Fled

by Meg Keneally

  ‘No, Elenor. If you come to my hut tomorrow, or any other time, I might find the need to practise with my knife.’

  ‘You may use the knife, if you wish. I’d rather them scaled, actually – the scales do stick to your lips a bit, otherwise. So I’ll choose the fish, and then you will prepare it for me. I look forward to bringing it back to the settlement and sharing it out as you never do.’

  ‘You’ll have nothing to share, then,’ said Jenny, ‘and those who always suspected you’re a lying bitch will know it for certain.’

  ‘If I come back with nothing, I will make sure that everyone knows how many fish you have, and that everyone knows they may come and take some. Take whatever else they like, while they’re about it. You might want to start on the scaling before I arrive – I would not want to be late to muster.’

  The next morning Elenor came, and blighted Jenny’s favourite time of day.

  There was always noise from the settlement: the yells and creaks penetrated Jenny’s little glade when the wind was right. But at dawn they had not yet reached full voice. Jenny, who had never been much for sleep, would take Charlotte outside in fine weather to watch the sunlight. It washed over the cliff and began to spill onto the surface of the water, and then on to the trees that marched up to their hut.

  Dan was still asleep and the light had not yet gained the land when Elenor appeared. ‘You have fish for me,’ she said.

  ‘I have nothing for you.’

  ‘If you don’t, by midday everyone here – everyone who isn’t working under an overseer at the time – will have come, will have made their demand.’

  ‘Tell them to watch their footing. The rains have washed away some of the earth around the tree roots. They might trip if they’re not careful.’

  Elenor looked at her for a moment. Opened her mouth. Closed it again, nodding. Turned and left.

  Jenny didn’t feel as calm as she hoped she’d sounded. She knew Elenor was not joking – she and Joseph knew how to generate belief, and how to keep generating it.

  The next person to step into the clearing wasn’t another convict, or a mob of them demanding fish. It was Mr Corbett, closely followed by Lieutenant Farrow.

  Dan had woken by this stage, and she had been intending to tell him about Elenor. She’d thought that she still had time.

  But Corbett and Farrow marched up to Dan, seized him by the arms and placed his hands in manacles.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Jenny shouted, prevented from running to him by Charlotte who was clinging to her legs. ‘What in God’s name are you doing?’

  ‘Arresting him, you stupid bitch,’ said Farrow. ‘In the governor’s name, not God’s.’ And he cracked Dan, who was struggling, across the face.

  ‘Lieutenant Farrow, please ensure your actions do you credit,’ Corbett snapped.

  But he made no effort to free Dan, who was swearing now, and spitting.

  They had leg irons with them, but as Farrow bent over to clamp them on, Jenny yelled to Corbett, ‘You know the track’s too rough! And where would he run with his hands in irons?’

  It was, perhaps, not the most stirring plea from a wife for her husband. Some might have expected her to hurl herself on him, weeping and begging for his freedom.

  She would have done so, if freedom was a possibility. But it was not, and she had no intention of providing entertainment for the sneering Farrow. The best she could do was to buy Dan a little extra comfort, reduce the chances of him stumbling on a tree root and landing face first on a rock, without hands free to protect himself.

  Farrow looked at Corbett. ‘You know this track, then,’ he said, and showed Corbett a nasty smile. The rumours of the convict barracks often infected the officers’ barracks as well.

  Corbett turned to Jenny, a crackling anger in his face, before turning away and leading Dan off with Farrow.

  CHAPTER 15

  When they were newly arrived, when each hill might have hidden fertile pastureland, Governor Lockhart had clearly felt ensuring a steady supply of fish was worth the cost of one or two of them going home with the fisherman. But now, with dead livestock and withered seeds and vegetables a third of their regular size, he was no doubt regretting the bargain.

  Then Dan had given a fish to a convict who worked at the government gardens, in exchange for a small cauliflower.

  ‘You were never told,’ Lockhart thundered when Dan was dragged into his study, ‘that you could trade your fish or sell them. They were for your use, yours alone. What you have done is a form of theft.’

