Fled

by Meg Keneally

  One thing she’d never heard during one of Lockhart’s speeches, though, was her own name.

  ‘All of you know Mrs Trelawney,’ Van Dalen said, nodding to her. ‘All of you know how she and her family got here. And here she is tonight, bearing little resemblance to the half-dead woman from the sea. But she, my friends, is the reason that everyone in that boat was not wholly dead. She is here to remind us all of the need to meet adversity with bravery, no matter our station. I thank you for the toasts you have raised to me, and now I propose another. To the brave woman of the ocean.’

  He raised his glass and drank. Some did likewise, but others cheered, thumping the table with their fists. Everyone was looking at her – and the yellow gown was like a beacon – so she could not look in the one direction she wanted to. She had to meet all of the eyes that were on her, while smiling at their owners. She could not afford to glance at Dan.

  And by the time the attention ebbed, and she was able to turn towards him at the end of the table, she saw his seat was empty.

  Later that night Jenny found Dan in their bedroom, sitting with his hands on his knees and head bent. She saw the wounded pride in him, knew she should tread carefully if she wanted to avoid confrontation, perhaps even a crack across the face with the back of his hand.

  There could be a price to his petulance. Van Dalen had followed her gaze to the empty seat. He’d frowned, and Jenny had too. Offending the governor would put them at far greater risk.

  But Dan’s slumped shoulders angered her most. They were free shoulders now, and he received money when he used them in someone else’s service. That could not continue if his petulance did.

  ‘You know, don’t you, Dan, that the man whose table you walked away from could put us in gaol, with a nod to Detmer?’

  Dan looked up, staring at her through the red web of veins in his eyes. ‘Ah, but he wouldn’t, would he? Not the brave woman of the ocean. How many people did you need to speak to, Jenny? To start the rumour spreading, that you were the one who saved us all?’

  ‘I never claimed credit for our survival, although at least some of it belongs to me.’

  ‘Did you nearly cut your hand in half gripping the tiller?’ Dan shouted. ‘Did you restore the boat month by month?’

  ‘I’ve never denied you the honour of your part in it. But you wouldn’t have gone if it wasn’t for me.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have needed to!’ he yelled. ‘My sentence was expired! I could have signed on as a mate on a ship without having to drag you and the –’ He stopped himself.

  That’s something, she thought. He was unwilling, as yet, to malign the children. If that changed, their world would become even less secure.

  ‘You got many benefits from marrying me, Dan Gwyn. The trust of the governor, of Mr Corbett. Command of the fishing fleet. The hut.’

  ‘I could have gotten those on my own,’ he said. ‘And I would not have suffered the shame of losing them, either, nor of a hundred cuts to my back, not if I hadn’t had to trade the fish to feed you and . . . to feed those who needed feeding.’

  ‘And now all those who need feeding are being fed! Don’t think for a moment that you would have escaped the famine had you stayed – and don’t think, either, that the authorities would have let you sail off on a merchant ship, even if your sentence expired, not with you the only trained fisherman. Having a wife and children means people trust you more. We need everyone to trust us, Dan, now more than ever.’

  ‘Do I have a wife, though?’ he said, standing and moving slowly towards her, scaring her far more than a headlong rush would have. ‘Married in a place not even God has heard of. Who’s to say it’s valid? What’s to keep me tied to you?’

  ‘The governor is not the kind to approve of that sort of thing. An upstanding man, him. Don’t think he would look well on a man who abandoned a woman and children.’

  ‘No,’ said Dan, ‘he wouldn’t. Especially when that woman is his sea goddess, someone he clothes in silk.’ He glared at her, reached out, grabbed the neckline of her dress and tore it open down the front.

  This shocked her far more than any blow would have. The silk was likely worth more than her parents’ home in Penmor. Dan would know it, too; when he worked as a smuggler, fine fabrics must have passed through his fingers.

  She knew him well enough to know that any sign of distress from her would outrage him further. So she forced herself to stand still, feeling the humid air paint moisture on her exposed breasts. Perhaps he would try to take her, valid marriage or not.

