WHEN THE BOUGH BREAKS
by
Dorothy Dart
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PUBLISHED BY CHARGAN AT SMASHWORDS
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When The Bough Breaks
Copyright © 2011 Dorothy Dart
ISBN: 978-1-4660-7334-0
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
Dorothy Dart has asserted her right under the Copyright Act 1976 to be identified as the author of this work.
This is a work of fiction. Characters, institutions and organisations mentioned in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously without any intent to describe actual conduct.
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The woman huddled on her narrow pallet and wound her shawl closer around her frail body in an effort to keep warm. It was the dead of night and something had woken her. She didn’t know what. A wail of despair from down the corridor, or the jangling keys of the wardress as she did her rounds perhaps.
She’d been dreaming and experienced a sense of betrayal that with wakefulness the dream had fled. It was always the same. When she dreamed it was not of the present, but the past. Sometimes her dreams took her back to Scotland when her parents had been alive and she’d been sheltered and loved by all who knew her, and particularly by her older brother Angus. He was nine years older than she, but as a child she had been his constant shadow. Not like her other brother, Alexander, well, step-brother to be exact, who had left home after a blazing row with Papa, to serve in the military when she was three years old and she had never really known as a child, but who she’d fantasized about, building stories in her mind as to what a brave and gallant a soldier he was. He who nine years later gave his life serving under Wellington at Waterloo. Well, that was what she’d been told, although in truth he’d been a deserter who had taken ship to India and simply disappeared for thirteen years before turning up in Van Diemen’s Land. That was when things had started to go from bad to worse.
Oh if only those childhood fantasies could have been true it would have changed all their lives! Papa and Mama would have died of old age rather than been burned alive in the fire that had destroyed the ancestral home of Carrick Hall. And Angus and she would never have used their inheritance to leave Scotland’s shores to come to Van Diemen’s Land in search of that elusive dream – a new and trouble free life.
But if so, she would never have unwittingly fulfilled her destiny to carry the bloodline of the MacGregors down through the years by giving birth to darling Fern. And Young Bernie, as she still thought of her nephew and foster son, the only offspring of Alexander and her step-daughter, Clarissa Baltrose, would never have been born. Perhaps it would have been better if he had not. But no, he had brought her such joy. Aye, and sorrow too, it must be said.
The woman sighed. So many of those who had comprised the fabric of her life over the past seventy-two years were gone now. Her youthful lover, James, whose face was fast fading from her memory, her cherished Fern who tragically had died in childbirth, as had her faithful convict servant, Bridie (the mother of her adopted daughter, Katio), Angus whose passion for preserving the integrity of the House of MacGregor had been the undoing of him, her first husband, Bernard Senior whose integrity had always been without question.
Then of course there was Alexander that wolf in sheep’s clothing who had wed Clarissa for the sake of her inheritance. They were both long gone now, as was the deceiver whose name the woman could not even now repeat but for whom she was paying this price. And … the woman’s tears streamed more freely now. Of course dearest Duncan to whom she had been so happily wed for such a short time, and who she missed now with an intensity that was almost a physical ache deep down inside of her. And as if that wasn’t enough to bear, now it seemed that young Bernie was not long for this world.
Silently the woman’s tears flowed unchecked. What she wouldn’t give for one more sight of her foster son! One more hour with him. But it could never be, he was too ill to travel now, and she was doomed to live out her days incarcerated in this terrible place. Unless, unless God answered her prayer and sent a miracle.
Hobart Town, Saturday, 1st May, 1875
The upper deck of the ‘Southern Queen’ was crowded with chattering women resplendent in voluminous skirts and bonnets, their ample cloaks clutched tightly around them as they shivered against the gale force winds that swept up from the Antarctic. Their gentlemen, too, were attired in their Sunday-best clothes, black frock coats and trousers, starched white high collars and cravats. All with eager eyes looked with anticipation and a sense of obvious relief towards what was for many their new homeland, Tasmania, at the southern tip of Australia. All, too, were thankful for the miraculous engineering feat of the Suez Canal which now offered ships equipped with steam an alternative to the old recognized sailing route via the South Atlantic Ocean and the Cape of Good Hope, and cut the time from five months to less than three.
Down below in steerage the passengers were equally jubilant at having arrived at their destination. Excitement had been mounting until it had exploded into every corner of the ship, thrilling all the passengers with a sense of hope. Whatever lay ahead could not be worse than the ever rolling ship beneath their feet, the wretchedness of sea-sickness and the perilous electrical storms they had encountered on the voyage.
A blurred bluish line against the horizon rapidly grew until passengers were able to make out the shapes of numerous ranges and folding hills, with one mountain so high it stood like a sentinel over the lonely outpost of Hobart Town, once a penal settlement, but now a proud free possession of Mother England.
