Claim the Kingdom

by John Fletcher

  He would be able to think properly about the future now. There was a limit to what you could do alone. But with two lads, both in their early twenties, anything was possible. I must commit them to this land so they don’t run away when things get tough, he told himself. We’ve got things to do. Time we got on with them.

  ‘You want to make money?’ he said to Cash. ‘What about banking? We need a bank here.’

  Cash shook his head emphatically. ‘I wasn’t thinking of banking.’

  Of course you weren’t. Adventure, that’s what you want. Well, there’ll be plenty of that, too, I dare say. Enough and to spare.

  ‘Later tonight, when this bunfight is over, we’ll be having a talk together, you and me.’

  That’s a certainty, he thought. One way or the other.

  He turned his head to look once again at the closed door into the governor’s room.

  *

  Cash saw a slight frown crease his father’s forehead. The idea that he might be worried surprised him. He had never known his father worried by anyone or anything.

  Must be something serious, he thought. Nothing he can’t handle, though, I’m sure of that. I’m glad I’m like him. I’m a pirate at heart, same as he is.

  He looked at the roomful of faces talking, laughing, sweating in the close air. More outside on the verandah. Not many pirates here, not by the look of them. Must be thirty or forty people. A bit of old England dumped down on the other side of the world. Everyone waiting on the governor’s pleasure. That’s power for you. Wouldn’t suit me, though. I don’t want to be cooped up in a building. Not in a town, either, especially one as small as this.

  Even in this room, shut away behind walls amid a crowd of people, he could feel the presence of the bush. Its power beckoned him. That’s where I need to be, he thought. Out there, doing things.

  That afternoon, while he and Jack were out together, they had climbed to the crest of the hill at the back of the settlement. Inland the trees stretched for miles without any apparent feature until, in the distance, they merged with a line of hills, blue against the sky. When he got back to the cottage, he had asked Mrs Clark about them. No one had crossed them, she said. Several had tried and failed, and people were beginning to say they were impassable. What lay on the other side? No one knew.

  One day I’ll find out, Cash promised himself.

  He looked again at his fellow guests – the uniforms, the tailcoats and ruffled shirts, the powdered wigs of the men, the elaborate dresses, wide-brimmed hats and towering hairstyles of the women. An unexplored continent out there and they might have been in England.

  That’s why they do it, of course. Its strangeness frightens them. Turn their backs, they can pretend it isn’t there at all. Even Jack’s uneasy. That’s the difference between us. For him, it’s a threat; for me, it’s a challenge.

  Through the open door to the verandah, he could see the water and the ships lying at anchor. Beyond, the enigmatic hills were dun-coloured in the late sunshine. A plume of black smoke rose silently into the sky above them.

  Who had lit the fire? Had anyone? He didn’t know. Were the natives watching them, even now, from the low hills? Or was it just the brooding presence of the land that he could feel? He didn’t know that, either. He didn’t know anything. That’s why I’m here, he thought. To learn.

  He smiled, staring out through the doorway, and issued a silent challenge. I shall take you, land. Take you and make something of you. Something of us both.

  A sudden stir and stamping of boots made him turn. The guard had drawn himself up stiffly to attention, musket at the present. The inner door stood open. The crowd of people stood in a hushed semicircle facing the doorway. Those who had been out on the verandah were trying to squeeze themselves back into the crowded room.

  The governor was about to come out.

  THREE

  Gough was watching Hagwood and Pike with their heads together at the far end of the verandah. Be interesting to know what that’s about, he thought. Must have a word with Pike, later.

  ‘Who’s that fellow?’ Cash asked, interrupting Gough’s thoughts.

  ‘Which fellow?’

  ‘The little chap trotting along behind the governor.’

  Gough glanced at the ferrety face and simpering eyes. ‘Benjamin Vowles. He’s Commissary General. Looks after supplies.’ Chuckled, remembering the arrangement over Virginia’s cargo. ‘When we give him the chance. He acts as a sort of secretary to the governor.’

  ‘He looks a rat.’

