Elsie wiped her hands on her apron as she looked at the present. I watched anxiously as she opened it.
‘Barney!’ she cried. She hugged me, and then gave me a kiss right in front of Maggie and Mr and Mrs Johnson, and they all just laughed, happy because we were happy.
‘It is the most wonderful present in the world,’ said Elsie.
She was talking now, though still just in the house. We’d told Mr and Mrs Johnson Elsie’s story. I think Mrs Macarthur had guessed some of it. Mr and Mrs Johnson agreed no one would think badly of Elsie being born French, not after so long just being Elsie and one of us, but we didn’t want tongues wagging about. Once she was living down on the farm, we’d let it be known she was beginning to talk again and let everyone assume it had been an illness or injury and that the good farm air — and being married and happy — had cured her.
And the present? It was a flower press, one you laid flowers or leaves on and pressed down tight with a screw so they dried in their true shape, and then could be packed carefully for the nine-month voyage to England.
Mr Johnson had already sent a letter home for his friends there to post to France, to Elsie’s family, her grandparents, if they were still alive, and her uncles too. He explained how Elsie had been left behind, and that he and his wife regarded her as part of their family, and how she was marrying me: . . . a young protégé of mine and a prosperous farmer, a free man, not convict, named Barney Bean Esquire.
Me, Barney Bean Esquire!
It would be a year at least, probably, before Elsie’s relatives found out their granddaughter and niece had become a colonist in New South Wales, and two years or more before we might hear back from them. Perhaps with the revolution and all the troubles in France, they might even have gone to the guillotine or been killed in the battles as royalists fought revolutionaries.
I was glad Elsie was safe, here.
And so we were married, in the church Mr Johnson and I and others had built with our own hands, knowing how much our colony had needed one.
Governor Hunter himself gave the bride away, as Mr Johnson couldn’t. Not while he was marrying us. I don’t think I ever had a happier moment in my life, watching Elsie walk up the aisle, so beautiful in her blue silk dress, to take my hand at the altar.
‘Dearly beloved . . .’ began Mr Johnson, and I thought about how rich I was, me, Barney Bean, who’d had nothing. I don’t mean rich in money or land, but rich in love, Elsie and the Johnsons and Bill and even Mrs Macarthur, carefully sitting on the other side of the church from Governor Hunter and Mrs Johnson, and some of the church ladies like Mrs Turner who Elsie sewed with once a week, making clothes for orphan children.
I hired a boat to take me and Elsie and the Johnsons and Bill to the farm for the wedding feast. By the time we got there, the men had a couple of fat sheep cooking on the spit down on the river flats by the dock — you could smell it a mile up the river. Long trestle tables were set with big bark platters for all the other food.
Every man who worked on my farm got as much as he wanted to eat that day, puddings and cakes and damper loaves and mutton, even if Bill did have to kick a couple of blokes to bend their heads respectfully while Mr Johnson said grace and thanked God for all the blessings we had received in our colony, as well as the feast we were about to eat.
It wasn’t till most of us had finished eating (mostly — Spotty Fin and John the Fish were chewing those mutton bones till late that night) and the men carried Elsie’s wedding chests up from the boat to the house that Elsie saw the sign I’d hung on the front door.
‘Jeanne’s Farm,’ she whispered.
I grinned.
‘Kiss her and carry her over the threshold, you idiot!’ called Bill.
So I did.
Elsie unpacked her wedding chests. You should have seen all the stuff! Tablecloths she had embroidered, and pots and pans she’d bought with the money she’d earned at Mrs Macarthur’s, and sheets she’d hemmed and tea towels with flowers sewn in the corner.
There I’d been thinking Elsie had never thought of marrying me, and there she’d been for years embroidering and hemming stuff because she wanted to marry me but thought I wouldn’t want her — and both of us too scared to ever tell each other.
And that should be the end of the story. That’s where books end, isn’t it? The hero marries his girl and they live happily ever after.