Meg Hamilton, her eyes alight with excitement and a sense of awe, looked upon the place of her childhood and knew she had come home. Even though she had left these shores this ten years past when she was eleven years old, she could still remember the way the clouds came down at times totally obscuring that mountain that from time immemorial had been a landmark to sailors daring to sail into Storm Bay from the capricious Southern Ocean. But it was the bright sunny days Meg remembered best, when Mt Wellington was cloaked in a gown of ice blue so vivid that it almost took one’s breath away, and inspired a sense of well-being with the world.
“That mountain there, it be called Wellington after the famous duke,” one of the rough, bewhiskered sailors said proudly to Meg as if she had no foreknowledge of it.
“Aye, that it is,” Meg smiled graciously at him and nodded, not wishing to embarrass him in his eagerness to introduce her to what he presumed to be her new country.
Again she turned her eyes landward. The predominantly light coloured sandstone buildings were much as she remembered them although there were many more of them now, higher up hugging the slopes of the hills.
There were crowds of people waiting on the wharf. Eagerly she looked for her cousins, Angus and Clarissa who were to meet her, and perhaps if she was lucky her much loved Grandma Kate would be with them as well.
Meg hadn’t seen her grandmother since her widowed mother had married a school master named Wilfred Pomroy who soon afterwards, had returned to England on account of his health taking his wife and all six of her children with him. She could well remember their departure, the way her mama and Grandma Kate had clung to each other as if they feared they would never see each other again. And they never did.
Meg’s eyes misted over as she recalled leaving from this very dock they called Constitution, and Grandma Kate her eyes streaming with tears that mingled with her own, kissing her and bidding her to return one day. Meg had promised faithfully that she would.
A year later her mama had died trying to give Mr Pomroy the son he so craved, but before she died she had begged her youngest daughter to promise to go in her place to help Grandma Kate if ever she was in trouble, and then she had pointed to the wardrobe and said ‘In the bottom there is a scrapbook. Take it with you when you go’.
Of course there was no question of her step-father allowing her to travel to the other side of the world until she was of age and so the scrapbook was replaced carefully in the wardrobe and forgotten for seven years until Mr P as Meg called him, never Papa or Father, demanded that the wardrobe be cleaned out because he was to be married again. Since then it had resided in the bottom of Meg’s chest of drawers until having reached her twenty-first birthday earlier this year she had decided the time had come to keep the promises she had made both to Mama and Grandma Kate. So she had taken the scrapbook from its hiding place and undone the pale blue ribbon that was tied around it and opened the book.
Inside there were some old newspapers, yellow with age, copies of The Colonial Observer. One told of her mother’s marriage to her father, Dr Charles Hamilton in 1843. Another, the birth of her eldest sister, Catherine, but it was the headlines of the third that caught her attention. The year was 1847 and it was headlined Women’s Rights Campaigner Accused of Harbouring Assignees. Eagerly Meg read on.
At a public meeting in the Hobart Town guild hall on Monday 21st April Mrs MacGregor Baltrose rallied to Dr Turnbull’s support when she delivered a scathing attack on the Government for refusing to join the push to have transportation of convicts totally abolished, calling the practice barbaric for these times. She spoke at length of the women she personally knew who had been beaten or used in inappropriate ways by their free masters who had never received any redress by the Powers That Be. When asked if she had ever broken the law and taken any of these women in, she refused to answer on the grounds it might incriminate her.
Meg had known at once that the reason her mother had been fearful that one day her grandma may find herself in trouble, had something to do with this.
Although twenty-eight years had passed since the incident reported in the newspaper, Meg knew Grandma Kate was still alive because her step-father had never received any communication to the contrary.
Besides which up until the year before last she had never missed Meg’s birthday, but Grandfather Duncan had just died and Meg had put her grandmother’s forgetfulness down to grief. But when she had missed it again this year Meg began to think maybe there’d been another reason, like she herself was ill. Or maybe she had lost her memory, although Meg thought her Uncle Bernard and Aunt Katio who still lived nearby, poor correspondents though they were, would have at least informed her step-father of such a shocking fact. So whatever the reason for the silence, it was clear that the time had come for her to go to Tasmania without delay to find out for herself what had happened to Grandma Kate.
She had written to her aunt and uncle advising them of her ship and its anticipated arrival, and received a short reply from her cousin, Rissa (as she liked to be called these days), claiming to be wildly excited at the prospect of their reunion. Angus and Rissa were twenty-one months older than Meg, and twins, the only children of her Uncle Bernard and Aunt Katio MacGregor who had inherited the original MacGregor estate of Carrick Park when Great-Uncle Angus had died.
“There they are! Oh do look, Mary! Oh, I can’t wait to be away off this ship and join them. Halloo!” Meg cried, drying her tears and jumping up and down with excitement whilst vigorously waving her handkerchief, her eyes alight now with pure joy.
