Morgan’s Run

PART SIX

From

October of 1788

until

May of 1791

The women were ordered to ftay below, but at dawn all the men had their belongings on deck and waited for morning to reveal Norfolk Island. Light came in the midst of a stunning sunrise, high billows and wisps of rainless cloud turning slowly from purple-shot plum through fiery scarlet to the glory of pure gold.

“Why does sunrise feel so strange?” Joey Long asked as he stood with Richard at the rail, MacGregor panting at his feet.

“I think because it is the reverse of sunset,” said Richard. “The colors go from dark to light until the clouds are white and the sky is blue.”

MacGregor barked to be picked up; Joey obliged. The dog was on a homemade leash his master had manufactured out of tiny scraps of leather even Lieutenant Furzer could not find a use for; more accustomed to freedom, MacGregor disliked the leash but wore it with resignation. The voyage had provided him with plenty of pickings, and Captain William Sharp had been delighted to let the little terrier have the run of the holds. The ship’s cat (MacGregor had no patience with cats) had retired to the forecastle in a huff and left the field to this impertinent intruder.

Having lain some miles off during the night, they were under sail again. Captain Sharp had never been to the island before, and was taking no chances. Getting in would be no trouble, as Harry Ball of Supply had lent him Supply’s sailing master, Lieutenant David Blackburn, who knew every kink in the reefs and every rock and shoal offshore.

Because the sun shone in the eyes until it climbed higher into the vault, all that could be seen of the island-three miles by five miles in extent, Donovan had informed Richard-was a dark, disappointingly low mass. No Teneriffe, this. Then, it seemed in a second, its bulk filled up with light. The green of it was blackish and the 300-foot-high cliffs were either dull orange or charcoal. Therefore the place should have looked ominous, brooding; that it did not lay in the sea, shading from purple-blue out where Golden Grove was trying to find a wind to a glowing aquamarine around its coast. That gradually paling water made the island seem as if it grew there as part of some gigantic marine plan, as natural as inevitable.

They were sailing from west to east in catspaws of breathy breeze which came from the southwest, then from the northeast. Two other isles attended the big one: a tiny low isle close in shore bristling with pine trees, and a larger isle perhaps four miles to the south, craggily tall and vividly green save for a few clumps of dark pines. White waves broke at the base of all the cliffs and against some sort of bar in the direction they were heading, but the ocean was quiet and calm.

Golden Grove anchored some distance off the reef where the surf broke in placid flurries; beyond it a lagoon glittered almost more green than blue, and having two beaches, the western one straight, the eastern one semi-circular. The sand was apricot-yellow and merged at its back right into the pines, thinned out by men, and the tallest, biggest trees Richard had ever seen. Amid them along the straight beach lay a small collection of wooden huts.

A large blue flag with a yellow plus was flying limply from a staff very close to the straight beach, on which people were busy manning two tiny boats. Golden Grove’s jollyboat went over the side and across to the reef to meet them; the tide had flooded in sufficiently for the jollyboat to cross the reef into the lagoon, where it would remain. The longboats, said Lieutenant Blackburn firmly, would go no farther than the outside of the coral, there to transfer cargo to the smaller boats for the run to the sand.

One of the two tiny boats approached the ship, a man clad in white, dark blue and gold braid standing in its bow, his powdered wig and hat on his head, his sword at his side. He came aboard, shook Captain Sharp warmly by the hand, and Blackburn, and Donovan, and Livingstone. This was the Commandant, Lieutenant Philip Gidley King, whom Richard had never really seen before. A well-made man of medium height, King had sparkling hazel eyes in a tanned face which was neither plain nor handsome; it owned a firm, good-natured mouth and a large, though not beaky, nose.

The pleasantries over, King turned to the convicts. “Who among ye are the sawyers?” he asked.

Richard and Bill Blackall shrinkingly held up their hands.

King’s face fell. “Is that all?” He toured the ranks of the 21 men, pausing before Henry Humphreys, a big man. “Step out,” he said, and continued touring until he found Will Marriner, another strong-looking man.

“You step out too.”

There were now four of them.

“Have any of ye had experience as sawyers?”

No one answered. Stifling a sigh, Richard found himself, as usual, the one who had to speak in order to save the group from official irritation in the face of silence.

“None of us is experienced, sir,” he said. “Blackall and I know how to saw, though neither of us has worked as a sawyer.” He indicated Blackall with one hand. “I am actually a saw sharpener.”

“And,” Donovan put in quickly, “a gunsmith, Lieutenant.”

“Ah! Well, I do not have enough work for a gunsmith, but I certainly do for a saw sharpener. Names, please.”

They gave their names and convict numbers.

“Numbers,” said King, “are unnecessary in a place owning so few people. Morgan, Blackall, ye’ll head the sawpit-go ashore with Humphreys and Marriner in the coble at once. To start work, not sit about. We have to fill Golden Grove’s holds with timber for Port Jackson before she sails, and losing my only experienced sawyer in a boating accident has meant there is not near enough done. The saws are nigh as blunt as a Scotchman, so ye’ll have to start sharpening this very minute, Morgan. Have ye any tools? We have only two files.”

“I have plenty of tools, sir,” said Richard, and proceeded to do what experience had taught him was politic: ask for what he wanted before ignorance or misinformation burdened him with people he either did not know or did not trust. “Sir, may I take yon Joseph Long? I know him and can work with him. He has not the build for a sawyer and his wits are weak, but he will do as he is told and can be of use at the sawpit.”

The Commandant of Norfolk Island’s eyes went to Joey and lighted upon the dog, clasped in Joey’s arms. “Oh, I say, what a little beauty!” he exclaimed. “A male dog, Long?”

Joey nodded wordlessly, never having been the recipient of a simple remark from an official before. Orders he had heard aplenty, snapped or barked, but never the kind of thing one ordinary man said to another.

“Splendid! We have but one dog here, a spaniel bitch. Does he rat? Say he rats, please?”

Joey nodded again.

“What dashed good luck! Delphinia rats too, so we will have ratting pups-oh, do we need ratting pups!” King realized that the five were still standing watching him, fascinated. “What are ye waiting for? Over the side and into the coble!”

“I always heard that the Navy was mad,” said Bill Blackall as the boat pulled away.

“Well,” said Richard, uncomfortably aware that the two oarsmen, both strangers, could overhear, “ye must not forget that there are but few people here. The Commandant and they must be very used to each other by now. They are probably short on ceremony.”

“Aye, we are short on ceremony, but very glad to see some new faces,” said one of the rowers, a man in his fifties with a Devon drawl in his voice. “John Mortimer, late Charlotte.” He tilted his head at his opposite number. “My son, Noah.”

They did not look a bit like father and son. John Mortimer was a tall, fair, placid-looking man, whereas Noah Mortimer was short and dark-and rather self-opinionated, if his expression was anything to go by. It is a wise man knows his own father.

The coble, so called because it was clinker-built in the manner of a Scotch fishing dinghy, very flat-bottomed, glided across the reef without grazing itself and stroked the mere 150 yards across the lagoon to the straight beach, where some of the surviving members of the community stood waiting: six women, one-the oldest-big with child, and five men whose ages, if their faces reflected their years, varied between shaveling young and grizzled old.

“Nathaniel Lucas, carpenter,” said a man of thirty-odd, “and my wife, Olivia.”

An attractive and intelligent-looking couple.

“Eddy Garth and my wife, Susan,” said another fellow.

“I am Ann Innet, Lieutenant King’s housekeeper,” said the eldest female, one hand a little defensively on her swollen belly.

“Elizabeth Colley, Surgeon Jamison’s housekeeper.”

“Eliza Hipsley, farmer,” said a handsome, strapping girl, her arm protectively about another girl of the same age. “This is my best friend, Liz Lee. She farms too.”

Good, thought Richard, I know where I stand with that pair, as must any man of perception. Eliza Hipsley is terrified at the advent of so many new men, which means that she is not sure of Liz Lee. And Len Dyer, Tom Jones and their like will be hard on them. So he smiled at them in a way which told them that they had an ally. Oh, names! Out of the seventeen women Norfolk Island would now own, five were Elizabeths, three Anns, and two Marys.

Like several of the other men, the lone marine had not bothered to introduce himself. “Lieutenant King has ordered us to work now,” said Richard to him. “Could I trouble you to show us the sawpit?”

Lieutenant King’s residence, somewhat larger than the others, stood on a small knoll directly behind the blue-and-yellow landing flag; a Union flag on a second staff closer to the house lay with equal limpness down its mast. The gubernatorial mansion probably contained three small rooms and one attic; no doubt the shed at its rear was its kitchen. There seemed to be a communal oven and cooking area, a smithy, a few buildings which looked as if they stored supplies, each about ten feet by eight, if that. On another rise to the east were extensive cultivated gardens to which all the women, including Ann Innet, were hurrying. And between the two hillocks, among the pines, stood fourteen huts of wooden planks, each very well thatched with some kind of tough, strappy plant; the walls facing the ocean were blank, indicating that their doors looked inland.

The sawpit was close to the beach at the end of a cleared path free of stumps which ran back into the pines; the area around it had also been cleared to make room for dozens of twelve-foot logs, the smallest five feet in diameter. Though he badly wanted to stop to inspect these gargantuan trees he was supposed to reduce to beams and boards, Richard dared not; King’s orders were specific and the marine, who had grudgingly admitted that his name was Heritage, did not look the kind to be nice to felons.

Somehow he and his inexperienced little band had to produce enough sawn timber to fill Golden Grove’s holds, he presumed within the space of ten to fourteen days. Two small mast logs and what appeared to be a spar had already been prepared and lay to one side, together with a stack of planks. The mast logs and the spar were probably for one of the ships left at Port Jackson.

The sawpit itself was lined with boards to prevent its walls crumbling; it was seven feet deep, eight feet wide and fifteen feet long. Two squared-off beams were mounted across it at five-foot intervals, with rocky rubble banked against the ends of the beams to form sloping ramps. A log minus bark had already been rolled up onto the beams, lying wedged and supported on them lengthwise above the pit, but no one was working and he could see no one in attendance. He found five pit saws varying between eight and fourteen feet in length lying in the bottom of the pit covered with an old sail.

Along came Nathaniel Lucas.

“This is the worst air for iron and steel tools I have ever encountered,” he said, dropping into the pit as Richard uncovered the saws. “We cannot keep the wretched things free of rust.”

“They are also horribly blunted,” said Richard, running the ball of his thumb along one large, wickedly notched tooth. He grimaced. “Whoever sharpened this saw seems to think that the blade bevel goes in the same direction from tooth to tooth instead of in opposite directions. Christ! It will take hours and hours to rectify that, let alone get an edge on the thing. Is there anybody here can teach Blackall, Humphreys and Marriner how to saw?”

“I can teach,” said Lucas, a very slight and small man, “but I have not the strength for the pull. I understand what you are saying-you will have to sharpen because that must be done first.”

Richard found a ten-foot saw with reasonably sharp teeth. “This is the best of a bad lot-Nat, or Nathaniel?”

“Nat. Are you Richard or Dick?”

“Richard.” He looked up at the sun. “We will have to get a shelter over the pit as soon as possible. The sun is much stronger here than in Port Jackson.”

“It is more overhead by four degrees of latitude.”

“However, a shelter will have to wait until after Golden Grove departs.” Richard sighed. “That means hats and a good supply of drinking water. Is there some place Joey can take our belongings before we start? I had best stay here and start sharpening.” He sat himself down in the bottom of the sawpit against its eastern edge, still shaded, crossed his legs under him and pulled a twelve-foot saw onto his lap. “Joey, pass down my tool box and then go with Nat, like a good fellow. You others put your things away too, then straight back here.”

All of which means that I am once more a head man in charge of men who cannot function without constant direction.

The most popular saw was obviously the twelve-footer; staring up at the log, over five feet in diameter, Richard fully understood why. There were two twelve-footers, one fourteen-footer, one ten-footer and an eight-footer. In another pile beneath the old canvas lay a dozen hand saws also in desperate need of sharpening.

He wrapped his right hand in a bandage of rags, picked up a coarse, flat file wider than the tooth, laid it against the metal at the slight angle necessary to “set” the cutting bevel and drew it downward, always stroking toward the edge of the blade. After the coarse filing of the first section of saw was done, he fine-filed it, then shifted the saw along his lap to come at the next section. When it was all done he would have to remove the rust.

Above him, a little later, he could hear Nat Lucas explaining the saw to Bill Blackall, deputed to work on top of the log, and Willy Marriner, who was to be the bottom man.

“Each tooth is angled in the opposite direction,” Nat was saying, “so that the cut is wide enough to allow the body of the blade to pass easily through the timber. If the teeth were all angled the same way, the body of the blade would be wider and would jam. In due time ye’ll learn to saw by eye, but to begin with I’ll give ye a cord line to saw against. Norfolk pine has to be debarked because the bark oozes resin and would stick the saw in the cut better than glue after two rips. For your first cut ye start on the outside of the log at one side, making your second cut the outside of the log on the other side. Then, alternating sides, ye work inward an inch at a time to make inch-thick sheets until ye get to the heartwood, which ye’ll saw for two-inch-wide scantlings at first, then four inches wide and finally six inches wide for beams. ’Tis only on the pull upward-the rip-that the saw cuts, and the man on top is in control. Because he bends and pulls from a crouch upward some two feet-more if he is really strong-his is harder work. On the other hand, the man underneath in the pit gets a face full of sawdust. He returns the saw down by pulling from chest level to groin, farther if the man on top is one of those strong enough to rip up on a three-foot pull.”

Marriner appeared in the pit at the far end of the log, where the pair would begin, and gave Richard a wry look.

Nat Lucas was still talking, now to Bill Blackall. “There is a knack in standing, and I recommend bare feet. If ye get your foot in the path of the saw ’twill rip through a shoe like butter, so shoes afford no protection. Ye’re standing on a slight curve, one foot either side of the saw, so ’tis easier to balance and hang on firm in bare feet. Ye pull equally with both hands-rip! A pit saw is designed for cutting down the grain, so it is not as hard as cutting across the grain. Since no one in London put in any big two-ended cross grain saws, we use axes to fell and then use a rip saw to cut the logs into twelve-foot lengths, which is hideous hard work.”

“Can ye do without the eight-footer?” Richard called.

“Aye, if we have to. Why, Richard?”

“It will take a long time, but I have the instruments to turn a rip saw into a cross cut saw of a sort.”

“Oh, God bless ye!” came the fervent reply. Nat’s voice went back to Bill Blackall. “Sawing is a thinking man’s job,” he said. “If ye learn from how it happens, ye’ll learn to get the most result from the least effort. Only big men have the strength for this, and I warn ye, for the first few days ’twill kill ye.”

“What happens when I get to the support beam?” Blackall asked.

“Ye get help to shift the whole log farther down, which is fairly easy to do once the wedges come off. Then ye wedge it again to keep the sawn section together. And by the time this becomes too hard, ye finish the cut by splitting the rest of the log with a steel wedge and hammer-’tis as straight as a die.”

A good man, Nat Lucas, was Richard’s verdict, patiently filing.

Lucas, who used a hand saw to cut the inch-thick sheets of timber into ten-inch-wide planks and trim the rounded edges off the outside boards, had set himself up with his saw horses beneath the shade of a pine on the margin of the clearing, and was supervising a large number of other men doing the same thing, including Johnny Livingstone and a dozen off Golden Grove. Lieutenant King’s orders were that every possible available person was to lend a hand until Golden Grove’s holds were full, and that made the sawpit the center of all activity for the following fourteen days.

Fourteen days during which Richard saw very little beyond saws, files and the sawdust-smothered figure of the bottom man. At first he had hoped to take a turn on the saw itself, but the pace of work meant that he was always sharpening, hand saws as well as pit saws. How, he wondered, was this relative handful of saws to last until more came from England? Every time a tooth was filed, it lost some of its substance.

He had worked until dusk on that first day, when Joey came to find him and tell him there was food. They all ate around a big fire of pine offcuts, for the moment the sun went down a chill greater than that in Port Jackson at this time of year descended. They were served salt meat and fresh-baked bread (it was only six days old-Norfolk Island had been given no hard bread, only flour) and-wonder of wonders!-uncooked green beans and lettuce. Richard ate ravenously, noticing that the loaves of bread were larger and the portions of salt meat less shriveled than what he would have been served in Port Jackson.

“The Commandant is very fair,” Eddy Garth explained, “so we get the full ration. In Port Jackson the marines short cut the convicts to give themselves more to eat. As on Scarborough.”

“And Alexander.” Richard heaved a sigh of happiness. “I had heard, however, that there were no vegetables here-that the grubs had eaten every last leaf and shoot.”

Garth put an arm around his wife, who leaned against him with obvious content. “ ’Tis true that the grubs eat a great deal, but not everything. The Commandant keeps the women in the patches all day picking the grubs off, and poisons the rats with his port bottles ground to powder in oatmeal-handy for the parrots too.” He put a finger to the side of his nose and grinned. “A great port bibber, Mr. King. Gets through several bottles in a day, so we are never short of ground glass. And the grubs come and go. Here a month or six weeks, gone a month or six weeks. There are two sorts. One likes wet conditions, one likes dry conditions. So whatever the weather does, we have grubs. Malign creatures.” He cleared his throat. “I do not suppose ye have any books?” he asked casually.

“I do indeed, and ye’re welcome to borrow them provided that ye look after them and return them,” said Richard. “I wonder how my belly will take greens after so long? Where are the privies?”

“Quite a distance away, so do not leave your run too late. Mr. King is fussy, insisted they be dug where they cannot contaminate the ground water. Our drinking water comes from up the vale, and it is perfect. No one is allowed to wash in it above the spot from which the water is taken, and the penalty for urinating in the stream is a dozen lashes.”

“Why should one need to urinate in it? There are trees.”

Joey Long, who had eaten earlier because he had to introduce MacGregor to Delphinia, came to show Richard to the privies and then lead him to their house, all by the light of a short piece of pine which ended in a thick knot: the ideal torch.

Richard stared at the interior of the house in amazement.

“It is all ours, yours and mine,” said Joey contentedly. “See? It has a window at either end that can be closed by a shutter. See? The wood is pegged into place. But we only put these shutters up if there is a blow-Nat says it is rare for rain to beat in from east or west. Most rain comes from the north.”

The floor was a carpet of peculiar-twigs? leaves? They looked for all the world like scaly tails about twelve or fifteen inches long, and felt firm yet yielding underfoot. Beneath them was a thin layer of sand, beneath that was bedrock. Against the windowless wall facing the lagoon stood two low wooden double beds furnished with fat mattresses and fat pillows.

“A double bed all to myself, Joey?” Richard lifted the fat mattress to discover that the bed had a lattice of rope supporting it, then realized that both mattress and pillows were stuffed with feathers. “Feathers!” he exclaimed, laughing. “I have died and gone to heaven.”

“This is the sawyer’s house,” Joey explained, delighted to be the fount of knowledge. “The sawyer was a seaman off Sirius and he shared this house with another seaman off Sirius. They were both drowned in the same accident on the reef almost three months ago, so Nat said. As free men they had the time to go out to the little island and kill some sort of bird to stuff their bedding-it takes a thousand birds to fill one mattress and two pillows, so Nat said. We have inherited the house and the beds.” Suddenly he looked downcast. “Though Nat did say that we would have to give them up to Mr. Donovan and Mr. Livingstone as soon as a house is built for Mr. Donovan and Mr. Livingstone. That will happen after Golden Grove sails. For the time being they are staying with Mr. King in Government House. This one is only ten by eight, but Mr. Donovan’s house is to be ten by fifteen. Nat has been the head carpenter, but he is a convict, so Mr. Livingstone will be the head carpenter from now on.”

“I care not if I have this mattress and pillows for one night,” said Richard, “I intend to enjoy them. But first I am going down to the beach to bathe the sweat away. Come on, Joey, you too.”

But Joey dug his heels in and refused to budge, terrified at the idea of venturing even knee-deep into water full of invisible monsters waiting to devour him and MacGregor. Richard went alone.

The sky was cloudless, the stars fantastic. Clothes left on the sand, Richard walked into surprisingly cold water and stood enchanted; every ripple he made created shimmers and tremors of light, so that it seemed he bathed in liquid silver. Oh, what a sea! How many wonders did it hold? On fire from within, for what reason he had no idea. All he could do was enjoy it, watch the water slide off his arms in luminous runnels, shake his hair free of glittering droplets. Beautiful! So beautiful. He felt filled with strength, as if this living sea transmitted its energies into his body through a natural magic.

When he turned to emerge he saw that the island was deceptively low from out in the roads; now that he was on it, its hills reared steeply behind this flat saucer of seashore, and everywhere against the starry sky their contours were outlined in spiky pines. Thousands upon thousands of them.

Once dried off and the sticking sand brushed away, he returned to his house and that big feather bed. Where he lay sybaritically, so comfortable that he could not sleep for many hours. Such still air, so few sounds-a sighing rustle, the occasional squealing cry of a sea bird, the soft whoosh of waves advancing and retreating on the reef. Joey did not snore, nor did MacGregor; at this time just over four years ago he had entered the Bristol Newgate, and not a night since had passed without a symphony of snores, even when he had lain alone with Lizzie Lock, for the snores of the men next door penetrated the sapling wall as if through paper. Until tonight. And he could not sleep for the sheer pleasure of it.

One of King’s original party, Ned Westlake, had sawn with the drowned Westbrook, so there were two teams to spell each other: Blackall and Marriner, Westlake and Humphreys. The record to date, said Westlake, was 898 superficial feet [5] of timber in five days, but there had been only the one team to saw. Though he was not a free man like the drowned Westbrook, Richard had-mostly by residence in the sawyer’s house, saved for Westbrook’s replacement (whom King had assumed would be another free man)-become the head sawyer. His first decision was not popular, but was obeyed; he refused to allow the two teams their elected preference, which was that each team should saw on alternate days.

“If ye do that your muscles will seize up and the pain will be worse,” he said. “Bill Blackall and Will Marriner in the mornings, Ned Westlake and Harry Humphreys in the afternoons. Five hours in any one day are enough in a sawpit. Each of the four of ye will take turns to sharpen with me. In time that will give us all a chance to saw and all a chance to sharpen. Whoever is not sharpening or sawing will take an axe and help Joey strip the bark off the logs. The better we get and the faster we get better, the more privileges we will enjoy. To have a craft or trade is far preferable to being at the beck and call of general labor. If I read Lieutenant King aright, on your days off ye’ll be allowed to saw timber to put up your own houses. Think of that pleasure! A roof and walls ye can call your own.”

By the end of the third day of sawing the pace began to build; by the end of the first week they were sawing 500 superficial feet in a single day, and by the end of the second week that figure had crept to 750. Joey Long was the permanent hand stripping the bark off the logs.

“Well done, everybody!” said Lieutenant King cheerfully to the sawyer teams after Golden Grove sailed on the 28th. “Now we get on and build more houses, as I am informed there will be a great many more people here soon. Sixty at the moment, two hundred by the end of next year-and many more the year after that. His Excellency wants Norfolk Island and Port Jackson to be of equal size.”

King paced from one end of the sawpit to the other, then back to the six assembled men. “I owe ye time off. On Norfolk Island we work Monday to Friday for the Government. Saturdays ye work for yourselves, Sundays ye rest-after divine service, which I take and is compulsory for every last soul here, is that understood? While Golden Grove was loading ye’ve worked for the Government on two Saturdays and two Sundays. Today being Tuesday, no one will work for the Government until next Monday. I advise ye to use some of this time to saw for your own houses-just continue the row eastward. The land behind each house down to the swamp the occupants of that house will use as private vegetable gardens. Cresses grow wonderful well in the swampier bits and the worms cannot eat it, so grow cress, no matter what else ye fancy growing and Stores can give ye.”

His eye lighted on Richard, his head sawyer who was not a free man. “Morgan, I need a report. Walk with me, an ye please.”

He really does have good manners, thought Richard as he strode alongside the Commandant down the pathway which led from the sawpit to Government House and the storage sheds, one of which, he noted, held the coble and an even smaller boat made from the pieces of the old coble which had foundered on the reef and drowned four men. Willy Dring, Joe Robinson, Neddy Smith and Tom Watson-the four young, strong, unattached, sea-mad men-were to man the coble to fish whenever possible.

“I discovered that my house is not situate in the deep soil that abounds here, so I was able to excavate a sort of soft bedrock and make a nice dry cellar. I did the same under Surgeon Jamison’s house, which is now a storehouse-I have shifted him into the vale. The nature of the shore accounts for the fact that all the houses straggle east on this rocky eminence between the straight beach and the swamp-we could fix the support posts in rock,” said Lieutenant King as they passed Government House. “D’ye like fish?” he asked, changing the subject with one of those tangential shifts of thought Richard fancied typical of him.

“Aye, sir.”

“Ye’d think the buggers would be right glad of fresh fish in lieu of salt meat, but most resent it when I issue fresh fish or turtle instead of salt meat. Baffles me, it really does.” He gave a shrug. “So if they are too obstreperous, I lash ’em. Sounds as if I’ll not be lashing you, Morgan.”

Richard grinned. “I would far rather fish than cat, sir. I have not so far been lashed since I was convicted.”

“Aye, that is true of many of ye, I have noted it. Ye did well with the division of labor. One team of sawyers was not enough. What size logs d’ye think the best, given what tools we have?”

“Six-foot diameter at the most, sir, until we are provided with longer pit saws. ’Twould be a help to have a cross cut saw big enough to need two men on it, so I am turning our only eight-foot rip saw into something that will cut across the grain better than the pit saws,” said Richard, very comfortable with this man.

He is as different from Major Ross as chalk is from cheese, yet I managed to get on well with Major Ross too. This man is very paternal and regards us as his family, and that is not in the Major’s nature. But coming to Norfolk Island has served to show me how much the marines in Port Jackson reduced our rations to supplement their own. For which I cannot blame them. The marines are hungry too. Neither Governor Phillip nor Major Ross ever witnessed what Furzer did in Stores, which only goes to show that the bigger Government is, the less Government knows what goes on at the bottom.

Lieutenant King is scrupulous, keeps the weights himself and checks their weight against his standard set. We have had a meal of fresh turtle and several meals of the most delicious fish I have ever tasted. After the first meal of fresh flesh we all felt a thousand times better. Not to mention that there are always greens to eat. No scurvy in Norfolk Island, despite the grubs and the rats. But I can understand the aversion of some men to marine meals-they did not grow up eating fish and deem meat the only acceptable diet. There is also the need in us for salt. According to Cousin James-the-druggist, the more a man sweats, the more he needs salt.

Yes, I am very content to be here. It is kinder than Port Jackson, and there are no natives to fear if one ventures into the wilds. Though the stories around the camp-fire say that the growth of trees and vines is so dense that even Lieutenant King has been hopelessly lost.

“What have ye to report, Morgan?” King asked as they set off across the swamp on a rickety bridge mounted on piers above felled pine logs sunk into the morass, evidently not a very deep morass.

“Only that the sawpit needs a shelter to keep the sawyers out of the sun as well as the rain, and that if ye want to build something needs longer beams than twelve feet without joining, ye’ll have to dig a second pit and make it longer, Mr. King.”

“There was a shelter over the sawpit, but it blew down in a winter gale-they are fierce, I can tell ye. I used its relics to shore up the cellar under my house, but I do realize that we will have to build a new shelter, and quickly. The strength in the sun grows every day.”

They had crossed the swamp to the far shore of a small stream which seemed to terminate in the swamp rather than run through it; King turned left and began to walk up a path through a meandering valley wider in its bottom than any of the clefts between the steep hills coming down to what King had named Sydney Town.

“What of the saws?” King asked.

“I came just in time,” said Richard simply.

“Hmmm. Better then that Major Ross sent you rather than a true sawyer. There was no one here knew more than the rudiments of sharpening. ’Tis cheering to know that ye can convert the eight-footer into a cross cut saw. That will further increase the supply of logs-I note ye’ve gone through the logs already hauled to the pit.”

He stopped just before the vale took a little turn around a bluff coming down from the north. “I call this Arthur’s Vale, for His Excellency’s Christian name. The big island to the south bears his surname-Phillip Island. Cultivation of plants is gradually being shifted from Sydney Town to here because here affords some protection from the south and west winds, and I hope from the east wind as well on the far side of this bluff. Yon hill to the south between Arthur’s Vale and the sea is Mount George, and we are slowly clearing it to plant grain, as also on the hills to the north. We have some wheat and Indian corn in already, and there is barley in the bottom. The new sawpit should go up hereabouts. The present one is too far away, but it can continue to handle twelve-foot logs taken from the hills behind and within Sydney Town itself.”

They had rounded the bluff and looked more or less westward; the ground of the vale descended about twenty feet abruptly, the stream tumbling in a thin cascade down the slope. The Commandant pointed to it. “I intend to dam the stream on that incline, Morgan. There is enough hollow ground above the slope to make a capacious pond of water which we can let out through a sluice to irrigate the Government gardens, which will lie not far below it. One day I hope to install a water-wheel on my dam. At the moment we are confined to hand querns for grinding our grain, but we do possess a proper millstone against the day when we have the power to turn it. Did we have oxen or mules we could turn it now. We could also use men to turn it, but of men we have not sufficient either. One day, one day!” He laughed, waved his arms about. “The granary, as ye saw, is just about finished, but I plan to build a big barn and a yard for the animals here on the south bank of the stream. The salt winds, Morgan, the salt winds! They stunt every sort of living thing save pines, flax and the local trees which grow in their lee. I did find the flax-those fools in Port Jackson did not describe the plant properly, was all. It makes excellent thatch, but we have not managed to make canvas out of it.”

He laughed again, went back to discussing Arthur’s Vale. “Yes, the salt winds. We have to find a better place for the vegetables than a mound looking straight at Phillip Island. I have tried fences to shelter the plants, but they don’t help a bit. Therefore the vegetables will be moved into the vale.”

Then off he went upon some urgent business apparently suddenly recollected, leaving Richard alone halfway up Arthur’s Vale.

The weather was thick and rain threatened; much though he yearned to walk farther up and explore, Richard decided that it was probably prudent to walk back to Sydney Town. In the nick of time: he had no sooner entered his house than it began to pour. Joey came in from their garden in a rush, MacGregor at his heels, and Richard wondered for the first time how he would pass the hours on rainy days until the sawpit received a new roof. Reading was all very well, yet he was getting enough food now to want to expend physical energy. But the rain was warm; he abandoned the hut to Joey, perfectly content to lie on his bed, cuddle the dog and hum tunelessly.

He walked along the hard strand, shoes on-he had been warned that the rock rubble was as sharp as a razor, and had lamed many. The half-circle of Turtle Bay looked as alluring in the rain as it did in the sun, its bottom pure sand, its water crystal, the pines pressing down as far as nurture permitted. He peeled off his drenched clothes and went in to swim, finding the water much warmer in the rain than it was in the sun. Finished, he donned his canvas trowsers together with his shoes, slung his shirt around his shoulders and turned to see if there was any place he might shelter to watch the sea, getting up.

Stephen Donovan had had the same idea; Richard found him in the lee of an outcrop on Point Hunter, where few pines grew, looking down the length of the reef toward the distant out-thrust of Point Ross in the west.

“Did you ever see anything so beautiful?” Stephen asked.

Richard put his shirt on the rock as a cushion and sat with his arms linked about his knees. The rain had cleared for the moment and the wind had veered northward. A great surf thundered in upon the reef, its waves curling over like satin candy rolled around a stick before exploding into walls of white foam. And the wind, blowing briskly in the counter direction, caught the spume and sent it flying backward across the waves in trailing plumes and veils.

“Nay, I do not think I ever have,” he said.

“I keep watching to see Aphrodite born.”

The sky cleared in the south and west just enough to let the sinking sun turn those drifts of spume to gold, then the rain fell again, but gently.

“I am ravished by this place,” said Stephen, sighing.

“Whereas I have spent my time in the bottom of the sawpit with a saw across my knees,” said Richard wryly. “How goes it with you?”

“As superintendent of convict labor, ye mean?”

“Aye.”

“ ’Tis not a wonderful job, Richard. D’ye remember Len Dyer?”

“How could I forget that weasel?”

“He brought things to a head three days ago when he informed me that he was not about to take orders from a shirt-lifting Rome mort turd pusher, and that when he took over the island I would be the first man he would kill. Next to go would be my fancy blond doll, Miss Molly Livingstone. He likes the sound of ‘Rome mort’ best, it seems-he used it more often than he did ‘Miss Molly.’ ”

“He is a Londoner, ’tis the phrase they use most.” Richard turned to stare at him, but Donovan gazed straight ahead. “What happened next, Mr. Donovan?”

“Oh, I wish ye’d call me Stephen! The only one who does is Johnny.” The shoulders lifted, his head hunched into them. “I ordered forty-eight lashes and made Private Heritage lay it on. Luckily for me, Dyer had not endeared himself to Heritage either, so he laid it on hard with the meanest cat. There were mutters from Francis, Peck, Pickett and a few others, but after they saw Dyer’s back they shut up.” His eyes finally slewed to look at Richard, their expression hard. “Ye’d think they would realize a man’s preferring his own gender does not indicate that he is soft or timid, would ye not? But no! Well, I have survived over fifteen years at sea and gained respect, so I am not about to take cheek from the likes of a Len Dyer. As he now understands.”

“I would watch my back if I were you,” said Richard. “The pity of it is that I scarcely know what is going on among those not concerned with the sawpit, but Golden Grove told me that there was something ominous in the air. Just what, I do not know. Nothing was said or done in my vicinity, since I’d kicked them in the cods. Perhaps Dyer was testing the temperature of the water in your vicinity when he spoke insolently. If that was the case, then he now has ye down in his book as”-Richard grinned-“no simpering Rome mort. Sincerely, watch your back.”

Stephen rose to his feet. “Dinner time,” he said, extending a hand to pull Richard up. “If ye hear anything at all, tell me.”

The carpenters were busy building a shelter for the sawpit the next morning, so as soon as he had eaten his leftover bread and a few mouthfuls of cress, Richard set off up Arthur’s Vale, keeping to the north side of the stream. Close to where Lieutenant King had indicated that he intended to build a large barn, a group of convicts were beginning to dig a new sawpit long enough to take a thirty-foot log. All the malcontents were on the job save the temporarily ruined Dyer, Stephen supervising-with two of the new marines off Golden Grove as guards, Richard was pleased to see.

Stephen does not wish more ardently than I do that I could call him by his name, Richard thought as he gave Donovan a wave. But I am a felon and he a free man. It is not fitting.

He continued around the north bluff to where the brook gushed down that slope where King wanted a dam. Standing on top of the rise, he could see why the Commandant considered a dam feasible, for there was indeed a big depression in the ground before the vale widened yet again.

Clearing of the trees had progressed some distance farther on and was creeping up the lower slopes of the hills, quite as steep as those along the back of Sydney Town. When he saw the plantains he recognized them for what they were from drawings in his books, and marveled at their height and maturity-such growth in a mere eight months? No, that was not possible. King had gotten into the vale only recently, which meant that the plantain grew in Norfolk Island naturally. A gift from God: the long bunches of a little green banana were already formed, so in months to come there would be fruit to eat-filling fruit at that.

As the vale narrowed again the clearing stopped abruptly, though a track continued into the forest alongside the stream, which here was some feet deep in places and so clear that Richard could see tiny, almost transparent shrimp swimming in it. Around the dinner camp-fire they had talked of large eels, but these he did not glimpse.

Brilliant green parrots flashed overhead and a weeny fantail fluttered twittering only inches from his face, as if trying to tell him something; it kept him company for at least a hundred yards, still trying to communicate. He thought he saw a quail, and then stumbled upon the most beautiful dove in the world, soft pink-brown and iridescent emerald green. So tame! It simply glanced at him and waddled off, head bobbing, quite indifferently. There were other birds too, one of which looked to be a blackbird save that its head was grey. The air was full of song unlike any he had heard in Port Jackson. Melodic except for the parrots, which screeched.

At no time since his arrival had he been able to stand back and take in the sight of a Norfolk pine, for the simplest of reasons: a lone Norfolk pine did not exist, and King’s clearing technique so far was to denude an area of every tree rather than to leave an odd one standing. He had discovered that the tails carpeting the floor of his hut were the leaves of the pine, if leaves they could be called. On either side of the track was the forest, an impenetrable wilderness he was not tempted to enter, though it bore no resemblance to what his reading had led him to believe was a jungle. Small plants did not exist, starved out by the pines, which grew very close together and must surely produce but few young; some were fifteen and more feet in diameter, most were about the size of the logs he had been sharpening the saws to cut, and a very few only were slender. Their roughish bark was brown with purple in it and they grew amazingly tall before they gave out branches. Occasional leafy green trees were sprinkled among them, but most of the space was taken up by a climbing vine the like of no vine anywhere. Its major trunks were as thick as a man’s thigh, and twisted, turned, ran back upon themselves, soared upward in gnarled humps and knees, were entangled in the thinner parts of the vine’s chaotic randomness. When it encountered a tree small enough to throttle, it did so, or else bent the hapless thing sideways and compelled it to continue its upward course feet from the place where its trunk left the ground.

The valley broadened a little to reveal more plantains having bunches of green fruit and showed him yet another bizarre tree which, like the plantains, confined itself to the watercourse area. This new plant had a round trunk a little like a palm’s-they were there too, with stiff, erect fronds rather than graceful ones-but plated with sharp-ended knobs; at the very top spread a canopy of what could only be fern leaves. A giant fern! A fern that grew as a forty-foot tree!

More birds arrived, among them a small kingfisher in cream, brown and a brilliant, iridescent blue-green exactly the color of the lagoon. The most mysterious bird he did not see until it moved, for it looked like a continuation of the mossy stump upon which it perched. The movement was sudden and startling: Richard jumped involuntarily. The thing was an enormous parrot.

“Hello,” he said. “How are you today?”

It cocked its head to one side and stalked toward him, but he had the wisdom not to hold his hand out; that huge, wicked black beak was powerful enough to take a finger off. Then, it seemed deciding that he was beneath contempt, it disappeared into the ferny or broad-leafed undergrowth along the banks of the brook.

