The Explorers E-Book

Vivian Stuart

• Herausgeber: Jentas Ehf
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Serie: The Australians
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 424

Beschreibung

WITH PASSION AND DARING, THEY SEIZED THE PROMISE OF A NEW LAND... The seventh book in the dramatic and intriguing story about the colonisation of Australia: a country built on blood, passion, and dreams. The upheavels in the new colony are frequent and radical. A governor has recently been fired, a rebel government has been forced to retreat, and a new governor has arrived in Australia. Will this mean redemption for the freed prisoners in the exile colony? The country needs its loyal fighters — and Jenny Hawley and her family certainly belong there in spite of their past. Above all, the new governor needs men of Andrew Hawley and Justin Broome's calibre to be able to transform the country into a thriving, independent nation. Rebels and outcasts, they fled halfway across the earth to settle the harsh Australian wastelands. Decades later — ennobled by love and strengthened by tragedy — they had transformed a wilderness into a fertile land. And themselves into The Australians.

Leseprobe

The Explorers

The Australians 7 – The Explorers

© Vivian Stuart, 1982

© eBook in English: Jentas ehf. 2021

Series: The Australians

Title: The Explorers

Title number: 7

ISBN: 978-9979-64-232-9

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchase.

All contracts and agreements regarding the work, editing, and layout are owned by Jentas ehf.

The Australians

The ExilesThe PrisonersThe SettlersThe NewcomersThe TraitorsThe RebelsThe ExplorersThe TravellersThe AdventurersThe WarriorsThe ColonistsThe PioneersThe Gold SeekersThe OpportunistsThe PatriotsThe PartisansThe Empire BuildersThe Road BuildersThe SeafarersThe MarinersThe NationalistsThe LoyalistsThe ImperialistsThe Expansionists

PROLOGUE

It was hot and airless in the confines of the empty storage cupboard, and dusty, too, now that the kit bags and packing cases had been removed, preparatory to being loaded aboard the waiting transports, which lay at anchor in Yarmouth Roads.

Crouched in the concealing darkness, Jessica India Maclaine heard the rapid thud of booted feet and shouted commands and breathed a small sigh of relief. The storage cupboard was situated beneath the stone staircase leading from the married families’ quarters on the upper floor of Colville Barracks to those occupied by the regiment’s non-commissioned officers on the floor below. Jessica had hidden herself late the previous evening when her stepfather announced that embarkation orders had been received, and she slept there, in desultory fashion, until reveille had sounded soon after dawn.

They would not look for her here, she was certain, and soon, when all the men had mustered on the parade ground outside and the roll call had been taken, his Majesty’s Seventy-third Regiment would march down to the harbor and her ordeal would be over. Like her brother, Murdo, she would be free, with the regiment on its way to New South Wales and her stepfather gone from her life.

She had planned no further ahead than this. Just to escape from the misery of existence under her stepfather’s roof was enough. She must get away from him and from the brutal beatings and never-ending humiliation he constantly heaped on her. If she starved, Jessica thought bitterly, if she had to beg bread in the streets, life could be no worse than he had made it for her.

For her and for Murdo, she reminded herself. Murdo had run away three months ago, before the regiment left Scotland, to be carried on board four Berwick smacks and driven by gale force winds to Gravesend and then to Yarmouth, Isle of Wight, to await the arrival of the transports that would take them across twelve thousand miles of ocean to exile, on the other side of the world.

That was how the whole regiment thought of the unwelcome posting. Even the officers spoke of it thus, as exile. The 73rd had served in India for twenty-five years; they had come home, expecting to fight their country’s battles under Sir Arthur Wellesley in Egypt, Spain, or Portugal, or even, if need be, in the fever-infested West Indies, should the French seek to effect new conquests there.

But going to New South Wales was different. It was a penal colony, and even the knowledge that their commanding officer, Colonel Lachlan Macquarie, was to become Governor and Captain General was of little consolation to proud Highland fighting men dreaming of military glory.

Jessica sighed, remembering the talk she had heard, the angry complaints, the sense of injustice which even the new recruits had felt. She herself, after a childhood spent in India, had not been averse to the prospect of another long voyage, no matter what was at the end of it. She would have gone, willingly enough, with her mother ... but not, O dear God, not with her mother’s second husband! Not with Company Sergeant Major Duncan Campbell, even if her life were to depend upon it.

“Jessie ... Jessie lass, are you there?” The voice was low, scarcely above a whisper, but Jessica recognized it as her mother’s and stirred uneasily. She knew that the regimental families, the wives and children, would be the last to embark, but even so ... She drew in her breath sharply. The men had not yet marched off the parade ground; she could hear the throbbing of the drums in the distance, but the pipes were still silent, and the shouts told her that the calling of the roll was not yet completed.

“India,” her mother persisted, using the name her own father had given her and which Duncan Campbell would never utter, save in mockery. “Open the door, child. I must speak to you.”

“But they’ve not gone, Mam. I dare not. He will be coming back, and—”

“He is coming back, lass. He was taking his belt to me ... I had to tell him where you were.”

There was shame in her mother’s soft highland voice, pity and regret mingled in the admission, and hearing this, Jessica’s dreams of freedom faded. She stretched out her cramped legs and dragged herself to the door of the cupboard. She had placed a wedge against the back of it to prevent it from being opened from the outside, and for a moment she hesitated. But the wedge would withstand only a casual push; it would be no defense against Duncan Campbell’s brute strength, if he came in search of her.