“And so you shall, Miss Hamilton, if you’d be comin’ along with me, it will be quicker this way,” a pleasantly cadenced voice with a lilting Irish accent whispered in her ear, and she turned to find Mr Finnegan standing there. He was the gentleman into whose hands her step-father had placed her for protection on the voyage.
“No thank you, sir, I’d rather wait, after all,” Meg said coldly as she turned from him to face Mary, her maid. Meg had avoided her so-called protector ever since he had taken advantage of her and kissed her whilst alone on the deck one night, and might have succeeded in totally destroying her reputation had not a young Scotsman named Jeremy Burns from steerage, come to her rescue.
“Look miss, Mr Burns is waving to you down there too!” Mary pointed to where a young man dressed in shabby brown corduroy trousers, black coat and a plaid cap was waving and gesticulating to Meg from the deck below, indicating that he would wait for her on the wharf.
“Oh, he is indeed. We’ll meet you by the shed,” she mouthed back, the wind and the sea-gulls totally drowning her words, though by the nod Mr Burns gave in response she thought he had understood, and a little burst of excitement rippled through her. Jeremy, as he had bid her to call him, had been constantly by her side following the assault on her person by Mr Finnegan, and she knew after spending so much time in his company that she was beginning to feel something for him that was different from what she had ever felt for any young man before. So much so that she had given him leave to use her Christian name, although she knew her step-father would never have approved of such forwardness.
Half an hour later as Meg was finally disembarking she was surprised to see her cousin Rissa, last remembered as an awkward gangling girl in her early teens now transformed into a beautiful golden haired woman, talking and laughing with Jeremy as if she had known him all her life. And, what was more, he seemed quite taken with her. Realizing then that his attention to herself must have been purely out of courtesy rather than genuine affection, Meg felt her heart plummet. But fixing a smile on her face, she hurried over to them leaving Mary to stay where she was for the moment to guard their belongings.
Angus, looking ever so handsome and debonair beneath his top hat and sporting a set of luxuriant auburn, curly sideburns saw her approaching first and hurried to greet her. “My! Cousin Margaret! But how you’ve changed! I declare I almost didn’t know you. And how did you fare on the voyage, my dear?” he exclaimed pleasantly, doffing his hat before relieving her of the bandbox she was carrying and setting it on the ground.
“Oh, I fared very well, thanks to the kindness of Mr Burns here,” Meg said louder than necessary for the benefit of Rissa.
Only then did Clarissa MacGregor turn away from Jeremy and rush towards her cousin, embracing her in a bear hug that knocked Meg’s hat askew.
“Oh, it’s so good to see you again, Meggie. I’ve missed you so, I really have,” Rissa cried joyfully while Meg laughingly corrected her hat.
“Me too, that is, I’ve also missed you and Angus here. I’ve wanted to come back for a long time, but Mr P would not allow it. But now I’m of age well, I can do as I please,” she finished with an airy shrug.
“And this is what you please? I couldn’t believe it when you said you were returning to this backwater to live. For years I’ve dreamed of what it must be like to live on a grand estate in Britain and have heaps of servants, and hunt-balls to attend every other week. But I must content myself with remaining here because of course Angus and I are to inherit the MacGregor estate when poor dear Papa dies.” Suddenly, at the mention of her father, Rissa’s eyes misted over.
“Poor Uncle Bernie! How is he these days?” Meg inquired.
“Not well at all I’m afraid,” Angus put in, shaking his head.
“Now his lungs have almost totally given out so that he can scarcely breathe some days. And it is many a month since he has left his room. He rarely even uses his wheelchair anymore,” Rissa added sadly.
“Oh er, excuse me, I’ll not intrude upon your reunion any longer,” Jeremy began awkwardly, but Meg turned to him.
“Oh, don’t go. Not like this. Surely you need lodging for the night at least. Rissa, Angus, can we not help? Are we to stay at The Elms?” Hopefully, her eyes pleaded with both cousins, but at that point Rissa was smiling in acknowledgement of somebody behind Meg, and she seemed unaware of her. Angus, however, nodded.
“Of course, Burns, you may stay at our town house The Elms for as long as you need. Or until we leave for the country. Do, there’s a good fellow,” he exclaimed congenially.
“Well, if you’re quite sure it would be no trouble I shall accept since I obviously do not have lodgings waiting for me, although I do have a job to come to,” Jeremy replied with a nod of his dark unruly curls, having removed his cap in front of the ladies.
“Jeremy, that is, Mr Burns is already apprenticed to one of the newspapers here to become a journalist, aren’t you, Jeremy?” Meg shot a proud smile in his direction. It was not everyone who had work to come out to, and it showed great foresight and independence of spirit she thought.
“Aye, that is correct, so you see I can afford to pay my way,” Jeremy shot Meg a grateful glance out of his emerald green eyes, and once again Meg felt herself drowning in them.
