Bitter Eden (56 page)

If you would be so kind, you might also thank her for writing to me of Hobart Town. I will be leaving for that settlement this afternoon. I am thankful that she thought to write to me of its beauty and pleasant aspects. I am sure to feel at home there immediately, due to her efforts.

Sincerely,

Your Christian brother, Peter Berean

He laughed nervously as he signed his name. He gave the letter to the guard, handing him a small amount of money he had stolen from a settler to whom he had been sent to deliver lumber. It would help insure the letter would be given to the commandant immediately.

No longer needing them, Peter picked the least informative letter of the bunch and tossed it to the old convict. Then he picked up another, scanned it, and tossed that to him as well. "Here—have two."

He lay down on the bunk again, his eyes narrowed as he allowed himself for the first time in months to think about his farm. It was no longer the soil or the brewery that filled his thoughts. It was the idea of owning it that held him in thrall. He remembered his study and the heavily tufted chair in which he sat while he worked at his accounts. He thought of put-

ting his feet up on the shining mahogany desk. He thought of spending money, giving orders, doing anything he pleased at any time. They were hard thoughts, unrealistically void of people.

Rebecca Ward stood on the jetty, waiting to choose the convict the commandant had promised she could have.

Rebecca was a large woman, domineering and far too iron-willed to have done well in London's marriage market, not that she wanted to. She had never met a man she considered equal to herself, and she would die a spinster rather than submit to a weaker one. She was, however, suited to the colony at Hobart Town. She would withstand the rigors better than most, and make a good teacher as well. She was both sure enough and bold enough to keep error-prone little boys in line.

The idea of a convict slave had appealed to Rebecca from the start. She had never met an animal yet she couldn't train, two-legged or four.

She spotted Peter as soon as he stepped off the gangplank. He towered above the others. His hair, unkempt as it was, shone nearly white in the sun; and despite his hardened, closed expression, she sensed the underlying vulnerability.

She appraised him as she had her father's hunting dogs, her eyes keen for straight bones, well-formed muscle, proper proportion, coordination, and alertness. 'There is the man I want," she said firmly to the commandant, indicating Peter.

The commandant hesitated, then said, "He's not your best choice."

Rebecca laughed. "He is my best choice. What is your objection?"

"His record."

She shrugged. "How bad can it be? Would he be here if it were felt he is incorrigible?"

"They say he has lost his rebellious spirit, but—"

Then we should assume he has."

"Perhaps," the commandant conceded doubtfully.

"Then I shall have him."

The commandant looked at Rebecca, the fiery red hair, the determined jaw, and the shrewd, intelligent cat's eyes that left no doubt of the will they cloaked. At least he could count on her not to be soft with the man. He motioned to a guard, then in a low voice issued several orders.

Rebecca insisted on waiting where she was, and she stood in the hot sun for nearly half an hour until Peter was brought to stand before her. She looked him over again, checking teeth and muscle and prodding at his knees and back; then she seconded her first approval. "What is your name?"

"Peter Berean, ma'am."

"May I take him with me now, John?" she asked, turning to the commandant

"Whenever you wish. We're finished with him. I anticipated your haste in the matter, Rebecca," he said, smiling.

"In that case the sooner he learns what is expected of him, the better. Follow me, Berean. Mind you keep proper distance." She looked critically at him. "Stand up straight! I'll not tolerate slovenly posture." She tapped him briskly on the shoulders with the end of her parasol.

Peter shrugged his shoulders back, walking nearly as straight as he once had. The sway given to his shoulders by his long-strided step brought back traces of what had once been called insolence in him.

