‘The soldiers,’ she said. She opened back the shutters and the sounds of the horses came clearly to Jeremy.
‘Six of them ‒ and Lieutenant Grey.’
She turned slowly and faced him. Her face was tired and old.
‘Do you realize that Andrew will hear this story ‒ everyone else’s version of it ‒ long before I have a chance to tell it to him myself?’
She dashed a hand frantically across her eyes.
‘And what a story they’ll make of it, Jeremy! A dead man lying in the kitchen, and Mrs. Maclay hasn’t even troubled to wash off his blood!’
Then she laughed; the sound was hysterical and false.
VI
Andrew reached Kintyre at dawn the following morning. Sara, lying awake in the shadowed bedroom, heard the hoof-beats distinctly break into the silence. She sat up and listened ‒ she listened also to the footsteps of the soldier who was posted on guard on the veranda.
The horse came up the slope at speed; Andrew’s voice impatiently answered the sentry’s challenge. His heavy boots clattered over the wooden boards. Sara lit a candle beside the bed, and waited.
He opened the bedroom door, and for a few seconds stood there looking at her. Then he pushed the door closed with his foot. She felt his arms go about her shoulders, and he thrust his face against her breasts.
‘Sara! Sara!’ His tone was muffled, but she was aware of his relief. His body trembled, and his clothes carried the smell of the horse’s sweat.
He raised his face to hers. ‘I came as soon as I heard. I’ve ridden all the way from Sydney without a break. Sara ‒ you’re not hurt?’
She shook her head. ‘Just tired out ‒ and not able to sleep.’
‘The swine!’ he said. ‘If they’ve as much as put a finger on you …’
‘They didn’t, Andrew. They fired the outhouses ‒ and looted … That’s all.’
‘David?’
She gave a little smile. ‘David is all right. He slept through most of it.’ Then her eyes grew suddenly afraid. ‘Andrew, it was terrible. There’s so much to tell you. I …’
His hands moved and gripped her arms. ‘Don’t try to tell me about it now, Sara. Everyone has the story ‒ in one form or another. I’ll hear it from you when you’re fit to tell me.’
She closed her eyes, and he gently pressed his lips to them.
‘Dearest,’ he said, ‘when the news first came they said you were hurt ‒ and then that you were dead. I didn’t know you were safe until I got to Parramatta.’ He thrust his head once more against her breast, gripping her in an agony of possessiveness. ‘God in heaven, Sara … If they had killed you …’
He looked up at her. ‘If you had been dead, I couldn’t have lived.’
She lifted her hand and stroked back the matted hair from his forehead. It was stuck with sweat and dirt.
‘I’ll not let it happen again,’ he said. ‘By God, I won’t! They’ll never be trusted again, as I’ve been fool enough to trust them in the past. It won’t worry me if I’m the most hated man in the colony ‒ no convict is going to get the better of me. From now on I’ll make every use I can of their bodies for labour, and I’ll forget about their souls. If any of them have souls, they’re too insignificant to be troubled with.’
He relaxed his grip on her, and she fell back against the pillows. His lips were thin and determined as he spoke; he had the angry, passionate look of a man thwarted. Sara knew that whatever past leniency he had shown the convicts was finished. Andrew had never been a patient man, and he would not make an effort now to be either patient or forgiving.
At last he straightened and took a backward step away from the bed. He said reluctantly, ‘You need rest, my darling. I must leave you …’
He hesitated, poised on one foot.
She held out her hand to him. ‘But I think there’s something else you want to talk about. There’s something besides the convicts …?’
He shrugged. ‘No ‒ nothing. Well … it must wait until you’ve rested.’
She smiled. ‘I’m not so tired that my curiosity wouldn’t keep me from resting.’ She leaned her head a little to one side. ‘Andrew, come and tell me.’
He smiled broadly at her; it was a grin that wiped the fatigue from his face. With a single movement he was beside the bed again and had flung himself down full length on it. He lay close to her; he was on his back and he stared up at the ceiling.
‘What a girl you are, my Sara! I’d be lost without you!’ He reached out and caught her hand. Their fingers laced together, and locked. He closed his eyes.
