3 Great Historical Novels (5 page)

The ale house was as rowdy as ever and the Lafferty boys had the corner table. Their fiddle and tin whistle were out already. Every face was familiar. Many were assigned, like Michael; beholden to wait out the last years or months of their sentence in private service. They would be sheering merino, or working in a quarry or boot factory or, like he, as a carpenter on one of the many new public buildings on Macquarie Street. There were many here who would never go home, even in the unlikely event that they could pay for their passage. Once you had a ticket of leave, wages were better than in Ireland or England and a redeemed convict with a trade or even just an able body, was assured a good living.

Michael had never once considered staying on. Mostly because of Annie. He’d been living like a free man for almost two years, assigned to the governor’s building agent, and it was not a bad life. The harshest sentence had always been being away from his wife and son. Annie’s hair might be grey now, like his own. And Thomas, who was little more than a lad when Michael was arrested, now a man. His son, a man.

The letters from Thomas came every few weeks with news of Annie, Greystones and the Mahoneys, and were Michael’s most treasured articles. Thomas never wrote plainly of the activities of his men, it was too risky, but he managed to convey whether they were safe and had been successful. Most of the
underground news from Ireland came from the steady stream of new arrivals, and this fed Michael Kelly’s small, secret press in the form of a monthly pamphlet.

The dark brown bitter that they called porter tasted more like charred malt, but at least at the Harp and Shamrock you could be certain to never encounter a colonist. Here all Irishmen, be they free settlers, prisoners or pardoned, were treated as equals. The bar was lined with the men without a choice; the survivors of ’98, the biggest uprising Ireland had ever known. They were all old men now, and their exile was political and unrepealable. They lived to tell anyone who would listen of the way things had been for them when they arrived. Michael had listened a good many times, at first out of interest and then out of sympathy. Now he just pretended he was listening. He had a good picture of the barren shanty town Sydney had been, once, where the prisoners were always hungry and where people were either killing or being killed by the natives. Michael had heard, more times than he cared to mention, of subterranean isolation cells, and water pits where a prisoner was unable to sleep for fear of drowning; of leg irons and lashes and the godawful
loneliness
. It was the loneliness, they all agreed, that was the worst.

Many of the political exiles were educated men and they had put their idle wits to use making life difficult for the
governor
’s military and constabulary. It was from their solidarity and rebellion that Michael had the idea for the basement press, and the veterans of the Harp and Shamrock were his most faithful readers.

Oscar was behind the bar with a jug at the ready for refills. His round face shone with good humour and perspiration. He nodded as Michael approached. ‘A pint is it, Mick?’

‘Aye. The black stuff. It’s what I look forward to all day and when it touches my lips I always wonder why.’

‘The water,’ said someone.

‘Aye. Too much lime,’ someone else chimed.

‘Lucky to have the bloody water. We didn’t have fresh water in the early days.’

‘Well it’s not as if it’s a good supply even now, is it, Sean? Not with the bore about to run dry and the piping gone to rust.’

The conversation was always the same. No one really minded that the stout wasn’t as sweet as it was ‘back home’, since it did the same job, but it was necessary to remark upon it. It united them. It also saved thinking of some topic for conversation whilst the drink was being poured. At the end of the long, labouring day, no one really felt like talking. At least not until they’d emptied a pint or two, so it was better that way.

Michael took his jar to one of the upended barrels that served as tables, and lit his pipe. The Laffertys had struck up a reel and he tapped his boot absently on the straw that covered the wood floor. His never-idle mind moved towards the
evening
ahead, but before he could assemble his thoughts, Will O’Shea shuffled over.

Even when he was pickled, which was most of the time, Will was good for a yarn. He had been a razor-witted Dublin
journalist
in his youth, until he wrote one too many scathing commentaries on the British in Ireland and was summarily picked up and dumped in New South Wales.

‘On your way down the Rocks, Mick?’ Will had his eye on Michael’s tobacco tin, so he pushed it towards him.

‘Aye.’

‘Awful quiet down there.’ Will took a pinch of tobacco and pressed it into his pipe.

