The Far Horizon (15 page)

Chapter Nineteen

‘I strangled her – my mistress,’ Mary said to her awe-struck audience in the kitchen. ‘I put my hands around her throat and squeezed the life out of her. She's dead now, ten feet under, and it surely is the kindest place for her to be. She had a friend, another nasty piece like herself, with red hair and sly eyes whom she called “Louise”, and I would have liked to strangle her too, but I never got the chance. Still, my day with her friend Louise may yet come! When I go back!’

Mrs Kelly was looking mighty uneasy. ‘Look here, Mary Neely, I don't know if I like having a murderess in my kitchen!’

‘Well you
hate
thieves!’ Mary challenged. ‘So pray tell us, Mrs Kelly dear, what crime of a convict
is
acceptable in your kitchen?’

The maids were all staring at Mary with a look akin to reverence. In the space of three weeks she had won the affection of Mrs Macquarie and had got herself elevated to service in the mistress’s private apartments, and now she was daring to challenge Mrs Kelly in her own kitchen!

‘Innocence
!’ Mrs Kelly declared. ‘That's what I like in my kitchen.
Innocence!
Or politics. There's nothing wrong with politics. But all these other girls here in my kitchen are innocent. That they are! All innocent as babes.’

Mary laughed, musically. ‘All convicts in New South Wales are innocent, according to you! Well here is one that is most definitely
not
innocent. I am guilty of murder. As true as my hand I am!' She held up a slim white hand that did not look capable of strangling anyone.

‘I was never one for violence myself,' said Mrs Kelly. ‘Not even in the heat of passion is it right...’ She pushed uncomfortably at her cap as she remembered the betrayal of her lover.

‘A person,' said Mrs Kelly, ‘a
good
person, may find themselves in a temper and lashing out with a plank in the heat of rage, and there may be some evil souls who would call that
attempted
murder. But there is something about the deliberate taking of life that is evil through and through!'

‘She did me a terrible wrong,’ Mary insisted hotly, ‘and I vowed that vengeance would be
mine!
’ Her blue eyes moved over the awe-struck girls. ‘Even now, every night, I take out the Black Queen from my pack of cards and work dark magic – like the Aboriginals' voodoo – on my former mistress.’

‘Who says the Aboriginals do voodoo? Not here in Botany they don’t!’ exclaimed Mrs Kelly. ‘And what use is your Black Queen and all that magic business – if the poor woman is dead!’

Mary lifted her chin and looked at the cook as if she was a simpleton. ‘The witch may be dead – but I am
not
finished with her yet!’

And with that she flounced out of the kitchen with all the haughtiness of a queen, for now being employed
upstairs
, she ate her meals in the kitchen of Mrs Ovens.

When the meal was served on the table, Mrs Ovens sat herself down to enjoy the nonsense of Miss Mary Neely. Never had the kitchen been so alive or such fun since Mary had entered it. The girl was beautiful, fascinating, adorable, although you could not believe one word she said.

‘I'm not lying,’ Mary was saying to the other servants as she broke a piece of bread in her hands, ‘I lay in my bed night after night thinking of them, my black-haired witch of a mistress and her red-haired friend with the sly eyes. She hated me because I wouldn't kow-tow to her overblown opinion of herself. Oh yes, a right pair of witches they were...’

‘Two nasty bints, if you ask me,’ said a maid.

Mary nodded. ‘The two of them – they weren't worth
that!
’ She snapped her fingers with a display of condescension.

Mrs Ovens shook her head over her stew in secret mirth. The girl had every servant round the table on her side, and they didn't even know the two women that Mary was talking about.

‘As my old grandma used to say, God rest her soul,’ Mary added with a deep sigh of affection. ‘When you grow up, Mary, she said, it’s not the ordinary plain-speaking people you have to be frightened of. Those you will know for what they are, and you will either like or dislike them as you please. No, says my grandma, it's the ones that are full of sweet-talk and smiles and empty promises that you have to watch. Those are the ones who will use you for their own gain and nothing more.’

‘Yer old grandma told you true!’ interrupted Mrs Ovens, pointing her spoon round the table and nodding in approval. ‘My dear mother used to say near enough the same. Never trust anyone that comes to you dripping with smiles and sugar. As sure as Old Nick, they'll be nasty as acid if you put one foot wrong.’

‘Smarmy gits, my ole dad used to call people like that,’ said Joseph Bigg thoughtfully. ‘Smarmy hypocrites that should be shot.’

