Today, however, was special. For once she initiated a demonstration of affection by cradling his head against her.
“Richard?” she asked, gazing down at his cropped dark hair and wishing that he would grow it; it had the potential to curl.
“Mmmmm?”
“I am with child.”
At first he stilled absolutely, then looked up at her with a face transfigured by joy. Leaping to his feet, he whirled her off the ground and kissed her and kissed her. “Oh, Kitty! My love, my angel!” The exaltation faded, he looked afraid. “Ye’re sure?”
“Olivia says I have fallen, though I was already sure.”
“When?
“Late February or early March, we think. Olivia says that you quickened me at once, just like Nat. She says that means we will be fruitful, that there will be as many children as we wish.”
He took her hand and kissed it reverently. “Ye’re well?”
“Very, all considered. I have had no courses since you took me. I am a little sick sometimes, but nothing like being at sea.”
“Are ye pleased, Kitty? It is very soon.”
“Oh, Richard, it is a dream! I am”—she found a new word—“ecstatic. Truly ecstatic! My own baby!”
On Monday morning Richard heard through the grapevine that Major Robert Ross was gravely ill. On Tuesday morning he was summoned by Private Bailey to wait upon the Major at once.
Ross had been put upstairs in the large room he usually used as a study because one floor up insulated him from importunate visitors. When Richard followed Mrs. Richard Morgan—very anxious and subdued—up the stairs and entered the room, he was shocked. The Major’s face was greyer than his eyes, sunken glazed into black sockets; he lay as rigid as a board with his arms by his sides, their hands curiously expectant.
“Sir?”
“Morgan? Good. Stand where I can see ye. Mrs. Morgan, ye can go. Surgeon Callam will be here soon,” Ross said steadily.
Suddenly his body spasmed dreadfully and his lips drew back in a rictus from his teeth; fight though he did to remain silent, he emitted a groan that Richard knew in any other man would have emerged a scream. He suffered through the bout, groaning, hands clenched into the counterpane like claws; this was what they had expected, must be ready for. Richard waited quietly, understanding that Ross wanted neither sympathy nor assistance. Finally his agony retreated to leave his face drenched in sweat.
“Better for a while,” he said then. “’Tis a kidney stone, Callam says. Wentworth agrees. Considen and Jamison disagree.”
“I would believe Callam and Wentworth, sir.”
“Aye, I do. Jamison could not castrate a cat and Considen is a wonder at drawing teeth.”
“Do not waste your energies, sir. What can I do?”
“Be aware that I may die. Callam is giving me something he says relaxes the tube between kidney and bladder in the hope that I may pass the stone. To do so is my only salvation.”
“I will pray for ye, sir,” said Richard, meaning it.
“’Twill help more than Callam’s medicaments, I suspect.”
Another spasm came on, was endured.
“If I die before a ship comes,” he said when it was over, “this place will be in parlous condition. Captain Hill is a fucken fool and Ralph Clark is mentally about the same age as my son. Faddy is a simpleton as well as a child. War will break out between my marines and the soldiers of the New South Wales Corps, with every felon villain from Francis to Peck enlisting with Hill. It will be a bloodbath, which is why I intend to pass this fucken stone no matter what. No matter what.”
“Ye’ll pass it, sir. The stone does not exist can break you,” said Richard with a smile. “Is there anything else I can do?”
“Aye. I have already seen Mr. Donovan and some others, and authorized the issue of muskets. Ye’ll be given one too, Morgan. At least the marine muskets fire, thanks to ye. The New South Wales Corps take no care of their weapons and I have not volunteered your services to Hill. Keep in touch with Donovan—and do not trust Andrew Hume, who has sided with Hill and participates in his felonies. Hume is a fraud, Morgan, he knows no more about flax processing than I do, but he sits there in Phillipsburgh like a spider fancying that between himself and Hill, they control half of this island.”
“Concentrate upon passing your stone, sir. We will not let Hill and his New South Wales Corps take over.”
“Oh, here it comes again! Go, Morgan, and stay wide awake.”