“All right, Mam. Wait, if you please. I will open it.”

She offered no reproach, aware that her mother had not willingly betrayed her hiding place, and when the cupboard door swung open, she was thankful that she had not. Elspeth Campbell stood facing her, swaying a little, her youngest child, Flora, on her hip. She was very pale, her lips swollen, and a livid bruise disfigured the right side of her lovely oval face. She raised her free hand in an attempt to hide the bruise, but it was evident to Jessica that she had suffered a more than usually severe beating.

And it had been on her account, because she had run away. “Did he hurt you badly, Mam?” she asked contritely.

Her mother shrugged, evading the question.

“I was thinking to spare you, lass. If you are coming with me now, we can walk down with the other women and nothing need be said. They are all assembled below, waiting for the word, and I have left Janet with Mrs. Macrae. We can be joining them. He will not touch you whilst we are all together. And once we are on board the ship you will be able to keep out of his way.”

Perhaps she would, Jessica thought, but it would not be easy. The ship would be crowded, the quarters for the ninety wives and eighty-seven children the regiment was permitted to take with it would be spartan and lacking in places to hide. The empty barracks offered more scope.

“I could run from here,” she began. “Upstairs, perhaps—”

“He will search until he finds you, child,” her mother put in wearily. “You know what he is like. And it is a matter of pride with him—he is determined to keep the family together, lest the officers think ill of him. And since Murdo ran away, he is more than ever determined that you shall not.”

Four-year-old Flora, tiring of their low-voiced conversation and her own exclusion from it, set up a plaintive wail.

“Oh, quiet, Flora!” Jessica begged. The little girl was Duncan Campbell’s favorite; he spoiled and indulged her even more than his elder child, the pretty, elfin Janet, and the sound of her weeping was calculated to bring him running, angry and reproving. “Stop crying!”

Flora ignored her pleas as, of late, she was tending to do. “Mam,” she sobbed, “can’t we go to the ship now? Let Jessie stay if she wants to.”

“In a minute, baby,” her mother soothed. She looked at her eldest daughter pityingly, taking in the signs of strain in Jessica’s small, pinched, and tired face, knowing and understanding her longing to escape. But she was barely seventeen; to abandon her, perhaps forever, as she was being compelled to abandon her runaway son, went painfully against the grain. Murdo was a boy, and boys were better able to look after themselves. He would find work; he was strong for his age and well grown, while Jessie, who did not eat enough, was neither. She knew Duncan had no love for Jessie, and certainly no compassion. He was a hard man, there was no denying that, a very different man from the handsome, happy-go-lucky young soldier she had first married, who had enticed her away from her highland croft and with whom she had voyaged to India and lived, in perfect happiness, for almost nine years.

But he had been killed in action at the battle of Seringapatam on May 4, 1799, when the Seventy-third Regiment had been in the forefront of the assault on the supposedly impregnable fortress of the ruler of Mysore, the infamous Tipoo Sultan, and she ... Elspeth Campbell felt the familiar ache in her heart which the memory of him never failed to evoke.

She had been left a widow, with a son of barely five and the pretty, dark-haired little daughter of seven, whom her husband had insisted on calling India. Jessica India ... an absurd name, but one he had delighted in and by which he had always addressed her.

The prize money for the capture of Seringapatam had amounted to over a million pounds, of which, Elspeth recalled, the commander in chief, General Harris, had received one hundred thousand ... sums so vast that they were beyond her comprehension. As a humble corporal, Murdoch Maclaine had been entitled to a mere seven pounds. She had been paid this in gold, together with the few shillings the sale of his kit had raised from his comrades. However, she had soon found herself in financial difficulties. The British Army in India made no provision for widows; they were expected to marry again or eke out a precarious living in other, less respectable ways. If they were young and comely, there was never any lack of suitors, and she ... Elspeth stifled a sigh.

She had still been in her mid-twenties and comely enough in those days, well thought of in the regiment, and there had been a number of offers. She accepted that of Duncan Campbell for many reasons. He was a corporal, as Murdoch had been, but with more ambition, marked out for future promotion, and was known as a man of strong religious principles and of sober habits. He had courted her with ardor, but perhaps what had weighed most with her at the time was the fact that he was in the quartermaster’s store and there was less chance of his going into battle and being killed or wounded. They had wed when the regiment returned to its peacetime quarters in Madras, and—

“Mam, listen!” Jessica’s voice broke into her thoughts, shrill with alarm. “The pipes ... they’ll be moving off!”

So they would, Elspeth’s mind registered as she, too, heard the skirling of the pipes. The regiment, parading for the last time in the glory of tartan and scarlet on British soil, would swing majestically into the rhythm of the march “Hie’land Laddie,” as the drums beat it out and, crossing the parade ground, would start proudly down the hill to the harbor and the waiting ships. Duncan had told her with bitterness that the kilt was not to be worn in the colony of New South Wales, that the 73rd highlanders would be indistinguishable from any other regiment of the line. They would be issued with white duck trousers, like its present garrison.

