Norfolk Island had begun in terror too; terror over and done with only if she did not offend Richard Morgan and Stephen Donovan, both of whom reminded her a little of Mr. Nicol, Lady Juliana’s steward, innately compassionate. Richard, she had sensed already, owned more power than Stephen. Both had said they were free men, both were supervisors. Yet it was Richard intimidated her, Stephen who drew her. And though she had no inkling of what her fate was to be—how this place worked or who made it work—somehow she knew that the decisions about her rested with Richard rather than with Stephen.
The trees overwhelmed her, she could see no beauty in them. Heaving a big sigh, she set her bare feet upon the path to the house, matted with scaly tails that felt crisp, more uncomfortable than hurtful. As she emerged from the pines she saw Richard working at building something on the far side of his garden, the dog cavorting around him; clad only in a pair of canvas trowsers, mortaring a row of stones set into the ground. His arms and shoulders were massive, the smooth brown skin of his back moved like a river. Her experience of partially naked men was minimal; Captain Aitken had insisted his seamen wear shirts, no matter how hot or becalmed the air was. A godfearing man, Aitken, who had cared for his female prisoners with Christian impartiality, though too sensible a man to forbid his crew—or himself—access to the cargo. Listening to the brasher and bawdier women had acquainted her with male anatomy; they gleefully discussed the attributes and amorous talents of their lovers and despised the Catherine Clarks and Annie Bryants as missish mice. The London Newgate she had blotted from her memory, her disgrace too recent then to have banished shock and fright. She had simply huddled in a corner and hidden her face, fed only because Betty Riley had brought her food and water. In Port Jackson came her first sight of men stripped to the waist, some of them with terribly scarred backs. And though Richard Morgan had been shirtless last night, she had not noticed him because of Stephen.
The sight of Richard now awed her without arousing any tender or feminine yearnings; what she saw reinforced her impression that he was a man to be respected and obeyed. He was also old. Not in the least wrinkled or crabbed, just—old. On the inside rather than on the outside. His outside she thought very strong, very handsome, very graceful. But she had seen Stephen Donovan first, and could see no further.
Stephen. He was like a dream—very strong, very handsome, very graceful—and also youthful, carefree, brilliant of eye and smile, appreciative of the feminine attention he attracted. After landing her, he had bantered saucily with some of the more forward women, yet managed to turn their hints and open remarks aside without offending them. It never occurred to Kitty that these knowing women took one look at him and knew him for what he was, for she had no idea that some folk liked their own sex. A Church of England workhouse in Canterbury, cradle of the Church of England, did not teach the facts of life. It preferred to badger and beat good work habits into its children, use them to best effect while they were young enough, then send them out to find a living as meanly paid servants obsessed with their own worthlessness and utterly ignorant of what went on in the big wide world. Illiterate, innumerate, insignificant. Of course Kitty had heard words like Rome mort and Miss Molly in both her prisons, but they held no meaning for her and went right over her head. That some of the folk who liked their own sex were women, and that they had lived alongside her in Lady Juliana, had also not sunk in.
Stephen, Stephen, Stephen. . . . Oh, why had he not been the one to find her? Why was it not his house sheltered her? And what did Richard want of her?
Richard straightened and pulled on a shirt. “Was the bath very bad?” he asked, letting her precede him through the door, his eyes, had she only possessed the courage to look, twinkling.
“No, sir, it was very pleasant.”
“Richard. Ye must call me plain Richard.”
“It goes against the grain,” she said. “You are old enough to be my father.”
For the first time she experienced a quality in Richard she was to find over and over again; no alteration in expression of the face, no inappropriate movement of hands or body, no change in his eyes, yet something was happening, some kind of mysterious, invisible reaction.
“I am indeed old enough to be your father, but I am plain Richard nonetheless. We do not keep up appearances here, we have more important things to occupy us. I am not one of your gaolers, Kitty. I am a free man, yes, but until recently I was a convict just like you. Only good work and good fortune pardoned me.” He sat her down at the table and gave her corn bread, lettuce and cress to eat, water to drink.
“Was Stephen a convict too?” she mumbled, ravenous.
“Nay, never. Stephen is a master mariner.”
“Have you been friends for long?”
“For at least one span of eternity.” Tucking his shirt into his trowsers, he sat down and ran his finger through his cropped hair rather nervously. “D’ye know why ye were sent here?”
“What is there to know?” she asked, bewildered. “I will be set to work until I serve out my sentence. At least, that is what the judge said at my trial. No one has mentioned it since.”
“Have ye not wondered why you and two hundred other women were put on board a ship and sent seventeen thousand miles to serve out your sentences? Does that not seem strange, to send ye to a place devoid of workhouses and factories?”
In the act of reaching for another piece of bread, her hand fell limply into her lap; her eyes widened, revealing that they were only partially William Henry’s eyes—his had been set in with a sooty thumb, hers with a crystal one. “Of course,” she said slowly. “Of course. Oh, how idiotic I am! Except that I was so sick, and before that, so shocked and confused. There are no workhouses or factories at the far ends of the earth. No gentlemen’s waistcoats to embroider. . . . That is what I did at the Canterbury workhouse. You mean that we have been sent here as wives for the convicts?”
His lips set. “ ’Tis more honest to say that ye’ve been sent here as conveniences. I do not pretend to know the official reasons why this experiment had been put into practice, save that a great many men have been removed from England who might otherwise have become a population to be reckoned with. Mutinies have happened, men with nothing to lose have escaped into the English countryside. Whereas at the far ends of the earth it matters not to England if men mutiny or escape. They do not threaten England. The only folk who have to be protected are their gaolers and their gaolers’ wives, children.” He paused to fix her gaze. “Men without women sink to the level of beasts. Therefore women are a necessary part of the great experiment, which is to turn the far ends of the earth into a vast English prison. Or so I have come to believe.”
Frowning, she listened to this and tried to assimilate it: he was saying that the only reason she had been transported was to be a pacifier of men. “We are your whores,” she said. “Is that why Lady Juliana’s crew called us whores? I thought it was because they thought we had all been convicted of prostitution, and I wondered at that. Most of us were convicted of stealing, or having stolen goods, or attacking someone with a knife. It is not a crime to be a prostitute, some of the women insisted—they used to grow angry when they were called whores. But what the sailors meant was that we were future whores. Is that it?”
He rolled his eyes at the ceiling, sighed. “Well,” he said finally, smiling at her wryly, “if my daughter were alive, she would be about your age. Just as ignorant—as a good father I would have made sure of that. What are your circumstances, Kitty? Who were your parents?”