‘Aye.’ Michael nodded thoughtfully. He’d noticed it too. If there was a job on, he was bloody well going to get to the bottom
of it. He was no whistle-blower, but if the orders were coming from London, then he’d make it his business. ‘Let us know if you hear of anything, won’t you, Will?’

Will chuckled and puffed on his pipe. ‘Nothing else to do.’ They assessed the new builds on Macquarie Street, and agreed that the timber from the cedar logs being floated down the Hawkesbury were magnificent. When Michael had drained his glass and Will had packed his pipe again, he left and headed for the Rocks.

The Rocks, the slum area at the bottom end of George Street, was overlooked by the homes of merchants and entrepreneurs. These honey coloured villas were perched right up on the tops of the ridge and as far away from the slums below as was
physically
possible. From their roost, Michael Kelly imagined that it was simply a matter of keeping one’s eyes directed out to sea, rather than to the rookeries below. Then a wealthy man might conveniently forget that his citadel rose up, both metaphorically and literally, from the tenements of the poor.

As Michael passed by the huddled, flimsy hovels loosely defined as ‘cottages’ in the lower Rocks area, he felt the same vague uneasiness he’d felt for the last week. These huts were a patchwork of rough-hewn timber, roofing iron, sea chests and canvas. They had no guttering or sewage and they opened onto alleys which were unpaved and undrained, and where all
manner
of filth collected. In this neighbourhood many cottage industries thrived in amongst the homes of the Irish and English poor. Michael knew exactly where one might find coiners, unlicensed pawnbrokers and ‘financiers’. Sydney was a competitive market for forgers and tricksters, and for thieves of varying skill and audacity.

All was still suspiciously quiet in the Rocks; the characters who were usually seen sauntering up towards George and
Elizabeth Streets at night, looking for an unsecured fob watch or a carelessly tied reticule, were either staying in or, more likely, were otherwise engaged. A big job meant someone was in from London or Calcutta; the cities between which most of the empire’s silver was shipped. If it was a big job, then
someone
who would never, ever, let their identity be known was running it. Someone who would think nothing of having nosy bastards like Michael silenced. He’d have to be careful not to let his interest show. It offended him that so many traditions and trades were being laid to waste. The suffering and
degradation
made him sick, and when he saw the clippers and barques of the East India Company or Jardine Matheson docked in Sydney harbour, he wanted to hang them all from the jib by their prissy white cravats.

Michael arrived at a row of slightly better class housing – whose windows had shutters that could be fastened by a bolt and whose walls were wide planks of native hardwood. When freshly hewn, it gave off the faint scent of eucalypt, which was a welcome respite from the rotting funk of the Rocks
neighbourhood
. These dwellings had underground rooms, originally excavated to keep food from spoiling so quickly. It was in one of these cellars that Michael spent his evenings.

The cottage in question belonged to Maggie, his oldest friend in the colony, and someone he didn’t ever expect to see again when he left. The fact that she was also the madam of a well-run brothel was of no consequence. One had to make a living. Since the upstairs trade was profitable, Michael’s rent was low; and Maggie no more cared what he got up to, than he did she. There were so few women in the settlement that
purchasing
the company of one of them was perfectly sensible, being as it provided everyone involved with a reward of some kind.

Michael knew as soon as he took the latch from the gate that something was amiss, because the windows were shuttered and bolted. The gas lantern that normally flickered on the verandah, informing punters that all was well, was not lit. His guess was that the law had been to visit. It almost certainly wasn’t a small-time brothel they were after, so what did they want? Information, perhaps. Maggie was doyenne of the
street-walkers
, and the street was the conduit of the Sydney underworld, a criminal network that had imported its highly skilled practitioners from the most infamous of London’s
prisons
. Something was definitely up.

The stair timbers creaked. Rhia put the pen down silently, hardly breathing. Its silver shank rolled across the table, then rolled back towards her, coming to rest at her fingertips. The fountain pen was a gift from Mamo, but until now, Rhia had been too afraid to use it. She had thought it foolish to imagine that using a gift from her grandmother might call her from the grave. The pen was graceful and decorative, and the knot-work of its engravings glowed like illuminations. Even perhaps a little brighter than they should by candlelight.

