Far From Botany Bay

by Rosa Jordan

  The bedroom door burst open. Mary turned to see Mira, tears spilling off her face in every direction. “My Pip, Mevrouw! They have taken him! And your husband! And now to the barracks for the others!”

  Instantly Mary knew that, incredible as it seemed, Will must have revealed that they were not shipwreck survivors, but escaped convicts.

  “I thought the guards came only to take Meneer Bryant, so angry was the gouverneur with him for entering his room,” Mira wept. “I did not know they would take all!”

  “You must run fast to Bados!” Mary ordered the girl. “Tell him what has happened!”

  “No, no! It is night! I am afraid!”

  “You must!” Mary pleaded. “Or he will be taken, too.”

  “But what of you, Mevrouw? And the kinder?”

  “We are in no danger,” Mary assured her. “We have done no wrong.”

  “Ah, but you do not know—,” Mira stopped herself, as yet unable to tell Mary what Will had said about her.

  It hardly mattered. Mary guessed—not Will’s exact words, but close enough. She stepped out onto the veranda, wondering whether she could find her way across the city to the trail leading to the lagoon. She saw shadows moving about on the lawn, and realised that guards had been posted around the house. Already she was a prisoner.

  Mary turned back to the Indonesian girl. “It is the last great favour I ask of you, Mira. If you can bring the news to Bados, it may save his life. I will return the favour by asking the governor to pardon Pip, for he is but a boy.”

  Mira gave Mary a wide and wet-eyed look, then ran off down the corridor. Mary did not know whether the girl would carry the terrible news to Bados or not.

  The fact that she was not taken into custody that night, and Siti brought breakfast trays as usual the next morning, gave Mary a slender ray of hope. She did not know Wanjon well, but she knew him well enough to be sure that he was mulling the matter over, perhaps even praying for guidance, as he was a very religious man. Had Will told him how and from whom she had acquired the navigational instruments? And if so, what effect would that have on his decision? Would he damn her for having traded her body for the items needed to facilitate their escape? Or, knowing a fellow Hollander to have been involved, would he be more lenient? Would James, having proven useful to the Dutch East India Company, be treated differently? Would her speaking up for Pip have any effect? And what lay in store for the children?

  All day these and other thoughts tormented Mary. When the children grew restless, she walked out of doors with them, as was her custom. No one stopped her, but soon a servant approached and said that by the governor’s orders, Mary must return to her room. Mary obeyed, expecting Wanjon to send for her at any moment. But he did not. Nor did Mira appear that day. Dinner trays came at the usual hour, delivered by servants who spoke no English, so Mary had no way of finding out what had happened to the others. Night had fallen and the children were already asleep when Bruger himself came to fetch her.

  He led Mary, not to the upstairs veranda where she had always met the governor before, but to a study lined with books. Wanjon, seated behind a desk of dark polished wood, did not rise when she entered, nor did he invite her to sit. Although he was not looking down from a high bench like the judge who sentenced her to be transported, his countenance was much the same. Mary grasped at once that Wanjon was about to sit in judgement on her.

  She stood before him as she had on that first afternoon, dressed in the sarong Mira called a kain panjang, with a simple seledang around her shoulders for modesty’s sake, long golden braids encircling her head like a crown. Wanjon glanced up when she entered, then dropped his eyes to a page of notes on the desk before him.

  “Your husband has informed upon you, Mevrouw. Have you anything to say?”

  Mary took a deep breath. “I ask but two clemencies of you, Governor, and neither for myself, for I am indeed a bolter from Botany Bay. I would ask only that you be lenient with the boy Pip, for he is but a child who had no say in the matter of coming with us. And I beg mercy for my children, who have committed no crime. Pray let me leave them in your care.”

  Wanjon continued to stare at the papers on his desk, for the longest time not speaking. At last he said, “I do not vant persons in this house who remind me of—.” He swallowed hard, and when he looked up at her, his eyes were sad. “No, Mevrouw Bryant. The Bible tells us that the sins of the parents vill be visited upon the children. It is the vill of God.”

