Fled: A Novel

by Meg Keneally

  As the weeks passed, Jenny became certain that they would not get away this year. It was growing too late in the season. But while each day they stayed increased the risk of them dying in a storm at sea, it also increased the risk of discovery.

  Bruton and Harrigan felt the same way. They had taken to visiting the Gwyn hut again, as the scrutiny on them had slackened off with the boat’s incapacity and the distraction of Harforth’s offence. They liked the sweet tea that Jenny brewed for them, also liking her uncomplicated nature, her willingness to squeeze an ear or swat a head when she felt it was called for.

  ‘We’ll wait, is all,’ Bruton said to her. ‘We know how to do that, at least.’

  ‘The pork doesn’t, or the rice,’ said Jenny. ‘We’ve enough rations for the journey if we leave today, tomorrow. By the next sailing season, we’ll barely have enough for a picnic.’

  ‘Not the best, I grant you,’ said Bruton. ‘But unless you intend to swim to Coepang with the victuals on your back, I see little point in complaining of it.’

  ‘I’ll complain if I feel like it.’

  ‘The biggest risk,’ said Harrigan, ‘is Bruton getting into a fight. The last thing we need is for him to be in the guard house once we’re ready to sail.’

  ‘Getting into no fights,’ Bruton insisted. ‘I told you I wouldn’t, and I haven’t.’

  ‘I saw you, today, you know,’ said Harrigan. ‘When Darley tripped over your spade, and cursed at you. I saw your shoulder start to go back, don’t tell me I didn’t. So as for waiting until next season, I don’t think you will get there.’

  ‘There will be no risk,’ said Bruton. ‘I’ll practise on you to make sure I’m not tempted.’

  ‘I’d thrash the both of you,’ said Jenny, ‘if it would get us out to sea any faster.’

  No thrashing, however, proved necessary. Dan walked into the hut slowly, shoulders back, a stance that always accompanied good news. ‘The boat, it’s finished,’ he said.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Jenny asked.

  ‘Did I not do it myself? Me and Carney.’ There was a sharpness there, striking hard against the banter of a few minutes ago. ‘And more news beside. The Supply’s off again in the morning. I rowed out to see Vorst – he’s leaving too, in three days. Something else is happening in three days too.’

  ‘The new moon,’ said Jenny.

  ‘The new moon,’ Bruton repeated. ‘Dark then.’

  ‘And empty,’ said Jenny. ‘Nothing will be able to catch us, even if we’re seen by the lookout at the head. It will be days, perhaps a week before they have any way of pursuing us.’

  ‘By which time we might even be in Coepang,’ said Harrigan.

  ‘Not Coepang, not in a few weeks,’ said Dan. ‘But I can tell you one thing – we won’t be here.’

  CHAPTER 21

  One of Jenny’s biggest fears was that Emanuel would cry. Babies’ cries were a common sound here, but not one that usually emanated from the dark water.

  Bea could always calm him, holding him close and humming a half-remembered song. The sound rose from deep in her chest so that it was as much vibration as music.

  Jenny had been in two minds about whether to ask Bea to come on the journey. She had desperately wanted to, knowing that she would very quickly miss female company – Bea’s in particular – and knowing that the children would miss her too. But Bea was not a creature of the ocean and might consider the voyage a greater punishment than any that could be delivered on land.

  Jenny put it to Dan.

  ‘We can’t take anyone else who cannot do anything towards our survival,’ he said. ‘We are bringing two children already, and that will have to be it.’

  So Jenny took what she viewed as the only possible course of action. She brought Bea to the clearing next to the hut, told her about the plan, and invited her to come anyway.

  Bea smiled, a little sadly. ‘That’s what’s been filling up the hole in your floor, then. Provisions for the journey.’ Jenny scowled, and Bea laughed. ‘I’ve been over that patch of your floor many times, more than enough to hear by the sound of my footsteps how full it is.’ She took Jenny’s hand. ‘Thank you, my bird, thank you. But I shall stop here, I think.’

  ‘Why, though? Bea, please. We don’t know when the food will run out. We don’t know when the ships will be back, or if they will. And who will fish when Dan and John are gone? You might not survive here.’