‘I want to start building in Sydney,’ he said.
She sat up at that and bent over him, her fingers gripping his tightly.
‘Andrew! You mean to give up Kintyre?’
He opened his eyes. ‘No, keep Kintyre ‒ and go on expanding, as we’ve always planned. In spite of what those swine did to the stores, Kintyre will still be the richest farm on the Hawkesbury.’
The grin spread over his face again, and made it, even with its toughened, weathered skin, seem like a boy’s face. He drew her down until her lips were almost touching his own.
‘Kintyre is only a part of what I want,’ he said eagerly. ‘Sara, things are stirring in Sydney. The world is beginning to know of its existence ‒ and the possibilities of trade is bringing ships in. More than ever I’m convinced that the colony is going to command great prosperity ‒ and Sydney is the port. As it opens up there’ll be need for stores and warehouses and wharves ‒ and I must be there and have land to keep up with the growth. I might even be able to get my hands on some sort of ship, and make voyages to the East for cargoes. It would be a gamble, of course … But with you to help me …’
She drew a little away from him, and she could see the flame of ambition and a young man’s excitement lighting his face. The silence of Kintyre that she loved so much was all about them, and in her mind she saw it replaced by the clatter and confusion of the ugly little town sprawling over Port Jackson’s bays. Andrew was asking her to go back to face the world of women and prejudice from which she had broken free. Because of his streak of trader’s blood she realized that she was being asked to endure the loneliness of long voyages. Kintyre would become a refuge only to be visited occasionally, a place to be longed for in the midst of Sydney’s discouraged-looking dwellings. For a moment her eyes turned to the window. The peace of the Hawkesbury Valley was real and very precious in the early spring dawn. She found it hard to believe that he wanted her to leave it.
But she looked again at Andrew; her fingers moved slowly over his cheek and forehead, and then they curled about the lock of matted hair.
‘Dearest,’ she said softly, ‘tell me what it is you plan to do.’
PART THREE
Chapter One
The house that Andrew Maclay finished building for himself at the end of February, 1800, was something as close to a mansion as Sydney was likely to see for some time to come. If it lacked quite the touch of grandeur he would have liked, its proportions were spacious and graceful enough, with wide, cool verandas facing out over the harbour. He built it on a site above Woolloomooloo Bay, removed from the noise of the township’s dusty streets, from the sounds of horses and oxen teams, and from the stream of raw, undisciplined life that was part of the tiny port.
In the five years since Andrew had made his decision to leave the Hawkesbury, the colony had altered subtly. Twelve years since its foundation, it was acquiring now an air of permanence, although the Colonial Office was tardy about admitting it to the status of something more than a penal settlement. It grew steadily ‒ free settlers dribbled in, and small exploration parties, most of them organized and driven on by the personal need of land, were opening up the hinterland, pushing always farther along the rivers. The mountain barrier still defeated them, but Governor Hunter was encouraging exploration of the coast. Young Lieutenant Matthew Flinders, with his friend, naval surgeon George Bass, had made a voyage through the stra
it Bass had discovered earlier, sailed round Van Diemen’s Land, proving that it was not connected with the mainland. They were hardly more than boys, both of them, but the southern ocean was giving up its mysteries to their eager adventuring.
But the administrative framework of the colony was very little altered since the hey-day of Lieutenant-Governor Grose. The ruling few of the New South Wales Corps still lined their pockets with the profits from rum and trade, while the rest struggled for their very existence. The military dictatorship had supposedly ended with the arrival of Governor Hunter ‒ its activities had not ended, but were carried on only slightly less blatantly, with a mock deference and a raised eyebrow towards the unhappy, powerless Governor.
