either capital punishment or five hundred lashes. He cannot afford to ignore this first infringement of his Law Martial.”
Very dark in the failing light, Stephen’s eyes turned to Richard, sitting coiled as tensely as a steel spring. “I hear that ye had a visit from the Major early today?”
Richard smiled wryly. “Major Ross’s ears belong to a bat. How or from whom I cannot hazard a guess, but he heard what went on last night at the bonfire. Well, ye know him. Waited until I went home for breakfast, barged in, sat himself down and looked at me very much as he might have inspected a new sort of grub. ‘I hear that ye publicly repudiated your wife,’ he said. I answered with a yes and he grunted. Then he said, ‘Not what I might have expected from ye, Morgan, but I daresay ye have your reasons, ye usually do.’ ”
Stephen chuckled. “He really does have a way with words!”
“He then proceeded to ask me if I thought my wife would make a suitable housekeeper for an officer! I told him she was clean, tidy, an excellent mender and darner of clothes, a good cook, and-as far as I knew-a virgin. Whereupon he slapped his hands on his knees and stood up. ‘Does she like children?’ he asked. I said I thought so, judging from her behavior with the children in Gloucester Gaol. ‘And ye’re sure she is not a temptress?’ he asked. I said I was absolutely positive about that. ‘Then she will suit me down to the ground,’ he said, and marched out looking as pleased as the cat that got to the cream.”
Stephen doubled up with laughter. “I swear, Richard,” he said when he was able, “that ye cannot put a foot wrong with Major Ross. For some reason quite beyond me he likes you enormously.”
“He likes me, “ said Richard, “because I am not a bit afraid of him and I tell him the truth, not what I think he wants to hear. Which is why he will never esteem Tommy Crowder the way King did. When I stood up to King he had half a mind to flog me, whereas I have never needed to stand up to Major Ross.”
“King is an English King,” said Stephen rather tangentially, “not an Irish King. The Celt in him is pure Cornish, far more akin to the Welsh. Which means he is touchy and moody. And Royal Navy down to his marrow. Ross is your classical Scotchman with but one mood-dour. His roots lie in a cold, bleak land that either makes or breaks.” He rose to his feet and held out his hand to help Richard up. “I am glad that he has solved the problem of what was going to happen to your repudiated wife.”
“Well, ye told me not to marry her,” said Richard with a sigh. “Had I known she was here I would have been prepared, but it was a bolt from the blue. My eyes were on Will Connelly when suddenly she was hanging around my neck smothering me in wet kisses. I-I smelled her and felt her, Stephen. She was far too close to see. As long as I have known her there have been other smells, and none of them nice. Port Jackson stank, just as the old castle stank. But the rank smell of woman in my nostrils-I have been alone too long, and things smell sweet away from the sawpits and Sydney Town. ’Tis not that she actually stinks, she does not, only that I could not bear how she smelled. My reasons are not very reasonable, even to myself, and God knows I am not proud of what I did. All I was conscious of at the time was revulsion-as if I had walked after dark straight into a spider’s web. My gut reacted, I struck out blindly. And after that it was too late to mend any of my fences, so I tore them out of the ground.”
“I can understand,” said Stephen gently. “What I do not begin to understand is how ye could have forgotten she was likely to be here with the rest.”
“Nor do I, looking back on it.”
“My fault too. I should have said something.”
“Ye were too busy with Sirius and the consequences. But there is another thing torments me-she was ashore for days and she knew I was here-why did she wait?”
They had reached Stephen’s house; he slipped inside without answering, then watched through the window as Richard’s torch went away up the vale and winked from sight. Why did she wait, Richard? Because in her heart of hearts she knew that were she to approach you in private, you would do what you ended in doing anyway-rejecting her. Or perhaps, being a woman, she longed for you to seek her out and claim her. Poor Lizzie Lock… He has been entirely alone for six months up there in his solitary house with only his dog for company, and he is very content. I do not know what goes on in his mind, except that until fairly recently he had put his emotions to sleep like a bear through winter. His marriage to Lizzie was a thing done in that sleep, from which I think he did not expect to awaken. Then suddenly he did-I saw him do it.
