Fled: A Novel

by Meg Keneally

  No one had expected the sails to be French. That was what Corbett told everyone when he came down, finding himself in the middle of a storm of questions. The French ships, he explained, were there on a mission of exploration.

  A rumour quickly spread. A French convict, so it went, had appealed to the patriotism of some countrymen and been concealed on board one of their vessels. Rumours, of course, were as contagious as any disease down in the darkness, fed by boredom until they grew grotesque.

  But the possibility bothered Jenny. Had a man grasped the freedom that she’d intended to be among the first to take? She worried that she would grow complacent; that she would wait for the right opportunity until every opportunity had passed. That her daughter would grow alongside her bonded mother, believing such servitude was normal and right.

  The group of able-bodied men was brought back, already darker from their time in the sun, blinking in the low light of the hold. Dan briefly knelt at the bars of the female cell, reaching in to offer Charlotte his finger to grasp, smiling at her.

  After the soldiers had gone back up, the returned men soon let everyone know what they’d overheard. The officers had been expecting a robust stream near this landing place, but it had turned out to be a trickle without a hope of supplying water for all of those on board. The ground was sandy and looked wholly unsuited for growing anything. So discouraged was Governor Lockhart that he had set out that morning to investigate another bay, further north.

  The Charlotte shuddered again as the anchor rose and feet stamped on the deck. Then the rocking resumed, quieting little Charlotte who had been irritable during their calm stay.

  ‘We will be out, soon,’ Bea whispered. ‘We’ll be on land.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Jenny. ‘Maybe . . . We will have to see, won’t we, duck?’

  It was the purest form of frustration when the rocking quieted, the ship stilled, the anchor fell and the marines came – but only for the men. All of them were released this time, and herded towards the ladder that would take them into the air and onto the unaccustomed ground. All of them, without exception, leered at the women as they passed. They made promises about the kind of welcome that would be waiting ashore.

  The women weren’t the only ones to hear the men’s promises. A few hours later, Mr Corbett came back down. He pulled the stool to the bars near where Jenny was sitting, rocking Charlotte to give the little girl comfort that her world hadn’t changed irrevocably, that there was still swaying to be had.

  ‘It will be a few days more,’ Corbett said. ‘A few days, and then you’ll be landed.’

  ‘After the other livestock,’ said Jenny. They had heard the thumps on the side, the squeals as farm animals were lowered one by one in harnesses to waiting boats, to be rowed ashore to a place that had never seen anything like them.

  ‘You should know,’ he said, ‘I don’t think much can be done to keep the men from you all. I don’t think there’s any intention to prevent such a thing. The ones on the Charlotte are bad enough. Some men on the other ships have not laid eyes on a woman for over a year.’

  There was always, for Jenny, a creeping fear that lay just under the surface of her mind. It surged forward now, accompanied as it often was by frustration.

  ‘Why are you bothering to tell me, if nothing can be done to prevent it?’

  ‘Because there are some, I think, coming out of the ships now, who would toss aside a baby to get to its mother.’

  Jenny drew her arms around Charlotte, squeezing a gurgle out of her. She had known, she supposed, that the men would take every woman they could. She hadn’t thought, though, that the life of a baby who had never touched ground might be viewed by some as a small price to pay – or that the responsibility of the government to protect the convicts stopped short of preventing ravishment.

  ‘You may be interested to know,’ said Mr Corbett, ‘that Reverend Gibson does not approve of licentiousness. I doubt he’s ever seen anything vaguely resembling what’s likely to occur when you’re all brought ashore. But he knows, as well as anyone, what men of a criminal bent who have been denied female company for so long are likely to do.’

  ‘He’ll pray for us, then. That’ll be nice. Prayers always work.’

  ‘No doubt he will, Jenny – and something else, as well. He has seen the governor, talked to him, and he’ll be taking names of convicts willing to marry. As I’ve told you there is one, only one, fisherman out of those on board.’

  ‘Dan Gwyn.’

