Castle Hill Rebellion

by Chrissie Michaels

  Castle Hill

  Rebellion

  An Omnibus Book from Scholastic Australia

  Castle Hill

  Rebellion

  CHRISSIE MICHAELS

  To — the Silks & O’Connors, Geraghtys & Whalens, Flahertys & Burkes, Loftus & McArdles, Daleys & Mullins (to name but a few).

  Érin go brágh!

  And to our next generation — Lani, Chloe, Zachary, Zoe, Isaac, Adora, Ruby, Thomas, Benjamin, Annabel, Louis, Juliet and in loving memory of Elisabeth.

  You are truly cherished.

  The Diary of Jonothan Joseph Daley Castle Hill, New South Wales

  January–March, 1804

  Sunday, January 1st in the year of 1804

  Midnight

  I heard the sound of bells and cheers and song, the clattering of lids and the tinkering of spoons against pots. The din spread across the farms that dotted the hills and gullies where I lived, inland from Sydney Town. Folk were welcoming in the new year, the old one having given a final sigh and passed on. Aye, and fair riddance!

  I was outside my shepherd hut, perched on the hillside and overlooking the clearing below. I had been out here awhile, alone, waiting. An Irish tradition, is it, to toss out the old, then bring in the new. This time around, like other folk, I was hoping to swing a bit of good luck my way.

  I agree, there were some happenings to be grateful for since I’d arrived in chains on the Rolla last May. After being sent with the other convicts to do hard labour at Castle Hill prison farm, a stroke of good fortune singled me out. Paymaster Cox, a captain in the New South Wales Corp, required a boy to tend sheep on one of his farms.

  He had taken over a debt-ridden lease near Castle Hill to add to his estate, after the poor farm had seen hard times: rust on the wheat crop, a small flock of fly-blown sheep, a burned-out, abandoned farmhouse. The officers in the Corps are always wheeling and dealing for favours.

  Paymaster Cox has allowed me to live alone in the shepherd hut, as long as I give regular reports on the condition of the sheep to his young steward, Joshua Holt. I had only ever sighted Paymaster Cox the once, in his redcoat captain’s uniform, when he had made it plain that if I ran away I would be caught and flogged, mebbe hanged. Aye, but for the threat of harsh punishment, which is a wretched thing, being sent to tend sheep somehow makes me feel more at ease. Safer. The quiet, is it.

  So here I was, blessed to be bonded as a shepherd boy to Paymaster Cox, my work done for the benefit of a magistrate, so he could tick the years from my sentence.

  Another blessing is the summer’s welcome at the turn of the year. To be sure, the warm greeting was something out of the ordinary. Back in Ireland I had only ever felt the freezing snap and bitter cold of winter. There was nothing for me in my homeland, only thieving and shivering and misery. I shook away the bad, sad thoughts. New South Wales is my world now, come what may.

  The night sky was cloudless, bountiful with stars. The bark roof and sapling walls of my shepherd hut shone silver-grey. My hut, no one else’s. Aye, well, ‘twas time to step back indoors and have a kip. I was due up at morning light.

  But some niggly bleating from my flock delayed me. I inclined my head towards the sheep pen. From here upon the rise a dark nothingness blotted the clearing, swallowed everything below. I looked beyond to the ghostly surround of blue gums and breathed in slowly. More bleating. Aye, then, best to check.

  Over these past seven months I had become familiar with trekking the beaten strip of ground leading down to the sheep pen, to go without stumbling. Still, I was on my guard.

  Parramatta, our main settlement, was only a few miles along the road and had a share of taverns. Mebbe folk had come prowling in search of a leg of mutton. No telling what state they would be in at this late hour. The ale and rum were bound to be flowing. I sniffed for any telltale sign.

  Turned out there was no one lurking. Nothing untoward, other than a few of the ewes raising their heads and staring at me with blank eyes. Satisfied, I left the sheep to settle. A new year means nothing to them.

  Morning

  This being a Sunday, I was spared from doing my public work. The sheep were penned and I was in my hut. The gnarly split timber that was my door stood ajar, letting in a sliver of rosy sunlight, when I heard Kitt calling.

  ‘Ah, you’re home, Joe!’ She brought herself in. A smell of freshly baked bread and bacon carried inside. ‘Good tidings!’ She thrust a plaid-covered basket into my hands.