  Mary had mentally practised her plea for clemency, and had hesitated only slightly before delivering it. But the governor’s use of the Good Book, which her mother had revered, to justify his own lack of compassion so outraged her that words she never should have spoken rushed hotly out of her mouth.

  “A God who punishes the innocent is no better than ourselves!”

  Wanjon’s eyes bulged with shock. “For shame, Mevrouw!” To Bruger, who lingered in the doorway, he called a rapid command in Dutch.

  Mary was marched out of the governor’s office, down the corridor to her room. “Take your kinder,” Bruger told her. “It is to the dungeon you go.”

  Mary stared at him in disbelief. “My children are condemned to prison? For what? The crime of innocent sleep?”

  “I am so ordered,” Bruger informed her stiffly.

  Mary turned to look at her children, sleeping peacefully in the great soft bed. The thought of taking them up from there and laying them down on a cold dungeon floor was almost more than she could bear. Bruger must have envisioned a similar contrast because he said, grudgingly, “If you take a pillow for the kinder, I think it vill not be missed.”

  Mary looked longingly at the many eiderdown cushions scattered about the room. Any one of them would have made a comfortable cot for a child. But pride intervened, coupled with an irrational anger over which she had no control. Speaking in a voice as cold as her blood was hot, she said, “Had the governor offered the cushions as charity for my children I would have accepted. But I will not be accused of stealing, even for their sake. You are my witness, Mr. Bruger, that we leave this room with only the clothes upon our backs, which the governor did kindly provide us. If they are not our own, but only on loan, do inform me and they shall be returned on the morrow. And we shall go forward more naked than when we arrived. As your governor pleases.”

  With that she hoisted the children into her arms. Charlotte whimpered and Emanuel began to sob, not a common thing for either of them to do when wakened. No doubt they had felt the extreme tension that had permeated the household during the previous twenty-four hours, and perhaps they had not been sleeping so peacefully after all. Even Emanuel, as he dropped his drowsy head onto Mary’s perspiring shoulder, must have smelled her fear and fury.

  Bruger assigned two guards the task of escorting Mary to the fort. As no conveyance was provided, it was a long walk and a slow one. With Emanuel in her arms, Mary matched her steps to Charlotte’s as the sleepy child stumbled along beside her. The guards, perhaps feeling a small degree of regret for the duty they were forced to perform, did not hurry them.

  It was a bright and windy night. As they approached the waterfront, Mary saw, far out, a boat. A dark sliver on the water, it raised a sail which had the same shape as the one on the cutter which had brought them here. The sail crossed a path of moonlight and disappeared from view.

  Mary tightened her arm about Emanuel, and squeezed Charlotte’s hand. “Look at the moon, darlings. It’s on its way to England.”

  4

  Of Men and Mercy

  *

  *

  A flicker of lantern light crept into the dungeon when the jailer opened the door, but Mary barely had time to glimpse bodies strewn about before the door clanged shut, leaving them in the clammy blackness.

  “Mummy,” Charlotte spoke in a small frightened voice. “I don
’t like this place.”

  Then Pip’s voice, close at hand, “Hey, Charlotte. I’m here, too. Come, sit by me.”

  Charlotte took a step forward, being guided, Mary surmised, by Pip. Mary held onto the little girl’s hand and moved forward with her.

  “For the lovagod!” It was Luke’s voice. “The bastard’s gone and shut the babies up in this hell hole, too!”

  From the other side of the room came a hoarse sob. Then Matey’s voice, “Shut yer mouth, you bleedin’ graft, afore I shut it for you.”

  And Cox’s: “Shut up yourself, you rum-soaked ass. You think he would’ve blabbed if you hadn’t got him so drunk he couldn’t stand up?”

