by Rosa Jordan
He sat there fingering the pieces of his broken flute. “I got no schoolin’, Mary.”
“Nor I, Bados. But charts are easier to read than books, and the compass easier yet. I give you my word—”
“Miss Mary!” Pip’s squeak of alarm caused Mary and Bados to look up. Silhouetted against the firelight, they could see Will walking toward them. Both rose. Bados faded into the shadows. When Will arrived, Mary was alone, scrubbing the stew pot in the surf.
“Taking a long time to wash up, ain’t you, girl?”
“I was talking to Bados. He wants to stay here.”
“So let him stay. We don’t need him,” Will boasted, but frowned as he spoke. Mary could tell that he was visualising the next day, thinking that one step ahead, which he rarely did. “Though none’s stronger. Damn lucky he was at the oars when them savages bore down on us.”
Mary scrubbed at the iron pot with a handful of sand, then rinsed the bowls and placed them inside. Over her shoulder she said, “Our chances are better if we stick together.”
Will laughed, bitterly. “Sticking together, are we?
Sure and you’d see it that way, having them all at your beck and call.”
Mary sighed and got up off her knees. She handed Will the cast iron cooking pot to carry back to camp.
He stared at the pot moodily, then bellowed, “Don’t get uppity with me, Madam. I’m not your goddamned manservant!” He flung the pot at her feet and stalked off down the beach.
Again Mary knelt on the beach and, in the darkness, began to search for the wooden bowls which had scattered onto the sand.
Pip came to help her. “You go on back, Miss Mary,” he whispered. “I’ll rinse ‘em off again.”
Mary gave the boy’s shoulder a grateful squeeze, then picked up the heavy pot and trudged back to camp. Tired though she was, she knew that she would have trouble falling asleep, for anger burned within her. It was fed by feelings coming at her from many directions; among them this reminder that her circumstances were such that she could not even give and receive words of kindness unless they were whispered in secret.
It was the first morning on the entire journey that Mary woke not in the grey light of dawn but with morning sun blazing full in her face. She automatically threw out an arm to touch her children, but they had already left the nest. She sat up and looked about. Some of the men were still asleep, which informed her that Will had decided not to sail that day after all; else he would have wakened them early. She saw him down on the beach, checking over the boat. Charlotte was at his side. Pip was a little way off, holding Emanuel by the hand, as the child had begun to toddle.
A fire had been built, waiting, she supposed, for her to make breakfast. Neither James nor Bados were among those still sleeping. She wondered if Bados had acted on his intent to leave the group, and had disappeared into the forest for good.
She rose, poured water into the kettle and, while it came to a boil, cleaned some still-flopping fish which lay nearby in the net that had dragged them in. When the fish were cooked she moved the simple stew off the fire to cool. She picked some broad leaves from a nearby plant and used them to wrap two of the cooled fish. Then she went over a small rise and down to the beach, not where Will and the children were, but further along, where they would not see her go. She had no chance of finding Bados if he chose not to show himself, but she thought that if he saw her walking along the beach, he might come to her.
She stopped frequently to see what shells lay on the sand and what creatures might be in the tide pools. By moving so slowly, Bados, if he saw her, would have time to come out from wherever he might be hiding in the forest. She had walked about a quarter mile along the seaweed-strewn beach when she saw a trail leading into the forest. She was wondering where it might go when she glanced up and saw Bados sitting on a high bluff, staring out to sea. He gave no sign of having seen her, and indeed, was looking off in another direction. She began to climb, supposing that the bluff had been used as a lookout by others and that was where this trail must lead.
She walked slowly, pausing to look about. It was possible to see only a few feet into such dense forest. Remembering the snakes Luke had reported lying up in trees, she paid close attention to her surroundings. She used her ears as well and so knew, before the person behind her appeared, that someone was following.