  More often than not, Kitt shares something from Ann’s pantry. She is always trying to fatten me up. Fitting that she works as a cook for Ann and Thomas. They are pardoned convicts, with a land-holding in Toongabbie, a down-a-ways stroll if you follow the namesake creek. Aye, they are as close as real kin to Kitt. Ann had been on the same transport ship as Kitt’s mammy, who had died in childbed the hour Kitt was born. As soon as they got their pardons and land grant they rescued Kitt from the orphan house. They grow enough to feed themselves, as well as barter for trade, so they are off the stores.

  ‘Make sure you eat every morsel,’ Kitt said. ‘Starving men have hung for less.’ She reached over and set about pinching my cheek with her thumb and forefinger. ‘You’re all skin and bone.’

  I pulled away. I am masterly fond of Kitt. She has a giving nature. Yet, although she is older than me, fifteen by my reckoning, and was born free, has a bonny oval face, and has been fierce kind, I am still not used to her mothering.

  ‘Go on with you,’ she added, flashing those knowing blue eyes at me, ‘I am well aware you eat to live. Aye, hand to mouth. Always have. You say so often enough!’

  I did not understand her fussing. The Parramatta storehouse kept me provisioned with the basics: salt meat, flour, dried pease. They did for every convict on the stores. I went to the storehouse every Saturday afternoon to collect my supplies. Added to what Kitt passed across, along with the odd apple, rough-cut of cabbage or pickled onion I cadged – I scraped by.

  I knew I should be thankful for her offerings. The basket held a crust of soda bread swiped in bacon drippings, a slice of smoked ham cut from the haunch and a dish of Colcannon – our cold buttered praties, potatoes, is it, mashed with cabbage. Old Mullins’ gang of boy thievers would be popping their eyes out over such a feast, considering the scraps we all fed upon in Ireland. Yet, ‘tis true, I only favour eating to live.

  Kitt began sizing up the state of my hut: the bundle of fern leaves topped with canvas I used as a bed; the cask-lid tabletop with splatters of black wax; a candle end with mebbe an hour left for the giving; and laid out in an orderly row my bundle of magpie feathers that served as my quills, their ends sharpened. Her eyes rested on a pair of big-bellied flies feasting on some tree bark: my eating plate. They were rubbing their back legs over what was left of the salt meat and pease, the stewed mess dried to a cowpat. I swatted them away. The whole place smelled of rough living.

  She gave a throaty ‘Humph!’, a sign I knew well. Meant she was planning to dig in her heels and serve another dose of tongue-lashing.

  ‘You need to fend better for yourself, Joe Daley. You keep your writing things orderly, yet the rest is a muddle! When this heat passes, I will ask Joshua to help you dig a growing patch for greens and onions and praties. Pat will be sure to lend a hand.’

  Pat mebbe. He is a good friend and has been since we met on the day of my arrival at the prison farm, before the superintendent handed me over to Paymaster Cox’s service. Pat is near the same age as me, likely twelve or so. But I could not see Joshua Holt dirtying his hands. He is fifteen, sober-faced and can be a bit nit-picking, sniffing his opinions through that sharp, thin nose of his, but as it happens he is not so bad.

  He lives with his father, who has a
farm alongside Paymaster Cox at the Field of Mars. Joshua told me once that it was the Holts’ good fortune to have Paymaster Cox in charge of the convicts on the transport ship, Minerva. That is how they made acquaintance. I suppose gentlemen farmers like Joshua’s father have good fortune, even if they are exiled rebel convicts. Now Joshua and his father work for Paymaster Cox, as I do, excepting Joshua is paid for his stewarding.

  Kitt was always coming up with notions. Most included Joshua Holt. Joshua! Joshua! Joshua! She is so fierce sweet on him.

  All the same I humoured Kitt, spitting out the word ‘Aye’ because I had a fistful of soda bread crammed in my mouth. I did not wish to seem ungrateful for the food, is it. When I finished chewing, I said, ‘And you’ll be pleased to know I dug a new privy hole. Want to have a look?’

  ‘Ugh!’ She looked squeamish, then playfully boxed my ear.

  Later

  Kitt’s friendly visit had given me a notion to drop in on my friend Pat over at the Castle Hill prison farm and bid him good tidings. The whole run is a convict station, a vast spread where the prisoners work and sleep, and ‘tis only a short stroll northward, after leaving the creek and skirting the edges of some English settler farms.

