Dream Time (historical): Book I (4 page)

§ CHAPTER FOUR §

All sorts of occupations were represented at the government farm—butchers, brass founders, hatters, grocers, needlemakers, hairdressers, curriers, and jockeys. Most of the trades cloaked professional thieves. Sane of the men, however, had been sentenced to death for as little as stealing a fish and had escaped the gallows by the mercy of transportation.

If that was mercy.

One of the convicts not a professional thief was Jimmy Underwood. Only fifteen, he had worked in a shipyard for two years until the night watchman had caught him stealing lumber for firewood one bitterly cold winter. Or, at least, that was Jimmy’s story.

Nan would have heeded him no more than she did the other men on the prison farm, except Jimmy somehow managed to get a knife and carve a bark cradle for her.

Her eyes had narrowed on the youth. “Why?”

His big ears had turned the color of his red-orange
hair. He had hunched his bony shoulders and stared at the sunbaked earth. “Ye remind me of me older sister, ye do. She was big with a babe like yerself.” The bony shoulders shrugged. “But something went wrong. Lots of bleeding. The doctor wouldn’t come . . . and she and the babe didn’t make it.”

Nan steeled herself against feeling pity. Soft hearts didn’t make it. Ever. She had only to look at the convicts who occupied the hut that she and Pulykara kept. The men were like the walking dead. Their skins were burnt to a raw brown and stretched over their knobby bones. Like marbles, their eyes stared lifelessly from bony sockets. Welts from the overseer’s whip tattooed their flesh.

Nan had to give thanks that her life was easier in comparison to that of Jimmy and the others. Her duty was to keep the hut clean and provide food for the men. When they returned each day, they were so weary that they never troubled her or Pulykara. They simply ate the broth and bread and fell asleep upon the floor, while she lay awake, feeling the thing stirring inside her, feeding off of her, draining her.

Sometimes she thought about escape, but Jimmy’s terse tales of what waited in the forest deterred her. “The wood that I used to make the cradle, I found it near the outskirts of the millet field. Smithy, the arsehole overseer wasn’t paying any attention, so I walked a little farther. Saw a large stand of sandalwood near an inky dark billabong.”

Jimmy’s light blue eyes glittered, and she realized he felt about woodcarving as she did about writing.

“Sandalwood is marvelous for carving jewelry boxes and canes, and I couldn’t help meself.
I crept closer to take me a look. Just then, whomp! Jaws missed me by the span of me finger!”

Jimmy’s big ears twitched with just the thought. ‘You don’t want to be food for a croc. They’ll poke you beneath a log and let you rot, ’cause they can’t chew too well. When you’ve ripened enough, they’ll tear a chunk off. Crocs are the bloody nightmares of this Dream Time land.”

Dream Time land. A name Nan was to hear often, especially from Pulykara. Something about the aborigine’s explanation for the beginning of life and its continuation into the future.

“There is places called Dreaming sites, baby. Them places still have power and energy of the Dream Time.”

Pulykara, Nan discovered, limped due to mistreatment by, not an overseer, but her husband. Because of her limp, she was spared work in the fields with the rest of the women convicts.

“For what were you found guilty?” Nan asked.

Pulykara gazed at her steadily. “For killing my husband. He was the master’s dog man. While my husband slept, I drove a bamboo shoot through his ugly heart.”

Nan’s scalp tingled. The ferocity that glinted momentarily behind Pulykara’s dark eyes reminded Nan how close the woman was to savagery.

Three times a week, an officer came to the government farm. His was a cursory duty: to inspect the supply room, the storage barns, and the prisoners and their living quarters.

In regard to Nan, h
is interest was more than cursory. That first time she sensed his stare, she had been washing convicts’ clothing in a large kettle. Bending over it, she had felt a hitch in her back, prompted by her mounded stomach and her bulky body’s uncomfortable position. She had paused to stretch—and caught him looking before he quickly turned away. She had thought nothing of it.

The next time, when she had fetched water pails, she had noticed him watching her from the veranda of the main building. The officer had stayed in the veranda’s shadows, but she had felt him watching her, nonetheless.

