Far From Botany Bay

by Rosa Jordan

  “Aye, Captain,” Mary said, and scooted into her seat like a child scolded for dallying.

  As if she were a child, Smit poured the tea for them both. He leaned back in his chair and said, “The Great Barrier Reef is a thousand miles long. No man could know it all.” He blew on his tea, and went on, thoughtfully. “No, I think it is something else. Some knack for looking past the surface and seeing—well, seeing is not the right word either. Maybe they just feel the coral rising up to bite a hole in their boat, and they turn aside in the nick of time.”

  Mary gazed across at him, wide-eyed. “Have you ever felt such a thing, Sir?”

  Smit laughed. “Me? No. I depend on these.” He waved at the charts strewn about the room. “And keep my distance from reefs that bite.”

  Mary nodded, and sipped her tea. “How came you to be a seafaring man, Captain?”

  As she set her cup down, the Captain refilled it, and laid two biscuits on her plate. Then he leaned back and told a story of a merchant’s son sent to sea at a tender age, for having failed to apply himself at school, and for what his father perceived as the advantages of having a seafaring trader in the family. Mary never interrupted his recitation, but answered what questions he put to her; questions that she saw were designed to determine the truth of her claim to have sailed with her father. If he paused too long, she would ask something more to keep him going.

  At last, when the teapot was drained and the biscuits he had placed on her plate consumed, Mary rose. “What a story, Captain Smit! You’ve made me forget the time!”

  He rose as well. “As have you, Mrs. Bryant.” He picked up the tin of biscuits, which had lain open between them the whole of the evening. No doubt he had left it so in a spirit of generosity, not knowing what force of will had been required of Mary to not grab and gobble the contents. “Here,” he offered the tin. “A small token of your visit.”

  She hesitated, and shook her head. “I cannot, Sir. With so much hunger in the Colony, the smallest morsel gives rise to envy.”

  Smit eyed her body. “You look better fed than most in this port.”

  “At the cost of a hundred lashes for my husband, when he was caught holding back a few fish from his catch to feed his family!” Mary exclaimed bitterly.

  Smit’s mouth twisted in disgust. “And the English fancy themselves civilised! Will you take a meal with me then, before you go?”

  “I cannot this night, Sir, for I have no more time.” She turned around to the chart on the wall. “It would comfort me, though, to have one of these to feast my eyes on when my heart’s sore for the sea.”

  He eyed her narrowly for a moment, then asked, “Which will you have?”

  “This one,” she said, pointing to one that showed the north and east coasts of Australia, with its little-known Coral Sea, leading down to (or away from) Botany Bay.

  “That one, eh?” Smit stirred among the cache of charts. “Yes, I have a second one of those. In any case, it is not I who will ever sail the impossible sea.” He turned back to her, rolling the chart as he spoke. “You do know that your great Captain Cook himself ran aground on a reef there? It was not then, nor has it yet, been truly charted.”

  “I shall remember that,” Mary said, looking straight into his eyes.

  He walked her out to that part of the deck where her boat was secured. As she reached for the rope ladder, he said, “We shall not be sailing for at least two months. Perhaps you would care to come again.”

  “’Twould be a great pleasure, Captain Smit,” she responded, and moved hand under hand down the ladder with a great, floating sensation of relief.

  Upon reaching shore, she re-fastened the rowboat and trod on silent bare feet across the beach and along the path to her hut. Will lay sleeping deeply as he always did. This she knew by his gentle snores, although it was too black inside the hut to see even the outline of his body. She slid the rolled chart under the leaves that served as their bed, and lay down beside him with a sigh as deep as the gulf that separated their life from that of Captain Smit’s.

