Remember Me - Lesley Pearse [66]
‘Go home now,’ he said. ‘He will be tried tomorrow. Tonight he stays in the guard-house.’
Mary moved towards the door, but turned before leaving and gave Phillip a penetrating stare. He saw deep fear and desperation in her eyes as she held the child out to him.
‘Please, sir,’ she pleaded. ‘Look at my child. She is bonny and healthy now, but without Will she may not stay that way. I’ll make sure Will never goes wrong again. Please, for the love of God and this child, spare him!’
She left then, slinking off into the night like a cat.
Phillip sat for a while deep in thought. The woman was right. Hanging Bryant would bring the spectre of starvation even closer.
‘Damn those fools in England,’ he muttered. ‘Where are the provisions asked for? How can I be expected to make this colony self-sufficient when I haven’t been given even the most basic equipment or men with the right skills?’
He had deep anxieties about almost every facet of this experiment: the infertile soil, the fast-dwindling stores, the behaviour of the felons, and the natives. It was predictable that the felons wouldn’t pitch in and help themselves. They were townsfolk in the main, and they were more familiar with a jug of ale than a plough. They had no morals – dozens of the women had given birth or were expecting a child, and they moved from one partner to another without a qualm. They’d rather stand about chatting than work, would rather steal vegetables than grow them. Phillip could understand them, they had after all been sent here for good reason. But he was very disappointed in the natives.
Phillip had believed that if they were treated with kindness and friendliness, they would reciprocate. Sadly, this didn’t seem to be the case – over the last few months several convicts working away from the camp had been brutally murdered. He still wanted to find a way to communicate with these people, to discover where the big rivers and fertile land lay, to learn about the native animals and birds, but all his efforts had come to nothing.
In truth, by the first anniversary of the colony, Phillip was a very worried man. He had the settlement at Sydney Cove, the one in Norfolk Island, and now Rose Hill too, but the convicts showed little inclination to reform, the Marines grumbled constantly, and the situation with the natives appeared to be getting worse rather than better. Without more food and medicine, the death toll would rise even more steeply. He found it hard to sleep at night for anxiety, and he couldn’t see an end to it.
Mary bit into her knuckles as Judge Collins stood up in the guard-house to tell Will what his punishment was to be. As she had expected, someone had informed on Will, and she guessed it to be Joseph Pagett, a man who had been on both the Dunkirk and the Charlotte. He had shown signs of jealousy during the voyage, and she could recall him giving Will a baleful look the day they were married.
Charles White, the surgeon from the Charlotte, had spoken up for Will, but even so Mary was sure he was to be hanged. She knew Will thought so too, for his face was drained of all colour, and he was biting his lip and trying very hard not to tremble.
‘I sentence you to a hundred lashes,’ Collins said. ‘And to be deprived of the direction of fishing and the boat. Also to be turned out of the hut you are now in, along with your wife and family.’
Will shot a glance at Mary, his face registering some relief, but anxiety at how she would take the loss of the hut.
Mary couldn’t think about that now. While she was relieved Will wasn’t to be hanged, and 100 lashes was a light punishment compared to some she’d witnessed, any flogging was still terrible, and she felt her stomach heave with nausea.
‘Take him away for punishment,’ Collins said.
All the prisoners were rounded up to watch Will’s flogging, even the children. They took their places in a semicircle before the big wooden triangle, which was manned on either side by a Marine drummer. In front of the triangle stood the Marine who was to administer the flogging. He had stripped