He was there again today, observing her as she made her way to the kitchen larder. The clerk on duty, a beefy man, marked in a ledger supplies issued to each hut. So bedraggled was she, so unkempt and homely and large with child, that he never once looked at her. Not really looked at her.

The officer did. As he approached her on the veranda steps, she noted first his stripes. A captain, he was. She shifted the heavy burlap bag of potatoes to her other hip. Why would he be interested in her? Then she saw his eyes. Clearly saw the pity there.

“Can I help you?” His hand was on the railing, his arm blocking her descent.

Although he was a step below her, they were of the same height. She stared directly into his eyes. “Now why would you be wanting to help me, Captain?”

He blushed. She was surprised by this reaction, and her writer’s curiosity got the better of her antipathy toward males. She studied him and realized he wasn’t unattractive: tall, lanky, with ruddy cheeks and wayward brown hair. Hazel eyes fringed by stubby, curling lashes peered back at her.

“You don’t seem like the others.” Shyness made his voice rusty.

“Oh? Do I seem to possess more than the dumb intelligence of animals? That’s how we’re treated by the likes of you, you know. Like dumb animals. Beasts of burden.”

His fingers rubbed the wooden railing. “You’re felons. You committed crimes, and so you have to pay for—”

“Are you so sure each and every one of us really committed a crime?” With a boldness imprisonment had made her forget, she pushed past him and continued to her hut.

That night, lying on the floor with the men around her in the depths of fatigue-induced sleep, she was awake. She entertained thoughts of the captain. How old was he?

Twenty-five to thirty, she decided. A young man who was lonely for home and all that reminded him of it. She had judged him shy, but she sensed a certain courage he himself was most likely unaware of having.

The pity that had prompted his offer of help stung her pride. Yet, as she
lay in the dark, her palms curving over the globe of her huge stomach, she decided that, yes, he could help her.

He could marry her.

The officer came again two days later. She was ready for him. She had deliberated over the man for the full two-day interval. What kind of man was he? Why would he want a wife? Some men wanted to be waited on, some constantly wanted to be reassured of their wonderful attributes, some merely wanted a son, some married for companionship.

So they wouldn’t have to face living with their thoughts?

And this man?

This man, she decided, was one of those people who only felt good when he was helping. She had seen people like him at her father’s parish church. Always helping, always trying to make things right, getting in the way, getting on one’s nerves. These were the same people who fought revolutions in the trenches, while their leaders issued orders safely behind the line of fire.

In short, her captain was one of those foolhardy souls with the best intentions.

She watched him approach her as she carried water pails from the well behind the main house. Knowing the approximate time he arrived in the afternoons, she had dallied until she spotted the small plume of dust churned by his horse’s hooves. The pails’ handles cut into her palms. She set the pails down on the cracked earth and chafed the circulation back into her hands.

By that time, his bay was cantering toward her. He dismounted. Without looking at her, he said, “If you’ll take the reins, I’ll get the pails.”

She waited until they began walking, then said, “I appreciate your help. And you need my help, Captain.”

He looked at her askance.

She fixed her gaze on his profile, studying it as she talked. “The baby is coming soon. It will need a name— and a father. You need a wife to make a home for you in the wilderness outposts, wherever you are stationed. A wife who is clever, who can withstand hardships, who can help you get ahead in your career. I am that woman.”

She was honest, if nothing else. She fully believed she could offer him something in return for his releasing her from a sentence of lifetime imprisonment.

He came up short. Water sloshed over the pails he carried. Behind them, his bay snorted and shifted its stance, as if also awaiting the outcome of this one-act play.

The officer’s head swerved in her direction. Eyes wide, he stared back at her. “Good God, you are serious?”

She had nothing to lose if he turned her down. “Captain, I’ve danced in the same room as His Majesty King George.”

“I looked at your record. You were transported for treason against His Majesty.”

He was asking her to expound. She would explain herself when she was ready. At another time. First, the gaining of her objective. “I’ve supped with ambassadors and generals, including Nelson himself. What pretty lass with half a brain is going to follow you to the mountainous wilds of India”—she flung out a hand—“or
to this strange, ungodly wilderness?”

He fumbled for words. She waited. “I had thought to .
. . Mary had said she would wait . . . letters take so long getting here.”