On the way back he noticed a shrub which seemed able to compete with the forest giants, its trunk very smooth and rosy, its leafy branches loaded with bright red berries the size of small plums. Will I, or won’t I? Some weeks before he drowned, the unfortunate sawyer, Westbrook, had eaten a local fruit he mistook for a Windsor bean and nearly died. Richard pressed one of the berries to find it hard and unyielding; whatever it was, it was certainly not yet ripe. Later, he promised himself, I will try just one. I do not believe that eating one of anything can kill.

The sun was westering as he retraced his steps and emerged into Arthur’s Vale; time to join the others and eat. This place is unique, not to be compared with New South Wales in any way whatsoever. Different trees, different soil, different hills, different rocks, and not one single blade of any kind of grass. Perhaps this was God’s first attempt to create land out of the sea? Or perhaps it was His last attempt? If His last, then He gave it no people. Which might lead a man like Jem Thistlethwaite to say that God had come to the conclusion that Man was not a desirable addition to His menagerie.

“Are there any snakes?” he asked Nat Lucas, whom he liked very much, as he did old Dick Widdicombe, full seventy years old-why had London sent aged men to hew out a new place?

“If there are, they have remained invisible,” Nat said. “No one has seen a lizard, a frog or a leech either. Ground animals seem to be absent save for the rat, though it does not look like our rats. The Norfolk Island one is a soft grey with a white belly and is not enormously large.”

“But it eats anything,” said Ned Westlake. “A rat is a rat.”

At dawn on the morrow Richard turned his footsteps eastward, choosing to walk along the sand of Turtle Bay before scrambling up and over to yet another lovely beach, this one unprotected by a reef; here the sand had spread inland upon a raft of petrified logs, and beyond this beach some distance around the shore reared a massive cliff. Yet more pine forest; it truly was everywhere, and always impenetrable. The only way he could proceed was to hug the rocks, a dangerous alternative in the face of a heavy sea. Today, however, was perfect weather, and the brisk breeze blew from the northwest. The tide was on the ebb, so he must make sure that he returned before it reached half-flood. Two little brooks joined forces in a small flat area beyond which the water glowed an ethereal aquamarine. For a short while he tried to climb up the cleft which led to that mighty headland, but gave it up. Not sensible.

So he returned to Turtle Bay to discover two men he had not seen before heaving a gigantic turtle onto its back, where it lay, flippers waving, utterly helpless.

They had to be brothers, and they did not wear the look of men who had spent time in an English prison. Both spare, young, decent-looking; brown of skin, brown of hair, brown of eye.

“Ahah! Ye must be Morgan,” said one. “I am Robert Webb and this is my brother, Thomas. We go by our full names. Help us to tether this beauty-there will be turtle for dinner tomorrow.”

Richard helped tie a rope firmly around the creature’s chest where its flippers would prevent the rope’s sliding off.

“We are the gardeners,” said Robert, who, if he were not the elder, was certainly the spokesman. “I thank ye for bringing us women. Thomas is not keen for a woman, but I was desperate.”

“Whom did ye choose?” asked Richard, wondering why he was to be thanked.

“Beth Henderson, a good woman. Which means Thomas and I have come to the parting of the ways,” said Robert cheerfully, while his brother grimaced. “He has gone to live with Mr. Altree in Arthur’s Vale, where there is much planting going on.”

The turtle was hauled into the water and towed, the men knee-deep, around the point of Turtle Bay. Richard helped the Webbs bring it up the straight beach near the landing place, then left them to return to his hut.

“Lieutenant King was looking for you,” said Joey.

So off Richard went again; he found the Commandant at the site of the second sawpit, excavated in soil and so needing to be shored up with timber.

“There is turtle, sir,” said Richard, saluting.

“Oh, splendid! Dashed good!” King turned to walk off a little way and faced his head sawyer. “I do not allow many turtle to be turned, otherwise there will end in being none,” he said. “Nor do I permit the eggs to be dug out. ’Tis not as turtle-populous as Lord Howe Island to begin with, so why ruin a good thing?”

“Aye, sir.”

Lieutenant King then demonstrated one of the more exasperating facets of his nature: he clean forgot what he had said two days ago when he congratulated his sawing teams and gave them time off until Monday. “Ye’ll be back sawing tomorrow,” he announced, “and I intend to build a third sawpit farther up the vale beyond where the dam will be. That means more sawyers. I understand enough about the work to know that it is exceeding hard and cannot be done by weak men, but I leave it to you to pick out the men ye want, Morgan. Ye can have your choice of any provided they are not carpenters. The old pit’s shelter is up, so ye’ll start sawing there tomorrow-planks for the granary ceiling. And ye’ll continue to do this on Saturday, even though by rights the day should be yours. I need the granary finished, there are crops close to harvesting.” He prepared to go. “Think about whom ye want, Morgan, and let me know on Monday.”

“Aye, sir,” said Richard woodenly.

Two sawpits meant four teams: three sawpits meant six teams. Christ, he would never have a chance to saw! Ned Westlake, Bill Blackall and Harry Humphreys could not seem to learn to use a file properly. The only man who had shown any kind of aptitude was Will Marriner, who would have to be left at the old sawpit to sharpen while he hied himself to Arthur’s Vale. The saws needed touching up every ten to twelve feet along a cut. But who would be willing to saw? Men hated it, did it grudgingly. Weasels like Len Dyer, Tom Jones, Josh Peck and Sam Pickett were impossible. John Rice, one of the originals, had the build for it, but he was the ropemaker and therefore unavailable. John Mortimer and Dick Widdicombe were too old, and Noah Mortimer was an idler, always in trouble for not pulling his weight. If a man disliked physical labor, he was not capable of doing any work without being driven to it, and that was Noah. The very young original, Charlie McClellan, was another such.

Who then off Golden Grove? John Anderson, yes. Sam Hussey, yes. Jim Richardson, yes. Willy Thompson, yes. But that was the end of the supply. Richardson, who had taken up with Susannah Trippett, would manage the job with equanimity, if not enthusiasm. Hussey and Thompson were peculiarities, already busy building themselves huts of their own because they could not bear company; they both reminded Richard of Taffy Edmunds. As for Anderson-he was an unknown quantity. At divine service on Sunday at eleven in the morning, Richard thanked God for his convict status: it would never be in his province to order a man flogged. He had to find other ways to ensure that his sawyers worked, chiefly by pairing one good man with one doubtful one. Never two doubtfuls together.

“Four teams are as many as I can scrape up,” he informed Stephen when they met at Turtle Bay for a swim on Sunday evening. “I am doomed to sharpen forever, it seems. Such a simple job, ye’d think, Mr. Donovan, and yet most men lack the-the idea of it. They take no care to set the teeth at the right bevel, nor do they have the eyes in the tips of their fingers a man must have. Oh, I wish I had Taffy Edmunds! Not only can he sharpen as well as I, but he would like it here.”

“More are coming, so I understand, though Supply cannot carry many at once. And, since they are finding some trees they can cut in Port Jackson, I fear ye won’t see Taffy landed here in a hurry. Richardson is a good, strong fellow, he will work out, I think. Who knows? Perhaps one of this second four will turn out to have a talent for sharpening. Though why, Richard, ye should want to saw yourself baffles me,” said Stephen.

“Because to the men who saw, my job is child’s play. I sit cross-legged like a tailor and appear to be doing nothing. One reason why I put them all to it, and will go on putting them to it. Each of them knows that if he should prove good at sharpening, he has a comfortable job. When they fail, at least they know that sharpening is a job of patience and skill.”

Stephen lay back on the sand and stretched voluptuously. “Ye would think,” he said, “that Johnny, being a seaman, would be down here with us. But no, he would rather be outside our house, planing or polishing some fancy piece of wood. He will have finished the balusters for Port Jackson’s Government House by the time Supply returns, whenever that might be. How isolated we are! More than a thousand miles across an empty ocean to the only other place an Englishman can be found. I feel it every time I look at the horizon. This isle is a gigantic ship at anchor in the midst of a nowhere, surrounded by infinity. It is completely its own entity.”

Richard rolled over to dry his back. “I do not feel that this isle is small, though I agree about the isolation. To me, Norfolk Island seems quite as large as New South Wales. Here lies a certain privacy. I do not feel as if I am a prisoner, whereas everything at Port Jackson reminded me I was a prisoner.”

“More officials,” said Stephen dryly.

“Is your Johnny getting on with the carpenters?”

“Oh, yes. Mostly thanks to the fact that he sticks to his lathe and has more sense than to tell Nat Lucas how to do his job or how to make sure the others do their jobs. ’Tis I suffer.”

“Just watch your back-I have a feeling.”

“D’ye want me to pull your four new sawyers out of the gang?”

“It has to be either you or Lieutenant King. Whoever.”

“I will do it. King is a will o’ the wisp-he darts here, there and everywhere. Always starting new things before the old are done, and never stopping to remember that he has too few hands to do what has been started, let alone deal with new work as well. That is why I insisted that he finish the granary before he lifts a finger to build the barn or the dam. In the midst of which he wants more houses built, if you please! But then, he has never served on any but big ships, wherein more hands run around than are necessary save in a battle or a blow.”

“Which reminds me, Mr. Donovan. Joey and I are sleeping in double beds with feather mattresses and feather pillows. By rights they belong to you and Mr. Livingstone.”

That provoked gales of laughter. “Keep them, ye hedonists! Neither Johnny nor I would sleep in anything other than a hammock.” He looked at Richard with a derisive gleam in his fine blue eyes. “When men make love, Richard, they do not need to have a big bed. ’Tis women like comfort.”

Richard took Ned Westlake and Harry Humphreys with him to the new sawpit in Arthur’s Vale together with Jim Richardson and Juno Anderson, as this John called himself.

Naturally the pace slowed greatly, much to Lieutenant King’s displeasure. “It has taken ye five days to produce but seven hundred and ninety-one feet of timber!” he said to Richard indignantly.

“I know, sir, but two of the four teams are new to the work and the other two are busy instructing,” Richard explained respectfully but firmly. “Ye must expect less wood for a while.” He drew a deep breath and decided to say it all. “Also, sir, ye cannot expect the sawing teams or me to strip bark as well. The old sawpit has Joseph Long permanently stripping and one of the others assisting him, whereas the new sawpit has no regular hand preparing the logs. I am sharpening, and I have no time to do aught else because I have to do the big sets for Marriner as well as keep my men going here. Is it not possible for those who fell the trees to debark them the moment they are down? The longer the bark stays on, the more risk there is of the beetle which eats the wood getting into it. And there should be one man felling who has the skill to look at each tree before it is felled to assess its sawing worth. Half the logs we receive are of no use, but by the time we can look at them ourselves, the men who have hauled them to the sawpit have vanished. So we have to waste our valuable time shifting them to the burning heap.”

Oh, the Lieutenant did not like that speech! His face was frowning direfully before half of it was said. In which case, thought Richard, holding those angry hazel eyes without flinching, I am in for a flogging for insolence. Yet better now than later, when the situation grows worse because he decides on a third pit, leaving us with only one spare saw now that I have amended the eight-footer into a cross-cut tool.

“We shall see,” said King eventually, and marched off in the direction of the carpenters and his new granary. Every inch of his retreating form radiated offended feelings.

“What,” asked King of Stephen Donovan over lunch in Government House, “d’ye make of the supervisor of sawyers?”

The very pregnant Ann Innet did not sit with them to eat, just brought the food and disappeared. The port decanter was half-empty and would be a marine before lunch was over; the Commandant was always more mellow in the afternoons than in the mornings, a fact Richard Morgan was unaware of. Port was King’s besetting sin; never a day went by that he did not get through at least two bottles of it. No keg port for Philip Gidley King! He liked the best, which came already bottled and was laid down carefully for at least a month before he personally decanted each bottle.

“Richard Morgan, ye mean?”

“Aye, Morgan. Major Ross said he would be an asset, but I am not so sure. The fellow had the effrontery to stand up to me this morning-virtually told me I am going about things the wrong way!”

“Yes, Morgan has the sinew to do that-but not, I hazard a guess, in an insolent fashion. He was on Alexander and proved of great service in the matter of Alexander’s bilge pumps-d’ye not remember coming aboard her shortly before we reached Rio? ’Twas Morgan said flatly that only chain pumps could remedy the problem.”

“Gammon!” snapped King, blinking in amazement. “Utter gammon! I recommended chain pumps!”

“Ye did indeed, sir, but Morgan was before ye. Had Morgan not convinced Major Ross and Surgeon-General White that hard measures were necessary, ye would never have been summoned to Alexander,” said Stephen valiantly.

“Oh. Oh, I see. But that does not alter the fact that Morgan exceeded his authority this morning,” King maintained stubbornly. “It is not his place to criticize my arrangements. I ought to have him flogged.”

“Why flog a useful and hardworking man because he has a head on his shoulders?” Stephen asked, leaning back easily and declining the port. Another glass of it and King would be more malleable. “Ye know he has a head on his shoulders, Mr. King. His intention was not insolent-he is a man cares about his work, is all. He wants to produce more,” Stephen labored.

The Commandant looked unconvinced.

“Sir, be fair! If I had suggested the changes-what precisely were they, may I ask?”

“That no one is inspecting the trees before they are hauled to the pits-that no one is stripping the logs of their bark-that stripping ought to be done when the trees are felled-that the sawyers waste too much time dragging unusable logs to the burning heap-and so on, and so forth.”

Sip away, Lieutenant King, sip away. Stephen said nothing as his superior sipped away. Finally, one glass of port later, he held out his hand and looked imploring. “Mr. King, if I had said what Morgan did, would ye not have listened?”

“The simple fact is, Mr. Donovan, that ye did not.”

“Because I am elsewhere and ye have a supervisor of sawyers-Morgan! They are all sensible observations and all designed to see more timber sawn. Why put wagon harness on your saddle horses, sir? Ye have an excellent team of woodworkers and carpenters, and I note ye display no aversion to listening to whatever Nat Lucas has to say. Well, in Richard Morgan ye have another Nat Lucas. If I were you, I would use his talents. His sentence finishes in two years. Were he to develop a fondness for this place, ye’d have some continuance, as with Lucas.”

And that, Stephen Donovan decided, was enough on the subject. The petulance was leaving King’s face, and he did have many good qualities. A pity that he so disliked being told where he had gone wrong by a convict.

By the end of November the humidity was such that the hours of labor were changed. Work commenced at dawn and continued until half past seven, when everyone had half an hour for breakfast; at eleven in the morning work ceased and did not resume until half past two, then ended at sunset. And the first harvest came in, an acre of barley which yielded 80 gallons of valuable seed despite the grubs and rats. This was followed by 3 quarts of wheat from the 260 ears the grubs and rats had not destroyed; could the pests only be controlled, this magnificent soil could grow anything.

The little red plums-cherry guavas-had ripened and were so delicious that the temptation to eat too many was hard to resist; resigned to gluttony, Surgeon Jamison declared that no free man or felon would be let off work because of diarrhoea. The bananas were ripe too. Catches of fish came in on occasions Richard looked forward to very much. In this taste he had few companions-and quite a lot more fish than he was entitled to. He had discovered that the fish lasted another day if it were submerged in a cold and shady current of salt water, so was happy to trade his next day’s ration of salt meat for someone else’s despised fish. Such delicious fish! Not unlike a snapper, it could be grilled in a fire and eaten down to the very few bones. Shark was good eating, so too were the hundred-pound ugly monsters which lurked in reef crannies, and a local kingfish that grew to a length of eight feet. The only trouble was that the fish were capricious; on some days the coble would come in with a hundred, on other days with none.

Toward Christmas, Lieutenant King decided to send Assistant Surgeon John Turnpenny Altree, Thomas Webb and Juno Anderson to live permanently at Ball Bay, a stony beach on the eastern side of the island wherein Supply was occasionally forced to anchor. His intention was that the three men should clear and keep clear a channel through the round, kettle-sized rocks so that a ship’s boat could land; the basalt boulders stove a boat’s keel in. This decision of King’s was one which provoked covert winks and smirks all round. Altree, a strange and ineffectual man who had not been able to face doctoring the female convicts of Lady Penrhyn, avoided women as if they carried plague. Wherever he went, so too would Thomas Webb go, eased out of his brother’s life by Beth Henderson and fled to Altree for succor. Delighted at the prospect of abandoning his wife and his job as a sawyer, Juno Anderson went to dance attendance on the two free custodians of Ball Bay. It was no more than a mile away, but was so cut off by the forest that Joe Robinson, trying to find his way back to Sydney Town, was lost for two nights. A path to Ball Bay was therefore mandatory, though no trees were felled to make it. The massively thick, strangulating vine between the pines was easily severed by one blow from an axe, and its bark, the path hewers discovered, made quite good twine provided the lengths were kept short.

Richard was now down two sawyers, and of prospective sawyers there were none until Supply returned-if Supply ever did. Jim Richardson had ventured out on a Sunday in quest of bananas and broken his leg so badly that it would be months healing; he would never saw again. And Juno Anderson was no loss, a sentiment his wife echoed heartily.

This meant that Richard would have to saw himself; the three-and-a-half-hour midday break would have to be spent sharpening, as would every other second of spare time. But who as a partner?

“Needs must,” said the Commandant, having long since recovered from his miff at Morgan’s presumption. “I shall ask Private Wigfall if he would care to make an additional wage as a sawyer. He has the body and stature of a boxer.”

“A good choice, sir,” said Richard, then pretended to be horrified. “What if Private Wigfall cannot saw straight and has to be the bottom man? It is not seemly for a convict to give a marine free man a face full of sawdust.”

“He can wear a hat,” said King blithely, and hurried off.

Luckily Private William Wigfall was a typical large and burly fellow: habitually phlegmatic, impossible to rile. He hailed from Sheffield and owned no close friends among his tiny detachment.

“My friends all remained at Port Jackson,” he said to Richard. “Honestly, I am right glad for the chance to get away from this lot, not to mention that I will earn more for sawing than I do for being a marine. I will be able to retire earlier. ’Tis my ambition to buy an acre of good ground with a nice little cottage on it somewhere near Sheffield. If I work my passage home as a sailor I will have even more money.”

“D’ye mind if I try being the man on top of the log first?” asked Richard. “My eye is very straight, so I am curious to see if that holds true when I am sawing. Besides, being bottom man is easier on the muscles. Unfortunately ye will not be able to wear a hat-ye have to stand too close to the saw. I will yell as I begin my pull to give ye the chance to look down.”

His eye proved straight; Wigfall’s did not. The work was every bit as grueling as Richard had thought, but Wigfall turned out to be a magnificent partner, capable of a tremendous pull downward. But I could never have done this in Port Jackson on those miserable rations. Here, between the fish, the occasional turtle and the masses of green vegetables and turnips-not to mention the better bread-I can saw without losing more weight than I can afford. For a man of forty, I am in far better condition than Lieutenant King is at a mere thirty.

At Christmastide the Commandant killed a large pig just for his convict family, so on that dark and windy day the porker was spitted over a fire of smoldering coals and roasted until its skin crackled and bubbled up crisply; each man and woman got a double portion, there were scarce potatoes to go with it, and a half-pint of rum to wash the meal down. This was the first roast meat that Richard had eaten since his days at the Cooper’s Arms-incredibly delicious! As were the potatoes. Dear Lord, he prayed that night as he tumbled into his feather bed, I am so very grateful. Only those who have truly wanted can ever enjoy simple plenty.

For the next few days it rained and blew too hard for outside work, though, as both sawpits were sheltered, the sawyers continued to cut logs into planks, scantlings and beams; Government House was receiving some additions, Stephen Donovan was getting a new house in close proximity to the Commandant’s, and all the sawyers were allowed to cut timber to build themselves private dwellings. Nor was Richard, already possessed of a good house, unwilling to saw for his teams’ houses.

New Year of 1789 dawned clear and fine; the convicts were given a half-day off work and a quarter-pint of rum. Thanks to the subtle and unobtrusive exertions of his supervisors, Lieutenant King was settling into something vaguely like a routine-please, sir, if we finish what we have started, it will mean we can devote all our attention to the new work in its turn…

King’s joy overflowed when his healthy son by Ann Innet was born eight days into 1789. As the only person who conducted religious worship, King baptized the boy himself and christened him “Norfolk.”

“Norfolk King has a pleasing sound,” said Stephen to Richard on the sand at Turtle Bay. “I am delighted for him. He needs to have a family, though ’twill not help his naval career to marry Mistress Innet. But a more doting father would be hard to imagine. Things will go hard for him when comes the time he must leave for England-what to do with a much-loved bastard, not to mention the mother? He is very fond of her.”

“He will solve all his dilemmas,” said Richard tranquilly. “A flightier commanding officer would be hard to find, but he lacks neither honor nor a sense of responsibility. There are some things he cannot deal with happily-routine, for one-and he has a hot temper. Witness Mary Gamble.”

Mary Gamble provoked that hot temper when she threw an axe at a boar and severely wounded it. Furious at the near-demise of this immensely valuable animal, King refused to listen to her frenzied explanation that the boar had charged her and she had thrown the axe in self-defense. Before his temper cooled he levied the atrocious number of a dozen-dozen lashes at the cart’s tail upon her. Once calm returned, he was aghast-strip that gallant creature to the waist before men like Dyer and give her 144 licks of the cat, even the kindest cat among the assortment? Oh, Christ, he could not do it! What if the boar had indeed charged her? The axe she had by right, as she was one of the women deputed to debark pine logs. Oh, Jesus! He had never ordered half that many lashes for a man! What a pickle! So he summoned Mary Gamble to Government House and announced in lordly tones that he forgave her.

His conduct of this debacle told a few of the convicts that he was stupid, soft-hearted and weak; certain plans already in train were advanced in time because it was so obvious that King had neither the stomach nor the kidney for harsh action.

Robert Webb the gardener came to see him urgently. “Sir, there is a plot afoot,” he said.

“A plot?” King asked blankly.

“Aye, sir. A great many of the felons plan to take you, Mr. Donovan, the other free men and all the marines prisoner. They are then going to wait for the next ship, take her, and sail her to Otaheite.”

The Commandant’s face paled from brown to dirty white; he stared at Webb incredulously. “Jesus Christ! Who, Robert, who?”

“From what I was told, sir, all but three of the convicts off Golden Grove, and”-he swallowed, blinked away tears-“a few of our original party.”

“How quickly the rot sets in, Robert,” King said slowly. “If just one fresh intake of felons has caused this, what is going to happen when His Excellency sends hundreds more?” He passed his hand across his eyes to brush away moisture. “Oh, I am hurt! A few of our originals… How could they be so foolish? Noah Mortimer and that silly youth Charlie McClellan are the originals, I imagine.” He set his shoulders and squared his jaw. “How did ye discover this?”

“My woman told me, sir-Beth Henderson. William Francis got her on her own and asked her to see if I would be in it. She pretended to agree to persuade me to be in it, then told me.”

The sweat was running into his eyes; high summer at these latitudes made the uniform of a naval lieutenant-and a commandant at that, doomed always to be in uniform-a torment to wear. “Who off Golden Grove are the three not involved?” he asked, voice thin.

“The Catholic, John Bryant. The sawyer Richard Morgan and his simple hut companion, Joseph Long,” said Webb.

“Well, of the latter pair, one is too busy at the sawpits and the other, as ye say, is a simpleton. ’Tis the Catholic Bryant I will learn from, he works with them. Go to his hut from here and fetch him to me as quietly as ye can, Robert. This being a Saturday, Sydney Town is fairly deserted-they all like to think I do not notice that they have vanished into Arthur’s Vale. Also ask Mr. Donovan to report to me immediately.”

Lieutenant King’s talents shone at full brilliance in dealing with concrete peril; it was all over and done with before one of the ringleaders knew he had been detected.

Armed with their rusted muskets, the marines took the dangerous men into custody-William Francis, Samuel Pickett, Joshua Peck, Thomas Watson, Leonard Dyer, James Davis, Noah Mortimer and Charles McClellan. Exhaustive examination winnowed out the real villains; though almost every convict on the island had indicated a wish to be in the coup provided it succeeded, only a handful were actively involved. Francis and Pickett were put into double irons and confined in the stoutest storehouse; Watson and Mortimer were fettered and released until Monday’s full enquiry brought the whole story out.

A startled Richard Morgan was told to walk at once to Ball Bay and fetch its three custodians into the Sydney Town fold, while King arranged his scant supply of free men and marines around his end of the beach and the convicts were ordered on pain of being shot to remain in their huts.

“And as if that were not enough,” said King to Donovan in huge indignation, “Corporal Gowen found Thompson pilfering Indian corn in the vale! From which, given what Robert and Bryant have told me, I gather that men like Thompson thought the island would be taken over by Francis before I could flog him for theft. He is mistaken.”

“They should have waited until Supply was in the roads and our attention was taken up in that direction,” said Stephen thoughtfully, too tactful to add that King’s conduct in the Mary Gamble business was the reason for the plot’s advancement in time. “What of the women, sir?”

King shrugged. “Women are women. They are neither the cause nor the trouble.”

“Whom will ye punish?”

“As few as I can,” King said, looking worried. “Otherwise I stand no hope to keep control of Norfolk Island, ye must surely see that, Mr. Donovan. Hardly a musket fires and there are many more of them than of us. But most of them are sheep, they need leaders. That is our salvation provided that I do not punish the sheep. I will have to wait until Supply comes, send word to Port Jackson on her, and then wait for her to return before I will be able to ship the ringleaders to stand trial in Port Jackson.”

“Why,” asked Stephen dreamily, “do I have a feeling that ye’ll not solve Norfolk Island’s difficulties by shipping them to Port Jackson and the Governor’s justice?”

King’s eyes flashed angrily. “Because,” he said grimly, “I am well aware that most of those on Golden Grove were sent here to rid Port Jackson of them. His Excellency will not want them back, especially branded as mutineers. He would have to hang them, and he is not a man likes to see others at the end of a rope. If he is forced to hang, he would rather that the crime was committed under the gaze of those around him, not a thousand miles away in a place he has been using as an example of felicitous success. Norfolk Island is too isolated to prosper under a system which delegates the real authority to men who are not here, to men who are more than a thousand miles away. The Government in Norfolk Island ought to have authority over Norfolk Island’s affairs. But I am strapped. I must first wait months, then no doubt will not get answers which improve Norfolk Island’s lot.”

“Just so,” sighed Stephen. “It is a cleft stick.” He leaned forward eagerly. “Sir, ye have a master gunsmith right here in the island who was not implicated in the plot-Morgan the sawyer. May I humbly request that ye set him at once to fixing our firearms? Then on every Saturday morning the free men, marines and Morgan will shoot for two hours. I will undertake to set up a proving butt beyond the eastern end of Sydney Town, and also undertake the supervision of firing practice. Provided that ye give me Morgan.”

“An excellent idea! See to it, Mr. Donovan.” The Commandant grunted. “If, as I expect, His Excellency does not want any of our mutineers sent to trial in Port Jackson, then he will have to send me a bigger detachment of marines under the command of a proper officer, not a mere sergeant. And I want some cannons. Plus powder, shot and cartridges aplenty for the muskets.” He looked brisk. “I shall draft a letter this instant. And from now on, Superintendent of Convicts, ye will see a stricter discipline enforced. If flogging is what they want, then flogging is what they will get. I am hurt! Wounded to the quick! My happy little family has serpents in its midst, with many more serpents to come.”

It was John Bryant the fanatically devout Catholic who bore the brunt of convict resentment once the hearing of testimony was over. His evidence was all the more damning because he also told of a plan aboard Golden Grove to take her over-a plan foiled when he informed Captain Sharp. The blame for the Norfolk Island revolt fell upon William Francis and Samuel Pickett, who were to be kept permanently in double irons and permanently locked up. Noah Mortimer and Thomas Watson were put in light fetters at the Commandant’s pleasure, and the rest of those questioned were dismissed.

The most tragic consequence of the January plot concerned the beauty of tiny Sydney Town, graced by the presence of tall pines and leafy “white oaks.” Lieutenant King took every last tree away, even cleared lower vegetation; a marine could stand at either end of the settlement and see any coming and going between the huts, even after dark. Tom Jones, an intimate of Len Dyer’s, received 36 lashes from the meanest cat for contemptuous sexual references aimed at Stephen Donovan and Surgeon Thomas Jamison.

“The climate has changed,” said Richard to Stephen as they dealt with muskets preparatory to the first shooting practice, “and it saddens me. I like this little place, could be happy here were it not for other men. But I do not want to live in this village any longer. The trees are gone and so is the privacy-a man cannot piss without a dozen others watching. I want to be somewhere on my own so that I can mind my own business and confine my contacts with my fellow convicts to the sawpits.”

Stephen blinked. “D’ye dislike them so much, Richard?”

“I like some of them very well. It is the villains always spoil things-and for what? Can they never learn? Take poor Bryant. They have vowed to get him, you know, and they will.”

“As Superintendent of Convicts I will exert every effort to make sure they do not get him. Bryant has a very nice little wife and they love each other madly. Were anything to happen to him, she would become a lost soul.”

1789 was not coming in well. There had been intermittent rain and gales which ruined the rest of the barley, spoiled some casks of flour, made fishing impossible on most days, and life in the denuded collection of wooden huts a jeremiad of wet clothes, damp bedding, mold on precious books and precious shoes, summer colds, sick headaches and painful bones. Halfway through February the Commandant released Francis and Pickett from their storehouse and returned them to their huts free of manacles but heavily ironed on their legs. Of Supply there was no sign; the last ship to call had been Golden Grove, and that was now four months ago. Were they never going to see another ship? Had something happened to Supply? To Port Jackson?

Everybody was grumpy thanks to the foul weather, none grumpier than the Commandant, who was engineer enough to realize that he did not dare commence building a dam in the midst of such downpours, and had a crying baby in the house. Most of the work had to be postponed and too many people had little to do beyond grumble. The only truly happy persons were the three men at Ball Bay, snug under the pine trees in a good house, well provisioned, and able to rock fish no matter how hard it rained.

Even so, the 26th of February came as a mighty shock. Dawn arrived with high winds just to the south of east and seas so high that the surf broke all the way into the beaches of the lagoon. To Stephen and Richard, who walked as far out on Point Hunter as they dared, the sight of the coastline to the west was a terrifying vista of white water crashing down so hard and high against the cliffs that the spray soared up over 300 feet and blew inland as far as the mountain four miles away.

“God help us, we are in for the father of all gales!” Stephen shouted. “We had best be sure they are battening down the hatches!”

By the time they fought their way around Turtle Bay and turned to look back, not only had lofty Phillip Island disappeared; so also had Nepean Island, close in shore. The world was a seething mass of waves as big as those in the southern ocean on the voyage from the Cape of Good Hope, and the wind continued to rise even as it swung to the southeast, throwing the whole force of sea and sky straight at the settlement. Bent double in the blast, people were shooing pigs and poultry into the storehouses and huts, piling logs against their doors and climbing inside through their windows.

So huge were the noises of howling wind and thundering water that neither Richard nor Stephen noticed the shrieking groan of a 180-foot pine behind Turtle Bay as it lifted itself piecemeal out of the ground; they simply saw it fly, its massive roots and tapering top giving it the look of an arrow, thirty feet up in the air back toward the hills. More pines followed it, the bombardment of a fortress by an army of giants, the wind their bows, the pine trees their arrows, the white oaks their grapples.

Stephen struggled on down the row of huts making sure that all the hatches were battened; finding his own house door already bolstered by a pine log, Richard elected to stay outside, thankful that Joey and MacGregor were safe. As far as his own skin was concerned, he would far rather be out than in, blinded to his fate-horrifying thought! He sat on the ground with his back to the lee wall and the log to witness the cataclysm, massive pines and huge old white oaks flying to crash into the swamp, the hillsides, the lashing spray.

Then the rain came, so horizontal that Richard remained dry even as he looked upon the deluge. Thatched roofs farther down were lifting to blow away like umbrellas, but the vastest winds seemed to be thirty feet above the ground, which was what saved the settlement. That, and its lack of trees. Had Lieutenant King not ordered total visibility, the huts, store sheds and houses would have been buried together with those inside them.

It started at eight in the morning; it began to blow itself out at four in the afternoon. The huts in this middle section where Richard and Joey lived kept their roofs, as did the bigger houses, all shingled rather than thatched with flax.

But not until the next day-innocently balmy, the breeze a zephyr-did the sixty-four people of Norfolk Island see what havoc the hurricane had wreaked. Where the swamp had been was a tumbling river lapping around the flanks of the old garden hill; the ground everywhere was feet deep in pine branches, pine tails, bushes, sand, coral chunks, leaves; and the windward sides of the buildings were smothered in debris so blasted into the wood that it needed great effort to pull the debris off. There were literal fields of felled pines, their root systems so mighty, their tap roots so long, that imagination foundered at gauging the strength of those winds. Where they had grown were craters many feet deep, and looking up to where the forest had not yet been touched by any axe, the pine casualties were as numerous. Many hundreds of trees had come down just within sight of Sydney Town; three acres of recently cleared ground on the far side of the swamp were solidly covered with pines. Not fifty men cutting down trees every day for a month could have produced so much timber.

“This cannot be anything but a true freak of nature,” Lieutenant King said cheerily to his assembled family, even its serpents in a chastened mood. “Nowhere that I have been on this island have I seen any evidence that a hurricane like this has ever struck before, at least in the however many hundreds of years it takes for the pines to grow to two hundred feet. It has simply never happened.” His expression changed to something approaching a Wesleyan preacher in full fire-and-brimstone spate. “Why did it happen in this year? Those of ye who have transgressed should examine your souls. This is God’s work! God’s work! And if it is God’s work, ask yourselves why He has sent this visitation upon the first men ever to inhabit one of His most precious jewels? Pray for forgiveness, and do not transgress again! Next time God might choose to open up the earth and swallow ye whole!”

Brave words which actually sank in for several weeks after the event; then, as is the wont of men, the lesson was forgotten.

Lieutenant King had cause to wonder if perhaps his own hot temper was a contributing factor toward God’s tantrum; a tree killed his privately owned sow and her litter of piglets.

That the devastation was island-wide was evident in the logs and branches which dammed up the stream in Arthur’s Vale, carried down from the hills during the torrents of rain. Spring cleaning took days for the men, weeks for the women, who bore the brunt of it, and it was a full month before the lagoon turned from the red of washed-away soil to its customary aquamarine.

But when Supply arrived in the roads on the 2nd of March, Richard and his sawyers went back to work in the sawpits. The New South Wales settlement was still hungry for planks, scantlings and beams, not to mention ship’s spars. At least no one had to ply an axe; the timber was already on the ground, though of course much of it was old and rotten.

Among others, Supply brought an experienced sawyer, William Holmes-why did they have to be Williams? After the trees at Port Jackson, Holmes said, Norfolk Island’s pines were a mere nothing.

Aware that the Commandant was lusting after a third sawpit, Richard told Holmes to find three other men from among Supply’s new infusion of convict blood and take over the sawpit on the beach. A good man; he brought his wife, Rebecca, with him, and the pair settled quickly into community life. That left Bill Blackall and Will Marriner in charge of the Arthur’s Vale sawpit; while I, said Richard to himself with iron determination, take Private Wigfall, Sam Hussey and Harry Humphreys to the new third pit farther up the vale. It will be far more peaceful and I will ask Lieutenant King if I may build myself a good house nearby. Joey Long must fend for himself. All I will take are my books, my bed and feather bedding, half of our blankets and my own belongings. And one of MacGregor’s pups, since Mr. King is allowing Joey to take two of Delphinia’s five, the males. A good ratter up the vale will be a blessing.

All of these resolutions came to pass. They were a grief to Stephen Donovan only, who did not see as much of Richard as he had when it was a simple matter of calling in at his door on the way to Turtle Bay for a swim.

Lieutenant John Cresswell and a detachment of 14 more marines arrived with winter; the work force was now formidable enough and the policing of it strict enough to see the bulk of the Commandant’s most cherished schemes come to pass, including his dam. Richard’s house was several hundred yards above it, almost at the point where the forest commenced. Peaceful.

Paths suddenly loomed high on Lieutenant King’s agenda. One such path was cut all the way across the island-three miles-to the leeward side at Cascade Bay, so called because the most spectacular of the many small waterfalls tumbled down a cliff there to cascade into the sea. A jagged but platformish outcrop of rock just offshore made landing there feasible when Sydney Bay’s prevailing winds prevented any thought of landing across the reef. The Cascade path was also necessary because most of the best flax grew around Cascade, and Lieutenant King resolved to set up his canvas-from-flax industry in a tiny new settlement not far above the landing place he would call Phillipburgh.

Richard went into Sydney Town but rarely, for it was rapidly mushrooming into an actual street of huts and houses. Save for attending divine service each Sunday and collecting his rations, he had no need to visit the place. MacTavish was every bit as good a watchdog as his father, and all the company Richard wanted save for Stephen, who had become so firmly “Stephen” in his mind that it was increasingly hard to remember that he was “Mr. Donovan.”

His house was ten by fifteen feet, had several big window apertures to let in plenty of light, and Johnny Livingstone had made him a table and two chairs. His roof was thatched with flax, but he had been promised shingles before the end of the year. It had a wooden floor some inches off the ground and foundations of round pine logs; the pine rotted quickly once embedded in soil, so this method of construction enabled him to ease out a rotting foundation post without dismantling the house, which was lined with thin pine boards of the most attractive kind because the Commandant had inexplicably taken against this particular grain-the wood owned a rippling pattern which reminded Richard of sunlight on calm water. Privately he wondered whether the ripples were evidence of the way the pine compensated for the perpetual winds; no one knew of any other tree anywhere which could grow absolutely straight in the teeth of a high prevailing wind, yet the Norfolk pine did, even on the most exposed clifftops. After that colossal hurricane all the young trees had bent over to touch the ground or snapped their tops off, but within two months the bent ones were ramrod straight again and the snapped ones sprouting two separate tops.

