Remember Me - Lesley Pearse [80]
‘This could be our big chance,’ she urged Will one night as they lay in bed. ‘With the use of that boat we could make our escape.’
‘Don’t be foolish,’ Will said wearily. He was so weak with hunger and tired from the strain of trying to bring enough food back for everyone that he wasn’t inclined to listen to his wife’s wild ideas.
‘I don’t mean now,’ she said, sitting up beside him and leaning over to kiss him. ‘We can’t do it without instruments, charts or a store of food. But what you can do is win the Governor’s confidence. Take the boat out further and further each time, but always come back. He’s trusting you now, think how much more trust he’ll have in you if you seem to be playing the game his way!’
‘I can’t see the point,’ Will said irritably. ‘Even if I did get him to trust me well enough so I wasn’t watched, I wouldn’t even know which was the best direction to go in to find a port.’
‘Tench was telling me about the Dutch East Indies the other day. There’s a busy port called Kupang,’ Mary said. ‘He said it was over the sea at the top end of this place.’
Will made a sort of guffaw. ‘Over the sea at the top end of this place!’ he scoffed. ‘What kind of directions are those? Does he know how many leagues it is? Has anyone sailed to it afore? Don’t talk daft, girl!’
Mary slumped back down, angry that he was mocking her. ‘I don’t know yet, but I’ll find out,’ she said with grim determination. ‘We have to escape, Will. If we don’t, Emmanuel and Charlotte will die.’
‘No, Mary,’ he said, turning his back on her dismissively. ‘They won’t, food will come, you’ll see.’
‘Maybe it will,’ she said, but she ran one finger down the deep scars from the flogging on his back. ‘Perhaps the children will even be lucky enough to survive all the outbreaks of fever, to avoid being bitten by a snake, and they won’t be corrupted by the other convicts. But let’s hope neither of us lives long enough to see Emmanuel tied to the triangle to be flogged.’
She felt Will stiffen under her fingers. She knew he still had nightmares about the flogging.
‘I’d kill anyone who tried to do that to him,’ he said.
‘You’ll be too weak by then,’ she said gently. ‘Old before your time with the struggle to survive. So will I be. That’s why we have to go soon, while we’re still capable of protecting the children.’
He sighed deeply. ‘I’ll think about it,’ he said.
‘And while you’re thinking about it, do what I said and win the Governor’s trust,’ Mary said. ‘Once we have that, we’re half-way there.’
Mary lay awake long after Will had fallen asleep. She watched and listened constantly, whereas Will went around with his eyes and ears closed. He might think there were adequate provisions for many months yet in the stores, but she knew better. When the officers dined with the Governor now, they had to take their own bread, and the fare at Government House was little better than her own. One evening they’d dined on dog!
Just a few days ago an elderly convict had died while getting his rations in the store, and when Surgeon White examined his body he found his stomach to be completely empty. The only reason Mary still had some fight left in her, and milk in her breasts for Emmanuel, was because of fish Will brought home from the day’s catch, and the grubs and berries the natives had introduced her to.
Bennelong had finally made his escape from the settlement, once the food and rum he had become used to grew short. Gardens, even the Governor’s own, had been constantly plundered for vegetables, despite the severe flogging that resulted if the culprit was caught. It wasn’t only convicts that did it, a seaman from the Supply was caught, and one of the Marines. Will had been compelled to dig a hole under their hut to keep their own meagre rations safe. He’d made it like the ones smugglers used back in Cornwall, lined with wood, and a false floor laid down on it.
Yet Mary thrived and still managed to feed her family because she refused to give way to utter despair as some were doing. As she told Will, it was just a case of hanging on, being helpful