by Sarah Lark
Matt Edmunds did not notice that the mule had been exchanged, but Claire was amazed when she took the animal into the stables along with Kathleen.
“Your own mule? Ian sold Matt his best mule? What did Matt pay for that? Ought I to reckon with being driven from house and home if we can’t come up with the money?” She laughed and patted the new mule. Spotty reacted with a jealous bray.
Kathleen was not in the mood for jokes. “Best thing would be for you to take your animals a little farther inland today,” she advised Claire. “Take Spotty and this one out to graze at the Leprechaun rock, or even better, hide them at the Fairy Place. Most of all, don’t let my husband see you or the mules. Oh yes—and come by tomorrow to look for me. If you find he’s killed me, look after my children.”
Chapter 11
Rather than living in the makeshift barracks, Sergeant Meyers and Velvet had rented two rooms at a small inn. When Lizzie knocked, the proprietress immediately let her inside. Instead of her apron and bonnet, Lizzie wore a dark dress and a carefully coiffed hairstyle so she would not be recognized as a maid gone astray. It was a weekday, and she had used an errand to grant herself a free hour.
Lizzie followed the proprietress with a pounding heart. Sergeant Meyers should not be home at that hour. One never knew, of course, but Velvet greeted her alone. She dismissed the proprietress at once, amicably but firmly, to fetch tea and pastries.
“I really can’t stay that long,” Lizzie said nervously, looking around the room. “You’ve got it nice here. You’ve become a real lady, Velvet.”
Velvet smiled. “It’s not as nice as your bosses have it,” she said. Misreading Lizzie’s unhappy facial expression, she qualified her statement: “Well, if I had to dust all that shiny stuff every day, I’d probably see it with other eyes too.”
Lizzie shook her head. “That’s not the problem. I don’t mind cleaning. But . . . we don’t have much time, Velvet. You have to listen to me. I need your help.”
Velvet held up her hand to stop her and gestured with her chin toward the door. The proprietress was just coming in carrying a platter with teacups and rolls.
Once the tea and treats were on the table, Velvet thanked her with a smile and motioned for Lizzie take a seat. “Now we can talk,” she said once the woman had gone. “So, what can I do for you? You want to marry, I heard?”
“I want to flee,” Lizzie corrected her. She had no time for polite conversation. “Together with Michael Drury. But first he needs out of his chain gang.”
“Wait a minute, wait.” Velvet poured the tea. She did not seem perturbed by Lizzie’s revelation, but she had always been like that. “You’re going a little fast. Are you aware that no one has ever escaped from Van Diemen’s Land before?”
“So they say, but if I was the governor and someone ran away, I wouldn’t admit it either. But it doesn’t matter. We’ll just be the first.”
“But Lizzie, why?”
Velvet saw in Lizzie’s impatient expression that she did not want to discuss it. Lizzie looked at the clock in the corner of the room.
“I should get to the butcher’s, Velvet. The cook’s waiting for the meat.”
Velvet nodded. “All right, fine. You absolutely want to make yourself miserable with Michael Drury. How can I help?”
“You can ask your husband to mark Michael as a lower security risk so they take off his chains,” Lizzie said. “That’s the first thing. Then we need to get to Hobart somehow.”
If she were being honest, her plan did not extend much further. And everything needed to go quickly since her wedding already had been announced at church.
“Somehow,” Velvet said mockingly. “Now, don’t sit here like there’s a fire under you, Lizzie. It won’t help. You need to take a little time.”
“I don’t have any time,” Lizzie burst forth. “This swine, Mr. Smithers, throws himself on me every night he spends at the house. And more or less with his wife’s blessing. She thinks she can only stop him by marrying me off. In four weeks they’re going to hitch me to the gardener who’s agreed to continue sharing me with Mr. Smithers. And Michael Drury is chained up with a few violent idiots who rave to him about fleeing to New Zealand—and yet they can’t even row a boat, let alone sail one across the Tasman Sea. So you see . . . I don’t have time, Velvet. I need papers and passage on the next ship.”
“The ships to England are searched thoroughly,” Velvet said.