  No one had stopped Jenny trailing in after the small group. At the governor’s last words, her face began to tingle, and she heard a small whimper from Charlotte. How does she know, Jenny wondered, at such a young age? But of course the little girl didn’t know: her mother had simply squeezed her hand tightly enough to call forth a small yelp.

  Jenny knew what the penalty for theft was here, what it had been since they first landed. Some, like the six marines, had already had the penalty brought down upon them, for the governor had to be seen as resolute. If he was willing to hang six free men, a convict would surely not present any problem for him.

  Dan was taken to the gaol, and Jenny tried to scurry after Mr Corbett. He rounded on her, though, moving more quickly than she had ever seen him do before. I must not forget, she thought, that he is soldier. He has fought, and he will continue to fight.

  ‘Please, Mr Corbett,’ she said, slowing as she got near him. She was used to seeing his face relaxed, open. But now it was taut, and she had a sense that he was barely restraining himself.

  ‘Mrs Gwyn, return to your hut immediately.’ He turned and kept walking.

  ‘Mr Corbett, please! What will happen?’

  ‘I suggest you take that up with the judge advocate.’ He did not slow as he said it, did not turn, did not raise his voice, simply cast the words into the air without seeming to mind if Jenny caught them.

  ‘Why are you angry with me? I’ve done nothing to you, Mr Corbett, truly. Those rumours – no one believes them, and those who do, well, they don’t think less of you for it.’

  He turned around and slowly walked towards her, forcing words out as he went. ‘It’s not . . . about . . . the blasted rumours!’

  ‘Then what have we done?’

  ‘I spoke for you – for both of you, because half the ideas in Gwyn’s head were put there by you. To the governor, the judge advocate, Farrow and his ilk. I told them Dan could be trusted with the cutter, that neither of you would abuse the privilege. The governor will not trust me again. I have lost his ear, and very possibly the ability to moderate the disciplinary excesses of many of those here. For a cauliflower!’ He turned and walked away.

  Jenny decided she would never eat cauliflower again, if she could help it.

  She ran back the way she had come, towards the tent of Anthony Price, the judge advocate. A grand title, but the man who bore it was only around five years older than her.

  She’d learned quite a lot about him from Corbett. He had been sent out here to make a mark in a less crowded field than that in London. His father was prominent and felt his son would rise significantly faster if a tour of duty beyond the knowledge of men was undertaken. Price was expected to return as a honed blade, tempered by the colonial fire and far more capable than those who had spent a few years at the Inns of Court. He was equal to anyone in the colony in terms of intelligence, and seemed aware of that fact. While he wasn’t a cruel man, he could be arrogant and mercurial. No one ever knew how he would respond to requests.

  But Corbett had told Jenny to ask the judge advocate, so ask the judge advocate she would.

  She found him at his desk, scratching away at a piece of paper. ‘Mr Price, sir . . .’

  He looked up. ‘Mrs Gwyn.’

  ‘Mr Corbett suggested I see you. To find out what happens.’

  ‘What happens?’

  ‘What happens now. To Dan. To me and Charlotte.’

  ‘To you and y
our child, nothing, as neither of you have committed a crime as far as I’m aware. Dan will stand trial. Evidence will be presented and assessed, and if he is found to have committed the crime of which he is accused, there will be an appropriate punishment.’

  Price went back to his document.

  ‘An appropriate punishment?’ said Jenny. ‘He’ll be hanged!’

  ‘Yes. If he’s guilty and can be proven to be so, it’s highly likely he will be hanged. We cannot, under any circumstances, allow theft, Mrs Gwyn. If you don’t wish to see your child die of starvation, you would do well to remember it. This is not a useful conversation, though. Your husband has not yet stood trial, and we are already discussing his execution.’

  When witnesses were called, the first to step forward was Joseph Clancy.

  When Joseph came forward to give evidence, a murmur began trickling around the room. Jenny followed its progress until she saw Elenor towards the back, smiling.