  ‘He is a rat. Best keep on the right side of him though.’

  ‘Why?’ Contemptuously. ‘What can he do?’

  ‘You never know when a fellow like that may be useful. He’s close to the governor and that’s where the power is.’ His lip curled. ‘One of those religious freaks. Doesn’t approve of me, I’ll tell you that.’

  ‘You talk as though being religious was some kind of disease,’ Jack said.

  ‘With him it is.’ Gough gave him an assessing glance. ‘Don’t say you’re another of them?’

  ‘I have my opinions,’ Jack said stiffly.

  ‘So long as you know how to keep them to yourself …’

  Maybe I do and maybe I don’t, Jack thought. This society looks to be in sore need of the word of God. All societies, he corrected himself, but this one more than most. So far from home, established because of sin, thriving because of it, it was bound to be worse than elsewhere.

  He remembered, the day before he left, Mr Menhenniot over at the chapel at Cross Lanes putting his hands on him and praying that God would guide his footsteps. He would have liked for Cash to be there, too, but chapel was never his way, no more than it was his father’s.

  ‘Maybe I should speak to Mr Vowles,’ Jack said, half to himself.

  Gough grunted disapprovingly. ‘If you must talk religion, you’d be better off having a word with the Reverend Pearse over there. He’s the chaplain for the colony.’

  ‘Is there no Methodist minister?’

  ‘A Methodist?’ Gough looked curiously at his son. ‘Not unless there’s one among the convicts. Since when have you been tied up with that lot?’

  ‘About three years, now.’

  Knowing the exact day, the exact hour, the exact moment when he had sought salvation.

  Gwennap Pit, 20 June 1790, the terraces crowded with those who had come to the Revival. Jack knew no one there – few gentry would have anything to do with the Methodists because they insisted that all men were equal in the sight of God. Talk of equality was unpopular with those made nervous by the storming of the Bastille in Paris the previous year.

  It had been the hardest thing Jack had ever done, to confess publicly before a crowd of strangers the repeated and sordid sins of the flesh that in the beginning had eased him, then troubled and terrified him and finally brought him there to seek forgiveness and admission into the body of Christ.

  ‘Fornication,’ he said, hearing his voice small and ashamed to begin with, then louder as he pitched it to reach those at the top of the pit. ‘I have lain with women with no thought of marriage. I have seduced innocent girls to commit with me the sins of the flesh. God forgive me. God forgive us all,’ he prayed, watching the sun-starved faces of the miners, the weathered faces of those who worked the land.

  He had been unable – had not dared – to confess everything. Things he could not think about, never mind confess. A redness. A horror burning under suppressed memory.

  Oh God, forgive.

  The preacher raised voice and hands, promising forgiveness and salvation if he would turn from sin and embrace the faith in his life as well as with his lips.

  He swore, tears running down his face, while the congregation shouted praises to God.

  Oh please, he pleaded in his terror. Lift from me the weight of sin. Grant me rebirth into a new life.

  The weight had not been lifted. He had prayed, he still prayed, wrestling with the demon while the sweat ran reeking and his
body was corroded with desire. Lust lingered in his loins. He had inherited his father’s blood and Gough Tremain had had a hundred women in his time and thought nothing of it. If only it had been no more than that …

  He had never told Cash about the public repentance, about anything. Then, as now, they lived separate lives.

  God keep me from sin, he prayed. Give me strength to fight the demon.

  ‘I’d caution you to keep your views to yourself,’ Gough said. ‘There’s people here see no difference between the Methodists and the Jacobins in France. You don’t want people thinking you’re some kind of revolutionary.’

  Jack stared angrily at his father. ‘The Methodists have nothing to do with revolution.’

  ‘Then why do they pretend they’re equal to their betters?’

  ‘All men are equal in the sight of God.’

  Gough laughed, an angry bark that turned nearby heads. ‘Not in this colony, by heavens!’

  ‘Everywhere.’ Stiff-necked. Then, not wanting to quarrel on his first day here, he said, ‘Perhaps I’ll have a word with the Reverend Pearse now.’

