Beneath the Southern Cross (2 page)

It was a moonless night, the night it happened. Which felt strange to young Thomas Kendall. The most successful forays for a warrener usually took place when the moon was full. Then the warrener could hunt out the burrows with ease, net the openings, send in the ferrets and set the lurcher on the rabbits, the dog, too, needing the light of the moon to pursue its quarry through the bracken.

But tonight Thomas and his father were not hunting rabbits. They were not wearing their warreners' smocks. And their lurcher, faithful old Jed, had been left at home.

‘It be a bigger prize we hunt tonight, Thomas,' Jonathan Kendall had told his son, ‘and you must say naught to your mother.'

Since the age of ten, Thomas had hunted with his father. He had learned how to press his ear to the earth and listen for the sounds of activity beneath the surface. He had learned to handle a shovel, to dig deep and fast, three feet in a matter of seconds, to get to the rabbit before the ferret moved off with it. And he had learned to huddle and gut his catch with swiftness and precision—the butcher was always pleased with the Kendall delivery. ‘A pleasure to see,' he'd say, ‘rabbits hulked proper—no mess, good and neat.'

Now, nine years on, young Thomas Kendall was a warrener as skilful as any on the Norfolk Brecklands. But this moonless night was different. As he crept along the banks of the Little Ouse River on the outskirts of the village of Thetford with his father and Bill ‘Ferret' Bailey, young Thomas knew that a crime was about to be committed.

Beneath his ragged overcoat, tucked in the crook of his arm, was a large cloth bag. ‘Hide it, lad, hide it,' his father had said as he handed it to him, and Thomas had noted both Ferret and his father stuffing similar bags inside their coats. ‘Keep your eyes and ears open and your wits about you.'

They turned away from the riverbanks and cut through a grove of birch trees. Was it poaching they were up to, Thomas wondered. But they hadn't told him to bring his staff, he would need his staff if they were to go poaching.

He was distracted by a badger. Apparently oblivious to the presence of the men, it trotted along beside them, head down, hindquarters swaying flirtatiously side to side like an overweight coquette. Thomas liked badgers. After several moments, however, the badger paused to listen, body motionless, nose twitching, aware of danger present. They left the animal behind and Thomas's attention once more returned to the men. In the instant they broke out of the grove, he realised their intent.

The road to Norwich was to their left. In the darkness ahead was Burrell and Sons Works, and to their right, surrounded by lavish trees and gardens, was the home of the Widow Pettigrew. A brief thrill of shock ran through Thomas. So that was it! They were about to go thieving.

He said nothing as they straddled the low stone wall. He said nothing as they approached the house, keeping well under cover amongst the elms and oaks, maples and sycamores, but his mind was racing. This was a mad thing his father was contemplating. Was the widow at home tucked up in her bed? Were the servants in their quarters at the rear? There was no light visible, but that meant nothing. To rob this house was the action of a madman.

Thomas had few misgivings about the robbery itself, the widow could certainly afford to be relieved of some of her possessions, and if these were his father's instructions, Thomas was duty-bound to obey. But for the first time in his life he found himself questioning the wisdom of his father's actions.

‘Saturday is the servants' night off,' Jonathan whispered, as if divining his son's thoughts, ‘and the widow goes out to dine with friends in the village.'

‘I've watched her,' Ferret added. ‘She leaves at dusk and doesn't return till nigh on midnight.'

They were around the side of the house where a large window frame with small thick panes of glass was set into the knapped flintstone walls. Thomas watched with admiration as Ferret drew a cold chisel from his coat pocket and levered the window open with comparative ease. It was a skill born of long practice. Ferret was an expert, Thomas realised. Then, one by one, they clambered over the sill.

Inside the widow's house they crouched in the darkness while Jonathan struck the flint of his tinderbox and ignited three tallow candles. As the light filled the room each man stood, candle in hand, and looked about in silence.

On the mantel stood an ornate porcelain vase, several fine china ornaments and a pair of silver candlesticks. In a glass cabinet were a silver salver, a cutlery service and a set of goblets. A carved wooden chest in the corner was opened and revealed sets of linen and lace—sheets, towels, tablecloths and napkins.

‘I told you so.' Ferret was the first to speak. He grinned greedily, his yellow teeth gleaming triumphant in the gloom. ‘A haul fit for a king.' He crossed excitedly to the fireplace. ‘Jonathan, look!'