She should have been there, with the other women, watching them, but ... impatiently, almost angrily, she grasped Jessica’s hand, seeking to pull her forcibly from her hiding place.

“Come, lass, in God’s name! I’ll not leave you here, I cannot, whatever you say.”

“But they’re moving off, Mam,” Jessica protested. “He’ll be with them—he must be. He’ll not look for me now, he’ll not get leave.”

“He will be seeking permission from the adjutant if he has need to,” her mother answered. “If he is not seeing us there. All of us,” she added forcefully. Flora’s round, rosy face deepened in color, she drew a deep breath, screwing up her blue eyes preparatory to emitting another wail, but it was cut short by her mother’s unexpected slap.

“Quiet!” she demanded. “Please be quiet!”

The child obeyed her, and in the sudden silence as the sound of the pipes and drums faded into the distance, there came another sound—that of booted feet on the stone stairway—and Elspeth Campbell whispered urgently,” ‘It is him, India! Out of that cupboard, as quick as you know how, and stand beside me. Your bundle, too ... Oh, lass, reach for your bundle or he’ll not believe you were coming with me!”

Jessica attempted to do as she was bidden, but her long stay in the cupboard had rendered her whole body stiff and leaden, and she was still tugging at the bundle which contained her few possessions when her stepfather came striding into the storeroom, roaring her name.

He was a formidable figure at any time, standing over six feet, with a broad-shouldered, muscular body in line with his height. Now, in full uniform, the tall regimental feather bonnet giving him the stature of a giant, and his gaunt, heavily jowled face suffused with angry color, he scowled, and Jessica shrank from him in terror. Her mother, bravely seeking to come between them, was thrust aside, her despairing “No, Duncan, no!” contemptuously ignored.

“Let the pulin’ wee girl speak for hersel’, woman!” he thundered. “Come on now, Jessie—what have ye to say?”

Sergeant Major Duncan Campbell, unlike the majority of men in the 73rd, was a Lowland Scot, and the harshness of his accent grated unpleasantly, as it always had, on Jessica’s ears. She backed away until, finding the door of the cupboard barred any further retreat, she cowered there speechless, unable to find words with which to defend herself. Her stepfather had a rattan cane in his right hand, she saw, and he was tapping it impatiently against the bare brown knees below his immaculately fitting kilt.

“Weel?” he persisted. “Were ye thinkin’ about hidin’ from us, then? Were ye hopin’ we’d sail without ye? And what, in the name of God, do ye suppose would have befallen ye, if we had? Come on now—speak up! I want the truth, Jessie—and I’ll have it, if I’ve got to beat it out o’ ye!”

She knew he meant exactly what he said and, finding her voice at last, whispered miserably, “Aye, that ... that was what I hoped for. I’m don’t want to come with you.”

“Feyther,” he prompted resentfully. “I’m your feyther an’ don’t ye forget it.”

Jessica bowed her smooth dark head but was silent, refusing to give him the name he had demanded, and her silence unleashed the anger that was burning within him.

“She’s asked for it, dear,” he flung at Elspeth. “And, by God, the damned wee hussy will get what she deserves!”

The cane, in Duncan Campbell’s big, powerful hand, was a cruel weapon, and he used it cruelly, caring little where his blows fell. Flora clung shrieking to her mother, but her cries and Elspeth’s pleas failed to deter him, and it was not until Jessica fell to the floor, her hands covering her face, that the sight of the livid weals which now crisscrossed her arms gave him pause. Breathing hard, he tucked the cane under his own arm and growled, without contrition, ”Twas only what she deserved. Tidy her up and follow me down to the parade ground, the pair o’ ye. I’ll take the baby.”

Flora went to him unwillingly, but his tone changed as he held her to him. “There, there, ma wee hen! Ye’ve naething to be scared of, for your dada loves ye. Ye ken see that Jessie’s been a bad lass and had to be punished. Dry those tears now and ye shall ride on your dada’s back.” He hoisted her onto his broad, scarlet-clad shoulder, and the child’s sobbing obediently ceased. “Make haste now,” he said to Elspeth and bent to pick up Jessica’s discarded bundle. “Is there no’ a shawl in here ye can wrap round her?”

On her knees beside her elder daughter, Elspeth took the bundle from him, careful to avoid his gaze. She extracted the shawl and rose slowly to her feet.

“This will not hide what you have done to her,” she said accusingly. Receiving no answer, she asked, tight-lipped, “Will the families not have gone already?”

Duncan Campbell, on his way to the stairs, turned briefly to shake his head. “I am in charge o’ them. They’ll not move off until I give ‘em leave. But control yersel’, woman. I cannot keep them waiting much longer.”

So he had always had it in mind to come back for poor Jessie, Elspeth thought dully. He must have volunteered to take charge of the families, and probably—since it was not a duty many relished—the adjutant had been glad enough to leave the task to him. Biting hard on her lower lip, she did her best to obey his injunction to tidy up the outward signs of his savage assault on her elder daughter, but the cane had cut deep, and the girl’s face and neck, as well as her arms, continued to bear mute witness to the brutal punishment he had inflicted on her.

“You will be needing to hold this round you, lass,” she said, offering the shawl apologetically. “But once we are on board the ship, I will cleanse these cuts and get some balm for the bruises.”

