Far From Botany Bay

by Rosa Jordan

  Smit watched her movements and shook his head. “In all my travels, Madam, I have never met a woman such as you.”

  “Am I the only one, then?” Mary tried to sound a playful note, but his reply mattered to her, as he must have guessed it would.

  “Most surely, Mary Bryant. The only one.”

  He walked her across the deck, as he always did. When they reached the railing where the rope ladder was tied, he said, “You will find provisions in the boat, along with a musket and ammunition, well-wrapped against the wet.”

  She was astonished by his generosity, and by how completely he comprehended the plans she had not spoken openly of until this night. “I don’t know how to shoot, Captain.”

  He smiled. “Perhaps someone less dangerous than you can find a use for it. Have you chosen a vessel?”

  “I have,” Mary confessed.

  “And is it swift enough?”

  “The swiftest in port, once yours has sailed.”

  Smit gazed across the harbour until his eyes came to rest on a six-oar cutter, broad of beam and a good thirty feet long. “The Governor’s own boat?” he exclaimed incredulously.

  Her cool smile told him he had guessed correctly.

  “Madam, Madam!” He shook his head. “A man with your qualities would be an admiral. Or a buccaneer.”

  Smit might have forced one of his hard scratchy-whiskered kisses on her then, as he often did at their parting. But on this last night he only raised his hand in an oddly military salute and said, “Godspeed, Mary Bryant.”

  She caught the hand as it fell, and used it to wipe her tears. “Godspeed, my Captain.”

  *

  As she approached the shore, Will waded out, grasped the rowboat’s line, and fastened it to his fishing boat. Mary handed over six bags of provisions.

  “Damn me,” he muttered, “if he’s not given you everything but the boat itself!”

  “We have a boat,” Mary whispered back.

  Will stared at her. She pointed to the cutter, tied a short distance down the beach. “There’s but one thing to be done, and that’s to find a crew, for we cannot sail her alone.”

  Will made no reply, nor had Mary expected one. She had yet to see him plan for anything that required thinking more than one step ahead. She revealed to him her plan to take the Governor’s boat only because it was now necessary for him to think that one step ahead, and to help recruit a crew.

  By the time they were in the hut, Will’s mind had travelled in the general direction she wanted it to go. “My fishing mates,” he whispered, as they crouched together, stuffing the things Mary had acquired into a hole he had hollowed out beneath their bed. “They’re strong at rowing and accustomed to long hours on the water. And Cox, for he’s got tools to make repairs along the way.”

  “Yes,” Mary agreed, as she covered the opening of their hiding place with poles. “Cox and your mates, except for Matey.”

  “Leave Matey?” Will exclaimed. “A foolish thing that would be. Why, Matey’s the best boatman of the lot!”

  “He’s a drunk,” Mary said flatly, not voicing her greater concern, which was that Matey had a knack for inciting Will to drink with him.

  “Matey’s a lifer,” Will pointed out. “It’d be cruel to leave him.”

  “A life sentence is too good for a man caught red-handed luring ships onto the rocks. Scavenging is one thing; drowning folks for profit is something else,” Mary said vehemently.

  “Getting a little priggish there, my girl,” Will sneered. “Anyway, even with Matey, there’s room for one more. Johnny? He’s a lifer, too.”

  Mary rocked back on her heels and thought it over. “Johnny’s a good man, for all he’s a cripple. But he’ll not come without Colleen, nor would I ask him to make such a choice. Leave Matey behind and we can bring both of them.”

  As she spoke, Mary knew that this was unwise. Johnny, besides being crippled, worked in the carpentry shop, so had neither the strength nor the rowing skills of the men on Will’s crew. Even Pip, youngest and smallest of the crew, would be more useful.

  And then there was Colleen. It was time for her baby to be born, but the exact day could not be foretold, nor how difficult might be the birthing. The night of their bolting was equally uncertain. If a storm blew in, it could delay the departure of the Waaksamheyd, and their departure would have to be delayed as well. What if the child was newly birthed, or born in the boat a few days out? Colleen might even be locked in labour at the very hour best for sailing! One thing was certain: Colleen could not pull her weight, even if she and the infant managed to survive conditions so raw, and perils that were sure to come their way.

  Both Mary and Will were silent for a moment, as they heaped dry grass and leaves over the poles which covered their cache of provisions. When it again had the appearance of what passed for a bed in the colony, Will rose. “I will not leave Matey behind. And that, Madam, is that.”

  “Very well.” Mary rose and faced him. “I ask only that you do not speak to him of it until the very day. For when Matey drinks he blabs, and his tongue can hang us all.”

  “And what shall be that day?” Will asked.

  “Let us wait and see,” Mary equivocated. “Tell them to be ready, and we will see.”

  “And the last passenger?”

  “James Brown.”

  Will’s mouth dropped open in surprise. “The Canadian? Are you daft, woman? Why, he’s naught but a clerk!”

  “He has keys to the government storeroom,” Mary retorted. “Where else do you suppose we’ll find provisions to feed eleven mouths on a voyage of so many months?”