  Corbett nodded. ‘It would certainly make sense if he were to marry someone with skill in that area herself. Someone who can mend nets, or make ones which don’t need mending.’

  Dan Gwyn, not the least handsome man Jenny had ever met, and had shown kindness to Charlotte in a world unkind to children.

  ‘Does Gwyn know of the reverend’s intentions?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes. I’ve made certain of it. I did mention that marriage would show a steady temperament, and that if such a convict brought in fish, the governor might be persuaded to allow him to keep a portion of the catch.’

  Bea, who had been sleeping, stirred now and drifted over to the bars. ‘Mr Corbett, are there savages?’ she asked. Perhaps she had been entertained by lurid dreams of tribesmen.

  ‘After a fashion, Beatrice,’ he said, smiling. ‘There are Indians, certainly. They don’t, however, seem to be savage. They are well armed, as far as spears go, but they are cautious and have made no attempt to drive us off. Expect them to show interest in your baby, Jenny, as they seem very delighted with children. I took the son of the Lady Penrhyn’s quartermaster – Anthony, lad of about seven – for a walk the other day. He’d been getting under his father’s feet, you see. And we came upon a group of them. They were fascinated with the boy, and one of the old men put his hand on Anthony’s hair, but they seemed very gentle.’

  ‘So they’re not going to eat anyone?’ Bea asked.

  ‘They have certainly shown no inclination to do so yet.’

  She nodded, looking relieved. ‘What do they wear? Do they have big, beautiful, colourful feathers? Jewelled silks?’

  ‘No feathers, and no silks. They are – to a man, woman and child – naked.’

  The mention of savages had drawn the attention of other women, and their speculation reverberated around the hold long after Corbett had left.

  No one, though, had heard what he had told Jenny about marriage.

  She didn’t want Dan surrounded by women the second they landed. He was still a bit of a favourite, and over the months of the voyage Susannah had made several suggestions to him through the bars, proposals that Jenny wasn’t sure were physically possible.

  She whispered to Bea that night, as they lay on a board. ‘Duck, first thing we get ashore, you should find yourself a husband.’

  ‘But I don’t know any of them, not really.’

  ‘Take the hand of the first man you like the look of, tell the fellow he will have better rations if he marries you, and march him up to the reverend. Don’t wait a day. Because names don’t matter when it comes to marriage. When they find themselves with no bars between them and us for the first time, they won’t bother to ask our names.’

  CHAPTER 11

  Jenny’s father would have liked the small cutter in which the women were being rowed ashore. She sat, with Charlotte in her arms, towards the rear of it, in the place where her father used to sit in his boat. This one was bigger, though. There were several women in it, and several dozen trips ahead of it before the ships were emptied.

  She had known, of course, that there would be no streets, no taverns, no carts or roads or buildings here. She had known their shelter would have to be built, fashioned out of whatever supplies had survived the many storms of the crossing, and whatever they could find on the land. It was still odd, somehow, to be rowing towards a shore where there was no stone seawall, no pier or dock, no hands outstretched to receive a barrel of pilchards. Instead, there were honeyed platforms of rock, ind
ecently yellow sand, and pale blotched trees with bark like drowned skin gathering near the shore.

  Until now, she had played a game with herself. Tried to pretend they had not really left, that they had been sailing all these months just out of sight of Plymouth, and that when they had been taught their lesson they would disembark to the familiar smells and shouting and stone buildings and boarded windows. This was a fantasy, but in the unguarded moments before sleep she had almost believed it. She found it impossible, even in hallucinatory half-consciousness, to believe it now – not with the trees shouting evidence to the contrary.

  Some of the women needed to be helped out of the boat. Jenny moved before help was offered. She held Charlotte forward, facing outwards, so that the little girl could have a good view of her new home. Then Jenny started to cry, because Constance didn’t know she was a grandmother, Dolly didn’t know she was an aunt.

  There were tents up, and smoke from a few cooking fires round about – the flames certainly weren’t needed for heat. Everywhere, there were men: felling trees and hauling cargo, managing the too-thin livestock, digging holes for unknown purposes.