Jessica, who had taken her punishment with stoic resignation, staring emptily into space, turned with pleading eyes to her mother’s face. She had made virtually no sound as the cane bit into her yielding flesh, but now she burst out tearfully, “On board the ship! Oh, Mam, must I go on board the ship? Can I not stay here—surely he will not come back again, if he has the families in his charge?”

“No, he will not,” Elspeth conceded. “But it will be I who will be blamed if I do not take you with me. And you know what he will do then.”

She knew, from bitter experience; Jessica grasped the shawl and stumbled to her feet, recognizing that her cause was lost. Her mother put an arm around her, and together they descended the stone stairway, their shuffling footsteps echoing from its emptiness.

The women were waiting with the patience they had all learned over the years, their children as docile as they, held by the hand or carried, a few perched on top of the laden handcarts drawn up on the barrack square in front of them. The soldiers detailed to push the cumbersome carts came to attention in obedience to Sergeant Major Campbell’s stentorian command, and the women moved off in a straggling line, Jessie and her mother having to run in order to catch up with them.

No pipes or drums lifted their hearts or gave them a step to which they could keep time—the regiment was long gone, out of sight and hearing—and they shuffled slowly along, only the shrill voices and excited cries of some of the older children giving vent to their feelings.

Morag Macrae relinquished Janet to her own mother’s care and indicated, with a jerk of the head, that Flora had been placed on one of the baggage carts.

“The wean is sleeping,” she said. “And it is as well, for you’ll not be needing to carry her, Elspeth.” She asked no questions as to the reason for their delay, but her shrewd dark eyes ranged swiftly over both of them, and from the pitying tone of her voice, Jessica sensed that she knew—or had worked out for herself—all that was to be known. Her husband was a sergeant, a kindly, elderly man, to whom she had been married for over twelve years, and six of their eight children had died in infancy—two on the voyage home from India. She was pregnant now, but this in no way impaired her energy or detracted from her willingness to help others, and her two surviving children, both boys, took after her.

“Thank you,” Elspeth acknowledged. “We will walk with the cart, in case she wakes up.”

They took their places behind the baggage cart, Janet with her hand in her mother’s and Jessica, with bowed head and the shawl draped round her, following in constrained silence at their heels.

There were two ships tied up alongside the outer quay when they reached it, the men of the regiment still filing up the wooden gangways, with bulging kit bags balanced on their shoulders, and capes and haversacks strapped to their backs.

One of the ships was a naval two-decker, spruce and smart in her black and yellow checker paint. As the last company of soldiers trooped on board in regulation single file, the group of married families, similar in size to their own, moved toward the foot of the gangway.

“Our ship is the Dromedary” Elspeth said to Jessie. “She is an army transport, so that she will be larger than the Hindostan. But it looks as if we shall have a while to wait yet, before we can board her ... that is Number Three Company preparing to embark. Are you all right, Jessie dear? If you are feeling ill, why do you not go and sit upon the baggage cart beside Flora?”

“I am all right, Mam,” Jessica insisted. It had been a long walk and she was dropping with fatigue. The whole of her bruised and tortured body was aching, but to yield to weakness would be to concede defeat, to give her hated stepfather power over her, and that, at whatever the cost, she would not do.

She glanced about, wondering where he was, and then saw him, striding self-importantly along the quayside, to come to a halt beside a small group of officers, his hand raised in an impeccable salute. One of the officers was Captain Henry Antill, who, she had been told, was to be aide-de-camp to the new Governor, Colonel Macquarie.

Antill was one of the regiment’s heroes, having as a young ensign carried the colors into the breach at Seringapatam, and his gallantry was still talked of whenever the battle was a subject of discussion among the older men. He had been kind to her mother after she was widowed, Jessica recalled, and to Murdo and herself as children; but since the regiment’s return to Scotland, he had been on furlough and they had seen little of him.

“Captain Antill is promoted to command of a company,” her mother said, following the direction of her gaze, a pleased smile lighting the habitual gravity of her face. “And it may well be ours, I am thinking, since Major O’Connell is to take command of the regiment after we are landing at Port Jackson.”

“Then Captain Antill will be with us on board the ship?” Jessica suggested. She had shown no interest in such matters hitherto, expecting that they would be no concern of hers, but she found the prospect of Captain Antill’s presence oddly heartening. “On board the—what is it called? The Dromedary, Mam?”

“Yes, indeed,” Elspeth Campbell confirmed. “And the new Governor also, with his lady and their servants. They will embark when we reach Spithead.” She added thoughtfully, her smile fading, “They will be strangers to us, of course, Jessie—Colonel Macquarie has never served with the regiment his own was the Seventy-seventh, but he was at Seringapatam, and they say that he is a good officer and in every respect a highland gentleman. He is from Ulva and related to Maclaine of Lochbuie. His lady—” She broke off. “Ah, now, it would seem that our waiting is nearly over. They are moving, thanks be to heaven! I must waken poor wee Flora. Can you—” She eyed her elder daughter anxiously. “Can you manage both our bundles, if I pick her up?”

“Of course I can, Mam. Do not worry about me.” Jessie held out her hand for the second bundle and did not wince when it was given to her. “I am fine now, I truly am.”