“Do you know when, if ever, you’ll get back to England again?” she asked softly.

He shook his head.

They began walking again. She said nothing more. At the doorway to the hut, he passed her the pails. Without a word, he strode on to the main house.

The waiting that afternoon was long. She scrubbed and rescrubbed the rough-hewn table.

Soon Pulykara came in, toting a bag of peas she had been issued from the storage house. “We’d best shell these, if we gonna get them cooked in time.”

“Not now, Pulykara,” she said, her eye ever on the doorless opening, which gave full view of the veranda. Then she saw him. He had come out onto the veranda and halted at the steps. Indecision showed in his stance, the way his body was half-turned toward the hitching post and half toward her hut; the way his head was lowered, the way his hands rubbed against each other.

You need me. You need me.

As if her thoughts empowered his footsteps, he descended the steps and began walking in the hut’s direction. His body blocked the sunlight that had heated the entrance. Pulykara turned toward him. “Yes, suh?”

“The lady. I would like to speak to her alone.”

The ever-grateful, ever-protective Pulykara shot her a wondering glance, then rose from her squatting position before the mound of peas and limped past the captain.

Alone with Nan, he said nothing. She helped him. “The baby is due in
a week or so. We should be married by a clergyman soon. I’ll need a midwife. Pulykara will be worth your purchase, also.”

She saw his dubious expression. “You won’t be sorry, Captain. I’ll be a good wife for you.”

And she meant it.

She hadn’t even known his name. Captain Tom Livingston. She gazed at him while he slept. The flickering light of the sperm candle lent him a little-boy look. Yet he had served in what was formerly the American colonies and against Napoleon’s forces in India.

He had come to her twice this week. Using his rank, he had appropriated a small hut used by a night guard. The hut was filthy and the bedlinens stank, but at least she was sleeping on a mattress for the first time in almost a year. Within a few days, Tom assured her, a house on post would be vacated for them.

Tom had a gentle touch. Out of concern for her condition, he had not taken her. Out of respect for his condition, having gone so long without a woman, she brought him to a climax. Using her hand and mouth. Acts that would have appalled her a short year ago.

She drew the sheet up over his sprawled body. The gnats and mosqui
toes were horrendous. Tomorrow, she would have Pulykara see about getting netting. Her gaze was almost tender, and she hoped she wasn’t falling in love with him. Her foolish love for Miles Randolph had brought upon her humiliation and degradation that months of captivity had only intensified. She could never let herself be weakened by love again.

“Nan?” Tom stirred and flung out an arm across her chest.

“I’m here, Tom. I’ll always be here for you.”

He didn’t hear her. He was snoring softly.

The following week, Nan began having contractions. Pain came unexpectedly, shooting up her belly as she bent over a large staved bucket to wash a pair of Tom’s trousers. At her groan, Pulykara glanced back
at her. Seeing Nan’s face contorted by pain, the aborigine woman laid aside the damp clothing she had been hanging on the line of hemp stretched between two golden wattle trees.

“Your time upon you, baby?” she asked, crossing to Nan.

Nan grunted an assent and let the black woman lead her to the house. At that moment, she was more grateful than ever to Tom that he had put up little objection about buying Pulykara from bondage.

If Nan expected the relieving comfort of bed, Pulykara vanquished that idea. “The stool. Sit on it, baby, and whenever you feel the pushing, you move forward and squat.”

While Pulykara sat on her haunches and observed, Nan went into quiet agony. The pain was ripping her apart. It radiated outward from the lower part of her abdomen, firing through her veins and muscles ever upward, flicking like the overseer’s whip that rent at flesh and blood. Her brain exploded with the pain.

Yet she bit back her screams. In silence she suffered, because she knew to be weak now would lose her Pulykara’s respect. Nan needed that authority. Some sense of control of her life. She needed a friend, even if it was an aborigine woman.

“Talk to me, Pulykara. Distract me.”

Pulykara talked of sandalwood trees with wood so heavy it would barely float and of great herds of seals, the whereabouts of which only her tribe knew, and of course of the Dreamtime. For her, it was a real place.

For Nan, it was an endless journey, this Dreamtime. An imaginary place where one might find oneself. Like the outback, Pulykara’s Never-Never, this Dreamtime must be a deep interior where the soul was free in an inner outback, a land beyond Disappointment and Good-bye and Alone.

