The Far Horizon (20 page)

Chapter Thirty

Some later referred to him as ‘
the Assassin’
, a man who had the long arm of Downing Street pushing at his back.

Others viewed him as a welcome saviour, come to rescue them from the despotic rule of Lachlan Macquarie.

And these ‘others’ were the Exclusives.

The convict ship carrying the dispatch informing Governor Macquarie of Commissioner John Bigge’s journey from England to Australia reached Sydney only five days before the man himself.

The Governor was happy to meet and greet him and, following protocol, thirteen guns fired a salute from Dawes Point, as the guns always did when a government emissary arrived.

Accompanied by his assistant, Thomas Hobbs Scott, who was also his brother-in-law, Commissioner Bigge found himself sitting down to dinner and being entertained warmly by Governor Macquarie and his wife.

Although when Elizabeth withdrew and left the men to themselves, Lachlan felt compelled to ask John Bigge, ‘And for what reason, precisely, have you come to Australia?’

John Bigge answered smoothly, ‘I have been commissioned to carry out an inquiry into the laws, regulations and usages of the penal settlements of New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land, on behalf of the British government.’

Lachlan was puzzled. ‘And the object of your inquiry is to ascertain … what?’

‘If New South Wales is fulfilling its purpose as a penal colony.’

Astonished, Lachlan half laughed. ‘I should think the British government knows very well the answer to that, in view of the fact that they have sent us
seventeen
convict transport ships in the past nine months alone, containing over three thousand convicts, and the number of those transport ships arriving at our shores are increasing by greater numbers every year.’

‘Ah, yes …’ John Bigge glanced at his brother-in-law, ‘but are the felons being
punished
properly when they arrive here, Governor Macquarie? That is what the British government wants to know.’

And in that moment Lachlan knew who had instigated and caused the need for this inquiry – the Exclusives. And he also saw in that moment that John Bigge was one of their type.

‘No doubt you will wish to speak to as many of the inhabitants as freely you can,’ Lachlan said finally. ‘I will put my carriage driver at your service from tomorrow morning.’

*

‘We will see which of the inhabitants, and which of the homesteads he chooses to visit first,’ Lachlan said later to Elizabeth in the bedroom, ‘exclusive or emancipist?’

‘I disliked him on sight,’ Elizabeth confessed. ‘And the more I saw of him, the more I disliked him … something about him. The delicate way he handled his knife and fork, the finicky way he removed all the fat from the lamb cutlets … and his soft hand when he held mine, as soft as a baby’s hand, and his softly smooth voice … yet his eyes were as cold and as hard as rocks. Did you notice? His cold eyes?’

‘No, I didn’t notice,’ Lachlan replied offhandedly, not interested in the physical appearance of the man. It was the
intentions
of the commissioner that he was interested in, and what
information
he was hoping to gain, and – most importantly – to whom he would go to first when seeking that information.

That is why he had offered the services of his own carriage driver to the commissioner.

*

The following morning, Joseph Bigg, sitting on the driver’s bench of the governor’s carriage, chucked the reins and set off with the commissioner and his assistant seated comfortably inside.

‘See you tonight, m’lady,’ Joseph said as he tipped his hat to Elizabeth.

But Joseph Bigg did not return with the carriage that night, or the following night.

When he finally returned with the carriage three nights later, Lachlan asked him, ‘Who was the first person the commissioner went to visit?’

‘John McArthur.’

‘And where is the commissioner now?’

‘Over at Reverend Marsden’s place, staying there a few days, so ‘e sent me and the carriage back.’

When Joseph had gone, Lachlan slowly turned to look at George Jarvis. ‘The snakes are coiling and hissing, George.’

George’s eyes were dark with anger and disgust. ‘And soon they will be rattling in readiness to attack you.’

‘No doubt’

‘So what are you going to do?’

Lachlan shrugged. ‘What I always do, George, ignore them and get on with the bloody job.’

Chapter Thirty-One

Commissioner John Bigge had great sympathy for the free settlers of the colony, being denied by Governor Macquarie all the rights that their free status entitled them to. No use of the whip? No flogging without the consent and order of a magistrate? It was not only ridiculous, it was madness – he thought back to his years in Trinidad – how on earth could order have been maintained on that island of so many slaves without the use of the whip?

Reverend Marsden, he believed to be a good and devout man, and his wish to convert the Maoris in New Zealand to Christianity was admirable, although it was highly regrettable that Governor Macquarie had so far denied him the finances, soldiers and sailing vessel to carry out that mission.

Those other free settlers he had met were somewhat dull, although quite bearable, but the man who impressed him the most was John McArthur.