  Will turned and left the hut. He had not given assent, but Mary knew she had won her point. She looked longingly at their pathetic bed of grass and leaves, for she had not slept an hour that night and could easily have dozed all day. But there was already a streak of grey in the sky. It was time to build a fire, cook breakfast for Will, then make gruel for Charlotte and give Emanuel her breast. After that, and before the sun grew too blazing hot, there was the garden to tend, wood to gather, rations to claim, and the evening meal to make.

  Also, between Will’s leaving and the children’s waking, there was the water to fetch. She had seen James almost daily since their conversation, along the path to the stream. Their eyes spoke volumes to one another, but no words beyond brief and proper greetings had been exchanged. This morning, though, she would put the proposition to him.

  Mary was always the first to draw water from the stream, for few had reason to rise so early, nor much desire, given how many in the colony were prone to pass part of the night in drunkenness. She filled the heavy pails, then walked back toward her hut, pausing where she usually stopped to rest, on a rise which gave a view out to sea. She had not waited long before James appeared. “Good morning, Mrs. Bryant,” he said with his usual formality.

  “Good morning, Mr. Brown,” she said, matching his formal tone. But instead of dropping her eyes as she normally did, she put out her hand to touch his arm. That stopped him in his tracks. She tried to speak, but the words caught in her throat. James was highly regarded in government circles. The risk she took in revealing their plans to him was great. She trusted him implicitly, but could it be that the completeness with which she gave that trust was a sign of her own foolishness?

  “There is something you wish to ask me?”

  Mary nodded, still mute.

  He waited, and when he saw that she could not speak her mind, he said, “There is a question I have for you as well. Something personal.”

  “Please!” she said, relieved to have a moment of respite from the fear generated by her self-doubt. Her blue eyes searched his brown ones. She saw that what he wanted to ask was of great importance to him. “Ask what you will,” she encouraged, “and I will answer you truly.”
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br />   He stared into her eyes a moment longer, then posed his question. “On the ship coming over, you never gave Will Bryant the time of day. Yet you chose him over me. I have often wondered why.”

  Mary looked at him in surprise. “Do you not know? Will and I are here for crimes we committed; we’re of the same class. But you—you’re no criminal, James! Educated as you are, why, we’re no match, you and I!”

  James sighed and shook his head. “Mary, Mary! If you think we’re no match only for the reasons you give, then you have done us both a great wrong.”

  “In what way?” She was puzzled, for she had only voiced the obvious.

  “It is not education that counts, or even intelligence, but the nature of one’s mind. Early in our voyage, I perceived you as a woman apart, whose actions were never frivolous, but always thoughtful. Are we not alike in this?”

  Never had a man looked so deep into her and no one, with the exception of her now-dead mother, had ever recognised her propensity to thought. It was as if he had unveiled her innermost way of being, measured it against himself, and found it not to be less.

  Mary’s response, barely audible, was choked with emotion. “’Tis a pity you did not speak to me thus before we reached Botany Bay.”

  “You gave me no encouragement,” he reminded her with a trace of bitterness.

  “How was I to know?” she whispered.

  James lapsed into hopeless silence and looked away, at the harbour view she herself often sought for solace. At last he said, “A while back you asked about my sentence. Why?”

  “I was wondering . . . if a group was preparing to bolt, and asked you to join, what would you say?”

  “If you were among them, I would say count me in.”

  “I am. As are my husband and my children.”

  He looked her full in the face and not only in the face, but taking in all of her, surface and what lay beneath; a woman exposed, perhaps not even to herself, but taken in by him.

  “There are certain things . . . the smell of a pine forest, the music of a violin, the flight of a bird . . . one can love without possessing.”

  “Certain things, yes,” Mary agreed, loving the romanticism of his remark but thinking it more than a little foolish. “But can a man feel thus about a woman?”

  “Perhaps. Once in a lifetime.”

  It was as if each of the phrases he uttered opened a little wider some door into himself, until now, with his heart wide open, Mary saw the full extent of her loss. Tears filled her eyes. Then she blinked back those tears and looked away. Nothing could destroy her well-laid plans quicker than allowing herself to dwell on the mistakes of the past and on what might have been. Such thoughts would only clutter her mind and cloud her judgment. For that reason she permitted no response or show of emotion to his declaration of love.

  James waited a moment for her reaction and, when there was none that he could see, he asked, “Does your husband know I am being ask to bolt with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then it is settled.”

  Contained again, dry of eye and cool of voice, she said, “We shall be nine, eleven with the children. Some supplies we have, but not enough.”

  “And the time?”

  “On the tide that follows the sailing of the Waaksamheyd, if no storm is brewing and the night be black enough.”

  “A fair plan,” he said. “I shall await your notice.”

  Later, when Mary was back at the hut nursing the baby, she recalled the conversation. It came to her then that James had asked nothing about how they intended to accomplish what was planned; what they meant to use for a boat, whether they had a compass or chart; indeed, even if they had those things, who in the group knew how to use them. For all James knew, she might be luring him into a mad adventure that was doomed from the start. Yet he trusted her—or loved her—enough to say yes with no reassurance as to practical matters. The only thing that seemed to matter was that she wanted him with her.

