‘Are you going to tell the Governor?’
‘He already knows,’ said the Surgeon gently. ‘I sent one of the porters to tell him. Is this young man a friend of yours? A relative?’
‘He is my brother.’ He knew the Surgeon might think they were blood brothers, not name brothers. But the English didn’t seem to understand name brothers.
He felt the Surgeon’s hand, reassuring on his shoulder. ‘We’ll do our best for him. I’ll be in my office. Call a porter to get me if he becomes restless. I can give him laudanum, but I don’t want to if I don’t have to — it can make the breathing weaker. I’ll send a message to Rachel to organise some food.’
The hut door creaked open on its rope hinges. Bennelong came back in. He carried a wattle branch and a coolamon of water. As Father White and Nanberry watched he dipped the branch into the water and stroked it over Balloonderry’s body, over and over, to cool it down.
Better than a wet rag, thought Nanberry. ‘Father, the lavender oil —’
‘I’ll send it down.’ The Surgeon hesitated. ‘Lad, in truth, it won’t make much difference. With a fever like this there is nothing we can do.’
For two days Balloonderry lay and sweated, staring at the bark roof. Once he began to scream, a nightmare in his fever. But as soon as Bennelong touched him the screaming stopped.
Bennelong didn’t leave his side, except for brief moments outside. Nor did Nanberry.
The Governor called in several times, standing still and simply watching. He seemed sad. Nanberry thought there was more to his grief than the illness of one young man. There was no talk of chains or hanging Balloonderry now.
On the third day Willemeeerin arrived. Bennelong ushered him into the hut. ‘He knows how to drive out the spirits that make men sick.’ The man who’d speared the Governor put his mouth to Balloonderry’s body. He closed his eyes and let the illness take him. He shuddered and moaned, feeling Balloonderry’s pain.
At last Willemeeerin lay, exhausted, on the dirt floor of the hut.
Balloonderry’s face was blank, his eyes were staring, unchanged. His breath was so slight it might vanish any second like a puff of smoke.
Bennelong looked at Nanberry. He spoke in their own language. There was none of the arrogance of the warrior to a boy now. ‘We need to take him away. Across the water, where his ghost won’t hurt us.’
‘No! He may still get better.’
‘No,’ said Bennelong. His voice was kind. He touched Nanberry gently, a leaf touch on the arm. ‘He is dying. Do this for your brother. Help me carry him down to the cove.’
Bennelong carried Balloonderry’s head; Nanberry his legs. But as soon as they left the hut others joined them, the warriors and young men who had been part of the war party, here to escort Balloonderry’s body. They must have been waiting, thought Nanberry, watching for us to come outside.
This time he didn’t follow them. His brother had what he needed, in these last hours of his life. He had the harbour, the blue sky. He had the people he loved, the ones who had stood by him when he was hunted down. Their hands would carry him now.
Nanberry watched them go, down to a canoe that waited on the shore. He watched as the canoe was paddled out into the water. And soon he heard the women’s cries and knew that his brother had died.
The warriors and young men brought the body back. They placed it in a hut, down by the water, given by the Governor for the purpose. ‘A fine lad,’ said the Governor to Father White. He sighed. ‘A tragedy, that it should end like this.’
Father White glanced at Nanberry, then back to the Governor. ‘Yes, sir,’ was all he said.
Women and girls wailed outside the death house while convicts dug a grave at Government House. Bennelong brought Balloonderry’s canoe, a new one, freshly made, not the one wrecked by the convict men.
The warriors laid the body in the canoe, with a spear, a throwing stick and Balloonderry’s fishing spear and lines. Young men waved bunches of grass.
Nanberry followed, with Father White, the officers, the Governor. Nanberry wore English clothes now. He had no place in the official part of Balloonderry’s burial. That was for his brother’s true native companions.
Drummers lined the road leading to Government House. Bennelong had ordered them, and the Governor had agreed. They beat the drums slowly, thud, thud, thud, their drumsticks muffled.