Oh Lor'! thought Mrs Ovens with amused amazement. She's even got Joseph Bigg wanting to commit murder now!

‘What did your mistress do to you, Mary?’ asked a young parlour maid. ‘You never did tell us what she done.’

Mary's eyes glittered like cold sapphires. ‘She thought she could wipe me clean away as if I was no more important than a speck of dust on her table! Smash all my hopes and dreams as if they were no more valuable than cheap glass.’

‘Oh,she sounds a nasty one, all right, this mistress of yorn!’ said Mrs Ovens, dipping her bread into her stew and chuckling inwardly. ‘So tell us what you done, Mary m'dear. Tell us how you wreaked your vengeance? And every little detail, mind!’

‘Well,’ said Mary, narrowing her eyes as she looked slowly round the table, ‘I waited for her one dark night, when she thought I was long gone and herself forgotten by me. Foolish woman to think that I would ever forget
her
! I waited in the street just down from the house, and out she came … walking as smug and as self-satisfied as ever you did see a person walking … and then out of the darkness and quick as a flash I ran to her, and before anyone could see me – I stuck the knife in her! And down she flopped like a sack of flour. But not before she turned and looked me in the eyes, and saw – to her shocked surprise – who it was that had come out of the darkness and killed her.’

‘Ohhhh!’ Some of the maids were shuddering with delicious horror. It was awful and eerie and terrifying!

‘It was justice!’ Mary insisted, delicately dipping her spoon into her stew, while Mrs Ovens wiped the tears of laughter from her eyes with her apron. What a girl! What an imagination! And now came the big question that no one else had ever thought to ask Mary Neely. Now let's see how Mary would answer this one!

‘So tell me, you little she-devil, if you did commit murder, how is it that the judge only gave you seven years in Botany Bay and not the noose? After all, that is the law, a life for a life.’

‘Yeh, that's right!’ said a maid. ‘I got seven years for nicking a box of candles – so how come you got only the same for committing bloody murder?’

Mary's composure did not flicker. Mrs Ovens had to admire her. The sheer sauce of the girl was a treat to watch!

Mary finished her bread unhurriedly, smacked the crumbs delicately from her hands, then sat back languidly and surveyed her audience calmly.

‘Life, I said to the judge, you may take my life in due exchange and I’ll face my death bravely, because I do not repent of the deed, your worship. Nor will I ever repent! Not as long as I have breath. And the judge – a good man – he looks at me with the pitying and sorrowful eyes of a true Christian, and he says, "Miss Mary Neely, you have been cruelly wronged by that black-haired witch! And she did in all justice deserve to die. If it was up to me I would set you free, but the law is also cruel, and so I must punish you, with seven long years in Botany Bay."'

‘Oh, ducky!’ Mrs Ovens was laughing hysterically. ‘It's a wonder that old judge didn't follow you out here himself ... Rachel, fetch my rum! I need it bad! And here was me pining for dear old London, but they don't get entertainment like this in Drury Lane!’

Tears spilled onto Mrs Ovens' fat cheeks. ‘Mary, I got a soft spot for you, girl, because you got the manners of a lady and the tales of a scoundrel. Murder indeed!’ Her whole body quaked with more laughter. She reached for her rum and gulped. ‘Well, I tell you this, Mary Neely, you kill me!’

Chapter Twenty

Some days later, after a two-week excursion up country, George Jarvis met Mary Neely for the first time. He and Lachlan had just ridden up the drive to Government House, dismounted, and were handing their horses into the care of grooms when a curricle driven by Joseph Bigg came trotting up the path behind them.

Both men turned to look towards the open two-wheeled carriage where a girl was sitting with a baby in her arms.

‘G’morning, sir,’ Joseph Bigg touched his hat to the Governor. ‘The boy was cranky an teethin’ so Missis Macquarie asked us to take him out for a short ride in the cool air.’

‘And now he is fast asleep,’ Lachlan smiled, walking over to the carriage, opening the small door and reaching in to carefully lift his sleeping son from the girl’s arms. ‘May I?’

‘Yes, sir.’ The girl carefully handed the child over. ‘He was asleep as soon as the curricle started moving,’ she said.

Lachlan looked at the girl curiously. ‘And you are?’

‘Mary Neely, sir.’