John McArthur’s view of the colony was much more in line with that of the Colonial Office and the British government. Now that the Blue Mountains had been opened up with roads into a vast interior, John McArthur could see the possibility of thousands of sheep grazing on those rich green pastures.

Endless land, vast sheep farms, and later
millions
of sheep for as far as the eyes could see – allowing the wool barons to supply Britain with all the cheap wool it needed for its own use and exports.

But for that vision to become a possibility, the government would need to release that land to the sheep farmers, as well as supplying vast numbers of convict labour as a workforce.

Commissioner Bigge agreed with McArthur’s vision. The sheep farms worked by convict labour could be run just like the British sugar plantations worked by slaves in Trinidad.

Yet Governor Macquarie, the ruler of the colony, seemed more interested in improving the lives and conditions for emancipists and convict felons.

‘And while he continues to do so
,
’ John McArthur said ruefully to the commissioner, ‘I fear my flocks must remain static, unless an unexpected change should be made in the system of
managing
prisoners
.’

And that change would come, Commissioner Bigge was determined it would.

He sat down and wrote yet another letter to Lord Bathurst, pointing out that so far the colony of New South Wales exported nothing more than bills to the Treasury to pay for the upkeep of the colony, the military and the convicts –
‘an estimated £150,000 a year, I am told.’

When Commissioner Bigge later mentioned this exorbitant amount of money to Governor Macquarie, insisting it to be ‘a very
high
cost to Britain!’

Lachlan replied, ‘If Britain wishes the cost of running this country to be kept as low as possible, then surely the best way to achieve that is for Britain to stop sending shiploads of British convicts out to this country.’

‘But, your Excellency …’ Commissioner Bigge’s mouth was turned down, ‘this
is
a
penal
colony.’

‘Yes, and when I first arrived in this country nine years ago, there were no more than seven thousand convicts here. Yet now there are over
thirty thousand
convicts here and more arriving by the shipload every few months. So how am I supposed to house and feed all these extra convicts and still keep the bills the same?’

‘But surely the convict labour can be put to better use?’

‘Better use … what better use?’ Lachlan was beginning to lose control of his temper with this pursed-lip little man. ‘When I arrived in Sydney it was little more than a hovel of shacks with no amenities, no common buildings and no roads of any description, just dirt tracks. The only decent habitations were Government House and those houses built by the free settlers using convict labour.

‘Lachlan …’ Elizabeth could see her husband was losing his temper and put out her hand to warn him that he was.

‘But now,’ Lachlan continued, ‘thanks to the hard work of that convict labour, Sydney is now a city suitable enough to welcome even a gentleman like yourself, Commissioner Bigge, with every amenity necessary, such as a fully functioning hospital, and two schools to educate the young.’

‘And a separate school to educate the black
Aboriginal
children as well!’ the commissioner retorted with eyebrows high. ‘I did not realise that educating the black savages in this land was a part of your remit from the King, Governor Macquarie!’

For one long silent moment Lachlan Macquarie stared at John Bigge, then he quietly pushed back his chair and stood up, and without haste or any change of expression on his face, walked out of the room.

It was an end to the conversation and a dismissal, and John Bigge knew it was. His red cheeks showed his embarrassment.

Elizabeth also rose to her feet, her expression and voice ice-cold. ‘Dinner appears to be over, Commissioner Bigge. Thank you so much for coming. Goodnight.’

And she too swept out of the room, leaving Commissioner Bigge alone with his half-eaten dinner.

A half-eaten dinner which he left behind him, preferring instead to spend the rest of the evening writing a letter of complaint about Governor Macquarie to the Colonial Office.

Chapter Thirty-Two

For months and months Mary had not gone anywhere near the gardens in the evening time.

For months and months she had avoided George Jarvis, refusing to meet his eyes whenever she had to enter the governor’s office or apartments. And all of those times when he had tried to speak to her in corridors or on landings she had not listened to him, carrying on with whatever she was doing as if she was deaf.

And then he had stopped trying, and seemed to spend most of his time avoiding her, which was not too difficult for George, due to his having accompanied Governor Macquarie on yet another of his three-month trips to Van Diemen’s Land to make sure his building programmes there were progressing satisfactorily, especially his new school and hospital.

Lately, Mary had taken to spending some of her evenings in the company of Mrs Ovens and Mrs Kelly, sipping more and more of their rum until she was almost as drunk as they were.

But rum was like water to those two, and didn’t seem to have the same effect on them as it did on her.

And tonight she was drunk, good and drunk, or at least she thought she was.

Mrs Ovens laughed. ‘You’ve only had a few more sips than normal, so what makes you say you’re drunk! And listen, m’girl, it’s not good for females to drink too much rum, it’s unladylike.’