On the table by the open hearth stood an ivory snuff box, a hand-carved humidor, a brass pipe-rack and a pewter jug with matching tankard. All preserved in memory of the widow's late husband who had died barely six months previously. Widow Pettigrew still wore black and, in church on Sundays, her mourning veil.

‘She's even kept his coat,' Ferret cackled as he dropped his own threadbare garment and donned the heavy wool greatcoat which was draped over the armchair. ‘A big man, old Pettigrew,' he added, the coat hanging off his scrawny frame.

‘We'd best get to work.' Jonathan Kendall was already stuffing the silver candlesticks into his cloth bag. ‘Thomas lad, you go upstairs. The widow's bedroom. It will be to the left.' Thomas hesitated. ‘Ferret's kept watch these past three Saturdays,' Jonathan explained, ‘he says that the upstairs light in the room on the left is the last to be snuffed at night.'

Thomas turned to do his father's bidding.

‘Satin and lace and fine leather gloves fetch a good price,' Jonathan instructed. ‘And feather bedding. And mind you check the dressing table,' he added, ‘for that's where she'll be keeping her jewels and trinkets.'

Holding his candle aloft, Thomas stepped out into the main hall and up the stairway, each wooden step creaking alarmingly. Turning left at the top, he crept to the door at the end of the corridor and gently turned the knob.

As the door swung slowly inward, Thomas heard a noise. A noise he recognised. It was the noise he himself made when he was with Bertha in the little back room at the alehouse, passion mounting, nearing his release.

The light of the candle illuminated the room and he saw them. The naked man, buttocks pounding. Grunting. The woman pinioned beneath, invisible but for her bare parted legs high in the air and her hands clutching at the man's back.

The scene froze for one shocked instant. Then the grunting stopped. The man turned. The woman screamed. And Thomas dropped his candle and ran.

In the darkness he groped for the bannister railings and all but fell down the stairs. He heard the man in pursuit, saw the glow of candlelight ahead, thrust open the door to the lounge room and gasped, ‘Run! Run!'

But Ferret and Jonathan had heard the commotion. Ferret was already halfway out the window and Jonathan, realising there was no time for all three of them to get out, grabbed his son. Together they pressed themselves against the wall by the door to the hall so when, with a howl of fury, the naked man appeared in the open doorway, he failed to see them in the half darkness.

‘Now!' Jonathan yelled as the man entered the room, giving an angry growl at the sight of Ferret halfway out the window. Father and son dived into the hall and made for the main doors. ‘Run, lad! Run!'

My God! Jonathan registered in the second he turned back to check that his son was close behind him. My God, but it's young Captain Pettigrew!

Fletcher Pettigrew also turned, momentarily indecisive as to whether to pursue the felons running for the main doors or the man escaping out through the window. Then he noticed that the man at the window was wearing his coat. With another furious roar he launched himself at Ferret.

Upstairs, in her bedroom, Mathilda Pettigrew clasped the fine linen bedsheets about her naked body and whimpered. She was
not fearful for the safety of her lover. Fletcher Pettigrew was renowned for his skills in combat; the fact that he was naked and wore neither blade nor pistol was immaterial, fisticuffs would suffice. But did this mean that her secret was to be made public? Was the whole village about to know that she had been intimate with her dead husband's brother? That she had indeed been intimate with her husband's young brother for a full year before Ezekiel Pettigrew's tedious, lingering illness finally took him to his long-overdue grave?

They had been so careful, she and Fletcher. After Ezekiel's death, Mathilda had regularly visited her lover on Saturday nights when the servants were dismissed. She had dined publicly with friends, then gone to his rooms afterwards. And occasionally he had come to the house. On foot. After dark. Always entering through the servants' entrance at the rear. No-one had been any the wiser. And now, because of a common, grubby thief, her dreadful secret was sure to become public knowledge.

Mathilda Pettigrew had no cause for concern, however. When, three days later, Jonathan and Thomas Kendall, along with Bill Bailey, were arrested and held in Thetford Gaol to await sentence, the virtuous reputation of the Widow Pettigrew was of little concern to them. A crime such as theirs would demand one sentence and one sentence only. The gallows.

Their incarceration in the poky little gaolhouse on Market Street was not prolonged. Soon after their arrest the town of Thetford came alive, as it did these two special weeks of every year, for the Lent assizes.

People flocked from miles around. The local gentry returned to take up residence in their townhouses. Business was good. The hotels were full, copious amounts of ale and liquor were consumed, and numerous entertainments were held, the crowds delighting to the bawdy vaudeville and rustic classics performed at the theatre in White Hart Street. And throughout the festivities there was the constant excitement of men and women being sentenced to death, transportation or incarceration.