But for all her brave protestations, she came near to fainting long before the slow-moving procession of women and children reached the foot of the Dromedary’s sternmost passageway. Her mother, with the two younger girls, mounted it ahead of her, and as Jessica leaned, against the gangway’s single rail, regaining her breath, Captain Antill came up, with a young ensign and her stepfather in attendance.

He looked at her for a moment without recognition and then exclaimed, smiling, “Why, it is Jessica India Maclaine, is it not? And sorely burdened for one so small and young. Well, we must rectify that.” His beckoning finger brought a soldier in fatigue dress to his side, who relieved Jessica of her bundles. She started shyly to thank him, keeping the shawl draped about her neck and shoulders, and then cold anger filled her, as she heard her stepfather say ingratiatingly, “The lassie is my stepdaughter, sir. Show your respect for Captain Antill, Jessie—where are your manners, girl?”

He wanted her to drop the young captain a curtsy, Jessica knew, and she hesitated, torn between her own natural good manners and her fury at his interference.

Finally Antill himself resolved her quandary for her. He said crisply, “Seriously, Sar’nt Major, can you not see the poor child is exhausted? A puff of wind would blow her over. Come, India, have you forgotten the pick-a-back rides I used to give you in Madras? Arms round my neck now and we’ll negotiate this gangplank together.”

He bent and picked her up, and Jessie clung obediently to him as he carried her up to the Dromedary’s entry port and gently put her down. To the soldier carrying her bundles he said in the same crisp, authoritative tone, “Take her below to the families’ quarters. Her mother is the company Sar’nt major’s wife, Mistress Campbell. Tell her that the girl is—” The shawl had slipped aside, Jessica realized in panic, and Captain Antill’s eyes reflected his horror at what this had revealed. She jerked the garment back into place, the unhappy color rising to suffuse her cheeks.

“Tell Mistress Campbell that the girl is ill,” he ordered, his thin, good-looking face suddenly stern and forbidding. “She will know what is to be done and whether the surgeon should be called.” To Jessica, he added, forcing a tight-lipped smile, “I will see you again, India. A night’s sleep will help you recover.”

The soldier was young, a recruit, judging by his appearance and the bewilderment in his eyes as he looked at her. But hefting both bundles onto his back, he offered Jessica his arm. “Lean on me,” he invited in Gaelic. “We have some ways to what they are calling the orlop deck.”

The families’ quarters were, despite the size of the ship, cramped and overcrowded, lit by lanterns which hung, at intervals, from the overhead deck beams. Wooden bunks, in tiers of three, occupied most of the available space, with scant room to pass between them, and mothers with babes in arms and very small children found themselves allocated only one—or, at most, two—of the bunks.

As the wife of a senior non-commissioned officer, Elspeth Campbell had been given a tier of three, each furnished with a straw mattress and a single blanket, and situated in a recess to one side of the iron, wood-burning cooking stove. A stained curtain, hung on rings from a sagging wooden rail, gave the recess a measure of privacy, but that was all, and Jessica, when her escort left her, found her mother surveying her surroundings with something approaching dismay.

“These are quarters for sixty of us, not ninety,” she asserted. “And listen to the children—it is like Bedlam out there! Or like a transport for convicts ... and they are saying that the men are worse off than we are, with hammocks slung just a few inches apart. In bad weather, it will be unbearable.”

Jessica said nothing. She felt lightheaded and racked with pain, scarcely able to concentrate on what her mother was saying. The concealing shawl fell from her shoulders as, unable to stay any longer on her feet, she slumped down on the lower bunk beside Flora, who, seemingly undisturbed by the shrieks and cries of the other children, slept as deeply as she had on the baggage cart.

Elspeth once again was made aware of the appalling severity of the beating her elder daughter had suffered, and was instantly contrite. She sent Janet to Morag Macrae, with instructions to remain with her until she was sent for, and when the child had gone, she lifted the sleeping Flora onto the upper bunk and went in search of water. Returning with a bowlful and some soothing ointment she had contrived to borrow, Elspeth set expertly to work cleansing and dressing Jessica’s cuts and bruises, clicking her tongue with distress as the full extent of her injuries was revealed.

“He had no right to treat you like this,” she exclaimed indignantly. “And I’ve a mind to report him for it, I truly have. He does not know his own strength.”

“He would never forgive you, if you reported him,” Jessica objected. “And they would do nothing. He would tell them that I had deserved it, and at most, he would be reprimanded. You know what the officers are like, Mam.” Captain Antill was not like the rest, she thought, but even he would not interfere in what would be regarded as a family matter.

Elspeth’s capable fingers were trembling as she wiped the surplus ointment from their tips.

“I have done the best I can,” she said. “But I really should be calling the surgeon to see you.”

“No!” Jessica’s refusal was emphatic. “Please don’t, Mam. I feel better now. Let us keep this between ourselves.”

“Very well,” her mother conceded. She rose from her knees, her thin face obstinately set, the jar of ointment still open. “I’ve a few bruises of my own to heal. But stay where you are, dear lass, and sleep for as long as you can. The weans will all be settled in their bunks soon, and maybe we shall get a little peace.”

The Hindostan and the Dromedary sailed for Spithead next morning, and after a brief delay caused by the Dromedary’s running into a sandbar off Old Castle Point, they dropped anchor some four miles off the town of Portsmouth. There they both remained for a week, with much coming and going between the frigate Hindostan and the shore, but little activity on the part of the Dromedary’s civilian officers.

