Morgan’s Run (91 page)

“Because ye’re right-handed?” Richard asked, subsiding into a chair with a deep sigh.

“Ye look more like a man who has been trying to walk on water than one making love.”

“I have not been making love, I have been trying to walk on water. And I have an idea.”

“Pray enlighten me.”

“We both know that Joe McCaldren wants land on the way to Queensborough, yet not that far out. And we both know that what Joe McCaldren really wants is to sell his land the moment it is surveyed and deeded to him. Not so?”

“Absolutely so. Have a glass of port and continue.”

“Would ye do me a very great favor by surveying McCaldren’s land next? I know the ideal piece to give him,” said Richard, accepting the wine.

“Ye want to get Kitty away before the next convicts come, of course. But have ye the money to buy sixty acres, Richard? Joe McCaldren will ask ten shillings the acre,” said Stephen, frowning.

“I have at least thirty pounds in notes of hand, but he will want coin of the realm. Besides, I do not need or want sixty acres, which are too many for one man to farm. Is it true, what ye told me, that every sixty-acre lot will make contact with a stream of water?”

“Aye, so I have suggested to the Major, who agrees.”

“Does the Major object to a sixty-acre portion’s being split up after it is deeded?”

“Once the sixty acres are handed over, Richard, the Major would not care if they flew away with the Mt. Pitt birds. But he also intends to give ten- and twelve-acre grants to those convicts like yourself who have been pardoned or emancipated. Why not save your money and get your land for nothing?”

“Two reasons. The first is that the free settlers have to be served first. That is going to take a year, a year in which we all expect to see well over a thousand people here. Some of the new convicts will be men His Excellency deems too depraved to be safely held in Port Jackson. The second is that when our grants do come to pass, they will be side by side. The nature of the streams here will dictate that each block be long and narrow, and all the houses must be built close to the water—in a row. Yes, separated by many yards, yet still in a row. I do not want to live like that, Stephen. So I want my twelve acres to be surrounded by sixty-acre blocks and I want my house on a run of water no one else will be close to.”

“Morgan’s run.”

“Exactly.
Morgan’s
run. I have found the place. It is the main tributary of Arthur’s Vale stream and it arises from a strong spring at the top of a narrow valley. Above it lies the flat land which abuts onto the Queensborough road in the same region as the track to the Major’s distillery. A mere thirty-minute walk from Sydney Town, which will please McCaldren, and on good water. But I want the survey to take in both sides of the stream, because the best place to build is on the western slope. If ye make the block to the west of McCaldren’s another sixty-acre one, ’twill extend to water courses flowing west through Queensborough itself.”

Stephen stared at Richard in complete admiration. “Ye’ve solved all your problems, haven’t ye?” He shrugged, slapped his hands on his knees. “Well, I am going in that direction, having proceeded from the Cascade side. There I alternated sixty-acre lots with twenty-acre ones—big lot, hard land, small lot, easy land—which evens out the selling price, ye may say. At the moment I am up to James Proctor and Peter Hibbs. Not so far away. So I will proceed to the Queensborough road and start moving from it northward until I get back to Proctor and Hibbs. And I will make sure that I enclose Morgan’s Run within McCaldren’s sixty in such a way that ye have the head of the stream all to yourself.”

“Just twelve acres of it, Stephen, that is enough. Up the valley on both sides and through to the Queensborough road. What McCaldren does with the other forty-eight acres I care not,” said Richard with a grin. “However, if ye make my block more of a square, the rest of the piece could connect to my stream well below me. I can pay as much as twenty-five pounds in gold.”

“Let me lend ye the price of all sixty in gold, Richard.”

“Nay, it is not possible.”

“Between brothers anything is possible.”

“We shall see” was as far as Richard was prepared to go. He put the wine glass on the counter and bent to pick up Tobias, mewing around his feet with heartbreaking plaintiveness. “Ye’re a fraud, Tobias. Ye sound like the saddest orphan in the world, but I happen to know that ye live like a king.”