  Gough’s expression showed what he thought of the Reverend Pearse. ‘He’s a poor stick. I’ll say one thing for him though, you’ll not find him talking about the equality of man.’ And with that he turned away.

  *

  Already half drunk, Thomas Birkett, the twenty-four-year-old only son of Sir Ronald Birkett, baronet, of Hampton in the county of Middlesex, stared around at the crush of people gathered in the depressingly undistinguished room and for the thousandth time since leaving England cursed the ill-fortune that had condemned him to this place.

  He was wearing his smartest and most fashionable clothing – skin-tight breeches dyed a spectacular shade of russet with elaborate golden knee buckles, white silk stockings that showed to advantage the shape of his calves, an emerald waistcoat with a border of gold brocade and a canary-yellow coat lined with maroon silk and cuffs of the same colour. It had been a wasted effort. No one here looked interested in the latest London fashions. No one looked interested in anything beyond the day-to-day dreariness of their plebeian lives.

  Even after the interminable journey, it was hard for him, a gentleman and heir to a baronetcy, to come to terms with the grim fact that it was among these hobbledehoys that his future would be spent, at least during his damned father’s lifetime.

  I should have stood up to the old man, he thought. But how?

  His father had made it clear that he would settle his son’s debts for one final time only if he agreed to emigrate forthwith to the colony of New South Wales. No discussion, no choice. His debts would be paid, a debtor’s warrant from Newgate prison cancelled and a five hundred guinea sweetener added on top – but only if he embarked on Bellona and disappeared from his father’s life forever.

  Sir Ronald had warned him that, if he refused, he would have nothing. He would rot his life away in Newgate gaol and no one would lift a finger to help him.

  Five hundred guineas, he thought. Not to be sneezed at. Should last me a month or two, at least.

  ‘To be used for buying a suitable property in the colony‚’ Sir Ronald cautioned him, glaucous eyes staring down his great prow of a nose. ‘Not to be gambled or frittered away.’

  ‘Certainly, Father,’ he had said, striving with little success for a note of the humility he did not feel. ‘I’ll take good care of it.’

  ‘No, sir, you will do no such thing.’

  And then the blow. The money, it seemed, would not be handed to him at all but to the captain of the god-rotting Bellona and then, at journey’s end, to this fat pig of a governor.

  To buy a property. A suitable property.

  As soon as he had come ashore, Thomas had made it his business to look around. It was as he had feared. There were no suitable properties to be had. Even Government House itself …

  He noted the indifferent plaster work of the ceiling, the appalling paintings, the undistinguished proportions of the room. To someone like himself, used to visiting the best houses in London, it was little more than a shack. And yet it was presumably the best in the colony.

  God help us all, he thought.

  His glass was empty. He saw a waiter passing and snapped his fingers. The man’s head turned.

  He thrust his glass at him. ‘Quick as you can.’

  Who wouldn’t need a drink, in this company?

  Thomas stared about him with fastidious distaste. Not one person here with whom he felt the slightest affinity. Look at them, he thought. Boorish, red-faced soldiers, and the rest of them clod-hoppers no better than those unspeakable brothers from the wilds of Cornwall or somewhere who had been on board with him, along with the other farmers who, if anything, had been even worse. And the women … He shuddered. Vulgarly-dressed, raucous-voiced, faces and bodies like sows.

  What was one supposed to do? he wondered.

  It began to look as though a suitable property in New South Wales meant a farm. What did he know about farming? Nothing, by God, nor wanted to. Have to find someone rich with an eligible daughter. That was the ticket.

  His fresh drink arrived and he swilled it down.

  A group of young women was chattering together on the far side of the room. He hesitated. They would be appallingly unsophisticated, no doubt, but at least they were young. And women. In the absence of anything better, perhaps they would do.

  The fat figure of the governor was with them at the moment. As soon as he moves on, he thought, I’ll chance my luck.

  Fortified by rum, he studied them again, making up his mind which of the little group was the most worthy of his attentions.