“But not the ones to Auckland or Greymouth or all the other funny-named places in New Zealand. The idea isn’t that bad, just its execution. With those fools, Michael will never make it.”
Velvet nibbled on a roll. “Well, first, you have more time than you think,” she said. “No, not now, of course. You need to hurry to the butcher; I see that. But with the wedding. Before your pardon, they’ll interrogate you one last time. Likely they’ll send you to Hobart. That will take at least two months, so don’t drive yourself mad. And second, I see that you want to get away. And the idea’s ingenious. If only I’d thought of that! But why, for God’s sake, do you need Michael Drury?”
Lizzie lowered her gaze.
Velvet moaned, brushing a strand of her gorgeous black hair from her fair forehead. “Yes, I know, you love him. Even on the ship you couldn’t miss it. But Lizzie, the man will make you miserable. He’s a dog who—”
“You don’t even know him,” Lizzie said, defending the man she loved.
Velvet rolled her eyes. “I’ve heard enough about his adventures. Although dog is perhaps the wrong word. It might very well be that Drury is a good fellow. But in the end, he’s still given his whole heart to that girl he knocked up in Ireland.”
“He knocked . . . he . . . Mary Kathleen?”
Lizzie had not yet touched her tea, but Velvet could see she needed some fortification. She pulled a bottle of rum out from behind the sofa and poured some into Lizzie’s tea.
“Yes, Michael knocked up his girl. Didn’t think about how he was supposed to feed the kid until afterward either. As if he’d fled into a forest full of poison snakes and only then considered how he was supposed to get out again. At first, he didn’t even know that this was an island. The man will keep getting into trouble, Lizzie! He’s too emotional, too impulsive. You saved him once when he had a fever. And now you want to save him again. He doesn’t even love you.” Velvet poured rum in her own cup as well.
“He will, though . . . if only I . . .”
A tiny furrow formed over Velvet’s nose. Lizzie remembered from their days as cellmates that this always happened before Velvet indulged in a fit of excitement. “If only you do what for him? Lie, steal, whore? I thought that way once too. I’d have done anything for Murphy, and then he foisted all the guilt onto me. He claimed he hadn’t quite known that pinching watches was illegal and suddenly I just slipped the thing to him. And yet I’d been stealing for him for two years. At first, I thought I’d die. But you don’t die that easy . . .” Velvet lowered her gaze.
“But Michael . . .” Lizzie tried once more.
“Forget Michael,” Velvet said sternly. “Get yourself to safety. You’ll find someone else in New Zealand. These colonies are crawling with fellows. And over on the islands, they’re all free.”
Lizzie chewed her lip. “I won’t make it alone,” she whispered. “I need him.”
Velvet shook her head. “You don’t need him. He needs you.”
“Same thing,” Lizzie said. “So, will you help me? Please, Velvet, please! You said yourself: he’s a good fellow.”
Velvet gripped her forehead. “All right, fine, Lizzie,” she finally said. “But promise me you won’t rush. Think it over again calmly.”
Lizzie nodded halfheartedly, but now Velvet was the one thinking—and an idea came to her. “Listen, Lizzie. Michael came from the country, right? Do you think he knows anything about horses?”
Though she had no idea, Lizzie nodded eagerly. “Of course,” she said.
“Good. There’s a constan
t lack of drivers here. They have heavy teams for clearing the forests and transporting building material, but most of the convicts come from the city. They don’t know how to drive the wagons, and worse, they’re afraid of the giant nags. If my husband frees Michael, and he behaves for a couple of weeks, he might get a wagon to drive. That’s your ticket to Hobart. But that’ll take a little time. Will you make it?”
Lizzie nodded bravely. “I’ll try. If Michael doesn’t take off the moment they remove his chains.”
Velvet rolled her eyes. “Then you can take it as a sign,” she said. “Really, it’s the best thing that could happen to you. Now get to the butcher. Otherwise you’ll catch trouble.”
She accompanied Lizzie to the door, and suddenly hugged her.
“Good luck, Lizzie!” she whispered. “It’d be nice if one of us got to be happy.”
