South of Darkness

  About South of Darkness

  My name, then, is Barnaby Fletch. To the best of my knowledge I have no middle name and cannot say of whom I am the son, or of whom my father’s father’s father was the son. Alas, my origins are shrouded in mystery . . .

  Thirteen-year-old Barnaby Fletch is a bag-and-bones orphan in London in the late 1700s.

  Barnaby lives on his wits and ill-gotten gains, on streets seething with the press of the throng and shadowed by sinister figures. Life is a precarious business.

  When he hears of a paradise on the other side of the world – a place called Botany Bay – he decides to commit a crime and get himself transported to a new life, a better life.

  To succeed, he must survive the trials of Newgate Prison, the stinking hull of a prison ship and the unknown terrors of a journey across the world.

  And Botany Bay is far from the paradise Barnaby has imagined. When his past and present suddenly collide, he is soon fleeing for his life – once again.

  A riveting story of courage, hope and extraordinary adventure.

  Contents

  Cover

  About South of Darkness

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Author’s Note

  About John Marsden

  Copyright page

  To Kris, with memories of those quiet days in that vast room, in the beautiful stillness of winter . . .

  Chapter 1

  Having been asked by the Revd Mr Johnson to jot down a few notes about my upbringing and the manner of my arrival in the colony, I will attempt to do so, but I should say at the outset that I have little of interest to relate. I have not contributed much of worth to the world, as will no doubt become obvious in the pages that follow, and indeed I sometimes wonder that I even survived the trials and tribulations of my earliest years.

  I will begin, however, by relating my present situation. I do so in order to get my thoughts assembled in some way, for I confess I am loath to go back over some of the more painful memories that have accompanied me to this place. Verily, it seems easier to write about what I see outside my window than what I see when I look to the interior, at the dark rooms of the past.

  Around me, then, are a few cleared acres, with trunks of trees piled here and there. These were fired the day before yesterday and are still smouldering. The smoke steals into everything, making my eyes water and my cough even worse. If a man wakes in the middle of the night he sees the red glows in all directions, and though he can be thankful for the warmth, he still shivers at the thought of that infernal flame to which a great number of the men and women who inhabit this place may expect to be consigned when the awful knell sounds.

  Beyond the beginnings of Mr Cowper’s farm lies the endless grey-green forest of this land. My fellow convicts, not to mention the soldiers, marines, emancipates and free men, were and still are for the most part uninterested in what they see as its strangeness and monotony. When I first arrived I regarded it with much the same distaste. Yet gradually I have fallen under its spell. To wander through it is to be struck by both its immensity and at the same time the delicate details that I fear generally escape the notice of my compatriots. As a boy and young man I believe I lacked the capacity to notice its finer features, for attention to detail comes only with age. As time passed, however, I did have quite singular opportunities to get to know it at close quarters, and perhaps those early experiences laid the foundations for my current appreciation of its qualities.

  I feel I have at least been able to venture some small way into its mysteries.

  At first one is struck by the absolute peculiarity of the native creatures. I remember vividly the first time I surprised kangaroos at rest. They were in the middle of a stand of trees, in a clearing with sufficient grass for them to rest comfortably. The sun was at its height. The first they knew of my presence was when I emerged from a dense stretch of eucalypts at the edge of the glade they had adopted as their home. They were as startled as I was. In a rather ungainly way they scrambled to their feet and bounded away, scattering in a variety of directions. Kangaroos are one of the few wild creatures who do not move quietly, when in flight at least. They pound the ground with the heavy spring of their rear legs, so I could hear them for a considerable time.

  In spring, the little prickly beasts known as echidnas are everywhere, sometimes in a line of three or four. I believe they can be compared to the hedgehogs of home, but I have seen these latter only in books. The koala bears are rather less common, and are seldom seen on the ground. Men say they never need water, but I have observed them several times lapping from pools. In their trees, where they spend the greater part of their lives, they are slow and ponderous, moving from branch to branch with the solemnity of a judge at the Old Bailey. Unlike those awful dispensers of justice, however, the koalas, with their babies clinging to their backs, make a charming spectacle.

  It must not be thought that it is just the creatures of this country which give the forest its beauty. Sprinkled through it, in the spring particularly, are brightly coloured flowers which would be lauded were they to grow in the woods and heathlands of England. Here they are disregarded, because they come into bloom for brief intervals only, and because they are not easily evident in the endless expanse of trees and grasses. Some are indeed among the tiniest and most delicate of God’s creations, but are they to be crushed under the careless boot of a soldier or convict for that reason alone? They too have their place. To be insignificant in Man’s eyes says nothing of the way we are viewed by the Supreme Being who, despite the vicissitudes of my life, I still believe made me, and everything else, and did so for a reason.