  ‘I know even less whether I can survive there, wherever there is,’ said Bea, nodding out to the bay. ‘Don’t frown, duck. I am absolutely certain you will survive, but just as certain that I wouldn’t. Not on the sea, and not with the fear of it. And there’s Jack, now.’

  Jack Carrow was one of the convicts on the brick kilns. Not exactly a poetic soul. This life drove the poetry even out of those who possessed it to begin with, and Jack had not been among their number. But he was not a bad man, far from it. Loyal, or seemed to be. Did not use his fists without greater provocation than most. Well regarded, too, by the governor and the judge advocate. When Dan, Jenny and the rest of them went, his calm nature might see him put in a position of leadership. He might even find himself in Jenny and Dan’s hut.

  Jenny would like it if Bea was with him. She understood the temper of the place, could read it between the shifting shadows in the shafts of sunlight that the trees allowed into the little clearing.

  ‘But what about Elenor?’ Jenny asked. ‘Who will protect you from her?’

  ‘She is not, you know, as well thought of as she used to be. Those rumours spread by her and Joe – some were right, a lot were wrong. Joe has told some very outlandish stories of late, involving curses by the natives to stop the hens from laying. Fewer people listen to them now, and those who had arrived on the second fleet never listened to them in the first place. I will have no trouble with Elenor, Jenny. You’re not to worry on that count.’

  ‘I’ll worry less if you take this,’ Jenny said, handing Bea a small cloth parcel. Inside was a paring knife, much like the one she had used on the King’s Highway, with similar rust spots but a much sharper tip.

  ‘What on earth do you expect me to do with this?’ said Bea.

  ‘Hopefully peel potatoes, but if Elenor gets aggressive you can wave it around a bit.’

  ‘Won’t you have more need of it?’

  Jenny lifted the hem of her skirt, showing Bea a section that was stiff and heavy, weighted down by something sewn into it. ‘I’ve kept the sharper one, sorry.’

  Bea laughed, but Jenny noticed a few tears were quietly sliding down her cheek. She felt an answering moisture on her own face.

  ‘I will come to the shore tonight, if I can,’ Bea said. ‘But don’t look for me. If I think I may be seen, I’ll stay in the hut.’

  Jenny kept watching the trees long after Bea had stepped through them. She had hoped, for the last time, to see a mass of grey fur looking back at her. Instead, as night began to fall, she saw Mawberry stepping towards her, flat bellied now, a contented child dozing in the crook of one arm. The woman looked at the harbour and then back at Jenny, and raised her eyebrows. Jenny nodded.

  Mawberry shrugged, holding out her hand to Jenny. It held a small green package: a broad leaf wrapped tightly around a clump of the leaves that had kept many from the grave when the scurvy was at its worst. Jenny took it, smiling.

  Leaning forward, Mawberry touched her forehead to Jenny’s. Then she turned and, with the bearing of a princess, carried her baby away into the trees.

  The others, Jenny knew, were also saying quiet goodbyes. None of the other men were married, but they had liaisons in various states of permanence. These needed to be shattered, and Jenny still worried that one of the women would decide to inform.

  But nobody did. It was perhaps their salvation that Joe and Elenor no longer held the sway that they used to, that those who had been in the habit of bringing them snippets of information – as payment for entry to their circle – no longer bothered. Elenor and Joe would h
ave informed on the conspirators without a second thought.

  At midnight, Jenny sat cross-legged on the floor of her hut. She avoided resting her leg on the section of her hem that contained the knife and, now, that small bunch of leaves, for which she’d found some oil cloth.

  One breast was bare as she fed Emanuel, heedless of the men walking in and out, emptying the cache under the floor. She wanted her son drowsy, replete, happily snuggled into his mother with no need to make any noise. Having avoided detection up till this point, to be betrayed by a baby’s wail would be too cruel.

  Emanuel finished, his head lolling back, with the glaze in his eyes that always appeared when he couldn’t ingest any more milk. Jenny shrugged her dress back onto her shoulder, wrapped Emanuel in a cloth, and woke Charlotte. ‘We are going to play a game with Pa,’ she said. ‘We are going out on the boat to look for sea dragons. We might have to go very far to find them – very, very far. But they won’t come out if we make any noise at all, so we are going to have to step so, so carefully and make sure we don’t say a word until the sun rises.’