Burglaries had increased now that the population stood at 100 souls, but thieves left Richard Morgan severely alone. Anyone who had watched him pull the fourteen-foot saw through three full feet, the muscles of his naked back and chest moving beneath the brown skin, decided that he was not a man to offend. He was, besides, a notorious loner. The community’s loners, of whom there were a number, were viewed with a superstitious shiver of fear; there had to be something mentally wrong with a man who preferred his own company, who did not need to see himself reflected in somebody else’s eyes or hear himself praised, drawn into an entity larger than he was. Which suited Richard perfectly. If people thought him dangerously strange, all the better. What surprised him was that more men did not elect to become loners after years of being jammed cheek by jowl with others. Solitude was not only bliss, it was also a healing process.

The hard core of January’s mutineers got John Bryant at last midway through winter. Francis, Pickett, Watson, Peck and others off Golden Grove were cutting timber on Mount George when-who knew how, who knew why?-Bryant stumbled into the path of a falling pine. His head crushed, he died two hours later and was buried on the same day. Half crazed with grief, his widow wandered Sydney Town keening and moaning like an Irishwoman who spoke no English.

“The mood is very nasty,” Stephen said as he walked back to Richard’s house after the funeral.

“It had to happen” was all Richard said.

“That poor, wretched woman! And no priest to bury him.”

“God will not care.”

“God does not care!” Stephen snapped savagely. He entered the house without needing to bend, noting its scrupulous tidiness, the lined walls and ceiling, and the fact that Richard was slowly polishing them. “Christ,” he said, sagging onto a chair, “this is one of the very rare days in my life when I could do with a beaker of rum. I feel as if I am to blame for Bryant’s death.”

“It had to happen,” Richard repeated.

MacTavish, in whom the Scotch terrier line had run true, leaped into Richard’s arms without making a nuisance of himself in the usual manner of a young dog; he has trained it, Stephen thought, with the same thoroughness he devotes to everything. How does he manage to look exactly as he did when I first met him? Why have the rest of us aged and hardened while he has preserved intact every iota that he always was? Only more so. Much more so.

“If ye get me a few stalks of the sugar cane running riot,” said Richard, gently thumping the dog’s lower spine with the flat of his hand, “in two years I will give ye all the rum ye can drink.”

“What?”

“Oh, plus two copper kettles, some copper sheet, a few lengths of copper tubing and some casks cut in half,” Richard went on with a smile. “I can distill, Mr. Donovan. ’Tis another of my hidden talents.”

“Christ, Richard, ye’re a commandant’s dream! And for the love of God, will you please call me Stephen? I am so tired of this lopsided friendship! Surely after so many years it is time ye gave in, convict though ye may still be? ’Tis that Bristol prudishness, and I hate it!”

“Sorry, Stephen,” said Richard, eyes twinkling.

“Begorrah! Victory at last!” Tremendously pleased at hearing his name come from Richard’s lips, Stephen concealed his joy by frowning. “The marines are boiling because there is never enough rum to give them their full ration-Lieutenant Cresswell is at his wits’ end. Nor does he do any better. King does not care, of course, as long as his port does not run out. Cresswell would far rather drink rum. Port Jackson has little rum either. I warrant that a rum distillery in Norfolk Island would receive full sanction from His Excellency. ’Twould cost far less to make rum than to bring it out on storeships, for even the most idealistic official understands that rum is as necessary as bread and salt meat.”

“Well, there is certainly nothing to stop my growing my own patch of sugar cane. This soil loves it, and the grubs hate it. Though despite the rats and the grubs, we will harvest both wheat and Indian corn this summer, I am sure of it.”

“I hope so, for all our sakes. Harry Ball of Supply says that there are many more to be shipped here soon. In Port Jackson things are much worse, despite the lack of grubs.” Stephen shivered. “I do not think, even including the hurricane, that I have ever been so terrified as when the whole vale was one heaving mass of grubs. Not one million but millions upon millions, an army on the move that left Attila’s hordes looking minuscule. Maybe ’twas my Irish blood, but I swear I thought that the Devil had cursed us. Brr!” Shivering again, he changed the subject. “Tell me, Richard, who is attacking the Government sows? One dead and one maimed.”

Richard studied Stephen’s face with an affection bordering on love. That he felt he could not call what he experienced “love” was not because of its lack of a sexual element; it was because “love” was an emotion he associated with William Henry, with little Mary, with Peg. Whom he had kept below the level of all thought for what had piled up into years.

Yet now their names fell inside his mind as clear and limpid as the brook farther up across a pattern of stones, as distant as the stars, as close as MacTavish on his lap. It was Stephen, it was calling Stephen by his name. The other names came rushing up, rang on a peal of memories not all the time and all the things that had happened to him could tarnish, diminish, expunge. William Henry, little Mary, Peg… Gone forever, yet not gone at all. I am a vessel filled with their light, and somewhere, sometime, I will know that love again. Not in an after life. Here. Here in Norfolk Island. I am awake again. I am alive. So alive! I will not waste my essence in a thankless exile. I will not belong to that segment of this place who would ruin it for sheer spite. Peg, little Mary, William Henry. They are here. They are waiting to be with me. And they will be with me.

This had occurred in the silence between two beats of a heart, yet Stephen understood that some enormous change in Richard had just come about. As if he had sloughed off a skin and stood forth in all the splendor of new raiment. What did I say? What brought it to pass? And why did the privilege of seeing it fall to me?

Richard answered Stephen’s question about the sows. “That is easy,” he said. “Len Dyer.”

“Why Len Dyer?”

“He fancies Mary Gamble, who will not give herself to anyone. When he solicited her attentions, he did so as any weasel would-without respect or acknowledgment of her humanity. You know what I mean: ‘Hey, Gamble, how about a fuck?’ So she told him in no uncertain terms what he could do with his tossle-if he could find it. In front of his cronies.” Richard looked grim. “He is a weasel, and needs to be revenged. Mary threw an axe at a boar and was almost lashed for it. So why not attack some of the swine? Mary is bound to be blamed.”

“Not now she will not be.” Stephen got to his feet and blew Richard an impudent kiss. “I know how to deal with Dyer. Call me Stephen again, please.”

“Stephen,” said Richard, laughing. “Now leave me to get on with my polishing.”

Lieutenant King had discovered an easily quarried rock underlying all the land between the old garden hillock and Point Hunter at the far end of Turtle Bay, and also found that it burned to make excellent lime, though his primary purpose had been to use it for stone chimneys and ovens.

When Supply arrived in December with enough convicts to bring the population up to 132, she bore orders from Governor Phillip that rations were to go down to two-thirds, as they were already at Port Jackson. For the growing Norfolk Island this news was not so calamitous; though the millions of grubs had eaten every leafed thing they crawled on, the wheat crop off eleven acres came in splendidly and the rain held off right through its harvesting. The Indian corn did even better, the pigs were multiplying quickly-as were the ducks and chickens-and it was banana season. For those who would eat fish, there was fish.

Endurance and tenacity had turned Richard Morgan into one of the more privileged convicts, for no other reasons than that he gave absolutely no trouble, worked indefatigably and was never sick. So to Richard went enough of this new stone and mortar to build himself a decent chimney. All the sawpits were sawing flat out-what more could a commandant ask of his supervisor of sawyers? Luckily more saws arrived from Port Jackson on Supply; Governor Phillip, planning to more than triple Norfolk Island’s population, had decided that Port Jackson needed saws less than Norfolk Island did. A decision he would find reinforced when Supply returned bearing the first consignment of splendid clean lime.

When Supply also brought more women than Lieutenant King could find a use for, Richard had a brilliant inspiration: he put six of them to sharpening saws. It was, he admitted to himself ruefully, an alternative he should have thought of long before. The work suited females of a certain temperament-it could be done sitting down in the shade, it was not exhausting, it required fine attention to detail and yet could be pursued in a spirit of camaraderie. As one woman was needed at each pit to touch up the saws halfway through each cut and yet more women were put to stripping logs of bark, romances developed between those who were unattached. Though a woman soon learned that Richard Morgan was married already and not interested in amorous intrigues.

Two-thirds rations were a symptom of the fact that two years had gone by without a single ship from England; the long-awaited Guardian storeship which carried so much marine private property as well as tons of flour, salt meat, other provisions and animals had never arrived, and no one knew why. Every day on top of South Head at the entrance to Port Jackson the sentinel on watch gazed out to sea with painful urgency, had been doing so for a year; a whale spout was a sail, a water spout was a sail, a little low white cloud was a sail. But none of them was a sail. The foods that Sirius had fetched back from the Cape of Good Hope in May of 1789 were running out, and still no ship came. The only ray of hope Governor Phillip had was Norfolk Island, where at least some things grew, other things could be caught, and there were no marauding natives to worry about.

Conditions in Port Jackson were appalling, the latest arrivals off Supply vowed; people there were literally starving to death, looked like skeletons. Rose Hill showed some promise, as did other areas to the north and west of Port Jackson like Toongabbe and the Boundary Farms, but though they were now producing a few vegetables, a decent crop of grain was still years off.

Nothing for it, Governor Phillip decided after Supply returned to Port Jackson with lime and timber; he would have to send Sirius somewhere to obtain food in vast quantities. The Cape of Good Hope, he realized now, was simply not a large enough community to furnish adequate flour and salt meat, nor even sufficient animals. It sold its surpluses to the Dutch, English and other East Indiamen making port there, a matter of provisions for crews between 20 and 50 in number. To feed a thousand-plus mouths even for a mere twelvemonth was not in Cape Town’s power; Sirius had returned half-empty.

Therefore Sirius would have to sail to Cathay, where rice and smoked meats were abundant-not to mention tea and sugar, both of which would sweeten a convict’s lot, albeit the nourishment in them was slight. In Wampoa the Governor also hoped to purchase rum off the European emporiums. 1790 was off to a worse start than 1789, though he had not thought that possible.

And in the night marches Phillip wondered if perhaps there had been a massive political upheaval in England-if Mr. Pitt had tumbled-if a Royal decision had been made not to continue with the Botany Bay experiment-and just forget about those already at Botany Bay. Not knowing was terrible, especially as the months dragged by with his nightmares still unappeased. It really did begin to look as if they were as marooned as Robinson Crusoe.

Before Sirius could be readied for a long sea voyage, Supply had time to make yet another round trip to Norfolk Island with more convicts, swelling its population to 149 all told. The Governor then planned that Sirius (on her way to the Orient) and Supply would sail together to Norfolk Island, bearing 116 male convicts, 67 female convicts, 28 children, 8 marine officers and 56 troops. Which would inflate the island’s population overnight to 424 souls-tripled within a month, quadrupled within four months.

The gentle, cultivated little governor knew some of his people very well indeed, particularly Lieutenant Philip Gidley King, who had served with him on Ariadne and Europe before joining Sirius for the voyage to New South Wales. Every time Supply returned to Port Jackson she bore despatches from King, all of which reinforced His Excellency’s reservations about leaving King to govern a populace suddenly numerous enough to render most faces anonymous. King was a patriarch, wildly devoted to his son by Ann Innet-Norfolk! Really! If that name did not indicate King’s innate romanticism, nothing could. And Norfolk Island was about to become a place ill suited to government by a romantic.

His Excellency had other considerations besides, principally two: one, that Major Robert Ross was a carping Scotch thorn in his side; the other, that he desperately needed to send someone he could trust-a romantic someone-back to England in a tearing hurry. This envoy would have to find out what had gone wrong, and eloquently persuade whoever was in power that New South Wales had enormous potential, yet could not possibly realize that potential unless a little capital was invested in it. Less than £50,000 was ridiculous considering that the Honourable East India Company spent more than that per annum in bribes. King the Governor trusted, Ross he did not. Nor, for that matter, did he trust Captain John Hunter of Sirius, another possible candidate-and another Scotchman, croaking harbingers of doom that all Scotchmen were. Ross and Hunter were sour about New South Wales, saw no potential in it whatsoever, and were more likely to recommend to the Crown that the whole experiment be forthwith canceled. Therefore Phillip knew he could not send either Ross or Hunter to England as his envoy. He knew his judgment was correct. New South Wales would thrive. But not yet. It needed time and money.

So when Supply sailed for Norfolk Island with the complement of convicts which would bring its population up to 149, she bore a letter for Lieutenant King commanding him to return to Port Jackson with Mistress Innet and Master Norfolk King, there to be drilled in the details of his vital mission to England. To take his place at Norfolk Island, Phillip would send a full Lieutenant-Governor rather than a mere Commandant-Major Robert Ross. Thus killing lots of birds with the same stone, for with Sirius going on from Norfolk Island to Cathay, he would also be rid of Captain John Hunter for months. And there would be 424 people at Norfolk Island, leaving only 591 people in Port Jackson.

Sirius and Supply arrived together on Saturday the 13th of March, 1790. Landing on Norfolk Island had to commence on the leeward side at Cascade; after that wet, storm-tossed summer, the equinoctial gales and rains had arrived with a vengeance. The track across the island was hideous enough, but at Cascade itself matters were even worse, as the hills plunged straight into the ocean. The only way up to the crest of them was through a precipitous valley adjacent to the landing rock. This cleft ascended over 200 feet so steeply that the women convicts could not climb it without assistance, especially with water tumbling down it and the ground slippery as ice from mud.

Sawyers and carpenters excepted, every convict was sent across the island to help get the new arrivals and the baggage up the cleft to the top and then across the island to Sydney Town, Major Ross in the vanguard.

“I felt exceeding sorry for the poor bastard,” said Stephen to Richard over a lunch of cold, unsweetened rice pudding mixed with a morsel of salt pork and a handful of parsley. They were sitting together in Richard’s house watching the rain pelt down through the unshuttered lee window. Stephen had contributed the flour and the salt pork, Richard the rice and parsley.

“Major Ross, you mean?”

“Aye, the same. He and Hunter loathe each other, so Hunter made sure he sent Ross off Sirius in a longboat loaded to the gunwales with chickens, turkeys, crates, kegs-Ross’s calf muscles were so cramped that he had terrible trouble jumping from the boat to the landing rock, couldn’t stand when he got there. And no one helped him-Hunter’s men to the core. I think they fancied the sight of the Major swimming for his life, but he ain’t Major Ross for naught, fucked ’em good by getting ashore as dry as the rain permitted. They ought by rights to have sent his stuff off with him, but ’tis still on Sirius and no doubt will be the last cargo unloaded. I met him and tried to help him up that deathly haul to the top, but would he let me? Not he! Marched up it soaked to the skin with his chin in the air and his mouth the double of a staple. And marched straight across the island on that horror of a track with me floundering in his wake like a seal on a beach. The image of a horse’s rear end he might be, but ah, he is a lovely man!”

Richard was grinning from ear to ear by the end of this tale, but got up without comment to put the dishes outside the door in the rain, then tidied the table. Of course the whole community had known within hours of Supply’s last visit that Lieutenant King was to go and Major Ross was to come, news greeted wellnigh universally with groans and curses. The holiday had come to an end, Major Ross would see to that. To the Dyers and Francises, an awful prospect. But to Richard Morgan, a not unattractive prospect. Oh, Lieutenant King had been a good commandant, but even 149 people were too many for his style. All King could do was pluck at his wig and set men to cutting timber, sawing it, and building huts out of it. Norfolk Island was less than ten thousand acres in extent, but surely Sydney Town was not the only spot where this enormous new influx of people could be accommodated? Phillipburgh and the flax was King’s only attempt at putting people elsewhere; the truth was that he liked to see the members of his extended family all gathered in the tiny sea-level shelf around Sydney Town. When Robert Webb and Beth Henderson emigrated along the track to Cascade, King had been quite distracted; Richard Phillimore off Scarborough was anxious to be gone around the eastern corner of the far beach to farm a small valley he fancied, but King did not want to let him go.

Whereas Richard thought the most sensible thing to do with Norfolk Island was to open it up, settle people anywhere in it that they fancied. What he dreaded was to see the Sydney Town settlement advance up to the head of Arthur’s Vale, where he enjoyed the fact that there were no abodes near him, and could call the privy he had dug into the hillside entirely his own. His bath lay along the stream in the midst of the fern tree forest, a by-water he had cut and dug out so that his body did not foul the main course of water-if a healthy body could, which he doubted. But under King, he could see the day coming when Sydney Town would reach him. Not that he hoped for more wisdom from Major Ross; only that Ross was a very different kind of man and might therefore have different solutions for this relatively monstrous and sudden growth in population.

“I take it, then, that the Major is already drying his coat in Government House?” Richard asked as they walked, heedless of the rain, back down the stream toward the pond and dam.

“Oh, nothing surer. Poor Mr. King! Half of him is in raptures over this huge mission he is to undertake for the Governor, while the other half is beside itself at the thought of what Major Ross will do to Norfolk Island.”

Private Wigfall, who had lunched with some of the new marines-among them were several of his Port Jackson friends-saw Richard coming and dashed for the pit. They were halfway through a 30-foot log and down to the heartwood-scantling time, after which would come beams. Stephen Donovan continued in the direction of the first of his dozen gangs, engaged in making sluices for the dam wall of basalt boulders, pounded limestone and piled earth. Even in this rain the dam was holding, which had surprised everybody; the rain had been drumming down for days and days.

Within the space of four days the population of Norfolk Island swelled from 149 to 424; more extra people had arrived on Sirius and Supply than had ever lived there before March of 1790. Both ships also carried additional provisions of everything from flour to rum.

“But not nearly enough!” cried Lieutenant King to Major Ross distractedly. “How am I to feed everybody?”

“That will not be your concern,” said the Major bluntly. “Ye’re Commandant only until Supply sails, which will not be long once the seas abate and she can land her stores on this side of the island. Until ye go, I will defer to your judgments. But feeding this lot devolves upon me. As does housing it.” He put his arm about his ten-year-old son, Alexander John, who had been appointed a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps after the death of Captain John Shea resulted in an upward movement of the officers and created a vacancy right at the bottom. Little John, as he was known to all, was a quiet child who knew better than to make his father’s life more complicated than it already was; he bore his lot with resignation, knowing full well that this unorthodox promotion did not endear him to his fellow officers. His father, standing atop the eminence upon which humble Government House was built, gazed across the sea-level shelf at the same kind of chaos had ensued after the landing at Port Jackson.

People were wandering about aimlessly, including the 56 new marines, minus a barracks. Their officers had commandeered eight-by-ten huts from the old convict residents, who contributed to the confusion by joining the ranks of the newly arrived homeless.

“I hope,” said Ross grimly, “that ye have a good crowd of men sawing, Mr. King?”

“Aye, as far as it goes.” King’s distraction increased, as did his sudden anxiety to quit Norfolk Island. “There are three sawpits, but I will have to find more men to saw-and that, as ye know, Major Ross, is not easily done.”

“There are Port Jackson sawyers among the new convicts.”

“And more saws, I hope?”

“His Excellency has sent all but three pit saws, as well as a hundred hand saws.” Ross dropped his arm from his son’s shoulders. “Is Richard Morgan sawing?”

King’s face lit up. “I could not do without him,” he said, “any more than I could do without Nat Lucas, my head of carpenters, or Tom Crowder, my clerk.”

“I told ye Morgan was a good man. Where is he?”

“Sawing while ever there is daylight.”

“Not sharpening?”

King grinned. “He puts women to sharpening, and it answers exceeding fine. His sawing partner is Private Wigfall-well, we ran out of suitable convicts. ’Tis an unenviable job, but Wigfall seems to thrive on it, as do Morgan and a few others. They enjoy rude health, probably thanks to the hard labor and good food.”

“And they have to be kept well fed, no matter who else goes hungry. The first thing,” said Ross, temporarily forgetting that King was still nominally in charge, “is to build barracks for my marines. Living under canvas is Hell-if and when Hunter gets off his royal arse to unload the tents.” He added, though not by way of an apology, “D’ye have any idea whereabouts the barracks ought to go?”

“Over there on the far side of the swamp,” said King, nobly swallowing his displeasure. “The land along the base of the hills behind Sydney Town is free of water, though I must tell ye that the Norfolk pine rots quickly if put in the ground. ’Twould be best to use stone for the foundations-did any stonemasons come?”

“Several, and a few stone chisels. Port Jackson is not in need of new buildings at the moment, whereas His Excellency knows Norfolk Island will need them desperately. He was, incidentally, delighted to get the lime-we have not found one pebble of limestone on our travels through Cumberland County.”

“Then when I see him I can tell him not to worry. We can produce a hundred bushels of lime a day if pushed to it,” said King, longing for a glass of port and acutely aware that the Major did not approve of more than a daily half-pint of anything intoxicating. He caught sight of Ann in the doorway of the house and decided to leave the Major to his own devices; after all, Ann was carrying a second child and might be in distress. “Must go!” he said, and bolted.

Along came the delicate figure of Second Lieutenant Ralph Clark, whom Ross had despised until he realized that the mawkish, immature Clark had a rare touch with children, actually seemed pleased to take care of Little John. Useless as a marine, but a wonderful nursemaid.

“I will be dashed glad, sir,” said Clark politely, smiling at Little John, “to have a clean shirt to put on my back. As, I am sure, will you. They might at least have sent our baggage ashore.”

“I doubt Sirius will ever manage to unload,” said Ross dourly, “though I note that Supply makes light enough work of it.”

“Supply has Ball and Blackburn, sir. They know the place.”

While Hunter of Sirius, said Ross to himself, is a crotchety fool. Aloud he said, “Take charge of Little John, Lieutenant. I need to do some walking.”

The scars of the mighty hurricane were still visible more than a year after it had happened, though the usable trees had been stripped of their bark and reduced to appropriate lengths. Those too large for the pit saws and those already rotten had been disposed of in various ways: their branches were lopped off to be made into torches and firewood, their trunks lopped into sections and dropped into craters for burning or heaped into piles for burning. The settlement was still, King had explained, sawing timber felled by the wind, though clearing of the hills around the vale and Sydney Town was continuing and that timber was being stockpiled. In winter, thought Ross, I will have a bonfire every night. Too much precious flat land is being wasted on pine detritus.

To Ross, the island was even worse than Port Jackson; how it could support more than 400 people in some degree of comfort he did not yet know. Of vegetables there were plenty despite the grub armies, but humankind could not live on vegetables alone if they were required to labor hard-people needed flesh and bread as well. The size of the wheat crop in the granary had astonished him, as did the amount of Indian corn. Only the constant presence of some of MacGregor’s and Delphinia’s offspring around the granary kept the rats at bay, King had explained, but with the new arrivals had come a dozen more dogs and two dozen cats to help control the rodent hordes. The pigs here were thriving far better than at Port Jackson. They dined on Indian corn, mangel-wurzel, fish scraps and whatever else was fed them, including the pith of the palm and tree fern. They also dined off some sort of sea bird which came in to nest in burrows on Mount George between November and March.

“A fool of a thing,” King had said, “that gets lost and cannot find its burrow. Waaaah! Waaaah! It howls like a ghost all night when it is here, frightens the living daylights out of newcomers. Take a torch and ye can catch it easily. The pigs just scamper up on top of Mount George and feast. We tried to eat ’em because they are so nearby, but they are fearsome fatty and fishy-ugh!”

Therefore, thought Ross as he walked, porkers will loom large in my calculations.

The wheat, good crop though it was, would never feed 424 people until the next harvest came in; sowing happened in May or June, reaping in November or December. According to King, Indian corn grew all year round. His technique in dealing with the rats and grubs was to plant wheat just at the conclusion of a grub wave and Indian corn continuously. Wheat in ear was too frail for rats to climb, whereas corn was a ladder. But the ripe ears of both were ravaged by the green parrots, which came out of the skies in vast flocks. Taming Nature, the Major reflected, was a constant war.

He toured the sea-level shelf from end to end and front to back, thinking, thinking. No more people up Arthur’s Vale; that was clearly where the produce flourished best, must be reserved for cultivation. Therefore Sydney Town would have to house everybody for the time being-but only for the time being. He would have to visit Robert Webb and his woman and the time-elapsed convict Robert Jones, who had taken up land halfway between Sydney Town and Cascade. Oh, Cascade-what a place to have to come ashore! And how Hunter must have sniggered as he watched the new Lieutenant-Governor, baggageless, in a longboat full of poultry. Ross glowered, concentrated all his energies upon ill-wishing Captain John Hunter of Sirius; practical and down-to-earth Scotchman though he was, the Major believed that a curse held great power. Hunter would not prosper. Hunter would come to grief. Hunter would fall. A murrain on him, a murrain on him, a murrain on him…

Feeling much better, he paused on the far side of the causeway and turned to look east down the cleared but unoccupied land which ended at the sea along the beach beyond Turtle Bay. This end plus the road down to the landing place, he decided, would accommodate the marines and their officers, thus effectively cutting off the convicts from access to Arthur’s Vale and the food, which was now stored in King’s huge barn and the mezzanine of the granary. He would house the convicts eastward of the troops, ten to a hut, and bugger the Reverend Johnson’s strictures about keeping male and female felons from fornicating. In Ross’s opinion, freedom to fornicate meant a certain degree of content. God would forgive them, for God had sent them many other trials.

Those convicts possessed of huts along the beach who had been evicted in favor of his officers would have to be returned to their dwellings; hard he was, but just he was. Those who had labored here-very few, when all was said and done-must have some sort of thanks for their efforts. They would go back to their huts as soon as his officers were properly housed, and they would also be the first convicts to receive land. For that, he had already concluded, was the only answer: break open the interior of this speck in the midst of an infinity of ocean and people it. Give those who were willing to work an incentive to work by dowering them with land-some around Sydney Town, a very few in Arthur’s Vale, and the big majority in the virgin bulk of the island. No more tracks: a proper road to Ball Bay, to Cascade, to Anson Bay. Once there were roads, people could move out and away. If there was one asset he owned, it was a huge laboring force.

Those resolutions tucked away, he turned then westward into Arthur’s Vale, grudgingly admitting to himself that, considering the tiny size of his work force, Lieutenant King had not loafed during the two years he had occupied Norfolk Island. The granary and the barn were gradually having their wooden foundations replaced by the lime-producing stone (it was not limestone, but calcarenite) King had discovered around the cemetery, the stockyard attached to the barn was roomy, and the dam was an inspiration. He found the second sawpit, sheltered from the sun, its men working frantically; gazed sourly at the gaggle of women under a roof busy sharpening saws; and passed on up the vale beyond the dam, where the hillsides were being cleared in preparation for yet more wheat and Indian corn. Here he located the third sawpit, and Richard Morgan atop a gigantic log. Far too sensible to attract the sawyer’s attention to him while that lethal instrument ripped inches at a time through the six-foot girth-he was down to heartwood and big beams-Major Ross stood quietly watching.

The air was humid, the weather finer than any since he had landed four days ago, and the men at the sawpit worked clad only in worn, tattered canvas trowsers. It is not right, thought Ross. Not one of them has the luxury of underdrawers, that I know from Port Jackson, where the last convict underdrawers fell apart a full twelvemonth ago. So they do this work with the rough seams of their trowsers chafing at their groins. Though I detest convicts, I have to admit that a fair proportion of them are good men, and some are superlative. King may rave about the likes of a Tom Crowder-a useful lickspittle-but I prefer the likes of Richard Morgan, who never opens his mouth save to voice common sense. And Nat Lucas, the little carpenter. Crowder will work indefatigably for himself; Morgan and Lucas simply work for the pleasure of a job well done. How strange are the machinations of God, Who makes some men and women genuinely industrious, and others lazy to the very marrow…

The cut finished, Ross spoke. “Hard at it, Morgan, I see.”

Not troubling to conceal his delight, Richard turned on the log, leaped from it onto solid ground, and walked over. His hand went out automatically, but he caught the gesture in time to turn it into a salute. “Major Ross, welcome,” he said, smiling.

“Have ye been evicted from your hut?”

“Not yet, sir, but I expect I will be.”

“Where d’ye live, that it has not happened?”

“Farther up, right at the end of the vale.”

“Show me.”

On stone piers now and with its roof shingled, the house-it could not be called a hut-lay under the eaves of the forest. Ross noted that it had a stone chimney, as did some of the convict huts and houses on the shore; a sign that King thought Richard Morgan worthy of reward. Below it but up the hillside was a privy. A lush-looking vegetable garden surrounded it save for a path of basalt rocks to the door, and beyond the garden sugar cane waved. A few plantains flourished and the slope around the privy was planted with a bushy small tree that bore pinkening berries.

Entering, Major Ross thought the house a remarkably professional piece of work for a man not a carpenter; it was finished. The walls, ceiling and floor had actually been dully polished. Of course! Gunsmiths worked with wood too. An impressive collection of books stood on a shelf on one wall, another shelf held what looked suspiciously like a dripstone, the bed was sheeted with Alexander-issue blankets, and a very nice table and two chairs stood in the middle of the floor. The window apertures had been equipped with proper shutters.

“Ye’ve made a home,” said Ross, occupying one chair. “Sit down, Morgan, otherwise I will not be comfortable.”

Richard sat rather rigidly. “I am glad to see ye, sir.”

“So your face betrayed. One of the very few.”

“Well, folk dislike change of any kind.”

“Especially when the change is named Robert Ross. No, no, Morgan, there is no need to look squalmy! Ye’re a convict, but ye’re not a felon. There is a difference. For instance, I do not see Lucas as a felon either. What did he go down for, d’ye know? I am gathering evidence for a theory I have conceived.”

“Lucas lived in a London boarding house, in a room he was not allowed to lock because he was obliged to share it at a moment’s notice. Two other lodgers were a father and daughter. The father found some of his daughter’s property beneath Lucas’s mattress-some muslin aprons and the like. Not items a perverted man would steal. Lucas denied he had put them there, but the girl and her father prosecuted him.”

“What d’ye think the truth was?” asked the Major, interested.

“That the girl coveted Lucas himself. When she could not have him, she chose revenge. His trial lasted not ten minutes and his master neglected to appear for him, so he had no one to speak for his character. But I gather that the London courts are such a mass of people and confusion that his master could well have been there, either lost or refused entrance. The magistrate questioned him and he denied the charges, but it was his word against two people. He went down for seven years.”

“Yet one more confirmation of my theory,” said Ross, leaning back in the chair until its front legs left the floor. “Such tales are fairly common. Though some of ye are recognizably villains, I have noted that most of ye keep out of trouble. ’Tis the few who make it difficult for all. For every convict flogged, there are three or four who are never flogged, and those who are flogged inevitably get flogged again and again. Mind you, some of ye are neither decent nor villainous-the ones who are averse to hard work. What the English trial boils down to is someone’s word against someone else’s word. Evidence is rarely presented.”

“And many,” said Richard, “commit their crimes sodden drunk.”

“Is that what happened to you?”

“Not exactly, though rum contributed. An excise fraud hinged upon my testimony, therefore it was expedient that I not be able to testify. It took place in Bristol, but I was removed to trial in Gloucester, where I knew no one.” Richard drew a breath. “But in all fairness, sir, I blame no one except myself.”

Ross thought he looked like a Celtic Welshman-dark hair, dark skin, light eyes, fine-boned face. The height he must have inherited from English forebears, and the musculature was the result of hard labor. Sawyers, stone-masons, smiths and axemen who threw their hearts into their work always had splendid bodies. Provided they had enough to eat, and clearly those in Norfolk Island had enough to eat. Whether they would in the future was not so sure.

“Ye look the picture of health,” Ross said, “but then, ye never were sick, were ye?”

“I managed to preserve my health, mostly thanks to my dripstone.” Richard indicated it affectionately. “I have also been fortunate, sir. The times when I have not had enough to eat have either been short enough or idle enough not to cause bone-deep illness. Had I remained in Port Jackson, who knows? But ye sent me here sixteen months ago.” His eyes twinkled. “I like fish, and there are many who do not, so I have had more than my share of flesh.”

MacTavish erupted through the open door and made a flying leap onto Richard’s lap, panting.

“Good lord! Is that Wallace? ’Tis not MacGregor.”

“Nay, sir. This is Wallace’s grandson out of the Government spaniel, Delphinia. His name is MacTavish and he eats rat.”

Ross got up. “I congratulate ye on this house, Morgan, ’tis a comfortable dwelling. Cool in summer thanks to the trees, warm in winter thanks to the fireplace.”

“It is at your disposal, sir,” said Richard dutifully.

“Were it closer to civilization, Morgan, I would grab it, make no mistake. Your canniness is worthy of a man from north of the border, to build at the far end of the vale. None of my officers would relish the walk save Lieutenant Clark, and I need him close to me.” It is too isolated to make safe officer housing, Ross said to himself-who knows what the bastard who occupied it might get up to? “However,” he added, going to the door, “in time I will oblige ye to share it.”

Richard walked with him as far as the sawpit, where Sam Hussey and Harry Humphreys were attacking a new log.

“I am supervisor of sawyers, sir, so as soon as ye have the time, I would discuss the sawing with ye,” he said.

“There is no time like the present, Morgan. Talk now.”

They visited each of the sawpits in turn, Richard explaining his system, the worthiness of using women to sharpen and strip bark, the sites where more sawpits could be dug, the kind of men he needed to saw, the desirability of letting the sawyers cut timber for their own houses in their spare time, the need to convert some of the extra pit saws into cross cut saws.

“But that,” he ended as they stood on the edge of the sawpit on the beach, “is work I dare not trust to anyone save myself. Unless ye’ve brought William Edmunds?” he asked, sure that Major Ross would know the names of all his immigrants, free or felon.

“Aye, he is among the throng somewhere. He is yours.”

And, thought Richard in great content, I have made this transition painlessly. How friendless Major Ross must be, to talk to a convict as to a colleague. Is that why he banked me here?

On Friday the 19th of March, the sea fair, the day fine, Sirius stood in to Sydney Bay to unload her cargo. She lay to under the lee of Nepean Island and prepared to hoist her boats into the water, but when her commanders realized that she was drifting too close to the rocks of Point Hunter they made sail to get her farther out; she missed stays and lay immobile. Sailing master Keltie decided to wear her by tacking with the wind around her stern at the very moment when it gusted from a breeze to a gale. Sirius missed her stays again. Just as the noon bell rang a wave plucked her out of a trough and flung her broadside on the reef. Armed with axes, her sailors lopped the masts through at deck level, stoving in her boats and smothering her in a welter of spars and canvas. Boats flew from the beach and from Supply in the roads, but had no hope of reaching her; the treacherous surf was suddenly high enough to soar over her chess tree, a piece of oak where the curve of the bow straightened to run aft as the rail. While the sailors worked in a frenzy to clear the decks of the felled rigging, a seven-inch-circumference hawser was towed ashore and fixed high on a surviving pine; those people who could be spared aboard were dragged in clinging to the hawser through the flooding afternoon tide. As the hawser bowed in its middle exactly where the surf broke, Captain John Hunter, the first man winched ashore, arrived bruised, cut and battered enough to assure Major Ross that his curse had worked a treat. There would be far worse to come for Hunter, who had lost his ship and would have to stand trial for it in England.

Other officers followed him before someone thought to rig the hawser with a traveler, a piece of grating upon which the men could perch and at least save their legs and bottoms from the coral. Only when the surf went down would they be able to put a tripod under the bow in the hawser, and there was no chance of that at the moment.

Some of Sirius’s crew, on shore leave, swam back and forth to the wreck, as did Stephen Donovan, very angry that no one on Sirius had asked him about the local winds and currents. Christ, she was a big ship, and someone ought to have realized that Nepean Island did strange things with wind! Why hadn’t Hunter utilized David Blackburn or Harry Ball, if he was too haughty to ask a mere sailor of the merchant service?

The news reached the sawpits as quickly as bad news always does; Richard went the rounds and forbade his teams to stop work unless orders came that they were needed. There were several hundred people to house, especially given that the crew of Sirius was now marooned on Norfolk Island as well-an extra hundred souls. If Sirius could not sail to Cathay, Supply would have to go, and that meant months and months without relief. Or so Richard reasoned-as it turned out, correctly.

Dawn of Saturday revealed Sirius still intact; her back was broken but her stern had swung off the reef, where she lay at an angle. Landing conditions were terrible. The wind had risen to a minor gale and clouds threatened rain, but the work of getting her provisions off went on all day; by four that afternoon the last of the men had come ashore, having emptied Sirius’s holds and put her cargo on the cleared decks for easier removal.

But at nine on that Saturday morning King, deferring to Major Ross, called a meeting of all the commissioned officers belonging to Sirius and the Marine Corps. Ross conducted it.

“Lieutenant King, as is proper in this emergency, has formally handed command to me as Lieutenant-Governor,” said Ross, whose pale eyes bore the same steely gloss as a highland loch. “It is necessary to make decisions that will ensure the peace, order and good government of this place. I am informed that Supply will be able to take about twenty members of Sirius’s crew as well as Mr. King, his lady, and child, and it is imperative that Supply sails for Port Jackson as quickly as possible. His Excellency must be apprised of this disaster forthwith.”

“It was not my fault!” gasped Hunter, face cut, skin so white that he looked about to faint. “We could not keep her in stays, we could not! The moment the wind shifted, the sails backed-it all happened so fast-so fast!”

“I have not convened this meeting to apportion blame, Captain Hunter,” said Ross crisply; he was in control, and for once the Royal Navy would have to bow to a member of a corps did not have the right to call itself “Royal.” “What we are here to discuss is the fact that a settlement which six days ago held one hundred and forty-nine people will now contain more than five hundred people, including over three hundred convicts and eighty-odd men off Sirius. The latter will not, as seamen, be of much use either in governing convicts or working land. Mr. King, d’ye expect that Governor Phillip will send Supply back here from Port Jackson?”

King’s expression was a compound of shock and bewilderment, but he shook his head emphatically. “No, Major Ross, ye cannot count on Supply’s returning. As I understand it, Port Jackson is starving and His Excellency very much fears that England has-for what reason no one knows-forgotten us. With Sirius gone, Supply is the only link he has with other places. She will have to go either to Cape Town or Batavia for provisions, and my bet is that His Excellency will choose Batavia because ’twill be an easier voyage for such an old, fair-weather ship. His chief concern is that somebody must get home to remind the Crown that conditions in both settlements are appalling. Unless, that is, a storeship should arrive. But that, gentlemen, grows less rather than more likely.”

“We cannot count on anything except the worst, Mr. King, so we will not entertain the hope of a storeship. There is wheat and Indian corn in the granary but planting is still at least two months off and harvesting eight or nine months off. If we manage to get all the provisions off Sirius before she sinks”-he ignored the look on Hunter’s face-“I estimate that we can feed everybody for three months at most. Fishing will have to be continuous, and whatever edible birds we find we will also consume.”

