The Penny Heart (19 page)

Peg judged the Chicken Pie to be satisfactory, if old-fashioned, the braised chicken flavoured with nutmeg, fresh peas and cream. The Croxons had liked it, too, and most of it had disappeared. Nan would certainly be staying on. That would leave Peg free to make only sweet confections, jellies, and cakes. She had not lost her touch, for the pudding bowls had returned downstairs all but licked clean. She had kept back a second dish for herself, and dug her spoon into syrupy gooseberries inside claggy suet pudding. All she needed was gumption to keep the Croxons sweet. Gumption and a pinch of high-flying trickery.

Leaving the clearing up to the others, she took a stroll outside to clear her head of smoke. Reaching an open glade in the woods, she sat down on a hollow trunk with a satisfied sigh. From inside her pocket she pulled out a short pipe of pale stuff with a brownish tinge, like the stub of a penny whistle. Raising it to her lips, she blew softly against the top until a high unearthly note made the grass, the leaves, and the dusk-heavy air vibrate. Artfully, she stopped the three small holes with her fingertips in an unhurried sequence, casting a mournful phrase into the air. The tone was more husky than a flute’s; it was off-key and haunting, a summoning call quite at odds with the gentle English glade. The chirruping birds fell silent. The hairs on the back of her neck rose like startled feathers.

*

After those eight starveling months, they had finally got to New South Wales – the biggest, most frightening prison in the world. No walls – only the deadly forever of empty bush land; no iron bars – only hundreds of leagues of ocean. It was the end of the earth, the end of all hope. And Botany Bay had lacked those botanical meadows so vaunted by Captain Codswallop Cook. The governor had no choice but to sail on. To everyone’s astonishment, the five ships then floated into the biggest and bluest bay they had ever seen. As quiet as the grave it was, as they tacked around the rocky shore; so quiet you could hear the hawsers creaking and the hiss and lap of the waves. The women leaned over the rail, trying to catch the breeze, for the air was as hot as a fiery furnace. Mary spotted some green parrots fluttering from branch to branch, and was just wondering if they would make good eating when a racket broke out ahead of them. A mob of natives were hopping about and shouting something none of them could understand. Buck-naked they were, and black-skinned, with pointy spears and round shields.

‘Don’t reckon they’ll want our visiting cards,’ she said to Janey, who was standing beside her. Instinctively both of them stood back from the rail, glad of the hundred feet between them and the ends of the savages’ spears.

‘It’s our lot I’m more feared of,’ said Janey. Though still tall and graceful, she looked ashen and scabby in the sunshine. Lice moved in her hair, making Mary’s own scalp itch. ‘We’ve only been sent for one reason,’ Janey ventured, ‘and that’s to stop the menfolk from buggering each other to death.’

There were more than one thousand itchy-loined male convicts to two hundred women. She looked around for Jack Pierce and gave him a hopeful smile. It would be a test for the lad. She meant to stick to him like a limpet. The governor favoured easily-herded sheep types, and as a reward, those who married might build their own huts and live apart. So she and Jack had given the reverend their names, and she was primed to turn an honest woman. She and Jack would play a couple of go-alongers for a while – until she decided otherwise.

It was days later that they were allowed to land at a ramshackle camp of tents and hovels set up by the men. Everything was alive; the mosquitoes buzzed in your eyes, the biting ants crawled up your legs. The place had an eye-squinting blaze to it, and smelled of parched tobacco. The women were led to airless tents and guarded by redcoats as if they were prize money. That first afternoon they sat playing chuck-penny, or wagering the knucklebones fished out of their broth. They could hear the men hard at it, hammering huts together and banging and cursing around the place. She looked around the tent and wondered what the night would bring. Outside, everything shone so hard the air trembled.

At first there had been the usual military bells, tootling of fifes, beating of drums. A few convict pals called around, and she hung about the entrance, looking for Jack. When he finally braved the redcoats, he told her a curfew had been ordered. Pulling her close, he whispered, ‘Take care tonight, love. There’s talk of some of the bad ’uns going off on the rampage.’

Sure enough, they could see lags straggling in groups along the beach. Some had found a supply of grog, and were yelling like young blades out on the town. The marines didn’t look to be on duty any more; the women’s guards were dallying with a gang of fast girls.

She wiped her sweating brow against the canvas. ‘P’raps I should hide over there, in the bush.’ She pointed at a thick stand of trees.

‘Stay with the others, eh? I ’ave to cut it now,’ Jack looked more hot and mithered than she’d ever seen him.

When the bell rang out from the men’s camp, she found it hard to let go of his hand. Perhaps she was turning into that posset-soft girl she was personating, after all. Once Jack had traipsed off, she eyed the clump of trees one last time.

Back inside the tent it was crowded and airless. Janey was touching up a paunchy fellow – no doubt a new pimp who would protect her. There was no one else to talk to; all her pals were in another tent. She dragged her bit of blanket into a corner, scratched her bites, and let the heat creep over her until she fell asleep.

She was woken by a hot wind that snapped the canvas hard against the ropes. Scarily fast, the tent was stranded in soot-black darkness. With a whoosh, the rain hit the tent, and started up a needling roar. The first blinder of lightning made them all jump like rabbits. A moment later thunder cracked like a giant whip, and then grumbled and rumbled on. Each time it sparked the women cursed and gasped in the darkness. Water trickled from the tent seams. Four men burst into the tent, pretended refugees from the storm.