  Charlotte nodded solemnly. Such a sacred task was to be taken seriously.

  They walked out of the hut, passing the now empty hole.

  ‘Ma, shut the door!’ said Charlotte in a whisper that seemed as loud as any yell.

  ‘No need, my love. No need for any doors, now. But just remember, sea dragons have very good hearing. If they know we are after them, they will hide, so you must say nothing more.’

  The new moon that Jenny hoped would conceal their escape made it difficult to navigate down to the shore, difficult to pick out slightly darker shapes against the night sky. She could hear just as well in the dark, though, and recognised the slap of a small wave against a wooden hull. She also knew the sound of a foot on undergrowth. It was a noise she had trained herself to hear while living in the forest.

  She glanced to the side, tensing, readying herself to react to what she saw, whether it was a kangaroo or a marine with a musket.

  A slightly darker patch of night was moving to the edge of the trees, resolving into a shape. Instead of sprinting away, Jenny moved towards it. Charlotte trailed after her, opening her mouth to call out a greeting before remembering the sea dragons.

  ‘You took a risk, coming here,’ Jenny muttered.

  ‘One worth taking,’ whispered Bea. ‘Are you nearly away?’

  ‘Yes, just us to load now.’

  ‘Good. You need to hurry. Elenor thinks she knows something. She’s not sure what, but Bruton tends to make a bit of noise whenever he sneaks away from the men’s huts late at night, and Joe has seen him heading towards your hut a few times.’

  Jenny glanced behind Bea. ‘Has she told anyone? Is she coming?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Not yet, anyway. She was making noises about paying you a visit tonight. I stole Suse’s rum, making sure Elenor saw me. So of course she took it from me and drank it down before Suse could wake up. Elenor’s sleeping now but snoring loudly enough to wake the governor. You might have more time, but you might not.’

  ‘You know, Bea, you are far better than her. Be careful, though.’

  ‘I will, and I hope my caution has earned me a last embrace from this one,’ Bea said, kneeling and smiling at Charlotte, holding a finger to her lips. Bea took care not to hug the girl tightly enough to draw out any noise. She stood, wordlessly embraced Jenny, then pushed her towards the boat before she walked away.

  The cutter had been brought in close enough to be boarded. Dan and Yarramundi had swum out to retrieve it, hauling it back in as they had guided it to the inlet last month.

  Yarramundi stood there now, his hand on the point of the bow, holding the boat steady as the men climbed in. He smiled when he saw Charlotte, who smiled back and waved, but then held her finger to her lips and stared at him sternly. Yarramundi, looking suitably chastened, reached out his arms for the little girl and deposited her gently in the boat.

  When he reached out for Emanuel, Jenny handed the boy over. ‘You are risking a lot for us,’ she said.

  ‘Help was needed with a boat, and help is what I gave,’ he said. ‘I do not recognise any law which prohibits that.’

  Jenny climbed in next to Charlotte. As she took Emanuel from Yarramundi, he leaned forward and Jenny did likewise, so that their foreheads touched. She suddenly seemed to feel a sadness heavier than that which saying goodbye to Bea had called forth. This is the last time, she thought, that I will meet someone like this.

  In the stern, with his hand on the tiller, sat Dan. Each of the men took an oar. Vincent, the keeper of the chart, was stymied for now by the lack of light.

  They floated there, for a moment. Yarramundi nodded to Dan and let go of the bow after aligning it with the outgoing tide. Dan said, ‘Row.’ The oars lifted and fell, forced through the water, and the noise seemed to echo off the cliffs and around the settlement.

  But no one came running down to the shore. None of the nightwatchmen raced with torches to the headlands or went to wake the governor. And if any of the convicts heard them, they were not disposed to disturb the rest of the authorities.

  The cutter was, very quickly, far enough from the shore that anyone chasing them would have trouble gaining on them. Especially in one of the few small fishing boats that were now the only vessels in this whole land aside from the native canoes.