  Joseph said he had seen Dan talking to John Rush, one of those who tended the government gardens. He had seen Rush hand over a cauliflower to Dan in exchange for a parcel. After following Rush at a distance, Joseph saw him unwrap the gift: a fish.

  Joseph, as everyone knew, could be trusted. Joseph knew everything that was going on in the settlement.

  As Dan was found guilty of theft, preparations began for another execution.

  The evening found Jenny on the doorstep of the governor’s house. She hadn’t wanted to leave Charlotte, who was agitated. The girl didn’t know that her father was to be strangled, but she had absorbed her mother’s fear and was only slightly mollified by songs from Bea, who had come to the hut.

  The governor’s house was the first brick structure anyone in this place had seen since leaving England. It sat above the eastern shore of the cove, small and squat and meaner than some Penmor cottages, but the apex of civilisation here. There were lights in its windows against the advancing dusk, more tallow than Jenny would use in a year.

  ‘I must speak to him, and it must be tonight,’ she kept saying to the guard.

  ‘I keep telling you, Mrs Gwyn, to go back to your hut.’

  Then Lockhart’s called out, from a room off the hallway, ‘For God’s sake, she’s not going to give me any peace until I see her.’

  She was allowed inside. In his broad-windowed study, the governor was sitting behind what had to be the most ornate desk ever to rest on this soil. Imported, no doubt – the wood here just wasn’t up to it.

  Jenny had no interest in the desk. She ran into the room, put her hands on its polished surface, and leaned forward as far as her distended stomach would allow. ‘My husband will hang.’

  ‘I am sorry, Mrs Gwyn. It is the penalty for theft of food, as you and he know very well.’

  ‘He stole nothing,’ she said. ‘I heard the bargain you made with him on that first day. You never mentioned anything about cauliflower, simply told him he could keep part of the catch. He made a fair exchange. You may have changed your mind – and it wouldn’t surprise me, for I know things are bad. But he was following your rules.’

  ‘No, Mrs Gwyn, he was not. The fish were for his own use – and yours, and your family’s. They were not to be sold, for money or cauliflower or any other commodity.’

  ‘After you turn him off, it won’t happen as much. The thieving.’

  ‘No. That is my hope.’

  ‘Because there won’t be anything to steal. Without Dan, you’ll all starve a lot more quickly. How many kangaroos have your dogs managed to bring down? Enough to feed everyone here? Enough to feed those who are coming?’

  ‘There are others who can fish, Mrs Gwyn.’

  ‘Others who can haul a net, maybe. Even sail a boat, in a pinch. But Dan tells them when to pull and where to put the boat. He knows where the fish are, knows whether they’re likely to be on one side of the harbour or the other. No point in just throwing a net down there and seeing what happens, Your Excellency.’

  ‘Mrs Gwyn, I don’t want to see your husband hang – nice fellow, all things considered, and he was a fine fisherman. But if I spare him the noose, our stores will be picked clean, and there will be nothing left of us.’

  ‘There will be nothing left of us – any of us – a lot sooner, if you hang Dan. Without him, more people will die.’

  The governor leaned back behind his desk, exhaling slowly. ‘With him, people will steal,’ he said. ‘Mrs Gwyn, do you know why the stores haven’t been raided every night? People know they will hang if they try it. If your husband goes unpunished, they will try it.’

  ‘Punish him, then. But don’t kill him. Punish him and send him back on the water.’

  ‘It may surprise you to learn that I am not in the habit of having policy dictated by convicts.’ Lockhart nodded to the soldier at the door, who came forward with his hand outstretched, seeking to take her arm.

  She ignored him. ‘What will the convicts do when they find you cannot be trusted to keep a bargain?’ She turned, glared at the soldier, and stepped around him towards the door.

  He followed her out of the study and closed the door behind him. ‘You need to mind the way you talk to the governor,’ he said. ‘There are some who think he’s a little too soft on all of you. They might decide stricter treatment is in order.’