  In my time I have been somewhat insignificant, and exactly why God took the trouble to create me has been difficult to imagine, though I can hardly be compared to a flower. A rank weed perhaps. Yet I too have felt the crushing boot of my uncaring fellows.

  Perhaps it is time, though, that I complied with Revd Mr Johnson’s charge, to describe a little of my tale.

  My name, then, is Barnaby Fletch. To the best of my knowl
edge I have no middle name and cannot say of whom I am the son, or of whom my father’s father’s father was the son. I can hardly give the story of my birth let alone my pedigree, unlike the gentlefolk who are able to say, ‘My great-great-grandfather fought with . . . at . . .’ or ‘On my mother’s side I am descended from the Duke of . . .’ Would that I could. Alas, my origins are shrouded in mystery, and the only mother and father I can summon are wraiths. On occasions I have invoked these phantoms in my mind, attempting to give myself succour in times of loneliness or sorrow, but the images I have conjured, which I am convinced are manifestations of the imagination alone, have provided little in the way of comfort, and I can only pray that all will be revealed when I am summoned to the Judgement Seat, for it is not likely to happen during my mortal existence.

  My earliest memory is of being pulled aside in a crowded and narrow street that I surmise must have been in London, for I have no memory of ever going outside that town until I was thirteen years old. I believe I was about to be run over by a grand carriage, perhaps in the manner in which the aristocrats of France cared not whom they crushed under their wheels in the days before the recent revolution in that country. It may have been merely a cab; I cannot say at this distance. I recollect huge wheels and the great noise they made on the cobblestones, and my arm being nearly wrenched out of its socket and a voice bellowing at me in anger at my carelessness. Some shiny bauble had attracted me and I think I had trotted out into the path of the carriage to collect it. I know not what manner of thing it was, for the arm pulled me head over heels, and by the time I regained my balance, the shiny object was gone. Perhaps it was just a beam of sunlight reflecting from a puddle. I had not cried at the violent pulling on my arm, nor at my near escape from death, nor at being turned upside-down on the roadway, but I cried at the loss of the bright hope represented by the gleam on the cobblestones.

  Perhaps the man who snatched me clear and then roared at me was my father. There are wisps of memory of a big bearded man who shouted a lot, and a woman who held me tight at certain times and pushed me away at others. These are the wraiths to which I can give no earthly form. Likely they have now gone to their rest and I can only pray that they know God’s love and forgiveness in their eternal home.

  Chapter 2

  A thread throughout my childhood was the great church in the district known to the local people as Hell, down by the north bank of the river. I apologise to my readers for inflicting this distasteful word upon their sensibilities, but it was the name commonly used by its denizens, although I believe that maps of London refer to it by the less offensive epithet East Smithfield. However, even at this distance, having seen what I have seen, Hell still seems to me an apt enough name for this den of iniquity. The proper name for the church was St Martin’s, though again that was not how it was known among the local folk. Respect for my readers’ sensitivities causes me to refrain from recording its popular name here.

  St Martin’s stood like a fortress among the insect life which teemed around its perimeter. Though the human termites made their burrows and consumed with avid mouths all that was soft and corruptible, the church could not be eroded. Its massive buttresses were implacable; the saints in its stained-glass windows turned their backs on the hordes in the streets and gazed upon the pious with tender eyes. Those outside could not see in, and those inside were insulated from the human transgressions which rolled endlessly against the walls, as the waves of the ocean roll against the rocks of the shore. They became blind and deaf to the swell of sin. The silence in the church was almost absolute; only the occasional whispers of a member of the clergy or a parishioner, or the puny efforts of the organ, interrupted the vast stillness.

  I’m not sure at what point in my life I began to sneak into St Martin’s to spend my nights within the safety of its walls. Perhaps I was four years old, perhaps I was five. But it frequently served as my refuge in times of trial. I had several hiding places. One was under the altar itself, though as I grew older I feared the wrath of God for treating the holy sanctuary with such irreverence. I dared not go near it when certain clergy were on duty, for if they were to catch me I feared their wrath would be as awful as that of the Lord. Another, somewhat colder bolthole, was behind a statue of St Peter, though eventually I grew too big to fit into the little space between him and the wall. But I liked St Peter’s kind face, and I talked to him sometimes at night, when I was alone there in the dark.

  The other safe spot was the high pulpit, used by the clergy only on the most solemn occasions. It contained a small prayer cushion, which made a pleasant pillow, and it was nearly as warm as under the altar. Many a time I curled up in there and waited for the night to pass.

  In time I learned the habits and idiosyncrasies of the holy men who served the Lord in St Martin’s. The rector was the Revd Mr Cartwright, a Christlike man indeed, who moved about the church shrouded in such an air of piety that few dared approach him. He had a fine and haughty face, and stood in the high pulpit on Sundays like an eagle on a crag, gazing through the air as though taking no notice of anyone, yet at the same time giving the impression that he saw every detail of every life of those doomed and sinful souls seated before him. Oh, the congregation paid him such attention. They dared not look away. He preached a fine sermon, even though I rarely understood a word of it, so grand was his eloquence and so elevated his thoughts.