‘So why do you two drink rum –
all
the time –
every
night!’

‘It’s different for us,’ Mrs Kelly informed her. ‘We’re older and past caring.’

‘And widowed,’ Mrs Ovens added. ‘Both of us! And stuck out here in a convict colony. So why wouldn’t we drink?’

‘By God, you’re right!’ Mrs Kelly exclaimed sorrowfully. ‘Widowed and stuck out here in a convict colony – here, give me some more of that rum!’

Mrs Ovens poured out two good measures from the jug of rum and the two cooks touched their glasses together.

‘I want a drink too!’ Mary demanded.

Mrs Ovens lowered the glass from her mouth, smacked her lips appreciatively, and then looked at Mary with narrowed eyes.

‘Why do you have the need to drink these nights, Mary? You would never touch a drop before.’

‘I want another drink!’ Mary insisted.

‘Then will you tell us?’ Mrs Kelly asked her. ‘If we give you another drink will you tell us why you need it?’

Mary nodded.

Mrs Ovens poured her the usual tiny measure then watched as Mary knocked it back in one gulp, making her entire body shudder afterwards.

‘So?’ Mrs Ovens asked.

‘I drink because I’m a convict.’

The two cooks looked at each other, and then burst out laughing.

‘Go away with you!’ said Mrs Kelly. ‘That’s not the reason. You was a convict before and you didn’t need to drink, so what’s the
real
reason?’

‘I drink because I’m miserable.’

‘And why are you miserable?’ asked Mrs Ovens.

‘I’m miserable because I drink.’

Mrs Kelly looked at Mrs Ovens. ‘Maybe she is drunk? It’s the only explanation for talking such nonsense.’

Mary suddenly stood up and walked like a sleepwalker out of the kitchen. Those two would never be able to understand her ravaging heartache.

*

A few weeks later Governor Macquarie returned from Van Diemen’s Land, but it was not until days after the return that Mary saw George again – from her window.

He was walking slowly in the garden, and her heart leaped. Was he waiting for her there, hoping to meet her there?

But leaning forward, she saw he was not, because he was holding the hand of Lachlan Junior hopping beside him, and then Mrs Macquarie came into view, a short way behind them.

A few paces on, Mrs Macquarie sat down on a garden bench and George turned back and sat down beside her, young Lachlan scrambling onto his lap, and there they sat, Mrs Macquarie and George, talking very seriously together while young Lachlan began to relax into a doze.

She turned her head slowly and looked towards the pack of cards on the small dresser by her bed … realising how pointless it all was – standing here watching him from the window – because now matter how many times she had shuffled the pack … hoping, wishing … it was never to be seen in the cards … her and George, free and convict, being together, loving each other … it was never to be seen in the cards.

Still she turned her eyes back to the garden and saw they were still sitting on the bench, still talking to each other, quietly and seriously. At times Mrs Macquarie looked as if she was getting very anxious about something, but as they talked on she began to relax, and Mary couldn’t help noticing again the confidence that Mrs Macquarie always seemed to take from George’s calm counsel and advice.

Mary Rouse came on the scene, a very pretty girl, one of the new maids in the nursery, but
she
was not a convict, no, she was the daughter of Richard Rouse, an emancipist who was now a leading resident out at Parramatta.

Mary Rouse moved to lift young Lachlan from George’s lap and arms, but George raised his hand to stop her, obviously saying that he would carry the sleeping child back into the house.

Mrs Macquarie made a gesture with her hand and nodded her head as if saying she wished to remain where she was for a while, and Mary watched as George and the new maid strolled back towards the house, talking and smiling together in a very friendly way.

The feeling inside her, caused by the sight of the two of them so friendly together, was unbearable. And how
dare
she – that Mary Rouse? Lachlan Junior was
her
charge, so who was Mary Rouse to go walking into the garden to take him? Whether he was asleep or not, it was not her place to do so – and how did she
know
he was asleep, if she had not been watching from a window also.

Impulsively she turned and fled out of her room and along the landing and down the stairs until she was in the hallway, running to meet the two of them as they came into the hall and then reaching to take young Lachlan from George’s arms.

‘Mary, you will wake him,’ George said in surprised alarm.

‘He’s
my
charge,’ Mary insisted, taking the child into her own arms, and then turning a haughty look at Mary Rouse. ‘And weren’t
you
supposed to be doing his laundry?’

Mary Rouse turned a deep red and then bowed her head and rushed down the hall as if looking for somewhere to hide and die.

George was looking at Mary in puzzlement. Never before had he heard her speak to another maid like that, and it was not in her nature to be cold and cruel.