Brightening, King said eagerly, “I told ye of the summer bird wails like a ghost, but there is also a winter bird. It is a fat and tasty sea bird arrives about April and remains until August. It uses the mountain, which is why we have never bothered to try to eat it in any quantity-the walk is long and perilous without any paths. However, it is so tame that a man can walk straight up to it and grab it. There are thousands upon thousands of them. They fish out to sea all day and come in on dusk to their burrows, the same as the summer ghost birds. If things become desperate, they are a source of food. All ye’d have to do is cut paths.”

“I thank ye for that information, Mr. King.” Ross cleared his throat. “Be that as it may, what worries me most is mutiny.” He glared at his marine officers. “I do not necessarily mean a convict mutiny. Many of my enlisted men are ruffians who must be kept supplied with rum. And when I said that we have provisions enough to last three months, I include rum in that estimate. I must conserve enough rum for my officers, which will cut rations for the enlisted men. Not to mention that Captain Hunter’s seamen will also expect their rum-is that not so, Captain?”

Hunter swallowed. “Aye, Major Ross, I fear so.”

“Then,” said Ross, “there is only one solution. Law Martial. Theft of anything by any man, free or felon, will be punishable by death without trial. And, gentlemen, I will enforce it, have no doubts about that.”

This announcement was greeted with a profound silence. The noises of those toiling outside to retrieve men and supplies from Sirius percolated through the walls of Government House, a reminder of prevailing chaos.

“On Monday,” said Ross, “the entire complement of those on this island will assemble at eight o’clock beneath the Union flagstaff, when I will inform them of the new state of affairs. Until then, gentlemen, button your mouths as tight as a fish’s arsehole. I mean that. If news of Law Martial leaks out before Monday morning, I will have the offender flogged no matter how exalted his rank. Ye are at liberty to go.”

Property and provisions continued to come off Sirius; the stock-pigs and goats-were simply thrown overboard and herded by boats and swimmers in the direction of the beaches, with surprisingly few casualties. Though her back was broken, the vessel showed no sign of coming apart or sinking; casks, barrels, kegs and sacks were ferried ashore. She lay sometimes stern off the reef, sometimes stern on, always pinioned by her midships and remorselessly pounded by gale-whipped seas, but somehow as each day passed she never seemed to look worse.

At eight on Monday morning every single soul was herded into position at the Union flagstaff, the marines and seamen lined up on the right, the convicts on the left, with the officers in the center right below the flag.

“As commandant of this English colony, I hereby declare that the Law Martial will come into effect as of this moment!” shouted Major Ross, his stentorian voice assisted by a wind west of southwest. “Until God and His Britannic Majesty send relief we are thrown upon our own resources. If we are to survive, then every last man, woman and child will have to work with two goals in mind-to build shelter from the elements and produce food. On my count, there are five hundred and four persons who will be remaining here after Supply sails-over triple the number a week ago! I am not about to disguise the fact that starvation stares us in the face, but of one thing I can assure ye-no one here-no one!-will have a scrap more to eat than all have to eat. God is trying us as He tried the Israelites in the desert, but we can lay no claim to the virtue of that ancient and admirable people. What happens to us rests squarely upon our own resourcefulness-our will to work hard, our will to behave with the interests of all at heart, our will to survive in the teeth of terrible adversity!”

He paused, and those near enough could see the bitter look on his face. “Ye are no Israelites, I repeat that! Among ye are the scum of the earth, the dregs of humanity, and I will deal with ye accordingly. For those who bear their misfortunes with grace and unselfishness, there will be rewards. For those who steal food from the mouths of others, the penalty is death. For those who steal to barter, to have more comfort, to get drunk, or for any other reason, I will flay ye until the bones show from neck to ankles! Man or woman makes no difference, nor will children be let off lightly. The Law is Martial, which means that I am your judge, jury and executioner. I care not if ye fornicate, I care not if ye work in your own time to grow a little more or house yourselves, but I will not countenance the slightest infringement of the general public good! For the first six weeks every single vegetable and fruit will go to Government Stores, but I expect that all men and women commence this very moment to grow vegetables and fruit to augment the Government supply, which means that at the end of those six weeks all with productive gardens will contribute only two-thirds of what they grow to Government Stores. My motto is productiveness through labor, and that applies as much to the free as to the convicted.”

His lip lifted in a snarl. “I am Major Robert Ross, and my reputation precedes me! I am Lieutenant-Governor of Norfolk Island, and what I say is no less the Law than if it issued from the King’s own mouth! Now I will have three cheers for His Royal Majesty King George, and make them loud! Hip-hip!”

“Hurrah!” everybody bellowed, and twice more.

“And three cheers for Lieutenant King, who has worked wonders! Mr. King, I salute ye and wish ye Godspeed. Hip-hip!”

The cheers for King were louder than those for the King, and their King stood dazed, beaming, immensely gratified. For a minute he actually loved Major Ross.

“I now require that every last one of ye pass beneath the Union and bow the head as affirmation of your oath of loyalty!”

The crowd filed past, awed into fearful solemnity.

Though Richard stood at the head of his sawyers and closer to the Union than the new convict arrivals, he had spotted many faces he knew, some with delight: Will Connelly, Neddy Perrott and Taffy Edmunds; Tommy Kidner, Aaron Davis, Mikey Dennison, Steve Martin, George Guest and his boon companion, Ed Risby; George Whitacre. Among the new marines he saw his gunsmith apprentice, Daniel Stanfield, and two privates from Alexander days, Elias Bishop and Joe McCaldren. No doubt the convicts would come rushing to greet him-how to explain that Major Ross meant every word he said, and would not appreciate his head sawyer dallying to chat with old friends? Then Major Ross solved his dilemma by shouting his name.

“Yes, sir?” he asked as the crowd melted away.

“I will depute Private Stanfield to find Edmunds. Will ye be at the third sawpit?”

“Aye, sir.”

“I am sending ye John Lawrell to live with ye and do whatever ye require of him. A good enough fellow, but a little slow in the noggin. Have him tend your garden. For the first six weeks Tom Crowder will collect everything as it ripens, after that he will take only two-thirds.”

“Aye, sir,” said Richard, saluted and departed in haste. John Lawrell… He had been at Norfolk Island for a year and Richard knew him slightly; a good-natured, rather shambling Cornishman off Dunkirk hulk and Scarborough, and part of the general labor pool operated by Stephen. What was Major Ross up to? In effect, he had just endowed Richard with a servant to tend his unofficial block.

By the time he reached the third sawpit to find Sam Hussey and Harry Humphreys sawing, he had seen the Major’s reason: with so many new people on the island, those old residents who owned good vegetable gardens were at risk of losing their produce to thieves, Law Martial or no Law Martial. Ross had given him a guard to make sure his produce was not pilfered, and he would be doing the same to all those with decent gardens. And trust Ross to select guards from among the ranks of the unoffending dimwitted. Stifling a sigh, Richard vowed that during his time off he would be sawing to build Lawrell his own hut. The thought of sharing a house was far more repugnant than the thought of too little food.

“I am off to see to the new pits, Billy,” he said to Private Wigfall, whom he counted a good friend. He winked, laughed. “And make sure we don’t get any fucken Williams as sawyers.” He thought of something else. “If a Welshman named Taffy Edmunds reports in, sit him down in the shade-not with the women!-and tell him to wait until I get back. He will be our master sharpener. A pity he does not like women, but he will have to learn to.”

Three of the new pits lay beyond the limits of Sydney Town to the east, where the hillsides were still heavily forested. Somehow Ross had already managed to find time to think out what he wanted, and issued instructions that trees were to be felled in a strip twenty feet wide from Turtle Bay to Ball Bay as the start of a proper road. Those on the slopes leading to Turtle Bay would be laid lengthwise and slid downhill; once the tilt switched to Ball Bay, another sawpit would be dug at Ball Bay to deal with that timber. It was going to be impossible for one man to keep an eye on so many pits so far apart, which meant that he would have to make sure he picked a head sawyer for each pit who would not slacken the pace because the supervisor was elsewhere. Nor was this the only road: a strip twenty feet wide was to be cleared to Cascade, and a third, the longest, westward to Anson Bay. Sawpits and more sawpits, those were the Major’s orders.

On the way back he skirted the unnamed beach which seemed to act as a net to catch any pines which tumbled down the cliffs into the water, piling them up while the sea pushed them inland to form a raft of logs so ancient that they had turned to a kind of stone. And there, washing back and forth in the water-the wind was too far west to lash up a heavy surf-was a convoluted heap of canvas sail off Sirius. Useful, he understood immediately, quickening his pace. The tide was just beginning to come in, so it was unlikely that the sail would wash out to sea again, but he thought the find too important to risk losing by dawdling.

The first man in authority he saw was Stephen, deputed to the stone quarry these days.

Wreathed in smiles, Stephen promptly abandoned his workers. “Plague take this huge influx! I’ve hardly seen ye in a week.” His face changed. “Oh, Richard, the shame of it!” he cried. “To lose Sirius-what evil forces are conniving against us?”

“I know not. Nor do I think I want to know.”

“What brings ye down here?”

“New sawpits, what else? With Major Ross as commandant, we are to go from the idealism of Marcus Aurelius to the pragmatism of Augustus. I do not say the Major will leave Norfolk Island marble, as he did not find it brick, but he will certainly give it roads-a hint, I am sure, that he is going to send people elsewhere than Sydney Town.” He looked brisk. “Can ye spare some time and men?”

“If the reason be good enough. What’s amiss?”

“Nothing for a change,” grinned Richard. “In fact, I am the bearer of good news. There is a huge mass of Sirius’s sail lying in the far beach, and more may come around the point with the tide on the flood. It will serve as canopies for those untented. Once people are properly housed it can be cut into hammocks, sheets for the officers’ beds-a thousand and one things. I imagine that quite a lot of the officers’ property will be spirited away by the likes of Francis and Peck.”

“God bless ye, Richard!” Stephen ran off, shouting and waving to his men.

That evening, armed with a pine-knot torch to find his way back up the vale in the darkness (curfew was set for eight o’clock), Richard ventured into Sydney Town in search of the faces he had seen amid the assembly. Tents were pitched behind the row of huts on the beachfront, but many of the convicts were doomed to sleep in the open, Sirius’s crew taking precedence in the matter of tents. By tomorrow, he hoped, Sirius’s sails would roof them over.

A big fire of pine scraps burned where the shelterless would lie down their heads. Though he had been on the island for sixteen months, it still amazed Richard how suddenly the air chilled once the sun went down, no matter how hot the day had been; only when humidity descended did this cooling off not happen, and so far 1790 had not been at all sultry. A sign, he thought, that the weather this year would be drier, though how he came to that conclusion he did not know. Instinct arising from some Druid ancestor?

About a hundred people were huddled together around the tall blaze, belongings strewn about them. Unlike the marines and their officers, the convicts had been disembarked together with all they owned, including their precious blankets and buckets. Feet were universally bare; shoes had run out months ago, nor did Norfolk Island have any. He prayed that it would not rain that night; much of the island’s rain fell at night, and out of what had been a clear sky moments before. The convicts had all been landed in downpours, had not had sufficient fine weather yet to dry out completely. There would be an epidemic of chills and fevers, and perhaps the island’s record would be broken: not one person in it had died of natural causes or disease since Lieutenant King and his original 23 companions had come ashore over two years ago. Whatever else Norfolk Island might or might not be, its climate engendered splendid health.

Sirius wallowed on the reef, a mournful sight. The grapevine had already informed Richard that Willy Dring and James Branagan-the latter a man he did not know-had volunteered to swim out to the wreck, toss the remaining poultry, dogs and cats over the side, and heave floatable kegs and casks into the water. Dring was not the right man for this; the Yorkshireman and his crony Joe Robinson, once steady fellows, seemed to have deteriorated.

He spied Will Connelly and Neddy Perrott sitting with women who must be theirs-that was a good sign!-and began to pick his way through the crowd.

“Richard! Oh, Richard my love, Richard my love!”

Lizzie Lock threw herself upon him, twined her arms about his neck and covered his face with kisses, crooning, weeping, mumbling.

His reaction was utterly instinctive, over and done before he could think of suppressing it, of waiting until some more private opportunity arrived to tell her that he could not share any part of himself with her, wife though she was. No one had told him that she was here, and he had not thought of her once since that magical day when William Henry, little Mary and Peg had returned to live in his soul. Before he could control them, his hands had gone to fasten about Lizzie’s arms and wrench her away.

Flesh crawling, hair on end, he stared at her as if she were a visitation from Hell. “Don’t touch me!” he cried, white-faced. “Don’t touch me!”

And she, poor creature, staggered plummeting from ecstatic joy to horror, to bewilderment, to a pain so great that she clutched at her meager chest and looked at him out of eyes blinded to everything but his revulsion. Breath gone, her mouth opened and closed without a sound; she fell to her knees, powerless.

The moment she had uttered his name the whole group turned to look, and those in it who knew him, who had so eagerly anticipated this reunion, gasped, gaped, murmured.

“I am your wife!” she screamed thinly from her knees. “Richard, I am your wife!”

His eyes were clearing, took in the sight of her at his feet, took in the growing anger and outrage on the faces of his friends, took in the greed of the uninvolved to eat up as much of this show as its participants were willing to enact. What to do? What to say? Even as one part of him asked these unanswerable questions, a second part of him was noting the onlookers, and a third part of him was shrinking in horror-she was going to touch him! The visceral part won: he backed away, out of her reach.

The die was cast. Better then to finish it the way it had started, by the glaring light of a public bonfire in the midst of a collection of people who would-and rightly so-condemn him as a heartless wretch in sore need of a flogging.

“I am very sorry, Lizzie,” he managed, “but I cannot take up with you again. I-just-cannot.” His hands lifted, fell. “I want no wife, I-”

He could find nothing else to say, and having nothing else to say, turned and left.

The next day, Tuesday, he met Stephen as usual at Point Hunter to watch the sunset. It was one of those cloudless evenings when the massive red disc had slid into the sea with what Richard always fancied should be a boiling sizzle, and as the light died out of the sky and the vault darkened to indigo, the vanished sun seemed to bend its rays back through the vast depths of the water to endow it with a pale, milky-blue luminousness far brighter than the heavens.

“This is a wondrous place,” said Stephen, who must surely have heard what the whole settlement was saying, but chose not to mention it. “Here is where the Garden of Eden was, I am convinced of it. It ravishes me, it calls to me like a siren. And I do not know why, only that it is unearthly. No parallel anywhere. But now that men are here, they will ruin it. ’Twas Man ruined Eden.”

“No, they will merely try to ruin it, mistaking it for other earth they have ruined. This place looks after itself because it is beloved of God.”

“There are ghosts here, you know,” Stephen remarked idly. “I saw one as clear as day-it was day, as a matter of fact. A giant of a fellow with huge calf muscles, golden skin, naked save for a piece of papery cloth marked in brown across his loins. His face was sternly beautiful, patrician, and both his thighs were tattooed in a pattern of curliqued stripes. A kind of man I have never set eyes upon, could not have imagined in my dreams. He came down the beach toward me, then, when I might almost have touched him, he turned and walked straight through the wall of Nat Lucas’s house. Olivia began to scream the place down.”

“Then I am glad I live up the vale. Though Billy Wigfall told me recently that he saw John Bryant on the hillside where the tree killed him. One moment he was standing there, the next moment he was gone. As if, said Billy, he was startled at being discovered.”

The surf was pounding in; Supply had sailed from the roads, was working her way around to Cascade. Embarkation would not be easy for Mr. King’s pregnant lady, forced to leap from that rock into a heaving longboat.

“Is it true that Dring and Branagan got into the rum last night aboard Sirius and set fire to her?” Richard asked.

“Aye. Private John Escott-he is Ross’s servant-spotted the flames after dark from Government House’s eminence and volunteered to swim out. Ross agreed because the man is very strong in the water. Escott found Dring and Branagan almost insensible from rum, busy warming themselves at the fire. He threw them into the sea, put out the conflagration-it had burned right through the gun deck-and stayed on Sirius until this morning, when they got him off together with the rum. Dring and Branagan have been clapped in irons and put in Lieutenant King’s new guardhouse. The Major is livid, having left the rum aboard Sirius thinking ’twould be much safer there than ashore. I suspect that as soon as the old commandant has sailed on Supply, the new commandant will administer either capital punishment or five hundred lashes. He cannot afford to ignore this first infringement of his Law Martial.”

Very dark in the failing light, Stephen’s eyes turned to Richard, sitting coiled as tensely as a steel spring. “I hear that ye had a visit from the Major early today?”

Richard smiled wryly. “Major Ross’s ears belong to a bat. How or from whom I cannot hazard a guess, but he heard what went on last night at the bonfire. Well, ye know him. Waited until I went home for breakfast, barged in, sat himself down and looked at me very much as he might have inspected a new sort of grub. ‘I hear that ye publicly repudiated your wife,’ he said. I answered with a yes and he grunted. Then he said, ‘Not what I might have expected from ye, Morgan, but I daresay ye have your reasons, ye usually do.’ ”

Stephen chuckled. “He really does have a way with words!”

“He then proceeded to ask me if I thought my wife would make a suitable housekeeper for an officer! I told him she was clean, tidy, an excellent mender and darner of clothes, a good cook, and-as far as I knew-a virgin. Whereupon he slapped his hands on his knees and stood up. ‘Does she like children?’ he asked. I said I thought so, judging from her behavior with the children in Gloucester Gaol. ‘And ye’re sure she is not a temptress?’ he asked. I said I was absolutely positive about that. ‘Then she will suit me down to the ground,’ he said, and marched out looking as pleased as the cat that got to the cream.”

Stephen doubled up with laughter. “I swear, Richard,” he said when he was able, “that ye cannot put a foot wrong with Major Ross. For some reason quite beyond me he likes you enormously.”

“He likes me, “ said Richard, “because I am not a bit afraid of him and I tell him the truth, not what I think he wants to hear. Which is why he will never esteem Tommy Crowder the way King did. When I stood up to King he had half a mind to flog me, whereas I have never needed to stand up to Major Ross.”

“King is an English King,” said Stephen rather tangentially, “not an Irish King. The Celt in him is pure Cornish, far more akin to the Welsh. Which means he is touchy and moody. And Royal Navy down to his marrow. Ross is your classical Scotchman with but one mood-dour. His roots lie in a cold, bleak land that either makes or breaks.” He rose to his feet and held out his hand to help Richard up. “I am glad that he has solved the problem of what was going to happen to your repudiated wife.”

“Well, ye told me not to marry her,” said Richard with a sigh. “Had I known she was here I would have been prepared, but it was a bolt from the blue. My eyes were on Will Connelly when suddenly she was hanging around my neck smothering me in wet kisses. I-I smelled her and felt her, Stephen. She was far too close to see. As long as I have known her there have been other smells, and none of them nice. Port Jackson stank, just as the old castle stank. But the rank smell of woman in my nostrils-I have been alone too long, and things smell sweet away from the sawpits and Sydney Town. ’Tis not that she actually stinks, she does not, only that I could not bear how she smelled. My reasons are not very reasonable, even to myself, and God knows I am not proud of what I did. All I was conscious of at the time was revulsion-as if I had walked after dark straight into a spider’s web. My gut reacted, I struck out blindly. And after that it was too late to mend any of my fences, so I tore them out of the ground.”

“I can understand,” said Stephen gently. “What I do not begin to understand is how ye could have forgotten she was likely to be here with the rest.”

“Nor do I, looking back on it.”

“My fault too. I should have said something.”

“Ye were too busy with Sirius and the consequences. But there is another thing torments me-she was ashore for days and she knew I was here-why did she wait?”

They had reached Stephen’s house; he slipped inside without answering, then watched through the window as Richard’s torch went away up the vale and winked from sight. Why did she wait, Richard? Because in her heart of hearts she knew that were she to approach you in private, you would do what you ended in doing anyway-rejecting her. Or perhaps, being a woman, she longed for you to seek her out and claim her. Poor Lizzie Lock… He has been entirely alone for six months up there in his solitary house with only his dog for company, and he is very content. I do not know what goes on in his mind, except that until fairly recently he had put his emotions to sleep like a bear through winter. His marriage to Lizzie was a thing done in that sleep, from which I think he did not expect to awaken. Then suddenly he did-I saw him do it.

Time was getting on. Stephen looked at his watch, pressed his lips together and debated about whether he was hungry enough to bother heating broth to go with his bread supper. Captain John Hunter was in residence at Government House, and Johnny-oh, well. Heat the soup, Stephen, it is chill enough for a fire.

“All I want,” said Richard, erupting into the room as Stephen blew on the reluctant flames, “is to be left alone with my books and my dog! To have a meed of privacy!”

“Then what are ye doing here?” Stephen asked, sitting back on his heels. “The meed of privacy is up yon vale.”

“Aye, but-but-” said Richard, floundering.

“Why not simply admit to yourself, Richard,” Stephen said, in no mood to put up with megrims, “that ye’s consumed with guilt over what ye did-all right, had to do!-to Lizzie Lock? Ye’re not a man finds it easy to live with a you who did not come up to expectations. In fact, I never saw anybody with such high standards of self-conduct-ye’re a fucken Protestant martyr!”

“Oh, don’t fucken preach!” Richard snapped. “Your trouble is that ye’re never sure whether to be a Catholic or a Protestant anything, let alone martyr! Why not simply admit to yourself that ye’re lovesick for Johnny and want to wallop Hunter?”

Blue eyes blazed at eyes gone absolutely grey for a full minute; neither man moved a muscle. Then both mouths started to quiver at the same instant; they howled with laughter.

“It clears the air,” Stephen said, mopping his face on a rag.

“Aye, that it does,” gasped Richard, borrowing it.

“Ye’d better eat Johnny’s share of the soup now that ye’re here-why did ye come back?”

“I think because you didn’t answer my question, to which I no longer require an answer. Ye’re right, Stephen. Lizzie is something I have to suffer through, including not liking myself.”

John Lawrell moved in, and moved out again so quickly that the poor fellow’s weak head spun; Richard had a comfortable hut up for him within a month, erected at the far end of his little acre with its door and window apertures facing away from his own house. If Lawrell snored after that, Richard was too far away to hear. With regard to his duties he proved excellent, but he had one flaw: he loved to play card games and had to be restrained from gambling away his scant rations.

Sydney Town was mushrooming into veritable streets of small wooden huts, banged together by Nat Lucas and his carpenters as fast as Richard’s sawpits could feed him planks and beams. With neither the time nor the equipment to put a shiplap or dovetail on the boards to join them in a finished way, thin battens were nailed down the gaps-a style not unattractive if, like the interior of Richard’s house, the wood was sanded to a dull polish. Government House, enlarged by King to a size permitting him to entertain half a dozen dinner guests in better days, finally sported sheet glass in its small-paned windows, courtesy of Governor Phillip. Every other residence, including those commodious enough to satisfy the naval and marine officers, had to make do with shutters or naked apertures. One pit was put to sawing the basis for creating shingles; all the roofs would eventually be shingled, though the timber had first to be seasoned in sea-water for six weeks before it could be split. This meant temporary roofs of flax thatch; the task of venturing far and wide in search of flax was handed over to Sirius’s sailors, whom Ross flatly refused to let do nothing.

Liberated from the need to supply Port Jackson with lime, at least for the present, the deposits of calcarenite stone were worked for foundations and chimneys. Having found a good local hardwood the shingle sawpit also cut, the four coopers the island now possessed began to make barrels. Ross had set women to grinding King’s crop of wheat in hand querns, deeming barrels of flour safer from rats than loose grain. Aaron Davis, who had ended in working as a baker at Port Jackson, was appointed community baker. Not that bread was something the community saw every day; Sundays and Wednesdays were bread, Mondays and Thursdays were rice, Saturdays were pease, and Tuesdays and Fridays a porridge of Indian corn mixed with oatmeal.

Eyeing his rapidly proliferating swine, Ross built a small hearth and furnace and started producing salt. What parts of the beast not suitable for salting down were minced and became sausages sheathed in intestine.

“The best thing about a pig,” Major Ross was heard to say, “is that the only inedible part of it is the oink.” As he was known to possess absolutely no sense of humor, the general assumption was that he had spoken seriously.

Sirius, which continued to lie with her stern on and off the reef, was gradually stripped of every salvageable item, from some of her six-pounder guns to the last of the many kegs of nails His Excellency had sent from his settlement, turning to brick and stone, to this settlement of perpetual wood. Saddest loss was the scrap iron Sirius had carried for Norfolk Island’s smithy, still down in her holds and too risky to go after. Almost all the canvas she flew had washed ashore tangled in lines and spars, and her cutter had survived together with its oars; lopping down the masts had wrecked every other boat she owned.

Among the last things to come off her were several casks of tobacco and some crates of cheap Bristol soap. Though the soap did go into Government Stores for general distribution, the tobacco never saw the interior of a pipe bowl-much to the disgust of the seamen, who deemed a puff only slightly less desirable than a swig of rum. George Guest and Henry Hatheway, both from rural parts, went to Major Ross and informed him that in Gloucester gardens wives dealt with slugs, caterpillars and grubs by plundering their husbands’ tobacco. They steeped the leaves in boiling water, then sudsed the liquid with soap and sprinkled the concoction upon their vegetables. The first rain washed it away, but until that fell, wriggly pests turned up their noses and refused to eat such horrid-tasting food.

From that moment on, no one was allowed to throw away a single drop of soapy water. A small group of women was put to stewing the tobacco, which, experience revealed, retained its potency through several infusions. As for soap-why, it could be made just as it was made in poor farmhouses and cottages from one end of the British Isles to the other: fat and lye. Lard was the fat of the pig, and the settlement had plenty of it. To obtain lye was easy: soak the thoroughly burned ashes of unwanted potato, carrot, turnip and beet leaves, boil the mess down a little, and strain. The liquid part was lye. Watering cans were scarce, but a woman armed with a bucket of sudsed tobacco solution and a pewter dipper with holes punched in its bottom sprinkled the growing vegetables-and crops!-quite efficiently enough. To be ready for the next wave, the grub poison was stockpiled in empty rum pipes.

In such practical matters the Commandant shone. His mind had progressed from manufacturing salt, sausages and grub poison to whether he might use some of the sawdust in smokehouses instead of turning it all into the soil. What could not be salted down might perhaps be smoked, including fish. Owning a large work force, Ross was determined no member of it would be idle. The first step was to produce as much food as possible; the second step was to get as many of his charges as possible maintaining themselves without consuming Government food. This latter step was clearly the only justification for the whole Botany Bay experiment-what was the point of dumping thousands of convicts and guards at the far ends of the earth if the Government had to keep feeding them ad infinitum?

At which moment, Supply having gone two weeks earlier to bear the dreadful news about Sirius to His Excellency, the birds arrived on Mt. Pitt, a 1,000-foot sprawl at the northwestern end of the island. A very few days verified King’s report on these big petrels; they came in from the day’s fishing on dusk to waddle to their burrows, equipped with so little brain and so much ignorance of the ways of men that they allowed themselves to be captured without flight or resistance.

Paths were cut through the vine (coming to be called “Samson’s sinew” from its immense girth) up the flanks of the mountain from the new Cascade road, and work was finished in time for the bird catchers to set out in daylight of the first day, armed with sacks. Salt meat rations were cut to three pounds a week and the quantities of bread, rice, pease and oatmeal were halved. The Mt. Pitt bird would have to fill up the ration gaps.

Rum was reduced to a half-pint of very watery grog a day even for the officers, which did not worry Lieutenant Ralph Clark in the least; he was still able to trade his share of it for badly needed shirts, underdrawers, stockings and the like; hardly any of his property off Sirius had reached him, though he caught glimpses of it on some convict’s back. Nor had Major Ross got his property off Sirius, but he bore his losses with a great deal less whinging than Clark, a natural complainer.

Potatoes were issued whenever they were dug at the rate of a few between each dozen people, and harvested vegetables were shared equally. Perhaps because green vegetables owned so little substance-and especially because scurvy was nonexistent-there were always more than enough of them to go around; people would rather eat anything (except fish) than a huge bowl of spinach or runner beans.

It was going to be a long, desperate business. Supply, the Major knew, would not return. The thirty-four-year-old Channel tender would have to sail to the East Indies for food, else those at Port Jackson would certainly starve to death; those at Norfolk Island would probably not, but would be reduced to scratching a primitive living. And the great experiment would fail.

Robert Ross believed as ardently as Arthur Phillip that whatever perils and privations the future might hold, those people in his charge must not be permitted to sink below the Christian standards of any British community anywhere. Somehow morality, decency, literacy, technocracy and all the other virtues of proper European civilization must be preserved. Were they not, then those who did not actually die would be nothings. Where Ross differed from Phillip lay in the more abstract virtues of optimism and faith. Phillip was determined that the great experiment would succeed. Ross simply knew that all of it-the time, the money, the property, the pain-was utterly wasted, sucked into the maw of ignominy to leave no trace behind. Which conviction, rooted though it was, did not deter him in the slightest from exerting his every effort to deal with matters those posturing fools in London had not even taken into account while they listened to Sir Joseph Banks and Mr. James Maria Matra and drew up their fine Heads of a Plan. How easy it was to move human pawns on a global chessboard when the chair was comfortable, the stomach full, the fire warm and the port decanter bottomless.

The diet of Mt. Pitt bird brought no protests from anyone. Its flesh was dark and tasted slightly but not offensively fishy, it oozed very little fat when spitted or stewed, and at the beginning of this winter breeding every female bird carried an egg inside her. Once the feathers-easily plucked out-were removed, the body was not large, so one bird fed a child, two a woman, three a man, and four or five a glutton. The official catchers were instructed to bring down enough birds for smoking too. At first Ross tried to limit both the number of birds and the number of people let walk up the mountain in search of them. When Law Martial and the sight of Dring and Branagan after 500 lashes (administered in increments) did not deter people from venturing after this fantastic change from salt meat, fish and vegetables, Ross shrugged his shoulders and ceased trying to put a curb on bird-getting. Lieutenant Ralph Clark, head of Government Stores, began to record the figures as best he knew them: the catch crept up from 147 birds a day shortly into April to 1,890 a day one month later. Of these some were smoked, but the vast majority were thrown away uneaten; what all the bird catchers wanted to eat were the unlaid eggs and only the unlaid eggs. Clark himself was an unabashed egg fancier and great bird gatherer.

For Richard, who walked the five-mile round journey every other day and enjoyed his Mt. Pitt poultry very much, the arrival of the bird led to the temporary loss of his garden guard. John Lawrell was apprehended by the Law Martial patrol after curfew dragging a sack; when told to halt he tried to flee, got a musket butt on the head and was thrown into the guardhouse. A week later he was released, still nursing his aching pate, and given a dozen lashes with a medium cat.

“What on earth possessed ye, John?” Richard demanded at Turtle Bay, whence he had marched the moaning Lawrell as soon as his day’s work at the sawpits was done. “Sixty-eight birds!” He threw a dipper of salt water onto Lawrell’s back unsympathetically. “Will ye stand still, damn it? I would not need to do this if ye’d just get up the gumption to walk farther into the water and duck down.”

“Cards!” gasped Lawrell, teeth chattering; the wind was due south and very cold.

“Cards.” Richard led him out of the water and patted his welts dry with a rag. “Ye’ll live,” he said then. “Jimmy Richardson did not lay it on hard, ye’re not bleeding much. Were ye a woman, ye’d not have fared so well. And what do cards have to do with it?”

“Lost,” said Lawrell simply, following Richard down the road past the outermost row of houses. “Had to pay somehow. Josh Peck said I could save them a walk and get their birds for them. But I did not know how heavy the sack would be, so I was too slow to get back before curfew.”

“Then learn from this lesson, John, please. If ye must play cards, play with decent men, not cheats and liars like that lot. Now go on up the vale to bed.”

After several moves, Stephen Donovan now had a very good house just to the east of the Cascade road, and Nat Lucas an equally good house on an acre of flat ground beyond him. The swamp did not encroach on this area, but Major Ross was busy trying to drain the swamp by digging an outlet to Turtle Bay. Flat land was arable land, and all the tiny brooks which fed the Arthur’s Vale stream could not contribute enough water to force an exit to the sea; the swamp was a terminus using up growing space.

“Come!” Stephen called when Richard knocked.

“I have just sent my erring guard to bed,” said Richard, sitting down with a sigh. “Peck and the rest called in his card debts by making him bring them birds. Oh, he is a nodcock!”

“But useful. Here, share my fish. The coble got out today and Johnny is dancing attendance on Captain Hunter, so I have his share too. A welcome change from Mt. Pitt birds.”

“I would rather eat fish any day,” said Richard, tucking in, “and why the craze for female birds gravid with egg I do not know. I will repay this kindness by digging ye a handful of potatoes tomorrow. Mine are coming on nicely, one reason why I am glad to have Lawrell back on duty now I can keep a third of my produce.”

“Is anybody speaking to you yet?” Stephen asked when they were done, the dishes washed, the chessboard set up.

“Not among those who have sided with my wife-Connelly, Perrott and a few others from Ceres and Alexander days. Oddly enough, the group who knew her in Gloucester Gaol before my time there-Guest, Risby, Hatheway-have sided with me.” He looked disgusted. “As if there are sides to take. Ridiculous. Lizzie is very satisfied with her lot, up there on the Government House knoll clucking and fussing over Little John, though she don’t try it with the Major.”

“She is in love with you, Richard, and scorned,” Stephen said, thinking that enough time had gone by to bring this aspect up.

Richard stared in astonishment. “Rubbish! There was never love between us. I know you hoped that marrying her might lead to love, but it did not.”

“She loves you.”

Troubled, Richard said nothing for a while, moved and lost a pawn, essayed a knight. If Lizzie loved him, then her hurt was far greater than he had thought. Remembering what she had said about Lady Penrhyn and the stripping of women’s pride, that was how he had seen the worst aspect of his crime against her-as a public humiliation of unpardonable kind. She had never said she loved him, never indicated that by word or look… He lost his knight.

“How goes it between the Marine Corps and the Navy?” he asked.

“Very touchy. Hunter has never liked Major Ross, but his exile here only serves to enhance his loathing. So far they have managed not to have an actual falling out, but that is definitely coming. Limited to Sirius’s cutter, he can undertake no long sea excursions, so he spends most of his time rowing around his nemesis, Nepean Island-looking, I suspect, for navigational evidence to bolster his defense when he comes to court martial in England. Once he has sounded every inch of the bottom and compiled his chart, he will do the same sort of thing everywhere on these coasts.”

“Why has Johnny half-returned to him, if that is not an intrusion into your private world?”

Shrugging, Stephen turned the corners of his mouth down. “No, I will answer. ’Tis very hard for a seaman to resist the authority of the captain unless he is of mutinous make, and that Johnny is not. Johnny is Royal Navy and Hunter next to God.”

“I also heard that Lieutenant William Bradley, Royal Navy, has quit the naval officers’ quarters and moved himself out along the road to Ball Bay.”

“Ye deduced that, no doubt, from sawing timber for his new house. Aye, he has gone, and no one mourns the fact. A very strange man, Bradley-talks to himself, which is why he needs no company other than himself. As I understand it, the Major has put him to rough surveying of the interior. A great affront to Hunter, who is adamant that naval persons of any rank ought not to toil on land.”

Ignominiously beaten, Richard rose to kindle a pine knot in Stephen’s fire. “I would like my revenge, but if I do not go now I will be caught out after curfew. D’ye care to walk to the mountain with me tomorrow for another lot of birds?”

“Since we ate all the fish, gladly.”

Stephen waved him off down the vale, trying to imagine the expression on Richard’s face when he entered his house. Sirius’s sail had been released from duty as shelter and had been divided up among the free men for use as mattresses or hammocks; thanks to King’s wheat crop as well as the fact that the settlement owned neither horses nor cattle, there was ample straw for stuffing. To Stephen, officially the captor of the sail, went as much as he wanted, so he had taken enough for his own needs and Richard’s. Long weathering and a few soapy washes in fresh water softened the canvas sufficiently to turn it into reasonable sheets, not to mention stout trowsers. Parties of women skilled with a needle were sewing away to produce new trowsers for the enlisted marines and sailors, who were obliged to give up a pair of old trowsers to a convict in return for a pair of new ones. No one truly appreciated the amount of sail a ship the size of Sirius carried until it was liberated for other uses.

“I cannot thank you enough for the canvas,” Richard said when he met Stephen on the Cascade road at sundown on the following day. “Using blankets as a bottom sheet on one’s bed wears them out in no time. The canvas will last for years.”

“I suspect it may have to.”

They climbed up the farthest path, which was the least popular one as it involved the longest walk, and gathered a half-dozen birds each high on the mountain, where the creatures still thronged in countless numbers. All that was necessary was to reach down and pick one up; a quick wring of its neck, and into the sack. The eggs were laid now, though the amount of birds being caught had not diminished; Clark’s tally was growing into many thousands, and took account only of birds handed over to Government Stores plus whatever he and his fellow officers collected.

On the way back they passed through a vast clearing where the timber was already felled-some acres of it-on the flattish crest of the hills which divided the direction of the streams from those flowing north to Cascade Bay, those flowing east to Ball Bay, and those flowing south to the swamp or what was becoming known as Phillimore’s stream, around the corner from the far beach. Here in this clearing-what was Major Ross’s purpose?-it was possible to look north at the mountain.

Cloudless darkness had fallen, the stars so dense and brilliant that a man could fancy there must be an intensely glowing white layer behind the darkness of the sky, and that God had pricked the heavens to let some of that silver firmament shine through. Where the bulk of the mountain should have loomed as a black shadow, what looked like streamers of darting fireflies flickered in and out of the gloom, shifting and sparkling rivers of flame; the torches of hundreds of men coming down the slopes.

“Beautiful!” breathed Richard, stunned.

“How could a man tire of this place?”

They remained watching until the lights died away and then resumed their walk amid dozens of panting, sack-laden predators, torches all around them.

Winter came, drier and colder than last year’s; the wheat and Indian corn were planted over many more acres than King’s eleven, but were slow to come up until a welcome day of squally rain followed by a day of sun saw the vale and hillsides turn magically from blood-red soil to vividly green grass.