Mary stepped down from the curricle
and stood looking at the Governor with a nervous expression on her face. She was dressed in a neat blue dress and wore a straw bonnet over her golden hair.

‘Are you the daughter of one of Elizabeth’s friends?’

‘No, sir.’ Mary’s cheeks flushed pink. ‘I’m a convict-servant, sir.’

Lachlan was clearly surprised. The girl was obviously new to the household, and yet it was only the Chosen Few that Elizabeth allowed anywhere near their son. And Elizabeth was no fool when it came to judging character.

He said to the girl. ‘Have you had much experience in looking after children?’

She shook her head. ‘I’ve had none.’

‘No experience? No younger brothers or sisters?’

‘No, sir.’

Even more surprised by her direct truthfulness, Lachlan glanced at George to determine his reaction, but George’s eyes were fixed on the girl.

And it was this unusual attention given by George Jarvis to the convict girl that made Lachlan look more keenly at her. He saw a pretty, light-haired girl with a slender shape and that was all.

‘She’s a good girl, Your Excellency.’ Joseph Bigg had stepped down from his bench in order to speak up for the girl. ‘And she has a knack with the baby there – soon as she lifts him up he stops cryin’ – according to the mistress.’

‘Then I am much obliged to you,’ Lachlan said to the girl and turned away to carry his beloved son indoors.

Mary Neely and George Jarvis were left to follow, while Joseph Bigg climbed back on his bench to take the curricle and two horses back to the stables.

At the door to the house, George politely and silently stood aside to let the girl pass. And now they were only inches apart, she looked straight at George and he looked straight back at her.

‘And you are George Jarvis,’ she said.

‘Yes, I know I am,’ George answered.

She waited for him to say something more, not sure if he was being sarcastic, but when he didn't say anything more she was not sure whether to be amused or offended. She nodded briefly and walked on.

George watched her go. She moved with light and easy steps that made her look as if she might suddenly skip into a dance. Everything about her was too light and too lovely for her to harbour any dark secret, but this was New South Wales and she was a convict ... and knowing nothing about her yet, George's impulse to quicken his steps and catch up with her was checked by the thought that she might have committed some terrible crime.

Although, as he strolled slowly down the hall and watched her skip lightly up the stairs towards the nursery, his deep and powerful intuition told him that whatever her crime, it had to be something forgivable.

*

‘What did she do?’ George asked Lachlan.

It was the first time George Jarvis had ever asked such a question about a convict.

Lachlan considered the papers on the table before him and decided to answer the question.

‘Oh, nothing very bad. Elizabeth would not have allowed her near our child if she had.’

‘But you checked her papers, nevertheless, as soon as you came in today?’

‘Of course I did. Anyone who works close enough to get even a glimpse of my son is closely
checked, as well you know.’

‘So, what was her crime?’

‘She was accused of stealing a small silver mirror from her mistress's bedroom. Her defence was that the maids in the attic had no mirror, but the mistress had many. So at night, especially when a maid had a night off, Miss Mary Neely would slip down to her mistress's bedroom and "borrow" a mirror. Until the night she was caught by a female guest, coming out of the bedroom of the lady of the house, carrying the mirror under her pinafore. Her mistress had her immediately arrested and charged at Leicester Assizes with theft, for which she was sentenced to seven years in Botany Bay.'

When George made no comment, Lachlan looked at him with smiling curiosity. ‘So you've looked her over, have you, George? And now you want to know more about her?’

George shrugged. ‘I was merely interested in her crime.’

‘Well now you know. Her crime was the alleged theft of a small mirror. Elizabeth is quite certain that Mary Neely is basically a decent girl who would not hurt anyone.’

All this Mrs Ovens knew. Elizabeth had revealed Mary’s true crime to her on the day the girl had been promoted upstairs and therefore entitled to eat in Mrs Ovens’ kitchen.

Usually, the subject of a convict’s crime was not something anyone asked or talked about. Whatever had happened was in the past and was their own business, and all they had left to do now was serve out their punishment and be done with it.

But it was time, Mrs Ovens decided, to end the fun and tell the truth to poor Mrs Kelly who had been suffering for weeks at the thought of having a murderess in their midst.

Mrs Kelly's black eyes nearly popped out of her head when Mrs Ovens told her over a glass of rum.

‘It's the truth, m'deary, not a word of a lie. But why the girl has to keep saying she done murder is beyond me. I don't understand it at all.'