They retained the monopoly on the sale of the cargoes of ships trading with the port, they distilled and distributed rum illegally ‒ and since very little agriculture was undertaken on the Government’s behalf, the military still demanded and got their fantastic prices for grain, without which the colony could not survive. Hunter was hopelessly caught up in the bonds forged during the three years when there had been no responsible Government. He had not the cunning to match wits sharpened by greed, nor did he have control of the troops. The troops obeyed only their officers, and it was to the advantage of the officers to forestall, frustrate and even ignore every order the Governor issued. It had never at any time been an equal match, and Hunter knew that he was fast reaching a stage where he would be forced to admit his defeat. Beyond that point there was nothing but his recall to England, and the hope of a pension.
Andrew Maclay had had his generous share in the pickings of these fruitful years. He had made his profits, with the rest of the buying-ring. Kintyre’s acres had increased, and it was still the most prosperous farm on the Hawkesbury. He had fulfilled his dream of the store in Sydney: it had not been done easily, but it stood now, like a banner for his triumph, and a warehouse was building up beside it. He was the registered owner of a sloop, the Thistle, which traded regularly in the East. And he was still talked of as the luckiest man with a pack of cards in his hands that the colony yet knew of.
But these alone had not built and furnished the house overlooking Woolloomooloo Bay. To do this he had had to go beyond the colony ‒ to the East, and back to London itself.
The eyes of the colony had fastened with keen, and, for the most part, rather malicious, interest on Andrew when he announced in 1795 that he intended to trade in Sydney. He was given his grant of land at a noisy, busy intersection of streets close to the public wharf ‒ hardly the place, the curious whispered, that a gentleman would want to settle his wife and family. But, after all, when that wife was a former convict … The colony still shrugged its shoulders in amusement and scorn at the very idea of Sara.
After seven months the Maclay store, with living-rooms above it, was finished, and Sara arrived from Kintyre, household belongings and bundles piled high on a wagon. The upstairs windows looked out on to the shipping in the harbour, and to Government House on the rise above it; close at hand were the uncobbled streets, either dust choked or pools of mud, according to the weather, and never free, day or night, from the clamour of Sydney’s rowdy, often quarrelsome inhabitants. On the day of her arrival, Sara, strained by the upheaval of the move, gave one backward, regretful thought to the peace she had left behind at Kintyre, then turned briskly to making a home out of the bare rooms.
Her appearance at the opening of the store was brief, and after that she was seldom seen. Two months later her second son, Duncan, was born. It seemed to the colony that the confinement was barely over when Mrs. Maclay gave a sharp impetus to scandalized gossip by leaving David and the new baby in Annie Stokes’s hands, and appearing daily in the store to attend to customers. And it was noted, almost immediately, that the store was always crowded with men ‒ many of whom went by the name of gentlemen ‒ at the times when she was known to be there. Seated behind a small desk she took orders, discussed the possibility of securing certain goods in short supply, smiling and talking pleasantly and keeping a wary eye on the young clerks, fresh out from England, who rushed about and perspired freely in their efforts to please her. The women of the colony said that Andrew Maclay must be short of money when he needed to have his wife to attend to the business. Their menfolk said nothing, and continued to take their custom to the Maclays’ store.
The sloop, the Thistle, was Andrew’s biggest business venture yet. He bought her after she had limped into the harbour at the end of a nightmare voyage from the Cape, her timbers rotten and taking in water at every seam. Her owner-master was not a coward, but he could not face another voyage in a vessel that was literally going to pieces under his feet. He sold cheaply to Andrew, glad to be rid of his burden. Andrew, trusting to fortune for a good harvest at Kintyre, borrowed money to refit. From amongst the motley host of men that Sydney, as a seaport, was beginning to collect, he found two who claimed once to have been shipwrights. He put them in charge of his hired labourers, and the rebuilding of the Thistle began. Material was short, labour was short ‒ and Andrew himself spent many days squeezed into the narrow space of the carpenter’s walk, working on the hull.
The harvest was a good one; there was more money, and the Thistle was ready for sea at last. With a sense of aching relief, Andrew paid back his loan, and got together an oddly-assorted crew from the seamen who had drifted into the port and had been left behind. He engaged a short, wiry Yankee skipper, who was idling about without a ship, to take command. Everything was ready for her to sail for Calcutta, when the first mate fell ill. After an hour’s earnest talk with Sara, Andrew took his place. The Thistle left with the tide, and Sydney sat back to enjoy the spectacle of watching a woman trying to run both town store and Hawkesbury farm. It was an engaging item of gossip and speculation, and the store was always crowded with men anxious to see what she would make of it.