  The settlers are not overly fond of Irish lads crossing their land. Only last year a gang of runaway Irish fled Castle Hill in a bid for freedom. They threatened the neighbouring settlers before they were caught and punished. Two hanged. Needless to say, plenty of folk are still brooding and do not think well of us. I have no wish to make matters worse. They might take any innocent action amiss and set me before a magistrate.

  So I skulked gingerly along their boundaries, hidden by the trees, prodding the ground with a branch every so often lest killer snakes be slithering. But for the prison farm’s acres set aside for government crops, the holdings in these surrounding hills have only small pockets under cultivation. Much of the land remains forest, a patchwork of shooting and ailing trees – saplings and high gums that flicker green-silver; greying boughs and bleached white skeletons; brown clumps of dried-up scrub, the grass underneath wild and straggling. The task of felling and clearing is a mighty one.

  A nose-tickling smell of dust and sweet powder laced the air, making me sneeze. The wheat had been cut and cleared in the December harvest. The paddocks had since turned brown in the dry. A few scattered wheat stacks remained. They stood out like straw castles. The maize was still growing; cornstalks rustled and shifted green and silken brown with the sunlight.

  On higher ground, I lingered briefly. To the left a narrow trail through the trees took you to There or Nowhere, where they ran a sly grog stall. There alright, but nowhere to be found if ever a constable came snooping. To the right the trail thread its way to join a dusty rut of a road that was more of a stock run. This road led up to Castle Hill and down to Parramatta. I paid no heed to going either way and headed for the short cut, a zigzag of tree stumps. They used to be a forest of blue gums, but the prison work gangs had ringbarked, burned, felled and sawed clean through to the prison farm, the scarred acres set in a valley of rising and falling land.

  Although I was a frequent enough caller to Castle Hill, I still felt uneasy passing the superintendent’s cottage, weapon store and guard post. I kept my head down as I covered the distance to a scattering of saw-timber huts and a near completed sandstone building. They are the prisoners’ living quarters. Father Dixon says there are now four hundred and seventy-four prisoners at Castle Hill. Our good priest is masterly partial to the exact knowledge of things. And I thank him for his occasional schooling. He taught me to write these very words I now set down.

  My stomach griped at the thought of living alongside so many. I have fierce bad memories of being huddled with a gang of lads in Old Mullins’ damp, Dublin slum; and then having to clamour for air in the Rolla’s hold. ‘Tis unbearable to live for days and nights cramped together. No, I am not able for crowds. Paymaster Cox did me a good turn, if unknowingly, by letting me retreat to the solitude of the shepherd hut.

  I found Pat sitting on a mound of rocks. His eyes were pouched with tiredness. My own hours watching over the sheep are mebbe as long, from dawn ‘til dusk, five days at a time, with half a day on Saturday, but Pat has to do the stone lifting and laying, which is heavy and dirty work. Before the harvest he was in Parramatta, helping to lay slabs of sandstone over at the new gaol and setting the foundations for a brewery.

  Today something different about him distracted my eye. His sun-bleached hair was spiked shorter than before, the crest of a cockie sitting wild on top, with little husks of wheat tucked at one side.

  ‘You been chopping at your hair?’ I asked.

  He grinned. ‘Ahy.’ His tongue slipped awkwardly over the word, the skin above his eye hanging slack over crushed bone, leaving a hollow.

  Pat is unable to speak easily for himself. Instead, he gasps out simple sounds. They tumble from his mouth like river stones in a slow pouring. He has a fixed grin, too. Because of this some folk mistake him for a simpleton. I’ve heard them call him names. Looby! Ninnyhammer! Hubble bubble turnip head!

  Kitt tells him it is a fine thing to always be plastered with a smile, like a ray of sunshine swiped across your face wherever you go.

  I do not know how Pat suffered the injury, nor ever pushed to find out. No need to dwell – painful deep down, is it, to go dragging over what has been and gone. Like when Old Mullins tries to rear his ugly head in my own thoughts. The scoundrel lured in stray boys like me and forced us to become pick-purses. If we came back empty-handed, well, he had his ways of making us afeared. Get lost, Old Mullins! I tell myself. You’ve been and gone.

  ‘Joh?’ Pat tugged at my arm.