  *

  ‘Looks bad,’ Silas Pike said. He was a granite-hard man in his early thirties, face the colour of oak. His black hair was tied back in a ponytail and his huge hands were broken and scarred.

  Jonathan Hagwood narrowed green eyes at him. ‘What does?’

  Pike grinned contentedly, baring brown teeth. He enjoyed baiting Hagwood, him with his superior ways and fancy clothes. ‘The governor’s keeping his mouth shut. The news can’t be good.’

  In fact he was convinced the news must be good. Even the bloody fools in London wouldn’t be idiotic enough to refuse the land allocations. It was the only way the colony could hope to become self-sufficient and that must be London’s aim – to stop having to pay the bills. Of course, with cretins like Home Secretary Dundas you could never be sure, but even he must see the sense of that.

  Pike hoped so, not that it meant as much to him as to the others here. A trading vessel like Centaur could come and go where she liked: the Pacific, the Cape of Good Hope, Batavia – wherever there was a cargo or a market. If the settlement failed he would lose – the loss of any market was always a blow – but it wouldn’t be the catastrophe for him that it would be for the rest.

  He wondered why Hagwood had singled him out for a word now.

  ‘Arbitrary bastard, Dundas. No knowing what he’ll do next.’ Probing Hagwood’s anxiety was like working his knife in a wound. Stir him up, maybe he’ll show what he’s thinking. ‘This colony’s finished, if Dundas says no.’

  Jonathan’s clenched knuckles showed white beneath the lightly tanned skin. ‘Dundas will never say no.’

  ‘You better hope not. Otherwise you’re finished, too.’

  ‘And you with the rest of us!’

  Pike shook his head, grinning. ‘There are other ports. I’m thinking maybe I should start taking a look at them. In case this one dries up.’

  The pale green eyes dissected him by inches. ‘You’d be a fool to do that without something in your hold to sell.’

  ‘Problem is, this colony of yours has nothing to export,’ he said, playing the lieutenant like a fish.

  He had brought fresh supplies for the colony from the Pacific – fruit, vegetables, salted meat. Hagwood thought his holds were empty but Hagwood was wrong.

  No need for anyone to know we’ve sandalwood on board, he thought. O
r how we laid hands on it. Grinning to himself, remembering how they had stolen canoes from one island to exchange for supplies of wood at another. No market for sandalwood here but plenty in Canton or Batavia or the Cape.

  ‘I may have a cargo for you,’ Jonathan said. ‘Of course, you’ll have to agree not to deal with anyone else.’

  Anyone else presumably meant Tremain. Pike watched him. ‘What sort of cargo?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that yet. I’ll tell you one thing, though, it could be one for London.’

  Pike shook his head. ‘Not London. The East India Company claims a monopoly in these parts. Catch me, they’ll declare Centaur a prize and take her out from under me. Then I’m finished.’ He grinned ferociously. ‘Till I find another boat, anyway.’

  The East India Company, or John Company, as it was known, had been set up by parliament in the previous century to control all trade between England and Asia, which the company had later interpreted to include the Pacific and New South Wales.

  ‘It’ll have to be a damn good profit for me to take a chance like that,’ Pike said.

  Jonathan’s eyes spat green fire. ‘Company ships don’t operate this far south.’

  ‘Don’t need to. They can catch me at the other end, when I arrive in London.’

  Maybe he really does have a cargo, Pike thought. If he wants to be mysterious, I’ll wait him out. Stupid to lose your patience when someone wants to talk business.

  He thrust his empty tankard at a passing steward. ‘Get me a rum.’

  *

  ‘What’s the fishing like?’ Cash asked casually.

  ‘Not bad.’ Gough rubbed his chin. ‘Not Cornwall, mind you, but not bad.’

  ‘I’d like to take a boat out,’ Cash said.

  Gough Tremain drank wine from the glass he was holding and shuddered. He held the glass up to the light. ‘Should have stuck to rum. I declare this Cape wine is pure poison.’ His blue eyes measured his son. ‘Why would you want to do that?’

  ‘I thought I’d drop a line over the side for a bit before going to bed.’