by Rosa Jordan
This realisation was just taking shape in Mary’s mind when she saw that James, Cox, and Luke had been released from the dungeon to take exercise. Without any notion of what she was about to do, she walked across the field to where they stood. Cox and Luke waved, but James only stood there. Little wonder. Although she had sat next to him for a week, and he had often held her hand, it was as if she had not been aware of him at all. She saw him now only because the shroud of fury that had bound her so tightly inside herself had fallen away, to be replaced by an attitude which, if not wiser, was certainly softer.
She walked straight to James, laid a hand on his shoulder, and stood on tiptoe to kiss him on the lips. It no longer mattered who knew she loved him. It only mattered that he should know. When at last she moved her lips away from his, he laid his head on her shoulder and wetted it with tears.
“I didn’t know if you would come back to me,” he whispered.
“I wanted to love you when we were free,” she said. “But this is all we’ve got. Perhaps all we will ever have.”
Looking past James she saw Luke’s look of astonishment, and Cox’s mouth hanging agape. Their surprise was proof of how well she and James had concealed their secret up to this moment.
“Don’t you be afeared, Mary,” Luke said quickly. “We won’t be saying nothing to Will about your private affairs.”
“Like to rub his nose in it myself,” Cox blurted. “Han’t he told me a hundred times, from way back in Botany Bay, how he warn’t no married man, on account of there being no publishing of the banns?”
“I think,” Mary said with a faint smile, “that Will did not consider himself to be a married man, but he considered me a married woman. I’m not quite sure how he matched those points of view.”
Luke and Cox guffawed, albeit more out of nervous relief than humour.
“In any case,” Mary added, “what Will and I were in the past has little bearing on what we are now. It’s prisoners we are, and as you yourself said, Mr. Cox, we are likely to be that for the rest of our lives.”
Keeping one hand on James’s arm, she reached the other out to include Cox and Luke. “Come, boys. There’s a fine little stream over where the children are playing, if you’d care to lap up some cool sweet water and wash off some of that dungeon stink.”
As they walked toward the rivulet, Mary linked arms with James and said, “What we have right now is not what we had our hearts set on, but you can see for yourself,” she waved a hand at the meadow around them, the grasses sweet-smelling and slightly bent by a breeze coming off the bay, “it’s not all bad.”
James said nothing until they reached the stream. Then, as the other two went down on their knees to drink, he took Mary’s face in his hands. Looking at her in that way he had of seeming to see things inside her that even she had not discovered yet, he said, “What I have right now is more than I dared to dream of back in Botany Bay.”
*
Thus passed three weeks which were among the happiest yet of Mary’s life. Which is not to say they were easy. Most difficult was the effort required to block out thoughts of what was to come. Mary usually managed to do this during the day, but at night, horrors that ranged from rape to hangings often haunted her dreams. All she could do was to wait for morning and, once out in the sunshine, try again to chase the nightmares away. By afternoon, when James was given his turn outdoors, Mary would be in a mental attitude which allowed her to take pleasure in his company as they walked and talked, their fingers and minds lightly entwined.
By unspoken mutual consent, what lay ahead was rarely mentioned. Yet it hung about the edges of their conversations, and occasionally crept in.
“I feel like Eve in the Garden,” Mary once said. “Having brought knowledge to you which will lead to unknown suffering in some cast-out place we’ve yet to see.”
James, who was lying in the grass beside her, raised himself on one elbow and studied her with a serious smile. “Do you suppose Adam had no hand in the decision to eat of that fruit of the tree of knowledge?”
Mary shrugged. “He did put the blame on Eve.”
“But did God? Would you say that God blamed Eve?”
Mary smiled ruefully. “Maybe more than Adam.
After all, He sent her out to face the same hardships as Adam, with childbirth thrown in.”
“That’s true,” James admitted. “But did you ever wonder whether they regretted doing what they did?”
“What do you mean?” Mary leaned forward to brush one of his long brown curls back from his face.
“There is nothing in the story to say they repented. That may well have been the thing that made God angriest, the fact that they valued the knowledge they had gained so much that, given a choice, they would have done it all over again.”
“And would you?” Mary asked, for this was what the whole conversation had been about.
“Yes,” he said simply. “And you?”
Mary was a long time in answering. Finally she said, “That’s hard to say, not knowing what will become of my children. But I am fairly sure of this: I would rather see them dead than live a life of degradation in Botany Bay.”
When thoughts of the future slipped into their musings, one or the other would turn the conversation in another direction. James was inclined to seek some small pleasure in the moment, to speak of the sweet taste of the water in the stream, or to point out to Mary a rainbow caught in the slanting rays of late afternoon sun. Mary was more likely to ask questions about things she did not understand, for she had a greater sense than ever before of all she did not know, and now, perhaps, never would find out.