‘General gaol delivery' poured into Thetford—waggons of prisoners transported from Norwich Castle Gaol for sentencing at the Lent assizes. Twenty-three in all this year.

Amongst the twelve prisoners charged with capital offences that
March of 1783 were Jonathan Kendall, his son Thomas and William Bailey.

Jonathan pleaded his son's case vociferously. ‘The lad is only nineteen years of age, Your Honour,' he begged. ‘He has never committed a crime. Indeed he knew nothing of our intention until the very night of the felony, I swear. The boy was simply obeying me, his father.' Jonathan's final plea was desperate and emotional. ‘For the love of God, Your Honour, let him free!'

But his words fell on deaf ears and all three men were convicted and sentenced to the death penalty. A public hanging at Melford Common beside the road from London to Norwich.

‘Where your bodies will remain for a time,' Judge Baron Eyre decreed, ‘dangling from the hangman's rope, to serve as a lesson to passing travellers. And may the Lord have mercy on your souls.'

‘A night of debauchery it was.'

Thomas Kendall stood with his grandsons beside the massive sandstone walls of Fort Macquarie. He smiled as he looked out across Sydney Cove at the hustle and the bustle of pedestrians and soldiers and horse-drawn vehicles in the dusty streets of the busy town. It hadn't always been like that. Thomas could still see it as it had been all those years ago. Barren and unforgiving.

‘Debauchery the likes of which will never be seen again, I swear, that night they brought the women convicts ashore.'

At sixty-five, Thomas preferred to view the old days with a sense of humour. It was more comfortable than dwelling on the grim realities of the past.

After languishing for a month in Thetford Gaol, young Thomas Kendall had escaped the hangman's noose only days before the execution of his father and Ferret Bailey. On the grounds of his youth, Judge Eyre had granted the lad a last-minute reprieve, and Thomas's sentence had been commuted to transportation, for a period of seven years.

He was transferred to Norwich to a wait his transportation, and there, for three long years, Thomas had withstood the brutality, squalor and depravity of Norwich Castle Gaol. Far from breaking his spirit, however, it had moulded him. From a simple, unquestioning lad into a resilient and resourceful young man, strong in mind and body. A man whom others learned to respect.

‘The ships were hove to in the cove and the longboats collected
the women and pulled in ashore yonder.' The old man pointed towards the Tank Stream on the western side of the bay. ‘The livestock had been landed first, mind; cattle being more important than convict women. They'd landed the livestock a good ten days or so before, right here on this very point. They called it Cattle Point then. Course the fort wasn't here. Or the town. Nothing was here. Just scrawny trees that seemed to grow, God knew how, out of barren rock. And tents of course. By the time they brought the women convicts ashore there was a whole township of tents.

‘Dressed in their finery, those women were,' Thomas continued, painting the picture for his grandsons, particularly young James who was enthralled. Unlike his cousin, William, James had never heard his grandfather's stories before. ‘Leastways, they were pretending it was finery. Makeshift ribbons and bows they had in their hair. Primped and preened and saucy as could be. Excited too, every one of them, at the prospect of feeling solid land beneath their feet. We men had been living ashore for a week or more, see, clearing the land and setting up camp. But the women were hungry for the feel of the earth. Even the earth of that wretched God-forsaken wilderness, for it was a wilderness all right. Barren and hostile and downright fearsome.'

Thomas could still smell the fear of those early days, the fear of the unknown. He could remember the repugnance each and every one of the men had felt for the alien life that buzzed and crawled and slithered about them. The flies and spiders and snakes. And the birds. The demon birds. Some that screeched like banshees, others that cackled with the laughter of the devil himself, all of them chilling a man's blood each dusk and dawn.

Nowadays, of course, the cockatoos and kookaburras were considered amongst the more charming elements of the colony. William and James would laugh, Thomas realised, if he told them that insects and birds had been perceived as objects of terror by the hardened criminals of the first fleet. His grandsons were not to know that fear born of the unknown was the worst kind of fear to a lonely man in a foreign land.

‘The soldiers and the sailors were accustomed to fearsome foreign parts,' he explained, ‘but we who'd come, albeit in chains, from the civilised mother country found this to be a dreadful place.'

Seventeen-year-old William nudged his younger cousin. He'd told James about the old man's stories and James, wide-eyed with fascination, wasn't disappointed. James had met his grandfather on only one previous occasion, that he could remember anyway, and then it was in the company of his mother who refused to allow any discussion of her father-in-law's convict past.