The warriors bearing the canoe reached the grave, and began to lower their burden in.
Someone gave a startled laugh. The grave was far too short. The warriors trimmed off the ends of the canoe, then rolled Balloonderry’s body into the hole, with his head positioned so that his ghost might see the sun as it passed overhead.
White and black began to fill the grave. At last the earth was mounded up. One of the young warriors placed branches around the dirt, and then a log, which he covered with grass. He sat there, staring at the sky.
You do not mention the names of the dead.
Once Nanberry White had had another name. He couldn’t use that name now. He followed the Surgeon and Rachel back to the house without speaking.
I am Nanberry Bo-rahng, he thought. Nanberry and the shadow of the man who was once my brother.
What might we have done together, if he had lived? Would we have gone fishing? Would he have convinced me to become a warrior, to go through the ceremonies with him? Perhaps we would have sailed on ships together.
Don’t think of the dead, for ghosts can hurt. How could the loss of what you had never known hurt more than the loss of what you’d had? He felt more desolate now than he had nearly three years ago, when his whole family had died.
He took off his hat, his English hat, and put it on the peg next to his father’s. Tomorrow he would go down to the harbour and see when Captain Waterhouse was expected back.
He was Nanberry Bo-rahng White. Nanberry No-name White. Now it was time to go to sea again, to accept the life that he had chosen.
Chapter 42
RACHEL
SYDNEY COVE, 4 SEPTEMBER 1792
‘Pretty lady! Pretty lady!’ The ragged urchins grabbed at her skirts as she lifted them out of the dirt of the street. This road past the Governor’s house was the only proper road in New South Wales.
The Governor’s house was empty now. Governor Phillip had returned to England, ill and exhausted, taking Bennelong and another native with him to show to everyone back home. But the road was still kept up perfectly, a mile long and perfectly straight, unlike the muddy lanes that wandered between the colony’s hovels. It had a foundation of logs with dirt tamped hard to make a firm surface.
She handed the urchins the hearth cakes she’d brought for them (with the Surgeon’s permission): hard baked biscuits made of cornflour. There were more and more children running wild around the colony now, with dribbling noses and thin starved cheeks.
All too much of the wheat and corn crops were turned into alcohol these days. The children’s mothers were either drunk or simply didn’t care that their children went hungry. And their fathers: well, probably no one had any idea who their fathers were.
She walked on, lifting her skirts again out of the mud and horse droppings, up to the headland. The small crowd had gathered under the trees for the Reverend Johnson’s Sunday church service. The Surgeon was already there, sitting on an upholstered chair up the front with the other officers. She found herself a seat on a long bench, towards the back.
Even if they had walked to the service together they would have sat apart, like master and servant, not together like husband and wife.
It hurt, but she said nothing. Other men took convict wives, though none of them were proper gentlemen like the Surgeon, with good jobs back home to go to. Perhaps, one day — when she had served her sentence maybe, in just over two years’ time, when she had the right to go back to England, seven years after they had put her in gaol to wait for the hangman’s noose — the Surgeon would say …
No, that was a dream. She made herself focus
on the sermon. But the Reverend Johnson spoke as lengthily as ever, and as boringly too. It was good to stand for a hymn, hearing their voices join together, the song of praise carried on the wind across the harbour. She smiled. She had a lot to be thankful for, despite the lack of a wedding band on her finger. A comfortable home, and a man who treated her with kindness and respect. A life, instead of the noose, back in England …
There had been a time on the Lady Juliana when she had almost wished she had been hanged. Not now.
‘Amen!’ The man beside her bellowed out the word. She glanced at him. Tall, so broad-shouldered he was almost like a bull, black-eyed, the look of a sailor about him, not a convict. What was he doing here? Few sailors bothered to come to the Reverend Johnson’s services.
He caught her look, and smiled. She looked away as the Reverend opened his Bible for the readings.