It was James. He did not speak but, as she turned, he simply reached out his arms to her. And she to him. Standing as he was, a few inches lower than her on the trail, their lips, level with each other, came together naturally. They kissed as if they had done exactly this a thousand times before.
Perhaps James had, in his imagination, but Mary had never allowed herself that secret thrill. In the whole of her life she had been trained, and had trained herself, to not dream of the impossible. She had first supposed James’s love to be impossible by reason of his being better than she. When he denied that and she realised her mistake, she had continued to suppress such fantasies, judging any form of intimacy, even in her imagination, to be too great a danger.
Yet they stood now in just such danger. So passionate was their embrace, and so little attention did they give to anything else, that it might have resulted in death at the hands of their own kind as readily as from the fatal bite of a serpent. However, it was not such a horrible fate that finally parted them, but the act of two wills, accompanied by silent, gasping laughter at their own audacity.
“Did you expect that of me?” Mary asked.
“I did,” James admitted. “Because in my heart I know you.”
“I don’t know you so well,” Mary conceded, and added longingly, “But I look forward to a time when I can learn.”
“And this is not our time.” He said the words before she could, so she only nodded.
“Then let us continue on the way you were going. To see Bados, were you?”
“To persuade him to stay with us,” Mary acknowledged. “But perhaps it’s better that you go alone.”
James looked doubtful. “How do you propose to persuade him?”
Mary lifted the tobacco pouch containing the compass from where it hung between her breasts. “With this.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I told him that if he would go on as far as Timor, I’d give him the chart and compass, so he can find his way back.”
James looked surprised. “Surely he cannot read?”
“No, but he can learn to read a compass. And perhaps one of us can teach him to read the chart. It’s only a picture of land and water. Even Charlotte understands the representation of a trail in the sand.”
“Why not let him stay? England is not his home, and has treated him more than a little harshly.” James grimaced. “Seven years transported for stealing seven cucumbers!”
“We could,” Mary acknowledged. “But I would like to have him with us till we reach Timor. Which of us might now be dead if he hadn’t spied that enormous crocodile?”
“True,” James admitted. “And to leave him here alone, and with no flint for making fire, no line to make snares, no fishing net, no musket or ammunition, what chance would he have?”
“I have spoken to him of this already, and of how, once we reach the Dutch colony at Kupang, we won’t need these things anymore.” Mary took the compass from the tobacco pouch and laid it in James’s hand. “Go now. Convince him that he can learn how to use it, then bring it back to me. It’s confidence he’s wanting, nothing more. Ah, and this.” She gave him the leaf-wrapped fish. “Two bites of breakfast, one for him and one for you.”
James tucked the fish into one pocket, the compass into the other, and asked, “What about Will? He said we would sail on today.”
“Take your time,” Mary said firmly. “We shall not leave this island until Bados is ready to come with us.”
They kissed a
gain, long and hungrily, hands roving each other’s back and pressing hard to bring their bodies close, then making space for his hand on her breast, hers on his hardness. The clothing between them intensified the ache until at last they pulled apart, both of them hurting as lovers do when parting in advance of a long separation. It went without saying that between now and their arrival in England, the opportunity to be in each other’s arms was not likely to present itself again.
It was as if Will had guessed Mary’s determination to stay until Bados agreed to rejoin them, because he made no mention of sailing that day or the next. The others must have suspected it, too, and were glad for any excuse to stay longer on an island where food was plentiful, and molesting insects were not as bad as they had been in most places. It passed without comment when, late in the afternoon of the second day, Bados appeared and joined the others for supper. No one needed to be told that on the morrow they would leave.
They sailed due west just to the north of Latitude 10° south. Timor, when they sighted it, brought a thunderous cheer. This, their dreamed-of destination, was so beautiful it took their breath away. Rather than the jungle-covered mountains which they had found so fearsome, here were green rolling hills which, had they not been graced with palm trees and fringed with broad golden beaches, would have reminded them of home. Mary picked a distinctive rock outcropping and steered them toward it, having already got Will to agree that they would rest here for another few days before coasting around the tip of Timor to the city of Kupang, which lay on the far side of the island. The reason, she had explained to him, was to give them more time to practice the story James had laid out for them.