Suddenly embarrassed by the knowledge that Jeremy did not feel for her the way she did for him, she turned away in time to see that Rissa had opened her fan and was peeping over the top of it at none other than that odious Mr Finnegan, while he was tipping his top hat and looking at her in the way gentlemen did when they wanted to convey a special message to a lady who they found attractive.
“Well, now, I see that most of the first-class luggage appears to have been off-loaded so if you ladies would care to take a seat somewhere here, Burns and I will collect it and load it into our carriage,” suggested Angus, pointing to where a number of horses attached to conveyances of various sizes and types were waiting in the care of their erstwhile drivers who passed the time making ribald comments to one another about various new arrivals.
The three young women seated themselves on a bench to wait, for Meg had signalled to Mary that she must join them. But for a few minutes all thought of conversation was impossible because of the commotion going on all around them.
However, despite the chatter of locals greeting new arrivals, bellowing cattle being off-loaded in slings onto the wharf, and chickens a-plenty squawking in their cages Meg felt constrained to speak as soon as possible and warn her cousin about Mr Finnegan. She knew that young women in the colony were often starved of the company of educated young British gentlemen and that it was probably this need that had driven Rissa to set out to captivate Jeremy the moment he had set his feet on dry land. But Mr Finnegan was quite a different matter. Although he was purported to be an eminently respectable businessman with longstanding business connections in the colony, he was nothing of the kind as Meg well knew. Well, the respectable part anyway.
“I’m glad your little friend is coming to stay. He is such fun, so witty and so handsome, do you not agree?” Rissa asked Meg archly.
Taken off guard, Meg blushed. “He is indeed all of those things, but I wish you wouldn’t refer to him as MY LITTLE friend. I think his heart is entirely unattached to any lady, and in all truth I think to call him little is to demean him.”
“Oh ho, I’m sure I meant him no offence, my dear, nor you for I see how quick you are to defend him. But if as you say he is fancy free, I take it he is not then your property?” Again she smiled archly at her cousin, but when Meg didn’t reply she hurried on.
“Pity he isn’t the son of a peer or I might be tempted to find him very attractive. On the other hand that gentleman over there,” she paused and pointed with her fan to where Finnegan was loading a metal trunk onto the luggage rack of a horse-drawn taxi. “Now there is a charming gentleman with an air of mystery about him that I also find very attractive.”
Although Meg knew she was almost certainly handing Jeremy to Clarissa on a platter she felt duty-bound to tell her cousin what she knew of Mr Finnegan.
“Rissa dear, although he may look the perfect gentleman, let me assure you he is not. He is Mr Finnegan, a passing acquaintance of my step-father who he met at the Colonial Club, and he is the scoundrel into whose hands my step-father mistakenly placed my virtue on the voyage, only to have it risked by him at the first opportunity. It is from his advances that Jeremy, that is Mr Burns, rescued me, thereby in a sense becoming much more truly my protector.”
“Aha, so Mr Burns is honourable and above reproach, whereas Mr Finnegan is not. How very interesting,” Clarissa observed with a shrewd lift of one eyebrow.
“I’m afraid so, Rissa, but please, can we not discuss him any longer? I am much more anxious to know what word you bring me of Grandma Kate.”
“Oh look, here come the men with your trunks now,” Rissa cried jumping to her feet and pointing with her fan towards where her brother and the attractive young Scot were wheeling two travel trunks plus other sundry bags on a barrow up a wooden ramp towards the road. “See, they are about to load them into the carriage now. Come, let’s join them.”
Together the three young women walked over to the carriage, but when Meg and Mary had climbed aboard the high-sprung black buggy along with Angus, Rissa suddenly turned to Jeremy.
“It is such a pleasant day for a stroll, do you not think? Would you care to accompany me, Mr. Burns? That is if you are not too tired after your gruelling voyage. It is but a few blocks,” she added persuasively, her head coquettishly on one side her blue eyes pleading.
Jeremy, who had been waiting to hand her into the buggy, again doffed the cap he had returned to his head, his face flushing crimson.
“Of course, ma’am, M ..Miss MacGregor, I’d be delighted,” he stumbled over the words as he offered Rissa his arm which she took with a satisfied little smile and a jaunty wave over her shoulder at everyone else. There was nothing she loved better than a new conquest and she knew now she had one in Jeremy Burns. As for the other mysterious Mr Finnegan, time would tell. Today had been quite a day after all, and to think that she had nearly left Angus to meet the ship alone! But why had her cousin really returned from the bright lights of London? Surely it wasn’t simply on account of Grandma Kate disgracing the family and ending up in prison or she’d have come two years ago! No, she must have been fleeing from someone or something. Some scandal perhaps? Or had she, as a descendant of the House of MacGregor come at this time to contest her right to be a beneficiary of the MacGregor Estate when poor Papa should pass away? One way or another Rissa was determined to find out.
1875, Hobart Town, the same day.