  And Scrapper’s: “I been drunker than that plenty of times and it never drove me to squeal on me pals.” He added in a mutter, “Wouldn’t have lived long if I had.”

  “Wasn’t drink that drove him to it,” Matey snarled.

  “Don’t go saying more, fellas, not with the little ones here,” came Pip’s plea.

  There was another retching sob, then silence as absolute as the darkness.

  A man’s hand touched Mary’s shoulder and slid down her arm. She knew that touch, for palm and pressure alike, it was the softest she had ever felt. How many nights had she lain awake remembering the feel of James’s hands during that brief moment of intimacy they’d had back on Bados’s island? How many daylight hours had she dreamed of them touching her like that again and forever, in how many different settings? But never in a place such as this.

  She felt herself being pulled down by Charlotte, who must be seating herself next to Pip. Mary lowered herself onto the cold stones, and moved Emanuel from her shoulder onto her lap. He whimpered a bit, then slept. James’s hand found hers and brought it to his lips. Mary might have lain her head on his shoulder and wept, but what would have been the use of that? He was the man of her dreams, but this was not her dream. She held her body stiffly erect, resisting not the loving touch but the brutality being done to her dream of love.

  *

  Mary was awakened by an assault upon her senses, vile smells coming from two slop buckets filled with discharge from men’s bladders and bowels. She moved Emanuel from her lap to rest his head against his sister, and struggled stiffly to her feet. She needed to relieve herself, and as the darkness had faded to grey gloom, she figured that this was the nearest thing to privacy she would have until night returned. None of the mounds of humanity bestirred themselves as she crossed the room. She did her business, and returned to the place between Pip and James where she and the children had passed the night. Soon she fell into a doze again, and did not waken until the jailer’s key rattled in the lock. Two guards stood by as he opened the door and passed in a kettle of gruel. He indicated to Mary that she should have the tin cups he had brought for her and the children.

  She rose quickly and took them from him. As she did so, she pointed to the buckets. “Please allow us to empty our slops,” she beseeched. The children would be awake soon, needing to relieve themselves. She saw no way to hold her children above the brimming buckets to urinate and defecate without causing the filth to splash out onto them and her.

  The jailer seemed to understand, for he nodded. She went to bring the buckets, but before she could grasp the handles, James was there, his hands on her waist to move her aside. Then he took the slop pails up himself. He staggered to the door with the foul weight and was let out into the corridor to carry them away.

  Mary went to the kettle and dipped cups of gruel for the children, and one for James, in case the others should scrape the kettle clean before he returned—which in fact they did. Will was the last to claim his share, and small enough it was. The others, without so much as saying a word, seemed to have determined that this was how it would be.

  When James returned, Mary handed him his cup of gruel. She then crossed the floor with her children to help them relieve themselves before the pails should fill up again. Emanuel accepted this strange new way of making his toilet, but Charlotte resisted, whined for her chamber pot, and begged to be allowed to go back to their room and get it from under the bed. At length Mary gave up and led her back to sit next to Pip, knowing that when the pressure of her bladder grew strong enough, the child would give in to nature’s demand.

  Mary calculated that by now it must be broad day, but the dungeon remained as dim as dusk. The only light came through a slit in the stone wall high up near the ceiling, with a lesser amount coming through a small barred window in the door that led out into the corridor. She started to rise, to walk to the door and see what was visible through the bars. James must have sensed her intent, because he quickly stood and offered a hand to help her to her feet.

  It was then that one of the formless shapes across the room lunged forward and Will snarled, “Havin’ trouble keeping your hands to yourself, Brown? Seems like this whole damned morning you’re finding reasons to handle me slut of a wife.”

  James whirled round and let fly a fist that smacked Will square in the jaw. Will crashed backwards, falling over Scrapper who, with an oath, shoved him roughly aside. Then Will was up and would have gone for James, probably to devastating effect, for although they were the same size, Will was much the stronger due to the physical nature of his work. But Luke was quicker, and got to Will before he could make good on his intent to beat James senseless.