But a lot more things happened to me and Elsie after that. And this story didn’t end the day we got wed either. Because this story is about secrets, and there is one more I need to tell about Elsie: the secret of what happened when the real French spies arrived.
CHAPTER 9
Spies!
July 1802
Our new house had six chimneys and five bedrooms, not counting the housekeeper’s room and the attic for the maids, and a great long kitchen with a view of the river, because Elsie said most kitchens looked out onto rubbish bins or privies, but the most important work of all was done there, so they needed the best view.
It had a long verandah where you could look down on the swans and pelicans on the river, and the ducks that ate the grass along the river instead of the sheep getting it. But the ducks had been there before my sheep and there was plenty for all.
There was a nursery for the children we were going to have and a dining room where twenty could sit down to dinner.
Of course only the foundations of this wonderful house had been laid when the Frenchman sailed down the river, but Elsie and I had planned it for so long we knew just what it was going to be like, from the polished she-oak floors to the big candelabra that would light the living room at night.
Our old house was going to be the schoolroom and teacher’s house, because Bill had two children now, and so did many of my other workers, both convicts and those who’d stayed on working for a wage when they’d served their time. I didn’t kick the men off the farm as soon as the colony no longer gave me their clothes and rations, not when I’d spent so long training them to be good farmers. And if they wanted to get married, we built them cottages and gave their wives work if they wanted it.
Some of my workers left to take up their own land when they got their tickets of leave, of course. Bill had done that twice, but both times he took to drinking, and when he drank he gambled, and both times he’d had to sell his farm. He finally decided he was better off making his home on Jeanne’s Farm, where I didn’t allow rum on the property, and his new wife, Jane, thought so too.
Jane and Elsie were making blackcurrant cordial the day the Frenchman arrived, in a boat Governor King had lent him. England and France were at war again, with ‘Calls Himself an Emperor’ Monsieur Napoleon trying to conquer all of Europe — and doing pretty well too.
The year before, Governor King had made sure all ten guns and fourteen embankments at Dawes Point could fire on any ships of the French fleet that tried to attack us, and stop them coming further up the harbour. But when Captain Baudin arrived, it was with only the one ship, and the crew were so sick from scurvy that he had to send a boat to the governor asking for help to land.
‘Do you want to go to Sydney Town to meet them?’ I asked Elsie quietly, when we heard about Baudin’s arrival the next Sunday after church. I wondered if she’d like to speak her first language again. But she just shook her head. Elsie still kept silent at times when others might have spoken, from all those years she’d had to be quiet. Or maybe she’d learned that sometimes using words isn’t the best way to say things.
So when she shook her head, I hugged her and kissed her cheek. We held hands like two sweethearts all the way down the river to home, to find that Jane’s pet sheep had got into the dairy and eaten half a fresh cheese, and with all the fuss — you should see the mess one poddy lamb can make with cheese — I forgot about the French ship in the harbour.
Ships arrived almost every day at the colony now, mostly American sealers and whaling ships — even the convict transports usually went whaling after they’d dum
ped their cargo of convicts, or else they sailed off to try to attack the Dutch trading ships. During the war between England and Holland, the English king gave the captains letters of permission to attack any Dutch ship, and north of our big continent was the Dutch trading port of Batavia, where half the riches of the world came from spices.
Governor King had worried that the Dutch might attack the colony, as we gave the ships that raided Dutch traders provisions like meat and vegetables. But no attack had come.
Now we were at war with France again. But it was still a faraway war, it seemed, if the governor had welcomed Captain Baudin and his ship.
Wars were just gossip to me and Elsie, just like they were for most of the colony. Elsie and I only went to Parramatta to go to church, and to Sydney Town to sell the wool and cheeses and other produce once a year, and occasionally to attend a ball at Government House — Governor King was as kind to me as Governor Hunter had been. We dined with Mrs Macarthur too, when her husband was in England, just like she had predicted. She was a good friend now and the best sheep breeder in the colony. But we were no longer able to visit the Johnsons, because they had sailed home, just as we had known they would. Sydney Town still seemed empty without their warmth.
