Yield Not To Misfortune (The Underwood Mysteries Book 5) (20 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY

Port Macquarie, New South Wales, Australia

February, 1828

Despite his utter weariness, Rutherford Petch couldn’t sleep. It was not for want of trying because he knew that in less than three hours he was going to be roughly wakened and set to work for another long weary day under a sun so hot that it blistered any skin left exposed to it, and made a man so thirsty that he was glad to swallow the stinking, slimy water from the bottom of the communal bucket.

He had been thinking of home again – a fatal and stupid thing to do, but he couldn’t help it. He had just endured his first Christmas away from home – even the army had given him furlough in December, though he knew that this was due to his officer status – the poor lads in the infantry were not often that lucky.

Oddly it had not been the heart-tearing experience he had feared it would be, but that was mainly due to the fact that it was hot and sunny and didn’t feel like Christmas at all, though the other prisoners and even the guards had tried to mark the day with a decent meal for once and the singing of carols as the sun set. It didn’t make sense, singing about the ‘deep mid-winter’ when the only escape from the heat was a breeze which was as hot as a dragon’s breath, but they had sung the age old songs anyway and pretended to be jolly.

He wondered how Cressy was faring, with only two old ladies for company, one of them out of her mind, more or less. He almost felt more sorry for his little sister than he did for himself. At least he had no one but himself to think of and if he was honest he knew she was no more free than he was. She might not have shackles on her wrists and ankles, nor had she been sold like an animal in a market place to a free settler who used him to help clear the scrub and bush so that he could begin to farm, but she was as chained to her dreary life as surely as every convict in the colonies. At least he could look forward to the day, another six years hence, when he would have served his time – if he survived it.

He turned over on his thin straw mattress trying to find the sleep that eluded him. It was not particularly discomfort that was keeping him awake. He had slept on the ground before now, when campaigning in the Peninsular. It was not the heat, though sweat was rolling off his body, tickling as it trickled.

He listened to the sounds of the night, giving up any idea of slumber. He did not know half the creatures which called and scuttled in the darkness. He recognised the constant high-pitched whirr of some insect he supposed to be something like the cicadas he recalled so well from hot nights in Spain, and the endless croaking of the frogs in a reed-fringed pond not far from the shack in which he and the other five men who worked with him slept – and which when daylight came, they were expected to wash in. There was an occasional bark, but he did not know if it was from the wild dogs who wandered the bush, or if it was the two fierce bulldogs that the farmer used to keep not only his sheep and cattle in order, by nipping their heels, but similarly bit any convict who thought about making a break for freedom.

The man who had bought him in the New Year was a free settler, but Rutherford suspected, he was an ex-convict himself who had decided to stay – and why would he not? Here he was a landowner, a farmer and a respected member of society. Back in England he would probably be reduced to stealing again in order to survive, and be shipped back to the colonies for his pains – and this time he would find himself in Van Diemen’s Land, where death was almost certain if not from the country and all its dangers, then from floggings and starving, punishments fit for those who were found to be ‘incorrigible’. Taggart also had a wife – an ex-convict – who had given herself in marriage to escape bondage, but had simply found another form of hell in the shape of a man who expected her to work like a dog and give him a child a year. Rutherford had been astounded when she admitted she was only five and twenty – she looked at least twice that. But she had been kind to him. It was due to her that they all had a ticking mattress filled with fresh straw and when she could she gave them a bit of meat to go with their coarse bread. Taggart had cursed her when he found out, but she had stood up to him and pointed out that he’d get more work out of healthy men – after that he had allowed them to do a bit a trapping when they weren’t slaving for him and they had soon learned which of the native animals tasted good and which to leave well alone. When they could catch one, kangaroo meat was good, as was emu, but the furry little bear-like koalas were too tough and smelled too strong to be palatable, as were the rotund, nocturnal wombats, which looked like solid meat but were as tough as old boots.

Clearing the bush had presented him with the most deadly of the Australian creatures, snakes which showed no fear of man but struck out, as though daring them to try and steal their territory. Spiders big and small. He had been more afraid of the ones that were larger than his outspread hand, but he’d soon been told that it was the tiny fierce ones that could kill a man with one bite.

All the men had backed off hastily when one of them had prodded what he took to be a dead branch with his billhook. It had turned out to be a lizard, but on being disturbed it had opened its mouth with a threatening hiss and its neck had suddenly flicked out in a weird collar of stretched, scaly skin, like a lady’s parasol, making it look twice its size and deadly as well. As soon as it realized they were afraid it had taken to its heels and fled into the brush, leaving them all sweating and laughing nervously at their own foolishness.

Rutherford found the place fascinating. The animals were like nothing he had ever seen before, despite the fact that he had travelled more widely than most people he knew. The seasons were all the wrong way about, with July cold enough for the occasional frost, and January so blazingly hot that it had been torture to work, and made it impossible to sleep. Fires had spontaneously broken out and were so fearsome that they swept across the country in seconds, and ate everything in their path – forest, scrub, animals and men alike, leaving blackened bones and scorched earth – and yet when the rains came, the green began to show through within days and within weeks the undergrowth was as thick and plentiful as before.

He and his fellow convicts were supposed to clear the land for farming, but it seemed that as fast as they chopped away at the weeds, they grew up as fast behind them. He despaired of ever getting to the end of the task, but he knew that if weeds could grow so fast and strong, how much better would tended crops flourish? One day this land was going to be a wonderful place, but the tedium of taming it was going to beat most men. It would take exceptional souls to stay and see this right through to the end. He wondered if he was going to be one of them or if this land would either kill him or break him.