By the time the buggy wheels had rolled to a halt in the cobbled courtyard alongside The Elms Meg’s emotions were in turmoil. Apart from the shock of seeing Jeremy so openly appropriated by Clarissa and his apparent willingness to oblige her every whim, her mind was flooded with memories so sweet yet so painful she could scarcely endure them. Memories of herself as a little child seated in front of her father on Prince, his big chestnut horse; of Grandma Kate armed with toffee apples and other goodies when she and Grandpa Duncan used to come to visit, for this fine two-storey Georgian sandstone house had once been Meg’s home; of dear Mama, on her way to church dressed in black widow’s weeds whilst still in mourning for poor dear Papa who had been killed whilst serving as a military doctor in the first of the Maori wars in 1860.
“Well, here we are then,” Angus broke into her reverie as he stood and climbed down before turning and handing Meg to the ground, leaving Mary to struggle down with a small portmanteau in each hand.
“Oh, I just can’t believe I’m really here. It is as if I’ve really come home after all this time. So many memories!” Meg sighed nostalgically.
“Well, come along in and then I’ll have Edith make us some tea. The others will no doubt be here directly,” Angus said mindful of his responsibility as the host, as he led the way inside.
Mary followed wide-eyed as she took in the life-sized tapestry of a stag in the Scottish highlands that hung in the entrance hall, and the family coat of arms of a black lion’s head and a crown over the front door. Just then a plump elderly woman dressed in unrelieved black entered from a room off the hall.
“Edith, this is my cousin, Miss Margaret Hamilton. She’s just arrived off the ship from England and I am sure is very tired. Will you please show her to her room? Oh, and prepare another room, will you? We’re to have another guest for a few days,” Angus said as if used to giving orders and having them obeyed.
Meg smiled uncertainly at the woman who raised one corner of her tight lips in a shadow of a smile that had the unfortunate effect of ending up in a smirk, and said, “Come this way, please, miss.”
“Oh, Edith, just tell me which room is to be mine and I shall find it. I used to live here as a child you know,” Meg said kindly not wishing to inconvenience the elderly woman who because of her, now had another room to prepare.
“Oh, that’s uncommon kind of you, Miss Hamilton, my old knees are giving me jip today so I don’t mind one less climb, though I’ll have to go up directly to make up the extra room,” the old woman said, her attitude softening. Then with genuine warmth she added, ‘Yours is the blue room just at the top of the stairs, dear. And there’s a bed for your maid off the pantry down ’ere.” Edith gesticulated towards the kitchen area at the back.
“Thank you, you are most kind, Edith. Come, Mary, and I’ll show you the way,” Meg said, taking one of the portmanteaux herself as Mary, a wiry thirteen-year old orphan who Meg had rescued from a life of poverty on the streets of London, with head bent eagerly pattered behind her up the stairs carrying the rest of the lighter luggage.
An hour later when Meg, Angus, Jeremy and Rissa were seated in the drawing room having just partaken of delicious buttered currant scones and tea, Meg, anxious for news of her grandmother, could wait no longer for an answer.
Turning her fair coiffed head towards Angus she asked, “And how is Grandma Kate? I must confess I had been hoping she may have been there on the wharf with you to meet me, although I realize perhaps the journey may have been rather much at her age. We have not had word of her you know for over two years, ever since Grandpa Duncan died, but I was sure that if she’d also passed on your parents would have informed us.”
She did not miss the quick look that passed between Angus and his sister and sensed that something was amiss.
“Oh, didn’t you know? Grandmamma, or Grandma Kate as you call her is…..that is…she is in prison. Has been this past two and a half years,” Rissa began.
“In prison! But whatever for? Surely it has nothing to do with this,” exclaimed Meg and she drew from her reticule the old newspaper cutting dated 1847, about her grandmother speaking out against the transportation of convicts and being publicly accused of harbouring escaped assignees.
“Where on earth did you get this?” Angus asked in amazement as he looked at the yellowed newspaper cutting.
“Mama had a scrapbook in which she kept things like this. In fact I believe that she feared that this very thing would come against Grandma Kate at some time in the future, and she wouldn’t be here to help her. That was why on her death-bed she made me promise that one day I would come in her place to do for her whatever needed to be done.”
“So nine years ago Aunt Fern put the idea into your head to come here! But Grandmamma was living the life of a lady then. How could Aunt Fern have known that one day her mother’s past would rise up to haunt her as it has?” exclaimed Rissa.
“I don’t know, and I would have come before this only as I told you Mr P would not hear of me coming when I was under age, for there was nobody who was free to accompany me. So now is the first opportunity ….”
“Well, I don’t exactly know what good your coming will do her now that she has been imprisoned for life… for murder…”
“Murder! Grandma Kate would never have been guilty of murdering anyone! She couldn’t! She wouldn’t!” Meg leaped from her chair, her blue eyes ablaze.
“That’s what we all thought, didn’t we?” Rissa appealed to her brother, adding, “But two years ago new evidence came to light and it was this that convicted her. It was also this that killed Grandpa Duncan. He suffered a cerebral haemorrhage from which he never recovered.”
