Command

Black and dour, the spreading hopelessness bore down on him, at times with such weight that he had found it necessary to turn to the wall so she would not see the tears coursing. Long days of trying to draw on his pitiful resources of strength, scrabbling for the will to live, to go on.

And after the endless hours of depression came realism, his past life stripped of its vanities and dalliances, foolish notions, pretences; he could see himself as he had never done before and despised the revelation—one born with the immense advantages of privilege, including an education of the first order and opportunities of travel, and what had he done with it?

His sea experience on the lower deck had been a self-imposed exile for the expiation of what he considered a family sin.

As a result of his father's enforcement of enclosure of common lands, a young tenant farmer had committed suicide in despair. Renzi should not have gone on to the quarterdeck—that had been an indulgence. Could he return to his ancestral home to resume as eldest son? He had dealt with that question at the walls of Acre when he decided to disavow his father. There was nothing more to be said. And what of his King's commission? This was avoiding the issue. He had none of the fire and ambition of sea officers like Kydd; for Renzi the sea was an agreeable diversion—and therefore a waste.

What was left? There was nothing he could point to as his own achievement. For the world, it was as if he had never been.

It had been a cruel insight to be thrust on him at his lowest ebb but if he was to live with himself it had to be faced. Most importantly, he recognised that his feelings for Cecilia had deepened and flowered and there was now little doubt that he would never love another as he did her. But his detachment, logic, which before had served so well to control and divert the power of his emotions, now turned on him and exacted a price. If he cared for Cecilia to such a degree, was it honourable to expect her to join herself to one with neither achievements to his name nor any prospects?

It was not. Obedience to logic was the only course for a rational man and therefore he would act upon it. He would remove himself from Cecilia's life for her sake. But logic also said that, should he, in the fullness of time, find himself able to point to a notable achievement wrought by himself alone, then he might approach her—if she was still in a position to hear him.

In the long hours that he had lain awake he had made his plans. As soon as his strength allowed he would silently withdraw from her kindnesses and make his own way as a settler in the raw new world of Terra Australis. By his own wits and hard labours he would carve out a farming estate from the untouched wilderness, create an Arcadia where none had been before, truly an achievement to be proud of. And then . . . Cecilia.

The colonial government was generous to the free settler. It seemed that not only would the land be provided for nothing but that convict labour would be assigned to him, indeed tools, grain and other necessaries to any who was sincere in their wish to settle on the land. Admittedly he knew little of tillage but had seen much of the way the tenant farmers of Eskdale Hall had gone about their seasonal round. As a precaution, however, he had invested heavily in books on the art of farming, including the latest from Coke of Holkham whose methods were fast becoming legendary. Even the passage out was provided for; and thus he had carefully severed all connections with his old life and committed wholeheartedly to the new, boarding Totnes Castle in Deptford—to be confronted by, of all those from his past, Thomas Kydd.

He had resolved to cut all ties to his previous existence until he was in a position to return with his noble mission accomplished: Kydd was of that past and both logically and practically he should withdraw from his company as part of his resolve.

It had been hard, especially when he had seen what the voyage was costing his friend, but then he had witnessed Kydd lever himself above the sordid details and, by force of will, impose his own order on the situation. Now they must go their separate ways, find their own destinies at the opposite ends of the earth.

The coast firmed out of blue-grey anonymity: dark woods, stern headlands—not a single sign that man was present on the unknown continent. Conversations stilled as they neared; the land dipped lower until it revealed a widening inlet.

'Botany Bay, lads,' one of the seamen called. It was a name to conjure with, but no ship had called there with prisoners since the early days. Their final destination was a dozen miles north. Totnes Castle lay to the south-easterly and within hours had made landfall at the majestic entrance to a harbour, Port Jackson.

A tiny piece of colour fluttered from the southern headland; as they watched, it dipped and rose again. They shortened sail, then hove to safely offshore. The pilot was not long in slashing out to sea in his cutter.

Renzi watched as he climbed aboard; thin and rangy and with a well-worn coat, he looked around with interest as he talked with Kydd, and soon Totnes Castle was under way again for the last miles of her immense voyage.

They passed between the spectacular headlands into a huge expanse of water stretching away miles into the distance. The first captain to see it had sworn that it could take a thousand ships-of-the-line with ease.

Helm over, they continued to pass bays and promontories, beaches and rearing bluffs. Densely forested, there was no indication of civilisation—this was a raw, new land indeed and Renzi watched their progress sombrely.

Quite suddenly there were signs: an island with plots of greenery, a clearing ashore, smoke spiralling up beyond a point—and scattered houses, a road, and then, where the sound narrowed, a township. Substantial buildings, one or two small vessels at anchor, a bridge across a small muddy river and evidence of shipbuilding. And, after long months at sea, the reek of land. Powerful, distinctive and utterly alien, there were scents of livestock and turned earth overlain by a bitter, resinous fragrance carried on the smoke of innumerable fires.

After a journey of fourteen thousand miles, the torrid heat of the doldrums and the heaving cold wastes of the Southern Ocean, across three oceans and far into the other half of the world, Totnes Castle's anchors plunged down and at last she came to her rest.

'Please y'self then—an' remember we don't change after, like.'

'No, no—I understand,' Renzi replied. The boorish Land Registry clerk sat back and waited.

It was unfair. Renzi was being asked to make a decision on the spot affecting the rest of his life: which of the government blocks of land on offer would he accept as his grant? But then he realised that more time to choose would probably not help, because many of the names were meaningless. Illawarra? Prospect Hill? Toongabbie? He had turned down land along the Hawkesbury river in Broken Bay—it was apparently isolated and miles away up the coast—but he had read that expansion was taking place into the interior beyond the Parramatta River.

'Where might I select that takes me beyond the headwaters of the Parramatta?' he asked.