  A hammerlock hold around the neck brought Will gagging to his knees. Into his ear, Luke growled, “The only one likely to get beat is you, you bloody snitch. I’d stomp you to death myself for what you done, except it would deprive us all of the only thing we’ve got left to look forward to, and that’s the chance to see your arse hanged.” With that he flung Will back against the wall, amidst shouts of approval from the other men.

  Until the ruckus, the children hadn’t known that Will was in the room. When Charlotte realised he was, she gave an ecstatic cry. “Papa! You’re here!”

  “Papa!” Emanuel echoed, and toddled after his sister as she crossed the room to Will.

  At that, the others fell silent. The only sounds were those of Charlotte pleading with her father to take them out of this dark place, and Will’s sobbing, inarticulate responses.

  Some hours later the jailer came again and called Mary out. She started to collect the children but he indicated that she should leave them behind. Grasping her by the arm, he propelled her along the corridor and up many stone steps to the tower. He knocked, and when a voice bade them enter, he opened the heavy door and shoved her forward.

  Mary judged it to be the office of whoever commanded the colony’s military brigade, but the only person present besides herself and the jailer was Wanjon. He stood, his tall spare frame slightly stooped, hands clasped behind his back. The pale skin on his face was drawn, except about the neck where it hung loosely, attesting to the fact that his youth was well behind him. That skin, hanging as it did above his black suit, recalled to Mary a vulture, and caused her to think dark thoughts about how this must be his true nature, for was he not using his power to turn them all into carrion?

  Mary was aware that the dungeon’s stink hung about her and her sarong had not benefited from contact with the filthy floor, but she determined not to show shame for circumstances that were not of her own making. She fixed him with a questioning gaze.

  Clearing his throat, he said, “Mevrouw Bryant, your companions say you reached Kupang mit a chart, quadrant, and compass. Ve do not find these things. The boat is missing also. And the neeger. Do you think he took them?”

  Mary looked down, not wanting Wanjon to read in her eyes the sudden elation that filled her heart. “What use would an illiterate man have for navigational instruments?”

  “I believe you taught him to use them,” he said in an accusatory tone.

  The lowered eyes flashed up. “What else do you believe, Governor? That I, who lately supped at your
table, am now so dangerous that I must be caged like a beast?”

  Wanjon was taken clearly aback by her sarcasm. “You have powers over men,” he snapped. “In that respect, yes, Mevrouw, you are dangerous.”

  “You jest, Sir, and cruelly so! Do I not sit in this prison by your will? Once again in a man’s prison where I suffer every violence men can do to a woman?” Mary raised her bare arms in exasperation. “What powers do you imagine that I have?”

  Wanjon’s thin lips tightened. “The neeger got clean away, Mevrouw. I think this vas your doing.”

  “Is that my crime?” she demanded to know. “Allowing myself to feel mercy? What does your Bible say of mercy, Sir? That it belongs to God alone? That we mortals are meant to measure goodness by the weight of vengeance we heap on one another?”

  Never had Mary spoken to any man in such a daring way. It startled her, and appeared to frighten him. “You play, Voman! Mit words and men’s minds! I vill not interview you again!”

  “As you please, Sir.” She swallowed, her throat tight with anger and sadness. “For my part, I shall remember you as you were, when you were merciful and we were friends.”

  “Friends? Friends?” he repeated sarcastically. “No doubt you hoped ve might be more than friends, Mevrouw Bryant.”

  “Was it I who thought thus, Governor?”

  “Who knows vhat you think, you, a common criminal!” he shouted.

  “What I think is that you condemn me not for my thoughts but for your own,” she said bitterly. “Do you not suppose that God knows those thoughts as well as I?”

  His gasp was audible. “You dare pretend to know a man’s thoughts, even as God knows them? Acht, but you are a vicked voman!”