  I’d been lost in my daydreaming, is it, staring hard at a line of ants scurrying across the dirt. ‘Why are you looking like a croppy boy?’ I blurted.

  Many of the prisoners at Castle Hill are Politicals – United Irish, and the Defenders who came before them. They did their fighting in Ireland, battling the English,

  under different green flags, protecting their people, afeared of being turned out of their homes by greedy, absent English landlords. You can tell the hardened ones by the cut of their hair. Close-cropped to the skull, is it, showing they’re a croppy boy and proud of the fact. Making known they are the ones who fought in the Wicklow hills and are willing to fight on.

  Aye, while on the Rolla I had listened to many a tale about the 1798 rebellion in my homeland. Shackled in the ship’s dark hold, there were plenty of croppies who spoke about that final Battle of Vinegar Hill, how the redcoats had attacked their camp at County Wexford, and how the croppies outnumbered them but fell beneath the English cannon fire. The fight was bloody. No one told me different. Aye, those on board smouldered with resentment at the bitter defeat.

  But Pat had never fought, is it. He was too young in ‘98 for the rebellion. He couldn’t have been a croppy when he was a six-year-old.

  Pat shrugged and rested one elbow on a flat-topped rock, inviting an arm wrestle. I never win. His arms have grown too strong from carting and building. We were up to a rematch when Mr Johnston walked over.

  In spite of the heat of the day, Mr Johnston was wearing the clothes of a middling gentleman – a long dark coat over a white flounced shirt, though the cuffs and ruffle were soiled. There was a sweet-sour smell mixed in with his sweat, unwashed and syrupy.

  I know Mr Johnston. He was transported with me on the Rolla for being a United Irish captain. Governor King has made him one of those in charge of the Castle Hill carpenters. He tipped his hat in greeting and said, ‘How are you faring with the sheep, Joe?’ As if I was someone. As if I mattered.

  ‘Good,’ I replied, blinking at him. My eye tic affliction, is it. Comes upon me unexpected.

  ‘That lad London,’ he began to Pat. ‘The one I caught sidling up to you yesterday.’

  I threw Pat a questioning look. London was in one of the carpentry gangs. Aged sixteen, or so. A show-off and a bully-boy. T
here must have been trouble.

  Mr Johnston explained, ‘London was taunting Pat, saying “Slow. With. The. Words. Are. You?”, slurring ever so slowly, the way Pat does. Mockery was his sole aim. I set him straight. “Our boy’s as sharp as a tack,” I told him, “You’d be wise to hold your tongue in future.” Suffice to say his mouth ended up breaking his nose.’

  Mr Johnston had whacked London? I had never seen him raise a hand against another. He has a fair-minded nature, but he can be tough, aye. Oft times he stood up for me on the Rolla, saved me from jibes, cautioned others. The men in the hold took heed of his words. I recall how he would call the croppies, ‘Friend’. However, that troublemaker London was English-born, not a croppy. Why would he listen to an Irish rebel captain? I was afeared a smashed nose would make him even more vengeful. Pat and I both swallowed hard. We must have had the same notion.

  Mr Johnston’s face relaxed into a smile. I think he was pleased about defending Pat. ‘The Lord may have seen fit to break your way of speaking, Pat, but we should give thanks he did not harm your power to carry a tune. So I say you’ll be obliging me with a fitting song to mark the new year then, if you please.’

  ’Tis true, Pat knows all our fiddle-de-dee music in Irish, especially the rebel songs. He launched into ‘The Wearing of the Green’, singing in the ancestral tongue, is it. Aye, Pat has a gift and strangely, the something that broke his way of speaking has not harmed his power to hold a tune. He hit all the high notes as pure as if he had sprinkled gold dust over the melody. Think of shaking a sprig of wattle and how the fine yellow fluff mixes with the sunlight and you shall be near to understanding what we were hearing.

  A crowd of ruddy-cheeked Irish prisoners soon closed in to listen, doffing their hats at Mr Johnston, some disposed to mopping the sweat from their brows at the same time. Vegetable scents, sour and tart, and something dank, mebbe ‘twas the odour of bitterness, drifted from their field breeches and shirts. I edged away and stood to the side. By the time Pat finished, there were plenty of misty eyes. You could tell the songs made them homesick for their people in Ireland. My own eyes stayed dry. I had no ties. I was still worrying about the bully-boy London. Pat would be wise to avoid him.