The old man smiled again. It was easy, from his position of prosperity and comfort, to smile back down the years. For Thomas this was no longer a dreadful place. He looked at the boats in the bay. He could see one of his very own barges ferrying its load of passengers and provisions across the harbour to the village on the northern point. He looked at the thriving township; the five-storey high Waterloo warehouse, the marketplace where the cries of the cockney seafood vendors rose above the bustle of human activity; he looked at George Street on the far side of the cove, the commercial centre of Sydney Town with its magnificent, wide-verandahed post office, its shops and taverns and cottages; at the traffic of the dusty streets, the men on horseback, the women in gigs and phaetons, the working horses and drays. And, amongst the endless procession, a gang of convicts being led to work at the stone quarries. Despondent, despairing. New arrivals, Thomas thought, and he wished them well.

He glanced out at the peak of the western point where the lighthouse stood. The latest allotment of land he had purchased was not far from the lighthouse. Soon he would be able to see his new cottage from here, high up there on the peak, overlooking the harbour and the whole of Sydney Town. Thomas felt proud. He had helped build this place, and this place, in return, had been good to him. Thomas loved Sydney Town with a fierce and personal pride.

‘Those who had religion swore that God had visited his wrath upon us sinners that night.' Thomas turned to his grandsons, both of whom were waiting breathlessly for him to continue. ‘For no sooner had the women's feet touched the soil of Sydney Cove than an almighty storm broke out. There was a crack like Satan's whip, an angry flash of gold, and in an instant the giant tree which stood in the very centre of the camp was split in two. It killed five sheep and a pig, which was a terrible thing in those days, livestock being highly valuable for future breeding.'

James nodded encouragingly. He wasn't really interested in the value of livestock. ‘What about the people? Were any of the people killed?'

‘Not by the storm they weren't. But there were many who met with floggings as a result of that night, and the floggings nigh on killed them. It's a wonder that some didn't meet the hangman's noose. No-one heeded the law, you see. There was brawling and riots and fornication throughout the camp; and whilst most were satisfying their lust, there were those who used the debauchery of the night as a cover for theft. And theft in those days,' Thomas added seriously, ‘was punishable by hanging.'

‘What about the soldiers?' James asked breathlessly. ‘Didn't the soldiers try and stop it?'

‘The soldiers were as lustful as the convicts,' Thomas declared. ‘The soldiers were in the women's tents and the women were in the soldiers' tents and the sailors had all gone back to the ships to get drunk. The captains were relieved that the women were no longer their responsibility, see, for they had to pay a heavy penalty if a convict went missing. So they allowed the men grog and, above the thunder and the lightning, we could hear those sailors, drunk as lords, singing and carousing all through the night. Oh I tell you lads, everyone was a sinner that night.'

‘What were you doing, Grandpa?'

William had tried to catch his cousin's eye, tried to warn him not to ask that question. The old man might have raved on for hours about rape and fornication, which was exactly what the boys wanted, had he not been asked about his own involvement. Too late.

‘Me?' The mischievous smile faded and Thomas seemed a little saddened himself to be halted midstream. ‘Ah, not for me the unbridled lust.'

James glanced at his cousin and William gave a wry shrug.

‘How old are you, James?' Thomas asked, noting the brief exchange. ‘I see you so little I lose track of your age.'

‘Thirteen.'

‘Well, it'll not be too long before you're a man. The day will come when you'll know women and lustful feelings.'

James flushed with the secret knowledge that he couldn't take his eyes from women's breasts, even his own mother's at times.

Thomas noticed the reaction and was sensitive enough not to make some ribald remark. James was a shy boy, he could tell, a lonely boy, and he was suffering the agonising guilt of pubescence. Well of course that mother of his wouldn't help. Surely Richard could be more of a confidant to his son though, Thomas thought critically. But then, Richard too was under the blasted woman's thumb.

‘Don't misunderstand me, lad, I was a lustful young man myself in those days, as lustful as any that stormy night. The desire between men and women is as natural as breathing, young James, and nothing to be ashamed of, but the abandonment of that night meant nothing to me for, you see, I had my Anne.'

It had been in the third year of his incarceration in Norwich Castle Gaol that young Thomas Kendall had met Anne Simpson. Like him, Anne had escaped the death penalty due to her youth: she too had been nineteen years old when convicted of theft. But unlike Thomas, Anne had been no novice.