It was hot and airless in the families’ quarters, the overcrowding a cause for constant complaint. Jessica slept through most of the weary waiting, oblivious to both heat and noise, but gradually her strength returned and her bruises started to fade. A visit from the ship’s master, Captain Pritchard, attended by several of his own and the regiment’s officers, resulted in the rigging of a canvas contraption, supposedly intended to channel fresh air from the upper deck to the depths of the orlop. It did little to disperse the fetid atmosphere or reduce the heat and smoke emanating from the cooking stove, and as their children grew more fractious, the women’s complaints were redoubled.

On May 19, the Dromedary weighed anchor and set course for St. Helen’s, and word spread that the new Governor and his suite would come on board that day, their arrival timed for five o’clock in the afternoon. That morning, the 73rd’s adjutant—flanked by the regimental sergeant major, his orderly room sergeant, and two clerks—made his appearance in the women’s quarters.

“Gather round,” he bade them officiously. “I have an announcement to make that concerns you all. There have been complaints of overcrowding on board this ship, and—” He was interrupted by a chorus of indignant voices, as the mothers reiterated their complaints, shrill with anger.

Coldly, he held up a hand for silence, and when the hubbub ceased, he made his announcement. “Your conditions have been investigated and your objections to them are held to be justified. I am therefore directed by Colonel O’Connell to inform you that we shall transfer thirty of the rank and file to his Majesty’s ship Hindostan. In addition, two officers, fifty other ranks, and forty women and children will be set ashore and given accommodation in Portsmouth, until such time as a convict transport bound for the colony of New South Wales is able to embark them. The names of those of you who will accompany your husbands ashore will be read to you, and the ship’s boats will commence loading in two hours’ tune.”

He motioned to one of the clerks, who cleared his throat nervously and began to read. The first name on the list was that of her mother, and Jessica caught her breath on a sob as she heard it.

“Elspeth Campbell, wife of Company Sergeant Major Duncan Campbell of Number Four Company, and three children ...” His voice droned on, but Jessica was not listening. She seized her mother’s hand in a convulsive grasp and whispered, shaken, “Oh, Mam, Mam! Must we go, with him!”

“I must, with the weans ... you know that. But you ...” Elspeth hesitated, her dark brows knit in a worried pucker. The adjutant was addressing the assembled women again, giving them instructions as to the disposal of their baggage and where they must wait for the boats to take them ashore, and, her frown deepening, Elspeth led her daughter aside. Out of earshot of the rest, she said urgently, “The men will be going first and your stepfather with them. He’ll not be able to come looking for you, Jessie, if you’re wanting to stay on board.”

“I’d need to hide again, Mam,” Jessica whispered uncertainly. “And—” Tears came to ache in her throat, as she visualized the probable consequences if she disobeyed the order to leave the ship. “He will take it out on you, when he finds out I’m not with you. He—”

“That is of no matter, lass,” Elspeth put in sharply. “You’ll be gone, and the ship, too—if you’ve the courage to be going on your own. Mrs. Macrae will be here; she will be watching out for you if I ask her. And it will be to a new land that you’ll be going, with friends, not strangers, for all the women know you well. That is surely to be preferred to what you’d have had to face if you had stayed in Yarmouth, once the regiment had left, is it not? You would have been truly alone then, Jessie.”

That was indeed true, Jessica thought, but she continued to cling to her mother’s hand, the pain and fear of parting coming to torment her anew.

“I’m not wanting to leave you, Mam,” she managed, in a choked voice.

“You were ready to leave me when I found you hiding in the store cupboard,” her mother reminded her. Her fingers tightened about the girl’s small hand. “Besides, it will not be a long parting, dear lass. We shall be following after you as soon as there is a ship. You—” She broke off, as the adjutant and his clerks, their business finished, moved toward the companionway.

Pausing at its foot, the regimental sergeant major, a big man with heavy black whiskers adorning his dark-complexioned face, roared out a reminder that the shore boats would be ready to leave in two hours’ time.

“Be sure that you are ready,” he warned, “for they will not wait. And your husbands will have gone before you.”

“You heard him?” Elspeth questioned.

“Aye, Mam, I heard him,” Jessica acknowledged. Her heart quickened its beat. The voyage to Port Jackson would, she knew, take upward of six months. To be free of her stepfather’s unpleasant company for six months was a tempting prospect. Her teeth closed fiercely over her lower lip, in a vain attempt to still its trembling. “I’ll go and find a place to hide,” she said, “if you are sure, Mam. If you—”

“Hush!” her mother whispered, cutting her short. “He is here. Go, and make a show of packing our things. You may leave me to speak with him.”

Jessica obeyed, but as she watched the tall figure of her stepfather stride purposefully across to where her mother waited, she was seized by panic and had to fight against the instinctive urge to take to her heels and run ... run anywhere, so long as it was away from him. Somehow she controlled herself, her eyes downcast as she thrust shawls and dresses, with the children’s clothes, at random into her mother’s wooden trunk. Small Flora, seated on the lower bunk, watched her in bemused sleepy silence; she had not noticed her father’s arrival, but Janet had and she ran to him eagerly, both arms held out. Duncan Campbell’s expression relaxed; beaming, he swept her off her feet and held her in a warm embrace, the picture of a loving father with his child.