  When the women had landed and were walking past, they leant on their shovels or put down their axes. They contorted their faces and openly discussed the relative attractions of the women before them. One of them, leering along with the rest, was Dan. Jenny stepped away from the small column of women being herded towards the main section of the camp; tents would, for now, serve as a women’s barracks.

  ‘Mr Corbett spoken to you?’ Jenny asked Dan.

  He turned towards her. She was still holding her daughter facing forwards, her arms crossed over the baby’s middle. Charlotte’s fists were pumping up and down, her nose detecting smoke for the first time: an odd smoke, such as her mother had never smelt in England.

  Dan looked at Charlotte, smiled and stroked her forearm. ‘You can throw a punch better than most of them here,’ he said to her, smiling. ‘I think your mam could too.’ He looked up, looked at Jenny, making no attempt to disguise his eyes as they ran over her face and down to her body. ‘Corbett has spoken to me,’ he said.

  ‘What did you think of what he had to say?’

  Dan now gazed towards the woods at the back of the bay, towards the narrow, ghostly trees. ‘I remained unsaddled in England. Why would I come all this way and then accept a bridle?’

  ‘Because it will get better rations, maybe a hut,’ Jenny said.

  ‘Perhaps I don’t want a hut.’

  ‘It will get you someone who knows fishing, knows the sea,’ said Jenny.

  ‘I know the sea well enough myself.’

  ‘It will get you a woman.’

  ‘Which I can get without the need for marriage,’ Dan said. ‘Without taking on a child.’ He glanced down again, smiling apologetically at Charlotte.

  ‘You’ll likely be able to fish,’ Jenny said, ‘and get to keep some of them.’

  ‘So Corbett says. Haven’t heard anyone else say it, certainly not the governor.’

  ‘And . . . and Charlotte needs protection,’ Jenny said, thrusting the little girl towards him. ‘Mr Corbett thinks she might be tossed aside, in what’s to come.’

  This was the closest, Jenny told herself, that she would come to begging this man – who would not have met with her parents’ approval – to marry her, to shield her with the threat of violence contained in his broad shoulders.

  ‘I’ll think on it, Jenny. I’ll think on it.’

  ‘Don’t think too long. There may be nothing left of me by tomorrow.’

  The women were assembled and told to be silent for the governor.

  Edward Lockhart. Ruler of the odd collection of people he had been given, he was more powerful than the King here. Seeking orders from England would take, once the ship left and then returned, more than a year.

  Lockhart was a tall man who seemed oddly immune to the sweat that coated every other face, even though he wore a uniform every bit as thick as theirs. She had the sense that any perspiration that tried to colonise his brow would be dealt with severely. His breeches were still white, and bore no salt stains or marks of the earth that was being torn up.

  The man next to him stood equally erect, but not quite as tall: a short-legged and bull-shouldered officer who was scowling at the convicts in open hostility. His breeches had one or two brown smears, and his face had a sheen of moisture that looked as though it would soak his sleeve were he to wipe it away.

  The governor stood in front of the women, hands behind his back, looking at them one by one. There was no menace in it, unlike in the gaze of his companion. He looked at each convict in turn, not rushing and not bothering to conceal the fact he was assessing them.

  ‘You will find,’ he said, ‘that those who are regular and behave well will have in me a friend. I will cherish them, I will raise them up. Those, however, who transgress, who continue in the behaviour which saw them transported here, will feel the full weight of my displeasure. It is my fervent hope that I shall never have to order a hanging – however, I will not hesitate to do so should a capital offence be committed. As we have not yet farmed the soil, and we have not yet assessed the ability of this land to provide us with sustenance, I remind you that theft of food is one of the offences that will be met with immediate execution.’

  The air seemed unusually still after Lockhart finished speaking; even the convicts working nearby had stopped. Jenny thought they had probably received a very similar welcome when they were first brought up the boats – but it would not do, she supposed, to interrupt the governor’s pronouncements with a badly timed whack of an axe on a tree.