  It was but two nights later, while the moon was still small, that Mary went again to visit Smit. Again the watchman bade her wait while he informed the captain. The watchman returned alone, and called down to Mary. She did not understand what he said, and feared that she was being told to leave. Then he leaned over the side and, speaking sharply, repeated the command, this time waving her up. Lantern swinging, he led her across the deck and along the corridor to the captain’s quarters. There was a single knock, and the door opened. Smit’s expression was as dour as it had been on their first meeting, and his command to enter was just as curt. But once inside, when they were alone and the light was better, Mary saw in his hazel-coloured eyes some satisfaction that she had returned.

  The conversation began with stiff formality, and Mary wondered that he did not order tea. Had she offended him perhaps, by refusing the biscuits on her previous visit? The mystery of his seeming lapse of hospitality was soon explained. A tap on the door was followed by the cabin boy, who laid the table for two, then went away, and returned twice bearing trays of food. Overcome, Mary bowed her head.

  “Do you pray?” queried Smit.

  Mary looked up. “My mother did. And I was taught as well. But I have come to believe that the kindness of God, like the kindness of men, is kindled not by need or gratitude, but within the heart of the one who gives.” Her eyes slanted with humour. “For all I know, Sir, it may offend Our Lord to have mortals giving Him advice as to where His charities ought be placed.”

  Smit chuckled. “What a little heathen you are, Mary Bryant.”

  He piled their plates with food then, and the Hollander’s conversation flowed easily, as he spoke of the ports of call where he had acquired this delicacy or that.

  When the meal ended, he rose and went to the sideboard for a bottle. Mary followed, but showed no interest in his selection of alcoholic beverages. Instead, she picked up a quadrant.

  Holding a bottle over the lip of a glass, Smit asked, “Will you have a touch of brandy?”

  Fiddling with the quadrant, she asked, “How does this work?”

  “If I show you how it works you’ll be wanting me to give it to you,” Smit grinned.

  “That is true,” Mary admitted.

  He poured a brandy for himself, sniffed it, and sipped. Then he set the glass down and took the quadrant from her.

  “It’s for measuring angles, you see, and altitude.”

  Mary’s third visit to the Waaksamheyd followed the pattern of the second, except that this time, after the cabin boy had cleared away the remains of their meal, Smit got up and locked the door behind him. Mary knew what this portended, and sought to delay it by distracting him into conversation. “Tell me of this Captain Cook, who sailed the Coral Sea and lived to tell of it. What did he say of the journey?”

  “Let’s see.” Smit lit a cigar and seemed to search his memory. “He said that in some ports the natives were friendly, and in some they posed a danger. Captain Bligh reported the same, when he arrived in Timor last year.”

  “What was Captain Bligh’s route?”

  Smit reached for a chart, and spread it on the table between them. “He came this way. It took him about four months, I believe, to reach Kupang.”

  Mary leaned close, following his finger across the map. Smit broke off suddenly, and ran his hand over her breast.

  “It’s a rough weave you’re wearing, Mrs. Bryant. And if rough to this old paw, it must be painful to your young skin.”

  “One grows accustomed,” Mary said, ignoring the liberty he had just taken.

  Abruptly, Smit rolled up the chart and crossed the room to a sea chest at the foot of his bed. From it he removed a piece of scarlet cloth. He brought the fabric and laid it in her arms. Mary sighed, for the feel of it evoked in her memory a
kerchief made of fabric such as this—silk it was—that her father had once brought home from a voyage for her mother.

  “It is a gown of the sort they wear in India,” Smit told her. “Will you put it on?”

  Mary unfolded the fabric in puzzlement. “It looks to be but a length of cloth, Sir. I cannot see how it might be worn.”

  “Remove your garment, Mrs. Bryant, and I will teach you.” With that, Smit turned his back on her.

  For Mary there was no decision to be made, for that decision had been made before she ever set foot aboard the Waaksamheyd. Whatever a man might need of a woman—and she knew men to need a great many more things than sex—sex they would have. And should have, she believed, if she was to get what she wanted in return.

  When Smit turned to look at her again, she stood naked, faced away from him. He took up the sari and began to wind it around her. The sensuous way it flowed over her skin was almost more than she could bear. “I’ve never felt the touch of a thing so gentle,” she murmured in ecstasy. “Why, it’s lighter than the very air!”

