Remember Me - Lesley Pearse [123]
Chapter fifteen
‘There is no point in denying it, Mary.’ Wanjon sighed in exasperation. ‘I know you escaped from the penal colony, your husband told me.’
At Wanjon’s words Mary felt as if she was tumbling into a black, bottomless pit, from which there would never be any way out.
She and the children had been separated from the men as soon as they arrived at the Castle gaol, so they had no opportunity to confer about what they were going to say. They didn’t know either whether Will had been arrested too. But Mary found herself being treated gently by the soldiers, the cell she was put in was clean, and she was brought water, bread and some fruit, so that gave her every hope.
Yet as she watched the sun rise through the tiny grilled window overlooking the port, and gradually move directly overhead, without anyone coming to her, her heart began to sink.
‘Why have we got to stay here, Mumma?’ Charlotte asked. She had accepted the situation patiently so far, but now she was getting restless. ‘I don’t like it here, I want to go home.’
‘We have to stay because a man wants to ask us some questions,’ Mary said, distractedly running her fingers through the child’s hair. ‘Now, be a good girl and let’s play with Emmanuel.’
But Mary had no heart to encourage Emmanuel to toddle between the two of them, and tell him what a clever boy he was for walking unaided. She was terribly afraid that this tiny cell, less than four feet wide by six feet long, was going to be their home for the unforeseeable future.
Charlotte looked so pretty now, dark curls framing her small sun-tanned face, her bare arms and legs plump and dimpled. She reminded Mary very much of her sister Dolly, for she had the same pouting lips and turned-up nose. All the care and attention over the last two months, and the company of other children, had given her more confidence; she’d even learned many of the native words.
It seemed to Mary that Charlotte had left babyhood behind and become a little girl now. Only a few days before she had refused to put on the dull grey dress she had been given when they first arrived here, and insisted on wearing a brightly coloured one her mother had made from a length of locally produced material. Mary had wanted to keep it for best, as she did her own pink dress, but Charlotte had made such a fuss that she’d given in.
Clearly Charlotte had forgotten that back in Sydney Cove she had only one dress, so worn, faded and patched it had fallen apart on the boat. Mary was very glad her daughter appeared not to remember the colony, or how they all were when they arrived here, fainting with hunger and thirst, their skin and hair crawling with lice. Mary had managed to blank it out too, but now, faced with the possibility they might be sent back there, it was back in the forefront of her mind again. It was bad enough imagining herself living that way again, but how could Charlotte stand it now that she knew a different kind of life? As for Emmanuel, his little stomach couldn’t possibly take a harsh prison diet. He wasn’t strong, just the slightest variation in his food brought on sickness again.
Later, when both he and Charlotte had fallen asleep, their heads on her lap as she sat on the floor, Mary stroked Emmanuel’s blond hair back from his eyes and choked back her tears. He was almost too pretty to be a boy, with his pure blond hair touching his shoulders, eyes like periwinkles, and translucent fair skin. She had kept him alive by sheer will-power on the boat, but if they had to stay in this gaol, or be sent back to the colony, how could she find that strength again? She knew that back home in Cornwall he’d be