dresses like a wharf doxie should know how to walk like one,” was the rough-voiced reply.

  The straggly haired convict wore no shirt, and scars that were still fresh pink crisscrossed the taut and sallow skin of his prominent ribs and shoulders. He was skeletally thin. Chains shackled his ankles. His stench overwhelmed her, and she wrinkled her nose reflexively. “A man who is chained like a slave should know when to speak.”

  For a moment, the creature’s eyes lost their eons-old look and flashed with that youthful resource, fury. Amaris stared back, snared by the power of the dark soul encased in the thin body.

  The overseer’s whip cracked, and his lash curled around the convict’s left shoulder. Instantly, the glare in the convict’s eyes was obliterated
, replaced by pain. The glare, but not the inner power. His body jerked as the whip popped again in a backlash release.

  “Get your bloody Irish carcass back in line, Tremayne.”

  “Oh, that horrid man!” Celeste said of the overseer. She turned to Amaris. “Do something, please!”

  Amaris had to fight back displaying her surprise. Celeste clearly thought she could do anything. Her gaze returned to the convict. He shuffled back into line with the others, all who were fresh off the convict ship. A bloody stripe traced the path the lash had left. “Your mother and father hire convicts, Celeste. Talk to them.”

  By rights, Celeste Livingston should have been spoiled rotten. Her parents doted on her. But such a condition was impossible for her angelic temperament. She loved life and loved people and easily overlooked her mother’s interfering ways that often put off some Sydneysiders.

  Rose Wilmot stared from the neatly penned invitation to Amaris’s bland expression. “Nan Livingston is inviting you to her daughter’s tea party?”

  Amaris shrugged. “I didn’t know anything about it.”

  “Well, you must be on your best behavior, love. That wild streak in you that I adore, Nan Livingston just might abhor.”

  Amaris wanted to see the inside of a mansion; at the same time, she felt a little silly going to a seven-year-old’s tea party. Her curiosity won out, and she went to the tea party dressed in a made-over dress donated by none other than Nan Livingston herself. By the time Rose had plied her needle, the dress was indistinguishable from the one Nan had worn. True, it was a trifle small for Amaris, but as long as she didn’t stretch or gambol about like a monkey, the seams wouldn’t rip.

  The Livingston house was a Georgian manor, imposing and out of place among the rural cottages and her father’s rectory, skirting Sydney proper. As she waited for her knock to summon someone to the Livingstons’ front door, she felt extremely uncomfortable and tugged on the hem of her bodice.

  Behind her, Pulykara said, “Remember who you are—one of them Dream Time people. Don’t be afraid of her.”

  “Celeste?”

  “You know who, Miss Priss. You two are a lot alike.”

  Amaris almost hooted. “Me and Nan Livingston!”

  A uniformed girl in black with a crisp white apron answered the door. Pug-nosed and freckled, the girl was not much older than she. Amaris gave her name and said, “I’ve come for Celeste Livingston’s tea party.”

  Her fair hair straggling from beneath her mop cap, the girl curtseyed. “I’ll tell the missus you’re here.” So, she would finally get to meet the remarkable Mrs. Livingston. The woman had come to the shores a convict and was now a wealthy woman—and the formidable woman behind New South Wales Traders, Limited.

  Amaris’s curiosity was greater than any trepidation she had in meeting the imperious woman. Even though Amaris was well aware that she was at least as tall as Nan Livingston, judging by the cast-off clothing, Amaris hadn’t expected the woman to appear so fragile.

  She swept into the room with a rustle of puce crepe skirts. Her gaze flickered to Pulykara standing discreetly behind Amaris, then settled on Amaris to study her as intently as Amaris was her. Nan Livingston’s brown hair was tugged back tightly into a netted chignon at her nape. Her thin face was heart shaped, her chin a mite too pointed.

  The gray eyes scanned Amaris in return, doubtlessly finding fault in her wild black hair, and Amaris wished she hadn’t unplaited it. Suddenly her feet and hands felt cloddish and clumsy, her dress inappropriate for her size and age. Worse, when every female in the colony strove for the fair skin that can only come from a sheltered life, her sun-browned skin was tantamount to evidence she was a former convict.

  “It seems my daughter has taken a liking to you.”

  Amaris, copying Nan Livingston, folded her large hands calmly before her. Then, wincing at how unsightly they were, she quickly put them behind her. “It seems so.”

  “How did you two meet?”

  “Celeste didn’t tell you?”

  “I’d like to hear it from you.”

  “We met at her birthday party.”

  “I don’t recall you being on the guest list.”

  “I wasn’t.” Beneath the woman’s basilisk gaze, Amaris felt compelled to elaborate but fought back the weakness.

  At last, Nan Livingston said, “I see. Well, Celeste is out in the garden, awaiting your arrival. Molly will show you the way. If your aborigine woman will go to the kitchen, I’ll see that she is given food and drink.”

  Amaris was too preoccupied noting the furnishings of the drawing room to pay any attention to the Livingston woman’s and Pulykara’s joint departure.