  I doubt that the Revd Mr Cartwright had any more real regard for us poor folk than he did for the mouse who lived in the vestry and made his meals from the crumbs in Revd Mr Haddock’s cupboard.

  Revd Mr Haddock was always at food, which was the salvation of the mouse, for he would not have survived otherwise. Many a time it was my salvation too, for he not infrequently left unfinished food on a low wooden ledge below his cupboard. I had to compete with the mouse for these suppers, and if I was a little late I had to brush his little black pellets away before I could consume the victuals.

  As time went on I noticed that Revd Mr Haddock left food behind only when he was the last to leave the church at nights, the one charged with locking the building. I did not know why he was so careless on these occasions, but to a child with an empty stomach, alone in the great dark building, the comfort derived from a few slices of bread, a piece of sausage, or a couple of baked potatoes was like a benediction from the Lord himself.

  Revd Mr Haddock was a big man, which was not to be wondered at, but he moved about the church quickly and quietly, with a surprising energy. I felt that the people laughed at him a little, for his ways were eccentric, and he was rarely charged with preaching a sermon or administering important services. Matins and Compline often fell to his lot. Yet he was always kind. Sometimes at night when he believed he was alone he would talk to himself, in a voice louder than one was accustomed to hearing in that place of silence. Perhaps he did it because he was lonely and even a little afraid, for at such times he often spoke words of comfort. Five minutes or more might elapse between each sentence, as though he pondered long and deeply over every remark. His words rumbled towards me out of the darkness. ‘Though the way be cold and cruel, yet there is always hope,’ he would say. ‘Know that even the least among us has a friend, and that friend is closer at hand than we might realise. You are here for a reason and God will make the reason clear to you one day, if that be His will. The Lord knows of your suffering and the Lord will reward those who try, no matter how many times they fail.’

  Certainly the Revd Mr Haddock failed many times, if the disapproval of the Revd Mr Grimwade was any indication. Revd Mr Cartwright may have been the rector of the church but a visitor could have been forgiven for thinking that Revd Mr Grimwade held this appointment. A lean man with a thin mouth, Revd Mr Grimwade would have cowed Satan himself had that malefactor dared set foot inside St Martin’s. He used words like the cracking of a whip, and one short sentence from him could leave a scar to last a lifetime. Grim he was by name and by nature.

  I
f I saw him in the church when I slipped in through one of its many doors I often left again. If I was in one of my hiding holes when he entered, I cowered in fear and tried to make myself as small as the vestry mouse.

  I confess now to the sin of hatred for one of the Lord’s anointed, for there were times when I hated Revd Mr Grimwade, and even more when he tongue-lashed Revd Mr Haddock or one of the curates. It offended my sense of justice. Revd Mr Haddock was, it must be said, somewhat clumsy at times, whereas Revd Mr Grimwade spoke and moved with such precision that it was difficult to imagine him ever making a mistake. At one Good Friday service Revd Mr Haddock put the wrong numbers on one of the hymn boards, which meant that half the congregation was trying to sing ‘There is a green hill far away’, while the other half, and the organist, were attempting ‘Guide me O thou great Jehovah’. The way Revd Mr Grimwade spoke to Revd Mr Haddock afterwards, in the vestry, as I listened from the curved staircase leading to the belltower, was a shame and should never have been allowed. ‘You make a mockery of Holy Orders,’ he said in his cold flat voice. ‘I notice the Bishop is seeking to appoint a chaplain to St Luke’s Asylum. That might suit you better, for there is no place for buffoons here.’

  But the time when Revd Mr Haddock dropped the chalice as he went to administer Communion to the first parishioner kneeling at the altar rail . . . that was Revd Mr Grimwade’s opportunity to sting with all the venom at his command. To be sure, it was a shocking sight, to see the blood of Christ spilled on the floor and dripping down the steps, and the parishioners backing away as one, with fear and horror in their eyes. Some made the sign of the Cross, which I knew even at my tender age would not please Revd Mr Grimwade, who regarded it as a contamination from the Papacy. There were three clergy officiating on this particular morning, Revd Mr Grimwade and Revd Mr Haddock and a young curate whose name I never learned and who did not stay at St Martin’s long. They and the two altar boys stood as if paralysed by the awful and sacrilegious spectacle. I don’t think anyone knew how to clean up the wine without committing further offence. Revd Mr Grimwade was the first to recover his wits, and although there was a gasp of horror from the congregation at the action he took, I had to admire the strength of his thinking. He removed the tippet from around his neck and, working calmly and methodically, used the holy garment to soak up the holy wine.