The stair creaked again. Mab was fat enough to make the stairs groan, but Mab wouldn’t move from the stones by the hearth until there was cream in her dish. It could only be Mamo again, moving through the house, doing whatever ghosts did in the faraway hours.
The faraway hours
. Strange that she should remember. It had been their secret name, long ago, for the time when the household was sleeping. Mamo had told her stories to help her sleep, which kept her awake. Mamo had also taught her a little rhyme to keep ghosts away, but Rhia couldn’t remember it now.

The shadows scattered as the door creaked open. Mamo’s spindly legs were clad, as before, in her husband’s too-big long johns. She’d worn them to bed from the time that he died until her own death, and had insisted on being buried in them. The underclothes of a dead man might seem unconventional
nightwear to some, but to Mamo it was perfectly sensible. She was from the hills and had always complained that the cold sea mist coiled around her bones. Her husband had been from the sea, being Black Irish and, supposedly, descended from the wrecks of the Spanish Armada. Mamo had liked to think him
silkie
. The silver braid of her hair was draped across her bony shoulder and half-hidden by her old paisley shawl. Her feet were, as usual, bare.

Mamo stood for a minute looking at Rhia’s drawing book open on the table. ‘You’re expecting a visitor?’ Her grandmother could never simply say ‘are you drawing?’ Any artistry must be a visitation from Cerridwen, muse of the bards.

‘Not tonight. I thought I’d write. Say goodbye to Thomas.’

Mamo looked at the page. ‘You’ve not much to say.’ She couldn’t read, but anyone could see that the parchment was unmarked. ‘Don’t be a milksop, Rhiannon. Say goodbye to his face.’

Rhia sighed. She knew that she should.

Mamo was still looking at the page. Her neat little walnut face was smoother, as though she’d grown younger in death. She traced a crooked finger over the knot-work on the pen, as if it were a pattern in cloth. It was a simple triple knot; the
oldest
of designs; the sign of the goddess. Mamo turned away and knelt by the wood basket, looking for faggots. ‘Write to me,’ she said.

Rhia laughed. ‘But you can’t read! And besides you’re—’ Should she state the obvious? Better not. Mamo was easily offended.

Mamo clicked her tongue in annoyance. ‘Keep what you write. You can read to me when you come home.’

‘I could.’ Rhia knew that she probably wouldn’t, and besides, she didn’t want her grandmother, or any ghost for that matter,
waiting for her when she came home. She was finished with ghosts. Or so she had thought.

‘Good.’ Mamo sat down. ‘Now, I’ve a story.’

Mamo’s stories were drawn from some boundless ancestral hoard; tales that had been told and retold by generations of bards. Some had never even been written down; others weren’t entirely Irish and weren’t entirely Welsh, like Mamo herself. She professed to be descended from the
Tuatha de Danaan
, the tribe of the great goddess Anu and the preservers of her stories. Connor Mahoney had always left the room when Mamo talked about the
Tuatha
; whenever she did, her grey eyes turned dark as granite.

‘There is a story about Rhiannon I haven’t told you; from after she fell in love with Pwyll and brought him to the Otherworld and after she was wrongly accused. After these things happened, she became the wife of Manannán, god of the sea.’

Rhia thought she knew all the stories of Rhiannon, her namesake who travelled between the world of the Others and the world of men. She knew that she rode a white mare and wore a purple cloak and that three magical birds always
accompanied
her. She knew that Rhiannon was, mysteriously, separate from but also part of Anu, and that her life was beset by troubles and betrayals because she had to become strong to do the work of the goddess.

She listened to Mamo’s story, but it was long and
complicated
and full of Gaelic names, and Rhia’s mind wandered. In only a few hours she would be leaving for London. Mamo had visited only once before, on the first night. She insisted Rhia go, and Rhia, just as adamantly, insisted that she would not. They had argued about it half the night. In the end Mamo said that it was her house and that she didn’t want Rhia in it. If Rhia
didn’t go, she said, she, Mamo, would stay. That did it. It was time, her grandmother said, for Rhia to undertake the night sea journey.