Another reason, although she kept it from Will, was her desire to give Bados time to get his bearings. During their three-day rest on the eastern side of Timor, she found an occasion to speak to Bados alone, explaining that he had but to mark this point well. There would be no more to navigating the return than coasting back around to here, then following the compass reading due east until he reached the island where he hoped to settle.
During that final rest stop, and again on the boat as they coasted toward Kupang, they practised the story which James had devised. Time spent on the Charlotte during the voyage to Botany Bay had given all a clear idea of how mariners and officers addressed each other. Prior to that, Matey had crewed on a whaler, and was able to provide details about the workings of such ships, so it was decided to pretend that the ship from which they’d been cast adrift had been a whaler. Each person was assigned a role, which they practised with a diligence that caused Cox to laugh and claim that they were good enough to perform for the King.
“Yes,” James said with serious smile. “But our act must be of longer duration, and, if any should fail, the consequences will be more than boos. It could be as it was in days of old, when those who brought displeasure to their King risked being removed from the stage of life.”
The Dutch East India Colony—
Kupang, Timor
June-September 1791
They sailed into Kupang Harbour with a well-earned sense of pride. And yet so long were they from the shores of civilisation that they couldn’t help but gape in wonder at the bustling port. By the time the oarsmen brought the cutter dockside, a crowd had gathered.
Will, standing tall and confident despite bare feet and the rags he wore in place of shirt and pants, stepped off the boat first, and shook the hand of an official who introduced himself as Bruger.
“William Bryant, Master’s Mate on Her Majesty’s ship, the Dunkirk, what went down in a storm some twenty-one days ago,” Will announced, borrowing the name of the hulk they had been imprisoned on back in England, which, if that wreck had ever managed to limp into the open sea, surely would have sunk. “A whaler she was, Mr. Bruger. God willing, some others from our ill-fated ship made landfall here already?”
“No sir.” Bruger, a stout man whose eyes, Mary judged, did not miss much of what went on around the docks, skimmed the cutter’s passengers and looked back at Will. “This is the first ve have heard of this unfortunate thing.”
After a few more questions, which Will handled with aplomb, the cutter’s passengers were placed in a cart and driven for some distance along a street lined with solid colonial buildings. Most of the edifices were squarish, two or three storeys of unadorned stone in the Dutch colonial style. However, the governor’s residence to which they were conveyed was differently designed. Perched on a rise in the centre of a rolling green lawn, it was a two-storey mansion with wings stretching out on either side of the entrance, and verandas which encircled the house, upstairs and down. They dismounted from the cart, but Bruger bade them wait in the courtyard while he went inside to announce their arrival.
They had been standing there several moments when Mary noticed that they were being observed from an upstairs veranda by a man with a visage as stern as a Calvinist minister. Unconsciously, she moved her children so that Charlotte concealed her bare legs from the man’s gaze, and Emanuel, whom she held in her arms, hid her skimpily-covered breasts.
*
A short time later Bruger returned. “The gouverneur vill allow you to draw upon the Crown’s credit such necessities as you require,” he told Will brusquely. “Two changes of clothing complete he has ordered me to issue to you and your men. They are to be quartered in the barracks.” He paused, and said, “Gouverneur Wanjon extends an invitation for you, Sir, as an officer, to lodge here as his guest. With your family, of course.”
Will’s mouth dropped open in surprise. “He don’t want to meet us first?”
“He vill vait until you have been restored to an appearance befitting civilised men,” Bruger said shortly. “After you have been barbered and clothed, all in your party shall return here, at the sunset hour, to take refreshments with the gouverneur.”
“Even . . .” Will slightly inclined his head, “the darky?”
