permanent stripes upon 'is back? Be it a coincidence that it be the same number as there is whores on board plus countin' yer good self?'
There was a loud gasp from the surrounding women, and then an excited murmur.
'Shush!' Ann Gower called and waited for the excitement of this new speculation to die down. 'Be it also a coincidence that you was called from the prison to do duty in the 'ospital that very night and that we knows about yer talons o' brass?'
There was a hush as everyone waited for Mary to answer. She was silent for a good while, the beautiful crown resting on her head. Then she looked up and her lovely green eyes seemed to dance with the mischief of her thoughts. 'I can't say as I knows and I can't say as I doesn't know, it be a secret, Ann Gower.' She paused and then gave a little laugh. 'A royal secret what's treason to tell about!'
There was much laughter and banter at this reply and Mary had never felt as loved or wanted. She knew herself to be a leader and now she also knew she had the courage to demand from life more than she had hitherto been given. She looked at the women surrounding her; like them, she was going into a new life and fate would play its hand, but she was different from them too. She would make her own luck, for she had seen the distant shore not as a place of servitude, but as a conquest, a place to be taken with a full heart, where the shadows of the past were leached out by a brighter sun. She would live under a higher sky washed a more brilliant blue, a heaven against which green parrots flashed like emeralds. She could make something of this place. Tomorrow, when the Destiny II sailed the last leg of the voyage up the Derwent River and she went ashore in irons with Ann Gower, she would wear Ikey's Waterloo medallion about her neck. For she knew, whatever happened to her, she would survive, the words 'I shall never surrender' inscribed not only on Ikey's medal, but forever on her heart. They would bring Mary Abacus to a new and astonishing beginning upon the Fatal Shore.
Book Two
Van Diemen's Land
Chapter Nineteen
The Destiny II lay at anchor in the D'Entrecasteaux Channel waiting for the morning tide to take it up river to Hobart Town. They had lain at anchor during the night, for the often shallow and treacherous channel waters, even though they appeared calm under the bright moon, were not to be embarked upon beyond sunset.
The morning was a smoky colour with a thin mist shrouding the surface of the water, and the prisoners, gathered on deck for muster, clasped their arms about their chests against the cold. They had been roused at dawn with the familiar 'Rouse out there! Turn out! Turn out! Huzza huzza!' and the words new to their ears resounded through the boat: 'Goin' ashore, huzza for the shore!' This was the last muster of the voyage and the cold could do nothing to conceal their excitement.
On the starboard side the Black Rocks and the cliffs of Bruny Island appeared most forbidding and their uninviting nature seemed to pervade the leaden-coloured landscape on either side of the ship. But when the sun came up not much past the hour of six, the sky was soon a clean high blue, somewhat darker than the tropical skies they'd grown accustomed to, and colder, a touch of ice in its high dome. The incoming tide was beginning to slap at the stern of the Destiny II when Joshua Smiles, with the ever-present Potbottom at his side, stood to address the female prisoners.
Smiles constantly rubbed his palms down the front of his frock coat, avoiding direct eye contact with any of the prisoners. From his coat he produced a tiny square of paper folded many times upon itself, which he commenced to unfold in a slow and tentative manner, each corner lifted as if he expected the words to leap off the paper and harm him. The women in the front row observing him at this silly task began to giggle. Finally, with the page fully opened, he began to read in a most lugubrious voice.
'I, Joshua Templeton Smiles, surgeon-superintendent of the prisoner ship Destiny II, do on this 18th day of October in the year of our Lord 1827 declare…' He glanced up from the page, his height enabling him to look over the heads of the assembled convicts towards an unseen Hobart thirty miles away. Then he slowly brought his eyes back to the pages held in his fist. '… that with the notable exception of a handful of refractory and turbulent spirits you have behaved well and I have marked your reports accordingly.' He paused again and cleared his throat. 'But for two prisoners who have shown themselves to be profligate wretches and designing blasphemous whores throughout this voyage.' Pleased to have surmounted this last statement he continued more slowly. 'I have therefore made recommendation to His Excellency Colonel Arthur, lieutenant governor of Van Diemen's Land, that with the exception of these two prisoners, you all be placed into service with the families of settlers as soon as this may be conveniently arranged.'
There was a collective gasp and then a swelling murmur of excitement among the female convicts, who had not known what to expect upon arrival but who had, as is usually the case, feared the worst rumours circulated on board during the voyage. Many of the convicts had worked as domestic servants in England and saw this arrangement as ideal, their immediate hope being that they might attract a considerate and kind master.
'Those two prisoners who will not be granted this privilege will be conveyed in light irons to the Female Factory where their vile natures and ardour of their blasphemous utterances might be cooled to a more silent, pleasing and obedient temperature. These two wretches, who Mr Potbottom informs me are well acquainted to you all as trouble makers, will not be granted the privilege of remaining on deck to witness our arrival, nor allowed to be present at the governor's inspection, but will be placed instead in the coal hole as a final gesture of our Christian contempt!'
'I am not mocked saith the Lord,' Potbottom shouted gleefully, 'Mary Habacus and Ann Gower now step you forward at once!'
A flock of bright green parrots flew over the ship calling raucously as though in a mocking welcome. Mary, determined to show no emotion, watched as the rising sun caught the gloss on the wings of the beautiful birds as they drew away from the ship.
She had seen a flock of parrots fly overhead as they sailed out of Rio de Janeiro. Now here they were again. Mary smiled as Ann Gower came up to her. Then she opened her arms and embraced her, the smaller woman holding the much larger one clasped to her thin chest. Mary looked over Ann Gower's shoulder at Joshua Smiles and to her own surprise she heard herself say, 'Hear you, Joshua Smiles, we are the women o' this new land! You cannot defeat us, because we will never again surrender to the sanctimonious tyranny o' your kind!' She paused momentarily and pointed her crooked finger at the surgeon-superintendent. 'Gawd is not mocked!'
It was late into the afternoon when the hatch to the coal hole was opened and Mary and Ann Gower were allowed to emerge onto the deck. Their eyes, grown accustomed to the pitch darkness, were at first blinded by the brightness of the afternoon light.
The Destiny II had anchored late in the morning in Sullivan's Cove and the last of the prisoners were being cleared to disembark. Now as Mary and Ann Gower stood on the deck they observed a town of quite harmonious appearance. Built on the water's edge and rising steeply back from the Government Wharf, Hobart contained many well constructed buildings of stone and brick, and its streets were straight and broad. Several large native trees, saved from the builder's axe, gave the town an appearance of permanence which belied its recent development.
It was then that Mary, her eyes adjusted to the spring sunshine, glanced well beyond the waterfront to where Hobart Town climbed upon an even steeper slope, and saw the mountain. It rose into the ice-blue sky fully four thousand feet above her, its great rounded dome covered in late snow.
Mary gasped, bringing her hand to her chest, her heart pounding. This morning she had seen the parrots fly over her head and now, as in Rio de Janeiro, she had been given the gift of the great mountain. 'It all begins now,
