by Rosa Jordan
So flustered was Wanjon that he roared for the jailer three times over, although the man was standing right near him. With a furious flapping of hands, the governor emphasised the speed with which Mary was to be returned to the dungeon.
The anger loosed in Mary during that interview did not dissipate, but swelled to encompass the whole of mankind. Back in the dungeon, she huddled on the stinking stone floor, filled with a hatred of men. She could not even bear to look at James, but turned her eyes away when she felt his gaze upon her. Thus she remained for the next three days, overcome by emotional storms such as she had never known.
During all the abuses suffered during her previous imprisonment, she had blamed only herself. She accepted
that she had brought it upon herself and, once recovered from the shock, had taken it as her own responsibility to do whatever she could to better her situation. But now things were different. She was different. Perhaps it was because this incarceration was not the result of her own actions. Perhaps it was because her children had been damned as well. Or because she had recently felt the respect of others, and had come close enough to freedom to imagine its reality. The blow, so swift and unjust, wounded her sense of reason. Equilibrium lost, she hunkered down on the cold stone floor and hated.
During the few days that Mary lay under that leaden cloud, the children gravitated to Will. Most of the time he responded gratefully, for they were the only ones in the room who would approach him. When he lapsed into brooding self-pity, they circled the room and were kindly treated by men who had been like family to them during the voyage from Botany Bay. When they grew tired they returned to Pip, cuddled next to him like kittens, and fell asleep.
There was much discussion during those first days as to why Bados had not been arrested, too. It was Matey who advanced the theory that, “He mighta made a run for it.” With a meaningful glance in Mary’s direction, he added, “Like if somebody got word to him that we was gettin’ grabbed.”
“Could be,” Cox allowed. “He did have a woman.”
This brought a babble of disbelieving commentary, but Cox stood by his story. “I seen her myself, I did. Was right soon after we got here. Bados showed up in the carpentry shop and wanted to borrow a whittling knife to make another flute. I let him do, like before, long as he didn’t leave the shop. So there he was sitting, working away, when down the street comes this woman. A big woman she was, dang near as tall as Bados. And bosoms, oh my! They stuck out in front of her like lanterns on a carriage!”
Cox waited for the men’s guffaws to die down, then continued his story. “Blinded our Bados, they did. Why, he was up and out of that shop before I could say a word, and off down the street after her. I was right put out, ‘cause he didn’t take time to lay down that whittling knife and I was afraid the master of the shop would blame me for it going missing. But two days later Bados was back, grinning like a man fully satisfied. He said he was sorry about going off with the knife, on account of he plumb forgot he had it in his hand.” Cox chuckled. “Then he crossed over the street where this same woman was bargaining her fish with a stall keeper. Bados lifted the basket off her head, which must’ve weighed half as much as a man, because it was a strain for him to lift, and you know how strong he is.”
“So you reckon this woman or one of her people got wind of what was afoot and sent word to him?” Scrapper asked.
“I ‘spect so,” Cox concluded. “Seems like these locals got a certain amount of bitterness about the way they’re getting treated. I figure any chance they get to stick it to the Dutch on the sly, they’d take some pleasure in it.”
Mary contributed nothing to the conversations about Bados. She roused herself only once, when a quarrel broke out over who would handle the daily chore of dumping the slops. Some insisted that Will, who had brought this misfortune upon them, should have sole responsibility for the disgusting task, while others felt Pip could be forced to do it, as he was the weakest and least able to defend himself.
At length, tired of the quarrel over who would empty the slops, Mary rose and shouted, “You will take turns!” She pointed a finger at each, and named the order in which they would go. The jailer, who was probably sick of the bickering as well, ordered the men to comply, beginning with Will, whom she had indicated should go first.
A few days after Mary’s meeting with Wanjon, Mira’s anxious face appeared at the small barred window. Pip ran forward and, fingers to fingers and lips to lips between the bars, they touched as best they could. The jailer allowed them two or three minutes, then ordered Pip away from the door and motioned Mary to come forward. The door was opened and two cushions were shoved in.