“Have a good night!” Stephen called after him, then scooped up the cat. “You and I, pussykins, are about to dine off Mt. Pitt bird. Why is it that dogs and cats are happy to eat the same thing each and every day of their lives, while we humans grow sated and sick after a week of monotony?”

Night had
come creeping into the vale as Richard walked up the path, MacTavish rushing to greet him with somersaults of joy. The dog would much rather have spent his time with Richard, but was resigned to the fact that Richard expected him to guard Kitty, who luckily loved all animals save what she called the “dross”—her vocabulary’s more unusual words were either biblical or the result of gaol and Lady Juliana.

He stepped into the house to find Kitty at the counter, apparently able to see sufficiently in the dimness to prepare a meal. Though he had told her that she might, she never would use one of his precious candles for her own purposes. Smiling, she turned her head; he crossed the room to kiss her lips as if she had been his wife forever.

“I am for a bath,” he said, and disappeared again.

It seemed to take a long time; when he returned he looked at the stove. “Is there still hot water?”

“Of course.”

“Good. ’Tis easier to shave.”

She watched him with interest as he plied the ivory-handled razor quickly, deftly. But then, she had never seen him make a clumsy or unsure movement. Such beautiful hands, male yet graceful; they inspired confidence. “I do not understand,” she said, “how you can shave without a mirror. You never cut yourself.”

“Long years of practice,” he mumbled, mouth contorted. “In warm water with a bit of soap, easy. On Alexander I shaved dry.”

Finished, he rinsed the razor, folded it and laid it in its case before washing and drying his face. That done, he looked aimless, glanced at the fire and decided that it needed a part-burned log pushing back. No, it was still dangerous; he added a log as a prop, stood back, adjusted it. He lifted the lid of the spouted kettle, seemed disappointed that it did not need more water, walked over to his books, just about invisible.

“Richard,” she said gently, “if you are truly trying to find something to do, we can eat. That will fill in a few more minutes while you summon your courage to start giving me children.”

His eyes flew to hers, astonished, then he threw back his head and laughed until the tears came. “No, wife.” His tone growled down to a caress. “Suddenly I am not hungry for food.”

She smiled at him sidelong and walked through her door. “Do close the shutters,” she said as she went. Her voice floated back out of the darkness. “And put MacTavish out for the night.”

They will always, thought Richard, lead us when they want to. Ours is an illusion of power. Theirs is as old as creation.

His clothes
he left behind him, halting inside her room until he could see shadows within shadows, the vague outline of her upon the bed, sitting bolt upright.

“No, not where I cannot see you. In the firelight, and as God made you. Come,” he said, holding out his hand.

The rustle as she shed her night shift, the feel of warm and trusting fingers. He took her back and left her standing near the hearth to pluck the straw mattress from his bed, then threw it on the floor between them and looked at her. So beautiful! Like Venus, made for love. And it would be naked skin from the beginning, he wanted this to bear no resemblance to clothed convulsive couplings on the flags of the London Newgate. Sacred, an act dedicated to God, Who had made it possible. This is what we suffer for, one divine spark that turns the blackness of the pit to the brilliance of the sun. In this is true immortality. In this we fly free.

So he folded her into his arms and let her feel the satin of skin, the play of muscle, the strength and the tenderness, all the love for which he had found no outlet in years upon years. And she seemed in their wordless mingling to sense the timeless pattern of it, to know how and where and why. Always why. If he hurt her, it was only for a moment, after which there was no tomorrow, no more than her and this for all eternity. Pour forth your love, Richard Morgan, hold nothing back! Give her everything that you are and do not count the cost. That is the only reason for love, and she, my gift from God, knows and feels and accepts my pain.

“P
eg,” faid Richard, for once in a mood to volunteer
emotional information, “was first love. Annemarie Latour was purely sex. Kitty is last love.”

Eyes twinkling, Stephen contemplated him, wondering how he had managed to turn what ought to be infatuation into what would undoubtedly be an enduring passion. Or is it perhaps that he has gone so far for so long that whatever he feels is magnified a thousandfold?