‘Just the first time I got caught is all,' she openly admitted. ‘Dear God in heaven, if they knew but a quarter of the thieving I've done, I'd have met the hangman long ago.'

She was a bold girl with a gypsy's face. Sensuous. Features too overgenerous to be beautiful, but wild hair and a mouth that beckoned. Thomas was smitten.

Both sexes were housed at the gaol and, discipline being a mixture of brutality and laxity, fornication was not uncommon. In fact, over the years many a child had been born as a result of couplings within the prison confines.

The cells having been built against the old walls of the roofless and dilapidated castle keep, it was not long before Thomas found a weak spot in the wall to the women's quarters. It didn't take him long to dislodge enough stone and dirt to wriggle his way through—as others had done before him—and, once there, his copulation with Anne was fast, fierce and lustful.

Mindless of the women around them, some urging them on, some fondling each other, some hissing obscenities and masturbating, Thomas and Anne fed on each other's passion. They soared above the prison walls, free of the squalor and confinement and, when they were spent, they kissed and laughed and made ribald comments to the others who were by then grumbling with envy and discontent.

When the news of imminent transportation finally spread throughout the gaol, Thomas and Anne prayed that they would be amongst those sent to a life in the colony of New South Wales.

Feeling amongst the other prisoners was uncertain. America having won its independence, the transportation was to be to the newly discovered south land. Half the world away. Surely it was better to serve out one's time in the old country, many said. The south land was a heathen place, hardly a land of opportunity like America.

But Thomas felt differently. ‘They call it New South Wales, Anne,' he said. ‘Just think, a whole new country! A whole new life!'

The union of Thomas Kendall and Anne Simpson had developed far beyond mere lustful congress. Together they nurtured each other's hopes and shared each other's strengths and, in the barren, dank gloom which was Norwich Castle Gaol, a genuine love had grown between them.

When they found that they were not only to be transported to New South Wales but aboard the very same ship as well, it was truly as if the gods had smiled upon them. And when Anne announced that she was with child, it seemed all the good fortune in the world had been laid at their feet.

‘Ah, my Anne,' the old man murmured, unaware that his grandsons were waiting, spellbound, for the next instalment of the orgy. ‘How it felt to hold her once more.' He could see her now, at the bow of the longboat, their child in her arms, the child he'd felt in her swollen belly but had never seen. He could feel Anne's lips against his and the softness of the baby's cheek against the stubble of his own. ‘I'd not seen her since they'd transferred her from the
Friendship
to the
Charlotte
in Cape Town,' he said as he registered the boys' attention. ‘Three long months it had been.'

Thomas had worried about Anne's condition and the hardship of the voyage, but she would have none of it. ‘It's only a baby, Thomas, women bring babies into the world every day of the week.'

But it was hard. Thomas knew that it was hard. When the ship bucketed and rolled and the child in Anne's belly kicked, he would watch her try to hold down the victuals that would feed her unborn baby. He would help her press her hand to her mouth and watch as she tried to swallow her vomit.

When the fleet reached Cape Town and changes were made to accommodate the livestock boarded at this, their last port before Botany Bay, Anne and several other women were transferred to the
Charlotte
. Anne was near her time and Thomas, fearing for her safety, was all for demanding he be transferred with her, or they be offloaded to await the birth of the child. Again, Anne would not hear of it.

‘You have earned the trust of the officers and the crew, Thomas,' she said. ‘I have seen it. We can use this to our advantage in the colony; you must not cause trouble now.

‘Listen,' she had insisted as he'd tried to argue, ‘when my time comes I will be better attended by the women aboard the
Charlotte
.' Then she had kissed him. ‘I'll see you in Botany Bay, my love, with a baby in my arms.'

But he didn't see her in Botany Bay. He didn't see her until Wednesday the 6th of February 1788, when the female convicts were finally landed on the shores of Port Jackson. It was then that Thomas saw his Anne, and, as she'd promised, she held their baby daughter in her arms.

The old man stood silent as he recalled their reunion that night they'd brought the women ashore. His coupling with Anne in the corner of the tent had been quiet, intense, oblivious to the raging storm and the threshing bodies about them. One week later, he and Anne, along with several other couples, had been the first convicts to be married by the Reverend Richard Johnson. As they had made their mark in the Register of Marriages, being able neither to read nor write, Thomas had whispered, ‘This is just the beginning, girl, just the beginning.' The old man's eyes filled with tears as he recalled his joy that day.