Brigit had been stunned by Rhia’s announcement that she would go to London after all, but she didn’t ask what had made her change her mind. Perhaps she didn’t want to know.

‘At least your mother agreed with me about your naming,’ Mamo was saying. Her father had wanted to name her Mary. ‘Goodness knows, she needs to stand up to him more,’ Mamo shook her head. ‘I didn’t raise her to be stupid.’

‘She isn’t stupid. She only thinks it’s respectful.’

‘Respectful!’ Mamo spat. ‘It is not
respect
to surrender, it is respectful to respect oneself and one’s spouse equally.’

Rhia did not want a lecture, or another tirade against her father. ‘Tell me the rest of the story of Rhiannon and Manannán,’ she said.

Epona stood as still as a statue and accepted an apple graciously while Rhia saddled her in the stable-yard in the half-light. Her soft grey ears were twitching as though the mare could hear the altered rhythm of Rhia’s heartbeat; as though she knew something was different.

Only the baker’s lamp was lit as they rode through the
village
and down to the sea. Thomas would be awake, though, and at his loom. The shale was glistening, the tide receding. The moon was new; a dim crescent, barely visible in the pearl grey sky. The sea sighed rhythmically. Rhia pressed her heels gently into Epona’s flank and the mare tossed her head and picked up her hooves. Rhia leaned lower over her neck and they moved as one until Epona was at a canter, her hooves rattling the shale like castanets. Rhia’s hood fell back. The air was sharp and salty and its damp clung to her hair. She closed her eyes for a moment.

The night sea journey.

The journey to the farthest shores of one’s fears. It was the sea itself that Rhia feared most.

The Kelly cottage was on the outskirts of the village, in the next cove, with the sand instead of shale at the back gate. Michael Kelly had once said he needed to see the ocean to remember that there was a world around its shores: doubtful he would need to be reminded of the fact again.

As children, Rhia and Thomas would sit on stools by Michael’s loom and watch him. He taught them how to weave and told them that flax was one of the oldest fibres in the world. He showed them how the soft, flexible stem of the plant needed to be soaked to separate the fibres, allowing for a much finer yarn to be spun. Flax was a peculiar fibre, and much harder to spin than wool and cotton. Spinning it by hand
produced
a superior cloth because a spindle and hands as deft as Annie Kelly’s could produce yarn of any weight, whereas machines could only produce coarse yarns. Annie Kelly spun all grades of linen yarn; finer for lace and cambric and damask, and coarse yarn for rope and paper and canvas.

Rhia arrived at the back of the cottage and tied Epona to the gatepost. The building was the shape of a barn and larger than most of the weavers’ cottages in Greystones. Thomas saw her through the window and beckoned her to come in. He was at the loom. The Kellys worked long hours. They produced such perfect repeat patterns that their cloth was always in demand.

The back door was never latched. The long narrow room that looked out across the Irish Sea was sparsely furnished to make way for two ancient looms, one for linen and one for wool, each hewn from gnarled oak and dark with age. There was a large hearth in the middle of the room and from a hook
above the spitting flames hung a blackened pot. A bright
copper
kettle shone like a lantern on its stone ledge. The scene was so familiar that Rhia wanted to cry at the thought of leaving. Neither Thomas nor Annie stopped working when Rhia let herself in. She did not expect them to. The rhythms of the loom and the spinning wheel were not to be interrupted
without
good cause.

‘Morning.’ Annie smiled. She smiled no matter how much she missed her man or how much yarn was left to spin. ‘There’s broth in the pot, and you know where the bread is.’

Thomas said nothing as Rhia fetched herself a bowl of broth and a hunk of warm soda bread from the cheese cupboard. She sat on a stool by the fire next to Annie’s spinning wheel and watched Thomas’s foot treadle up and down and his hands fly across the shafts as though they were an extension of his body. He had his mother’s colouring – wavy chestnut hair and
milk-white
skin. His hands and forearms were strong and sinewed. He was always quiet, but his silences had moods. Rhia could tell he was brooding.