Mind whirling, Richard stood outside on the landing trying to visualize Norfolk Island without Major Ross. It was boiling already, thanks to marine private Henry Wright. Wright had been caught in the act of raping Elizabeth Gregory, a ten-year-old Queensborough girl. To make matters worse, this was Wright’s second offense; he had been sentenced to death in Port Jackson two years earlier for raping a nine-year-old girl, but His Excellency had reprieved him on the condition that he spend the rest of his life at Norfolk Island. Thereby transferring his problem to Major Ross. Wright’s wife and toddling daughter had come with him, but in the aftermath of Elizabeth Gregory the wife had petitioned to take her daughter back to Port Jackson on the next ship. Ross had agreed. He had sentenced Wright to run the gauntlet three times: first at Sydney Town, then at Queensborough, and then at Phillipsburgh. The Sydney Town gauntlet had happened the very day Major Ross fell ill; stripped to breeches, Wright had been made to run between two lines of people from all walks, thirsting for his blood and armed with hoes, hatchets, cudgels, whips.
The child rape had destroyed the reputation of the marines, even among many of the law-abiding convicts, though the whole of the old Norfolk Island community was equally angered by Governor Phillip’s developing tendency to rid himself of his troublemakers at Norfolk Island’s expense.
Ross was absolutely right, Richard thought. If he dies, there will be war.
But, being Major Ross, he did not die. His life hung in the balance for a week during which Richard, Stephen and their cohorts prowled regularly, then the pain began to diminish. Whether he had passed the stone or whether it had retreated back into the kidney Surgeon Callam had no idea, for the pain did not lift in an instant; it dwindled away gradually. Two weeks after the onslaught he was able to go downstairs, and a week after that he was the same brisk, snarling, caustic Major Ross everybody knew and either loved or feared or loathed.
The balance tipped more in favor of the New South Wales Corps when Mary Ann arrived midway through August of 1791, the first ship since Supply in April, and the first transport in a year. She brought 11 more soldiers with 3 wives and 9 children belonging to the New South Wales Corps, and 133 felons—131 men, a woman and a child. By the time she had unloaded her human cargo, the population of Norfolk Island had risen to 875. Mary Ann was supposed to have nine months’ supplies aboard for the contingent she brought, but, as usual, whoever determined how much the newcomers would eat had grossly erred. Five months’ supplies, more like.
The fresh influx consisted of 32 intractables who had long plagued Governor Phillip and 99 sick, half-starved wretches off another ship which had arrived in Port Jackson, Matilda. Matilda and Mary Ann were the first two of ten ships sailed from England around the end of March, which meant that vessels were making the journey faster with fewer and shorter ports of call along the way. Matilda had made the run in four months and five days without stopping at all, Mary Ann almost as swiftly. The brevity of the passage was what saved the convicts they carried, for the same slave contractors had victualled 1791’s transports: Messrs. Camden, Calvert & King. Only the Royal Navy storeship, Gorgon, would be delayed by a long port of call; she was to stay in Cape Town and buy as many animals as possible. As Gorgon carried most of the mail and parcels, the old inhabitants of Norfolk Island settled in with a sigh to wait several more months for news. Oh, the frustration of never knowing what was happening in the rest of the world! Added to which, Mary Ann’s captain, Mark Monroe, was so ignorant of world events that he could contribute nothing
.
He did, however, set up a stall on the straight beach.
“Stephen,” said Richard, “I am going to call in a brother’s promise. Will ye lend me gold? I can pay ye for it in notes of hand with interest.”
“I will gladly lend ye the gold, Richard, but I will wait for repayment until ye can give me gold,” said Stephen craftily. “How much d’ye require?”
“Twenty pounds.”
“A trifle!”
“Ye’re sure?”
“Like you, brother, I have plenty of credit with Government. Two or three hundred pounds by now, I expect—I never can bother asking Freeman to tot it up. My wants are simple and not usually to be assuaged by gold or notes of hand. Whereas you have a wife and family to provide for, not to mention a new and much bigger house of two storeys.” Closing all the shutters, he reached into the skeletal maw of a shark he had caught on Alexander and fiddled until a catch sprang, revealing a small door in the wall. The purse he removed was a fat one.