“Ye’re living proof of the fact that there’s no fool like an old fool. But ye’re wrong about one thing, Richard. Kitty is love
and
sex rolled up in the same parcel. For you, at any rate. For myself—I used to think that sex was—well, if not the most important, certainly the most urgent, the one I had to satisfy. But ye’ve taught me a great many things, one of which is the art of going without sex.” He grinned. “As long, that is, that no one absolutely delectable comes along. Then I am all to pieces. But it passes, and so does he.”

“Like every man, ye need both.”

“I have both. Just not rolled up in the same parcel. Which, I have come to realize, suits me very well. I certainly do not repine,” he said with genuine cheerfulness, jumping up. “Out of my stint on Norfolk Island I am going to get a commission in the Royal Navy, I am determined upon it. Then I will strut around a quarterdeck in my white, gold and Navy blue with a spyglass tucked under my arm and forty-four guns at my command.”

They had paused for a drink of water and a brief rest from digging the foundations of Richard’s new house. Joseph McCaldren had been granted his 60 acres and happily parted with the best 12 of them for the sum of £24; he drove a hard bargain. Then D’arcy Wentworth bought the other 48 acres as well as a part of Elias Bishop’s 60 acres at Queensborough. Major Ross had endorsed the transfer of deeds with great good will.

“I am very pleased ye’ll occupy McCaldren’s land,” he said to Richard. “Ye’ll have it cleared and under cultivation in no time, and that is what the island needs. More wheat, more Indian corn.”

There were only four lots in Norfolk Island which incorporated both sides of a stream in them; they immediately became known as “runs,” prefixed by the name of the owner. Which gave Norfolk Island four new landmarks to add to Sydney Town, Phillipsburgh, Cascade and Queensborough: Drummond’s Run, Phillimore’s Run, Proctor’s Run and Morgan’s Run.

Unfortunately the sawpits left Richard little time to get on with building his new house. Barracks had to be constructed in Sydney Town and reasonable huts for the New South Wales Corps at the place the Sirius seamen had occupied; a proper gaol had to be finished, more civilian officials’ houses—Major Ross’s list seemed endless. Nat Lucas, who had over fifty carpenters toiling under his command, was frantic.

“I cannot guarantee the quality of the work anymore,” he said to Richard over Sunday dinner in Richard’s domain at the head of the vale. “Some of the buildings are downright shoddy, hammered together without thought or care, and I cannot divide myself into enough of me to keep an eye on Queensborough, Phillipsburgh
and
all the rest. I run, run, run, Lieutenant Clark yapping at my heels about the western settlement, Captain Hill rudely poking my shoulder because the New South Wales Corps huts are leaky, or drafty, or—truly, Richard, I am at my wits’ end.”

“Ye can do no more than ye’re able to, Nat. Has the Major himself complained?”

“Nay, he is too great a realist.” Nat looked a little worried. “I heard this morning that Lieutenant Clark had been deputed to take divine service because the Major is not well. Not well at all, according to Lizzie Lock.” None of Richard’s close friends ever called the Major’s housekeeper “Mrs. Richard Morgan.”

The food had been delicious. Kitty had killed two fat ducks and roasted them in her big oven-kettle with potatoes, pumpkins and onions around them; she had taken Olivia and the twins outside to look at Augusta and her rapidly growing female offspring, soon either to be killed and sold to the Stores or sent with their mother to a different Government boar. Thank God Richard had built a large sty!

“When your foundations are in, Richard,” said Nat, changing the subject, “George and I have organized a working bee for two weekends in a row to put up your house, and I have secured the Major’s permission to absent ourselves from Sunday service. That way, with any luck ye’ll be able to move from here before the next transport arrives. ’Twill be rudimentary but livable, and ye can continue with the finishing unaided. Have ye enough timber?”

“Aye, from my own land. I put a sawpit on it and Billy Wigfall, God bless him, saws with me. Harry Humphreys and Sam Hussey turn up on some Saturdays, while Joey Long debarks the logs. I thought I may as well start clearing my own land rather than use trees from other locations.”