Mostly our lives were contained in the small village of Jeanne’s Farm: six families in their own cottages, Bill in the manager’s house, the shepherds in their huts and the convict workers in the bunkhouse. We had our own feasts and dances, like the Harvest Home after the corn crop was brought in.
The Indian family who had helped me harvest my first crop visited us again now they knew I’d make sure none of my men attacked them. They helped harvest the corn and stayed for the dance, which they seemed to think was funny, and they left with bags of corn the next morning. Any bloke who didn’t like it knew that, while there was no flogging at Jeanne’s Farm, the master would give the boot to any man who thought the colour of a man’s skin made him worse or better.
Mr Johnson had taught me well.
As soon as I saw the sail approach along the river, I sent Spotty Fin to tell Elsie it looked like visitors, then hurried in and changed my boots and put on my ‘company jacket’ with the brass buttons. Elsie took off her apron and slipped on a silk dress — not her best one, but one suited for company. I thought maybe Mrs Moore had come to talk to Elsie, with her husband perhaps, with plans for the orphanage. They were good friends of ours too — I’ll tell you about them another time.
But to our surprise a single man in a strange uniform walked up the path, leaving the boat’s skipper to smoke his pipe, with a flask of rum to keep him company down at our jetty. It was the skipper’s own boat, so I ignored the rum.
The newcomer’s face was like a skeleton’s and sunken where he’d lost teeth from scurvy. He had a sailor’s tan and his blue uniform was faded, as was his three-cornered hat.
I didn’t pay much attention to his uniform — the Naval Office in England was always changing the uniforms. But I heard Elsie gasp beside me when she saw it. She leaned against the door, her face white.
‘Elsie?’ I asked in alarm, just as the stranger bowed and said, ‘Madame Jeanne Bean?’
‘Oui,’ said Elsie softly. ‘Je suis Madame Bean.’
The stranger bowed to me, and I bowed back, and Elsie curtseyed.
‘Monsieur François Peron,’ the stranger said to me. His voice had the same kind of musical quality as Elsie’s. ‘I am a naturalist on the Emperor Napoleon’s boat, Le Géographe, commanded by Captain Nicolas Baudin. We are here on a voyage of scientific discovery.’
‘My wife is interested in plants,’ I said cautiously. I wasn’t saying more till I knew what this man wanted. ‘Won’t you come in?’
We sat in our parlour. Jane served us small cups of coffee — I hated the stuff, but Elsie had planted twenty coffee bushes. American whaling captains paid more for coffee beans than they would for a nugget of gold!
It seemed the French liked coffee too.
Monsieur Peron took one of Elsie’s apple tarts, the pastry all buttery and the apple sliced into a pattern, and bit into it with appreciation. ‘Most excellent, Madame,’ he said.
‘Merci,’ said Elsie. She’d said nothing else since he’d arrived.
Monsieur François Peron waited till Jane had left the room, then took a letter sealed with wax from his pocket and handed it to her. ‘From your good uncle,’ he said.
Elsie’s hand trembled as she took it. No letter had ever come from France in reply to Mr Johnson’s, but with wars and ships sinking, a lot of mail never even got to England, or from England to here, much less to France and back as well.
Elsie opened the seal and scanned the lines. She looked up at me. ‘My uncle says he is glad I am safe and is sorry for the loss of my parents.’ She smiled. ‘He hopes when Napoleon has conquered England that I will return to la belle France and bring my husband with me or, if I wish, he will have the marriage annulled, because it was done by an English clergyman among barbarians, not by a proper priest.’
I clenched my fists — ‘The . . .’ — then I closed my mouth again, because he was Elsie’s uncle after all.
Elsie grinned at me. ‘Don’t worry, my barbarian husband. I have decided I like being married to you. My uncle also hopes I will not be eaten by a kangaroo as he has heard they are most fierce.’
Elsie could always make me smile. My hands relaxed.