Sara made a better job of it than even Andrew believed possible. With Jeremy Hogan beside her, she became a familiar sight on the road between Sydney and the Hawkesbury. Work went on in the usual way at Kintyre, as if Andrew himself were there, and she even took his place in the buying-ring when a ship entered harbour with a cargo for sale. At first she was an object for curiosity and slight amusement; later Sydney learned that she had a business head as hard as her husband’s, and that she was never to be outwitted in striking a bargain.
‘No gentlewoman could have done it,’ was the general opinion in the colony.
But Sara appeared to care very little for general opinion. As long as trade came to her door, as long as the herds of livestock increased each year at Kintyre, and the acres under cultivation grew, she seemed content to bear the loneliness, and the dust which drifted into her upstairs rooms during the scorching summer months.
Both she and Jeremy knew that scandal was waiting to link their names at the first opportunity. The friendship they shared since the night of the convict outbreak on the Hawkesbury was now so strong that they dared not display it. Jeremy never stayed with her longer than was necessary, and kept rigidly to his role of Andrew Maclay’s overseer. He spent all of his time at the farm, except when he received her request to accompany her to a sale, or to come to town to bring her back to Kintyre for a brief visit. The hopes of the gossip-mongers were dampened, but never quite died.
Winds were favourable, and Andrew was back in the leaking Thistle months before anyone expected him. He unloaded a cargo that ranged from frying-pans and silks to sandalwood and cashmere shawls. His cargo carried the look and feel of the East with it, and people starved for colour and excitement flocked to inspect ‒ and those who could afford it, to buy. The store had never been so crowded before, or the shelves so crammed with goods. Jeremy rode down from Kintyre to help them, and when he returned, Andrew, Sara, and the two children were with him.
Andrew basked in the peace of Kintyre for a two weeks’ spell, counted his herds, went through the accounts with Jeremy, and with thoughtful, careful eyes appraised the startlingly differen
t quality of the wool of the tiny flock ‒ three ewes and a ram ‒ of merino sheep, which Sara had persuaded John Macarthur to sell her. It was well known that Macarthur was experimenting with wool ‒ he was the best farmer in the colony, and he had an unshakable belief in the future of his merinos. Andrew considered him worth following.
The short period of rest at Kintyre seemed to renew Andrew’s energies. He had now seen what an entire cargo of his own could realize in clear profit, and he couldn’t for long resist the temptation to repeat his venture. As soon as he returned to Sydney he started once more on the job of patching up the Thistle. Two months later he sailed in her again, bound for the East. From an upstairs window Sara watched her sails breaking slowly; she watched her out of sight down the harbour.
The colony never learned the full details of Andrew Maclay’s second voyage. The captain of an American vessel brought Sara letters from Calcutta. She told no one what news they contained, except that her husband intended going on to London. But the captain himself had a tale to tell, a story he claimed had gone the rounds of Calcutta ‒ a story of the sort of chance which a man sometimes idly dreams. After a storm off the coast of Bengal, he said, the Thistle had come upon a Bristol merchantman, piled with a valuable cargo, and drifting helplessly towards the rocks. It was a feat of splendid seamanship to make contact, and bring the vessel into port, and it was the opinion in Calcutta that Andrew Maclay had truly earned every penny of the salvage money.
That was the story as it was given to the colonists ‒ no one knew if it was the true story. Then, nineteen months after she had sailed from Port Jackson, a sloop bearing the name of Thistle, but in no other way resembling her battered predecessor, dropped anchor in Sydney Cove, within sight of Sara’s windows. In less than an hour the news had spread through the whole town that Andrew Maclay was back.
Many curious and speculative eyes watched him come ashore, watched him stride along the dusty street towards the store. But there was no one to witness his meeting with Sara, or to hear what they said to each other in that first hour. Not even Annie Stokes, ear against keyhole, heard that.
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