  He looked at her, assessing. Then shrugged, turned, and left the house.

  Jenny changed into a nightdress, the yellow silk folded on the bed, its front facing downwards. She heard footsteps approaching and looked up, seeing Gert walking down the corridor and into the bedroom. The slam of the front door must have woken her.

  Gert and Jenny had been teaching each other their words by small degrees, almost hesitantly. Jenny felt that their easy coexistence, the warmth that had been established between them, might be dismantled by too much understanding. She sensed that Gert felt the same.

  Gert frowned, gesturing with her head towards the front door. ‘Hij is boos,’ she said. ‘He is angry. Why?’

  ‘Ik weet het niet,’ Jenny said. ‘I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. Thank you for minding the children.’

  Gert smiled and spoke another quick sentence in Dutch. Jenny couldn’t understand all of it, but she thought she heard the word for ‘play’. Dan was very probably seeking his own fun in the tavern by the docks.

  For most of the lads, the novelty of having money for ale and rum, and the freedom to drink it as long as that money lasted, was almost as intoxicating as the drinks themselves. Carney was the only one who seemed immune. Jenny didn’t know what he did with his money, but it wouldn’t have surprised her to find it in a hole in the floor of his cottage, like the one that possibly still gaped in the Gwyn hut. Carney took a lot of teasing from the men, particularly Bruton, about his lack of head for drink. Jenny, though, was grateful. At least someone would get the rest of them home.

  Women in Coepang didn’t go to the tavern. Not the wives of merchants or those of the ranking natives, and certainly not those of the governor’s staff.

  ‘Believe me, my dear, you’re lucky to avoid it,’ Van Dalen had said to her. ‘Full of sailors, deckhands and the like, that tavern. Rough men, Mrs Trelawney. Your husband, I dare say, could hold his own. But they would eat you alive.’

  Jenny smiled and thanked him. She doubted the place would be any worse than the Plymouth taverns in which she’d fenced stolen trinkets, but of course she had no intention of acquainting the governor with this particular part of her history.

  Dan, though, loved the tavern. Not just the rum, although that was welcome.

  ‘He sits there, and the Coepang men stare at him,’ Carney had told her. ‘He smiles, nods, and buys some ale for those who seem most curious. Some of them speak English, and he tells them about the voyage, about the times he stopped the boat capsizing.’ Jenny had been pleased to hear Dan had some praise coming to him, until Carney had said, ‘All the time they tell him he was lucky to have such a companion.’

  ‘Ah. He won’t like that.’

  ‘No. Those who say so do not receive any more ale from him.’

  The last time Jenny had heard pounding on the door, it had been Howard Tippett bearing the body of her father. A few nights after the governor’s party, it was Carney bearing the intoxicated form of the man who might or might not be her husband.

  This was by no means the first time Dan had come home drunk. More nights than not, he would stumble in and breathe rum stink over her.

  At the sound of a fist on wood, she rolled over to face the wall, throwing off a sheet that had become soaked with her sleeping sweat. She had never gotten out of bed when Dan came home drunk, and saw no reason to start now.

  But the hammering continued – hammering in this house with no locks, hammering eve
n though Dan and Carney would have had no trouble getting through the front door.

  The hammering, she realised, was at the door to their bedroom.

  ‘Jenny! Jenny, you have to get up!’

  Not Dan’s voice. Carney’s.

  ‘Would you stop it, John! You’ll wake the children!’

  This, in her view, was a great sin. She sat with them as they slept for an hour or more each night, listening to the little noises they made, loving the absence of pain and fear on their faces as sleep slowly brought them to health.

  As she opened the door, she realised she had forgotten to put a robe over her nightdress. Not that this was really a concern for her – after more than two months in a small boat with Carney and the others, she had no modesty left to preserve.

  Carney’s teeth were clenched. Dan was draped over his shoulder, muttering and unsteady on his feet, but Carney had the clear eyes of a sober man. ‘You’ll have to get them up anyway, bring them into the kitchen,’ he said. ‘Wait till you hear what the idiot’s done!’

