The Rum Rebellion

by Libby Gleeson

  Daniel spoke then. ‘It can be a difficult journey. I think it would be easier with company. I cannot leave with the harvest starting. I think both Patrick and Kitty should go with you. They can take our vegetables to the market. We have need of supplies and they can return with them.’

  So it is decided. We leave in the early hours in two days’ time. Patrick is experienced in driving horses and we will have the O’Farrells’ trap. John and Thomas will be riding to Sydney Town themselves to see their Fathers’ trials, and we will link up with them on the road.

  Dog is a little better. He still lies quiet in the shade, but he allows us to pour a little water on his tongue and Ellen makes him broths like those my Aunt sometimes has. I sat with him till late in the evening, scratching his head and his belly.

  Ellen came and sat beside me when all the young ones were asleep.

  ‘You had a bad time with a dog once,’ she said.

  I nodded. Answering was suddenly easy. ‘When I was about five,’ I said. ‘I was out walking with my Father and he stopped to talk to a farmer. I went on ahead and I was set upon by two dogs. I ran and I fell and my leg was broken and it never healed in the right way. The Doctors said it would get better as I got older and stronger. Today is the closest I have been to such an animal since then.’

  I kept patting and scratching Dog’s head and Ellen put her arm around my shoulders and we stayed like that for a very long time.

  Monday 12th December

  I am nervous. Not, strangely enough, of the dangers in the travelling, although I know there are convicts on the road who might take from us our food and our money. Rather I am nervous for my Uncle. What fate awaits him? How can I convince him to say what he must to be freed and to return to the farm? How could he convince the Colonel to let him return? What can I say that may help?

  I patted Dog before I left and assured him that we should not be long. Kitty looked at me strangely when I did that. The last time she had seen me near him I was rigid with fear, desperate to put as much space between us as possible.

  No escaped convicts or Indians on this trip. We are staying the night with Mr Caley in Parramatta. He wanted to come with us but he has an expedition to Green Hills and beyond to the Mountains and so cannot.

  Patrick drives the horse very fast. Kitty drives too and when we were on a long straight part of the road she urged Patrick to let me have a turn. I said no, but she insisted that I could not be a farmer and never drive horses. I wanted to say that I was not going to be a farmer but the words stuck in my throat as if I did not quite believe them myself anymore and I took the reins and drove, slowly, for some miles.

  Tuesday 13th December

  We stopped first at Mr Lewin’s house. My Uncle was not there. He was brought before the Magistrates yesterday and the case was held over for three days. So he has spent a night in gaol and will spend more there as well. I wanted to go immediately to tell him we were here but Mr Lewin convinced me that we would not be allowed to see him until tomorrow.

  He was finishing the paintings he had begun at Chelsea Farm and for a moment when we stood looking at them, my mind forgot all the reasons we were in Sydney Town. If I could have stayed in his room, surrounded by his work, if I could have said that I would help him, I would have been contented.

  ‘They are beautiful,’ said Kitty, ‘but we have not time to stay and gaze at them.’

  Ralph was home when we arrived. He had his catch for the day and we feasted on fish and some of the vegetables we had carried from the farm. That baby, born at the time of the Rebellion, is now standing up and smiling at everyone—her Father especially. He is preparing for a run to Newcastle tomorrow but will come straight back within a few days.

  Ralph would normally go with him but because we are here he will stay behind. Tomorrow he and Patrick will take all the produce to the market while Kitty and I go back to Mr Lewin and then to visit my Uncle in gaol.

  Wednesday 14th December

  That gaol is a terrible place. Kitty and I went past it on our way to Mr Lewin’s, and I could not imagine my Uncle held in by its cold walls.

  Mr Lewin welcomed us again and was already prepared to set out for the prison.

  At every stage we were kept waiting. First at the outer wall when the fellow in charge said there was no way we could see the prisoner. Mr Lewin said, very strongly, that my Uncle was not a convicted felon but someone who had yet to be fully tried and that we had a right to see him. The Officer was surprised at this and went away for quite some time.

