The Secret of the Youngest Rebel Read online

  DEDICATION

  To Lisa and Mark: thank you for the adventure,

  with love, admiration and gratitude

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1: The Apple Tart

  Chapter 2: Me

  Chapter 3: Hope

  Chapter 4: Plots

  Chapter 5: Tomorrow Might Be Wonderful

  Chapter 6: Rebellion!

  Chapter 7: Death or Liberty

  Chapter 8: Comrades on the Hill

  Chapter 9: Liberty . . . and Death . . .

  Chapter 10: My Life Shatters

  Chapter 11: A New Life?

  Chapter 12: A Different Kind of Rebel Now

  Author’s Notes

  About the Author

  Also by Jackie French

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  Copyright

  PROLOGUE

  4 MARCH 1804

  The darkness smelled of woodsmoke and the pies Ma Grimsby swore were mutton.

  ‘Death or liberty?’ Ma whispered. ‘Which will you choose, boy?’

  I met her small, mean eyes. ‘Liberty!’ I said.

  Tomorrow we’d be free, or we would die.

  CHAPTER 1

  The Apple Tart

  It began with an apple tart.

  The tart was in a basket, and the basket was carried by a lady in a yellow silk dress and bonnet, lifting her skirts out of the muck of the Parramatta street, just down from Ma Grimsby’s wattle-and-mud tavern. I’d hardly ever seen a lady like that, not up close.

  I’d never seen a tart like that either — the apples in neat slices and the pastry yellow with eggs and butter. Not like Ma Grimsby’s flour and sawdust with mouse droppings the customers hoped were currants.

  I slipped from doorway to doorway, knife in hand. The lady carried a silk reticule too. There’d be money in it, a well-dressed lady like that.

  You didn’t get to sleep safely on the straw in the lean-to next to Ma’s tavern unless you brought her decent pickings. I’d sleep safely for many nights if I gave Ma that reticule, and get the pick of the scraps her customers had left, bits of crust or turnip.

  But that tart. I’d never eaten an apple tart, just glimpsed them on the market stalls before the stallholder gave me a cuff on the ear for getting too close. And none of them tarts had ever looked so fine.

  I couldn’t steal both the basket and the reticule. The basket wasn’t worth much: I should get the reticule . . .

  I grabbed the basket and ran.

  The lady gave a cry. But she couldn’t catch me, not wearing her long skirts. My bare feet pounded around a corner —

  A big hand grabbed my collar. ‘Got you, you little vagabond.’

  I was lifted up, and up still further, till I faced a man with a clean-shaven jaw and the clearest green eyes I’d ever seen. He had brown cropped hair, cut short like the Irish rebels, but was dressed in a gentry cove’s clean suit. He was the biggest man I’d ever seen. I was so lost in those green eyes I forgot to bite his hand to get away.

  And then it was too late. The big man put me down, holding my arm. I couldn’t have bit him if I’d tried. I waited for him to call a constable. This was going to mean fifty lashes, or even chains . . .

  Instead he looked over my head and smiled. The lady had followed me. Her hair was shiny black under her bonnet; her face and dress were all clean and fresh. I pushed the tangles of my hair back from my face with my free hand and felt the lice wriggle.

  The big man gave the lady a short bow, moving stiffly. ‘Philip Cunningham, an unwilling guest of King George at Castle Hill, at your service, ma’am.’

  The lady curtseyed. ‘I am Mrs Barney Bean, of Jeanne’s Farm.’

  ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs Bean. The lad here is going to give your basket back, aren’t you, boyo? And he’s going to say that he is sorry.’

  Yes, he was Irish, I thought. Like all the others sent to the colony the last four years — rebels who’d fought against the English. Some of them were gentry too.

  I tried to copy his bow. ‘I’m sorry.’ I held the basket out to Mrs Bean. But I couldn’t help staring at that tart.

  Mrs Bean took her basket. I waited for her to carry it away. Instead she asked, ‘Did you steal this because you are hungry?’ Her voice was gentle. I’d never heard anyone speak gentle like that, or not to me.

  I was always hungry, so hungry it was hard to walk sometimes. But I’d grabbed a chop from one of the redcoat officers’ dogs just that morning. There’d been good meat left on it, and I’d nicked a handful of turnips the night before, so I weren’t starving. Something in her voice made me tell her the truth.