She turned back to Monsieur Peron. ‘If you don’t mind waiting, Monsieur, I will write a reply, thanking my uncle and assuring him that when England has won the war he and his family will always have a welcome here, and I will be especially sure the kangaroos will not attack them.’
Monsieur Peron bowed. ‘It would be an honour to take your letter, Madame, but,’ he glanced at me, ‘might we speak privately?’
Elsie sat a little straighter. ‘I would prefer my husband remain here, Monsieur Peron.’
‘Of course,’ the stranger said smoothly. And then he began to talk . . . and talk . . . and talk . . . all in the French lingo.
I’d learned a few words of French by then, even a song or two. But I couldn’t follow this rapid chatter.
I understood Elsie’s face, though. I watched that instead. Interest at first, and then sorrow, and then a flash of anger.
And then the anger was gone, as if it had never been. Elsie looked interested and inquisitive, then even a little eager.
What was going on?
At last Elsie smiled and held out her hand. Monsieur Peron kissed it.
I didn’t punch him in the nose. I’d learned by then that gentlemen kissed women’s hands. And anyway, just then he stood and bowed to me, and to Elsie again.
‘Thank you for your excellent hospitality, Monsieur Bean. And for your coffee, which is the best in New South Wales.’
It was pretty much the only coffee in New South Wales.
‘The pleasure is mine, Monsieur,’ I said, hoping I sounded gentlemanly enough. I’d had a lot of practice being a gentleman by now, but I suspected that manners at Government House, Sydney Town, weren’t the same as grand manners back at court in England — or in France either, probably, not even now the French had cut off the head of their true king and Monsieur Napoleon had taken his place.
‘I hope to hear from you soon, Madame,’ said Monsieur Peron. He bowed again. He waited while Elsie called for ink and pen and paper and dry sand to write her letter, and a wax candle to seal it. And then he left.
CHAPTER 10
A Spy Again
I saw Monsieur Peron to the boat, just to make sure he didn’t stay skulking around the place. As soon as the sail vanished around the river bend, I went back to the house.
Elsie had changed into the old dress she wore during the shearing and put on her old bonnet.
Where was she going? But she said nothing, just took my hand. She led me up the hill behind what was going to be our new house, still holding my hand. The river stretched before us, a silver snake lit with blue flashes. Here and th
ere paler blue spires of smoke showed where we colonists were gradually turning the bush into farms.
I could see our orchard, the best in the colony, because whenever a new fruit or plant arrived, Elsie begged seed or cuttings and got it to grow for us too. There were the sheep in the paddocks where we’d grown melons and pumpkins and potatoes in spring — all foods that would keep a long time and be useful for a ship’s stores to sell to the whalers. The melons were Elsie’s idea, and a grand price we got for them too.
We let the sounds of the bush sink into us, a kookaburra’s laugh and then the rustle of a fat golden skink catching a fly before settling down to eat it.
At last Elsie said, ‘Captain Baudin’s men have been sketching all the colony’s fortifications.’
‘What?’ There was Governor King, treating them like honoured guests and they’d been spying all along!
‘Monsieur Peron says the French have to attack the colony soon,’ said Elsie grimly, ‘while we are still small and weak enough for a few French ships to conquer us. The French and Irish rebels are allies, so the Irish convicts will fight for the French, not the English who keep them prisoner here. Monsieur Peron says that as the colony can feed itself, once the French have taken it they can defend it against the English navy, who will have no place to resupply their ships. But he says the attack must happen quickly, for once there are more English colonies, they may come to the aid of any others who are attacked.’
It made sense. I was scared how much sense it made. Sydney Town was a valuable English port now. It would be just as valuable for the French.
Elsie held my hand tightly. ‘My uncle is an important man in this Napoleon’s government. He said in his letter that if I do not wish to come home to France and can assure him my husband will be loyal, you will perhaps be made governor of the French colony of New South Wales.’ She shrugged. ‘Or perhaps it will be called Napoleonland then.’
Barney and the Secret of the French Spies Page 6