Others lingered to gossip after the service, but she had the Surgeon’s dinner to see to. She had made her way through the crowd when she realised the sailor was walking next to her. He lifted his hat — a good one — showing neat black hair pulled back into a queue. ‘Good morning, miss.’
She nodded politely, but kept walking.
‘Thomas Moore, ship’s carpenter, at your service.’
She hesitated. She should ignore him — no lady, or respectable servant, spoke to a man without an introduction, especially in the colony, where rogues needed no encouragement to think a woman willing. But somehow she found herself saying, ‘I am Rachel Turner.’
‘It’s an honour to meet you, Miss Turner. It is Miss, isn’t it?’
She smiled. ‘It is. But you must excuse me. I have my master’s dinner to attend to.’
‘Then may I walk with you?’
She paused again. But he had been at church and she liked his face. ‘For a way,’ she said.
‘I saw you before, giving food to the children.’
She stared at him. ‘Is that why you came to the church service? You followed me?’
‘No. I go to church whenever I’m onshore.’ There was truth in his voice. ‘It’s a pity the colony don’t have a proper church. But I’m sure it will, one day.’ He smiled again. ‘A cathedral, maybe, where we can give God thanks for our deliverance across the seas.’
‘The colony needs granaries to store the grain more than churches.’ She was echoing the Surgeon’s words. ‘I can’t see a colony of mud-and-wattle huts ever boasting a cathedral.’
‘Can’t you? I can.’
She stared at him. ‘This place is a prison, no more.’
‘If you’ll pardon me, it’s a lot more, Miss Turner. There’s enough whales in these waters for a thousand whaling ships — ships that will need food to feed their sailors. There’s land for sheep and markets for their wool too. Once the American colonies were mud-and-bark huts. Look at ’em now.’
‘Have you been to America?’
‘I have.’ The smile came again. ‘Do you have your Sunday afternoons free, Miss Turner? I could tell you about my travels. A walk along the cliffs would be grand.’
‘No. I’m sorry.’ To her surprise she found she was.
‘I will see you at the service next Sunday then?’
Suddenly she knew she had to be honest with him. This was a pleasant enough man, but he could want only one thing from her. ‘Mr Moore, I’m not looking to be a “sea-wife” to a sailor who’s got a girl in every port, a man who may never sail this way again. I’m sorry.’
He met her eyes. ‘And I’m not looking for a sea-wife either. Very well, Miss Turner. If one day you find me knocking on your door you’ll know it’s a proper wedding ring I’ll be offering you, with a house and a job onshore.’
She flushed. But there was no way he could mean it. No man offered that after a single meeting. No sane man came to live in this colony willingly, not one who could have a good life anywhere else. ‘I might marry another by then.’ She tried to make it sound like a joke.
‘Then you’ll have my good wishes.’ He gave her that smile once more. ‘Until we meet again, Miss Turner.’
He had been sincere, she realised. But even if he did return — and there was no guarantee he’d find a ship coming this way, even if he wanted to come — he’d lose interest when he found out she was another man’s mistress.
But she could feel him watching her as she walked along the street, shaking her head at the children to show she had no more biscuits to give them today. Another good man, she thought. At least there were two good men in the world.
But neither, she thought with a stab in her heart, likely to be a husband for me.
Chapter 43
RACHEL
SYDNEY COVE, JANUARY 1793
Summer had burnt the tussocks brown. The plums were ripe in the orchard, the bees buzzing and the hens pecking around the fallen fruit, damaged in a hailstorm the night before. Rachel wiped the sweat from her face — the cooking fire made the kitchen hot — and slowly dried the plates from dinner.
Nanberry was back from yet another voyage to Norfolk Island, filled with stories of storms and broken masts, of the green island set in the blue sea. She made him scrub off the lice and muck out in the washhouse before he came inside, then fed him roast mutton and potatoes, freshly picked corn and hot buttered bread, with plum pudding to follow.
