Liberty

  I stared. I gaped. I had never seen anything quite like it.

  Barton McLeod had shaved his armpits. ‘You have no idea how hard it is to find a razor on campus at short notice!’ He laughed.

  My mouth fell open and I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry or a combination of both.

  ‘What do you say? You wanna risk a date with me? I smell real nice,’ he said, leaning down and taking a big sniff of his armpit.

  ‘Ahh, like roses,’ he said, rolling his eyes skyward.

  What could I say to that? I liked Barton. I couldn’t help it. Everyone loved Barton McLeod. ‘Sure.’ I smiled. ‘Sure. But only because of the armpits.’

  We walked to the cafeteria, me carrying my guitar strung across my back, Barton with his megaphone on a strap around his neck. I was feeling a smorgasbord of feelings. Elation, after my public performance. And a hint of those silly girl tingles you got in the pit of your belly when you suddenly realised that you liked a guy and that you’d liked him for a really long time but had refused to admit it to yourself.

  ‘So do you think you can see me as a lawyer now, Barton McLeod?’ I asked with a wry grin as we stopped by the coffee depot.

  ‘Well, yes, but actually there’s this other thing,’ he said, putting a hand on his chin, appraising me, staring deeply into my eyes.

  ‘This other thing?’ I frowned.

  ‘Yeah, this other thing.’ He grinned. ‘Hmmm.’

  ‘And what, may I ask, is this other thing?’

  ‘It’s something else I can see when I look at you.’

  ‘And that thing might be?’ I asked in a sing-song voice, coaxing it out of him.

  ‘Well, Fiona from the Darling Downs,’ he said, looking at me seriously, ‘when I look at you now, I see a girl who might just change the world.’

  The characters of Jeanne Laisné and Betsy Gray are based on actual historical figures, although there is little recorded evidence of the details of their lives outside of the events for which they became renowned. They have, however, become the subject of legends, songs and local folklore. Given that these were young women, it is likely that their stories were overlooked by writers of history who during that time were almost exclusively male. For this reason, I have pieced together remnants of information and evidence still in existence and, using a blend of my own imagination along with my research of those specific times and places, I fleshed out the circumstances and family histories that saw these heroic women become legends. Fairytale stories where real girls are the heroes. Liberty is my own way of telling these ‘herstories’.

  JEANNE LAISNÉ

  (Born 1456, date of death unknown)

  In 1472 Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, along with his army, sacked the French town of Roye before moving on to the fortress town of Beauvais. Over the course of the siege, a woman named Jeanne Laisné organised a contingent of women who loaded the town’s cannons, delivered arrows to the archers and dumped scalding oil over the walls onto the attacking Burgundians. As the siege progressed, the Burgundians got up onto the walls and were about to take the town. Many of the French defenders began to lose hope. However, the seventeen-year-old Jeanne grabbed a hatchet and launched herself at the Burgundian officer about to plant the Burgundian flag on the wall to claim the town. She threw the flag and soldier from the wall. Charles the Bold gave up after night-time spot attacks on his troops and the sustained defence from the townspeople and marched on, leaving Beauvais alone.

  King Louis XI, upon hearing of Jeanne Hachette’s heroism, allowed her to marry any man of her choosing, which was unheard of for a woman in the 1400s. She married a man named Colin Pilon. Jeanne was also granted tax exemption for the rest of her life, as were her descendants. Every year the town of Beauvais holds ‘The Procession of the Assault’ where the women of the town march through the streets. Colin Pilon died only a few years after the pair were married. No more is known about Jeanne.

  BETSY GRAY

  (Born 1778, died 1798)

  Betsy Gray was a young Presbyterian girl from Northern Ireland, killed during the 1798 Rebellion of the United Irishmen. She fought in the Battle of Ballynahinch with the United Irishmen (also known as the Liberty Men) against the English and was killed the next day, with her brother, George, and lover, William Boal, having her right hand cut off before being shot in the eye. Much of what is known of Betsy was passed down in her family through oral history. There is some debate about her gravesite. The storyline of her older sister Brigit is fiction.

  My own family lived on a farm not far from where the Grays lived, outside of Newtownards, and my great-great-great-grandmother was Isabella Ballantine who returned to the area from Paisley, Scotland, around twenty years after Betsy’s death. (Thanks for helping me stumble upon the story, Granny Ballantine.)

  FIONA MCKECHNIE

  While Fiona and all the characters in her story are fictitious, the University of Queensland’s student protest movement was one of the most vibrant of its time and it could be argued that the marches and rallies helped to sway the government and society at large to give up on the policy of conscription and withdraw Australian troops from the Vietnam conflict. The student march depicted in Liberty was based on the ‘Big March’ of 8 September 1967 when up to four thousand students, teachers and activists marched from the University of Queensland to Brisbane City, illegally, to protest involvement in the Vietnam War. Conscription in Australia ended in December 1972. The marches and protest movements rising around the world today – demanding fairer treatment of women and minorities and bringing attention to issues such as gun control and climate change – show that grassroots activism through taking to the streets is still a valid and effective way to spread the will of the people.