When they were alone, they talked mostly of themselves and what they meant to each other. In this, Mary was more plain-spoken than James for, having had little social life as a girl, she was unaware of all the things a woman ought not mention. She and her mother, shy and inarticulate around most people, had spoken to each other of whatever came into their minds. Later, in prison, Mary had conversed with other women who likewise voiced their intimate thoughts. Thus Mary did not know what was considered inappropriate, and spoke to James as she would to anyone she trusted, of whatever was on her mind.
One day, when Pip and Mira had disappeared into the forest rather longer than usual, and emerged with languorous looks which made it clear that they had been engaged in the most intimate way, Mary turned to James and said, “I recall that you were once hungry for me in that way. Has it passed?”
James gave her a bemused look and said, “I recall that you once seemed hungry for me in that way. Has it passed?”
Mary laughed. “Your asking such a question tells me that you cannot see into my soul as well as I thought, for rarely is it empty of such dreams.” Then she added, seriously, “But it is normal for a woman to hold passion in check, is it not? Not so for a man, if passion he has.”
“Have you reason to doubt that I am a passionate man?”
Mary pondered this a moment. “You’re not like other men.”
James, who had been lying in the grass, sat up and looked at her, puzzled. “Surely you don’t mean—that is, you never supposed I favoured men over women?”
Mary shook her head. “I remember the night of our landing in Botany Bay. That was the first I knew that some men could be as lustful of men as of women. But you, I recall, were pursuing neither. I saw you attacked by a mob when you were only trying to protect poor old Dorothy Haggart. After that, well, I don’t remember.”
“I don’t remember much after that either,” James said. “But I do know that I was in that area looking for you.”
“Had you found me, the outcome might have been no better, for I had problems of my own,” Mary recalled, then continued to make her point. “But what I meant was, well, during all that time in the Colony, you never chose a wife.”
“The wom
an I loved was taken,” he said simply. Then added, with a teasing smile, “Had the Lady Juliana brought another Mary Broad, I might have married her.”
“No doubt that would have been a wiser choice,” Mary said sadly. “In the beginning I did not believe you could love me, and now that I know you can, I’m sorry for it.”
“How can you be sorry when I am not?”
“How can you not be, when you’ve paid so dearly, and without once an intimacy such as Pip and Mira enjoyed not an hour ago?”
“Is that what you want? Here and now?”
“It is what I want but not here, not now. I had in mind to wait until we were free, but seeing that we’ll never be . . .” Sorrow overtook her, and she could not finish her sentence. She looked off into the distance, where she could see the children playing tag with Pip, and tried to get back to that place where it was the joy of the moment that filled her heart, not dread of the future.
“We aren’t free, but we aren’t dead yet either,” James pointed out. “I would gladly make love to you here in the sunshine, and all night long in the dungeon as well. But I agree that, just as our fleeing Botany Bay was no time for merging our bodies, neither is imprisonment. And another thing.” He laid his hand on her belly. “Have you given no thought to the hardship of pregnancy on the voyage home, under circumstances we have yet to know?”
“Indeed I have!” Mary exclaimed. “Why, ‘twas over that very thing that Will and I quarrelled during our last night together. It was for my refusal, and for locking him out after he struck me, that he informed upon us. But it amazes me that you would think of that! I mean,” she laughed, “most men don’t. Sometimes I’m not sure they have any notion that what pleasures them for a few minutes can lead to suffering or even death for the woman!”
“Most men seem not to consider the consequences of any of their actions,” James noted, a bitter reminder that they were where they were for just that reason. “But I am a person who tries to look ahead, and I noticed long ago that you do the same.” He paused, and smiled. “But just because I was first drawn to you by what I observed of the workings of your mind doesn’t mean I haven’t hungered mightily for the rest of you.”
Mary smiled back, only half-believing. “I suppose you speak the truth, but I have never known any other man who tempered his lust out of consideration for a woman.”
“And you?” James asked. “What have you known of a woman’s lust? Or temperance?”
The audacious question gave Mary pause, for it was not something she had ever considered before. “I think,” she began hesitantly, “that this woman has not had much experience with personal lust, apart from a few minutes back on that island, when you held me in your arms and a weakness came upon me such that I could hardly stand. But before that . . .”
“Before that?” James prompted gently.
“One can hardly feel lust when one is being battered, as I was in prison,” Mary said sharply. “’Twas terror pure and simple, same as for every woman on the night of our landing, when nearly a thousand men let their lust run rampant.”
She paused, searching her memory, for she did not wish to deceive James with a dishonest history. “There in Botany Bay did I voluntarily offer my body, first to Will in payment for his protection, and later to Captain Smit in exchange for the compass and chart. Captain Smit and Will, too, for a time, were both kind to me. I repaid them out of my body, for it was the only thing I had that either of them wanted. It wasn’t passion I felt but gratitude, and a desire to be as kind to them as they were to me. There was some pleasure to be had in that.”
“And is there something you want from me?” James asked, kissing her palm. “For which you would be willing to offer your body?”