“Gouverneur Wanjon give for the kinder,” Mira explained.
Although Mary longed to refuse the gift, she did not. Angry as she was, she suspected that the governor’s conscience was
bothering him, and he was trying to prove his humanity, at least to himself. She also understood that her challenging manner and bitter hatred toward him had accomplished nothing. It was time she took herself in hand and set a different course.
“Give the governor my thanks for this small kindness,” Mary murmured to Mira. “And tell him this: The eighth day of September is nigh upon us. That being Charlotte’s fourth birthday, perhaps he will see fit to grant her God’s own gift of a breath of fresh air and a few rays of sunlight.”
“I will tell him that,” Mira promised. And to Pip, “Tomorrow, my Pip, I come again.”
Mira did come on the morrow, and each night after that. Once she brought a cushion for Pip taken from her own bed. Mary only had to look into the girl’s eyes, and see the smirk on the face of the jailer, to know the price Mira was paying for those nightly visits.
On the seventh of September, when they had been confined a week, Bruger brought news of a welcome change. Henceforth, he said, Mary and the children were to be allowed out from dawn to sunset, providing they stayed in the vicinity of the fort. The men would be allowed out, three at a time, for half a day each. They were to receive this privilege, Bruger said, for as long as they remained in the governor’s charge.
James, who had always had a cordial relationship with Bruger, asked how long that might be. Bruger said that the governor would consider his responsibility discharged upon the arrival of a British ship. Then they would be turned over to English authority, as represented by its captain.
When James reported this to the group, they muttered uneasily. Some were of the opinion that they would receive better treatment from their own countrymen, but others, recalling the conditions of their imprisonment back in England, felt that the opposite might be true. It was Cox who voiced the underlying dread which haunted them all.
“Don’t make much difference, do it? We’ll be travelling back as prisoners same as we come, and lucky if we get a captain as square as Phillip. And what’ll we see of merry old England once we get there, but the inside of another gaol? Leastways till we come to trial.”
“Then what?” Scrapper asked fearfully.
Cox gave him a sorrowful look. “We’re bolters, ain’t we? Reckon we’ll be sentenced to hang. Or else transported back to Botany Bay.”
That bleak truth clouded the cheer they had felt upon being told that henceforth they would be allowed out each day to take exercise. Still, they had something to look forward to on the morrow. James reminded the others that it was Mary’s sending word of Charlotte’s impending birthday that had resulted in this privilege.
“’Twas Mira’s doing,” Mary insisted, and knew that to be the truth. She had had two interviews with Wanjon and had gained not one concession, as her flaring anger had only made him more intransigent. It was Mira, trained to be sweet and subservient even when she was bitterly unhappy, who managed to elicit mercy from the dry old man.
Despite Mary’s disclaimer, the men cheered her. Then Matey led off with a rousing birthday so
ng for Charlotte, which the others joined in. It was then that Mary noted a change in the men’s attitude toward her. During the voyage of escape they had shown her respect, but had done so in subtle, even secretive ways, to avoid offending Will. Their loyalty was to him, and reasonably so, given that he had captained the fishing crew, and Cox, although not on the crew, was his boon drinking companion. James was the only outsider, and he, like Mary, had known that cohesion of the group depended on acknowledging Will as leader.
But if there had been reasons to feel or fake loyalty to Will then, there were none now.
That much James had made clear the morning Will called Mary a slut. And Luke had backed James up. Mary had been too deep in her own darkness just then to read the mood of the men. But now, as they praised her for having found a way to ease the discomfort of prison, the message was plain and public: she, not Will, was their leader.
But where was the value in that, Mary wondered despairingly, now that they were confined, with no place to go, nor any way to get there?
The following day, as soon as the jailer came with their gruel, Mary asked that she and the children be let out, and Pip as well. Pip, although he was seventeen, looked to be no more than twelve, his growth having been stunted by a lifetime of hunger. The jailer took Pip’s measure, and, as the governor’s instructions had been to allow Mary and the children to roam free in the vicinity of the fort for the better part of the day, he supposed that included the boy who, as far as he knew, was also one of her children.
