"Aw, hell," Quincy whispered.
Bryony realized he was staring upriver. She tore her gaze from Hayden's slow but steady passage back toward the shore long enough to cast one swift glance toward the mountains.
And saw another, deadly surge of floodwaters crashing down on them.
"God, no!"
she screamed.
The second wall of water hit when Hayden was still only halfway up the bank. She saw him stumble to his knees. Hands reached out to haul in the rope, to grab him.
Somehow he managed to stagger back up onto his feet and splash to the edges of the swirling, sucking morass.
"Hayden." Bryony surged forward to throw her arms around him. She felt cold water seep into her shoes, soak her skirt to the knees. "Oh, thank God," she whispered, over and over again. She cradled his wet cheeks between her trembling hands, kissed his eyes, his mouth.
Then a sudden, hideous thought struck her. She whirled back toward the river, but saw only heaving, white-crested waves sweeping on down the river and out of sight.
Oliver had disappeared.
She refused to believe he was dead.
Once before Bryony had thought Oliver lost to a watery grave, and yet he had somehow managed to survive. This time she would not believe he was dead until she saw his body.
The floodwaters surged for three days, rising over the high banks of the river, spreading out over farmlands and settlements, carrying away livestock and buildings and the odd, unlucky colonist. But by the fourth day, the worst had passed.
From Barrenjoey to the Long Reef, the beaches were strewn with the flotsam of the attempts of transplanted Englishmen and women to build themselves a new life on the banks of a river they had not yet come to understand. Dead pigs and cattle, bedsteads and smashed window frames, lay entangled with piles of hay and sodden corn and twisted, muddied lengths of wool and muslin. In places the debris was piled so high one couldn't even see the sand, and the poor and the dispossessed came from miles around to search through it and salvage what they could.
Thus it was that they found the body of the man with the guinea-gold hair, the man whose wife had refused to believe he was dead until she had seen his body. They
wrapped him in a muddy tarp and carried him back up the river to her, so that she might bury him in the small cemetery high on the hill above Hayden St. John's house.
Next to the grave of Hayden St. John's first wife, Laura.
March. 1811
The wind danced slow and easy through the dry leaves of the gum trees down by the river. It was a temperate wind, swinging up from the south. A wind that whispered of soft rains and shortening days and the bonfires of autumn to come.
Bryony set aside her trowel and rose to her feet. Sighing with contentment, she lifted her face to the breeze and let it cool her damp forehead and cheeks. The summer had been hot and long, but the harvest had been good. Life had been good.
A gurgle of laughter at her feet made her look down and smile. Miss Sophie St. John, a year old now and already steady on her feet, toddled over to where her half brother and half sister sat in the newly turned earth of the garden bed.
"Want a mud pie?" Madeline offered, holding out a tin plate heaped high with a squishy brown concoction.
"Mud," repeated Sophie, reaching out with one chubby fist.
Madeline's head fell back, a delighted smile creasing her cheeks. "She said 'mud.' Did you hear her, Mama? She said mud!"
Bryony stared at her daughter, feeling anew the sheer delight of having Madeline beside her. Never again, she swore, would she take the simple things in life for granted. All were too precious. And far too easily lost.
Madeline's smile was as bright as the summer sun. There had been a time, especially in the dark weeks after Oliver's death, when Bryony had feared the child might never recover from what she had been through. But that blank look she had worn in the first months after her arrival in New South Wales had eventually faded, to be replaced by the ready laughter and hushed wonder of the child Bryony remembered from the days at Cadgwith Cove.
"Mud," said Sophie again, or what sounded like mud.
Bryony started. "Oh, my goodness—"
She made a grab for the baby, but Sophie was too quick. Her hand closed over Madeline's proffered mud pie and brought up a fistful to smear it liberally over her cheeks and mouth.
Bryony scooped the baby up in her arms. "We don't eat the mud pies, darling," chuckled Bryony, using the edge of her apron in an attempt to wipe off the worst of the muck. "Nor do we wear them."