The official tally of Mt. Pitt birds rose to over 170,000-an average of 340 birds per person over 100 days. The island was still under Law Martial; Major Ross cut salt meat entirely from everybody’s rations, aware that the thousands of petrels remaining on the mountain would fly away once their chicks were strong enough to take wing. There had been plenty of heavy floggings administered by Jim Richardson, whom Richard had used as a sawyer until he broke his leg. To wield his assortment of cats put no strain on the afflicted member, and he quite liked this exclusive occupation. The odium in which he was regarded by almost all of his fellows, free as well as felon, worried him not in the slightest.

There had also been some hangings. Not of convicts: of sailors. Captain Hunter’s servants, assisted by Ross’s servant the noble Escott of Sirius fame, pillaged the Major’s scanty supply of rum, drank some of it and sold the rest. In his role of judge, jury and executioner, Lieutenant-Governor Ross hanged three of the offenders, though not Escott and not Hunter’s chief minion, Elliott. Escott’s other punishment was to be stripped of his Sirius valor; Ross gave the official credit for swimming out to the wreck to a convict named John Arscott. Escott and Elliott were let off with 500 lashes from the meanest cat, a punishment which, as the Major had promised in his address at the beginning of Law Martial, laid them bare to the bone from neck to ankles. This total was administered in a series of five floggings of 100 lashes each, 100 lashes being considered the most any man could bear at one time. The flogger started at the shoulders and moved slowly down the body over back, buttocks and thighs to finish at the calves. Murmurs of mutiny arose among the sailors, but in the face of this terrible crime against the free, rum-drinking community Captain Hunter was unable to support his men’s cause, while the furious marines looked only too happy to shoot a mob of sailors down. Thanks to Private Daniel Stanfield their muskets were in excellent condition and they kept their cartridges dry; musket practice under Stephen and Richard still happened on Saturday mornings.

Major Ross arrived at Richard’s house in the aftermath of the rumstealing disaster, face even grimmer than usual.

This task is killing him, thought Richard, ushering the Major to a chair; he has aged ten years since arriving here.

“Mr. Donovan,” Ross announced, “imparted some interesting facts about ye to me, Morgan. He says ye can distill rum.”

“Aye, sir-given the equipment and the ingredients. Though I cannot promise that it will taste any better than the stuff produced in Rio de Janeiro, from reports of that. Like all spirits, rum should be aged in the cask before being drunk, but if ye want what I think ye want, there is not the time. The results will be raw and nasty.”

“Beggars cannot be choosers.” Ross snapped his fingers at the dog, which bustled over to be patted. “How are ye, MacTavish?”

MacTavish wagged his undocked tail and looked adorable.

“I was a victualler in Bristol, sir, among other things,” said Richard, throwing a log onto his fire, “so I understand better than most how big are the horns of this dilemma. Men who are used to rum or gin every day cannot live happily without it. That can be as true of women. Only the Law Martial and lack of equipment has prevented construction of a still here already. I will gladly build ye the still and work it, but…”

Hands out to the fire, Ross grunted. “I know what ye’re implying. The moment ’tis known a still exists, there will be those who will not be content with a half-pint a day and others who will see profit in it.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Ye have a fine crop of sugar cane, as does the Government.”

Richard grinned. “I thought it might come in handy.”

“Are ye a drinker yourself these days, Morgan?”

“Nay. On that I give you my word, Major Ross.”

“I have one abstemious officer, Lieutenant Clark, so to him I will apportion supervision of this project. And tear my ranks apart looking for privates. Stanfield, Hayes and James Redman I can trust neither to imbibe nor to sell, and Captain Hunter”-his face twisted, was disciplined-“recommends his quarter gunner Drummond, his bosun’s mate Mitchell, and his seaman Hibbs. That gives ye a total of six men and one officer.”

“Ye cannot site it in the vale, sir,” said Richard strongly.

“I agree. Have ye any suggestions?”

“Nay, sir. I travel only as far afield as my sawpits.”

“Let me think about it, Morgan,” said Ross, rising with some reluctance. “In the meantime, have Lawrell cut your sugar cane.”

“Aye, sir. But I will tell him that ye’ve ordered me to start refining sugar to sweeten the officers’ tea.”

Off went the Major, nodding in satisfaction, to supervise the final installation of his grindstone. When the wheat came in, hand querns would not cope with it. Therefore the full-sized millstone would have to be turned by the only labor he had, that of men. A useful adjunct to floggings, which Ross tolerated but privately detested-not because of scruples, rather because the lash only deterred crime when it was administered in very large doses, and those rendered the victims partially crippled for the rest of their lives. To chain a man to the grindstone for a week or a month and make him push it like a sailor a capstan was good punishment, hideous but not ruinous.

The roads to Ball Bay and Cascade were finished. Hacking a road westward to Anson Bay began at the beginning of June, and yielded a delightful surprise; about a hundred acres of rolling hills and vales halfway between Sydney Town and Anson Bay were discovered utterly free of pine forest-for what reason, no one could fathom. Accepting this as a gift like unto the manna of the Mt. Pitt bird, Major Ross immediately decided to establish a new settlement there. The ground he had cleared at the middle of the Cascade road was intended as a place of banishment for the Sirius sailors; Phillipburgh, at the Cascade end of the road, was still trying to turn flax into canvas.

The settlement in the direction of Anson Bay was called after Her Majesty Queen Charlotte-Charlotte Field. Why was Richard not surprised when none other than Lieutenant Ralph Clark was deputed to establish Charlotte Field? In company with Privates Stanfield, Hayes and James Redman? The still would be tucked somewhere along the way between Sydney Town and Charlotte Field, he was sure of it.

Rightly so. Soon after, he was summoned to walk out in that direction to site a new sawpit for Charlotte Field. A nice area. The pineless ground was densely covered with a creeper Clark fancied resembled English cow-itch; the creeper came out of the ground easily and was found useful in the construction of fences when mixed with a bush sporting thorns two inches long-not a fence a pig would tackle, enterprising though pigs were.

Major Ross had chosen a site for the distillery down a track off the Anson Bay road well before Charlotte Field; a stream arose from a spring below the crest and flowed down with other tributaries to join a creek which entered Sydney Bay not far from its western promontory, Point Ross. On additional pay, the three marines and three sailors set to with a will to clear enough ground for a small wooden building and a woodheap of white oak, the same local tree which fueled both the salt house and the lime kiln because it burned to scant ash. The stone blocks which would make the hearth and furnace were hauled by convicts from Sydney Town, ostensibly destined for Charlotte Field later on; Richard and his six men took them from the road to the distillery themselves after dark. They also had to erect the shed. Ross furnished copper kettles, a few stopcocks and valves, copper pipe and vats made from barrels sawn in half. Richard managed the welding and assembling himself. Secrecy was maintained, rather to his surprise; the cut cane and some ears of Indian corn simply vanished to presses and hand querns at the distillery.

Four weeks later he was able to produce his first distillate. The Lieutenant-Governor sipped at it cautiously, grimaced, had another sip, then drank the rest of his quarter-pint down; he liked his rum as much as any other man.

“It tastes dreadful, Morgan, but it has the right effect,” he said, actually smiling. “Ye may well have saved us from mutiny and murder. ’Twould be much smoother if it were aged, but that is for the future. Who knows? We may yet supply Port Jackson with rum as well as lime and timber.”

“An it please ye, sir, I would now appreciate it if I could return to my sawpits,” said Richard, to whom the sight of a still brought no happy memories. “ ’Tis necessary to keep up the mash and the fire, not to mention the water, but I do not see the need to be here myself. Stanfield can take one shift and Drummond the other. If ye’ve any drop of good rum in store, we can put a bit of the raw distillate in an oak cask with a mite of the good stuff and see how it goes.”

“Ye can share the task of supervision with Lieutenant Clark, Morgan, but ’tis a waste of your talents to keep ye here feeding the apparatus and the furnace, ye’re right about that.” He strolled off, smacking his lips, obviously permeated with a feeling of well-being. “Walk with me back to Sydney Town.” Then he remembered the rest of the team, and paused to clap each man on the shoulder. “Guard and tend this well, boys,” he said with startling affability, still smiling. “ ’Twill earn each of ye an extra twenty pounds a year.”

The road through the pines followed the crest down across the top of Mount George, where the views were glorious-the ocean, the whole of Sydney Town and its lagoons, the surf, Phillip and Neapean Islands. Stopping to gaze, Major Ross spoke.

“I have it in mind, Morgan, to free ye,” he said. “I cannot give ye an absolute pardon, but I can give a conditional one until time and altered circumstances make it possible for me to petition a full pardon from His Excellency in Port Jackson. I think ye’ve earned a better status as a free man than simple emancipation by virtue of having served out your sentence-which, as I remember, ye said expires in March of ninety-two?”

Richard’s throat worked convulsively, his eyes overflowed with tears; he tried to speak, could not, nodded as he brushed at the torrent with his palms. Free. Free.

The Major continued to stare at Phillip Island. “There are others I am freeing as well-Lucas, Phillimore, Rice, the elder Mortimer, et cetera. Ye should all have the chance to take up land and make something of yourselves, for all of ye have behaved like decent men for as long as I have known ye. ’Tis thanks to your sort that Norfolk Island has managed to survive and I have been able to govern-not to mention Lieutenant King before me. As of now, Morgan, ye’re a free man, which means that as supervisor of sawyers ye’ll be paid a wage of twenty-five pounds a year. I will also pay ye an emolument for supervising the distillery-five pounds a year-and a sum of twenty for building it. None can be paid in coin of the realm-that His Majesty’s Government did not give us. ’Twill be accorded to ye in notes of hand which will be properly entered in the Government’s accounts. Ye can use it to transact business with the Stores or with private vendors. On the subject of the distillery I want complete silence, and I warn ye that I may close it down-this is an experiment only, which I am performing because I do not want to see any naval individuals go into the distilling business for themselves. My conscience gnaws, I suffer doubts,” he ended, mood flattening. “Lieutenant Clark I can trust not to breathe a word, even to his journal. Its contents-as he well knows-must reflect not only his virtues, but mine also. Oh, I acquit him of the desire to publish, but sometimes journals fall into the wrong hands.”

The speech was long enough to allow Richard to compose himself. “I am your man, Major Ross. That is the only way I can thank ye for all your many kindnesses.” A smile lit his eyes, turning them very blue. “Though I have a favor to ask. Would ye let me make my first act as a free man the honor of shaking your hand?”

Ross extended his hand willingly. “I am for town,” he said, “but I am afraid, Morgan, that ye must return to the distillery and fetch me enough of that horrible brew to water down my little remaining good stuff at dinner this evening.” He grimaced. “I am as tired of Mt. Pitt bird as the next man, but I doubt there will be any complaints if there is a jug of spirits to wash it down.”

Free! He was free! And pardoned free, which meant everything. All men were free once their sentences expired, but they were mere emancipists. A pardoned man had a reference. He was vindicated.

On the 4th of August a sail was sighted from Sydney Town; the entire community forgot work, discipline, illness, good sense. Lieutenant Clark and Captain George Johnston ascended Mount George and verified that the sail was real, but the ship passed serenely onward. Landing at Sydney Bay was impossible in the teeth of a strong southerly gale, so Captain Johnston and Captain Hunter walked to Cascade in the expectation of a landing there, where the water was as quiet as a millpond. But the ship passed serenely on, and by dusk she had disappeared northward. The mood that night in the town and vale, even in Charlotte Field and Phillipburgh, was despairing. To see a ship and be ignored! Oh, what worse disappointment could there be?

The next day Major Ross sent a party to the top of Mt. Pitt to watch, but in vain; the ship was definitely gone.

Then on the 7th of August people in Sydney Town were woken at dawn by screams of a ship on the far southern horizon.

The wind against her, she had not worked much farther in by late afternoon, but she had been joined by a second set of sails. This time it was real, this time they would not be ignored!

Unable to make contact with the first of the two sighted ships, Lieutenant Clark in the coble headed for the second one and managed to board her. She was Surprize, captained out of London by Nicholas Anstis, who had been first mate on Lady Penrhyn and had an interest in the slaving business. Surprize, he informed Clark, carried 204 convicts-but very few stores-for Norfolk Island. Before Clark could have a conniption fit, Anstis added that the other ship was Justinian, carrying no convicts but lots of provisions. Port Jackson no longer starved, and nor would Norfolk Island, where less than three weeks’ rations of salt meat and flour remained.

“Which vessel was it ignored our signals?” Clark demanded.

“Lady Juliana. She carried a cargo of women felons to Port Jackson, but was leaking so badly that she sailed straight for Wampoa empty. She is to pick up a cargo of tea there, but first she needs dry docking,” said Anstis. “Justinian and I are going on to Wampoa as soon as we have dropped our loads here.”

Even men like Len Dyer and William Francis worked energetically to pile Surprize and Justinian longboats with vegetables for the greens-starved crews; neither was able to land any cargo, human or food. Letters came ashore from England and Port Jackson, together with some ships’ officers of a mind to stretch their legs. Unloading would have to wait, happen if necessary at Cascade. The delighted Lieutenant Clark received no less than four fulsome missives from his beloved Betsy, learned that she and baby Ralphie were very well, and felt less anxious.

Governor Phillip explained to Major Ross on paper that Supply had been sent to Batavia, there to pick up whatever food her tiny holds could carry, if possible charter a Dutch vessel to follow her back to Port Jackson with more food, and drop off Lieutenant Philip Gidley King; His Excellency hoped that King would be able to board a Dutch East Indiaman from Batavia at least as far as Cape Town on his long journey of petition to London. As soon as Supply had returned to Port Jackson and was shipshape, she would be sent to Norfolk Island to pick up Captain John Hunter and his Sirius sailors-an event Phillip did not think likely to happen until well into 1791. But, said Phillip firmly, now that sufficient provisions had arrived, Major Ross had no excuse to continue governing under the Law Martial. That would have to be repealed immediately. Oh, bugger ye, King! thought the Major savagely. This is your doing, no one else’s. How am I to get any work out of Hunter’s sailors if I cannot hang them?

There was other bad news from Port Jackson as well. Storeship Guardian, en route from England laden with food, had purchased every beast Cape Town had to spare and set off on the last leg to Botany Bay. On Christmas Eve of 1789 she was 1,000 miles out of the Cape and proceeding placidly through reasonable seas when she sighted a summer iceberg. Her captain had not counted on how much water cattle could drink in one day, so he decided to take advantage of his good fortune and send a few boats to chip off some of the ice, thus replenishing his water. This was done expeditiously, and Guardian made sail away from the ice island. Captain Riou, a happy man, saw for himself that Guardian was well clear and went below to enjoy a good dinner. Fifteen minutes later the ship struck by the stern, wrenched her rudder off and stove in her round tucks. She made water slowly enough for Captain Riou to think that he stood a good chance of getting her back to Cape Town; every last animal was thrown over the side and five boats were launched with the majority of the crew and some very choice artisan convicts in them. But the sailors had broached the rum to deaden the pain of dying in a sea cold enough to harbor ice; the five boats reeled away loaded to the gunwales with drunken men. Only one of them reached land. Guardian reached land too, after limping in aimless spirals all over the south Indian Ocean for weeks. She beached not far from Cape Town, hardly any of her cargo worth salvaging. What could be saved was put aboard Lady Juliana, the first Botany Bay ship to arrive at the Cape of Good Hope after the disaster. But of animals Cape Town had absolutely none to sell Justinian a few days later; they had all been lost off Guardian. As had the personal effects of Governor Phillip, Major Ross, Captain David Collins and others among the senior marine officers. Ross for one never recovered from the magnitude of his financial losses when Guardian foundered, for by proxy he had bought a great many animals for his own use and breeding.

Good news perhaps to learn that starvation was postponed, but repeal of Law Martial and news of Guardian made the Major wish he was a genuine drinking man.

Some stores off Justinian and Surprize were landed over the next days, but none of the convicts-47 men and 157 women. The women were all off Lady Juliana; she had been the first of five ships to make Port Jackson during June. Naturally Phillip had expected a storeship. To find instead that this first vessel to reach them after so long held nothing more useful than women and clothing was appalling. Then storeship Justinian had sailed in, to be followed at the end of the month by Surprize, Neptune and none other than Scarborough, on a second venture to New South Wales.

“Oh, what a shock!” said Surgeon Murray of Justinian to a big audience of marine and stranded naval Norfolk Island officers. His face paled at the memory, he drew a long breath. “Surprize, Neptune and Scarborough brought an additional thousand convicts to Port Jackson, but two hundred and sixty-seven of them had died during the passage. They landed only seven hundred and fifty-nine, of whom nearly five hundred were gravely ill. It was-I thought that His Excellency the Governor was going to faint, and no one blamed him. You can have no idea, no idea…” Murray gagged. “The Home Department had changed contractors, so the victualler of the three ships was a slaving firm, paid in advance for each convict with no stipulation that he be landed alive and well. In fact, it was to the contractor’s financial advantage if the convicts died early in the voyage. So the poor wretches were not-fed. And they were confined for the whole length of the voyage in the old kind of slave fetters-you know, a foot-long, rigid iron bar welded between the ankle cuffs? Even had they been allowed on deck-they were not-they could not have gotten up to the deck. They could not walk. Hard enough on negroes for a six or eight weeks’ passage, but ye can imagine what the fetters did to men incarcerated below deck for nigh a year?”

“I daresay,” said Stephen Donovan through his teeth, “that they died in hideous misery and pain. God rot all slavers!”

When no one else offered a comment, Murray continued. “The worst was Neptune, though Scarborough was not much better-she had near sixty extra men in less space than on her first voyage. Surprize was the best of the three, she lost but thirty-six of her two hundred and fifty-four on the way out. We wept when we were not vomiting, I tell ye frankly. They were living skeletons, all of them, and they kept on dying as they were helped from the holds-the stench! They died on the decks, they died as they were put into boats, died as they were carried ashore. Those who were still alive as they got near to the hospital had to be treated outside until their vermin were dealt with-they seethed with thousands upon thousands of lice, and I do not exaggerate-do I, Mr. Wentworth?”

“Not one iota,” said the other visitor to the officers’ mess, a tall, fair, handsome fellow named D’arcy Wentworth, who had been posted to Norfolk Island as an assistant surgeon. “Neptune was the ship from Hell. I sailed on her as a surgeon from Portsmouth, but never once was I asked to go below during the voyage-in fact, I was forbidden access to the prison. The smell of the prison was in our nostrils the whole way, but when I went down into the orlop at Port Jackson to help-Christ! There are no words to describe what it was like. A sea of maggots, rotting bodies, cockroaches, rats, fleas, flies, lice-but some men were still alive, can ye imagine it? We surgeons expect that any who do manage to survive will emerge raving mad.”

Knowing more merchant masters than the navy men, Stephen asked, “Who is the captain of Neptune?”

“A beast named Donald Trail,” said Wentworth. “He could not understand what all the fuss was about, which made us wonder how many live slaves he delivers to Jamaica. The only thing interested him-or Anstis, for that matter-was selling goods to those in Port Jackson at such exorbitant prices only his rum was bought.”

“I have heard of Trail,” said Stephen, looking sick. “He can keep a negro alive because he can sell the live ones only. To give him a contract that was tacit permission to murder is murder. God rot the whole Home Department!”

“He did not even treat his free paying passengers well, is the mystery,” Wentworth said, shaking his head. “Ye’d think he would at least be conscious enough of his own skin to pander just a little to them, but he did not. Neptune carried some of the officers and men of a new army regiment recruited solely to do duty in New South Wales. Captain John MacArthur of the New South Wales Corps, his wife and babe, their son and servants were jammed into a tiny cabin and forbidden access to the great cabin or the deck save through a corridor filled with women convicts and overflowing buckets of excrement. The babe died, MacArthur quarreled fiercely with Trail and his sailing master and transferred in Cape Town to Scarborough, but not before the squalor had made him quite gravely ill. I understand that the son is seedy too.”

“How did you fare, Mr. Wentworth?” asked Major Ross, who had listened without a word.

“Unpleasantly, but at least I could get up on deck. After the MacArthurs left I was able to put my woman in their cabin-a vast improvement for her.” He looked suddenly nasty. “I have important relatives in England, and I have written to demand that Trail be made to answer for his crimes when Neptune gets home.”

“Do not hope for it,” said Captain George Johnston. “Lord Penrhyn and the slaving group carry more weight in the parliament than a dozen dukes and earls.”

“Tell me more about what happened to these poor wretches at Port Jackson, Mr. Murray,” Major Ross commanded.

“His Excellency the Governor ordered a huge pit dug well out of town,” Murray went on, “and there the dead were placed for Mr. Johnson to conduct a funeral service. A dear man, Mr. Johnson-he was very good to those who still lived, brave in going below Neptune’s deck to fetch men out, and tender in his last rites. But the pit cannot be closed. The corpses have been piled over with rocks so that the natives’ dogs cannot get at them-they will scavenge anything-and bodies were still going into it when Surprize sailed for Norfolk Island. Men were still dying by the score. Governor Phillip is beside himself with grief and anger. We carry a letter from him to Lord Sydney, but I fear ’twill not reach the Home Department before the next lot of convicts are sent-under the same slave contractors and on the same terms. Paid in advance to deliver corpses to Port Jackson.”

“Trail liked to see everybody die early,” said Wentworth. “Neptune lost soldiers too.”

“I take it that most of the thousand-odd aboard Neptune, Surprize and Scarborough were male convicts?” asked Ross.

“Aye, there were but a handful of women, in Neptune, in that filthy corridor. The women were sent earlier in Lady Juliana.”

“What was their fate?” asked Ross grimly, seeing in his mind’s eye 157 walking skeletons being landed at perilous Cascade.

“Oh,” said Surgeon Murray, brightening, “they fared very well! Mr. Richards-he who contracted for your fleet-victualled Lady Juliana. The worst one can say about that ship is that her crew-she carried no troops-had as good a time as they would have in a rum distillery. A cargo of women? Little wonder that her passage out was exceeding slow.”

“We can be thankful for small mercies, it seems,” said Ross. “No doubt our midwives will shortly be busy.”

“Aye, some are with child. Some already have babes.”

“What of the forty-seven men? Are they old Port Jackson men, or are they off these ships from Hell?”

“New arrivals, but the very best of them. Which is not saying much. But at least none is mad and all can keep food down.”

The local rum was in evidence, but from the beginning canny Robert Ross had disguised it by mixing it with better spirit and calling it “Rio rum.” He was also stockpiling Richard’s product in empty oaken casks adulterated by some good Bristol rum off Justinian to see what happened when it aged a little. This cache he, Lieutenant Clark and Richard had hidden in a dry place where no one would find it. The still would continue until he had 2,000 gallons-by which time, he estimated, both the supply of sugar-cane and casks would be exhausted. Then he would dismantle the apparatus and give it to Morgan to hide. Conscience appeased, he made a mental resolution to use the bit of barley the island managed to grow to make small beer; Justinian had brought hops among its cargo. That way even the convicts would occasionally get something better than water to drink.

Jesus Christ, what kind of trade was this one in convicted men and women? Handed by the King’s own government to worms and snakes. He had hanged men and he had flogged men, but he had fed them and cared for them too. Does Arthur Phillip realize yet that the wickedness of slavers has saved him from starvation a second time within a twelvemonth? What would have happened if all the 1,200 convicts who arrived in June had been landed in as good a condition as those off our own fleet? Minus Guardian, what food Justinian carried would have lasted scant weeks. God has saved New South Wales through the agency of soulless slavers. But who, when God calls this debt in, will be asked to pay?

On the morning of August 10th before any convicts had been landed from Surprize, Major Ross assembled every member of his community under the Union flag and addressed them.

“Our critical situation has been alleviated by the arrival of sufficient supplies to last us for some time!” he roared. “I hereby announce that the Law Martial is repealed! Which does not mean that I grant any of ye license to run amok! I may not be able to hang, but I can still flog ye within an inch of your lives-and flog ye I will! Our population is about to increase to seven hundred and eighteen persons, and that is not a prospect can be viewed with complacency! Especially given that the new convicts are mostly women, while the few men among them are sick. Therefore the new mouths we have to feed are not attached to bodies which can do hard labor. Every hut and house will have to take one additional person, for I am not about to build a barracks for women. Only those who will act as superintendents of convicts-Mr. Donovan and Mr. Wentworth-are given dispensation in this respect. Be ye sailors, marines outside the barracks, pardoned convicts or convicts still under sentence, ye will take charge of at least one woman. Officers may participate or not, according to their choice. But I warn ye, so hear me well! I will have no woman beaten or disgraced by becoming the plaything of a number of men. I cannot stop fornication, but I will not condone conduct that brands ye as savages. Rape and other sorts of physical abuse of the women will earn ye five hundred lashes from Richardson’s meanest cat, and that goes as much for marines and sailors as it does felons.”

He paused to frown direfully at the silent ranks, eyes resting on Captain John Hunter’s smug countenance; there was one who fully understood that His Excellency’s abolition of the Law Martial gave him a great deal more latitude in defiance.

“Excluding those naval persons who do not wish to remain here and settle once Supply arrives to take them off the island, from now on I am going to thin Sydney Town out by putting as many of ye as I can onto one-acre lots, provided that ye are supporting a new man or a woman. The contents of your lots will not be subject to any Government garnish, but rather must serve to lessen your need for the Government’s stores of food. Ye are, however, at liberty to sell any surplus to the Government, and ye will be paid for all such surpluses, be ye free or felon. Those of convict status who work hard, clear their lots and sell to the Government will be freed as soon as they demonstrate their worth, just as I have already freed some of ye for good work. The Government will dower each occupant of a one-acre lot with a breeding sow and provide the services of a boar. I cannot extend this to poultry, but those of ye who can afford to purchase turkeys, chickens or ducks will be let do so as soon as poultry numbers permit.”

There were low murmurs in the crowd; some faces beamed, others glowered. Not everybody liked the idea of hard work, even in his own interests.

The Major continued. “Richard Phillimore, ye may take up one acre of the lot ye fancy around the corner to the east. Nathaniel Lucas, ye may regard the one acre behind Sydney Town whereon ye presently live as yours. John Rice, ye may take up one acre above Nat Lucas fronting on the stream which flows between the marine barracks and the inner row of houses. John Mortimer and Thomas Crowder, ye’ll go to the same locality as Rice. Richard Morgan, ye will remain on your present piece at the head of the vale. I will be notifying others as soon as Mr. Bradley gives me his plan. The crew of Sirius will go to the big clearing midway along the Cascade road. The flax workers, including the retters and weavers I believe have come in Surprize, will settle at Phillipburgh and establish a proper canvas factory there.”

Run out of things to say, he simply stopped. “Get ye gone!”

Richard returned to his sawpit up the vale, his mood a blend of exhilaration and gloom. Ross had given him his own acre right where his house stood-a wonderful boon, as it was already cleared and growing. Nat Lucas and Richard Phillimore had been similarly gifted, whereas Crowder, Rice and Mortimer would have to fell trees. His gloom revolved around his solitude, which Ross definitely intended should end. Though Lawrell might occupy his own hut, Richard knew that he could not so banish a woman, any more than he could hand her over to Lawrell. Lawrell was decent enough, but would certainly expect to enjoy her body whether she wished it or not. No, the wretched creature would have to live in his house, just one largish room. That canceled his plans for the coming weekend, which had consisted of fishing with a hand-line from the rocks west of the landing place and taking a long walk with Stephen. Instead, he would have to start adding a new room onto his house for the female. Johnny Livingstone, wise enough not to ask why he needed one, had built him a sled on smooth runners to which he could attach himself by canvas harness and draw like a horse. He had needed it to cart the ingredients for mash to the distillery, deeming that a task only he should perform, and under darkness. It held about as much as a good big handcart, and it was invaluable. Now he would have to use it to lump stone from the quarry for more foundation piers. Damn all women!

This being winter, the senior officers messed together at one o’clock for the hot main meal of their day, and did so with Major Ross in the dining room of Government House. Mrs. Morgan, as Lizzie Lock insisted upon being called, was a superb cook now she had a few ingredients. Today she served roast pork in honor of the arrival of Surprize and Justinian, though no officers from either ship had been invited to eat it any more than had Messrs. Donovan, Wentworth and Murray. Lieutenant Ralph Clark was not present either; he had taken Little John to dine with Messrs. Donovan, Wentworth and Murray. His own table was notoriously meager, had been ever since the voyage from England. When it came to spending his own money, Clark, whose circumstances were financially shortened, was extremely frugal. Nor was Lieutenant Robert Kellow present; he was still in Coventry after fighting a ridiculous duel with Lieutenant Faddy.

Present were Major Robert Ross, Captain John Hunter, Captain George Johnston, Lieutenant John Johnstone and, alas, that shocking gossip, Lieutenant William Faddy.

The Major served a before-dinner drink of “Rio rum,” reserving the bottle of port Captain Maitland of Justinian had given him for an after-dinner tipple. The meal was a little long in coming; the Major served a second before-dinner drink. So when they sat down to do justice to Mrs. Morgan’s haunch of pork, its skin beautifully crackled, the gravy delicious and the roast potatoes perfectly crusted with meat juices, the five men were a little too light-headed to banish the effects of the rum by eating; a situation not helped because more rum accompanied the feast.

“I see ye’ve replaced Clark as head of Government Stores,” said Hunter, finishing off the last of his baked rice pudding, swimming in treacle.

“Lieutenant Clark has better things to do than count up numbers on his fingers,” said Ross, chin shining with crackling fat. “His Excellency sent me Freeman to be of use, and I will use him thus. I need Clark to superintend the building of Charlotte Field.”

Hunter stiffened. “Which reminds me,” he said, voice quiet, “that during your memorable address this morning, ye implied that my seamen are to be moved out of Sydney Town-along the Cascade road, I think ye put it.”

“I did.” Ross wiped his chin with one of the napkins dear Mrs. Morgan had hemmed out of an old linen tablecloth-a gem of a woman! What had possessed Richard Morgan to repudiate her, Ross could not guess with certainty, but he suspected it had to do with activities in bed, for Morgan had been right: she was definitely not a temptress. Folding the napkin, Ross looked straight at Hunter, sitting at the far end of the table.

“What of it?” he asked.

“Ye’re not the Lord High Executioner any longer, Ross, so what gives ye the right to make decisions about my crew?”

“I am still the Lieutenant-Governor, I believe. Therefore it is my right to shift pillars to posts and the Royal Navy to the Cascade road. With a half plus one hundred women about to descend upon us, I do not want Sydney Town crawling with ruffians who will not work yet expect to be fed.”

Hunter shoved his pudding plate aside with a force that toppled his empty rum mug and leaned forward, the bases of his palms against the edge of the table. “I have had enough!” he shouted, lifted one hand and banged it down. “Ye’re a perfidious dictator, Ross, and so I will inform the Governor when I return to Port Jackson! Ye’ve hanged my men, ye’ve flogged my men, and I curse ye for it! Ye’ve made seamen of the Royal Navy work at tasks I’d not give to Judas Iscariot-gathering flax, risking their lives moving stones on the reef”-he rose to his feet, glaring at Ross with teeth bared-“and what is more, ye’ve enjoyed every minute of your Law Martial!”

“I have indeed,” said Ross with deceptive affability. “ ’Tis wonderful good for my liver and lights to watch the Navy work for a change.”

“I tell ye now, Major Ross, ye’ll not banish my men!”

“Fuck I won’t!” Ross got up, eyes blazing. “I have suffered ye and your privileged lot for five months-and from the sound of it, I have to keep suffering ye for the next six months! Well, not at close quarters! You Royal Navy bastards think ye’re the lords of creation, but ye’re not! Not here, at any rate. Here ye’re a pack of leeches sucking blood out of other persons. But here there is a marine in charge-this marine! Ye’ll do as ye’re told, Hunter, and that is the end of it! I care not if ye bugger every ship’s boy silly, but ye’ll not continue to do it close enough to me to smell the farts! Go and push your turds on the Cascade road!”

“I’ll have ye court martialed, Ross! I’ll have ye recalled to Port Jackson in disgrace and sent home on the first ship!”

“Try, ye pathetic old shirt-lifter! But remember that I am not the one lost his command! And if ye’ve hied me to England for court martial, I will be there to testify that ye took no notice of those present in this island who could have told ye how not to lose your ship!” roared Ross. “The truth is, Hunter, that ye could not navigate a barge between Woolwich and Tilbury if ye were being towed!”

Face purple, Hunter sucked the flecks of foam from the corners of his mouth with a hiss. “Pistols,” he said, “tomorrow at dawn.”

The Major burst into laughter. “In a pig’s eye!” he said. “I would not so demean the Marine Corps! Fight a duel with a Miss Molly granny has one foot in the grave already? Piss off! Go on, piss off, and don’t show your face in Sydney Town while I am still Lieutenant-Governor of Norfolk Island!”

Captain Hunter turned on his heel and left.

The three witnesses looked at each other across the table, Faddy itching to make his excuses and rush off to tell Ralph Clark, John Johnstone feeling sick to his stomach, and the rapacious George Johnston conscious of a delicious well-being not entirely due to rum or Mrs. Morgan’s food. That was telling the Navy! He heartily concurred with Ross’s opinion of the Sirius crew; besides which, it devolved upon him, the only captain, to keep the enlisted marines from the seamen’s throats. Not an easy task. And how very clever the Major was, to shift a part of his problem out of Sydney Town before 157 women arrived in it.

“Faddy,” said the Major, sitting down with a sigh of satisfaction, “keep your arse on your chair. I will not order ye to keep your mouth shut because not even God Himself could do that unless He struck ye dumb. George, do the honors with the port. I’ll not let this truly memorable dinner conclude before we have drunk a loyal toast to His Majesty and the Marine Corps, which one day will be the Royal Marine Corps. Then we will have equal rank with the Navy.”

On Friday the 13th, a day so inauspicious that the entire community shivered with superstitious fear, the female convicts began to be disembarked from Surprize at Cascade, for the wind stubbornly refused to shift out of the south.

Though he had ten sawpits working these days and Ralph Clark wanted one at Charlotte Field together with a team of carpenters-Ross was anxious to get the settlement there up and running to have yet more land to grow grain-Richard still sawed himself, and still with Private Billy Wigfall. But early on Friday the 13th he was obliged to report to Major Ross that he could not persuade one man to saw on such an unlucky day.

“The thing is, sir, that were I to summon Richardson and his cat they would work, but in such a pother that there would be accidents. I cannot run the risk of having men incapacitated by injuries when we have to saw timber for so many new settlements,” Richard explained.

“Some things,” said Ross, a trifle fearful of the omens himself, “cannot be resisted. I shall give everybody the day off. They will have to work tomorrow instead. Incidentally, I have forbidden all convicts to walk to Cascade today in search of likely women.” He grinned mirthlessly. “I also told them that if they defied me and did try, they would be bound to pick the wrong ones on Friday the thirteenth. However, the useless creatures will have to be helped ashore and up to the top of the climb, and as I have also ordered my marines to stay away, that leaves the field to Sirius’s sailors.” This put a little genuine amusement into his smile. “However, I want someone there to report back to me on the conduct of Sirius’s sailors, most of whom came into the world without benefit of father or mother. Ye can accompany Mr. Donovan and Mr. Wentworth, Morgan.”

The three men set off at eight in the morning, in the best of spirits despite the date. Stephen and D’arcy Wentworth got on together famously; like Richard, Wentworth was too sensible a man to condemn a man for being a Miss Molly. The pair also shared certain characteristics, particularly a zest for new places and adventures, and both were very well read. The sea had provided an outlet for Stephen’s desire for action, whereas Wentworth had experienced the call of the road and been apprehended and tried on several occasions for highway robbery. Only those important relatives had gotten him off, but even family patience can eventually erode; having dabbled in medicine when he was not holding up coaches, Wentworth was told to take himself off to New South Wales and never come back. The lure was a small income payable only in New South Wales.

Stephen still wore his black hair in long, luxuriant curls, but Wentworth had gone to what he said was starting to be the new fashion-cropped hair like Richard’s, though his was not as short. The three of them walking abreast down the road looked striking: handsome, tall, lithe, with Wentworth, the tallest and the only fair one, between the two dark-headed ones.

They scrambled down the steep cleft which emerged 100 yards from the landing place to find Surprize fairly close in shore and the sea calm. The tide was turning to the flood, and Captain Anstis had been instructed two days ago by Mr. Donovan as to how to manage the business of getting people safely onto dry land. Advice he, a merchant master, was sensible enough to heed.

“Anstis is an awful man,” said Stephen, sitting down on a rock. “I am told that in Port Jackson he sold paper for a penny a sheet, ink for a pound the small bottle, and cheap unbleached calico for ten shillings the ell. [6] Surgeon Murray says he had nowhere near as many customers as he had expected, so we shall see how he does when he sets up a stall here.”

Remembering Lizzie Lock-Morgan, Richard, Morgan!-and what she had told him about Lady Penrhyn’s lack of rags for bleeding women, Richard decided that, much though he loathed enriching the likes of a man who starved other men to death for profit, he would be at that stall to buy some ells of unbleached calico for the woman he would be obliged to shelter under the Ross Plan. Perhaps Lady Juliana’s complement had been provided with rags, but he doubted it. If the behavior of Lady Penrhyn’s sexually satiated crew was anything to go on, the sailors would not have been sympathetic no matter how many women they plundered. He would certainly have to provide a bed for her, which meant a mattress, pillow, sheets and maybe a blanket, clothing. Johnny Livingstone had promised to make him the bed and some more chairs, but his unwelcome guest was going to prove expensive. He still had his gold coins in his box and in the heels of Ike Rogers’s boots. Interesting to see what Nicholas Anstis had for sale. Emery powder? He hoped so; his supply was almost exhausted. Sandpaper he made himself from Turtle Bay sand, fish-glue he made himself from fish scraps, but emery powder he could not duplicate.