Annie looked from one of them to the other, wound her bobbin off and dropped it into the basket at her feet. She touched Rhia’s shoulder. ‘I’ve linen to boil. Don’t go away for ever, will you? You’ll be missed.’ Annie kissed her on each cheek and gave her a swift hug and then hurried away.

Rhia swallowed back her tears and moved closer to the
window
near the loom. She waited for Thomas to speak. He finally took his foot from the treadle.

‘Well, Rhia.’

‘Well yourself.’

‘Will you come back to us do you think?’

‘What a thing to say! Do you really think I’d leave for ever? I don’t want to go. I’ve no choice.’

He laughed bitterly. ‘My pa had no choice. You’ve been wishing yourself in London since you were wee.’

It was true. ‘But this is not how I wanted it, not to seek a position.’

‘Aye, and I’m sorry for your troubles, but you’ve no idea how you’ve been blessed. You’ve not had to think about how to pay for your kid slippers and your silk ribbons. It won’t be so bad, you’ve a quick mind – you’re inventive.’

‘But I’m not polite. All of the Londoners I’ve met are polite. And I’m not clever enough to be a governess.’

Thomas only shook his head as though this didn’t warrant a reply. He looked away from her towards the waves breaking across the beach. Epona was pawing the sand at the gate. ‘She’ll miss you,’ he said, jerking his head at the mare.

‘You’ll be careful, won’t you Thomas?’

He didn’t answer. He led a small group of Catholics who met secretly to plan insurgencies, just as his father had done. He and his men wrought their own brand of justice on the English Protestant landlords who behaved unjustly towards their tenants. Their actions were often violent and always unlawful, and Rhia didn’t ever ask about them. She heard things, of course, and that was bad enough. Lately, she’d also heard that Thomas had a sweetheart; the sister of one of his men.

‘I hear you’re courting Fiona Duffy.’

He ignored this. ‘What of your painting? Have you more ideas?’

Rhia smiled. ‘Only a hundred. But I’ve not picked up my brush for weeks.’

They had climbed trees and bathed naked and searched for fairy rings. Thomas had watched her first experiments with pigments, sitting on the forest floor in the autumn or amongst
the long headland grasses in the summer. He had admired the silken skin of a wet shell with her, and the scribble of veins in a dry leaf. He’d made the easel and paintbox for her sixteenth birthday. That was when he’d asked Rhia to marry him. Connor Mahoney did not allow him in the cottage for the rest of the summer.

They were silent until the fire spat loudly, making Rhia jump and interrupting the awkwardness of the moment. Thomas went to the cheese cupboard and returned with a package wrapped in brown paper. He gave it to her. ‘Don’t open it now. Not till you’re on your way. I’ll not say goodbye, as you’ve said you’re coming home. You know the hearth’s always lit here.’

‘I know.’ She took Thomas’s hands until he pulled away and returned to his loom. He didn’t look up again. He kept his head bent low – lower than normal – over the shafts.

Epona walked up the headland as though she was hitched to a cart, and seemed to slow even more as they neared the cottage. Perhaps she had sensed that something was amiss. Rhia turned to take a last look at the beach; at the gulls circling above the red and yellow and blue fishing boats. She turned back and saw her father. He was sitting in his wicker chair looking out across the bay as he’d done every day for a week, unheeding of the weather. The weight of his failure was patent in the stoop of his shoulders.

They had pretended, thus far, that the quarrel had never happened. It was easier. She’d had little time to dwell on it once the decision had been taken to leave Dublin, and Connor had not returned to St Stephen’s Green to witness the empty
echoing
rooms and the tears of Tilly and Hannah. He had been released from the infirmary only last week. Rhia and Brigit
had done everything themselves. There was enough from the auction of the Dublin house and contents to settle accounts, but not much more.

Rhia could delay the moment no longer. She jumped down and kissed Epona on the nose. She gave her a withered apple from her pocket and a light tap on the rump. The mare knew how to find her own way to the yard, but she went reluctantly, her head hung like Thomas’s had been. Rhia turned away quickly.

Her father looked up at her with his head tilted and attempted a smile. ‘I wish you wouldn’t go, Rhia.’

‘It’s not for ever.’

‘To think of you seeking a position. And with no husband to provide for you. It’s shameful.’