A week later, Lizzie’s pardon hearing was delayed. While Mrs. Smithers and Cecil were rather disappointed, Mr. Smithers was delighted that the wedding had to wait. Apparently, Mrs. Smithers was of the opinion that with or without a marriage certificate, Lizzie ought to start taking her pleasure with Cecil rather than her husband. But she no longer spoke to the girl about it directly.
Michael was freed from his chains three weeks after Lizzie and Velvet’s conversation. He easily adapted to the post of stable boy, where Sergeant Meyers placed him after a short questioning about his previous experience. Michael was used to mules. The heavy workhorses with which he now had to contend were larger but hardly any more difficult to handle. Michael fed and cleaned them, and to the satisfaction of the stable master, he even knew how to hitch them.
“Might you be able to drive too, boy?”
Michael nodded and soon accustomed himself to the giant wagon with which he transported the building materials and logs. The horses were less of a problem than the size and weight of the wagon, but Lord Wetherby’s grain wagons had not been all that much smaller. Michael handled it all well, and he would have been called to be driver, but he wasn’t yet trusted enough to be sent out alone on the roads.
“Just don’t do anything stupid,” Lizzie urged Michael.
She tried to see him as often as possible. Though it wasn’t easy, the best time to sneak in a visit was during the week, when she was out running errands. Martha played along with these rendezvous good-naturedly enough, though Lizzie hadn’t told her about the escape plan, since she knew the cook had her misgivings about Michael.
“How’s that supposed to end, child? Love one and marry another, and the third takes what he wants. Just watch out, girlie. Cecil, he can’t like what’s going on with the master. But he can’t do anything either. But if he hears about you and the handsome driver . . .”
Lizzie shrugged her shoulders. Before Cecil heard anything, she intended to be on a ship to New Zealand—or in prison again in Hobart. Once she ran away, there was no turning back, but now almost anything seemed better than becoming Cecil’s wife while staying Mr. Smithers’s whore.
Now, Lizzie tried not to look at Michael. He was atop the box of a wagon, and she was walking inconspicuously alongside him toward the store. “Behave for a couple of months. Let Sergeant Meyers start to trust you.” She could hardly keep herself from casting at least a comforting look at his handsome face and into his shining eyes.
“An opportunity will surely arise,” she said under her breath.
“Of course.” Michael sounded cheery and carefree. He seemed to enjoy the job of driver. Might he not want to leave at all anymore? Lizzie’s heart skipped a beat. If she arranged everything now, and then he said no . . .
“I can’t do anything on my own anyway. I have to wait for Will and Dylan and Connor. Without Connor, it’s hopeless.”
Lizzie sighed. So he did still want to flee. She would dissuade him yet.
And then, a couple of weeks later, events came to a head. It began with Mrs. Smithers summoning Lizzie. Of course she obeyed, but her heart was pounding. Were things taking too long for her mistress? Would she level more charges that Lizzie was seducing her husband?
Mrs. Smithers, however, did nothing of the sort. Instead, her news was positive.
“Tomorrow you will ride to Hobart. They want to question you again, and then things will hopefully go faster with your wedding. Pete’s driving to Hobart anyway; he’s taking David Parsley to the ship.” Pete was not just house servant but also driver for the Smitherses.
“Mr. Parsley means to travel?” Lizzie asked without inflection.
“For business. New Zealand; it concerns a contract. It seems they’re thinking of a road between the east and west coasts, something like that. I’d rather return to England, of course, but that’s no concern of yours. We can’t leave here for two or three years anyway. In any case, ready yourself. You leave at sunrise.”
Lizzie went back to her work and tried to sort out what was happening. It was Thursday. She would be traveling Friday and Saturday, so the ship would leave either Sunday or Monday. She could easily take care of Mr. Parsley; the man was a coward, and he had often winked at her when he was a guest of the Smitherses and Lizzie served dinner. Did he know that she belonged to his boss? The blood rose to Lizzie’s face. But that did not matter either. More important than anything now was getting to Michael. She quickly set the dinner table, then ran to Martha.
“I have to go! Give me an errand, any errand.”
The cook frowned. “What do you want to do now, child? The missus wants you to serve. Mr. Smithers is expected.”