Shortly after ten o’clock the first longboat struck for shore to a cheer from about fifty of Sirius’s seamen, waiting eagerly; other longboats in the water alongside Surprize were filling with more women. The conditions were nothing like as wet or as rough as when Major Ross had landed from Sirius, but when the first boat maneuvered itself near the landing rock, its oarsmen poised to shove off in a hurry if a wave larger than the rest came rushing in, the women shrieked, struggled, refused to make the leap. One Sirius sailor advanced to the edge of the rock and held out his hands; when the boat came in a second time the two sailors aboard it threw a screaming woman at him, followed her up with others. No one fell in, and the bundles of personal property landed safely in their wake. Another boat succeeded the first, the process was repeated; soon the whole of the very little negotiable ground in the vicinity of the landing place was milling with Sirius seamen and women. There were, however, no offensive liberties; most of the women were led off, each by the man who apparently fancied her, to make the climb to the crest 200 feet above.

“Wait,” said Stephen, “until the news reaches town that Sirius has made off with the best women. The marines will be fit to be tied, since Ross forbade them to come over.”

“Did he do that deliberately?” asked Wentworth curiously.

“Aye, but not for the reason ye might think,” said Richard. “Which is worse? To let those of his marines not on duty take first pick, or let Sirius take first pick? Since there is bound to be contention, the Major would rather it lay between marines and sailors than marines and other marines.”

“Anyway,” Stephen smiled, “there has been little picking. I imagine Medusa the Gorgon would look good to them after so long. I have counted a mere fifty-three women, which means, my friends, that we will have to get up off our arses and down to the rock. The helpers from Sirius have disappeared.”

Like Stephen Donovan and Richard Morgan-but for very different reasons-D’arcy Wentworth was not tempted to find himself a woman from among those who landed after the three men took over on the landing rock, encouraging the terrified creatures to leap ashore. His own convict mistress, a beautiful red-haired girl named Catherine Crowley, was pledged not to be landed at Cascade; she and their baby son, William Charles, would wait until Sydney Bay calmed down. Wentworth had fallen in love with her at first sight and defiantly moved her out of the filthy corridor on Neptune; in the cabin which had belonged to the MacArthurs, Catherine bore her baby shortly before Neptune reached Port Jackson. Both a sweet joy and a sore sadness. Little William Charles, with his mother’s copper curls and the promise of his father’s stature, had a badly crossed eye and would never see very well.

Having landed almost seventy of her female and all her male convicts, Surprize signaled as the tide reached half-ebb that she would not be sending more. The women were a sorry-looking lot; though Lady Juliana might have treated them well, they had made the voyage to Norfolk Island on a “wet” ship, damp and leaky, on a deck which had contained men on the long journey out and still contained filth, decay and excrement.

But the 47 men landed were in an appalling way. Were these the fittest who had been delivered to Port Jackson? Wentworth had to jump into each boat as it arrived-the Surprize seamen were not interested-and pick the poor wretches up, throw them bodily to Richard and Stephen, for they could not have jumped an inch. Of flesh they had none, eyes sunk into their sockets like shriveled gooseberries in paper rings, teeth gone, hair gone, nails rotted. Full of scurvy, lice and dysentery. Richard, the fleetest, ran to Sydney Town and demanded marine or convict helpers-the last of the women, unclaimed by Sirius, were straggling along the road hampered by the weight of their bundles as he returned at a run, Sergeant Tom Smyth urging the recruits in his wake. Few men were as strong as a top sawyer, even one about to turn forty-two. Neither he nor Smyth saw one of the convict volunteers, Tom Jones Two, sneak off before the group reached the cleft at Cascade; there were still women trying to walk to Sydney Town.

But by dusk the last of the work was done, all the landed convicts safe in Sydney Town, where fresh choices were made for the women and the emaciated, terribly ill men were put into the small hospital and a hastily converted store shed. Olivia Lucas, Eliza Anderson, John Bryant’s widow, and the Commandant’s housekeeper, Mrs. Richard Morgan, ministered to the sick and despaired of their ever getting well again. And these were the best from among 1,000 men? That was what everybody could not get over.

As Surprize was still at Cascade the next day, Stephen, D’arcy Wentworth and Richard returned to help again, having scrubbed themselves raw last night to remove the dirt and vermin handling those men and women had produced. Then the wind got up, Surprize signaled that she was finished, Stephen and D’arcy took charge of the last party of women and jollied them along, showing them how to carry their burdens easier, taking whatever they could carry themselves, assuring the terrified creatures that they were going to like life in Norfolk Island, which was a better place by far than Port Jackson.

Deputed to make sure that Surprize did not change her mind and suddenly launch another longboat, Richard was some minutes behind them in leaving Cascade. At the top of the crest he turned to look along that coast, a less familiar sight than Sydney Bay’s fabulous reef, lagoon, beaches and offshore islands. But no less hauntingly beautiful, Richard thought, between the waterfalls, the outcrops of rock in the water, a great blowhole to the north sending a jet of foam higher and higher as the sea rose.

What interesting trees were the Norfolk pines! Those felled to make the road had been cut off right at ground level with a cross saw and were already crumbling, sinking slowly beneath the surface. In two years, with a little rubble to fill the craters in, no one would ever know that pines had once occupied every inch. Aware that the sun was lower than he had counted on, he quickened his pace as he walked through the clearing around Phillipburgh, where Ross was heroically following in King’s footsteps by attempting to establish a canvas-from-flax industry, and set off into the forested section that led to the fairly flat crest to which the Lieutenant-Governor had banished the men off Sirius. Captain Hunter had declined to join them; he had elected to move in with Lieutenant William Bradley at what was beginning to be known as Phillimore’s Run, from the strength of the stream which ran through Dick Phillimore’s land.

Well, he was safe for yet another day. None of the women had taken a fancy to him, none had lacked eager takers acceptable to them-though all had fancied Stephen best, the devil. With any luck, Richard thought as he strode along, I will wriggle out of having to care for anybody save John Lawrell, even if that does mean I will not qualify for a sow.

Something mewed. Richard stopped, frowning. The settlers had a few cats brought on Sirius, but they were greatly prized as pets and ratters and did not need to wander this far in search of food. Sirius’s crew had cats too, but loved them, so it was hardly likely to belong to the sailors. Unless it had strayed, climbed a tree and could not get down.

“Here, kitty, kitty!” he called, ear tilted for a response.

Another mew, but less catlike. Skin prickling, he left the road and entered the realm of vine-choked pine buttresses. Once off the cleared ground the darkness increased dramatically; he paused long enough to allow his eyes to accustom themselves to the gloom, then started off again, suddenly sure that the sound was a human one. What a pity. He had hoped for a cat, longing to be able to gift Stephen with a replacement for his beloved Rodney, which, as ship’s cat, had remained behind on Alexander when Stephen moved to Sirius and Johnny Livingstone’s arms.

“Where are ye?” he asked in an ordinary but loud voice. “Sing out to me, then I can find ye.”

Silence save for the creaking of the pines, the sound of the wind high up in them, the flutters of birds.

“Come, it is all right, I want to help ye. Sing out!”

A faint mew, some distance farther in. Richard looked back to fix his landmarks, then ventured toward the sound.

“Sing out,” he said at normal volume. “Let me find you.”

“Help me!”

After that it was no trouble to find her, crouched inside the cavity time and perpetually gnawing beetles had carved out of an enormous pine; a refugee might have made a dwelling out of it, which lent credence to the stories of the occasional convict who absconded into the wilderness, only to reappear in Sydney Town weeks later, starving.

A little girl, or so at first she seemed. Then he saw that it was a woman’s breast showed amid a great tear in her dress. Crouched on his heels, he smiled and held out his hand.

“Come, it is all right. I will not hurt you. We must leave this place or it will be too dark to see the way back to the road. Come, take my hand.”

She put her fingers into his palm and let him draw her out, shivering with cold and terror.

“Where are your things?” he asked, careful to touch no more of her than those trembling fingers.

“The man took them,” she whispered.

Mouth compressed to a thin line, he led her to the road, there to look at her in the dying light. No taller than his shoulder, very thin, with what might have been fair hair, though it was too dirty to tell. Her eyes, however, were-were-his breath caught. No, sunshine would give the lie to them, had to! William Henry’s eyes had belonged to him alone, they had no like on the face of the globe.

“Are ye able to walk?” he asked, wanting to give her his shirt but afraid of frightening her into running off.

“I think so.”

“At the next clearing I will get a torch. After that we can take our time.”

She flinched, shuddered.

“No, no, it is all right! We have three more miles to get home, and we will need to see our way.” He held her hand strongly and began to move onward. “My name is Richard Morgan, and I am a free man.” How wonderful to be able to say that! “I am the supervisor of sawyers.”

Though she did not reply, she walked with him more confidently until they reached the Sirius settlement. The sailors were living in tents until the carpenters could erect proper barracks and huts, and a few men were moving about in the distance. A big fire burned adjacent to the road, but no one sat at it. They were probably all drunk on rum. So no one saw him pick up a torch and kindle it, nor saw the waif still clinging for dear life to his hand.

“What is your name?” he asked as they set off again into the pines, more exposed to the south and beginning to roar now that the full force of the wind struck into them like a hammer into thin copper sheeting-boom, boom, boom.

“Catherine Clark.”

“Kitty,” he said instantly. “Kitty.”

She jumped. “How did you know that?”

“I did not,” he said, surprised. “It is just that when I first heard ye, I thought I heard a kitten. Ye’re off Lady Juliana?”

“Yes.”

Sensing that she was foundering but afraid to carry her for fear of frightening her-who was the cur had attacked her?-he said, “We will not waste our time or breath on talking, Kitty. The most important thing is to get ye home.”

Home.The most beautiful word in the world. He uttered it as if it genuinely meant something to him, as if he promised her all the things she had not known in so long. Since years before she was convicted and sent briefly to the London Newgate, then sent to Lady Juliana on the Thames to wait for months before the ship finally sailed for Botany Bay all alone. That had not been utter horror because no sailor had lusted after her; with 204 women to choose from, why should a mere 30 men select any but the strapping girls with hips, breasts, nicely rounded bellies? A few of the men were given to prowling, not satisfied with one conquest, but Mr. Nicol had made sure no girl was raped. Most of the crew had behaved like potential buyers at a horse fair and fastened upon just one “wife,” as he called her. Like a hundred others on board, Catherine Clark had never attracted male attention. In Port Jackson they had not been landed, had remained upon Lady Juliana until 157 of them were picked at random to transfer to Surprize for the voyage to Norfolk Island, a place she had never, never heard of. Nor had she heard of Port Jackson: all she had known was “Botany Bay,” a petrifying name.

Surprize had been far worse than Lady Juliana. Seasick even in the Thames, desperately ill for most of Lady Juliana’s leisurely progress, Catherine had descended into a nightmare only terrible seasickness had rendered endurable without madness. The place where they were put crawled with vermin, slopped with a noisome fluid the nature of which no one dared to guess, stank so badly that the nose never got used to it, and there was no fresh air, no deck privilege.

To be rowed ashore and flung like a doll onto the rock had terrified her, but a handsome man with a beautiful smile and the bluest eyes had caught her, reassured her, given her a gentle push and asked her if she could manage to climb that awful crevice. Wanting to please him, she had nodded and set off, her bundle and her bedding serving as props while she toiled upward. By some quirk of fate she had not set eyes upon Richard Morgan, who had come down on a more precipitous track at the moment she was crawling into the cleft. At the top she paused to catch her breath, then set off along the road, realizing that so much seasickness and so little food for the past year and more had not equipped her for this walk, however far it might be, wherever its termination might be. A group of men passed her by at a run, took no notice of her.

Not far into the forest her legs could carry her no farther; she set her bundle and her bedding on the ground and sat upon them, her head between her knees, wheezing.

“Well, what have we here?” a voice asked.

She looked up to see a corn-gold fellow clad only in a pair of tattered canvas trowsers staring at her. Then he smiled to reveal that he had two mouths: both front teeth in upper and lower jaw were missing, creating a sinister black hole. But she was very tired, so when he held out his hand to her she took it, expecting him to help her to her feet. Instead he jerked her into his arms and tried to cover her mouth with that awful aperture in his face. Struggling weakly, she resisted, felt her thin convict slops dress rip as he grabbed cruelly at her breasts.

Someone in the distance spoke. His grip relaxed immediately; she tore herself away from him and ran into the trees. For a moment he stood, clearly debating whether to follow her, then several more voices spoke. He shrugged, picked up her bundle and her bedding, and set off in the direction she had been pointed. The noises of conversation grew closer. Panicking, she ran farther into the forest until she had no idea where she was, where-abouts the road was. Something flew in her face, but she did not scream. She fainted, struck her head on a root.

When she came to, moaning and retching, darkness had fallen. Scurries, thin keeking shrieks, the mighty groans of mighty trees moving, a night so black she could see nothing-she crawled on hands and knees to the hollow in a tree so large she could not see around it, and there huddled until a wan morning light let her discover where she was. Surrounded by these gigantic trees and penned into her prison by a creeper as big around as her waist.

All that day she had heard the confused sounds of people far off but had not cried out, terrified that the man with two mouths was lurking. Why, with the light fading, she had suddenly tried to shout, she never knew. Only that she had, and had been answered: “Here, Kitty, Kitty!” Whoever it was called her name, and she thought of the wonderful man who had helped her ashore.

Her finder was very like that man, but not he; his hair was cut off, his eyes were greyer. His smile was beautiful too, teeth as white as snow and not one missing. It was too dim to see more, but when he extended his hand she took it and held on to it, associating him with the one who brought her ashore and still lived in her memory vividly. Once on the road, her eyes cleared enough to see that he was older than her hero of the rock, as brown of skin and dark of hair; they might have been brothers. This conclusion was what prompted her to trust him, to walk with him.

“You are cold,” he said now. “I beg ye, let me give ye my shirt. I mean no insult, but I must touch ye to put it on, Kitty.”

Even had he meant to insult her she was too exhausted to resist, so she stood docilely while he peeled his shirt off and slid her arms into its sleeves, then left her to tie its ends together in a knot about her waist.

“Warmer?”

“Yes.”

Somehow she managed to force her legs to keep moving until they reached the last section of road, which plunged steeply down a hill to a different darkness, lit with pinpoints of flame and, far out, a white flurry. She tripped and fell heavily.

“That settles it,” said Richard, abandoning the torch. He plucked her up, draped her around his shoulders with her wrists pinioned by one hand, her legs by the other, and set off, as sure-footed as if he walked by day. Near the bottom stood a house. He marched up to it and thumped on its door.

“Stephen!” he called.

“Christ, Richard, abducting females?” asked the man from the rock, eyes dancing with unmalicious mockery.

“The poor child spent last night in the Cascade woods. Some bastard attacked her and stole her things. Light me home, please.”

“Let me carry her,” said Stephen. “Ye must be worn out.”

Yes, oh yes, please carry me! she cried silently. But Richard Morgan shook his head.

“Nay, I’ve carried her down the hill, no more. She has lice. Just see me home.”

“What do lice matter? Bring her in,” Stephen commanded, holding the door wide. “Ye have no fire lit, and since ye planned to eat with me, ye have no food prepared. Bring her in, man! I have seen my share of vermin these past two days.” His heart twisted at the look on Richard’s face. Who knows why a man loves, or whom he will love? He has crossed the deck to his fate, just as I did on Alexander. “I have fish-chowder. She will be able to tolerate the broth.”

“Lice first, else she’ll sicken. What she needs most is a bath and clean clothes. Have ye ample hot water on the hob? D’ye need cold? I am off to Olivia Lucas to borrow.”

“I have water enough, but no bath and no louse comb. See if Olivia can oblige.”

Off went Richard, leaving Stephen alone with the scrap, who had recovered sufficiently to stare at him with worshipful eyes-the most extraordinary eyes he had ever seen, an ale color speckled with dark brown dots, and fringed by thick lashes so fair that only their crystal gleam in the candlelight betrayed their presence. Thinner by far than probably God had intended her to be, owning an oval face and no beauty save for those eyes; she had a typically large English nose and prominent English chin.

He put a chair in the middle of the floor and sat her on it. “I am Stephen Donovan,” he said, ladling liquid off the top of the chowder and setting it aside in a bowl to cool. “Who are you?”

“Catherine Clark. Kitty,” she answered, smiling to reveal a trace of dimple in her left cheek and regular, discolored teeth. A sign, thought the experienced sailor, of perpetual seasickness and lack of nourishment.

“You helped me onto the rock,” she said.

“Along with half a hundred others, so indeed I did. Now tell me about the man and your night in the woods, Kitty.”

She explained, composure growing with every passing minute, taking in the neat parlor-cum-kitchen with its table, several nice chairs, kitchen bench, another table which apparently served him as a desk, the sanded walls adorned with three sets of enormous fanged jaws; a chessboard and men sat on the desk together with an inkwell, quills and papers, and the table was set for two.

“A man with yellow hair and four missing front teeth.”

“Yes.”

“Tom Jones Two, for sure.” He gave her the bowl. “Drink.”

When she sipped gingerly at the broth an expression of bliss came over her face; she drank it down greedily and held out the empty bowl. “Please may I have some more, Mr. Donovan?”

“Stephen. Ye may have more in a little while, Kitty. Let that lot settle first. Have ye been seasick often?”

“Forever,” she said simply.

“Well, starting tomorrow, scrub your teeth every day with some ashes from the fire. If ye do not, ye’ll lose them. Bringing up bile for months on end eats them away to nothing.”

“I am sorry for bringing lice into your house,” she said.

“Pish and tush, child! Richard will fetch ye new clothes and we will burn these. But I think ye should cut off your hair, if ye can bear to. Not to the scalp, just short.”

She flinched, but nodded obediently.

Richard returned bearing a small tin bathtub with clothes in it. “Olivia Lucas is a treasure,” he said, dumping the bath down and removing its contents. “Has Kitty told ye what happened?”

“Aye. Her attacker was Tom Jones Two. Unmistakable.”

The two men half-filled the baby’s bath with a mixture of hot and cold water, working, thought the dazed Kitty, as if they truly were brothers.

“Are ye accustomed to bathing, Kitty?” Richard asked. It was the most delicate way he could think to put the question; she may never have washed in her life, judging from her appearance.

“Oh, yes. I cannot thank you enough, Mr. Morgan. I have not been able to wash properly since I left Lady Juliana. Aboard her, we managed to keep clean and free of lice. If you give me a pair of scissors I will cut off my hair,” she said, her speech polite but faintly Londonish-Surrey or Kent, perhaps.

Richard looked horrified. “Let us not cut off the hair yet! I have a fine-toothed comb and we will keep using it until your hair is free, even of nits. My name is Richard, not Mr. Morgan. Where are ye from, Kitty?”

“Faversham in Kent. Then the girls’ workhouse in Canterbury, then the manor at St. Paul Deptford as a kitchen servant. I was tried at Maidstone and sentenced to seven years’ transportation,” she recited humbly. “I stole some muslin from a shop. I think.”

“How old are ye?” Stephen asked.

“Twenty last month.”

“Time for that bath.” Richard bent and picked up the tub as if it weighed a feather. “Ye can have the bedroom and the candle, and scrub. Give me your shoes and throw your dirty clothes through the window onto the ground outside. Stephen, carry her new clothes, soap and a brush-look useful, do! Wash your hair, child, scrub your scalp and then comb the hair as if your life depended upon it.” He laughed softly. “The fate of your hair certainly does.”

“Now to Tom Jones Two,” said Richard when they had left her to her own devices. “How do we go about that?”

“Leave it to me.” Stephen lit a candle from the fire, then ladled chowder into two big bowls and broke a loaf of bread into pieces. “I do not think it politic to bother the Major, as Mrs. Morgan is his housekeeper. The news that ye’ve picked up a stray will reach her soon enough as it is. What good fortune that her surname is Clark! I shall go to our Lieutenant Ralphie darling and recount the tale, emphasizing that the girl is not one of his ‘damned whores.’ With a name like Clark, he will be disposed to believe me. Besides, he loathes the second Thomas Jones, in which matter he displays excellent taste. But I fear we will never see her bedding or her property-Jones will already have bestowed them upon some damned whore in return for her favors.”

Picking up her shoes, Richard exchanged a glance with Stephen and grimaced. “They smell worse than Alexander’s bilges,” he said, throwing them into the fire. He washed his hands thoroughly at Stephen’s bench. “See if ye can charm our Lieutenant Ralphie darling into donating her a new pair of shoes now that Stores has some.” He sat down to consume bread and chowder hungrily. “I thought she was a cat,” he said out of the blue.

“Eh?”

“She mewed from the forest. It sounded like cat. I went in hoping to find ye a new Rodney.”

Face softening, Stephen looked at him across the table. If that was not just like him! Did he never think of himself first? And now this girl of wretched circumstances, no more a criminal than the Virgin Mary. Some poor little bumpkin out of a workhouse. What had possessed him to fall in love with her? He was hooked, sad fish. But why her? He had helped dozens ashore, girls and women of great good looks, some of them clearly educated, some of them sprightly, witty, refined even. Not every female convict was a damned whore. So why Catherine Clark? Pinched and plain, fair and foolish. An everyday nobody, devoid of charm, brain, beauty.

“Bless ye for the thought,” Stephen said, “but Olivia has promised me one of her kittens, a marmalade male with no white on him. He already has a name-Tobias.” Chowder finished, he rose to make sure there was enough in the pot to yield them more, yet still leave a bit for the Kitty. “Did ye ever see such eyes?” he asked as he went to the hob.

Because he turned away he missed the sight of Richard’s spasm; by the time he swung back the pain was vanishing, though enough of it lingered to shock him.

“Yes,” said Richard steadily, “I have seen such eyes. In my son, William Henry.”

“Did ye have just the one son, Richard?”

“Just William Henry. His sister died of the smallpox before he was born. His mother died as if felled by a fist when he was eight. He-he disappeared not long before his tenth birthday. People thought he drowned in the Avon, though I did not think so. Or perhaps it is more honest to say that I did not want to think so. He was with a master from Colston’s School. The master shot himself-left a note saying he caused William Henry’s death, which only compounded the confusion. The whole of Bristol searched for a week, but William Henry’s body was never found. I kept on with the search. The worst agony was the doubt-if he died, how did he die? The only one who might have told me was dead by his own hand.”

The wonder of it, thought Stephen, is that he could make a brother out of me, an unashamed Miss Molly. The master-what a fabulous profession for a child molester!-did something. On that I would stake my life, and Richard knows it too. Yet never once has he identified me with that man because of what I am. “Go on, Richard,” he said gently.

“After that I cared not whether I lived or died. I have told ye of the excise fraud and the swindlers who ridded themselves of me by sending me to trial in Gloucester.” His head tilted, he looked down at the tabletop with lashes lowered, face contemplative and smooth. “But now I understand that William Henry is dead. Her eyes are God’s message. They have answered much.”

Stephen wept. Part of his grief was for Richard’s loss, but part was for his own, though he had never hoped, simply attended like an acolyte a priest, waiting for the divine communion to begin. Thinking that, in the absence of love, at least there was the exquisite comfort of knowing that Richard belonged to no one else. But of course he belonged: to his dead family, and most of all to William Henry. Whom he had lost forever. Until God sent Catherine-Kitty Clark to stare at him out of his son’s eyes. A benediction. And that is how it happens. A look, a laugh, a word, a gesture, meaningless to others because meaning lies in the absolutely unique and personal. Time and torment.

“If ye rest easier, I rejoice,” Stephen said.

The inner door opened; both men turned.

To Richard she looked so beautiful, scrubbed clean from baby-floss hair to pearly toenails, smiling as gravely as a child on its first independent errand. Enchanting. So lovable. His own little Kitty, whom he would care for until he died.

To Stephen she simply looked a more palatable version of what she had been dirty-pinched and plain, fair and foolish. The smile? Ordinary, a trifle mawkish. Oh, the machinations of fate! To give this humdrum girl the one thing in all the world could catch and hold Richard Morgan fast.

“Ye need a shirt before we brave Sydney Town’s August wind,” said Stephen, tossing one to Richard. “Kitty, your shoes were so filthy we had to burn them. I will get ye more as soon as maybe, but ye’ll have to let us chair ye to Richard’s house.”

“Could I not stay here?” she asked.

“In a house with naught but hammocks? Besides, I may have a visitor later. Ready?”

Outside he extended his hand to Richard, who gripped it. Kitty hopped onto their linked arms, one of her own arms about Richard’s neck, the other about Stephen’s. Each with a torch in his free hand, the two men bore her down the vale, up beyond King’s dam and pond, to where Richard’s house stood on the edge of the forest.

The fire was set, wood piled alongside the hearth. Stephen saluted Richard, bowed lavishly to Kitty, and left them to their own devices. There was housework to do in his own home and work with the convicts started at dawn. No, it did not! Tomorrow, he remembered, was Sunday.

Richard carried her to his privy, worried that her tender feet would not tolerate the path, then carried her back. “If ye need it in the night, wake me,” he said, tucking her into his feather bed.

“Where will you sleep?” she asked.

“On the floor.”

Her lips parted to say something else, but sleep claimed her with the words unsaid, and Richard knew that no amount of noise or movement would wake her. So he stripped off his clothes, put them in a bucket and carried it outside before walking to his pool, there to make sure he harbored no louse. Shivering with cold, he returned to warm by the fire, donned a pair of old trowsers, made a bed of Sirius canvas on the floor and lay down in perfect content. His eyes closed and he slept immediately.

To wake before dawn to the sound of John Lawrell’s rooster crowing. The fire was embers but retrievable; he piled wood on it and inspected the contents of his larder, no better stocked than any other Norfolk Island larder. Most of the provisions were still to come ashore. As usual, what had already come ashore consisted of rum and clothing, the two least useful items in his opinion. But he had a loaf of Aaron Davis’s corn bread, made with just enough precious wheat flour to render it edible, and the garden was full of good things-cabbages, cauliflowers, cress down by the stream, broad beans-parsley and lettuce, which grew all year round.

Dawn came, then sunrise. He walked across to his bed to look down at Kitty, who seemed not to have moved. Lying on her back in the modified man’s shirt Olivia Lucas had donated, arms and chest uncovered. With her eyelids down, he could study her more dispassionately than when she gazed at him through William Henry’s eyes. Fair, fine straight hair that could not be called either gold or flaxen; fair brows and lashes; white skin gone only a little pink, which led him to assume she had not gone on deck very often; a rather big and bumpy nose; a sweet pink mouth which reminded him of Mary’s; a prominent chin above a long, slender neck; fine hands with tapering fingers.

Major Ross held divine service at eight, and, like King (a later riser), would tolerate no absentees; Richard would have to go, though she, not yet on the island’s register, would not be missed. Expose her to Lizzie Lock unprepared? Never! So he went up the brook to his bath, donned his only pair of carefully preserved breeches and stockings, his coat, greatcoat and tricorn, one of his two remaining pairs of shoes. She slumbered on. He debated whether to leave her a note, then concluded that she probably could not read or write. So in the end he departed in the hope that she would not wake until he returned in an hour and a half.

“How is Kitty?” Stephen asked, joining him after the service.

“Asleep.”

“Johnny will bring ye a second bed this afternoon, but I am afraid ye’ll have to stuff its mattress and pillow with straw.”

“Ye’re very good.” He whistled up MacTavish, who had accepted the presence of a stranger in his house by retreating outside before she could see him.

“I will try to get ye some extra stores, but they may have to wait until the morrow. Ralphie darling does not have the keys anymore, and Freeman is a cold bastard, not prone to put himself out.”

“Well I know it. I had best be off.”

Stephen cuffed him affectionately on the shoulder. “Richard, ye’re as clucky as an old hen.”

“I have a chick,” grinned Richard. “Come, MacTavish!”

Morning had apparently generated a change of heart in the dog, which bounded through the door and leaped onto Richard’s bed, there to lick Kitty’s arm, flung across the pillows. She woke with a start, stared into a whiskery canine face, and smiled.

“That,” said Richard, removing his hat, “is MacTavish. Are ye well, Kitty?”

“Very,” she said, struggling to a sitting position. “Is it so late? You have been out already.”

“Divine service,” he explained. “Get out of bed and I will take ye to my bath. The ground is fairly soft, ye’ll not hurt your feet. Tomorrow ye’ll probably have shoes.”

She visited the privy, then followed him to the small pool in the forest, alongside which he had put soap and a rag towel.

“The water is cold, but ye’ll enjoy it once ye’re in. ’Tis very Roman-deep enough to submerge ye, not deep enough to drown in. When ye’re done, come back to the house and I will give ye breakfast, such as it is. Mrs. Lucas will visit later to talk to ye about your needs, though I fear ye’ll have naught but convict slops to wear, and horrible shoes-no heels or buckles. Did ye have nice things in your bundle?”

“No, just slops.” She hesitated. “I had a bath last night. Must I have another this morning?”

Now was the time to get some things straight. Richard looked stern. “This climate is not England’s and this place is not England. Ye’ll have to work in the garden, care for a sow, find food for it with a hatchet or carry cobs of Indian corn from the granary for it. Ye’ll sweat, just as I sweat. Therefore ye’ll bathe every evening after the work is done. Today ye can have two baths-ye’ll not wash the last of Surprize away with one scrub, particularly your hair. If ye’re to share my house, I require that your person be as clean as my house and my own person.”

She blanched. “But this is open! I might be seen!”

“No one ventures into my domain, and this is my domain. I am not a man others take liberties with.”

He left her then, sorry to be hard on her, but determined that she would understand the rules.

The pool was peculiarly constructed, with a channel from it to the stream blocked off by a wooden sluice; another channel, similarly blocked, led off downhill to his vegetables. The reason for this arrangement escaped her, not because she lacked the mental acuity to plumb its purpose, but rather because of the hideously narrow existence she had lived.

Having been given the rules and made aware that Richard was not a person to be disobeyed, she pulled off the shirt and jumped into the water before any man spying on her from the undergrowth could glimpse much. The coldness made her gasp, but within a short while it vanished; the sensation of being immersed to her neck was very pleasant. She could dunk her head to get all the soap out of her hair, scrub her scalp properly, her armpits and groin. When she used the fine-toothed comb, eyes watering at the pain, it came out virtually clean.

Getting out was not difficult; there was a block of stone on the pool’s bottom to use as a step. The ground about it was thick with cress to keep the feet clean until they dried and the rag was capacious, hid her until she was dry enough to don her shift and convict-issue slops dress, donated it seemed by Mrs. Lucas, who, with the rest of these people, had been at the far ends of the earth for over two and a half years.

Now that she was at the far ends of the earth too, she had no idea whereabouts the far ends of the earth were; all she knew was that it had taken nearly a year to sail to them, calling in at a series of ports she hardly saw. Kitty had been one of those who hid, did not go on deck much, always tried to avoid being noticed by a member of Lady Juliana’s crew. Her plight had not broken her heart the way it had the poor little Scotch girl who died of shame before the ship had left the shelter of the Thames; Kitty had no parents to grieve and disgrace, and that, the Scotch girl’s fate had taught her, was a mercy. Illness had isolated her too; no sailor could be bothered philandering with a retching girl, even if he had fancied her because of her eyes. Those, she knew, were her sole claim to beauty.

Safely clothed and secure in the knowledge that Richard’s house was within hailing distance, she stared about her in wonder. Norfolk Island bore no more resemblance to Kent than had Port Jackson.

When Lady Juliana had arrived in Port Jackson she was so heavy and sluggish that she had been towed from the Heads by longboats and moored well off the shore. A very strange place, so frightening! Naked black people had paddled a bark canoe alongside and jabbered, pointed, brandished spears just as she had found the courage to go up on deck; she had fled back below and hardly ventured out again. Some of the convict women-oh, how much she admired them!-had dressed in the finery Captain Aitken had stored for them during the voyage and strutted about the deck preening, sure of their reception once ashore. What courage they had! One could not live for eighteen months among them, no matter how cowed and seasick, without understanding that Lady Juliana’s 204 women were as different as chalk was from cheese, and that even the hardened madams owned a kind of dignity and self-respect. More by far than she did.

Norfolk Island had begun in terror too; terror over and done with only if she did not offend Richard Morgan and Stephen Donovan, both of whom reminded her a little of Mr. Nicol, Lady Juliana’s steward, innately compassionate. Richard, she had sensed already, owned more power than Stephen. Both had said they were free men, both were supervisors. Yet it was Richard intimidated her, Stephen who drew her. And though she had no inkling of what her fate was to be-how this place worked or who made it work-somehow she knew that the decisions about her rested with Richard rather than with Stephen.

The trees overwhelmed her, she could see no beauty in them. Heaving a big sigh, she set her bare feet upon the path to the house, matted with scaly tails that felt crisp, more uncomfortable than hurtful. As she emerged from the pines she saw Richard working at building something on the far side of his garden, the dog cavorting around him; clad only in a pair of canvas trowsers, mortaring a row of stones set into the ground. His arms and shoulders were massive, the smooth brown skin of his back moved like a river. Her experience of partially naked men was minimal; Captain Aitken had insisted his seamen wear shirts, no matter how hot or becalmed the air was. A godfearing man, Aitken, who had cared for his female prisoners with Christian impartiality, though too sensible a man to forbid his crew-or himself-access to the cargo. Listening to the brasher and bawdier women had acquainted her with male anatomy; they gleefully discussed the attributes and amorous talents of their lovers and despised the Catherine Clarks and Annie Bryants as missish mice. The London Newgate she had blotted from her memory, her disgrace too recent then to have banished shock and fright. She had simply huddled in a corner and hidden her face, fed only because Betty Riley had brought her food and water. In Port Jackson came her first sight of men stripped to the waist, some of them with terribly scarred backs. And though Richard Morgan had been shirtless last night, she had not noticed him because of Stephen.

The sight of Richard now awed her without arousing any tender or feminine yearnings; what she saw reinforced her impression that he was a man to be respected and obeyed. He was also old. Not in the least wrinkled or crabbed, just-old. On the inside rather than on the outside. His outside she thought very strong, very handsome, very graceful. But she had seen Stephen Donovan first, and could see no further.

Stephen. He was like a dream-very strong, very handsome, very graceful-and also youthful, carefree, brilliant of eye and smile, appreciative of the feminine attention he attracted. After landing her, he had bantered saucily with some of the more forward women, yet managed to turn their hints and open remarks aside without offending them. It never occurred to Kitty that these knowing women took one look at him and knew him for what he was, for she had no idea that some folk liked their own sex. A Church of England workhouse in Canterbury, cradle of the Church of England, did not teach the facts of life. It preferred to badger and beat good work habits into its children, use them to best effect while they were young enough, then send them out to find a living as meanly paid servants obsessed with their own worthlessness and utterly ignorant of what went on in the big wide world. Illiterate, innumerate, insignificant. Of course Kitty had heard words like Rome mort and Miss Molly in both her prisons, but they held no meaning for her and went right over her head. That some of the folk who liked their own sex were women, and that they had lived alongside her in Lady Juliana, had also not sunk in.

Stephen, Stephen, Stephen… Oh, why had he not been the one to find her? Why was it not his house sheltered her? And what did Richard want of her?

Richard straightened and pulled on a shirt. “Was the bath very bad?” he asked, letting her precede him through the door, his eyes, had she only possessed the courage to look, twinkling.

“No, sir, it was very pleasant.”

“Richard. Ye must call me plain Richard.”

“It goes against the grain,” she said. “You are old enough to be my father.”

For the first time she experienced a quality in Richard she was to find over and over again; no alteration in expression of the face, no inappropriate movement of hands or body, no change in his eyes, yet something was happening, some kind of mysterious, invisible reaction.

“I am indeed old enough to be your father, but I am plain Richard nonetheless. We do not keep up appearances here, we have more important things to occupy us. I am not one of your gaolers, Kitty. I am a free man, yes, but until recently I was a convict just like you. Only good work and good fortune pardoned me.” He sat her down at the table and gave her corn bread, lettuce and cress to eat, water to drink.

“Was Stephen a convict too?” she mumbled, ravenous.

“Nay, never. Stephen is a master mariner.”

“Have you been friends for long?”

“For at least one span of eternity.” Tucking his shirt into his trowsers, he sat down and ran his finger through his cropped hair rather nervously. “D’ye know why ye were sent here?”

“What is there to know?” she asked, bewildered. “I will be set to work until I serve out my sentence. At least, that is what the judge said at my trial. No one has mentioned it since.”

“Have ye not wondered why you and two hundred other women were put on board a ship and sent seventeen thousand miles to serve out your sentences? Does that not seem strange, to send ye to a place devoid of workhouses and factories?”

In the act of reaching for another piece of bread, her hand fell limply into her lap; her eyes widened, revealing that they were only partially William Henry’s eyes-his had been set in with a sooty thumb, hers with a crystal one. “Of course,” she said slowly. “Of course. Oh, how idiotic I am! Except that I was so sick, and before that, so shocked and confused. There are no workhouses or factories at the far ends of the earth. No gentlemen’s waistcoats to embroider… That is what I did at the Canterbury workhouse. You mean that we have been sent here as wives for the convicts?”

His lips set. “ ’Tis more honest to say that ye’ve been sent here as conveniences. I do not pretend to know the official reasons why this experiment had been put into practice, save that a great many men have been removed from England who might otherwise have become a population to be reckoned with. Mutinies have happened, men with nothing to lose have escaped into the English countryside. Whereas at the far ends of the earth it matters not to England if men mutiny or escape. They do not threaten England. The only folk who have to be protected are their gaolers and their gaolers’ wives, children.” He paused to fix her gaze. “Men without women sink to the level of beasts. Therefore women are a necessary part of the great experiment, which is to turn the far ends of the earth into a vast English prison. Or so I have come to believe.”

Frowning, she listened to this and tried to assimilate it: he was saying that the only reason she had been transported was to be a pacifier of men. “We are your whores,” she said. “Is that why Lady Juliana’s crew called us whores? I thought it was because they thought we had all been convicted of prostitution, and I wondered at that. Most of us were convicted of stealing, or having stolen goods, or attacking someone with a knife. It is not a crime to be a prostitute, some of the women insisted-they used to grow angry when they were called whores. But what the sailors meant was that we were future whores. Is that it?”

He rolled his eyes at the ceiling, sighed. “Well,” he said finally, smiling at her wryly, “if my daughter were alive, she would be about your age. Just as ignorant-as a good father I would have made sure of that. What are your circumstances, Kitty? Who were your parents?”