Jessica again lowered her gaze and went on with her packing, filled with bitter resentment, and when he carried Janet back to the bunk, she did not look up, fearing to meet his gaze, lest she betray herself.

He said, an aggressive edge to his voice, “Your mam says you’ve learnt your lesson, Jessie. Be sure you have or there’ll be trouble. I’m awa’ now, wi’ ma men, but see you’re in good time for the shore boat.”

She inclined her head in wordless acquiescence, still careful to avoid his searching eyes and conscious of his mistrust In the presence of the other women and children he dared not strike her, but he put out a hand, gripping her shoulder painfully.

“Did ye hear what I said?” he demanded.

“Yes, I heard,” Jessica mumbled. There was a dress of her mother’s to be folded; she held it up, like a barrier between them, her face hidden behind it.

“Yes, Feyther. Say it, you damned wee wench!”

She said it into the folds of the dress, and he let her go. Thankfully she heard his heavy footsteps receding, and when she let the dress fall, her mother was beside her, white of face and breathless.

“You will be needing to hide yourself well, Jessie,” she warned. “He says he will have a man posted at the entry port, to make sure you leave the ship.”

“I will hide,” Jessica promised, her resolution hardened and her courage returning. “I will hide where no one will think to look for me.”

She had no clear idea of where she would find her hiding place, her concealment; the families had only twice been permitted access to the open deck since sailing from Yarmouth, and she had stumbled up in the wake of a mob of excited children, paying little attention to the decks they passed on their way. But, she recalled, one of the corporal’s wives had pointed enviously to a row of white-painted wooden doors, two decks above the orlop, which occupied most of the stern part of the ship, and made some remark about officers’ cabins and the differences between the accommodations they enjoyed and those of the married families.

If she was careful, she could probably find them again, and ... Jessica drew a quick, uneven breath. If she took refuge in Captain Antill’s cabin, he would surely not force her to go ashore. He had seen what her stepfather had done to her, and if she told him her reasons and threw herself on his mercy, he would listen to her at least. Although, there was a risk—he was an officer and he had his duty. It would be safer, perhaps, to find an empty cabin, if she could. And ...

Her mother, busy completing the repacking of their wooden trunk, gestured to her to assist with its closure.

“They will be coming to lift the heavy baggage soon. We must be ready.” The trunk shut, and Elspeth sat back on her heels, brushing the perspiration from her heated face with a relieved sigh. “That is the worst of it—the rest will not be taking us long. I have been thinking that the best plan will be for you to come with the three of us to the entry port, Jessie, so that you can answer when the roll is called ... and so that the soldier posted there will see you. Then you may go and hide when his back is turned. Once the last boat has gone, you will be safe.” She added, with a mirthless little smile, “Remember to leave your own bundle here, for you will be needing it. And we will say our farewells here, before they call us.”

When the order came for them to assemble at the entry port some two hours later, Jessica went with the rest, and her escape, after the roll had been called, proved a good deal easier than she had anticipated. A brief, surreptitious squeeze of her mother’s hand and she slipped away, seemingly unnoticed in the confusion, as the forty women and children, with their baggage, were transferred to the waiting boats.

No one challenged her when she tiptoed up the deserted companionway to the deck above and found herself facing the two rows of white-painted cabin doors that had been her objective. All were closed, and the first four cabins, whose doors she opened warily, bore obvious signs of occupation.

The fifth was empty, devoid of personal belongings and evidently prepared for a single passenger, and after a swift glance up and down the passageway to ensure that she was unobserved, Jessica entered and closed the door behind her, her heart pounding. Gradually it resumed its normal steady beat and she looked about her, noticing for the first time that the cabin possessed a porthole, through which it was possible to look down on the entry port. Her small face pressed against the glass, she watched three boats, in turn, pull away from the ship’s side, each with a cargo of despondent women and excited children, and the tears came, bitter and anguished, when she recognized her mother, with Flora on her knee.

Then they were gone, swallowed up in the blue haze of sea and sky, but she did not move, fearful of discovery should her footsteps be heard by the legitimate occupant of one of the neighboring cabins, for only a thin wooden screen separated one from the other. But no one came to dispute her occupancy of this one, and some time later— she had no idea how much later—she saw two of the boats return, piled high with baggage. The new Governor’s, Jessica decided, and that of his suite, for there were leather, brass-bound trunks of superior quality, hatboxes, uniform cases. And ... had not her mother said that Colonel Macquarie and his lady would board the ship at Spithead? The third boat brought more baggage; then all three were hauled inboard and a barge was lowered, manned by seamen in uniform striped vests and white duck trousers, with two officers seated in the sternsheets. The boat for the Governor ... with so much gilding on it, it could be nothing else, and despite her increasing weariness, Jessica watched eagerly for its return.

It came at last, heralded by the firing of a signal gun and the pounding of running feet on the deck planks above her head, followed by shouted orders and the grounding of arms—a guard of honor, she thought, accustomed to military ceremonial and able to visualize the scene taking place on the quarterdeck. Pressing closer to the glass of the porthole, she was able to make out the slightly stooping figure of an officer with graying hair, dressed in a gold-laced scarlet coat and with a field officer’s cocked hat balanced on his knee, its plumes ruffled by the rising offshore breeze.