Coming up from the dungeon, the brilliance of the sun at first so hurt their eyes that Emanuel buried his face in Mary’s shoulder and cried. But when Pip went cartwheeling across the meadow, Emanuel squirmed to be put down and went toddling after Pip and Charlotte. Soon all three were racing about like puppies let out of a box, and even Mary was smiling.
On the far side of the meadow surrounding the fort, Mary found a rivulet wending its way out of the forest and meandering toward the sea. There she was able to wash herself and the children. Then she laid down in the sweet-smelling grass and waited for the sun to dry her skin and sarong.
She had been there about an hour, listening to the children’s voices as they played nearby, when she opened her eyes to see Will looming over her. She sat up quickly and saw, some way off, Matey and Scrapper as well. Will immediately began to berate her for the misfortune that had befallen them.
“You’re like the rest of them,” he mocked. “Putting it all on me and my drinking. But what was the reason for me taking to drink, if not you selling your twat to another old Dutch geezer? Last time a compass, this time for naught but a cup o’ tea. Getting’ cheaper all the time, you are.”
Not wanting the children to overhear, Mary jumped to her feet and tried to walk away. Will, already in a fury generated by his own thoughts, became angrier still. He grabbed Mary by the braid and slammed her against a tree. She screamed, and saw by his startled look that he had not anticipated that. Apparently he had expected her to accept his abuse in silence, as she always had in the past.
Not only was she not silent this time, she began to put up a fierce struggle. Before Will could figure out how to hit her when he needed both hands to hold her, Matey and Scrapper came dashing up. With the natural cunning of a street tough, Scrapper dragged Will behind a stand of trees, for the guards, having heard the scream, were already looking their way.
“Give ‘em a wave,” Scrapper instructed Pip, who had likewise come running. “So they’ll think it was one of the young’uns. We don’t want them wandering by whilst we’re having a private chat with Old Blabbermouth.”
Scrapper got one of Will’s arms twisted behind him in such a way as to put him down on his knees. Matey clicked his tongue in mock sympathy. “Will, ya poor devil, didn’t I tell you way back on the crossing that a slut is never worth the grief she’s gonna bring you? But you wouldn’t listen, would you? Now, by God, she’s gone and made you lose your reason.”
“That ain’t no excuse!” Scrapper shouted. “Ain’t I been duped by plenty of floozies in me life? You never saw me go bonkers and run off at the mouth in such a way as to land my pals in the pokey!”
Matey picked up a dry stalk of bamboo and smashed it across his knee, leaving the broken ends splintered and sharp as shards of glass. Holding it before Will’s face, he said, “The boy’s right, you know. You keep running that mouth of yours, by reason of being drove crazy by a woman, I’m afeared I’ll have to quieten down that tongue, like what I seen done to a blabber in Africa, using a splinter of bamboo what weren’t no bigger than this.”
The old man poked Will’s face with the slivered bamboo, increasing the pressure until Will begged for mercy. “You’re right and don’t I know it! ‘Tis help I need, man to man, to keep me on the straight. Come on, boys. Give me a chance!”
“I don’t mind to do that,” Matey said in an agreeable tone that belied the pain he was causing Will with the bamboo splinters. “But we can’t be havin’ you kicking up no more stink with our Mary here, y’understand?”
“I’m done!” Will gasped. “Done with her I am. Lemme go and I’ll be getting as far from her as I can.”
“There’s a smart ‘un,” Matey grinned approvingly, and signalled to Scrapper to release his hold on Will. But just to make the point, he turned around and called to Mary, who had remained on the other side of the trees. “You let us know, Captain Mary, if he gives you any more grief, and we’ll come settle the rest o’ this score.” The word Captain being thrown in loud and clear because, as Matey had known all along, giving the title over to her caused Will more pain than bamboo splinters.