The commandant looked at the two of them marching down the wide, house-lined street. He shook his

head knowingly. He didn't believe in Peter's supposed conversion. Peter, he expected, would be sent from Rebecca's house regularly with a note to be given lashes for insolence and insubordination. He didn't like the look of the man, nor his walk, nor anything else about him. But for the moment, Peter was not his concern,

Peter was nervously aware that in order to gain the freedom he required to make contact with Tom Baker, he had to please Rebecca. He was apprehensive and frightened at the thought of being the only convict at her house, not knowing what would be demanded of him. His hands and body were clammy with doubt and fear as he tortured himself with questions of what Rebecca would want of him. He looked back on Sarah Island with a feeling almost of longing. There he had had a certain kind of security. He knew what was wanted. His job, though loathsome, held no surprises, and he knew and had survived the worst they could do to him. With Rebecca there was the awful uncertainty of not knowing.

She lived on the outskirts of the main settlement in an area just built to accommodate newcomers. Her house was minimal and not ready for the quartering of a convict. For the most part convicts slept in the outbuildings. Rebecca's plot did not yet have the outbuildings constructed. It was one of the reasons she wanted Peter. That she had taken a man with no means of sheltering him, meant nothing to her. Rebecca vowed she'd never be like other settlers, living with suspicions and fears about being able to trust their convicts. Her convict would be so well-trained she would be free to have him in her house once proper accommodations could be made. He would be near at hand to do her bidding at whatever time of the day or night she chose.

As they turned into the pathway to the house, she asked, "Have you ever been a carpenter?"

"No, ma'am."

"Well, you will now. If you are reasonably intelligent there should be no difficulty. Can you read?"

"Yes, ma'am."

He followed her as she motioned him into the house. In an austere room, as devoid of warmth as was Rebecca, she handed him a crude blueprint. "I want a room built to these specifications. The dimensions must be accurate. It will be your room. Be certain it is as well built as the rest of the house, or you will tear it down and begin again. You will build the room as often as it takes for you to get it right."

"Yes, maam."

"You may begin today. There's no purpose in wasting time."

Peter looked, confused, at the stacks of lumber at the back of the house. He had built things before, but that had been in Kent and Poughkeepsie, with no one to decide whether he had met all the requirements they wished. Then too it had been assumed that he was competent and capable; now he would be judged with the expectation that he would commit errors. Without confidence he began the room, never relying on his own judgment or ingenuity, but carefully checking each bit of progress against the blueprint.

At night she chained him outside, leaving him some straw to sleep on until the room was finished. As the room progressed, Peter realized he was building an airless, boxed-in cell into which he would be put. He worked, closing it in board by board, because he could do nothing else. He completed it without error one week after he had started. The original back door to Rebecca's house became the only entrance to his room. She would keep it locked from her side. She

had planned a single window for him, a high slit in the back wall.

Rebecca ordered him into the room the evening he finished it He didn't realize how much he had been dreading this night until the blood rushed from his head. He didn't think he could breathe as he stared at the tight bare walls. In panic he stood where he was, feeling sick to his stomach and fearing he'd scream, bringing Rebecca and all of her mighty wrath down on him. In order to be given the freedom settlers could grant their convicts, Peter had to keep silent his terror of being closed in and alone.

Trying to hold off what he had experienced in the cave, he paced the floor, repeating to himself everything he had done that day, trying to mentally rebuild the room. For a while in the early hours it worked, but as the hours passed, he was mentally and physically exhausted. He sat down on the built-in bunk, and the night slowly began to come alive. The horrible apparitions of the Grummet Rock cave crept into the black silence. The air people danced about him, and the monsters that had once come out of the sea now emerged in spiraling dark shadows from the knots in the wood. Repeatedly he fled to the slit window, standing on the edge of his bed to look out into the darkness. When the moon was out he could see the trees and be reassured, but when it was not, he saw nothing. When it rained he heard the sea pelting at the outside of the rock, washing it away into the sea again.

Rebecca followed a schedule that was rigid to the minute. In the mornings she opened the door to let him eat. Afterward she locked him in again while she went to the schoolhouse. At noon when she returned she came to the room, each time putting him through

some sort of confusing test she devised to no end he understood.

"Do the garden fencing today," she ordered.