He ate like he hadn’t seen food as good for months — which she was sure he hadn’t — and the Surgeon looked on, his face for once happy and peaceful.
He and Nanberry sat together in the study now, talking about the birds on Norfolk Island, while she cleaned up and put the bread on to rise for tomorrow’s baking. There was more wheat flour in the colony this year, grown out at Rose Hill, now called Parramatta, enough to make it worthwhile keeping a yeast plant going and making proper bread, not soda bread that went stale an hour after it was baked.
At last she heard Nanberry’s footsteps going up the stairs to bed. Surgeon White appeared at the door. ‘That was a fine meal. Thank you.’
‘Sir …’ It said a lot, she thought, that he had never told her to call him by his first name, although she sat at the table and ate with him now, instead of standing by like a servant. ‘There is something I need to tell you.’
He sat on one of the kitchen chairs. ‘What is it?’
‘I’m with child.’
She’d wondered if he’d look happy, or shocked, or angry. Instead he simply nodded. ‘I thought you might be.’
Had he heard her being sick in the morning? He was a surgeon, she thought. Of course he would have guessed. She waited for him to speak again. What happened next was his decision. Not hers.
‘Rachel.’ He spoke quietly and carefully. ‘I can’t marry you. Any day now I might be recalled to England. You can’t come back with me.’
She had promised herself she wouldn’t plead with him. But she couldn’t help it. ‘I can go back to England at the end of next year. I’ll have served my full sentence then. Or you could stay here …’
He shook his head. ‘My life here … these are days I want to forget, Rachel, not remember. The filth and horror, the thousands dead. Back in England I will have a proper house, servants, friends of my own kind.’
‘And not a convict wife.’
‘No.’ The sorrow in his eyes was real. ‘Not a convict wife. If I married you there would be no good job for me back home. No respectable neighbours to dine with. Not for us or our children.’
‘The neighbours need never know!’ Her voice was fierce.
‘They’d find out,’ he said gently. ‘They always do. So would my employers. A man can hide his past here, perhaps. Not back home.’
She was silent. He was right. He had never promised her marriage. They both knew it. Even here, he was a gentleman and she was not of his class. Even without her convict past, the tongues would wag if he married the likes of her. Gentlemen did not marry servants.
He looked at her steadily, this good man, locked into the rules of ‘gentleman’. ‘Rachel, I promise that
you and your child will never want for anything. When I leave here, I’ll make sure you are an independent woman, with a house and money of your own. I will care for you, I promise, all your life, and the child too.’
‘I know,’ she said.
She turned her head away so he wouldn’t see her tears.
Chapter 44
RACHEL
SYDNEY COVE, 23 SEPTEMBER 1793
Her pains began in the early afternoon. She wished she had another woman to tend her. But her few friends, mostly from the Lady Juliana, had either died, or were too far away, like Maria. She had made no new friends. The women nearby were either drunks, or officers’ wives like Mrs Macarthur, not interested in friendship with the Surgeon’s ‘housekeeper’.
She sent Big Lon to tell the Surgeon he was needed at home — no need to tell the crease-faced convict why. She sat in the kitchen, waiting for the next pain, trying not to remember Pockface Judy, back in Newgate, lying on the straw screaming as they took her baby from her arms straight to the workhouse, where it would most likely die in days, poor mite. You didn’t get to keep your child in prison, not unless you had the money to bribe the gaoler. And few of the babies born in the swaying filth in the depths of the ship had lived, unless their fathers claimed them and took them and their mothers up out of the hold.
She was scared. She was right to be scared. She knew of too many women who’d died in childbirth, especially the older ones. Back in the village when she was a child Old Meg came with her bag of napkins and herbs when it was time for a baby to come. Most of Old Meg’s mothers lived. But in London a servant was as likely to get an old crone with filthy nails to attend her, just to die of childbirth fever, red-faced and sweating, within a week.
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