“What was this evidence? Surely there has been some mistake,” Meg insisted rushing over to take the seat beside Angus, and urgently grasping him by the shirt-sleeves.
“It seems not,” Angus shook his head sadly. “And in answer to your question, it was in the form of a police constable’s badge and the bones of a skeleton that were found in an old disused well on our place at Carrick Park. The badge proved to be that of a constable who went missing when Grandma Kate was living at Carrick Hall way back in 1847 before our mama and papa were even wed.”
“You know the old boarded up well that Mama and Aunt Fern warned us against playing near when we were little lest we fell in. The one we used to tease you was haunted. Well, it looks as if it might very well have been,” Rissa cut in, her face alive with a sense of mystery.
“Of course I remember it,” Meg cut in shortly. “But how did that prove Grandma Kate was guilty of murdering the missing constable? I don’t understand, I don’t understand at all,” she shook her head in bewilderment.
“Well, of course her secret would have remained just that were it not for the fact that once accused, she admitted to the crime. I was there when she was arrested,” Angus said gently.
“Admitted it?” Meg repeated stupidly.
“Er pray excuse me,” Jeremy began, clearing his throat, “I feel I am intruding on family matters so I think I will retire to my room since I am rather tired after all the excitement of the day.”
“No, no please stay. You are not intruding at all, is he, Angus, Rissa?” Meg turned to her cousins, adding, “For that matter you may be the very one who is able to help us for we are terribly in need of someone’s aid.”
“Of course you must stay,” Rissa put in smiling beguilingly.
Tentatively returning the smile Jeremy blustered, “H…How so, Miss Meg, surely I know nobody, no magistrate……”
Meg rose and walked over to him both hands extended as if in supplication. “No, but for a start you are not family and besides you are a newcomer here. You may be able to see things that those of us who are too close to Grandma Kate cannot, or have overlooked. Somewhere there must lie the answer we seek to have our grandmother exonerated from this crime. Oh please help us, Jeremy. Grandma Kate is an old lady, a very proud and good old lady who does not deserve to end her days incarcerated in a filthy jail. Is that not right, Rissa, Angus?”
“Certainly,” Rissa replied a trifle icily, adding, “But my dear Margaret, do you not think that we as a family did all we could to assist her at the time? I hope you are not inferring anything to the contrary.”
“Of course not, Rissa,” Meg interjected her face flushing, embarrassed that her cousin should take her suggestion the wrong way.
“My dear Miss Hamilton, I do not know in what way I could possibly be of assistance, but if it is in my power to do anything to help you in order to repay your kindness to me, I am more than happy to be of service, for all your sakes,” Jeremy replied taking Meg’s hands in his own, but his eyes sliding across towards Rissa.
“In that case we would be much obliged to you, Mr Burns,” Rissa cut in, “But let us now turn our attention to happier matters. Shall I favour you with a pianoforte solo, or shall I sing? Now which do you prefer, Mr Burns?”
“I think a pianoforte solo would be delightful,” Jeremy nodded then realizing he was still holding Meg’s hands, he hastily let go leaving Meg to resume her seat on the sofa feeling that for her the evening might as well be over, although she would be forced, out of politeness, to sit another hour or so and watch her cousin flirting with her friend while her mind grappled with a way to have her grandmother set free. Because no matter what anybody said, her Grandma Kate included, she would never believe that that dignified old lady had killed a man, and just quietly was amazed and more than a little disappointed that Angus and Rissa could accept it as casually as they did. But she supposed that was just the point she had been trying to make. That came with living too close to where the crime was supposed to have occurred, while even she, though a relative, had the advantage of being able to see things through fresh eyes.
Just then Angus crossed the room and took the brocade seat alongside her, smiling sympathetically. “Poor little Meggie! I can see we’ve quite taken the wind out of your sails with what has become to us just a simple fact of life. Since tomorrow is Sunday I can’t take you then, but on Monday I’ll take you to see Grandmamma if you like, but I assure you, you will not like what you see. On the other hand, perhaps if you can see her for yourself, you will realize that she is far from being totally dispirited as you fear,” he said with a shrug.
“Oh thank you, Angus, that would be most kind of you,” Meg smiled, and at the thought of soon seeing her grandmother her spirits revived a little. Perhaps the hour hadn’t been a waste of time after all.
Hobart Town, Monday 3rd May, 1875
As the heavy oak door of the outer jail clanged shut behind her, Meg looked around in distaste at the dirty white walls of the reception room that were fitted with barred windows opening onto an inner courtyard. Here several women could be seen seated around an older woman who had her back towards Meg, and appeared to be reading to them from a Bible. Meanwhile a dozen others looked on and jeered at the old woman’s expense, causing Meg’s cheeks to flush with anger on her behalf. How could they treat the poor creature so, whoever she was? As if she were mad! At least she could read, which was probably more than they could, and the words they were calling her caused Meg to cover her ears in shame.