He is, thought Nat, a very happy man, and I am so glad for him. When Olivia told me that he was keeping Kitty as a friend—oh, and he was so much in love with her!—I prayed that the girl would grow some sense and see her luck. Olivia insists that most women swoon away at the mere sight of him, but women are very queer cattle. To me, he appears a fine-looking man who happens to be a decent man. I am even more pleased that Kitty is no minx.

The women came inside laughing and talking rather feverishly, Kitty holding baby William with such a glow in her eyes that Nat blinked, wondering why he had ever considered her plain. Little Mary and Sarah remained outside to play with an utterly bewildered MacTavish; whether he looked to his left or to his right, he saw an identical child.

“I am very fond of all your friends and their wives, Richard, but I confess I like the Lucases best,” said Kitty after they had gone, coming to stand behind his chair and draw his head against her belly. Eyes closed, he rested there contentedly.

Her world had opened up beyond imagination, in so many different directions. That first night of love had been a dazzling dream; she called it so because dreams to her were far nicer than life. In dreams, magical and impossible things happened, like farmhouses in Faversham surrounded by flower gardens. Yet the night had been a reality that continued into the following night, and all the nights thereafter. The hands she had thought beautiful to look at had moved upon her body with the cool smoothness of silk velvet.

“Why are your hands not hard and calloused?” she had asked at some moment, stretching and flexing under their rhythmic caress.

“Because I am a master gunsmith by craft, so I value them. Every corn and scar destroys a part of the sensitivity a gunsmith cannot work without. I wrap them in rags whenever I cannot find gloves,” he had explained.

And that had answered one of her questions. The trouble was that the majority of them he refused to answer, like what sort of life had he lived in Bristol? What were the details of his conviction? How many wives had he had? Did he have living children in Bristol? How had the daughter who would be her age die? His reply was always a smile, after which he would turn her queries aside firmly but kindly. So she had ceased to plague him. If and when he was ready to tell her, he would. Perhaps he was never going to be ready.

Oh, how he could make love! Though she had listened to literally hundreds of conversations between women about the sexual importunities of men, the nuisance it was to have to oblige them, Kitty looked forward to her nights. They were the greatest pleasure she had ever known. If she felt him reach for her in the early hours she turned to him in delight, roused by a kiss on her breast, his mouth against the side of her neck. Nor was she a passive recipient; Kitty adored learning how to rouse and please him.

But she did not believe that she was in love with him. Yes, she loved him;
that
was true. His immense age, she had concluded, served only to make him a better lover, a better companion. Yet simply looking at him did not arouse desire in her, nor did her heart flutter, her breath vanish. Only when he touched her or she touched him did the warmth and want begin. Every day he would tell her as naturally and spontaneously as a child that he loved her, that she was the beginning and the end of his world. And she would pay attention, flattered that he said such gratifying things, body and soul unmoved.

Today, however,
was special. For once she initiated a demonstration of affection by cradling his head against her.

“Richard?” she asked, gazing down at his cropped dark hair and wishing that he would grow it; it had the potential to curl.

“Mmmmm?”

“I am with child.”

At first he stilled absolutely, then looked up at her with a face transfigured by joy. Leaping to his feet, he whirled her off the ground and kissed her and kissed her. “Oh, Kitty! My love, my angel!” The exaltation faded, he looked afraid. “Ye’re sure?”

“Olivia says I have fallen, though I was already sure.”

“When?

“Late February or early March, we think. Olivia says that you quickened me at once, just like Nat. She says that means we will be fruitful, that there will be as many children as we wish.”

He took her hand and kissed it reverently. “Ye’re well?”

“Very, all considered. I have had no courses since you took me. I am a little sick sometimes, but nothing like being at sea.”

“Are ye pleased, Kitty? It is very soon.”

“Oh, Richard, it is a dream! I am”—she found a new word—“ecstatic. Truly ecstatic! My own baby!”