Charlotte and Emanuel came running then, having wanted to come before but being held back by Pip, who suspected some violence might be taking place behind the bushes. When Charlotte saw blood on Will’s face, she took him by the hand and insisted he come to the stream where she could wash it away. He went with her, mumbling sulkily as to how a child not his own had more loyalty in her smallest finger than all the others put together.
Mary was not surprised that Will, who had done them all the most grievous harm, should imagine himself to be the one betrayed. He had always been inclined to act on impulse without thought to consequences and, by the time the consequences came home to roost, he had already forgotten that he was the one who had brought them about.
She turned to Pip and said in a low voice, “When Will comes out for exercise each day, see that the children go to him, for it will cheer both him and them. But if he begins to ramble of dark things, bring them away at once, or call me to come get them.”
“I’ll do my best,” Pip promised, and added, somewhat gloomily, “even if Will beats me half to death for interfering.”
“I think Will has done the last beating he’s likely to do of anyone,” Mary said grimly. “For if you and I can’t stop him, it seems that the others will.”
This set a pattern to be followed for all the mornings for the rest of the month. Will would play with the children, teaching them games which Mary did not know, having not had that kind of childhood herself. Pip hung about until Will, supposing this to be an indication that the boy was loyal to him, urged him to join in playing hide and seek or ring around the rosy.
Scrapper and Matey stayed close to Mary, fancying themselves her protectors, which in fact they were as long as Will was on the loose. This self-assigned duty made it unnecessary for them to admit to themselves how much they needed her company.
Around noon, the three men were ordered back to the dungeon. Soon after that Mira arrived with a parcel of food, sent on the sly by Siti. She and Pip stole a few minutes of semi-privacy behind a stand of bamboo, then Mira ran swiftly away to attend to other errands. Mary watched the young babu go, seemingly so free. And yet what woman anywhere was truly free?
Mary climbed a nearby knoll where she could look out across the Timor Sea, sparkling i
n the sunshine. The view of sky and ocean was not so different from the one she had enjoyed back in Botany Bay, or the many she had seen from the deck of the Charlotte. Hundreds of hours she had spent gazing at the horizon, imprisoned in all but spirit. To have come so far, only to find the view so little changed, and freedom not even as close as that distant horizon, came near to breaking her heart.
Painful as that knowledge was, it did not incapacitate her as had the rage which poisoned her mind and rendered her incapable of thought in the first days after her arrest. But now that she had regained the capacity to think, her thoughts were bleak. The scenario offered by Cox—confinement here for an unknown length of time, to be followed by at least six months of imprisonment on the return voyage, then a cell in Newgate until it was decided if she was to be hanged or transported back to Botany Bay—this was her future.
Mary heard a shriek of laughter from Charlotte, and turned around to see the children sitting in the small, ankle-deep stream where they had earlier bathed, flinging handfuls of water at one another. For the second time in as many weeks she wished she had a way of ending their time on earth in this moment of tranquillity, rather than see them endure the agonies which would soon wreak havoc with their little lives.
And then it came to her that this was their life—and hers. Charlotte and Emanuel could laugh because they enjoyed the ignorance of the very young. They could revel in whatever pleasing sensations the moment provided because they had no knowledge of what was to come. She herself could not escape that knowledge, any more than Adam and Eve could.
And was this the knowledge that first couple had been given there in the Garden, she wondered? Knowledge that the same God who created the beauty and bounty of the world had an equal capacity for destruction and cruelty? What could be more cruel than being allowed to know that the future held all manner of suffering, without being permitted to know how it would unfold, and whether one could reasonably expect to survive?
How to survive—that was the question. Even as Mary brooded, she searched for ways and means. Some moments passed before she realised that she was staring at what might be the only survival tool at hand. She must follow her children’s example and revel in every small delight the moment provided. For if one reached a point of being unable to take any pleasure from life, what would keep death at bay? I must search for happiness, she thought. Just as I searched for food when we were starving back in Botany Bay. A scrap here, a scrap there . . . might be enough to keep one alive until the situation improved.