‘Oh, well, now,’ said Mrs Kelly, after a thoughtful pause. ‘You don't understand because you've never been transported. It's a terrible thing. The voyage here on the convict ship is like a nightmare in hell. And the humiliation! Oh, that’s the worst of all. Irons on your ankles. No water to wash the filth from your skin or clothes. The hatches battened down tight so there's no air, just the stinking stench of the crowded berths.’

‘I don’t bear to even imagine it,’ said Mrs Ovens pityingly.

Mrs Kelly nodded. ‘And when life is that bad, when all hope seems gone, some people just lose their mind and go mad. But others – like our Mary – stay sane by thinking of the person that put them in that position, and that's when the fantasies of murder begin. In her mind Mary has probably killed that mistress of hers a thousand times and in a hundred different ways. And even now she is still fantasising. And sure she
knows
she is, but she feels free to do so because her former mistress is half a globe away and as safe as houses. But the fact that Mary needs the consolation of these fantasies shows the bitterness and hatred is still in her heart.’

‘Then it's pitiable,’ said Mrs Ovens, ‘to let her heart burn up that way. But in time it will fade, surely?’

‘Well now, that depends on how her life works out.'’ Mrs Kelly sipped her rum and pressed her lips together. ‘I know how Mary feels because I went through the same myself once upon a time, that I did. And this I know – if her life was to stay bad, then her craving for vengeance will get worse. But if it turns out not so bad, as mine has done, then the past
will
eventually fade away into forgetfulness.’

‘She works the cards, you know? Works spells. Did she tell you? She uses the Black Queen to wreak evil on her former mistress.’

‘So she said?’ Mrs Kelly looked impressed. ‘Now I wonder who taught her that?’

Mrs Ovens poured herself some more rum. ‘Speaking only for myself, and you know I'm not a vengeful person, Mrs Kelly, being brought up in a good Anglican-Church family as I was, but I hopes the Black Queen takes a ton of bad luck to that black-haired witch who consigned Mary to the bottom of a convict ship. Callous cow!’

*

The following morning Mary Neely met George Jarvis on the upstairs landing. Once again they both felt that instantaneous attraction of opposites, the fair to the dark, the dark to the fair, but there was something else, something more, and both felt it.

They regarded each other in silence but there was a subtle excitement in the sudden tensing of their bodies. Mary's face flushed the colour of roses.

‘And you are Mary Neely,’ he said.

Mary eyed him with amusement.

‘Yes, I know I am,’ she replied.

George smiled as she haughtily swept past him into the nursery.

*

In the days and weeks that followed George Jarvis and Mary Neely found it hard to keep away from each other, seeing as they both shared the same house, the same backstairs and front stairs, the same landings, and even on occasions the same private apartments of Governor and Mrs Macquarie.

Each day they waylaid each other on the upper landings or lower halls when their conversations grew longer and longer. Their meetings became tantalising interludes when time always seemed too short.

And then both, at the same time, developed a passionate love for quiet walks in the warm gardens of Government House between dinnertime and sunset, and both knew the path they were treading.

For George, just having Mary in the same world as himself gave a new and tender beauty to life, and nothing in nature could compare to the loveliness he saw in her face and those light blue eyes of hers. Whenever he saw her he felt his heart beating furiously, although he always faced her with a calm serenity that hid most of his thoughts and feelings.

For Mary, the influence of George's quiet and calm voice whenever he spoke seriously to her was beginning to dispel her melancholy and need for mysticism and creating spells of revenge. Everything he said to her seemed to fill her with a new sense of peace.

One morning he asked to see her pack of cards, and when she brought them to him, he instantly lifted out the Black Queen and tore it in two pieces before her shocked eyes.

‘This is not the way,’ he said quietly. ‘In the East we believe that "Heaven's way always comes around," and life eventually serves out its own justice.’

Mary stared at the two torn halves of the Queen of Spades and gave a shudder of superstitious terror.

‘If you truly do believe in the power of the cards,’ George said slowly, ‘then you will know that
this
card always holds the power to break the spell of any black card in the pack.’

He handed her the Queen of Hearts.

The card of love.

She lifted her eyes and looked at him and felt the darkness leaving her soul. He had destroyed the Black Queen. The spell of the card and its hold on her thoughts was broken.

They stood facing each other in silence. Then a smile moved on her face as bright as the sun. She lifted the Queen of Hearts to her lips, kissed it, and handed the card back to him.

A new spell had begun.