  The lookouts on the headland, though – they had muskets. They were supposed to be pacing around as they scanned the water for the merest disturbance.

  There was enough light, just, for Jenny to make out the glowering shape of South Head. Even had there not been, she would have known they were leaving the harbour. The seas became rougher; the nose of the boat rose and then fell, sending spray onto those in the front. But she would never know if that night lookout was asleep, or daydreaming, or unable to see far enough in the darkness. She would never know if the sound of their passage, which seemed to cry out like a horn, was loud enough to echo up the cliff into his ears.

  No musket was fired, no signal fire was lit, and no shouted warnings floated across the bay.

  Although there was enough wind now to allow them to proceed under sail, the pale patch of cloth, glimmering out of the darkness, might alert the lookout. They were out of musket range, and certainly beyond immediate pursuit, but what if the Supply returned in the next few days, or another ship? They didn’t want to reveal their direction to anyone.

  ‘Can I talk now, Ma?’ Charlotte asked.

  ‘Yes, duckling. Very quietly, though.’

  ‘Have you seen any sea dragons?’

  ‘They’re all tucked up beneath the waves, by the look of it. Maybe they’ll come out in the morning. You should sleep now, and I promise I’ll wake you if they lift their scaly old heads above the water.’

  Charlotte leaned into her mother, claiming the opposing arm to the one that held her brother, and with the ease of which only small children seemed capable, she shut her eyes and fell asleep. Jenny gently lay Emanuel on her lap and tethered his leg to her wrist with a thin length of rope.

  The oars continued to splash, and the usually full-throated, roaring men made no sound. Charlotte dreamed on through the pitching of the boat and the occasional spray of salt water, and her mother eventually joined her, her chin knocking up and down on her chest as the sky slowly lightened, and the settlement behind them woke to find itself depleted.

  CHAPTER 22

  Jenny had never paid more attention to the wind. The roaring gales, the impossibly thick rain, had not come yet. But they could. Most in the governor’s cutter knew how quickly the weather could change. They tried to divine a meaning from the smallest breezes, from a ripple or a rising peak, from a distant whitecap.

  So far, though, their luck had held.

  But Thomas Harrigan, the farmer, clearly wasn’t feeling particularly fortunate. A son of the earth rather than the ocean, he did not approve of the sea’s mercurial nature. At first light they had allowed themse
lves a small amount of pork, and Harrigan’s had been regurgitated into the ocean almost immediately, as had every meal since.

  ‘Put a line in, Dan,’ Bruton said after one of Harrigan’s noisy evacuations. ‘You might get some interest.’

  Dan laughed, but not unkindly, and Jenny glared at Bruton. ‘I’ll enjoy seeing you planting and hoeing when the time comes,’ she said.

  He held up his hand in surrender, still smirking at the unfortunate Harrigan, who was surely feeling too miserable to care. He would care, though, if everything he ate reappeared over the gunwales. He would care if some of the others decided it wasn’t worth feeding him as much, as it would only be wasted. He would care if Bruton’s taunting emboldened the others, made them decide that Harrigan would be the scapegoat for everything that annoyed, frustrated or terrified them on this journey.

  Jenny was certain there were annoyances, frustrations and terrors ahead, in great number. She would not allow Bruton to sneer at anyone else, to try so quickly to divide their little floating commonwealth. Divisions, she knew, could be fatal.

  Really, she didn’t feel like playing nursemaid to two grown men, breaking up squabbles in which those involved displayed less maturity than the boat’s youngest passengers.

  Because one of the boat’s youngest passengers was getting very, very cranky. Emanuel wriggled and squirmed sometimes but was otherwise content to lie in his mother’s lap, or be hoisted onto her shoulders so he could look back towards his father at the tiller. Dan would make faces at him for the joy of hearing the little boy’s abandoned chortle.

  Charlotte, however, was far less happy with the situation. The sea dragons had failed to come, for which she blamed her father, mother, and the men at the oars. ‘They’re noisy,’ she said. ‘They’re scaring the dragons away.’

  ‘You can’t scare dragons, duckling. Perhaps they went in the other direction.’