  When he came back he said we could see Uncle George but not till ten o’clock and so we sat in the sun with our backs against the wall, resisting the urge to eat the sweet oranges that my Aunt and Ellen had packed for my Uncle.

  Mr Lewin told us that in Spain there are oranges with juice as red as a man’s blood but I am not sure if he is joking or not.

  Uncle George was overjoyed to see us. He took no notice of the guard in the corner but put his arms around us both, embracing us. ‘How is your Aunt?’ was his first question and he was reassured when I said she was a little better. I thought it best not to tell him that she was still in bed most of the time, and that Mrs O’Farrell and Ellen were both worried for her if my Uncle should be gaoled for long.

  He wanted to know everything about the children—what words Sarah was saying and if Thomas, William and Georgie were attending to their lessons. Again I thought it better not to say that most mornings we passed over the lessons quickly and moved on to work outside. My Aunt is not well enough to study with the children and I find it easier to distract them with jobs in the sun.

  I told him how John had stood unaided and we expected he might take his first steps before we returned and he smiled then and then frowned and said how he should be with his family and not rotting there.

  Then I told him what had happened.

  He stood up and strode around the room. ‘Jim?’ he said. ‘Also Jim?’

  I nodded.

  ‘It is Arthur’s doing,’ he said. ‘He knows he can be protected by those we have offended. I have always been suspicious of him.’ He sat down again at that point. ‘The harvest. You will need help with the harvest. I have got to get out of here.’

  ‘We have a plan for the harvest,’ I said and I told him of our good neighbours. Then I said, ‘What if you were to promise that you will go to the Musters, that you will not offend again?’

  Mr Lewin nodded when I said this. ‘You could do it, George. For your family’s sake. None of us would judge you harshly.’

  My Uncle looked at us, sadly. ‘It is a matter of my conscience, Davy. As a man of honour before God, I cannot stand by while this place is run by those who seek only their own profit. I cannot stand by while His Majesty’s appointed Governor lies imprisoned not ten minutes walk from here. I would just as soon make such a pact with the Devil himself.’

  He means it. Nothing I say about my Aunt’s condition will change his mind. He asked us to thank the neighbours for their kindness and their offers of assistance. He will go to Court tomorrow and he will beg the Colonel to look on his situation and the family with compassion but he will not make false promises.

  We are supposed to return tomorrow. I will convince Kitty in the morning that we must stay another day and be in the Court tomorrow. I want to know his fate and to be able to report everything perfectly accurately to my Aunt.

  If he is gaoled, if they send him to the Coal River, I do not know how she will bear it.

  Thursday 15th December

  It was not hard to convince Kitty. ‘Of course we are staying,’ she said. ‘I would not miss this for all the tea in China and India combined. This is History. This is what we will tell our Grandchildren.’

  We are to go after breakfast. Ralph is to come with us and his Mother has urged us to stay quiet and to take great care to cause offence to no-one.

  ‘It is enough,’ she said, ‘that your poor Uncle is in trouble without the lot of you hauled before the Magistra
tes.’

  Later

  The Court is cleared and we are now outside in the sun, waiting for the Judge-Advocate to return. As I write, Kitty leans over my shoulder, wanting to know exactly what I am saying. I tell her to read it herself but she says my writing is too squiggly and wriggly. She says she can only understand the properly rounded letters of her Mother and her Father. I pass the time reading her everything I have written for the last few days.

  ‘Put in something about the Judge,’ she says and so I write what she tells me. ‘He is a fat, round, mean-looking man. He has a red and purple rum-drinker’s nose and his eyes are hooded. He looks like a crow in his big black cloak—like he is going to swoop down from the bench and peck at our eyes as if we were the baby lambs.’

  ‘Good,’ says Kitty when I read her words back for her. ‘Now write about those stupid Officers in their red jackets, sitting in judgment, all stuffed up like mating pigeons.’