On Monday
morning Richard heard through the grapevine that Major Robert Ross was gravely ill. On Tuesday morning he was summoned by Private Bailey to wait upon the Major at once.

Ross had been put upstairs in the large room he usually used as a study because one floor up insulated him from importunate visitors. When Richard followed Mrs. Richard Morgan—very anxious and subdued—up the stairs and entered the room, he was shocked. The Major’s face was greyer than his eyes, sunken glazed into black sockets; he lay as rigid as a board with his arms by his sides, their hands curiously expectant.

“Sir?”

“Morgan? Good. Stand where I can see ye. Mrs. Morgan, ye can go. Surgeon Callam will be here soon,” Ross said steadily.

Suddenly his body spasmed dreadfully and his lips drew back in a rictus from his teeth; fight though he did to remain silent, he emitted a groan that Richard knew in any other man would have emerged a scream. He suffered through the bout, groaning, hands clenched into the counterpane like claws; this was what they had expected, must be ready for. Richard waited quietly, understanding that Ross wanted neither sympathy nor assistance. Finally his agony retreated to leave his face drenched in sweat.

“Better for a while,” he said then. “’Tis a kidney stone, Callam says. Wentworth agrees. Considen and Jamison disagree.”

“I would believe Callam and Wentworth, sir.”

“Aye, I do. Jamison could not castrate a cat and Considen is a wonder at drawing teeth.”

“Do not waste your energies, sir. What can I do?”

“Be aware that I may die. Callam is giving me something he says relaxes the tube between kidney and bladder in the hope that I may pass the stone. To do so is my only salvation.”

“I will pray for ye, sir,” said Richard, meaning it.

“’Twill help more than Callam’s medicaments, I suspect.”

Another spasm came on, was endured.

“If I die before a ship comes,” he said when it was over, “this place will be in parlous condition. Captain Hill is a fucken fool and Ralph Clark is mentally about the same age as my son. Faddy is a simpleton as well as a child. War will break out between my marines and the soldiers of the New South Wales Corps, with every felon villain from Francis to Peck enlisting with Hill. It will be a bloodbath, which is why I intend to pass this fucken stone no matter what. No matter what.”

“Ye’ll pass it, sir. The stone does not exist can break
you,
” said Richard with a smile. “Is there anything else I can do?”

“Aye. I have already seen Mr. Donovan and some others, and authorized the issue of muskets. Ye’ll be given one too, Morgan. At least the marine muskets fire, thanks to ye. The New South Wales Corps take no care of their weapons and I have not volunteered your services to Hill. Keep in touch with Donovan—and do not trust Andrew Hume, who has sided with Hill and participates in his felonies. Hume is a fraud, Morgan, he knows no more about flax processing than I do, but he sits there in Phillipsburgh like a spider fancying that between himself and Hill, they control half of this island.”

“Concentrate upon passing your stone, sir. We will not let Hill and his New South Wales Corps take over.”

“Oh, here it comes again! Go, Morgan, and stay wide awake.”

Mind whirling, Richard stood outside on the landing trying to visualize Norfolk Island without Major Ross. It was boiling already, thanks to marine private Henry Wright. Wright had been caught in the act of raping Elizabeth Gregory, a ten-year-old Queensborough girl. To make matters worse, this was Wright’s second offense; he had been sentenced to death in Port Jackson two years earlier for raping a nine-year-old girl, but His Excellency had reprieved him on the condition that he spend the rest of his life at Norfolk Island. Thereby transferring his problem to Major Ross. Wright’s wife and toddling daughter had come with him, but in the aftermath of Elizabeth Gregory the wife had petitioned to take her daughter back to Port Jackson on the next ship. Ross had agreed. He had sentenced Wright to run the gauntlet three times: first at Sydney Town, then at Queensborough, and then at Phillipsburgh. The Sydney Town gauntlet had happened the very day Major Ross fell ill; stripped to breeches, Wright had been made to run between two lines of people from all walks, thirsting for his blood and armed with hoes, hatchets, cudgels, whips.