Hours later, as Tom was returning from duty, she gave birth. Pulykara turned with the infant in her arms to Tom. He put away his scabbard and his shakar hat. With wonder, he stared down at the squalling mite of a human being.

From the bed, Nan said weakly, “Tis a girl.”

“Are you a
ll right?” he asked, taking his gaze off the baby to fix on her. “You don’t look well, Nan.”

“I’m tired. That’s all.”

“What will you name her?”

Nan turned her head toward the palisaded wall. “I won’t. I’m giving her away.”

“You cannot be serious about this,” he said. “The babe will die without your milk.”

Nan’s breasts ached with their heavy fullness, although scarcely six hours had passed since she had given birth. “No, the baby won’t die. Pulykara says she knows of someone who has breast milk.”

Tom stared at the aborigine, who was tearing strips of muslin to bind Nan’s breasts. “Pulykara knows,” Nan said. “I don’t understand how news is passed along by these people with nary a written word, but some woman gave birth yesterday to a stillborn.”

Tom asked, “You are certain the mother will want this child?”

She shrugged. “She’s a mother who has lost a child. She’ll want the—”

“But so are you.” Perplexity puckered his thick brows. “I’m stupefied. I can’t understand how you would so easily give away your own flesh and blood. It’s unnatural.”

“Come here, Tom.” She stretched out her hand to take his and draw him down on the bed beside her. She had to convince him of the wisdom of her decision. Should he doubt her at the beginning of their marriage, she would never be able to steer their relationship through threatening waters that would undoubtedly besiege their marriage from time to time.

She rubbed his pal
m, feeling the calluses and comparing it to Miles’s smooth one, the palm of a gentleman. Bemused, Tom watched her fingers. “Tom, dearest, the baby deserves the best possible upbringing.” Her voice lowered, as did her lids. “I cannot help the pain I feel when I see her and remember . . . remember that the man”—she drew a ragged breath and went on—“the man who was responsible for fathering her was also responsible for my imprisonment.”

“You have told me so little about what happened—”

“I was beguiled, Tom. Like a foolish woman who has never been courted, I let my heart overrule reason. I wrote pamphlets that infuriated his mentor’s rival—Pitt.”

“Not William Pitt!”

She was glad Tom momentarily forgot the issue of the child. “Aye. I was accused of being a Jacobin, and Pitt neatly arranged for me to be found guilty of treason. By loving a scoundrel of a man, I lost not only my freedom, but I was left to bear the child of a man who had used me only for political purposes. Should I keep”—she nodded toward the squalling infant—“the baby, I think I would always look upon it with resentment. For me, it represents the treachery of love and, worse, the demeaning of my soul and . . . well, another woman will love the baby far better than I.”

He shook his head and rubbed his lantern-jawed
chin. “I don’t understand you, Nan. This child is healthy and what’s another mouth to—”

“Tom, think of the baby.”

With a sigh, he rose. “I suppose you’re right.” He picked up his saber. “Tomorrow, I’ll go and talk to my commander about placing the baby.”

She knew Tom was hoping she would change her mind. After the door shut behind him, she allowed herself to turn her gaze on the baby. The child was healthy. And so tiny. A mite of a human being. Reluctance to give away the baby constricted the muscles in her throat. She found it difficult to speak but forced out the next words. “Pulykara, get your belongings together.”

They were few enough. A blanket, a tin cup, a woven reed basket of trinkets, which she ascribed to as a source of power.

Nan watched the baby’s tiny fists beat against empty space until Pulykara caught them in the folds of the blanket in which she wrapped the baby. “You want me to find a place for her now?” she asked.

The aborigine’s eyes held no reproach, yet Nan felt guilty. She was feeling maternal pangs. No, her decision was the right one. The child would be better off growing up in a household where it was loved.

She turned her face to the other side of the pillow. “Pulykara, you are to stay with the baby.
I helped you once, now you must help me. Guard the infant as your own for as long as the child lives.” Tears dampened the pillow. “Promise me this.”

Over the strips of tattoos, the luminous black eyes were sorrowful. “I promise, baby.”