Mrs Wills, as the superintendent of the jail called herself although nobody had ever met the unfortunate Mr Wills, was a formidable woman in her mid-fifties with upswept grey streaked hair and a prematurely lined face, the main feature of which was an enormous mole that adorned her left cheek and sprouted two ugly black hairs. She motioned to Angus and Meg that they should wait before a grilled cubicle to their right.
“Your grandmother will be with you directly, and I shall allow you thirty minutes with her, rather than the usual fifteen,” she said displaying a set of yellowed teeth as she threw Angus a conspiratorial smile. That Angus had greased her palm with a sovereign and delivered it with the disarming charm he bestowed on all women, Meg was unaware.
“Where is she then?” Meg turned uncertainly to Mrs. Wills.
“Can you not see ’er? That’s your grandmother m’dear. The one taking the Bible class. Oh, make no mistake about it, we’re not all ’eathens ’ere you know,” Mrs Wills replied piously.
At that point the old woman turned and Margaret caught her first glimpse of her face. Surely, surely that dirty, pitiful creature was not her beloved Grandma Kate! She turned uncertainly to Angus with raised eyebrows.
He acknowledged her with a nod and a grimace and then shrugged as if to say, I told you that you would find no pleasure in coming here.
“Oh my! How the mighty is fallen!” Mrs Wills said all trace of piety replaced by a silky sarcastic tone as she followed their eyes through the window. “Come all the way from England just to see ’er ’av you? Well there she is, the famous Lady Catherine MacGregor as she was once known, sister of that other murdering SIR Angus MacGregor. It’s in the blood you know, you need to watch out, my dear. And you too, sir, if you know what I mean, your grandfather, Alexander, was no better than he should be and he was a MacGregor an’ all. So there you are, you’re a right pair.” She laughed, pointing her right index finger at them both as if they were naughty children.
“Excuse me, ma’am, I find what you say offensive, and not in the least a matter for levity,” Meg was the first to find her tongue.
“I think, Mrs Wills, you should apologize to my cousin at once. She has just arrived from England and is not accustomed to our sometimes outrageous colonial sense of humour,” Angus intervened, at which Mrs Wills changed her tune and became at once business-like again.
“No offence meant, miss, I’m sure,” she mumbled adding, “But you may set your mind at rest, your grandmother is well cared for ’ere, runs ’er own Bible class and all as you can see. And a sewing class, when we can lay our hands on material for ’em to sew with,” she finished as if that proved what a wonderful institution she ran. The last thing she wanted was to have this newly arrived English chit running to the Board of Governors with a complaint that could cost her her position. On the whole she liked the job that came with meals and lodging all found, and if all the prisoners were as little trouble as poor old Widow Cameron over there, she would be happy to stay here until she retired. Especially since she had a finger in another pie as well that brought in a pretty penny on the side.
At this point a male warder approached the old woman in the courtyard, who closed the black leather book from which she had been reading to the women, rose to her feet and walked, or rather limped with him towards the visiting room. Meg’s eyes filled with tears. This old woman with the wispy white hair and creased but still beautiful face, who walked unsteadily, even though her back was still as ramrod straight as Meg remembered, was her own dear Grandma Kate. How had she come to this?
A few minutes later the warder let her grandmother into the door at the rear of the cubicle and Meg could see her face clearly through the grille. She smiled the old sweet smile that Meg remembered so well and reached out her hands towards her granddaughter, tears welling in her eyes.
“So you’ve come at last, my dear, I knew you would one day and I’ve prayed for that day. But so grown you are, I almost didn’t recognize you,” she said in the carefully modulated voice of a born lady. For Mrs Wills might joke all she liked but she was indeed a lady, born Lady Catherine MacGregor, daughter of a Scottish laird, who had emigrated to Van Diemen’s Land as a young free woman of great beauty and spirit back in 1824.
Tears coursed down Meg’s cheeks. “Oh Grandma Kate! How could they shut you up in here with villains, thieves and whores who taunt and deride you? I’ll not rest until I have you out of here and back home where you belong where I can look after you,” Meg sobbed, ineffectually banging her hands on the bars of the grille.
“Hush, my dearest child, I am here because I must pay my debt to society. But do not fear for me. Why, I even have my own cell where I can spend hours alone with my God, and He has even paved the way for me to teach the poor wretches here that there is a God in Heaven who loves them. Some of them have never heard the like before,” the old woman said gently.
“But you, you should not be in here. I simply do not believe that you killed a man all those years ago. Angus has told me about it and I simply do not believe it,” Meg insisted.
At the mention of Angus, Grandma Kate raised her eyes for the first time to where her grandson stood, tall and straight, alongside Meg’s chair, “Dear Angus, you always were the thoughtful one, thank you for bringing her to see me. She is a still such a pretty child, is she not?” She added, changing the subject.