Time was getting on. Stephen looked at his watch, pressed his lips together and debated about whether he was hungry enough to bother heating broth to go with his bread supper. Captain John Hunter was in residence at Government House, and Johnny-oh, well. Heat the soup, Stephen, it is chill enough for a fire.
“All I want,” said Richard, erupting into the room as Stephen blew on the reluctant flames, “is to be left alone with my books and my dog! To have a meed of privacy!”
“Then what are ye doing here?” Stephen asked, sitting back on his heels. “The meed of privacy is up yon vale.”
“Aye, but-but-” said Richard, floundering.
“Why not simply admit to yourself, Richard,” Stephen said, in no mood to put up with megrims, “that ye’s consumed with guilt over what ye did-all right,
“Oh, don’t fucken preach!” Richard snapped. “Your trouble is that ye’re never sure whether to be a Catholic or a Protestant anything, let alone martyr! Why not simply admit to yourself that ye’re lovesick for Johnny and want to wallop Hunter?”
Blue eyes blazed at eyes gone absolutely grey for a full minute; neither man moved a muscle. Then both mouths started to quiver at the same instant; they howled with laughter.
“It clears the air,” Stephen said, mopping his face on a rag.
“Aye, that it does,” gasped Richard, borrowing it.
“Ye’d better eat Johnny’s share of the soup now that ye’re here-why did ye come back?”
“I think because you didn’t answer my question, to which I no longer require an answer. Ye’re right, Stephen. Lizzie is something I have to suffer through, including not liking myself.”
John Lawrell moved in, and moved out again so quickly that the poor fellow’s weak head spun; Richard had a comfortable hut up for him within a month, erected at the far end of his little acre with its door and window apertures facing away from his own house. If Lawrell snored after that, Richard was too far away to hear. With regard to his duties he proved excellent, but he had one flaw: he loved to play card games and had to be restrained from gambling away his scant rations.
Sydney Town was mushrooming into veritable streets of small wooden huts, banged together by Nat Lucas and his carpenters as fast as Richard’s sawpits could feed him planks and beams. With neither the time nor the equipment to put a shiplap or dovetail on the boards to join them in a finished way, thin battens were nailed down the gaps-a style not unattractive if, like the interior of Richard’s house, the wood was sanded to a dull polish. Government House, enlarged by King to a size permitting him to entertain half a dozen dinner guests in better days, finally sported sheet glass in its small-paned windows, courtesy of Governor Phillip. Every other residence, including those commodious enough to satisfy the naval and marine officers, had to make do with shutters or naked apertures. One pit was put to sawing the basis for creating shingles; all the roofs would eventually be shingled, though the timber had first to be seasoned in sea-water for six weeks before it could be split. This meant temporary roofs of flax thatch; the task of venturing far and wide in search of flax was handed over to Sirius’s sailors, whom Ross flatly refused to let do nothing.
Liberated from the need to supply Port Jackson with lime, at least for the present, the deposits of calcarenite stone were worked for foundations and chimneys. Having found a good local hardwood the shingle sawpit also cut, the four coopers the island now possessed began to make barrels. Ross had set women to grinding King’s crop of wheat in hand querns, deeming barrels of flour safer from rats than loose grain. Aaron Davis, who had ended in working as a baker at Port Jackson, was appointed community baker. Not that bread was something the community saw every day; Sundays and Wednesdays were bread, Mondays and Thursdays were rice, Saturdays were pease, and Tuesdays and Fridays a porridge of Indian corn mixed with oatmeal.
Eyeing his rapidly proliferating swine, Ross built a small hearth and furnace and started producing salt. What parts of the beast not suitable for salting down were minced and became sausages sheathed in intestine.
“The best thing about a pig,” Major Ross was heard to say, “is that the only inedible part of it is the oink.” As he was known to possess absolutely no sense of humor, the general assumption was that he had spoken