  He pushed past Jenny, half dragging Dan to the kitchen, where Dan tumbled into a chair, his upper body slumping across the table. Carney looked up sharply. ‘I wasn’t jesting, Jenny. You need to get the children.’

  Dan had enough wits left to look up at Jenny through red-threaded eyes. ‘Only said the truth.’

  ‘Jenny, he’s told them,’ said Carney. ‘Told them all. About us.’

  CHAPTER 29

  Their last escape had been planned. She’d had time to soak her mind in it, to follow threads of probabilities, to snip the ones that led to unacceptable destinations.

  This escape would need to be headlong, frantic and silent – and immediate.

  ‘Go!’ she said to Carney. ‘Get the others, bring them . . . to the jungle, I think. Yes, these trees just behind us. I’ll meet you there. Don’t stop to get food, clothes, anything. The jungle will give us what we need, but we have to go now.’

  Carney nodded, then ran.

  Dan had propped himself up on his elbows, staring at her.

  ‘Get up,’ she said, in a voice she did not own. The voice of somebody calm, measured.

  ‘Don’t have to, my house,’ he said, and put his head back down.

  She stalked over to him, grabbed his hair, pulled his head back and slapped his face. ‘Get! Up!’

  That got him to his feet, rubbing both the back of his head and his cheek where her hand had connected. ‘Going to bed,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t you understand? They will come for us! Somebody will be going to the governor right now, if they haven’t already.’

  ‘I’m going to bed,’ Dan repeated.

  ‘Go, then,’ she called over her shoulder as she raced towards the children, who were mewling at the noise. ‘You wake up in gaol, but I won’t. I can’t.’

  She scooped Emanuel out of his bed. He was beginning to cry. Charlotte, though, was sitting up and looking at Jenny, saucer-eyed but not crying or questioning.

  Charlotte had done this before.

  ‘You’ve seen the monkeys,’ Jenny said. ‘The ones in the jungle, the ones who scurry through the trees, sometimes steal food in the market.’

  Charlotte nodded.

  ‘You’re going to be a monkey now. Climb on my back, and we’ll run like monkeys into the jungle.’ Jenny turned, holding Emanuel, and Charlotte clambered onto her mother’s back, the little arms around Jenny’s neck nearly choking her.

  She ran out of the house as fast as she could without the risk of falling and smashing Emanuel onto the flagstones. She didn’t close the front door, and this time her daughter didn’t ask her to.

  As she turned towards the jungle she could see lights on the road. Coming closer.

  She thought, or hoped, she and the children would be safe among the trees. She didn’t want to go in deeper, not until daylight would help her pick a safe path. For now she would stay just inside the boundaries of the jungle, watching the lights march up to her front door.

  She heard the yelling from inside the house, saw dark shapes drag someone out, heard her husband’s cursing. And Detmer’s voice, calling in a Dutch she was only beginning to understand. She heard a word that she thought meant close, or nearby.

  There was no sign of Carney and the others, and probably just as well – the more of them crashing through the undergrowth, the greater their chance of being caught. But she couldn’t stay just within the shelter of the trees. She would need to commit herself and her children to them.

  She was familiar with this part of the jungle, knew the small paths which had been worn by generations of feet. She could afford, she thought, to go further in.

  Emanuel, who had been quietened by her movement, was beginning to fidget and whimper as fern fronds scratched at his cheeks and unfamiliar noises sounded in the dark.

  Jenny came to a small clearing, one she had been to before. Lowering herself down carefully onto a rock, she let Charlotte off her back as she pulled down the neck of her nightdress, giving Emanuel the only solace she knew would quiet him.

  As she was feeding him, Charlotte quiet beside her, a hand clamped down onto her shoulder, and Detmer’s voice said, ‘I know the forest paths too, Mrs Trelawney.’

  And then more dark. The kind that did not lift with the sun.

  The others had been captured on the way to meet her in the jungle. It was their trajectory that had told Detmer where to look.