  “Then you shall have it.”

  Mary fingered the fine fabric, running her hands from where it covered her breast down her thighs and back again. Then she said simply, “I’d rather have a compass.”

  Smit narrowed his eyes. She saw in him then the trader that he was; tough in his dealings, but with enough decency to strike a bargain he deemed fair to both. “Very well,” he said gruffly. Grasping the silk with one hand, he placed the other hand on her shoulder and turned her round and round, unwinding the sari. When she stood naked before him he said, “Give me a bit of comfort, Madam, and you shall have your compass.”

  First light was but two hours off when Mary reached shore and tied the rowboat to Will’s fishing boat. Seeing the beach empty, she scurried across the sand. She had just started along the path leading to her hut when she heard a footstep behind her. Before she could turn her head to see who it was, a hand came out of the darkness and grabbed her by the hair.

  “Now where might you have been, my Mary, that you come back in the wee hours with your hair stinking of tobacco?”

  “Shhh!” Mary said, relieved that it was Will and not a Ranger.

  With one hand tangled in her hair, he raised the other and backhanded her across the face so hard that she fell to the ground. “Don’t shush me, you slut! I’m your husband!”

  Her lips, where he had crushed them against her teeth, oozed blood into her mouth. She hardly felt the pain, so great was her fear that they might be heard. Still on her knees, she grasped his wrist and laid the compass in his hand.

  “A compass!” he gasped. “You stole it from the old fart?”

  “He gave it to me,” Mary whispered, and staggered to her feet.

  “Arrrg!” The sound was more beast than human. “His hands on your body! It makes me want to puke!”

  Facing him, she said in a low, cold voice, “It would profit you more to ponder your own body’s freedom, Will Bryant, than to fret about the comings and goings of mine.”

  He slapped her again, this time with the flat of his hand so she did not feel hard knuckles as she had with the first blow. And this time, having seen it coming, she did not go down. She turned and walked up the path. Will scrambled after her.

  “You think I’m some crazy Irishman, to go running north with a notion of China just across the river?” he hissed. “A compass is no good at all without a chart.”

  “We have a chart.”

  He spoke not another word to her, but in the blackness of their cabin and before she could remove her shift, he shoved her down on their bed of leaves and pushed hard into her.

  Although Will’s hunger for her body had not diminished in the three years of their marriage, his way with her had changed. The teasing tenderness he had shown in the beginning had all but disappeared. Initially, she thought her pregnancy had changed him, but she soon understood that it was the rum. With passions fuelled not by affection but by alcohol, he seemed to forget the ways in which he had given her pleasure in the beginning. He went at her with clumsy jabs which were of minimal value to him and none at all to her. What was there for either of them in an act which, by reason of drink, was left incomplete or forgotten by morning?

  Mary had tolerated the change without a murmur, not because she feared her husband but because she feared pregnancy. In a sloppy drunken state, if he did manage to stay atop her long enough to get relief, she could ease him out of her so that the flow came onto her belly. He would fall heavily on her, not sober enough to know or care. Although there was no pleasure in it for her, neither had there been any violence, until this night.

  This night, though, Will drove into her as if he wished he were a stake nailing her to the ground. She made no sound and did not lift a hand—not to restrain him during the aggression nor to comfort him afterwards, when he rolled to the side and sobbed.

  Less than an hour later, the first grey light shone through the cracks of their hut. Mary rose, as she always did, to build a fire and make a johnnycake to tide her husband through the day. When the miserly amount of food was ready she held the upturned shovel out to him. Will snatched the bit and stuffed it into his mouth. He picked up his rucksack as if to be off, but continued to stand there, shifting his weight from foot to foot.

  At last he said, in a low, uncertain voice, “I beg your pardon, Mary.”

  She responded, dully, “You’ve done no wrong, nor I, but what was wrung out of us by this miserable place.”