  She had told Will only a partial truth when she said she wanted James along because he had access to government stores. She wanted him with her because she knew, had always known, that he was a man she could trust. What she now knew was that he trusted her as much.

  The danger came, as danger so often does, from a direction least expected. Mary was on her hands and knees in the garden, pulling weeds and looking for any vegetables that might be harvested to add flavour to the evening broth, or dried to carry with them, when Colleen came flying up the path. Mary saw at once that Colleen was in a state. Her eyes were as wild as her long red hair, and her belly, now great with child, heaved in an alarming way.

  “Colleen!” Mary cried. “Are you—?”

  “You bitch!” Colleen screamed. “And you call yourself a friend!”

  Mary’s mouth dropped open, but before a word could come out, Colleen had hold of her shoulders and was shaking her like an empty sack. “Was it not I who wiped your brow the night they brought you in? Does it count for nothing that I am Charlotte’s godmother and we treat her as our own? What is this coldness in you, Mary, that you can think of leaving us behind?”

  Her fierceness terrified Mary, for it gave a glimpse of the freedom fighter Colleen once had been, and an Irish temper that captivity had not diminished. Mary steadied her voice, if not her pounding heart, and tried to sound reasonable. “Come, Colleen. Do you want this baby or not? No newborn could survive such hardships as every bolter faces.”

  Colleen let go of Mary’s shoulders then and held out her hands in supplication. “Then take Johnny. Please, Mary! I beg you!”

  Mary wiped sweat from her forehead, her earth-soiled fingers leaving a trail of dirt in the roots of her hair. “You know Johnny would never leave without you!”

  “I’ll force him to go! Johnny’s got a life sentence! I’ve got but eight years more. If he got away, he could be waiting for me over there! We could start all over again!”

  “There’s no room, Colleen. Not on this voyage.”

  Colleen must have heard in Mary’s voice a determination that matched her own, because for a moment she seemed at a loss for words. Then she reached out and grasped a handful of Mary’s hair close to the scalp. Mary felt as if it was being pulled out by the roots. Colleen drew her forward until their faces were only inches apart, and hissed, “You’ll not go without him. I shall see to that.”

  Then she turned and left by the way she had come.

  That night, Mary said nothing to Will of what had transpired, but neither could she sleep. She longed to slip away to the Waaksamheyd, eat a hearty meal, then lie in Captain Smit’s great bed and pay the price he asked for passage, hers alone, away from this hellish place. She tried to weigh the risk of making one last trip out to the Dutch ship to save herself, against the risk of waiting to see what Colleen would do. If the woman held her tongue they might get away. But if she carried out her threat to inform—and that, of course, was what it was—all of them were doomed.

  In the end, it was not how the risks balanced against each other that caused Mary to stay the course. It was the responsibility she felt for the children who slept soundly beside her, and one other who had never shared her bed, but who trusted her just as much.

  As heavy as the fear was Mary’s sadness at having lost the friendship of the one woman in all of Botany Bay whom she truly admired. It was, after all, Colleen’s determination to keep Johnny alive that had shown Mary what power a woman can have when she sets her mind to a task. When Mary declared to Dr. White, “My daughter shall not starve,” who was she emulating but Colleen? Had she not proven herself to be just as strong? But now? What would happen when their two wills clashed, the one as driven as the other?

  The following day, walking to the centre of the settlement, Mary did not follow the path that led past Cox’s workshop, for next to it was Colleen
and Johnny’s hut. Normally, she would have stopped there to rest and visit. But now, knowing she would not be welcome, she took a less-used trail that ran along the back.

  She was just a little past the workshop when she looked back and saw that Charlotte was no longer meandering behind but had turned aside, her attention captured by the activity of some insect or another. Mary walked back to get her rather than calling out, because she could hear voices inside the shop, and did not want to draw attention to the fact that she had chosen to go by the back way.

  As she retraced her steps to get Charlotte, the voices from the shop became more distinct. Cox was saying, “This here plane’s come to fit your hand better than mine, John-boy. I want you to have it.”

  And Johnny’s reply, short and bitter, “You don’t have to buy my silence.”

  “If there’d been room for one more—,” Cox began, but Johnny cut him off.

  “The fisher-boys would have picked an Irishman? Not bloody likely!”

  “’Twas Mary’s choice who’d go,” Cox protested.

  At the mention of her name, Mary gave up pretending that she wasn’t trying to hear the conversation. Johnny replied, quick enough. “So my wife says.”

  “And Florie tells me that wife of yours is scheming to inform on us. If you let her.”

  And Johnny’s retort: “Something you wouldn’t know, Cox. Back in Ireland ‘twas Colleen who headed up our bunch. No man living ever told that lass what to do.”

  Cox voiced exactly the question that popped into Mary’s mind. “Then how come you got transported for life, and her only ten years?”

  “They wouldn’t believe the deeds we done was led by a woman. The judge had it in his mind she was just a doxy. She would have gone scot-free if she’d been willing to name the ones that wasn’t caught.”

  “You’re saying she won’t inform?”

  “I’m saying Colleen will do what she bloody well pleases. She always did.”

  There was then the sound of other voices coming into the shop. Mary took Charlotte by the hand and led her onward in the direction they had been going.