"Yes, ma'am."

"What are you waiting for, Berean? I gave you a command," she said, a full glass of rum in her hand as she stood in the doorway blocking his exit

Rebecca watched as Peter stood indecisively, his eyes fastened on the glass of rum.

He didn't know what she expected him to do. He remained mute, and Rebecca waited until the annoyance showed on his face. "Can't you speak?" she asked irritably.

"I can, ma'am."

"Then answer me."

"Yes, ma'am."

She looked at the rum, then held the glass out to him so he could smell it "Do you like rum, Berean?"

"I do."

"You may go now," she said, but didn't move aside so he could pass. He hesitated. "Go to work!"

He sidestepped past her, not looking back as he headed for the front door.

"Berean!"

"Yes, ma'am," he said, turning and standing still, his eyes downcast.

"You brushed the hem of my skirt. Don't ever touch me again, unless given permission."

"I won't, ma'am. I beg your pardon. May I go now?"

"You may go."

That night he found she had left a bottle of rum in his room. He drank it. Except for a few forbidden, stealthy drinks, he had had nothing since he was arrested. It deadened the nighttime fears, allowing him

to pass out and sleep until morning. His head throbbed, and he felt sick the next day.

That seemed to please Rebecca. "My father always said a man who couldn't hold his liquor was.no man at all. You a man, Berean? Or are you simply a brute with intelligence?"

He had no idea what Rebecca wanted him to say. She could have him flogged if she felt like it, and with that punishment would go the hopes he had of her giving him some time to himself. Rebecca's eyes glittered as she waited to jump on whatever he said. He tried to look at her and couldn't. Tm a man"

"We'll see," she replied, smirking.

The bottle of rum was in his room each night. For whatever reason, she wanted him to drink it, and he did, not because she wanted him to, but because it brought oblivion.

Every time she approached him outside the confines of his work, she seemed to poke at him, testing for some point in his character, or lack of it.

Occasionally, when he'd sit down to eat, she'd stalk up behind him. "Stand up when I enter a room!"

He stood. It was what she wanted—that or for him to lose his temper, which he found progressively hard to control as the season for the whalers to come to Hobart drew nearer.

Sometimes after she had done this, she would tell him to sit down and continue eating. At other times she would leave the room, standing near the doorway so she could watch him. The third time it happened, she left him standing so long he thought she had forgotten him. He sat down to complete his supper. She had him flogged for insubordination.

Without a word she had handed him the note designating the twenty lashes he was to be given. She sent him to deliver the message to the commandant, and

then doubled his work load for the following three days.

There was no way he could win with Rebecca, no rationale that he could see. He groped through her maze of oddities, obeying the slightest or most ridiculous command she gave him, carrying wood from one end of the yard to the other only to be told to put it back from where he had taken it. He never knew what she wanted.

Had he not read Stephen's letter promising freedom, he believed he would have beaten Rebecca to death to insure his own end.

Then one night the bottle of rum wasn't in his room. That night the walls closed in again, worse in some ways for now he was craving the rum as well as having to fight away the awful dreads and apparitions. He paced the hours away, his fist tight against his teeth as he waited for morning.

Then just as suddenly and apparently irrationally as she did everything else, Rebecca announced the following morning, "You have earned an hour to yourself this Saturday afternoon."

"Thank you, ma'am."

"That's all you have to say?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"You may walk around the front yard during that hour."

'Thank you, ma'am."

She began to laugh. "I do believe, Berean, I have you so well trained that should I tell you to balance one-handed on the chimney, you would do it."

"I would if you asked it, ma'am."

"Perhaps I will do that one day for my own amusement; but this time your free hour will take you wherever you wish to go. However, bear in mind, should you try to escape, most bolters die of starvation or

cannibalism. It would not be a pleasant death, I assure you, Berean. And should you be recaptured, which is likely, I will make you wish you had died so kindly. Keep that firmly in mind."