That must be Colonel Macquarie, Governor-designate of the colony of New South Wales, Jessica told herself, peering down at the approaching barge, and less impressed by his appearance than she had supposed she would be. Seated on either side of him were two ladies, both muffled in dark cloaks. The one who looked to be the elder was, perhaps, in her early forties, with a round, smiling face and some wisps of coppery hair escaping from the confines of a severely practical bonnet, which was tied firmly beneath her chin.

The younger—only a few years older than herself, Jessica judged—was slim and pretty, wearing a bonnet that, by comparison with her companion’s, was in the height of fashion. There was another gentleman, in civilian dress, but his face was turned away, and all she could see that was of interest to her was that he sported a very elaborate brocaded waistcoat and wore his hair powdered and tied in a long queue.

The barge came alongside, cut off partially from her line of vision by the bulging curve of the ship’s side, and she stepped back, as the high-pitched shrilling of naval pipes told her that the new Governor must have stepped on board. It was then that she yielded to sudden panic, reminded of the precariousness of her own situation. The cabin in which she had taken refuge was a small one, prepared for a single occupant, who, clearly, had not yet come to claim possession of it. But it was on the officers’ cabin deck and there would be little doubt that the owner—a staff officer, perhaps, or a valet or lady’s maid in the Governor’s service—would shortly put in an unwelcome appearance and order her removal.

Worse still, he or she might question her and, having done so, might report her to the adjutant or the orderly room sergeant and ... Jessica’s heart plummeted. There might still be time to send her ashore, for the ship had not yet weighed anchor. She moved to the door of the cabin, careful to make no sound as she opened it. From the quarterdeck came a chorus of resounding cheers, as the men of the regiment welcomed their new commander, and she heard the skirl of highland pipes, playing a tune she recognized as “The Red-Tartaned Army.” These compliments to the new arrivals would give her a little time, she thought, but would it be sufficient to enable her to return unobserved to the orlop deck? And if she did manage to return there, could she be sure that none of the women would report her? There were always one or two who, out of malice were bent on making trouble, even for their own kind, but ...

Biting her lip, Jessica pulled the door fully open. There was no one to be seen in the dimly lit passageway, and she had little choice but to risk swift and instant flight, back to the orlop. Discovery here would have worse consequences by far. She gathered up her skirts and ran, only to be brought abruptly to a halt by a tall, scarlet-clad figure which, turning into the passageway from its far end, now blocked her escape.

She stood, wide-eyed with fear, looking up into the stern, unsmiling face of Captain Antill. Recognizing her, this time without hesitation, his expression relaxed.

“Jessica India! Well, damn, I thought you had gone ashore with the sar’nt major!”

She stared up at him in mute despair. Then, finding her tongue at last, she said, in a faltering whisper, “I could not ... go with him, sir. I could not.”

“No,” he conceded gently, “perhaps you could not.” His fair brows met in a pensive frown. Finally, as if coming almost reluctantly to a decision, he opened the door of the cabin beside which he had been standing and gestured her to go inside.

“This is my cabin, child. You may stay here until we weigh anchor, which will be within the hour. Hush now”— he cut short her stammered thanks—“for both our sakes. I have not set eyes on you, and before heaven, I do not see you now! But I trust I can count on you to go back to your own quarters once we are under way?”

Having to fight back tears of gratitude, Jessica gave him her promise.

The young captain paused at the door, suddenly smiling. “I will do what I can do for you, India. Mrs. Macquarie is needing a second maid—if I were to recommend you to her, would you be willing to serve her?”

The tears came then and Jessica could not prevent them. “I would, sir,” she sobbed. “Indeed I would!”

Next morning, with the Dromedary and the frigate Hindostan butting their way through a Channel gale, she entered the service of the lady with the copper-colored hair and the unfashionable bonnet and scarcely knew how to count her good fortune.

After an uneventful voyage of more than two months, the ships came to anchor on August 6, 1809, at Rio de Janeiro, where they were joined by the transport Anne. Mrs. Macquarie’s personal maid, Mary Jones, gave notice and was put ashore—in order, it was widely believed, to join a soldier of the 73rd who had deserted soon after the Dromedary made port.

Jessica, invited to take her place, did so gladly and found herself, with strange irony, the legitimate occupant of the cabin in which, two months earlier, she had sought to hide from officialdom.

It was in Rio that she heard the first mention of the deposed Governor of New South Wales and of the military rebellion that had apparently taken place there. Brushing her mistress’s lovely, glowing hair, in preparation for an official attendance at the Opera House at the invitation of the Prince Regent of Portugal, she listened to Mrs. Macquarie’s account of two visitors to the ship who had called that morning, ostensibly to pay their respects to the new Governor.

“The frail, white-haired gentleman was Dr. Jamieson, late surgeon general of the colony. And his stout companion is also a surgeon—Dr. John Harris—who showed us sketches of the splendid house he owns in Sydney. They are an odd pair, seemingly wealthy and engaged in trade here ... and both, on their own admission, took part in the rebellion against the late Governor, which was led by the military commandant, Major Johnston.” Elizabeth Macquarie paused, her smooth brow pensively creased. Jessica went on brushing and her mistress continued, speaking more to herself than to her attentive but silent listener.