  This book is for my daughter, Mia, and her friends – Taliah Miller, Mia Fulham, Levi Lund and Freya McCowan Pearson – and my son Thomas and his sidekick Eric Ridley.

  Thanks also to Anne Powles, Gary and Julie Mason, Louise and Steve Rayner, Becc O’Neill, Sam Barker, Taylor and Elvis Goodwin, Lisa Standish and baby Ivy, Fiona McCowan, Jo and Graham Ridley, Peter Miller, Adelene Liu and Donna Cameron. To Rhoni Stokes for shouting me a tart at The Haven! Alison and Merril from Bookface Erina. To the lovely Pip Harry for her kind words and to Maria Lewis for hers (black cats and broomsticks forever, coven-sister). To Gemma Ward for being a warrior woman. And comrade Mandy Beaumont.

  To the kids from Book Bazaar Umina’s Junior Book Club. You rock!

  To my family. Dad. Mum. The sibs. The nephews. The cousins. The kids and kids-in-law. My precious grand-bibby. And the beloved Outlaws.

  To my friends. You are many and loved. Amanda Fullarton – sorry for the misspelling last time.

  All at UQP, thank you. Most of all, thank you to Kristina Schulz for helping me bring all my girls to life. Vanessa Pellatt, thanks for smoothing, tightening and tweaking me line by line. Jean Smith, you are wonderful at getting my words into people’s eyes! An enormous thanks to Jody Lee who is very much the godmother to Hexenhaus and Liberty and Saga. You are a great partner to have. And Jo Hunt – I love your beautiful cover so much!

  Of course none of my books would be possible without the mighty power of the beard of Zeus. Love love.

  Liberty. Equality. Sorority!

  May the Sisterhood be with you.

  In the last years of the Viking Age, as traditions and old wisdoms are being replaced by those of the Roman Catholic Church, Astrid, a skáldmær from Norway, takes on the task of writing the Goddess Book so that the True Things are not forgotten. When she realises that she must protect her baby daughter, Freyja, from the king’s men, Astrid stows away on a Viking ship to the Orkney Islands.

  Mercy escapes the harsh conditions of a Victorian orphanage in Glasgow to take her chances as a street urchin. She is taken in by Ann Radcliffe, a successful but reclusive author of Gothic horror novels, and taught the art of storytelling. Afte
r she leaves to become a nursemaid, Mercy tries to find her true identity by deciphering an ancient book left to her by her mother.

  At her cousin’s funeral, Mia, who lives in the Blue Mountains, is given a centuries-old book. With the help of a university research assistant, she manages to decipher the early rune symbols and discovers that it points to an even more mysterious book buried somewhere in the Orkney Islands. Mia travels to the windswept Scottish isles to discover the true secret of the Systir Saga.

  A powerful novel about three young women caught in the hysteria of their own times.

  In 1628, Veronica and her brother flee for their lives into the German woods after their father is burned at the stake.

  At the dawn of the eighteenth century, Scottish maid Katherine is lured into political dissent after her parents are butchered for their beliefs.

  In present-day Australia, Paisley navigates her way through the burning torches of small-town gossip after her mother’s new-age shop comes under scrutiny.

  ‘A gripping tale rich with demons and bigotry, potions and politics, Hexenhaus draws a sharply observed line between modern-day prejudice in Australia and the paranoia surrounding the European witch trials.’ Nicole Hayes, author of One True Thing

  ‘Hexenhaus entwines the past and the present in three compelling narratives that will keep readers on the edge of their seats.’ Kate Forsyth, internationally bestselling author

  First published 2018 by University of Queensland Press

  PO Box 6042, St Lucia, Queensland 4067 Australia

  uqp.com.au

  [email protected]

  Copyright © Nikki McWatters 2018

  The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

  This book is copyright. Except for private study, research, criticism or reviews, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher.

  Cover design by Jo Hunt

  Cover photographs: birds by Nature Bird Photography/Shutterstock; castle by Alberto

  Grazioli/Shutterstock; moon by Vik Y/Shutterstock; crowd by AlbertBuchatskyy/ Shutterstock

  Author photograph by Zeus Eugenius

  Typeset in Mrs Eaves 11/15pt by Post Pre-press Group, Brisbane

  The University of Queensland Press is assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia

  ISBN 978 0 7022 6029 2 (pbk)

  ISBN 978 0 7022 6175 6 (pdf)

  ISBN 978 0 7022 6176 3 (epub)

  ISBN 978 0 7022 6177 0 (kindle)

  Although Liberty is based on a number of historical events and characters, some of the factual detail has been left out, smoothed over or embellished for the purposes of creating a work of fiction.