  A marble bust stared out of vacant eyes at Amaris, and satyrs frolicked in a painting she was sure must be by some famous artist. She had too much pride to cross the parquet floor and read the signature.

  The heavy red damask drapes and red floral-patterned carpet made the room seem too dark for her taste. She much preferred her bedroom’s shuttered windows that were folded back each morning to let in the flood of endless sunlight and balmy air. Her parents’ small house might be a building of irregular and crumbly bricks, fashioned by convicts, its walls not whitewashed clean, its roof only thatched. Yet, it possessed a personal warmth the stately mansion lacked.

  “This way, miss,” the uniformed girl said. “If you be needing anything, Molly Finn’s me name.” Her smile revealed bad teeth.

  Amaris followed her along a corridor walled with more paintings interspersed with closed doors. After two right turns, the corridor ascended a short flight of stairs and emptied into the garden.

  Sunlight temporarily blinded Amaris, then amidst the garden’s lush greenery, Celeste was sprinting with arms thrown wide toward her. “Amaris!”

  “So, are you going to serve tea?”

  The little girl grasped her hand and drew her around an ell of the mansion to a grape arbor. “Look, Mama set it up. Come sit down, and I’ll pour us a cup. Our cook prepared some crumpets. Mama never lets me have crumpets unless it’s something special.”

  “Where are your other friends?” Amaris barely fit her Amazonian body into the painted-white wooden chair constructed for a child.

  “You’re the only one I wanted to invite. My friends are nice, but they’re not all grown up like you—and brave. Me neither. Not yet anyway.”

  “Oh.” She sat awkwardly as Celeste filled a porcelain cup.

  Leafy shadows dappled the little round face. “The tea set is by Wedgwood.” Celeste passed the cup to her. “Mama says she met the Wedgwood brothers.” She chattered on, and Amaris began to relax. Of the children her age, none were as educated as she, and at seven Celeste was a fountain of information that entertained her.

  Celeste took a dainty sip, put down her cup and said, “Guess what? I persuaded Papa to hire that convict.”

  “What convict?”

  “The one on the dock last week. Remember, he picked you up when you fell.”

  “An insolent man,” she said, remembering with shame his mocking smirk.

  “Sinclair Tremayne’s his name. I made Papa promise not to use the whip on him, but then Papa never does on any of his workers at the shipyard.”

  “Your father’s gentle, like you.”

  “Oh, yes, but it was Mama’s idea. She said that a bottle of rum was more incentive to work than the lash.”

  “Your mother doesn’t approve of me, I don’t think.”

  “Oh, that’s just Mama’s way. She’s really a nice woman.”

  Amaris didn’t want to argue with the little girl, but she could almost feel the woman’s antagonism burning through her back.

  Tom’s skill in trade had brought affluence to the Livingston family, and Nan was knocking on the door of Sydney’s upper society, although she chose to remain in the background. Eventually, the Exclusionists would trample each other to include her as one of them.

  She trusted Tom’s opinion. But not in this one matter. He d
idn’t know all the facts. Pushing back the drapery, she peered out the window overlooking the grape arbor. “I’m against this girl coming here, Tom.”

  “Why? Celeste likes her well enough.”

  “There is something about her that needles me.”

  “It’s because she is not from the right class, isn’t it?”

  “Partly. Partly because she acts too stubborn, too proud.”

  Sitting in the wingback chair, Tom laced his fingers over the slight paunch his stomach made. She often thought of Josiah and his rock-hard stomach. She missed him and occasionally regretted having sent him on his way. He knew too much. A mistake in judgment could lose her all she had worked for.

  “Well, for once, Nan, I’m opposing you. You’ve picked all of Celeste’s friends, and she and I both went along with you. But this time, you’re going to let our daughter make a choice of her own.”

  § CHAPTER EIGHT §

  Je voudrais un tas de—de—” Amaris abandoned her effort and threw up her hands. “I’ll never use the French, Celeste. This is utterly—”

  “Non, non,” Celeste’s tutor remonstrated. The old convict, transported for book theft, wagged his finger beneath his bony nose and sniffed haughtily. “English is the language of shopkeepers, French the language of love. One day, if you ever become a lady, you will be grateful I insisted you practice.

  “Now your turn, Mademoiselle Livingston.”

  “Oh, please, monsieur. Can we end the lessons for the day?”

  The French tutor glanced at the mantel clock. “There are still ten minutes remaining, and your mother—”

  The eleven-year-old girl broke in, saying, “Mama will not mind at all, I swear. And the dance master is waiting in the foyer.”

  “Bon. We resume next Friday.”

  After he collected his hat and departed, Amaris sprawled on the settee, clasped her hands behind her head, and sighed. “I dislike the dancing master even more. His palms are sweaty and his breath smells of garlic.”

  Celeste settled at the sofa’s other end. “He’s only nervous. Mama makes him that way the days she comes in and watches.”