Simon's gleeful laughter floated up, to be carried along with Madeline's giggles toward the house. The sound of hammering filled the air, blending with the children's laughter and the bleating of the sheep on the hillside and the raucous cawing of the flock of cockatoos passing overhead. The homestead had acquired a second story the previous winter, and now Hayden had decided to add a northern wing. The new brick walls were already higher than Simon's head.
One of the hammers stopped swinging, and a man came out onto the veranda. A tall man with broad shoulders, lean hips, and long legs. Bryony smiled, a glow of happiness and love warming her heart at the sight of her husband. She had married him all over again, just to be sure he really
was
her husband.
She watched him step down onto the garden path. Hot, golden sunlight glanced along his sharp, high cheekbones. Gravel crunched beneath his boot heels as he
strolled toward them. His deep blue eyes narrowed with silent amusement when he caught sight of Sophie's face.
"What's this?" he asked, reaching out with his thumb to swipe at some of the mud Bryony had missed. "You look like a beggar brat."
"What's a beggar?" asked Simon, squinting up at his father.
"A beggar is someone who is poor and has no money," answered Bryony.
"We're not beggars, are we?" asked Madeline. She stood up and dusted her seat with hands that were dirtier than her dress. "Quincy says I'm a rich woman—richer even than Papa." She stared up Hayden. "Is it true, Papa? Am I rich?"
Hayden's amused gaze caught Bryony's and held it. "Rich?" He grinned. "You're not just rich. You're very rich." He reached down to swing Madeline—grubby hands and dirty dress and all—up into his arms. "Do you remember Peyton Hall?"
Madeline wrapped her arms around Hayden's neck and hugged him close. "No," she said. But Bryony saw the shadows that darkened her brown eyes and the barely perceptible tightening of her mouth, and knew the child remembered something.
"Well, it's a great big house that belongs to you now. In a place called Cornwall. You were born in Cornwall, you know. One of these days we'll go there for a visit and see it."
"Really?" breathed Simon, his emerald-green eyes growing round with the wonder of it. "Will we go on the
Laura!"
"Yes." Hayden glanced thoughtfully at Bryony. "When your mother is ready."
Bryony shifted Sophie to her hip and swiveled to look down at the river. It was low now, and sluggish after the dry months of summer. She remembered that afternoon, long ago, when the sun had shown golden and hot, and the water had flowed placid and peaceful, and Louisa had
told her of the floods that could swell the river until it reached halfway up to the house.
"There's Sean!" shouted Simon, surging to his feet and pointing toward the yard. "Come on, Madeline." Hand in hand they ran, leaving Sophie to fuss and wriggle until Bryony put her down. The baby tottered off toward the shovels and plates abandoned by her siblings, and happily plopped down on her bottom in the dirt. Bryony watched the child warily, but she didn't seem inclined to repeat her mud-eating experiment.
Hayden came up behind her, his arm slipping around her waist to draw her back against the long, hard line of his body. They held each other in silence for a time, her hands wrapped around his strong arm, her head tipped back against his shoulder. She felt the solid heat of his palm lying against her waist, heard the gentle swish of the river sliding past, flowing slowly but inevitably toward the sea. A deep, quiet sense of peace filled her. "I remember reading something one time... something that compared fate to a current, sweeping us all on to our destinies."
He ran his hands
in a
slow caress up her sides, turning her in his arms to face him. "Is that what you believe?" he asked, his eyes narrowing as he studied her expression.
She considered a moment, then shook her head. "No." She touched the tips of her fingers to his tanned cheek, marveling again at the simple things in life. Such as the laugh of a child. The beauty of a heat-hazed afternoon. The love of a good man. The simple things that made life worthwhile. "I think fate is more like
a
tide. Something that ebbs and flows. Something we can miss or catch. Something that can save us." She paused. "Or destroy us."
The freshening breeze brought her the heavy scent of freshly cut hay and the warm, musky smell of turned earth. A sudden gust caught at her hair, blew it across her face. Hayden snagged his fingers
in
the loose strands,
drawing them back behind her head. "You saved me," he said in a soft, throaty voice. His thumb rubbed back and forth across the angle of her cheekbone. "With your courage, and your strength, and your love. I'm glad...."