Mary, who had been sitting beside him all this time, folded herself across his chest and kissed him. “Yes,” she said. “What I want from you is you.”
“Have you not enough of me already?” he teased. “Or must I take you into the forest to find the warm spot left by Pip and Mira?”
“That part of you I’ll wait for,” Mary said earnestly. “To have only when we’ve found our way to freedom. Or not at all.”
“You have my promise,” he whispered into her hair. “We shall finish this thing we have started in freedom or not at all.”
*
So passed many hours that September spring, days in which dread and joy were so co-mingled that Mary gave up trying to sort them out. Not every moment with James was spent in conversation, for the children were often with them, begging for a story or falling asleep in their laps. At other times Luke, Cox, and Pip joined them and they talked of many things, mostly of friends left behind in Botany Bay, or recollections of adventures on the voyage. If anyone began to speculate on what was to come, that person was quickly shushed. Charlotte was old enough to understand, and Mary did not want fear added to her other discomforts.
The men were ordered back to the dungeon each day after only three hours of liberty, but Mary, Pip, and the children did not have to present themselves at the fort until the sun was about to set. Return to the dungeon was always difficult, made more so by the fact that it was required at precisely the time of day when Wanjon had often invited Mary to stand by his side and watch the sun slip into the sea. As she followed the jailer down the steep stone stairs, careful that she and the children not lose their footing as they descended into the gloom, it was all she could do to suppress her fury. But having learned how incapacitating that kind of rage could be, she contained it as best she could.
When the cell door clanged shut behind them, she stood still in the darkness until she felt James’s arms come about her. Then they moved slowly to the wall and laid down together, Pip and the children on their pillows, and she and James in each other’s arms. She tried not to think of anything else, although this was as difficult as suppressing her anger. All her life she had looked ahead, seeking some reasonable path to a better future. It was not easy to change that way of being, nor was she altogether successful in living for the moment, with no thought as to where the river of time was taking them.
The dungeon, dismal as it was, was not as bad as it might have been. Indeed, everyone in the room, save the children, had suffered more on the hulks and in gaols back in England. “This ain’t the worst I knowed,” Cox commented one evening. “Leastwise the floor stays still and you don’t have everybody puking on everybody on account of rough seas.”
“The food’s not as bad as it was on the crossing neither,” Pip put in. “And more of it than I got most days back in Botany Bay.”
This was true. They were brought a pail of gruel each morning, and at night, a pail of soup. The soup was made from fish heads, potato peels, and other kitchen scraps, but it wasn’t thin and it had plenty of nourishment. During the first week, when Mary had been indifferent to what went on around her, the men had quarrelled over who got what, once so violently that the soup was spilt on the floor and nobody got anything. But later, when Mary had regained her reason, she would go to the door herself to take the pail from the jailer. Then she would dip a cup of soup for every person, beginning with the children, just as she had done on the journey. There was always at least one full mug for each person, and sometimes enough for a second round, so they soon stopped complaining.
The remarks made by Cox and Pip demonstrated to Mary that the best way to pass the time was not to compare their present situation with the luxuries Wanjon had provided before their arrest, but to remind themselves of how much better it was than what they had endured during other periods of incarceration. From that moment on, she added this to her understanding of how bitterness might be kept at bay.
The worst days were when it rained, because on those days they were not let out for exercise, and thus had no sunshine to lift their spirits. “Don’t know how much more of this I can take,” Scrapper muttered when they had missed two days out
in a row on account of foul weather. “Might be next time I set foot outside I won’t be comin’ back.”
“And how far do you think you’d be getting, afore the governor’s troops catched you?” Matey sneered. “Didn’t you see when we coasted round the point how many live hereabouts? Reckon they wouldn’t rat you out in a minute when they caught you stealing stuff from their garden? And how’d you keep from starving if you didn’t?”
“Bados got away, didn’t he? If a nigger can do it, I surely can.”
“Don’t be counting on that,” Matey came back at him. “When I jumped ship in Africa, I near about starved. And would’ve for sure if some bush black hadn’t took pity on me and got me eating grubs and the like till I come back to the land of the livin’.”
“Besides,” Pip put in. “Bados had a boat.”
“What? One of them tippy little dugout canoes like what the locals make?” Scrapper scoffed. “Couldn’t nobody take to sea in one of them.”
“No,” Pip informed Scrapper. “Him and his woman took the cutter. Mira said ‘twas on account of the cutter gone missing that the governor sent a search party all around the coast. They ain’t found them yet, nor heard a word about them.”
“Our cutter?” Will was incredulous.
“I think it was Governor Phillip’s cutter,” Mary remarked dryly. “If you mean the one that fetched us here.”
“Can’t no one man and one woman sail a six-oar cutter!” Will scoffed.
“I wouldn’t say that for certain,” Cox put in. “You know Bados was the strongest rower in our bunch, and from what I seen of his woman, she could’ve rowed for two.”