  Sunlight dribbled in through slits in the walls of the cells beneath the castle, almost directly under the hall where the governor’s party had been held. Enough light for Jenny to see Dan sitting on the floor in the corner, hugging his legs with his head on his knees. She and the children were on a bench nearby.

  The other men lay, leaned or sat, moving only when necessary. They had exhausted themselves during the first hours in the cell, roaring at Dan, asking him why, calling him the murderer of them all. Bruton had walked over to Dan’s corner and begun kicking him. No one tried to stop it, including Jenny, until Charlotte began to wail at the violence to her father. Perhaps she was too young, Jenny thought, to remember seeing him flogged. But perhaps the image was always there, shuttered behind the girl’s eyes, maliciously popping out whenever her father groaned.

  ‘You have put your children in a gaol,’ Jenny said to him now. ‘One they have done nothing to earn.’

  He looked up at her, blank-faced, and returned his forehead to his knees.

  Carney was leaning against the opposite wall.

  ‘What happened?’ she asked him.

  He shook his head and sighed. ‘This one fellow in the tavern – an English sailor, crew on a merchant ship I think, haven’t seen him before – he said to Dan, “Must be nice to have a woman to save you.”’

  Dan groaned. Carney glared at him, and Bruton started across the cell towards him again. Langham managed to haul him back – another fight would win them no favours, if there were still favours to be had.

  ‘And then Dan turned to this fellow,’ said Carney, ‘and asked if he’d ever had the courage to escape. If he’d brought everyone else through seas the size of houses, of hills. If he’d been quicker, brighter than the governor of an entire colony. And . . . I’m sorry, Jenny . . . if he’d done it all shackled to a woman he’d married in a sham ceremony.’

  ‘I see. And did Dan enjoy his moment? The surprise on the man’s face just before he got up to tell the guards? Or is this all truly for nothing?’

  ‘I . . . I couldn’t say, Jenny. He went back to his drinking.’

  Jenny, who had once seen Dan as a saviour, now looked on him as her executioner. She just hoped there might be some leniency for her children from the governor.

  Van Dalen visited the cell a few hours later. He was holding a handkerchief to his nose. Charlotte sat up, smiled and waved. But when Van Dalen ignored her, walked over to Dan and cuffed him, the girl started to wail again. Dan grunted and keeled over sideways, making no attempt to break his fall.

  �
�Please, Your Excellency,’ Jenny said, as Charlotte clung to her, whimpering. ‘My children –’

  He looked at her with apparent indifference. ‘Will stay where they are. As will you all, until the next English ship arrives. I will hand you to the captain.’

  ‘Don’t punish them!’ said Jenny.

  ‘Why not, for the sins of their mother?’ he yelled. ‘I offered you friendship, offered you clothes, offered you food and housing. Thinking you were a singular woman, a strong one. An honest one. And now! Laughter, laughter on the seas as the story spreads about the dupe of a governor. So you will look at these walls, and then you will look at the inside of the hull of the ship, but you will never look at me again.’

  He turned to the door, nodding to the guard who opened it for him and closed it pointedly afterwards.

  After Charlotte stopped crying, she lay on the bench with her head in her mother’s lap. Jenny tried to feed Emanuel, but the milk suddenly would hardly come, so he alternated between listlessness and a wail that echoed off the walls.

  Perhaps, Jenny thought, the next British ship to come into port would be a blessing. Perhaps its captain might take pity on her children, at least. Allow them fresh air, fresh food. No decent person would treat them as criminals.

  The walk to the dock after two months in the cell, even under heavy guard, was almost transcendent. Jenny enjoyed being able to move freely and to inhale, without effort, the scents of flowers and cooking instead of shit. While she could, she drew in great gulps of air until she thought her ribs would crack. She knew what the inside of a hull smelled like, could see none of the hatches open on the ship that waited at the end of the dock.

  The hold of the Rembang was worse than the Charlotte had been. That ship, at least, had been washed with quick lime on occasion, and the surgeon had shown an interest in keeping the convicts alive. This hold was damp and fetid, and so thick that it required an effort to breathe.