  ‘How many fish caught by us have slipped down your gullet? Have a care or you might find yourself coming up against one of the few things that can be relied on in this place – there are more of us than there are of you.’

  The notion of a convict uprising had entered her head before, as it had surely presented itself to most of those here. But after an uprising, what was to happen? They would still be trapped in the same landscape, with its stubborn inability to nurture crops. By the time the second fleet arrived they would be easily recaptured.

  In any case, those like Joe and Elenor, who thought of themselves as the convict caucus’s informal leaders didn’t have the courage to carry such a thing off. But Joe and Elenor weren’t entirely without wit, or without influence.

  The governor had shown no sign of listening to her when she’d stood in front of him, and nor had she expected him to. Perhaps he had, though. Or perhaps others in authority had also drawn the very short, straight line between Dan’s death and reduced rations.

  Whatever the truth of it was, Lockhart announced that Dan’s punishment would not be carried out at the end of the rope. He was to be flogged. One hundred lashes. He was to lose his command over fishing operations, and his cut of the fish that went with it. But eventually he might be allowed to resume fishing under the supervision of other convicts.

  Dan and Jenny would lose their hut, would go back into the communal convict barracks – he with the men and she with the women. They would try to make what life they could with his scarred back and a baby born among squabbling lags rather than the unearthly streaks of the trees around the glade that was no longer theirs.

  CHAPTER 16

  Both calamities happened the next day.

  All convicts were required to watch floggings – if they weren’t haunted by the sight of a back with no skin and mangled flesh, how could they be trusted to behave?

  The soldiers brought the triangle out. It was an ominous symbol, a profane and subverted trinity. Not that Dan showed fear when he was trussed to it. He looked straight ahead, a certain tension in his jaw but no other indication that he was experiencing anything other than boredom.

  One hundred lashes was a survivable punishment – as long as your heart didn’t stop from the shock, and you avoided growing a rot in the wound, a decay which would turn your blood to poison.

  Jenny had felt ill the first time she witnessed a flogging. It had taken place in Plymouth, and she’d been free then although already on the path that would bring her here. She went out of curiosity, and because Elenor had urged her to. ‘We may even get to do a little business on the side,’ Elenor had said. ‘Not as good as a hanging, but even with floggings people tend to be
fixated on one thing. It’s remarkable what can be removed from a pocket while the owner is gaping at some poor sod in pain.’

  Jenny had thought she already knew what to expect; had a vague picture in her mind of a bound man, another man tickling his back. But the scourger had propelled the flail through the air with a precision that terrified her. He wrapped the cords around his victim’s back and removed a predetermined amount of flesh with each blow.

  Had she a choice, she never would have seen another one. But she had seen many now, and they’d all seemed not quite as horrifying as the first one.

  The horror returned when she saw Dan with his shirt off, having his arms tied above his head. This was a creature of the waves, someone with the power to steer a small collection of wooden planks through the worst of storms. It should not have been possible to constrain him like this.

  Some of the lags had scars upon scars. The ones who couldn’t help themselves, the ones who didn’t have a special skill and wouldn’t be missed if they were pulled out of their gang. They were the ones who said flogging changed a man. She wondered what would be left of Dan when it was over.

  Here, the authorities tended to get convicts to administer floggings. Jenny supposed they didn’t like specks of blood on their shirts. But convicts were often hesitant to deliver blows that were too hard; they had to be urged to it, giving their masters the opportunity to deliver two lessons in one.

  But the man who walked towards Dan wouldn’t need any urging.

  Joseph Clancy was flanked by two soldiers, presumably to prevent him evading this duty. They needn’t have bothered, thought Jenny. If the King himself arrived in a boat and beckoned Joe aboard, the man wouldn’t go. Not until this business was done.

  Jenny felt movement beside her, a hand on her arm, and found herself looking into the freshly bruised face of John Carney.

  ‘I tried to stop the bastard from informing, but he rounded on me with a stick,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll make sure you’re safe, you and the little one, until Dan’s well. You put your face into my shoulder if you have to, no one will blame you.’