‘Don’t you be afeared o’ the storm, pet. We’ll take care of you.’ A pock-faced ruffian sat down on the end of her blanket, trapping her legs. His eyes gorged on her rump, like he was starving and she was some fancy dish. He offered her a swig from his bottle, but she wouldn’t take it. His skinny friend circled, watching her too. When she pretended to sleep, she heard them muttering. The sound of rutting had started up from the back of the tent: knocking, grunting, whimpering. Her mind was as empty as a beggar’s purse. Where were the damned redcoats when you needed them? Across the way a few crazy loons ran out into the rain; she could hear them hollering and singing to the storm, as drunk as kings. The camp was fomenting fast. The cribbage-face started to grope beneath her skirts with powerful hands. She shouted, but her voice was lost in the hubbub of the storm. With a violent yank she sprang free and legged it for the canvas door. Outside, she pelted through bucketing rain towards where she thought the trees were, dismayed to find her feet sinking in a quagmire. She wheeled about, unable to see her way. If she carried on along the beach, might she not find Jack? Or at least a couple of redcoats? After fifty paces, she had no notion where she was. Rain filled her eyes and weighted her clothes. She stopped, and tried to get her bearings. She was standing calf-deep in mire. The next white sizzle of lightning lit a group of men standing barely twenty paces away, hearkening to her presence. With a lurch of her guts, she knew they had seen her. She tried to sink down, to disappear into the mud, but at the next flickering flash they were barely an arm’s length away. She had no notion where the women’s camp was, nor where Jack was, nor the trees, nor God Himself in His cowardly crib of a heaven.

She thought she would die; suffocated by mud, drowned in a pool of muck. After the first desperate struggle, terror unbuckled her limbs, and she played dead. One man, two men, three, then four – she didn’t count. It went on for an infernal age. Her body was wrenched and grabbed and shoved and burst apart. Senseless with horror she was ground into slushy sand, her centre red raw. All of her spirit was being snuffed away. So this was Sydney Cove, the end of the earth, the end of her life, where her bones were being fucked into an unmarked grave.

When the sun stung her eyes she was sorry to find herself alive. Jack was crouching over her, his face out of kilter from the shock of it. ‘Who did this?’ She couldn’t speak. Her mouth was sticky with swallowed sand and men’s filth. She felt as brown and stiff as an insect struggling to open its broken wings. ‘I’ll get you to the hospital tent,’ Jack said.

He had carried her in his arms like a child, stroking her matted hair. And very slowly, like a timid wild creature, she had moved towards him, sinking her head against his chest. The truth was, love had ambushed her that day, just when she wasn’t looking. Jack was a purer creature than any other man she’d known; it wasn’t just some line he was spinning.

*

The pipe cast up its summoning tune. Through half-closed eyes, the trees were the same sheltering giants as those she had once camped beneath, in a place like paradise. There was the same smell of crushed leaves and wet soil, the breeze peppered with the scent of woodsmoke and the quickening chill of twilight. She felt suddenly younger and more vital, as if casting off a caul of troubles. The heat of the sun burned on her cheeks again.

Jack Pierce stood before her, wearing ragged breeches, his blue coat hanging open across his naked chest, half its brass buttons gone. The phantom Jack smiled down at her, showing his crooked dog’s teeth, his eyes gold-flecked and smiling. She drank in his features, and every inch of his marvellous being. He opened his mouth to tell her something – some foolishness that would make them both laugh, and then fall into each other’s arms. But she couldn’t stop herself reaching out to him. The flute tumbled to the ground.

In a twinkling he had vanished. No loving smile, no brass buttons – just a hushed and empty glade. Yet still she felt something – the sun burning on her face, the secret graze on her soul of Jack having stood right before her.

‘
Haere, e taku hoa
,’ she chanted, and the old lingo was like sweet fruit on her lips. ‘Go, oh my friend,’ she whispered. Standing up, she turned to leave. At the edge of the glade she stopped, facing the silhouette of the Hall, standing black-gabled and curlicued against the damson sky. Its bulk recalled the prison where she had first sunk into despair, and the Bailey where she had been sentenced; both of them full of stony men, with unjust power over the likes of her. It’s always the Devil dancing beneath the judge’s wig, Aunt Charlotte had said, and so she had found it. Like a Catholic reaching for a rosary, she felt in her bodice and found the Penny Heart. The outlines of the words were rough to her fingertips: ‘
I swear on this heart to find you one day . . .
’

Though the music of the pipe had left her as soft as a moonstruck girl, the Penny Heart could always be relied upon to fortify her. Tonight it felt as hard and heavy as a convict’s deadweight, those hunks of iron that kept a body tethered to a few miserable feet of earth. Eyeing the Hall, bitterness ran soot-black through her veins. These people with their landed estates knew nothing of the punch-gut of starvation. Damn their eyes, their one-sided laws and their righteous airs, their always getting what they wanted. She wished on them a hundred times her own pain. She wished on them a dose of her own corroding hurt, like the acid that had long since scarred her own steely heart.

13

Delafosse Hall

September 1792

~ Cherry Trifle ~

Put macaroons and dry cherries in a dish; pour over as much white wine as they will drink. Take a quart of cream and put in as much sugar as will make it sweet. Put your cream into a pot, mill it to a strong froth, lay as much froth upon a sieve as will fill the trifle dish. Put the remainder of your cream in a pan with a stick of cinnamon, the yolks of four eggs well beaten and sugar to your taste. Set them over a gentle fire, stir it one way till it is thick, and pour it upon your macaroons. When it is cold put upon it your frothed cream. Lay upon it sweetmeats, comfits and flowers as you have them.

Mother Eve’s Secrets

Like a polite acquaintance, Michael stayed just beyond my reach. That first night at the George he sat beside me, praising the roast beef and claret, the quick servants, and the roaring fire. ‘The currant tart is excellent here – is it not, Grace?’ He ate heartily, his eyes half-closed with pleasure.