His voice trailed off as he swiveled his head to stare out over the silver band of the river winding down through the valley. A lone sulfur-crested cockatoo lifted from a nearby red gum, its heavy wings beating the sultry air and flashing like white sails against the hot blue sky.
"Why are you glad, Hayden?" she asked gently.
He brought his gaze back to hers. She saw the love that shone in the depths of his blue eyes and the contentment that lifted the corners of his mouth into a teasing smile. "I'm glad fate brought you to me."
She laughed, and he caught her laugh with his kiss.
Until the late eighteenth century, Britain transported its convicted felons to the colonies of the New World. When the American Revolution eliminated that convenient outlet, British jails soon became so overcrowded that the government decided to establish a new colony, a penal colony, at a place called Botany Bay.
Botany Bay had been explored in 1770 by Captain James Cook during his famous voyage, but when the First Fleet arrived there in 1788, they decided it was not a suitable site for a colony and moved their settlement some miles up the coast to a small cove in Port Jackson that they named Sydney. Although the first settlement in what was known at the time as New South Wales was actually at Sydney, the name "Botany Bay" continued to be applied, which is why Bryony's lawyer told her she was likely to be transported to Botany Bay, when her actual destination was Sydney.
When Captain Matthew Flinders circumnavigated the southern continent in 1803, he referred to it as "terra australis." After that the name "Australia" gradually came into usage, particularly after the arrival of Governor Macquarie in 1810. Thus it is not a complete anachronism to have Bryony occasionally use the term in 1808-9. Besides, "the wide New South Wales sky" just doesn't sound right.
Because this is a novel rather than a history,
I
have allowed myself some laxity in geography and chronology. There was no homestead called Jindabyne, set high on its
hill overlooking the Hawkesbury River, although a town of that name can be found in the Blue Mountains. No ship carrying a cargo of women prisoners arrived in New South Wales in September 1808, so I have sent Bryony on the
Indispensable,
which did make several such trips around the turn of the century.
The history of the colony in the years 1808-9 was a turbulent one. In January 1808, the New South Wales Corps revolted against the then Governor William Bligh (yes, the same Captain Bligh who suffered through the mutiny on the
Bounty)
in a sordid but colorful incident known as the Rum Rebellion. The political events that followed were highly involved and beyond the scope of this tale, so I have simplified them. The heinous Foveaux was indeed acting governor when Bryony first arrived at the colony in 1808, although he was not in residence at Government House at that time. Because of the rebellion, some important figures from the early years of the colony were actually absent at this time, but I have taken the liberty of keeping them there.
Several scenes in this story were inspired by events that actually occurred. There were two floods on the Hawkesbury in 1809, one in May, the second in August. The destruction and loss of life were severe. The tale of the sentry given eight hundred lashes for falling asleep is real, as is the story about the officer court-martialed for marrying his convict mistress. Other incidents, such as the sad tale of the bark-covered graves, the lost child found clutching a bouquet of wildflowers, and Bryony's brush with the dogs, were inspired by events that took place in other parts of Australia, in other times. Because the Aboriginal peoples who originally inhabited the Hawkesbury died out so early, little is known of their language, which is why the Aboriginal people in this tale speak with a distinct South Australian accent.
The arrival of the new governor, Macquarie, in January 1810 brought many changes in New South Wales. He improved the roads, embarked on an ambitious building
program (with the aid of a talented transported architect named Green way), and eliminated rum as the colony's unique form of currency. Highly disturbed by the state of moral laxity in which he found the colony, he published proclamations in the newspapers against the pernicious local practice of "living in sin" and encouraged (vigorously) those involved in "irregular unions" to regularize them. Thus, the former Major George Johnston, who had taken the convict woman Hetty Abrahams as his mistress when they met on the
First Fleet,
finally married her in 1814—after more than half-a-dozen children and some twenty-five years of living together.
Governor Macquarie also went out of his way to encourage the "emancipists," as the ex-convicts were called, much to the fury of the so-called "exclusives," who were free of the criminal taint and therefore considered themselves superior. The new governor even went so far as to invite ex-convicts to dinner at Government House. One can imagine that Bryony St. John was one of them.