Lizzie looked at her, horrified. “Today? No! I’ve got to go, Martha! Tell them anything. Tell them I’m with Cecil, giving him the news that I’ll be pardoned soon. Or tell them you sent me to get eggs, and I’ll claim I sprained my ankle in the chicken coop.”
Martha shook her head. “The chickens are already asleep. Off with you, girlie, but hurry. I’ll think of something. The missus is in a good mood. And Master, well, if you get back in time . . .”
Lizzie nodded. She knew her duties. But for now, she took her apron off as she ran out, and wrapped herself quickly in Martha’s shawl. It was late summer, and in Van Diemen’s Land, it was already cold. It was also raining lightly as Lizzie ran across the village streets to the stables near the barracks. If she was lucky, Michael would still be there. He had to be there.
Michael was feeding the horses and whistling to himself. Lizzie went weak with relief.
“Michael, Michael, thank God you’re here.” She had to restrain herself from throwing her arms around him.
“My little angel,” he laughed. “Hey, is the house on fire, or are you having trouble with your little lover? Should I beat him for you?”
Michael seemed to be in a good mood and not quite sober. That was no wonder. Whenever there was contraband whiskey circulating among the convicts, the drivers always got a few swigs. Michael put his arm around Lizzie, who was leaning against a stall, trying to catch her breath.
“Stop your nonsense and listen.” Lizzie’s fear made her rebuff him more strongly than she actually wanted to. She hoped he was not too drunk to understand the plan. “Michael, Sunday or Monday a ship is leaving for New Zealand. You’ll get papers and a ticket—no, no questions now; there’s no time. But you have to make it to Hobart. I’ll meet you . . .”
“At Battery Point, in Mayfair Tavern,” Michael said quickly. “It’s a tavern, supposed to be easy to find.”
Lizzie rolled her eyes. “Just say: the soldiers will search there first,” she mocked. “But fine, it’s somewhere at least. But don’t go inside. Stay somewhere nearby. Or, better: look for the ship to New Zealand and hide on the pier. I’ll come there with a man. Follow us inconspicuously, and at some point, I’ll meet you and give you the papers.”
“But how do you mean to—” This was all happening a bit too fast for Michael.
“I don’t know yet, but it’s worth a try. Just come to Hobart. But don’t tell anyone. Not even your friends from the chain gang.”
“But the
y . . . I can’t just . . . They’ll wonder . . .”
“Let them. It’s better they stay in the dark than betray you. Michael, between now and when the ship leaves, you’ll have to hide for three days and cover more than a hundred fifty miles. It’ll be better if no one knows where to look for you.”
Michael was quiet for a moment, seeming to weigh his loyalties. But then he shrugged. “So be it. I’ll leave tonight,” he declared.
Lizzie squinted. “Don’t you think it would be better to go tomorrow with the team?”
“A team would draw too much attention. I have a better idea. I’ll take a horse. Wish me luck, Lizzie.”
Lizzie was moving to go when he kissed her. First on the forehead, then quickly on the mouth. “And good luck to you too,” he said.
Lizzie managed to smile when Martin Smithers came to her bed that night. She knew it was the last time, so she endured his caresses and thought of Michael.
Michael needed all the luck he could get—starting with his escape. Among the horses in his charge was an unruly young stallion. Gideon was a Shire horse—gorgeous, dark brown, white-footed, and almost fifteen hands tall. A farmer near Launceston had ordered the horse from England, and one of the drivers had brought it from Hobart. Now it stood in a stall with Michael, waiting to be transported to the farm—though the stable master was in no hurry. He planned to have the stallion cover all the mares in his stables before sending him onward. And nearly all the settlers in the area who had mares had spoken with him. They handed him a small fee, and the stallion performed his service. The farmer would never be the wiser.
The animal could hardly believe its luck. Every day he became unrulier, and he beat on the stall wall nervously whenever a mare was in heat. Michael had repaired his stall three times already. It would be completely believable for the stallion to manage to escape one day. And the horse was strong. It could easily make it to Hobart and take Michael with it. If it would carry a rider.
