After twenty minutes of walking barelegged up the muddy-bottomed brook he came to its first tributary, which led down from heights to the northeast. An amphitheatrical dell stuffed with tree ferns and plantains tempted him, but it was still too close to Arthur’s Vale, so he continued up the main course, which bent and wove its way through more tree ferns, palms and plantains until it branched again at the base of a flat expanse he thought the ages had deposited there during heavy rains. The western fork, which he followed first, was too short. The southwestern branch was clearly the principal source of the water in Arthur’s Vale, running deep and strong from somewhere up a fairly steep cleft. Wading on, he climbed higher and higher until, almost at the top of a crest, he found the spring gushing out between mossy, lichen-covered rocks smothered in ferns of more kinds than he had known existed—frilly, feathered, fluffed, fishtailed.
Squinting at the sun, sliding down the sky, he gained his perspective and entered the pine forest of the crest, which he soon discovered was quite flat and broad. To his amazement, he emerged not long afterward on the Queensborough road not very far from the track which led off its opposite side down to the distillery. Ah, that was interesting! Richard was visited with an idea. He went back to the spring and stood looking down the cleft. Not far below the spring on the western slope was a shelf wide enough and deep enough to hold a good big house and a few fruit trees; the ground beneath would serve as a vegetable garden.
His next stop was Stephen Donovan, who had frittered away the hours since he had left Kitty by playing chess against himself.
“Why,” he asked when Richard came through the door, “does my right hand win every game?”
“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.”