  One of those who paused in his labours was Dan, barely visible at the edge of the forest that only stopped when the soil gave way to sand. So as the women dispersed, heading towards their canvas roof, Jenny stayed where she was.

  ‘Sir,’ she said to the governor. He turned around but did not approach, so she clutched Charlotte a little more tightly and scurried up to him as fast as she could, dropping in what she hoped was his idea of a curtsy.

  ‘You will address the governor as “Your Excellency”,’ said the shorter man next to him. ‘Insubordination is one of the crimes we intend to deal with harshly here.’

  ‘Major Rowe . . .’ said the governor, in what sounded like a warning.

  ‘I’m sorry. Your Excellency,’ she said. Bobbing again, but carefully so as not to overbalance and send Charlotte plummeting to the ground. ‘I had heard, Your Excellency, that convicts who marry might be given positions of trust.’

  ‘Oh, you’ve heard? Where might you have heard this?’

  ‘I’m not sure, now, Your Excellency. But rumours, they spread quickly among us.’

  ‘They have grown wings, clearly, if they were able to reach you in the hold of the . . .’ Major Rowe said.

  ‘The Charlotte, Your Excellency,’ she said to him.

  ‘You do not address me as “Your Excellency”, only the governor,’ the man snapped. ‘You may call me “sir”.’

  ‘I was on the Charlotte, sir.’

  ‘Your child . . .?’ asked the governor. ‘Was her father also aboard the Charlotte?’

  ‘No, sir. Your Excellency. Her father is in England.’

  ‘And are you free to marry?’

  ‘Yes, Your Excellency. I have never been wed.’

  Rowe grunted. ‘It’s as I told you, sir. They’re whores. All of them.’

  The governor glanced sharply at the shorter man, before looking back to Jenny. ‘We are, as you have heard, encouraging of marriages between the convicts here. I take it, from your inquiry, that you have a prospect in mind?’

  ‘Yes, sir. A very useful man he is, too – a fisherman. He will be able to haul in net upon net of whatever fish swim in these oceans.’

  ‘What would you know of the fish that swim in these oceans, if there are any?’ Rowe said.

  ‘I was brought up in that line of work myself, sir. I know how to salt fish so
that they will keep through winter. I know how to make nets and sails. I can handle a boat.’

  ‘You won’t be required to do so,’ said the governor. ‘As for making nets and sails . . . there are possibilities there, I suppose. This remarkable fisherman of yours, where might I find him?’

  ‘He’s over there, sir,’ she said, pointing towards Dan who had resumed digging a seemingly pointless hole. ‘This is Dan Gwyn, the man who has agreed to marry me,’ she added loudly, as they approached.

  Dan’s head whipped towards her, his eyes widening, before his face drew itself into a scowl.

  ‘He’s a steady man, as I told you, Your Excellency. Not the type to fail in keeping his promises, of course. You can rely on him.’

  Dan’s face quickly rearranged itself, smoothing over, although he did risk a sharp glance in her direction.

  He understands me well enough, she thought.

  ‘I see,’ said the governor. ‘Off the Charlotte as well, I presume. You have agreed to marry this woman?’

  ‘Of course, sir. I wish to serve the colony.’

  ‘He is . . . to be addressed . . . as “Your Excellency”!’ Rowe barked.

  ‘Your Excellency,’ said Dan. ‘Well, if it will serve the purpose of helping us all survive, you may rely on me.’

  ‘Yes, well, survival is very much on my mind at present,’ said the governor, ‘and I am wondering why you are digging there – what are you digging, exactly?’

  ‘A latrine, sir. Sorry, Your Excellency.’

  ‘I see. One assumes you would rather be on the sea.’

  ‘Very much so, Your Excellency. It’s what I was born to, you see. I can say with all honesty, I am the best fisherman in the land. This land, of course.’

  Lockhart chuckled, and Rowe opened his mouth and closed it again, possibly about to upbraid Dan for insubordination until he saw his superior’s amusement.