  “’Tis hard,” he said. “For a man, a hard thing, this.”

  Mary turned away, bitter in the knowledge that he imagined the choices she had made to be harder on himself than on her.

  The summer lay on Botany Bay, hot and dry. Mary had not many more opportunities to slip across the bay to the Dutch ship, but those she had, she took. On each visit thereafter, she first shared a meal with Captain Smit, and then she shared his bed. On one visit he gave her a leather tobacco pouch that might be worn on a string about her neck. That night and on every other visit, it was stuffed with tidbits of meat and cheese for Charlotte. As for the baby, what filled Mary’s belly also filled her breasts. Thus while the Waaksamheyd lay at anchor in Botany Bay, she and the children thrived.

  On the matter of supplies to the colony, Captain Smit sought to drive a hard bargain, and Governor Phillip drove back just as hard. Wrangling between the two was fierce, and dragged on day after day for three full months. By night, Mary and Smit engaged in barter as well, but it was of a softer nature, and led to a closeness neither had anticipated.

  As she lay naked beside him on a night she judged to be their last, Mary admitted as much. With a sadness she had never expected to feel, she murmured, “Ah, good Captain! When I look across the harbour and see your great ship gone, I shall be lonelier than before.”

  Smit was silent for a very long time. At last he said, “Perhaps there is room aboard for one small convict after all.”

  Mary turned neither toward him nor away, but lay as she was with her head on his arm, pondering the proposition. She knew something of the life of womenfolk who went to sea with their men, so she could imagine how her days with Smit would be spent—how cold and dismissive he would be by day, followed by tenderness at night in proportion to the pleasure she gave him. Weeks of sailing would be interspersed with times when the ship lay at anchor in some exotic port. There they would be fêted by governors and enticed with exquisite goods such as the silken sari which Smit, for his entertainment, still sometimes bade her wear. Barring storms at sea, it would be a peaceful life.

  Mary believed that, were she as innocent as she had been back in Cornwall, she could be happy with such a life, had even dreamt of it as a girl. But that was before she carried the guilty weight of her mother’s lonely passing. That weight alone she might have borne; indeed, had borne these four
years since. But she felt that she had not the strength nor enough forgetting in her to live with the memory of children abandoned as well.

  Captain Smit was watching her now, by the light of the lantern which he would have burning even when they lay together. Like a little boy, she thought, he wanted to see the thing that amused him, and which, when he had satiated his sexual desire, he petted and stroked like a kitten. Mary sat up. Pulling her knees to her chest, she looked over at Smit with a smile. “If I had the provisions I might have eaten on this voyage, I’d make use of them on another.”

  Smit sighed. “You have the manners of a child, Mary Bryant, but the body of a woman.” He squeezed one breast, hard enough to make her wince. “And by what whim of God I do not know, you have been given the mind of a man. Why not come with me?”

  Mary glanced sideways at him and saw in the hazel eyes a longing she had not glimpsed there before. She caught the hand that clutched her breast and kissed the tough-skinned palm. “If I sailed with you my husband would howl, and would have a new wife in six months’ time. That I would not regret. But it would sadden my little girl forever. And likely my son would die.”

  Smit lay beside her a moment longer, then abruptly rose from the bed and pulled on a robe. He stepped outside the cabin and gave a string of orders. Then he returned to the bedside and said, “If the weather be fair, we sail at dawn on Monday next.”

  She understood that he meant the remark both as farewell and a repeat of the invitation to join him if she should change her mind. She felt it only fair to let him know that her mind was made up. “I venture that the night to follow will be without a moon.”

  “How would you know that?” he asked in surprise. “Among the convicts are there any with an almanac that shows phases of the moon?”

  “Not that I have seen,” Mary admitted. Although it caused her to blush, she explained, “My monthly flow comes with the full of the moon. From that I count the days, to know when the moon will be small or early set.” To cover her embarrassment, she reached for her burlap shift and slipped it on.