  My Uncle’s case is the last one for the day. Already Mr McDougall and Mr Smith have appeared. Like my Uncle they have been charged with failing to attend the Muster. They are each to serve a month’s gaol, here in Sydney Town. John was sitting behind me when his Father’s sentence was read and I heard him gasp and whisper angrily to Thomas.

  Uncle George is sitting in the dock. Mr Lewin is here and other men who I know to be friends of my Uncle.

  First he was asked to plead—guilty or not guilty? I must write down exactly what he said.

  ‘Gentlemen, I deny the legality of this Court. You may do with me as you please; my unfortunate Wife and family I leave to the mercy of God, until peace shall be restored in the Colony. I have nothing more to say.’

  I closed my eyes. I wanted him to say something else. I wanted him to say what was needed for him to be set free, to come home and take over the harvest. To set my Aunt’s mind at rest.

  The Judge tried again.

  Again my Uncle refused. This time he said that every drop of blood in his veins prevented him from acknowledging the legality of the Court.

  Again the Judge-Advocate leaned forward. His fingers gripped the edge of the bench, and his eyes seemed more hooded than before.

  ‘Once more I call upon you—are you guilty or not guilty?’

  I held my breath. This time. This time, please.

  For the third time my Uncle refused.

  I knew then that he would not change his mind. I knew then that Kitty and I will be returning to Chelsea Farm alone. I will have to face my Aunt with news of his imprisonment. We will be thrown upon the kindness of the neighbours and upon our own efforts. But for how long? How long?

  The Judge and the six Officers left then and we are waiting for their return.

  This Courtroom is stuffy. Mr Lewin has gone to talk with some friends of his. Kitty and I whisper to each other. ‘Look, there.’ She points to a cockroach that is making its way across the sandstone flagging at the base of the Judge-Advocate’s table.

  We watch it begin to crawl up the leg, feelers waving, and onto the top when the Officers return. We have to stand up and I cannot see exactly what happens but the Judge’s fist clenches and crashes down onto the table and I can only assume the cockroach is squashed.

  Later

  Six months and a fine of one shilling. Six months—when others who refused to attend the Muster got only one month. Truly they are harder on my Uncle. They took him away without letting us speak to him and he mouthed the words, ‘Forgive me, Sarah,’ before the door was slammed in our faces.

  Mr Lewin stood with us for a while. He promised me that he would see to it that food is brought to my Uncle every day and I must tell my Aunt that he would make sure he wants for nothing. ‘Nothing except his liberty,’ he said bitterly.

  We walked slowly back down the hill to the harbour and sat on the wall, staring at the softly lapping water.

  Eventually Kitty spoke. ‘Remember last time we were here, the night of the Rebellion?’

  ‘Pity there is not another one tonight,’ I said. ‘Only this time we revolt, imprison Macarthur and all the others and set the Governor free.’

  ‘Let us do it,’ said Kitty. ‘Not the imprisoning and setting free part, but we could go to the Governor and visit him in his gaol and tell him that there are still folk like your Uncle, people who believe in him and who support him enough to go to prison.’

  Once before, Ralph and I had followed Kitty and had been witness to the great calamity of the Rebellion. This time I shook my head.

  ‘We could try, Kitty. We may be able to see him and Mrs Putland, but we may not. Now we must get back to the farm. There is a harvest waiting to be gathered. My Aunt is ill and I am needed there. Already we have delayed too long.’

  So we left then. We were walking past a public house on our way to Ralph’s when I heard a voice, ‘Bellamy. Young Bellamy.’

  James Heep, my whining fellow traveller, a man I hoped never to see again, called to me from the doorway and then lurched towards me.

  ‘Congratulate me, Bellamy, I have a passage home.’ He staggered, waving his arms wildly. ‘Not another week will I spend in this rum-filled, sinful hellhole.’

  He smelt like any other Sydney Town drunk. Kitty tugged at my sleeve.

  ‘I said I would never stay. And you, Davy? What about you?’