“My father was a tenant farmer at Faversham,” she said proudly, lifting her chin. “My mother died when I was two, and my father had a housekeeper to look after me. He died when I was five. His farm went back to the manor because he had no heir. I was given to the parish, and the parish sent me to Canterbury.”

“Ye were the only child?”

“Yes. Had Papa lived, I would have been taught to read and write, and been brought up to marry a farmer.”

“But instead ye were sent to the poorhouse and ye never did learn to read or write,” said Richard gently.

“That is so. My fingers are nimble and my eyes keen, so they put me to embroidering. But it does not last forever. The work is too fine for hands that are grown. I was kept until after I turned seventeen, when suddenly I grew. So I was sent to the manor at St. Paul Deptford as cook’s maid.”

“How long were ye there?”

“Until I-I was arrested. Three months.”

“How did ye come to be arrested?”

“The manor had four below-stairs maidservants-Betty, Annie, Mary and me. Mary and I were the same age, Annie was sixteen, and Betty five-and-twenty. The master and mistress were called up to London very suddenly and Mr. and Mrs. Hobson got drunk on the port. Cook locked herself in her garret. It was Betty’s birthday, and she said we should all walk to the shops for an outing. I had never been to the shops before.”

Oh, this was awful! He sat there like the Master at the workhouse, a figure of age and authority, listening to this silly story with no expression on his face. It was a silly story-too silly to tell at the Kent assizes, had anybody asked. No one had.

“Did ye never go abroad from the workhouse, Kitty?”

“No, never.”

“Surely ye had a day off sometimes at the St. Paul Deptford manor?”

“I had a half-day once a week, but never with one of the other girls, so I used to walk into the fields. I would rather have gone to the fields on Betty’s birthday, but she mocked me for a rustic because I had never been into a shop, so I went with them.”

“Were ye tempted in a shop? Is that it?”

“I suppose it must have been like that,” she said doubtfully. “Betty brought a bottle of gin with her and we drank it as we went along. I do not remember the shops, or going into them-just men shouting, the bailiffs locking us up.”

“What did ye steal?”

“Muslin in one shop, they said at the trial, and checkered linen in another. I do not know why we stole either-the dresses we wore were of the same sort of stuff. Four and sixpence the ten yards of muslin, the jury determined, though the shopkeeper kept roaring that it was worth three guineas. They did not charge us with the theft of the linen.”

“Were ye in the habit of drinking gin?”

“No, I had never tasted it before. Nor had Mary or Annie.” She shuddered. “I will never drink it again, that I know.”

“Did ye all get transported?”

“Yes, for seven years. We were all on Lady Juliana almost as soon as the assizes were over. I suppose the others are here somewhere. It is just that I was so seasick-everybody loses patience with me, so they did not wait. And it was dark in Surprize.”

He got up abruptly and walked around the table, put his hand on her shoulder and rubbed it. “ ’Tis all right, Kitty, we will not speak of it again. Ye’re a child, as only English parish charity can make a child out of a young woman.”

MacTavish bounced in, having breakfasted on two juicy young rats. Giving her a final pat, Richard did the same to the dog, and sat down again. “The time has come to grow up, Catherine Clark. Not to lose your innocence, but to preserve it. There are no manors or workhouses here, ye know that. Had ye stayed at Port Jackson ye would have gone to the women’s camp, but Norfolk Island’s commandant, Major Robert Ross, is not willing to segregate the women. He is right, it only leads to worse trouble. Each of ye who came on Surprize is to be taken in by a man having a hut or house, though some will go to homes like that of Mrs. Lucas to help with the chores and children, and some will go as servants and conveniences to the officers and enlisted marines, yet others to Sirius men.”

Her skin paled. “I am yours,” she said.

His smile was very reassuring. “I am no rapist, Kitty, nor do I intend to plague ye with hints or wooing. I will keep ye as my servant. As soon as maybe, I will build a room onto this house to give each of us a meed of privacy. All I ask in return is that ye do whatever work ye’re capable of. Yon structure I am building is a sty for the sow Major Ross will give me, and one of your responsibilities will be to look after the sow. As well as the house, the chickens when they come, and the vegetable garden. I have a man, John Lawrell, who looks after my grain and does the heavy work. The community will regard ye as mine, which is all the protection ye need.”

“Have I no choice?” she asked.

“If ye had, where would ye rather be?”

“I would be Stephen’s servant,” she said simply.

Neither face nor eyes changed, though she knew that something happened inside him. All he said was, tone ordinary, “That is not possible, Kitty. Do not dream of Stephen.”

The rest of the day passed with bewildering swiftness; Mrs. Lucas came to visit, puffing a little.

“I fall,” she announced, flopping into a chair, “as soon as my Nat hangs his trowsers on their peg. Two so far, and a third well on the way.”

“Are the two boys or girls?” Kitty asked, happier with this kind of conversation than the serious subjects Richard chose.

“Twin girls a year old-Mary and Sarah. I am carrying this one differently, so I expect it will be a boy.” She fanned herself with her homemade shady hat. “Richard says ye mentioned a young girl named Annie who is here somewhere, or about to be landed. I am of a mind to take her in as help if I can get to her first-if, that is, ye think she would be happier in the bosom of a family than with a man.”

“Of that I am sure, Mrs. Lucas. Annie is like me.”

The large brown eyes narrowed. So, Richard, that is how things stand, is it? Stephen said ye’d fallen head over ears, and today I thought to find ye happy at last. What woman would be fool enough to spurn a man like you? But here she is, not a woman at all-a silly girl and a virgin to boot. Ye’d think gaol and transportation would make them grow up in a hurry, but I have seen Kitty’s like before. Somehow they escape the taint, largely by being mice. In Port Jackson they are the first ones to die, but in Norfolk Island they live to learn what neither gaol nor transportation has managed to teach them: that the most a convict woman can hope for is a good, kind, decent man. Like my Nat. And like Richard Morgan.

Smothering these thoughts, Olivia Lucas proceeded to instruct Kitty in women’s matters and how she should conduct herself in this place of too many men.

The conversation broke up with the arrival of Stephen and Johnny Livingstone carrying a bed; Olivia squawked and hurried home, leaving the three men and Kitty to eat Sunday dinner, a makeshift affair of pooled resources-pease cooked with a little salt pork, a dish of rice and onions, corn bread and a dessert of bananas from Richard’s palms, several of which had the peculiar habit of bearing different-looking fruit early.

Kitty sat and listened to the men talk, realizing that in all her life she had not been exposed to masculine talk or the company of men. Half an hour of it humbled her; she knew so little! Well, to listen and remember was to learn, and she was determined to learn. They did not gossip in the manner of women, though they could laugh heartily over a story Johnny-how beautiful he was!-recounted about Major Ross and Captain Hunter, who apparently had fallen out very badly. Most of the talk revolved around problems of construction, discipline, timber, stone, lime, grubs, tools, the growing of grain.

Stephen, she noticed, was a toucher. If he passed by Richard or Johnny he would rest his hand on a shoulder or back, and once he jokingly rumpled Richard’s short hair in exactly the same way he rumpled MacTavish’s coat. But if he passed her by he was very careful to steer a wide berth around her chair, and never drew her into the conversation. Nor, for that matter, did the other two.

I think I am forgotten. Not one of them looks at me as I would have Stephen look at me, with fond love. If they do look at me, their eyes move immediately away. Why is that?

It was always Stephen who drove the talk, never allowing a silence to develop; Richard, she fancied, normally contributed more to the discussions than he did today. Today he spoke only when spoken to, and then sometimes absently. When they got up to move outside for an inspection of the pigsty, Kitty started clearing away the few dishes and tidying what she thought she would not get into trouble for moving. Only then did she understand that it was her presence had inhibited them, and that this was particularly true of Richard.

The Commandant’s insistence that we be taken in by men with a house or hut has spoiled Richard’s leisure-probably Stephen’s too, since they are such good friends. I do not matter. I am a nuisance. In future I must find excuses to leave them alone.

That night Richard had a bed to sleep in, constructed in the same way hers was, a wooden frame connecting a lattice of rope, but when he ordered her to bed shortly after dusk he took a candle to the table he used as a desk, propped a book on a lectern and started to read. Whatever crime he committed, she thought drowsily, he has been schooled and brought up as a gentleman. The master of the St. Paul Deptford manor did not own such fine manners.

On the morrow, Monday, she saw little of Richard, who was off shortly after dawn to his work in the sawpits, came home for a hasty lunch of something cold with a pair of shoes for her, and spent most of his break at the pigsty, growing rapidly. It was about twenty feet on each side and consisted of wooden palings atop a course of stone.

“Pigs root,” Richard explained as he labored, “so they cannot be confined as sheep or cattle are, within a simple fence. And they must be shaded from the sun because they overheat and die. Their excrement stinks, but they are tidy creatures and always choose a corner only of the sty as their privy. That makes it easy to gather for manure-it is very rich manure.”

“Will I have to gather the manure?” she asked.

“Yes.” He lifted his head to give her a grin. “Ye’ll find that baths are very necessary.”

In the evening he did not come home. Her rations were hers to do with as she pleased, he told her; he was used to caring for himself and usually ate with Stephen, who was a stern bachelor and did not care for women in his house. They played chess, he explained, so she was to go to bed upon darkness without waiting for him or expecting to see him. Naive though she was, this seemed odd to Kitty. Stephen did not behave like a stern bachelor. Though, come to think of it, she had little idea how a stern bachelor behaved. However, that Sunday dinner had taught her that men liked the company of men and were hampered by the presence of women.

On Tuesday a marine private appeared to summon her to Sydney Town, where she was required to identify the man who had molested and robbed her. The view from Richard’s house was limited; Arthur’s Vale, opening out and out, astonished her. Green wheat and Indian corn grew up the slopes of the hills on either side, waved in the vale itself; there were occasional houses perched at the edges, several barns and sheds, a pond harboring ducks. Then all of a sudden she emerged from the vale into a large collection of wooden houses and huts arranged in proper treeless streets, an expanse of vividly green swamp separating them from bigger structures at the bottom of the hills; she passed by Stephen Donovan’s house without recognizing it.

Two military officers-she did not know a marine from a land soldier-waited for her outside a big, two-storeyed building she found out later was the marine barracks. A motley group of male convicts had been lined up nearby, and the officers were correctly dressed down to wigs, swords and cocked hats. The convicts all wore shirts.

“Mistress Clark?” asked the older officer, piercing her to the soul with a pair of pale grey eyes.

“Yes, sir,” she whispered.

“A man accosted ye on the road from Cascade on the day of the thirteenth of August?”

“Yes, sir.”

“He tried to force himself upon ye and tore your dress?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Ye ran into the woods to escape?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What did the man do then?”

Cheeks burning, striking eyes wide, she said, “He seemed at first to think of chasing me, then came voices. He picked up my bundle and bedding and walked in this direction.”

“Ye spent the night in the woods, is that so?”

“Yes, sir.”

Major Ross turned to Lieutenant Ralph Clark, who, having heard the story from Stephen Donovan and verified it from Richard Morgan, was curious to discover what his namesake looked like. Not a whore, he was relieved to see; as gentle and refined as Mistress Mary Branham, taken advantage of by a Lady Penrhyn seaman and delivered of a son in Port Jackson. She and the infant had been sent to Norfolk Island aboard Sirius; Clark had become interested in her after she was put to work in the officers’ mess. Adorably pretty, much in the mold of his beloved Betsy. Now that he knew Betsy and little Ralphie were safe and well in England-and especially now that he had his own comfortable house-it might be easier for Mary to look after just one officer and one house; her little boy was walking now and making rather a nuisance of himself. Yes, to take Mary Branham in would be doing her a good turn. Of course he would not mention this arrangement in his journal, which was written for darling Betsy’s eyes and could contain nothing might shock or perturb her. Slighting references upon damned whores were permissible, but approval of any convict woman was definitely not permissible.

Good, good! His mind made up on the future of Mary Branham and himself, he looked at the Major enquiringly.

“Lieutenant Clark, pray conduct Mistress Clark down the line to see if the villain is among this lot,” said Ross, who had rounded up every convict ever punished.

Talking to her kindly as they went, the Lieutenant led Kitty along the row of sullen men, then took her back to his superior.

“Is he there?” barked Ross.

“Yes, sir.”

“Where?”

She pointed to the man with two mouths. Both officers nodded.

“Thank ye, Mistress Clark. The private will escort ye home.”

And that was that. Kitty fled.

“Tom Jones Two,” said the private.

“That is who Mr. Donovan said it would be.”

“Ain’t none of them Mr. Donovan don’t know.”

“He is a very nice man,” she said sadly.

“Aye, he ain’t bad for a Miss Molly. Not one of your pretty field flowers. I watched him take a man apart with his fists-a bigger man than him too. Nasty when he are annoyed, Mr. Donovan.”

“Quite,” she agreed placidly.

And so went home with the private, Tom Jones Two forgotten.

Richard continued to absent himself in the evenings-not always, she learned, to play chess with Stephen. He was friends with the Lucases, someone called George Guest, a marine private Daniel Stanfield, others. What hurt Kitty most was that none of these friends ever asked her to accompany him, a reinforcement of his statement that she was his servant. It would be nice to have a friend or two, but of Betty and Mary she knew nothing, and Annie had indeed gone to the Lucases. Meeting Richard’s other helper, John Lawrell, had been an ordeal; he had glared at her and told her not to fiddle with his poultry or the grain patch.

So when she noticed a female figure tittuping up the path between the vegetables, Kitty was ready to greet the visitor with her best smile and curtsey. On Lady Juliana the woman would have been apostrophized as a quiz, for she was very grand in a vulgar sort of way-red-and-black striped dress, a red shawl with a long fringe proclaiming its silkness, shoes with high heels and glittering buckles, and a monstrous black velvet hat on her head nodding red ostrich plumes.

“Good day, madam,” said Kitty.

“And good day in return, Mistress Clark, for so I believe you are called,” said the visitor, sweeping inside. There she looked about with some awe. “He does do good work, don’t he?” she asked. “And more books than ever. Read, read, read! That is Richard.”

“Do sit down,” said Kitty, indicating a handsome chair.

“As fine as the Major’s,” said the red-and-black person. “I am always amazed at Richard’s run of good luck. He is like a cat, falls on his feet every time.” Her little black eyes looked Kitty up and down, straight, thick black brows frowning across her nose. “I never thought I was anything to look at,” she said, inspection finished, “but at least I can dress. You are as plain as a pikestaff, my girl.”

Jaw dropped, Kitty stared. “I beg your pardon?”

“You heard me. Plain as a pikestaff.”

“Who are you?”

“I am Mrs. Richard Morgan, what do you think about that?”

“Nothing very much,” said Kitty when she got her breath back. “I am pleased to meet you, Mrs. Morgan.”

“Christ!” Mrs. Morgan said. “Jeeesus! What is Richard up to?”

As Kitty did not know what he was up to, she said nothing.

“You ain’t his mistress?”

“Oh! Oh, of course!” Kitty shook her head in vexation. “I am so silly-I never thought-”

“Aye, silly is right enough. You ain’t his mistress?”

Kitty put her chin in the air. “I am his servant.”

“Hoo hoo! Hoity-toity!”

“If you are Mrs. Richard Morgan,” said Kitty, growing braver in the face of her visitor’s derision, “why are you not living in this house? If you were, he would have no need for a servant girl.”

“I am not living here because I do not want to live here,” Mrs. Richard Morgan said loftily. “I am Major Ross’s housekeeper.”

“Then I need not detain you. I am sure you are very busy.”

The visitor got up immediately. “Plain as a pikestaff!” she said, mincing to the door.

“I may be plain, Mrs. Morgan, but at least I am not beyond my last prayers! Unless you are also the Major’s mistress?”

“Fucken bitch!”

And off down the path she went, feathers bouncing.

Once the shock wore off-at her own temerity rather than at Mrs. Morgan’s conduct and language-Kitty reviewed this encounter more dispassionately. Well on the wrong side of thirty, and, under the outrageous apparel, quite as plain as she had professed to know herself. And not, if she had read Major Ross aright at her only meeting with him, his mistress. That was a very fastidious man. So why had Mrs. Richard Morgan come-and, more importantly, why had Mrs. Richard Morgan gone in the first place? Closing her eyes, Kitty conjured up a picture of her, saw things that sheer amazement had veiled in the flesh. Much pain, sadness, anger. Knowing herself a pathetic figure, Mrs. Richard Morgan had presented herself to her supplanter with a great show of haughty aggression that overlay grief and abandonment. How do I know that? But I do, I do… It was not her left him. He left her! Nothing else answers. Oh, poor woman!

Pleased with her deductive powers, she sat up in her bed in her convict-issue slops shift and waited by the dying light of the fire for Richard to come home. Where does he go?

His torch came flickering up the path two hours after night had fallen; he had, as on most evenings, eaten quickly at the pit and hied himself off to the distillery to make sure all was well and personally measure the amount of rum, enter it in his book. Time shortly to close it down. Casks and sugar were running low. All told, the installation would have produced about 5,000 gallons.

“Why are you awake?” he demanded, closing the door and tossing logs on the fire. “And what was the door doing open?”

“I had a visitor today,” she said in meaningful tones.

“Did ye now?”

He was not going to ask who, which rather spoiled things.

“Mrs. Richard Morgan,” she said, looking like a naughty child.

“I was wondering when she would appear” was all he said.

“Do you not want to know what happened?”

“No. Now lie down and go to sleep.”

She subsided in the bed, quenched, and tired enough that lying flat out induced immediate torpor. “You left her, I know it,” she said drowsily. “Poor woman, poor woman.”

Richard waited until he was sure she was asleep, then changed into his makeshift nightshirt. The timber for her room was piling up, and he would begin to pull stones for its piers home on his sled this coming Saturday. A month from now he would be rid of her, at least from the room where he slept. She could have her own door to the outside as well, and he would cozen a bolt out of Freeman for his side of the communicating door. Then he could return to the freedom of sleeping naked and feeling as if he owned some part of himself. Kitty. Born in 1770, the same year as little Mary. I am an old fool, and she a young one. Even admitting this, the last thing he saw before weariness turned into sleep was the lump she made in his bed, silent and unmoving. Kitty did not snore.

“What,” she asked the next day when he came home for a hot midday dinner, “is a Miss Molly?”

The bolus of bread in his mouth was in the act of sliding down his throat; he choked, coughed, had to be banged on the back and given water. “Sorry,” he gasped, eyes tearing. “Ask again.”

“What is a Miss Molly?”

“I have absolutely no idea. Why d’ye ask? Was it something Lizzie Lock said? Was it?” His expression boded ill.

“Lizzie Lock?”

“Mrs. Richard Morgan.”

“Is that her name? What an odd combination. Lizzie Lock. It was you left her, is that not so?”

“I was never with her in the first place,” he said, deflecting her attention from Miss Mollies.

The eyes were bright and sparkling, fascinated. “But you did marry her.”

“Aye, in Port Jackson. ’Twas a chivalrous impulse I have since regretted bitterly.”

“I understand,” she said, sounding as if she actually did. “I think you suffer from chivalrous impulses you later regret. Like me.”

“Why should ye think I regret you, Kitty?”

“I have cramped your style,” she said candidly. “I do not truly believe that you wanted a maidservant, but Major Ross said you must take one of us in. I happened by, so you took me.” Something in his eyes gave her pause; she put her head on one side and regarded him speculatively. “Your house was complete without me,” she said then, voice wobbly. “Your life was complete without me.”

In answer he got up to put his bowl and spoon on the bench beside the fireplace. “No,” he said, turning with a smile that tugged at her heart, “life is never complete until it is over. Nor do I refuse gifts when God offers them to me.”

“What time will you be home?” she called to his retreating back.

“Early, and with Stephen,” he shouted, “so dig potatoes.”

And that was life: digging potatoes.

In fact she loved the garden and was busy in it whenever the wretched sow gave her a spare moment. Augusta had arrived already pregnant by the Government boar, and had the most voracious appetite. If Kitty had preserved sufficient sense to wonder what serving out her sentence might entail before Richard had enlightened her-but she had not preserved sufficient sense-she would never have guessed that it would be spent waiting upon a four-trottered, mean-spirited glutton like Augusta. Since Richard was always absent, she had to learn the hard way how to take an axe and chop down cabbage palms and tree ferns, chip their skins off and feed the pith to Augusta, guzzling away; she carted baskets of Indian corn from the granary; she recited Kentish farmer’s spells over their own Indian corn, coming on nicely. If Augusta was bottomless now, what would she be like when she was nursing a dozen piglets?

Those three months attending Cook in the kitchen of the manor at St. Paul Deptford had proven invaluable, for though she had not been allowed to cook anything, Kitty had watched with interest, and found now that she was quite capable of preparing the simple fare Norfolk Island provided. With no cows and only enough goats for babies and children, of milk there was none; fresh meat was rare now that the Mt. Pitt bird had gone (though Kitty had merely heard of it, came too late to taste it); vegetables varied from green beans to, in winter, cabbages and cauliflowers; Richard had harvested a fine crop of calavances-chickpeas; and, with the arrival of Justinian, there was bread of some kind every day. What she missed most was a cup of tea. Lady Juliana had provided both tea and sugar for its women convicts; though some of them preferred wheedling rum out of the seamen, most enjoyed sweetened tea more than anything else. It had been almost the only thing the seasick Kitty had been able to keep down, and now she missed it badly.

So when Richard and Stephen arrived she had a meal of boiled potatoes and boiled salt beef ready to put upon the table together with a loaf of wheaten bread.

They trooped in laden with pots and boxes.

“Captain Anstis had a stall on the beach today,” said Richard, “and everything I wanted to buy was on it. Open kettles, a spouted kettle for boiling water, frying pans, little pots, tin dishes and tubs, pewter plates and mugs, knives and spoons, unbleached calico-even, when I asked for it, emery powder. Look, Kitty! I bought a pound of Malabar peppercorns and a mortar and pestle for grinding them.” He dumped a wooden box a foot cubed down on the desk. “And here is a chest of hyson tea just for you.”

Her hands to her cheeks, she stared at him tearily. “Oh! You thought of me?”

“Why should I not?” he asked, surprised. “I knew ye missed a cup of tea. I bought a teapot too. Sweetening it will not be hard. I will cut ye a stalk of sugar cane and chop it into short bits. All ye’ll have to do is crush it with a hammer and boil it to make syrup.”

“But this cost money!” she cried, appalled.

“Richard is a warm man, girl,” Stephen said, beginning to take articles off Richard as he handed them up from the sled. “I must say ye did amazing well, my friend, considering who ye dealt with. Nick Anstis is hard-headed.”

“I slapped gold coin on the board,” said Richard, coming inside again. “Anstis has to wait for money when it is tendered in notes of hand, whereas gold is gold. He was happy to quarter his prices for coins of the realm.”

“Just how much gold have ye got?” Stephen asked, curious.

“Enough,” said Richard tranquilly. “You see, I inherited from Ike Rogers as well.”

Stephen gaped, thunderstruck. “Is that why Richardson would not lay it on when Lieutenant King sentenced Joey Long to a hundred lashes for losing his best pair of Royal Navy shoes? Christ, ye’re close, Richard! Ye must have paid a little something to Jamison as well for insisting that Joey’s mental condition was too frail to sustain the whole flogging-Christ!”

“Joey looked after Ike. Now I look after Joey.”

They sat down at the table to do justice to the food, all three too active to scorn a diet banal and repetitive in the extreme.

“I gather that ye spent today at Charlotte Field, so ye may not have heard what happened to Kitty’s assailant,” Stephen said to Richard when they were done and Kitty stood happily washing their bowls and spoons in a new tin dish-no more bucket!

“Ye’re right, I have not heard. Tell me.”

“Tommy Two did not like being chained to the grindstone in the least, so last night he picked the locks on his irons and absconded into the forest, no doubt to join Gray.”

“With the birds gone, they will starve.”

“Aye, so I think. They will end up back on the grindstone.”

Richard rose, so did Stephen; Richard threw his arm about Stephen’s shoulders and steered him doorward, out of earshot. “Ye might,” he said quietly, “inform the Major that there may be a small conspiracy going on. Dyer, Francis, Peck and Pickett apparently have some purloined sugar cane growing somewhere off the track, and all four were sniffing around Anstis’s stall enquiring after things like copper kettles and copper pipe.”

“Why not tell the Major yourself? ’Tis you who is involved in that sort of activity.”

“Exactly why I would rather not be the one to tell the Major. In that respect, Stephen, I walk very carefully. Were I the one to speak of it, the Major might-should illicit spirits appear among the convicts and private marines-think I had concocted the tale to cover my own guilt.”

What are they muttering about? wondered Kitty, drying the bowls and spoons with a rag and putting them on their shelf before starting to wash the new pewter plates, mugs and eating utensils. Oh dear, I truly do cramp their style!

Though her world still consisted of Richard’s acre, Kitty was too busy to think of exploring; her only trip to Sydney Town apart from divine service had been to identify her attacker, neither an occasion to take notice of her surroundings. All her farmer’s bones were asserting themselves; Richard could not have picked a better kind of woman than Kitty for the kind of life she was called upon to lead.

She kept hearing about “the grubs,” and on the 18th of October she experienced them at first hand. The wheat on Richard’s acre was in ear and thriving, but the Government wheat in the more open parts of the vale had been hit by high, salty winds and blighted, though by no means all of it was ruined. The year was a dry one, the crops saved only by an occasional night of heavy rain which had vanished by the morning. Perhaps for this reason, the grubs had not come during winter. Then suddenly it seemed as if every growing thing was covered with a heaving green blanket-the caterpillars were bright green, about an inch long, and thin. Again Richard was lucky, for Kitty had no fear of wrigglers, crawlies and bugs. She was able to pick the creatures off without revulsion, though the solution of tobacco and soap was more effective. Every woman on the island save those who danced attendance on the marines and the sawpits was put to picking and sprinkling. Within three weeks they were gone. There would be a harvest, very soon for the Indian corn, early in December for the wheat. Though under Major Ross’s new scheme everything the freed Richard grew was his, he was very scrupulous about sending excess produce to Stores, for which he accumulated more notes of hand. What he kept was either eaten by the humans or Augusta, or saved for seed.

The weather in Norfolk Island, she occasionally thought as she toiled with her hoe or got down on hands and knees to weed, was truly delightful-balmy, warm, never hot out of the sun. And just when things began to wilt from lack of water, one of those nights of solid rain would roll in, disappear at dawn. The soil, blood-red and very friable, grew anything. No, Norfolk Island could not compete with Kent in her affections, yet it did have a magical quality. Rainy nights, sunny days-that was the stuff of fairies.

Some of those she had known on Lady Juliana had fallen to the lot of Richard’s friends. Aaron Davis, the community baker, had taken Mary Walker and her child. George Guest had taken eighteen-year-old Mary Bateman, whom Kitty had known very well, had liked, but yet sensed a strangeness, as of madness yet to come. Edward Risby and Ann Gibson were happily together and planning to marry as soon as a person empowered to marry visited the island. These women and Olivia Lucas visited-how delightful it was to be able to offer them a mug of tea with sugar in it! Mary Bateman and Ann Gibson were both expecting babies; Mary Walker, whose child Sarah Lee was toddling, was also expecting her first by Aaron Davis. The only barren one was Kitty Clark.

Of fish there were none. Sirius’s cutter, which might have ventured well outside the lagoon to fish, was smashed to pieces trying to land six women convicts off Surprize, one with a child. The oarsmen drowned, as did a man swimming to their rescue; one of the three women who survived was the drowned child’s mother. So the very occasional catches of fish the coble managed all went to the officers and marines; neither Sirius’s seamen nor freed convicts received a share. But Justinian had carried plants, including bamboo, and Richard was given one small piece of it from which to grow a clump of potential fishing poles. Hand-lines caught nothing fishing off rocks.

There was a panic at Charlotte Field, where the paddocks were hedged in by a mixture of creeper skeleton and a very thorny bush; one of the fences accidentally caught fire and the flames spread into ripe Indian corn. At first Sydney Town heard that all the corn had been burned to the ground, but Lieutenant Clark, speeding there at a run, reported back to the distraught Major Ross that only two acres had perished thanks to the great exertions of the convicts, who beat the fire out. So grateful was Lieutenant Clark to the damned whores of Charlotte Field that he gave each of them a new pair of shoes from the Government supplies.

D’arcy Wentworth was deputed to move to Charlotte Field with his mistress Catherine Crowley and little William Charles as soon as a house could be built for him; he was to be superintendent of convicts and also Charlotte Field’s surgeon. The duties of this latter position varied from midwifing to deciding when a convict being flogged could bear no more strokes. If the culprit were a woman, Wentworth tended to be lenient, whereas Lieutenant Clark, who despised the women of Charlotte Field, would of choice have had Richardson lay a meaner cat on harder.

Much to Kitty’s pleasure, the variety of food increased. She now had a wonderful cooking area because Richard had fixed an iron shelf across two-thirds of the big fireplace and a rod over the naked flames of the other third. She had covered kettles for braising, open ones for stewing or boiling, pans for frying and a spouted kettle she kept perpetually simmering on a coolish back corner of the shelf so that she could make herself or her visitors a pot of tea, tip a dollop of hot water into her washing-up dish. Richard had even made her what he called a soap-saver: a wire basket attached to a wire handle in which she could put a chunk of soap and swish it through the water without losing the soap.

Richard told John Lawrell firmly that he must give up some of his chickens and ducks, so Kitty added to her living charges and was able on special occasions to put eggs on the menu. Augusta farrowed twelve piglets and only twice rolled over to squash them; she was considerate enough to leave all six females alive as well as two males Richard intended would be roast suckling pig at Christmas. The pig produce was entirely theirs. If any successful breeder wished to sell pork to the Stores, he or she (Ross had made no sexual distinctions) was paid for it; if anyone wished to salt pork down, he or she was given the salt and a barrel to do so. Ross’s objective was, as he had said at the outset, to take as many convicts as possible off Government Stores. Folk like Aaron Davis, Dick Phillimore, Nat Lucas, George Guest, John Mortimer, Ed Risby and Richard Morgan demonstrated that Ross’s scheme could work, given time.

The Major’s chief troubles rested with the marines and Sirius’s sailors, who refused to soil their hands by growing vegetables and other fresh produce, demanding that Stores supply them. When Stores could not, they were prone to steal vegetables, melons and poultry from the convicts, a transgression Ross punished as severely as if the larceny were the other way around. The grumbles and dark looks among these free people increased; they all believed absolutely that no convicted felon ought to be able to keep the fruits of his or her labors, that every morsel the convicts grew belonged to them and must feed them ahead of any and all convicts. Why should they labor in a garden when so many convicts were growing enough to feed them? Convicts were the property of His Majesty the King, they could own nothing, keep nothing. Convicts had no rights, so who exactly did Major Robert Ross think he was? The fact that Major Ross levied two-thirds of the produce of convicts for Stores was conveniently overlooked; only freed men kept everything.

Christmas Day, a Saturday, dawned fine and clear, though the wind was in the south and a huge sea thundered into Sydney Bay. Richard killed his two boar piglets, Nat Lucas two geese, George Guest three fat ducks, Ed Risby four chickens, and Aaron Davis baked full wheaten bread from flour ground out of grain all of them had grown surplus to Government requirements. They picnicked under the shade and shelter of the pines on Point Hunter with Stephen Donovan, Johnny Livingstone and D’arcy Wentworth and his family, the pork and poultry turning on spits D’arcy had commandeered from the smithy. Stephen and Johnny contributed ten bottles of port, enough for both men and women to enjoy half a pint each.

The Major had publicly proclaimed that this was to be a dry Christmas for the convicts apart from small beer, and the marines were ordered to consume their half-pints away from any convict eyes; King had always given the convicts rum on festive occasions, whereas Ross, especially in the aftermath of discovering what Dyer, Francis and company were planning to do with their sugar cane, had no intention of doing the same.

For Kitty, the day was the happiest she had known since her father died. Sirius canvas was spread out for the women to sit on, pillows provided to ease the awkwardness of the pregnant ones. The pines broke the force of the wind, fathers took their toddlers down onto Turtle Bay to paddle and build sand castles, mothers gossiped comfortably. Kitty had brought her kettle to make tea for her friends, setting it on its own fire. The men, once duty at the water’s edge was over, moved off a little way to squat on their haunches and talk together, while the women attended to the spits, prepared bowls of lettuce, celery, raw onion and raw beans, buried potatoes in the embers. About two in the afternoon they sat down to feast, then the men joined the women in a toast to His Britannic Majesty and afterward lay flat out for a postprandial nap, toddlers cuddled against them.

They are all so easy together, thought Kitty. Because of shared experiences and hardships, she had grown up sufficiently to realize. We are a new sort of English people, and what we make of ourselves will always be influenced by the fact that we were sent here as unwanted by our betters. Betters who are not betters at all, but rather people who do not see beyond their own noses. Out of the blue, it seemed, she suddenly had a feeling that none of these convicted people would return to England. They have lost respect for England. This has become home.

What about herself? Never having been to the shore, she sat with her arms wrapped about her knees and propped her chin on them to look along the reef, invisible under billows of foam and tendrils of spray. Though its spectacular beauty was not lost on her, it did not draw her either. In her mind’s eye true beauty was Faversham, a good big stone house with bullioned casement windows and tumbles of pink and white roses-snapdragons, stocks, columbines, pansies, foxgloves, snowdrops, daffodils-apple orchards, yews, oaks-grassy green meadows, fluffy white sheep, birches and beeches. Oh, the perfume of her father’s flower garden! The placid, dreaming quality which overlay all human activity and endeavor. This Norfolk Island kind of beauty was too alien, too untamable. This humbled and crushed people. Whereas home enhanced people.

She looked up to find Stephen’s eyes upon her, and blushed crimson. Clearly startled, he transferred his gaze at once to the reef. Oh, Stephen! Why will you not love me? Did you love me, Richard would let me go-I know he would. I am not the center of his life. He has put me in my own room and he bolts the door between us, not because I tempt him-if I did, the bolt would be on my side of the door. To shut me out of his home. To pretend that I am not there. Stephen, why will you not love me when I love you? I want to cover your dear face in kisses, take it between my hands and smile into your eyes, see my love shining in their blueness like the sun in a Norfolk Island sky. Why will you not love me?

As soon as the strength went out of the sun and the toddlers became tired enough to grizzle, everybody started packing up. Families dropping off as they went, Richard and Kitty walked home with their share of the leftovers, Nat and Olivia Lucas the last to leave them. Olivia’s tiny son, William, was but recently born, and her twin girls were extremely proud of him. What nice folk!

“Did ye like your first antipodean Christmas?” Richard asked.

“What sort of Christmas? But I did, I did, truly!”

“Antipodean. That is the correct name for the ends of the earth-the Antipodes. It comes from the Greek, and means something like ‘feet at the opposite end.’ ”

The sun had gone behind the hills to the west, Richard’s acre was plunged into deep cold shadow.

“Would ye like a fire?”

“No, I would sooner go to bed,” she said rather mournfully, her mind occupied with Stephen, the way he had turned from her in rejection. Of course she did know why: she was as plain as a pikestaff despite the weight she was so delighted at gaining, fancying that her breasts were now quite as nice as most, her waist as small, her hips as properly hippy.

“Close your eyes and hold out your hand, Kitty.”

Obeying, she felt something small and square put into her palm, and opened her eyes. A box. Fingers trembling, she prised its lid off to see that it held a necklet of gold. “Richard!”

“Merry Christmas,” he said, smiling.

She flung her arms about his neck and pressed her cheek to his, then, in an ecstasy of gratitude and pleasure, kissed him on the mouth. For a moment he stayed very still, then put his hands upon her waist and returned her kiss, which transformed it from a thank you to something very different. Far too intelligent to mistake her response for anything other than what it was, he contented himself with savoring her deliciously soft lips. She neither fled nor made a protest; instead she nestled against him and let the kiss go on. Vibrant warmth kindled inside her, she forgot herself and Stephen to follow where his mouth led, thinking with what remained of her to think that this first real kiss of her life was a very exotic and wonderful experience, and that Richard Morgan was more interesting by far than she had realized.

He released her abruptly and went outside; the sound of the axe came immediately after. Kitty stood, immersed in an afterglow, then remembered Stephen and was consumed with guilt. How could she have enjoyed being kissed by Richard when it was Stephen she loved? Tears brimming over, she retreated to her own room and sat on the edge of her bed to weep silently.

The box with the gold necklet in it had somehow stayed in her hand; when her tears dried she took it out and clasped it around her neck, resolved that before next she bathed, she would look at her reflection in the pool. How kind of him! And why did some of her keep wishing that Richard had not let her go?

On the 6th of February 1791, the tender Supply finally arrived in the roads, bearing a letter from Governor Phillip instructing all Sirius personnel to board her for Port Jackson, but promising that those who wanted to take up land and settle in Norfolk Island would be granted 60 acres each and be returned on Supply’s next voyage. Captain John Hunter’s eleven-month exile was over, and not a moment too soon. He had conceived a hatred of Norfolk Island that was never to leave him-and was to bias much of his conduct later in his career. He had also conceived a hatred of Major Robert Ross and every fucken marine in the world. With him Captain Hunter took Johnny Livingstone, back in the fold at last.

Storeship Gorgon from England, which had been expected in New South Wales for months, had not arrived. Nor had any other ship save Supply on the 19th of November last from Batavia with a piddling amount of flour and a great deal of everybody’s least favorite food, rice. The chartered vessel Waaksamheid had followed in her wake from Batavia to reach Port Jackson on the 17th of December, loaded with tons more rice, plus tea, sugar and Dutch gin for the officers; the salt meat she carried proved to be a putrid mess of mostly bones.

According to Lieutenant Harry Ball of Supply, His Excellency was going to hire Waaksamheid to carry Captain Hunter and the crew of Sirius to England. In a hurry to get back to Port Jackson, Supply sailed on the 11th of February. Among those who went on her but intended to return as settlers were the three Sirius men who had helped guard and run Major Ross’s distillery, now closed, the contents of its kegs nicely maturing in a secret place. John Drummond had fallen in love with Ann Read off Lady Penrhyn. She was living with Neddy Perrott; though Drummond understood that he could not have her, he could not bear to sail to England either. William Mitchell had taken up with Susannah Hunt off Lady Juliana and they planned to stay in this part of the world. Peter Hibbs was caught in the toils of another girl off Lady Juliana, Mary Pardoe, who had been a sailor’s “wife” and borne a little girl toward the end of the voyage, whereupon the wretch had abandoned her, left her to be transferred to Norfolk Island.