Much later in the morning, just as the heat was building to an intolerable level, they heard the sound of horses galloping along the dusty trail which led into town, but they all knew better than to stop work to gawp. Taggart was handy with a bullwhip – and who was there to stop him?

When Taggart saw that the men were uniformed militia, he did stop work and walked up to the wooden shack in which he lived with his wife and three children, the youngest yet a babe in arms. Florrie Taggart had also heard the new arrivals and came out to greet them, the baby in a sling across her belly, so that she could carry on with her work in the house at the same time as feeding him – Taggart would allow no slackers on his land. She had been back in the kitchen, such as it was, within hours of giving birth.

“Mr Taggart?” asked the captain, dismounting as he spoke.

“That’s me. What’s the trouble?”

“Can we talk inside? My men would be grateful for a drink of water.”

“I suppose so,” said Taggart, gesturing to the two other soldiers where they would find the water trough.

The captain followed them inside, glancing from side to side in horror at the living accommodation. He was almost sorry he had asked for a drink now, but he need not have worried, the lean-to on the back of the shack was as clean as Florrie could make it and when she offered him tea, he gladly accepted.

“So, what’s this all about?” asked Taggart, when they were all seated on the roughly hewn stools, which he had made himself from the first tree he had felled when he took this piece of unpromising land and began the seemingly endless task of turning it into a farm.

“You have a prisoner here by the name of Rutherford Petch?”

“Damned if I know,” said Taggart, with a malicious grin, “why would I need to know their names?”

“Then we had better go out and ask the men,” said the captain, not about to be outwitted by this ignorant hick.

“Not until I know why you want him,” said Taggart hastily, aware that he was giving away the fact that he did indeed know the names of his slaves, but also wary of letting them know anything before he knew himself.

“He’s wanted in town. The Governor has sent for him.”

“Why?”

“Funnily enough, he hasn’t confided the reason to me,” said the captain sarcastically, “And I doubt he’ll confide it to you either.”

“That’s not good enough. I paid hard earned cash for those men and they are mine to use as I see fit. Sending them gallivanting into town is not in my interest. You are going to have to give me a better reason to part with Petch than that the Governor wants to take tea with him.”

The way Taggart mimicked the upper classes when he spoke these words suddenly made it clear to everyone in the room what Taggart’s problem was – he hated Rutherford Petch because he was gentry – even here, all these thousands of miles away from home, it seemed that a refined way of speaking and good manners were still enough to get a man treated differently, for all he was a common thief.

The captain however had had enough of the prevarication. He didn’t care that Taggart was aggrieved by the summons. He had a job to do and he intended to do it.

“Just fetch the man to me, Mr Taggart, and let me get on with my day. I don’t have time for this.”

“I’m not stopping him from working now. He can walk into town later, if you trust him not to take off into the bush.”

“Oh, I think I can guarantee he won’t do that,” said the captain, taking a folded paper from his pocket, “Give him this letter and he’ll find his way into town quick enough. Tell him to come to the barracks and ask for me, Captain Anthony Higgs.”

“So you do know why they want him,” said Taggart bitterly.

“I’ve a good idea, but it has nothing to do with you, so make sure the man gets that letter. If he doesn’t arrive at the barracks this evening, I’ll be back in the morning for him and I’ll be taking you in too.”

With that he drained his teacup and picking up his hat, he walked out, calling his men away from the shade of a gum tree and ordering them back onto their mounts.

Taggart watched from the doorway until he could no longer see the cloud of dust they raised and their hoof beats died away into the drowsy heat of the afternoon.

Turning to his wife he said, “Didn’t you once tell me you can read?” he asked. She looked at him fearfully, nodding slowly.

“Open that and tell me what it says,” he thrust the letter into her hands, but she tried to push him away, her breath coming in short little gasps of panic.

“No, no, they’ll hang me for touching a letter from the Governor!”

“Don’t be stupid, how will they ever know? Just open it or I’ll hang you myself, upside down from that bloody gum tree in the front!”

His raised hand showed her that he meant every word he said, so she took the paper, but her hands shook and she could barely manage to break the seal and unfold it without tearing it.

“Well,” he demanded, “What does it say?”

She looked up at him, her mouth falling open with surprise, “It says that there has been word from England that there is new evidence and they want to talk to him about it.”

“Damnation!” said Taggart, almost spitting the words so deep was his fury, “they won’t say it in a letter, but you can be sure that means he’ll be going home. My best worker and I’ll lose him – and I’ll bet the bastards won’t give me the money back I paid for him. Well, we’ve got to put a stop to it.”

“How are you going to do that?” she asked, “If he really is innocent, they’ll send him right back, on the next ship they can find, won’t they?”

Taggart paced the dirt floor for a few seconds, thinking of and rejecting ideas.

“We’ll have to accuse him of stealing. They can’t send him back if he’s a thief.”

Florrie was desperate now to save Rutherford. She liked him. He had treated her like a lady, spoken softly and courteously to her when their paths crossed. She wanted him to get home; she wanted to vicariously live through him, so that in her darkest moments she could imagine him back in England, thinking of her with gratitude because she had helped him to escape.

“That’s no good,” she said, emboldened by his including her in his deliberations, “He’s just been found not guilty – why would he thieve here, if he didn’t back there? And the others would speak out for him. They know we have nothing worth pinching.”

Taggart would have liked to slap her for disagreeing with him, but he had to admit she had a point. He looked at her, dislike shining in his eyes. She was suddenly very keen on helping a bloody convict. And then it hit him. The perfect excuse to put paid to Rutherford Petch and his reprieve.