‘There was no need to speak to her like that,’ he said quietly.

‘Why not – because she’s a
currency
girl and not a convict?’

Her breath was heaving and her blue eyes were flashing with an anger he had not seen since the old days when she dreamed of murdering her mistress in England.

‘What’s wrong, Mary? Why have you changed these past months and gone away somewhere inside your head where no one can reach you?’

‘I have
not
changed, I am
still
a convict.’

The anger in her voice caused young Lachlan to wake up and start to bawl at his rude awakening, wriggling down from Mary’s arms and running down the hall looking for his mama, with Mary running after him.

George watched her go, still puzzled. Her face had been so pale, and whenever he had seen her of late there had been dark shadows under her eyes as if she was not sleeping, and those dark shadows were still there. What had happened to her? What had changed her?

And what of his own jumbled thoughts? He needed and deserved some sort of clarification from her if only to help him understand what had gone wrong between them. His mind and emotions had been taxed so much during these past months that he realised it was now imperative to make her speak to him in order to give him some explanation that could lead to a solution or a final conclusion of their relationship.

Because it was not concluded, not yet – he had seen that today, on her face, and in the way she had spoken so severely to Mary Rouse with burning fury in her eyes.

And all young Mary Rouse had been doing was responding to his questions and telling him that Mary now often spent some of her evenings in one of the kitchens with the two cooks.

*

The glasses were on the table, the rum already poured, and Mrs Ovens was urging Mrs Kelly to tell Mary another tale about her handsome lover back in Ireland.

‘Oh!’ cried Mrs Kelly. ‘Will I ever forget him?’

‘No, you won’t ever forget him, if you
never
stop talking about him,’ Mary said tiredly.

But Mrs Kelly’s mind was already back in the small cottage hidden within lush green woodlands where only the love songs of the lark and the nightingale disturbed the peace, until
he
came a-calling that sweet summer’s day …

Mary had not asked for even a sip of the rum tonight but she did not want to be alone with her thoughts, so annoyed was she with herself at the awful way she had spoken to Mary Rouse today and the jealous face she had shown to George.

She dropped her face on her folded arms on the table and closed her tired eyes as she began to listen to one more of Mrs Kelly’s boring stories about her Irish lover, yet Mrs Ovens, the old romantic, couldn’t seem to hear enough of them.

At least Mrs Ovens had stopped questioning her about George Jarvis, wanting to know why she never saw them together anymore; and Mrs Kelly had stopped telling her she was right to have nothing to do with him; and she had let them talk and had answered none of their questions, because she didn’t expect either of those two old women to understand her love for George, or her need for him … but she did need him … every time she saw him she felt her need for him … and she did miss him now, so much …

‘And there was I,’ said Mrs Kelly, ‘sitting on the top bar of the gate of the field, and he puts his hands under both my armpits, close to my breasts, and begins to slowly lift me down to the ground…’ she paused to shiver deliciously.

George Jarvis entered the kitchen and walked straight over to Mary and saw she had fallen asleep. He gently shook her shoulder to wake her and when she lifted her head to look at him with sleepy eyes he said, ‘Mary, I need to talk with you.’

‘What’s this, what’s this
…?
’ cried Mrs Ovens, and her shocked voice brought Mrs Kelly back to reality with blinking eyes, and then seeing George standing there, she jumped to her feet to quickly cover the illicit jug of rum with the lower half of her apron.

‘What –
you
shouldn’t be in here, George Jarvis,’ Mrs Kelly declared defensively, ‘This is
my
kitchen and you’ve no right to come in here without a warrant!’

George was looking down into Mary’s upturned face. ‘Will you come with me for a walk in the garden?’

Mary nodded and rose from her chair and started walking towards the back door.

‘Now see here, George Jarvis,’ Mrs Kelly warned. ‘You know Governor Macquarie don’t like no finagling between the sexes in his household.’

George paused, and looked towards the jug that Mrs Kelly was hiding under her apron. ‘Is that a jug of rum?
Rum
? In one of the kitchens of the governor’s household?’

‘Go on with you!’ Mrs Oven chuckled. ‘You know it’s only water, George.’

‘You two –’ he said, pointing at both of them. ‘If you try to question Mary when she returns, then I may have to tell the governor that I’m certain it
is
rum.’

‘Now I knows you’d do no such thing, George!’ Mrs Ovens laughed, and she was still laughing to herself when George walked out.

She wriggled in her chair to lean closer to Mrs Kelly and said excitedly, ‘There’s going to be either some trouble or some lovemaking between those two tonight, unless I’m very much mistook!’