On the 15th of April Supply was back again. Her first cargo ashore was a detachment of the New South Wales Corps, specially commissioned in London to police the great experiment and free up the marines to go home, though any marine on finishing his three-year term was at liberty to join the New South Wales Corps rather than go home. Captain William Hill, Lieutenant Abbott, Ensign Prentice and 21 soldiers were to replace the same number of marines, save that four marine officers were to leave: three were intentional, the fourth an evil necessity. Captain George Johnston was taking his convict mistress Esther Abrahams and their son, George, to Port Jackson; the affable Lieutenant Cresswell, discoverer of pineless Charlotte Field, went as he had come, alone; Lieutenant Kellow, so odious to his fellow officers, departed with his convict mistress Catherine Hart and her two sons, the younger belonging to him; and Lieutenant John Johnstone was carried on board Supply desperately ill. Of the old brigade, only Major Ross, First Lieutenant Clark and Second Lieutenant Faddy were left. And Second Lieutenant Little John Ross, of course.

Ominously, Supply brought two more surgeons: Thomas Jamison, after a vacation in Port Jackson; and James Callam off Sirius. As D’arcy Wentworth and Denis Considen were already on the island, that brought the medical complement up to four-four to treat a population reduced by over 70 persons?

“This tells me,” said Major Ross grimly to Richard Morgan, “that as soon as more convict transports arrive from England, we are to receive many of their tenants. His Excellency has also given me to understand that he intends to ship some of his multiple offenders here. In Port Jackson, he says, they escape to kill the natives, plunder the outlying settlements, and rape women left alone. In this much smaller place he feels they will be easier to control. I must therefore build a stouter gaol than the old guardhouse, and I will have to start it now-no one knows when the next transports will arrive, only that they will arrive. It seems London cares more to be rid of England’s felons than London cares whether or not they will survive here. So keep sawing, Morgan, as hard and fast as ye can, and do not even think of such whimsies as closing down a pit.”

“How seem the men of the New South Wales Corps?” Richard asked.

“I see little difference between their enlisted men and my own-a rascally lot who by accident escaped the attention of the English courts. The officers are a cut above them, but I am not inspired to rave about their efficiency. What I would not give for a decent surveyor! Here I am to allocate sixty-acre grants to Sirius men like Drummond and Hibbs as well as some of my own time-expired marines, yet I have no surveyor. Bradley was pathetic, Altree even worse.” His eyes gleamed. “I do not suppose, Morgan, that amongst your many hidden talents is surveying?”

Richard laughed. “Nay, sir, nay!”

The yield of Indian corn from Charlotte Field had been huge; dozens of convict women were put to husking and scraping the grain off thousands upon thousands of cobs, and the wheat harvest had also come in much bigger than the blighting winds and gnawing grubs had promised. But Port Jackson was back on two-thirds rations, which meant that Norfolk Island was ordered to follow suit. Luckily when she sailed on the 9th of May, Supply had been so laden with departing people that she had no room for a cargo of grain. What Norfolk Island had, it would keep-for the time being, at any rate. A commodious house of young pine logs had been built at Charlotte Field for D’arcy Wentworth and his family, who were sorely missed in Sydney Town. Though this western village was no longer named Charlotte Field; on Saturday the 30th of April, Major Ross officially announced that it was to be called Queensborough, and that Phillipburgh would become properly possessive as Phillipsburgh.

Sufficient time had elapsed since the arrival of Surprize to enable the 700-odd people of Norfolk Island to get to know each other. The entire island hummed with gossip; Lieutenant Ralph Clark snipped the first two bunches of grapes ever to form in the Antipodes, but the gossip grapevine was much longer and stronger than the real thing, bore bigger fruit. Mrs. Richard Morgan was not averse to disseminating interesting tidbits garnered in the Lieutenant-Governor’s house; Mistress Mary Branham in Lieutenant Ralph Clark’s house also contributed her mite. From highest to lowest, the doings of everyone were examined, speculated upon, and judged. If a convict abandoned his Lady Penrhyn woman in favor of a newer, younger female off Lady Juliana, it was known; if a marine secretly philandered with a convict’s wife, it was known; if private marines Escott, Mee, Bailey and Fishbourn were brewing beer from island barley and Justinian hops, it was known; if Little John Ross was off color, it was known; and everybody knew the identity of the third man who broke into Stores and tried to steal saleable items. Mr. Freeman’s servant John Gault and convict Charles Strong were sentenced to 300 lashes each from the meanest cat: 100 in Sydney Town, then, upon recovery, 100 in Queensborough, then, upon recovery, 100 in Phillipsburgh. Even in the face of this terrible punishment-it would partially cripple them for life-they would not divulge the name of the third man. But everybody knew.

Despite the intermeshing relationships established between those who guarded and those who were guarded, the camps were very much divided when it came to totting up grievances. This meant that when rations were reduced and his enlisted marines looked like mutinying, Major Ross held no fears that the convicts would take advantage of a suddenly perilous situation. Led, as always, by men like Mee, Plyer and Fishbourn, the marines refused to take their rations from the Stores, complaining that their flour supply was already eroded because they had to use some of it to barter for fresh produce from the convicts. The insurrection was short-lived and unsuccessful; Major Ross, confronted, told them that they were a fucken lazy lot of fucken scum for whom he had neither time nor pity. If they wanted to keep the flour ration intact, then they ought to grow their own fresh produce. They had more leisure and more fish than the convicts, so what was stopping them? Ross’s ex-servant Escott and a group of other privates crumbled; the threat of mutiny faded. Shortly afterward, a daily allowance of a good mug of rum was issued again. If nothing else would pacify them, rum would. How could he deprive half his marines of their muskets? Ross asked himself. The answer was that he could not. Therefore keep them sedated and the hell with conscience.

Naturally the departure of Johnny Livingstone was noted. All eyes became riveted upon Stephen Donovan to see who Johnny’s replacement was going to be. Nobody permanent and nobody from among the convicts; since Donovan carried on superintending his gangs in the same cheerfully ruthless way, the final assumption was that Johnny had not mattered much.

Another interesting situation was that between Richard Morgan and his house girl, Kitty Clark, who was locked out of that strange man’s bed. Locked out!

“Fitting,” said Mrs. Richard Morgan, whose maiden name was Lock.

Richard was famously friendly with Stephen Donovan, but those who knew him from Ceres and Alexander days swore that he had no Miss Molly leanings; though Will Connelly and Neddy Perrott continued to ostracize him, they could not be brought to admit that he lifted Donovan’s shirt. If anyone peeked furtively through Donovan’s unshuttered windows, all the inquisitive individual saw was the pair of them bent over a chessboard, or sitting companionably side by side at the fire, or eating at the table. Never with Kitty Clark there. She stayed home, guarded by Lawrell and MacTavish.

Stephen had been in a quandary ever since he had seen Kitty blush on Christmas Day of 1790. Eyes opened, he noticed after that how her attention was always fixed upon him, though her attitude to Richard had subtly changed. Before that picnic he had utterly intimidated her-she was a natural mouse, and not a very bright mouse either. Very sweet, very humble, very dull. Had she not owned William Henry’s eyes, Stephen was sure that Richard would have passed her by without a glance. Therefore Richard’s strength, his intelligence and his reticent nature made him appear in her eyes as a God the Father kind of person, immensely old and the fount of all authority. Fear and obey. After the picnic Kitty had definitely lost a little of her terror of him, Stephen presumed because of the gold necklet she never left off-how women adored sparkling gewgaws! Or was it that sparkling gewgaws cost precious money, and were thus an indication of esteem? But it was he, Stephen, who fueled her dreams of love. That was unmistakable. Precisely why he had no idea, though he was used to attracting women. Probably, he thought, I give off emanations of unattainability; women inevitably want what they cannot have. Though it has not occurred to Kitty that Richard is hers for the lifting of a finger, so there must be more to it than that.

What to do for the best? How to channel her feelings away from himself and toward Richard?

Tobias, curled in his lap, got up, stretched, repositioned himself. A weeny marmalade bundle with gigantic paws that promised he would one day be a lion. What a cat Olivia had given him! Brilliantly clever, scheming, tough, stubborn, and irresistibly charming when he wanted to be worshiped and fussed over. The kittens he might have sired! But Stephen, wanting a pet which slept alongside him in his hammock rather than roamed abroad in search of sexual conquests, had castrated him without qualm or regret.

The answer to his quandary had not yet appeared when Supply sailed for Sydney in May. May of 1791 already! Where did the years go? Over four years since he had met Richard Morgan.

Stephen had been put to surveying, since he knew the rudiments of the art; those who had returned on Supply to take up land were anxious to do so, and Major Ross wanted them out of town post-haste. The Sirius seamen would probably last the distance, Stephen thought, but the marines were not so enthusiastic. Men like Elias Bishop and Joseph McCaldren-incorrigible troublemakers in their day-were principally interested in being deeded their land, then selling it. Having gotten what they could out of Norfolk Island, they would then return to Port Jackson and apply for land there, also to sell. They wanted hard money, not hard labor. And in the meantime they lolled around Sydney Town making mischief with those marines not yet due to retire. Poor Major Ross! An enormous kettle of trouble was brewing for him in Port Jackson and England. With backbiters like George Johnston and John Hunter-not to mention that mental-case Bradley-whispering in Governor Phillip’s receptive ear, Ross would see little thanks for his work. Stephen respected him as much as Richard did, and for the same reasons. Faced with a virtually insoluble predicament, Ross had proceeded without fear or favor. Always a dangerous thing to do.

“The trouble is,” Stephen said to Richard over a mess of fried chicken and rice Kitty had flavored splendidly with sage and onion from her garden and pepper from her pestle, “that one has to have a line of sight to survey, and Norfolk Island is a dense forest of trees which all look the same. I can survey wherever there is cleared ground, but a lot of these sixty-acre blocks will not be on cleared ground. I can put Elias Bishop at Queensborough, but Joe McCaldren refuses to go so far out of Sydney Town, and Peter Hibbs and James Proctor want adjoining pieces right in the middle of the island. Danny Stanfield and John Drummond want to be near Phillipsburgh. By the time I am through, I swear I will need to be confined in a strait-waistcoat and chained to a gun in the shade. Supervising the likes of Len Dyer is a holiday compared to this.”

“Is Danny Stanfield coming back, then?”

“Aye. He went off to marry Alice Harmsworth. A good man.”

“The best of all the marines.”

“With Juno Hayes and Jem Redman, aye,” Stephen agreed.

Kitty interrupted. “Is the supper tasty?” she asked anxiously.

“Magnificently so!” Stephen responded, wishing he could snub rather than encourage her, but too fair to do so. “Such a change from eternal Mt. Pitt bird too! I admit they save our salt meat-I admit that the Major’s pessimism about how many future mouths we will be feeding is well founded-but I confess that when I heard the birds had flown in to nest in apparently unreduced numbers, I was near sick to my stomach. However,” he said blandly, “Tobias is very partial to Mt. Pitt bird.”

“Oh, dear! I thought it was forbidden to give them to our pets,” said Kitty, looking frightened. “Please do not get into trouble, Stephen!”

Richard went into God the Father mode. “The wastage of Mt. Pitt birds,” he said ponderously, “is shameful. Stephen has no need to catch any to feed Tobias, Kitty. All he needs is to pick up carcasses strewn along the tracks. The greedy ingrates pillage the poor females of their eggs, then throw the rest away.”

“Oh, yes, quite!” squeaked Kitty, retreating in confusion.

“Richard,” said Stephen after she disappeared through the door with an empty bucket and a flustered explanation that she needed to fetch water from the stream, “sometimes ye’re an absolute looby!”

“Eh?” asked Richard, startled.

“When the poor little creature ventures a remark, ye squash her flat with logic and good sense! She makes us a delicious repast-out of fucken rice, of all things!-yet how d’ye thank her? By donning the snowy vestments of God the Father!”

Mouth open, Richard sat stunned. “God the Father?”

“That is what I call you these days. You know-as in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost? God the Father is the one sits on the throne and dispenses whatever-it-is He deems just reward or punishment, though it seems to me that He is quite as blind as every other judge in or out of Christendom. Kitty is the most harmless of all His creatures-for a man in love, Richard, ye’re as inept as a hobbledehoy! If you want her, why in fucken Hell d’ye not act as if you want her?” Stephen demanded, his exasperation fanned because of his own predicament with her.

Face a study might have made Stephen laugh were the situation different, Richard heard this diatribe through, then said flatly, “I am too old. Ye’re right-she thinks of me as a father, which is not unreasonable. My daughter would be her age.”

Stephen saw an even brighter shade of red. “Then make her think of you otherwise, you fool!” he cried, shaking with rage. “Damn you, Richard, ye’re one of the most beautiful men I have ever seen! There is no flaw-I know, because I have searched for one. I have been in love with you since before I was born and I will be in love with you until long after I die. The fact that I am a Miss Molly and you are not is irrelevant-no one chooses whom to love. It simply happens. Somehow you and I have managed to cope with our different preferences and forge a friendship too strong ever to break. Yes, I know the silly child thinks she is in love with me, so shut your mouth and stop looking noble! Just as well for her that she does fancy herself in love with me. Did she not, she would come to you a complete child-and that no man in his right mind wants!” He ran down, hiccoughed, looked spent.

“But you said it, Stephen. No one chooses whom to love, it simply happens. And she has chosen you, not me.”

“No, no, you miss the point! Jesus, Richard, where Kitty is concerned ye’re an ass! To her, I am the transition between child and woman-I am her first girlish passion, unrequited because they always are. She is a plum ripe for the picking, man! I saw her walking down the vale to Stores the other day, dangling an empty basket. The wind was blowing straight in her face and plastered her shapeless slops against her-were I a man for women, I would have snatched her away that instant. And do not think that other men did not notice! Apart from her eyes, her face does not have much to recommend it, but in the body she is Venus. Long shapely legs, swelling hips, tiny waist and superb breasts-Venus! If ye do not lay claim to her, Richard, someone else will in spite of his fear that ye’ll tear him in half.”

Stephen got to his feet. “Now I am going home to Tobias before she returns from her errand. Tell her that I remembered some urgent business.” He went to the door. “Ye’re too patient, Richard. ’Tis an admirable virtue, but while the cat crouches for an hour watching the mouse, a hawk may swoop down from the sky and steal it.”

Kitty shrank into the shadows beneath the unshuttered window, but Stephen Donovan looked neither to left nor to right; he strode off down the path between the vegetables and disappeared into the darkness. The moment he vanished, she crept back to the stream. Why was it not deep enough to drown in? Stephen’s calling Richard an absolute looby had stilled her footsteps, aroused her curiosity; forgetting adages about eavesdroppers, she placed herself beneath the window and listened.

How was that possible? How could Stephen say he was in love with Richard? Mind reeling, she could not get beyond that. Stephen, a man, was in love with-desired-another man. Richard. And he had called her love a girlish passion. He had called her a child. Spoken of her with tender sympathy but no love whatsoever. Could recount the details of her figure with the same sort of remote admiration she felt for Richard. Who, Stephen had said, was in love with her. But Richard was her father’s age! He had said it! She fell to her knees and rocked back and forth, tearless. I want to die, I want to die…

Richard crouched beside her. “You heard.”

“Yes.”

“Well, better to hear it that way than from my wife,” he said, put an arm about her shoulders and hauled her upright with himself. “You were bound to find out sooner or later. Come, off to bed. ’Tis cold out here.”

She suffered herself to be led inside, then looked at him out of a wan white face and William Henry’s eyes.

“Go to bed,” he said firmly, face impassive.

Without a word she turned and went to her room. He was right, it was cold; shivering, she got into her night shift and climbed into that warm soft feather bed, there to lie sleepless, going over and over what she remembered of their-no, not conversation. Nor argument. What she had heard was an exchange of feelings and impressions between two very old friends, friends who could not truly offend each other no matter what had to be said. From the little her life had shown her, a rare occurrence. The word “maturity” came from somewhere, and it suited them. Why were they what they were? Why did Stephen choose to love a man? And why was that man Richard? Why had he called Richard “God the Father”? Oh, she thought, squeezing her hands together in pain and bewilderment, I know nothing about either of them! Nothing!

The wish to die faded, died. Nor, she discovered, was she shattered beyond hope of mending. That Stephen did not love her was a grief, but she had never thought he loved her; that was an old disappointment. The shape of her sorrow melted, burned away by yet more questions. Perhaps, she thought, I do have the brain to learn, though what the lesson is I do not know. Only that I have spent my life hiding, and I cannot go on hiding. Those who hide are never seen. With that enlightenment, she fell asleep.

When she woke in the morning, Richard had gone. The dishes were washed, the stove top tidy, the kettle steamed, the fire lay in embers, and a plate of cold chicken and rice lay on the table.

She made herself tea in the sturdy baked clay pot warming on the hearth and sat to pick at the food, looking back on last night as if from a great distance. The memories were all firmly embedded, but the intensity of feeling had gone. Feeling… Surely there was a better word than that?

Richard walked in with his usual easy smile. As if nothing had happened. “You look very thoughtful,” he said.

The comment was a signal, she divined that: he did not wish to discuss last night. So she said, rather feebly, “No work?”

“Today is Saturday.”

“Oh, of course. Some tea?”

“That would be nice.”

She poured him a mug and cooled it down with cold sugar syrup, then sat down again to go on toying with her food. Finally she put the spoon down on the pewter plate with a clang and glared at him. “If I cannot talk to you,” she burst out, “who is there?”

“Try Stephen,” he said, sipping appreciatively. “Now that is one could talk the leg off an iron pot.”

“I do not understand you!”

“You do, Kitty, you do. ’Tis yourself you do not understand, and where is the wonder in that? Ye’ve not had much of a life,” he said gently.

She stared across the table straight into his eyes, something she had never had the courage to do before. Wide, the color of the sea beyond the lagoon on a squally day, and deep enough to drown in. Without, it seemed, the slightest effort, he took her inside himself and swept her away on a tide of-of-Gasping, she leaped to her feet, both hands clutching at her chest. “Where is Stephen?”

“Fishing at Point Hunter, I imagine.”

She fled through the door and into the vale as if Satan’s hounds bayed at her heels, slowing down only when she realized that he was not following her. How had he done that? How?

By the time she negotiated the perils of walking unescorted through Sydney Town-a matter of running from one group of women to the next-Kitty had regained a little composure and was able to smile and wave at Stephen, who rolled in his line, strolled to meet her, then shepherded her away from the vicinity of half a dozen other men also fishing. He seemed ignorant of what had happened; that eventuality had not occurred to her, she had automatically assumed that Richard would have gone to tell him. Did Richard discuss nothing with anyone?

“They are not biting,” he said breezily. “What brings ye here? No Richard in your wake?”

“I overheard what passed between you last night,” she said, and gulped audibly. “I know I ought not to have listened, but I did. I am sorry!”

“Bad child. Here, we can sit on this rock and look at the wonder of yon isles in the midst of such a smother, and the wind will blow our words away.”

“I am indeed a child,” she said miserably.

“Aye, and that I find the strangest part of it,” he said. “Ye’ve been through the London Newgate, Lady Juliana and Surprize as if none of it touched you. But it must have, Kitty.”

“Yes, of course it did. But there were others like me, you know. If we did not die of shame-one poor girl did-we managed not to be seen. Among so many, that is not as difficult as you might think. The crowds-the fighting, spitting, snarling, prowling-stepped over us as if we did not exist. Everybody was so drunk, or else after someone-to rob or fuck or beat upon. We were thin, poor, plain. Not worth going after for any reason.”

“So ye became a hedgehog curled into a ball.” His profile against the pines of Nepean Island was pure and serene. “And the only word ye know for the act of love is ‘fuck.’ That is the saddest thing of all. Did ye see people fucking?”

“Not really. Just clothes and jumping about. We used to shut our eyes when we realized it was going to happen near us.”

“ ’Tis one way to keep the world at a distance. What about Lady Juliana? Were ye not pecked at by the brazen madams?”

“Mr. Nicol was very good, so were some of the older women. They would not let the mean ones peck at us for spite. And I was always seasick.”

“ ’Tis a wonder ye lived. But ye came through it all to land here, and land none other than Richard Morgan. That, Mistress Kitty, is the most remarkable thing of all. I doubt there is a woman or a Miss Molly has not-well, perhaps tried is too strong a word, but at least wondered if it would be possible.” He turned his head to laugh at her.

How strange. His eyes were much bluer than Richard’s, so blue that they reflected the sky as if making a barrier of it. Not water to be engulfed by but a wall to come up against.

“I have fallen out of love with you,” she said in tones of wonder.

“And into love with Richard.”

“No, I do not think so. There is something, but it is not love. All I know is that it is different.”

“Oh, very different!”

“Tell me about him, please.”

“Nay, I’ll not do that. Ye’ll just have to stay with him and find things out for yourself. Not an easy task with our close-mouthed Richard, but ye’re a woman, and ye’re curious. I am sure,” he said, pulling her up, “that ye’ll give it your best try.” Leaning down, he put his cheek against her hair and whispered, “Whenever ye find something out, tell me.”

Tears sprang to her eyes, she was not sure why, except that a spasm of grief clutched at her heart. Grief for him rather than because of him, and not because she had taken anything away from him. I wish, she thought, that the world was better ordered. I am not in love with this man, but I love him dearly.

“Tobias and I,” he said, taking her hand and swinging it as they walked, “will make excellent uncles.”

At the head of Arthur’s Vale he released her hand and stopped. “This is as far as I go,” he said.

“Please come with me!”

“Oh, no. Ye must go alone.”

The house was empty; Richard had gone out, but the fireplace had been cleaned and fresh kindling stacked in it, her water buckets were full, four of the six chairs Richard had accumulated were tucked neatly beneath the table. Disappointed and bewildered-why had he not waited to see what Stephen had said to her?-she wandered about aimlessly, then went into the garden and began to dig, hoping that one day sufficient plenty arrived to allow her to waste ground outside the house upon flowers. Time passed; John Lawrell arrived with six Mt. Pitt birds he had cleaned and plucked, which solved dinner, served in the middle of the day now that winter approached.

By the time that Richard returned the birds had been browned in a pan and were braising, stuffed with herbed bread, in a covered pot with onions and potatoes.

“What,” she asked for something to say, “are the tiny green trees growing in a sunny spot below the privy?”

“Ah, you found them.”

“Ages ago, but I never remember to ask.”

“Oranges and lemons grown from seed I saved in Rio de Janeiro. In two or three years’ time we will see fruit during winter. A lot of my seeds came up, so I gave some of the plants to Nat Lucas, some to Major Ross, some to Stephen and some to a few others. The climate here should be perfect for citrus, there is no frost.” One brow lifted quizzically. “Did ye find Stephen?”

“Yes,” she said, pricking a potato with a knife to see if it was cooked.

“And he answered all your questions?”

Blinking in surprise, she paused. “Do you know, I do not believe I had time to ask any? He was too busy asking me questions.”

“What about?”

“Gaol and transports, mostly.” She began to transfer pieces of bird, onions and potatoes onto two plates, spooning juice over them. “There is a salad of lettuce, chives and parsley.”

“Ye’re a very good cook, Kitty,” he said, tucking in.

“I am improving. We almost support ourselves, Richard, do we not? Everything on our plates we either grew or found.”

“Aye. This is good soil and there is mostly enough rain to keep things going. My first year here was very wet, then it became dry. But the stream never ceases to flow, which means that it must originate in a spring. I would like to find the source.”

“Why?”

“That would be the best place to put a house.”

“But you already have a house.”

“Too close to Sydney Town,” he said, carefully scooping juice onto his spoon with the last of his potato.

“More?” she asked, getting up.

“If there is any, please.”

“It is close to Sydney Town in one way,” she said, sitting down again, “but we are quite isolated.”

“I suspect that when the next lot of convicts arrive, we will not be so isolated. Major Ross believes that His Excellency intends to push the number of people here up beyond a thousand.”

“A thousand? How many is that?”

“I forgot, ye cannot do sums. Remember last Sunday at divine service, Kitty?”

“Of course.”

“There were seven hundred present. Cut that crowd in half, then add your half to all who were there. That is over a thousand.”

“So many!” she breathed, awed. “Where will they go?”

“Some to Queensborough, some to Phillipsburgh, some to the place where the Sirius sailors were, though I believe that the Major might end in putting the New South Wales Corps soldiers there.”

“They do not get on with his marines,” she said, nodding.

“Exactly. But the vale will blossom with houses at this end, where the land is not in Government cultivation. So I would rather pick up and move farther away.” He leaned back in his chair and patted his belly, smiling. “At the rate ye feed me, I will have to work harder or grow fat.”

“You will not grow fat because you do not drink,” she said.

“None of us drinks.”

“Gammon, Richard! I am not as green as all that! The marines drink, so do the soldiers-and so do many convicts. If they have to, they make their own rum and beer.”

His brows flew up, he grinned. “I should lend ye to the Major as an adviser. How did ye pick that up?”

“At the Stores.” She took their empty plates and carried them to the counter beside the fireplace. “I had heard that you do not care for company,” she said, getting out her dish and soap whisk, “and in a way I understand. But moving from here would mean that you would have to start all over again. A terrible burden.”

“No amount of work is a burden if it means my children are protected,” he said in a steely voice. “I would have them grow up untainted, and they will not do that in close proximity to Sydney Town. There are many good people here, but there are also many bad people. Why d’ye think the Major racks his brains to devise punishments that might deter violence, drunkenness, robbery and all the other vices which spring up where people are too close together? D’ye think that Ross takes pleasure in sending men like Willy Dring to Nepean Island for six weeks with two weeks’ rations? Did he, I would not respect him, and I do respect him.”

The first part of this (for Richard) long speech sent her mind whirling, but she chose to answer the second. “Perhaps, did we understand better how folk think, we might find a way. So much trouble happens in drink. Look at me.”

“Aye, look at you. Growing in leaps and bounds.”

“I could grow more if I could read and write and do sums.”

“I will school you if you want.”

“Oh, would you? Richard, how wonderful!” She stood with the soap whisk in her hand, motionless, the same look in her eyes William Henry had borne after his first day at Colston’s School. “God the Father! I know now what Stephen meant. You need people to depend upon you as children do upon their father. You are very strong and very wise. So is Stephen, but he is not a father in his mind. I will always be your child.”

“In one way, yes. In another way, I want to father children of you. I am not God-Stephen spoke in jest, not in blasphemy. He was simply trying, as Stephen must, to put me under a title in his mental library.”

“You have a wife,” she said. “I cannot be your wife.”

“Lizzie Lock is entered in the Reverend Johnson’s register as my wife, but she has never been my wife. In England, I could have the marriage annulled, but the far ends of the earth do not run to bishops and ecclesiastical courts. You are my wife, Kitty, and I do not believe for one moment that God does not understand. God gave you to me, I knew it when I looked into your eyes. I will introduce you to people as my wife, and call you my wife. My other self.”

A silence fell, neither moved for what seemed an eternity. Her gaze was fixed in his, all the consent and communion necessary.

“What happens now?” she asked, a little breathlessly.

“Nothing until after curfew,” he said, preparing to depart. “I do not intend to be disturbed by visitors, wife. Dig in your garden, but bearing in mind that a lot of seedlings will end in being transplanted elsewhere. I am going up the stream to seek its sources. Ye may have been next door to a skeleton, but nine months of Norfolk Island sun and air and food have made a new woman of you. One I do not want gardening alone so close to Sydney Town.”

The pressure of work had left no time to explore farther up the stream than his bath, nor had curiosity prompted him until the truth about Kitty had dazzled him. How long might he have been prepared to wait if Stephen had not lost his temper? Loving her had been an idea; his gift from God was too precious to defile by behaving as most men would, by cozening and coaxing her into something she knew the wrong things about. Gloucester Gaol had shown him what the London Newgate must have been like, copulating couples everywhere. He did not believe for a moment that she had been the victim of any man’s lust, but lust she must have seen through every day and night she spent there. Luckily not long, yet quite long enough. Her attraction to Stephen had blasted his hopes apart without actually destroying them; he knew too well that Stephen was impossible. What he had decided upon was another long wait, patiently standing to one side caring for her while she came to terms with the fact that the object of her affections was incapable of returning them.

He did not think she loved him, but that he had never hoped for anyway. Close to twenty-three years lay between them, and youth called to youth. Yet when she had stared across the table at him this morning he felt his body stir and unveiled his very core to her. She had fled to Stephen, but not unmoved and not in fright. That revelation of himself had kindled emotions in her that were entirely new and entirely his. The fact that he had such power had filled him with elation. Never a man to spend his leisure looking into the depths of his own being, he had not understood until he worked that power upon Kitty why he was what he was: God the Father, as Stephen had put it. All men and women needed to see and touch someone of their own kind who yet appeared to be more than they were. A king, a prime minister, a head man. He had taken on the care of others reluctantly, as a last resort because he witnessed their floundering and could not bear to have them sink. And slowly this skin of calm strength and purpose had infiltrated him to the marrow; what had once been done with an internal sigh of resignation had become an automatic assumption of authority. The germ must always have lain there in his spirit, but had he lived out his life in Bristol, it would never have awakened. We are born owning many qualities; some we may never know we possess. It all depends what kind of run God gives us.

After twenty minutes of walking barelegged up the muddy-bottomed brook he came to its first tributary, which led down from heights to the northeast. An amphitheatrical dell stuffed with tree ferns and plantains tempted him, but it was still too close to Arthur’s Vale, so he continued up the main course, which bent and wove its way through more tree ferns, palms and plantains until it branched again at the base of a flat expanse he thought the ages had deposited there during heavy rains. The western fork, which he followed first, was too short. The southwestern branch was clearly the principal source of the water in Arthur’s Vale, running deep and strong from somewhere up a fairly steep cleft. Wading on, he climbed higher and higher until, almost at the top of a crest, he found the spring gushing out between mossy, lichen-covered rocks smothered in ferns of more kinds than he had known existed-frilly, feathered, fluffed, fishtailed.

Squinting at the sun, sliding down the sky, he gained his perspective and entered the pine forest of the crest, which he soon discovered was quite flat and broad. To his amazement, he emerged not long afterward on the Queensborough road not very far from the track which led off its opposite side down to the distillery. Ah, that was interesting! Richard was visited with an idea. He went back to the spring and stood looking down the cleft. Not far below the spring on the western slope was a shelf wide enough and deep enough to hold a good big house and a few fruit trees; the ground beneath would serve as a vegetable garden.

His next stop was Stephen Donovan, who had frittered away the hours since he had left Kitty by playing chess against himself.

“Why,” he asked when Richard came through the door, “does my right hand win every game?”

“Because ye’re right-handed?” Richard asked, subsiding into a chair with a deep sigh.

“Ye look more like a man who has been trying to walk on water than one making love.”

“I have not been making love, I have been trying to walk on water. And I have an idea.”

“Pray enlighten me.”

“We both know that Joe McCaldren wants land on the way to Queensborough, yet not that far out. And we both know that what Joe McCaldren really wants is to sell his land the moment it is surveyed and deeded to him. Not so?”

“Absolutely so. Have a glass of port and continue.”

“Would ye do me a very great favor by surveying McCaldren’s land next? I know the ideal piece to give him,” said Richard, accepting the wine.

“Ye want to get Kitty away before the next convicts come, of course. But have ye the money to buy sixty acres, Richard? Joe McCaldren will ask ten shillings the acre,” said Stephen, frowning.

“I have at least thirty pounds in notes of hand, but he will want coin of the realm. Besides, I do not need or want sixty acres, which are too many for one man to farm. Is it true, what ye told me, that every sixty-acre lot will make contact with a stream of water?”

“Aye, so I have suggested to the Major, who agrees.”

“Does the Major object to a sixty-acre portion’s being split up after it is deeded?”

“Once the sixty acres are handed over, Richard, the Major would not care if they flew away with the Mt. Pitt birds. But he also intends to give ten- and twelve-acre grants to those convicts like yourself who have been pardoned or emancipated. Why not save your money and get your land for nothing?”

“Two reasons. The first is that the free settlers have to be served first. That is going to take a year, a year in which we all expect to see well over a thousand people here. Some of the new convicts will be men His Excellency deems too depraved to be safely held in Port Jackson. The second is that when our grants do come to pass, they will be side by side. The nature of the streams here will dictate that each block be long and narrow, and all the houses must be built close to the water-in a row. Yes, separated by many yards, yet still in a row. I do not want to live like that, Stephen. So I want my twelve acres to be surrounded by sixty-acre blocks and I want my house on a run of water no one else will be close to.”

“Morgan’s run.”

“Exactly. Morgan’s run. I have found the place. It is the main tributary of Arthur’s Vale stream and it arises from a strong spring at the top of a narrow valley. Above it lies the flat land which abuts onto the Queensborough road in the same region as the track to the Major’s distillery. A mere thirty-minute walk from Sydney Town, which will please McCaldren, and on good water. But I want the survey to take in both sides of the stream, because the best place to build is on the western slope. If ye make the block to the west of McCaldren’s another sixty-acre one, ’twill extend to water courses flowing west through Queensborough itself.”

Stephen stared at Richard in complete admiration. “Ye’ve solved all your problems, haven’t ye?” He shrugged, slapped his hands on his knees. “Well, I am going in that direction, having proceeded from the Cascade side. There I alternated sixty-acre lots with twenty-acre ones-big lot, hard land, small lot, easy land-which evens out the selling price, ye may say. At the moment I am up to James Proctor and Peter Hibbs. Not so far away. So I will proceed to the Queensborough road and start moving from it northward until I get back to Proctor and Hibbs. And I will make sure that I enclose Morgan’s Run within McCaldren’s sixty in such a way that ye have the head of the stream all to yourself.”

“Just twelve acres of it, Stephen, that is enough. Up the valley on both sides and through to the Queensborough road. What McCaldren does with the other forty-eight acres I care not,” said Richard with a grin. “However, if ye make my block more of a square, the rest of the piece could connect to my stream well below me. I can pay as much as twenty-five pounds in gold.”

“Let me lend ye the price of all sixty in gold, Richard.”

“Nay, it is not possible.”

“Between brothers anything is possible.”

“We shall see” was as far as Richard was prepared to go. He put the wine glass on the counter and bent to pick up Tobias, mewing around his feet with heartbreaking plaintiveness. “Ye’re a fraud, Tobias. Ye sound like the saddest orphan in the world, but I happen to know that ye live like a king.”

“Have a good night!” Stephen called after him, then scooped up the cat. “You and I, pussykins, are about to dine off Mt. Pitt bird. Why is it that dogs and cats are happy to eat the same thing each and every day of their lives, while we humans grow sated and sick after a week of monotony?”

Night had come creeping into the vale as Richard walked up the path, MacTavish rushing to greet him with somersaults of joy. The dog would much rather have spent his time with Richard, but was resigned to the fact that Richard expected him to guard Kitty, who luckily loved all animals save what she called the “dross”-her vocabulary’s more unusual words were either biblical or the result of gaol and Lady Juliana.

He stepped into the house to find Kitty at the counter, apparently able to see sufficiently in the dimness to prepare a meal. Though he had told her that she might, she never would use one of his precious candles for her own purposes. Smiling, she turned her head; he crossed the room to kiss her lips as if she had been his wife forever.

“I am for a bath,” he said, and disappeared again.

It seemed to take a long time; when he returned he looked at the stove. “Is there still hot water?”

“Of course.”

“Good. ’Tis easier to shave.”

She watched him with interest as he plied the ivory-handled razor quickly, deftly. But then, she had never seen him make a clumsy or unsure movement. Such beautiful hands, male yet graceful; they inspired confidence. “I do not understand,” she said, “how you can shave without a mirror. You never cut yourself.”

“Long years of practice,” he mumbled, mouth contorted. “In warm water with a bit of soap, easy. On Alexander I shaved dry.”

Finished, he rinsed the razor, folded it and laid it in its case before washing and drying his face. That done, he looked aimless, glanced at the fire and decided that it needed a part-burned log pushing back. No, it was still dangerous; he added a log as a prop, stood back, adjusted it. He lifted the lid of the spouted kettle, seemed disappointed that it did not need more water, walked over to his books, just about invisible.

“Richard,” she said gently, “if you are truly trying to find something to do, we can eat. That will fill in a few more minutes while you summon your courage to start giving me children.”

His eyes flew to hers, astonished, then he threw back his head and laughed until the tears came. “No, wife.” His tone growled down to a caress. “Suddenly I am not hungry for food.”

She smiled at him sidelong and walked through her door. “Do close the shutters,” she said as she went. Her voice floated back out of the darkness. “And put MacTavish out for the night.”

They will always, thought Richard, lead us when they want to. Ours is an illusion of power. Theirs is as old as creation.

His clothes he left behind him, halting inside her room until he could see shadows within shadows, the vague outline of her upon the bed, sitting bolt upright.

“No, not where I cannot see you. In the firelight, and as God made you. Come,” he said, holding out his hand.

The rustle as she shed her night shift, the feel of warm and trusting fingers. He took her back and left her standing near the hearth to pluck the straw mattress from his bed, then threw it on the floor between them and looked at her. So beautiful! Like Venus, made for love. And it would be naked skin from the beginning, he wanted this to bear no resemblance to clothed convulsive couplings on the flags of the London Newgate. Sacred, an act dedicated to God, Who had made it possible. This is what we suffer for, one divine spark that turns the blackness of the pit to the brilliance of the sun. In this is true immortality. In this we fly free.

So he folded her into his arms and let her feel the satin of skin, the play of muscle, the strength and the tenderness, all the love for which he had found no outlet in years upon years. And she seemed in their wordless mingling to sense the timeless pattern of it, to know how and where and why. Always why. If he hurt her, it was only for a moment, after which there was no tomorrow, no more than her and this for all eternity. Pour forth your love, Richard Morgan, hold nothing back! Give her everything that you are and do not count the cost. That is the only reason for love, and she, my gift from God, knows and feels and accepts my pain.