“As you have arrived together, so vill our gouverneur take his first measure of you—after you have been restored to your decent selves, of course,” Bruger said, speaking with such stiffness that Mary suspected he too found it shocking that the governor’s invitation included a black man.
Still addressing only Will, Bruger said, “You, Sir, vill accompany me to sign for the clothing issued to your men. Your vife and the kinder, they go with Mira.” He half-turned, and motioned to an Indonesian girl waiting on the steps of the mansion. “She vill show them to the quarters Gouverneur Wanjon has designated for your family.”
Mary had never in her life glimpsed the inside of such a house. The floors were of hardwood so highly polished that they reflected every foot that crossed them. The furniture was likewise smooth and heavily polished. Yards of exquisite
fabrics draped the windows, and candles in heavy brass holders were set about at frequent intervals. Certain details of the decor reminded her of Captain Smit’s quarters so that, despite its grander scale, the place was not quite so intimidating as it might otherwise have been.
She followed Mira, a petite and perfectly-formed girl who could not have been more than sixteen, along a corridor to a wing of the house which seemed very little used. The Indonesian servant opened the door into a room more spacious than their hut had been back in Botany Bay. It was furnished with not one but two large beds. Fat cushions and patterned rugs were scattered about. Mira crossed the room and threw open a door containing many small panes of glass. Mary stepped out onto a veranda, partly to take in the view of a well-tended lawn and flowering trees, and partly to get past the strangeness of being shut up inside after so many weeks in the open air.
“Come,” Mira said, motioning to Mary with delicate hands. “A bath we make ready, first for the kinder, then for you, Mevrouw.”
Thus was Mary introduced to the first in-the-home bath she had ever seen, which was filled, at Mira’s command, by another servant bringing pails of warm water
from a distant part of the house. The children splashed happily in the tub, not overly impressed by a body of water so much smaller than the beaches and lagoons where all their previous baths had been taken. Soap was unfamiliar to them, and of course they got it in their eyes, and set up such a howl that servants came running and fluttered about, trying to console them.
By the time Mary and Mira had fished them out and got them dry, a large Indonesian woman, whom Mira called Siti, arrived with plates of food. Siti herded the children to a small table out on the veranda, and proceeded to feed them food which, except for the rice, was entirely unfamiliar. The children did not object, perhaps because so much of what they had eaten in recent months was altogether strange to them. Siti pushed a few bites of food into Mary’s mouth as if she were one of the children, then shooed her away. Mira tugged her back to the bathroom, where, to Mary’s astonishment, Mira proceeded to bathe her! Mary protested that such a service was for invalids and she was no such thing, but Mira had her instructions (as Mary later learned), and scrubbed her from hair to toenails.
Out and dried off, Mary reached for the rags she had been wearing, but Mira snatched them from her, and handed them to another servant whom she addressed in Indonesian. A wave of the woman’s hands left Mary with the clear impression that the instruction was to burn the clothes.
“No!” Mary cried in alarm, for although Bruger had indicated that the men were to have new clothes, he had said nothing about clothing for her. “I have no other!”
“Come, Mevrouw,” Mira soothed, wrapping her in the towel and leading her back to the bedroom. “We have other.” Mira ran her hands down her own outfit, which was similar to the sari Captain Smit had often had Mary wear, although of sturdier material. “Like this for you, but more special.”
Mira sat Mary in a chair and began to comb and braid her hair. Through the open veranda doors, Mary could see the children cheerfully consuming the food that Siti offered. Charlotte ran in several times to stick tidbits of food in her mother’s mouth, then went out again. Mary realised that just as she as a child had learned to trust the kindness of sailors on shipboard, so her own children had become accustomed to being passed from kindly hand to kindly hand on the voyage away from Botany Bay. Nor did the strangeness of this place seem to frighten them, for had not every day of the past ten weeks brought them into novel surroundings? At last Mary began to relax and, following her children’s example, let members of the governor’s household take charge.