“Aye, that she is Grandmamma, so much so that I warrant she will turn the heads of many a young colonial gentleman if I’m not much mistaken. I fear I shall have my time cut out as her closest male relative and protector,” Angus replied, leaning close to the grille and looking down at the old woman with a jovial smile.
‘Well, see that you protect her well, and bring her back to see me soon. She is very precious to me, my own dear Fern’s youngest child,” Grandma Kate said, and Angus assured her that he would.
“Clarissa and your mama, are they well? And your poor dear papa? Does he ail much these days?” Grandma Kate asked him after a moment’s silence.
“Alas! Poor Papa is no better. On top of everything else he suffers now from exceeding shortness of breath and a troublesome cough, but he sends you his love as always,” Angus replied as the warder appeared at the door to signify that their time was up.
“Oh Grandma Kate, I will find a way to get you out of here. I will not rest until I have. I love you, Oh, I love you,” Meg wept again as she reached her fingers through the grille as far as she could and Grandma Kate bent and pressed her lips to them.
“And I you, but don’t worry about me, child. I am an old woman, I have lived my life and am at peace with my lot. Please, I beg of you. Just let things be and pray do not do anything we might all regret,” Grandma Kate whispered as she released Meg’s fingers.
“What do you mean, Grandma?” Meg urgently whispered back, but there was no time for further conversation as the warder took her grandmother by the arm and began to usher her away.
“Goodbye, Grandmamma, I’ll call again soon and bring her with me,” Angus called after her, but the old woman simply stood where she was and regally inclined her head, her heart too heavy for words.
When they came outside it was raining and Angus, chivalrous to a fault bade Meg wait under the awning outside the jail doors while he hailed his groom to drive the closed carriage over to them. Then, as she was preparing to step over the puddles to the conveyance, the groom leaped down with an umbrella which he held over both of them for protection, although nothing could protect the hem of Meg’s skirt which inevitably became splattered with mud.
“What did she mean, Angus?” Meg asked her cousin when they were riding homewards.
“I don’t know, Meggie. You know there are those who say her mind is turned. That ever since Grandfather Duncan died, she has not recovered. That she has been … peculiar. All we can do is try to give her what comfort we can and help her make the best of things,” Angus replied, but Meg was far from satisfied. Into her mind had popped a picture of Alice, her grandmother’s housekeeper for many years and more than that, a friend.
“Is Alice still alive, do you know?” she asked suddenly.
“To my shame I have no idea. I have not seen her since Grandmamma’s trial where she was called as a witness, but she was so obviously out of her mind and her testimony was so confused, it had to be discounted,” Angus told her as the groom touched the horse’s flank with the whip.
Meg gently touched Angus’ arm, “Pray ask him not to do that. Poor thing! Have you ever thought how tiring it must be for the poor creature having to stand around all day in all weather waiting for us?”
“Well, as a matter of fact I haven’t. You were always such a tender hearted little thing. Couldn’t bear to see a devil or a wild dog caught in a trap, or a bird with a broken wing. And heaven spare us if we ever suggested robbing a bird’s nest! You would be in tears for a week,” Angus teased, his eyes, had Meg been looking, suddenly surprisingly warm.
“Oh well, every creature has its place in God’s creation. That’s why I cannot stand by and watch injustice being done to anyone or anything, but most of all to Grandma Kate,” Meg defended herself. “And that’s why I propose to dig until I find out what really happened that day she was accused of killing that policeman. And for that reason, I shall not rest until I find out if Alice is alive, and if she is I shall pay her a visit.”
“But consider this. Even if she is, she may not be still living here in Hobart Town. She could even have left the Colony and gone home. Some do, you know when they know they’re nearing the end. And besides, we don’t even know her surname. She was always just Alice to us,” Angus interposed.
“Grandma Kate must know, and probably your mama also,” Meg interrupted. “If necessary I shall ask Grandma next time I see her. In the meantime I shall start with the hospital first, and ask there if they have an elderly patient named Alice who was once a servant to Mrs Cameron. And I shall keep looking until I find her, which is something you could also have done yourself had you cared enough,” Meg insisted, her chin defiant as she pulled her cloak more closely around her against the cool breeze that had swept in from the sea.
“Oh dear, I expect I deserve that rebuke,” Angus sighed, adding in his own defence. “But I’m not as callous as I may appear to you. Grandmamma has always insisted that we leave well alone. Don’t you see? She doesn’t want your interference now. I heard her final words to you and they were ‘Don’t do anything we might all regret’, so I think you should honour her request.” Angus was clearly against her doing anything that went against his grandmother’s wishes and that included searching for Alice.
But why, reasoned Meg if it was to help her get out of that filthy place? She was sure her mother would never have been persuaded thus, and neither would she be, but she decided that this was something she would have to do alone. Unless of course Jeremy was willing and able to help her.