  He almost fell then and I let Kitty and Ralph drag me from him.

  We are again around the table at Ralph’s place. We are to leave first thing in the morning. Already I am imagining what I will say to my Aunt. I will talk of Mr Lewin. I will say that at least my Uncle is not sentenced to the Coal River and nor does he have to do hard labour on the chain gang or the roads. But already too I can see my Aunt’s tears as six long months spread before us.

  Friday 16th December

  We are in Parramatta. I am anxious to return to the farm as quickly as possible but it is already nightfall and Mr Caley insists we stay and set out in the morning. He is furious at my Uncle’s sentence and says he will write this evening to the King, to the Government in England and to every important person he can think of to tell them of the shameful behaviour of our rulers. We have eaten a fine meal and Patrick has gone to visit friends. Kitty is out in the garden.

  Later

  I joined her. The night sky was huge and filled with stars and we sat just staring up at them.

  ‘You are very quiet,’ she said, after a while.

  ‘I am thinking of my Uncle and how he must be feeling, locked away.’

  ‘My Father says it is the worst thing and you never get used to it.’

  ‘What did he do?’ I said. ‘Why did he go to prison?’

  She was slow to reply and I thought that maybe I had done the wrong thing in asking.

  ‘I do not really know,’ said Kitty. ‘He says he was against the British Government—everyone in his family and in his town was. But he says he never took up arms. He was from a farming family, back home. They lived on the coast. He misses the sea. When he is sad he sings all the old songs.’

  We kept sitting there, and she, in her way, kept talking.

  ‘He says it is the loss of your liberty that is the hardest to bear. You cannot just get up and go when you want to. He says you cannot imagine it until it happens to you and then it drives you mad.’

  We sat in silence again. I was trying to imagine being locked up, having cold stone walls around me and no warm sunlight streaming through windows and open doorways. I thought of it as being on the ship, the Duke of Carlyle, forever. If I could never get off that vessel, or never get away from my cabin on that ship, I would surely become a mad man.

  ‘Can I ask you something, Davy?’ said Kitty.

  I nodded.

  ‘Back a long time ago, you said that as soon as you were old enough you were going to leave this country and return to England, to where you belong, and live there. Are you still of that mind?’

  I did not answer her immediately. In truth, I can barely remember the feelings I had when I uttered those word
s.

  I looked up at our rich Southern sky and I tried to remember sitting out on a Summer evening in my old home. We never did such a thing. Each evening we sat in the tiny drawing room and one of my Parents would read to me.

  I tried to remember exactly the whole image of my Mother’s face and my Father’s and instead I remembered only fragments: her hollowed eyes as she lay ill, the tiny scar on his chin where his whiskers never grew, the way he carried me everywhere when my leg was hurt and I pressed my face against his breast bone and breathed the wool of his jacket to ease the pain. Fragments and feelings. Those feelings can stay with me wherever I go.

  ‘No, Kitty,’ I said. ‘I am not returning. I am staying.’

  ‘Good,’ she said and she jumped up, leant over, kissed my cheek and disappeared back into the house.

  I sat for a long time, fearing that if I went in everyone would see my cheek glowing.

  Saturday 17th December

  Dog was walking around when we came home. He is limping slowly but he is up on his feet and he came and rubbed his body against my leg and I did not move away from him.

  At last the harvest has begun. Daniel O’Farrell came at first light and he brought with him Patrick, Kitty and another man from their farm. I was almost afraid to look at her but she spoke to me as if nothing had happened between us. They have finished their bringing in of the wheat and so are free to help us. While we were in Sydney Town he checked all the sickles and repaired handles that had rotted since last year.

  I am admiring of the strength of these men. It is truly backbreaking work.

  Kitty and I cut one row in the whole morning while her Father easily did twice the distance alone that we did together. She can move more quickly than I but she did not hurry. The sun was murderously hot and yet we could only be grateful that there was no rain. Daniel says this wheat should have been cut two weeks ago so we are racing to get it off before it is overripe and spoiled.