“Twenty pounds,” he said, dropping them into Richard’s palm. “As ye see, I am not skint because of the loan.”
“What if someone fancies a pair of shark jaws?”
“Luckily I deem them last on a thief’s list.” He shut the door and adjusted his trophy. “Let us go, or some other hoarder of gold will beat us to the best bargains.”
Richard bought several lengths of sprigged muslin, well aware that Kitty had told him a small lie; servant maids wore wool, and ten yards of muslin were worth three guineas. The jury had felt sorry for the weeping, devastated girls. As well the jury might. He also bought cheap cotton calico which would make everyday dresses for dealing with pigs and poultry, sewing thread, needles, scissors, some yard rules and trowels for himself, and an iron stove with a fire grate and ashpan in its base surmounted by an oven with a flat top and a hole for a chimney. Captain Monroe had sections of thin steel chimney pipe of the kind installed on ships; they cost more than the stove. What pounds were left he spent on thick napped cotton cloth he knew would make excellent diapers, and dark red woolen serge to make winter coats for Kitty and the baby.
“Ye’ve just spent almost as much as ye did on twelve good acres,” said Stephen, testing the rope binding the goods to the sled. “Monroe is a robber.”
“Land requires labor, and that I give free,” said Richard. “I would have my wife and children as comfortable as Norfolk Island life permits. This is no climate for woolen or canvas slops, and the clothing already made up falls apart on first washing. We are swindled by London over and over again. Kitty sews even better than she cooks, so she can make things to last.” He eased his shoulders into the sled harness and buckled it across his chest. The sled moved off effortlessly, though its contents weighed over 300 pounds. “Ye’re welcome to come up the vale for supper this evening, Stephen.”
“Thankee, but nay. Tobias and I are celebrating the departure of the fucken Mt. Pitt bird by eating two splendid snappers I caught on the reef this morning.”
“Christ, ye’ll be killed doing that!”
“Not I! I can smell the big wave coming a mile away.”
Which he probably could, reflected Richard; Stephen’s gift for wind, weather, current and waves was uncanny, and no one knew more about Norfolk Island’s conditions than he.
Wanting to drop the stove off at the site of the new house first, Richard commenced to toil up the steep slope of Mount George on the Queensborough road. This one-mile slog was nothing new; he had dragged the sled laden with calcarenite stone up the hill time and time again. Wheels would have made the pull even harder, for the sled moved in smooth tracks its runners had worn when the road was muddy. Not a frequent occurrence this year, a dry one. Only an occasional night of heavy rain was bringing the wheat and Indian corn on superbly.
It had become a temptation to skimp his Government work—a temptation others also felt, wanting to get their own land cleared and bearing, but Richard had sufficient sense to resist such urges. Poor George Guest had succumbed before he was out of his sentence—so ambitious!—and been flogged for it.
The lash ruled more and more as Major Ross and Lieutenant Clark—and Captain William Hill of the New South Wales Corps—struggled to maintain some kind of control over a people existing without solidarity or rhythm. They flew in a hundred directions according to their origins, their limited experiences and their ideas of what constituted a happy life. All too often the idea of a happy life was an idle life. In England most of them would never have rubbed shoulders, and that fact was as true of the marines and soldiers as it was of the convicts. Exacerbated by a further fact: that almost everybody in military command was Scotch, yet of Scotch felons or enlisted troops there were virtually none.
We are ruled by the lash, exile to Nepean Island and being chained to the grindstone because not a soul in English government can see any other way to rule than to punish mercilessly. There must be another way, there must be! But what it is, I do not know. How does one make a better marine out of the likes of Francis Mee or Elias Bishop? How does one make a better man out of the likes of Len Dyer or Sam Pickett? They are lazy, greedy weasels who derive their chief pleasure from making mischief and creating chaos. Punishment does not transform the Mees, Bishops, Dyers and Picketts into hardworking, responsible citizens. But then again, nor did the relatively benign rule of Lieutenant King in days when this place held less than a hundred souls. His kindness was repaid by mutinies and plots, contempt and defiance. And when toward the last his domain grew to near a hundred and fifty souls, Lieutenant King too resorted to the lash with greater severity and ever greater frequency. When their backs are to the wall, they flog. There is no answer, but oh, how I wish there were! So that my Kitty and I could rear our children in a clean and better ordered world.
In such manner did Richard render the ordeal of pulling his sled up the terrible hill of Mount George endurable; he put his back to the work and his mind to conundrums beyond his understanding.
Once atop the mount it was much easier; the road went up and down somewhat, but never so dreadfully. Morgan’s Run came into sight and he turned off the road down a track into the trees, many of them reduced to stumps already. His intention was to leave a border of pines fifty feet deep all around the perimeter and clear the middle of the flat section entirely. There he would plant his wheat, a delicate crop, protected from the mighty salt-bearing winds which blew from every point of the compass; the island was not large enough to render any wind free of salt. The less steep slopes of the cleft wherein the run of water originated he would put to Indian corn for his multiplying pigs.
At the top of the cleft he undid his harness, though he had made a good clear track down to the shelf where the house was going up. Strong though he was, he knew he could not hold the sled downhill with all that iron upon it. He unloaded all but the stove itself, then transferred himself and his harness to the back of the sled, digging in his heels as he and the sled gathered momentum, sled in front, he behind. The distance was almost too great; the sled ran up a banked slope he had installed as a brake, overshot it slightly, and came to a halt with a thump that had Kitty up from her garden in a hurry.
“Richard!” she squawked, arriving at a run. “You are mad!”
Too out of breath to refute this accusation, he sat upon the ground and panted; she brought him a beaker of cool water and sat beside him, worried that he had done himself an injury.
“Are you all right?”
He gulped the water down, nodded, grinned. “I have a stove for ye, Kitty, with a baking oven.”
“Captain Monroe had his stall!” She got to her feet and inspected the new arrival eagerly. “Richard, I will be able to bake my own bread! And make cakes when I have enough crumbs and egg whites. And roast meat properly—oh, it is wonderful! Thank you, thank you!”
A hoist was rigged on one of the roof beams, so getting the big stove off the sled was not as difficult as had been keeping it from whizzing off the end of the brake slope into the va
lley below. He and Kitty walked together to the crest, where she found all the fabrics, threads, sewing apparatus.
“Richard, you are too good to me.”
“Nay, that is not possible. Ye’re carrying my child.” He began to load the sled for another trip down the slope with the chimney, which of course Kitty had dismissed as uninteresting. That delivered, they walked home down the Queensborough road with Richard pulling a much lighter sled.
Robert Ross, standing outside Government House to appreciate a magnificent sunset, watched them get the sled down Mount George. He had seen Richard expending his Saturday hauling it up that cruel hill several hours ago, marveling at the stamina of the man. So clever! He was a Bristolian, of course. A city of sledges. If ye cannot have wheels, have runners. I doubt a mule has more pure strength, and he with only two legs. I am but eight years older than he, but I could not have done that at twenty. The girl, he decided, was Morgan’s indulgence. A sweet wee mite, and oddly genteel. A workhouse brat, Mrs. Morgan had informed him, sniffing. But then, workhouse brats from strict Church of England workhouses like the girls’ in Canterbury (he had her papers) usually were genteel. Morgan himself was an educated man from the middling classes, so a workhouse brat was a comedown. But not, thought the Major cynically as he turned away, as big a comedown as his legal wife was.
Richard and Kitty moved house on Saturday and Sunday the 27th and 28th of August, 1791. The several working bees had gotten beams, scantlings and cladding up, shingles on the roof and a path from the front doorstep down to the spring; for the time being they would finish only the ground floor, deal with upstairs when an upstairs was necessary. There was a long way to go before his new home looked as nice as the old, but Richard did not care.
They had several tables, a kitchen bench, six fine chairs, two fine beds (one with a feather mattress and pillows), shelving for all Richard’s bits and pieces, and a stone chimney with a big hearth. The iron stove sat within the fireplace, its steel smokestack thrust up into the chimney’s maw; from now on they would have no open fire, which would darken the interior after nightfall, but was much safer.
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