  ‘I nicked your tart ’cause I ain’t never seen nothin’ look as good.’

  I could have told her it might be the kind of tart the angels eat, but I didn’t know words like that, back then.

  Mrs Bean smiled. She even had all her teeth, all white and straight. ‘I made the tart for a friend who likes my cooking. But she has all the tarts she needs. I think perhaps you should have this one.’ She held the basket out to me.

  I grabbed the tart and scuttled away as fast as I could between the tumbled shanties.

  There’s willow trees by the river, where no one can see you if you sit under the branches. The tart had cracked a bit by the time I got there, but I’d been careful not to lose a crumb. I’d just taken my first bite, felt the sweetness of the apple and the richness of that pastry, when the branches parted. Mr Cunningham gazed down at me.

  I clutched my tart, ready to run.

  ‘Peace to you, boyo. I haven’t come to hurt you. Or take your apple tart.’ The big man crouched down next to me. ‘How long since you’ve eaten, boyo?’

  I took another wary bite. ‘This mornin’. Half a chop.’ I didn’t tell him about the dog.

  ‘And yesterday?’

  ‘Couple o’ raw turnips and bit o’ pastry. Well, Ma calls it pastry. It ain’t like this.’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Frog.’

  ‘What kind of name’s that?’

  ‘Just means I’m small and quick.’

  ‘How old are you, Master Frog? Eight? Ten?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘Where do you live?’

  I shrugged again.

  ‘Do you have a family?’

  He wasn’t going to leave off asking questions, and I wanted to eat my apple tart in peace.

  So I told him.

  CHAPTER 2

  Me

  Down by the waterfront at Sydney Town there’s a huddle of convict women’s huts, all log walls of rotting cabbage tree and bark roofs falling in. The huts were built by the sailors who brought the First Fleet here for the women they’d come to love on the voyage.

  And then they sailed away.

  Women still lived there. The kind of women no one would marry, even in a colony that was mostly men: women who were too old, too drunk or too misshapen for any officer to have them working in his kitchen. The women collected oyster shells for the lime kilns, picked oakum, sewed sails or did whatever job the foremen wanted.

  Mostly they drank, for the men who came at night paid them in rum. Sometimes the women had children too.

  One of them was me.

  I never knew my ma. I don’t know if she knew me. Maybe she died when I was born. Most likely she simply didn’t care. There were dozens of us ragamuffins underfoot down by the docks, begging coins from sailors, a fish from fishermen, a few rags from the officers’ wives. Mostly all we got were cuffs and curses.

  Most of us died before we could walk, of fever or starvation, or being bashed against a wall if we cried too loudly. Those who lived learned to be
fast. We learned to steal too.

  The only person I’d ever called Ma was old Ma Grimsby — and she was no one’s mother. Her shanty tavern was a cross crib too, a place where young ’uns on the damble got a bed of straw where they’d be safe from cut-throats in the night, or roaming redcoats above the law, and the scraps from her mutton pies too, though they was mostly turnip and bandicoot.

  Come back empty-handed once and you’d get a thick ear and an empty belly. Do it twice . . . well, there was no point coming back to Ma’s empty-handed twice. Ma’d get Long Henry to beat you off with his stick.

  I’d taken shanks’s pony all the way to Parramatta, and a long hot walk it was too, after Floggin’ Dan had . . .

  Well, maybe that story’s best forgotten. I didn’t tell it to Mr Cunningham either. Just that I got shot of Sydney Town till Floggin’ Dan forgot what I’d done to him. Which he would when the rum had eaten away a bit more of his memory.

  ‘So I parks me shambles here now,’ I said, taking another bite of my tart. I tried to let it stay in my mouth, to feel the taste of it, but my belly was telling me I was fair gut-foundered.

  Maybe if I asked Mr Cunningham a question, I’d have time to eat my tart. ‘What did they send you here for?’

  ‘I was transported for sedition.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  He said, ‘I fought the English to free my country.’ He smiled wryly. ‘They should have hanged me in Ireland, but they didn’t want any more martyrs after the ’98 Rebellion. They should have hanged me after me and thirty others nearly took over the ship coming here. They should have hanged me two years ago when I nearly escaped from here on a French ship.’

  ‘Why didn’t they?’ I took another bite of tart.

  ‘Because I’m useful. I was a stonemason, see, before I bought my pub back in Clonmel, and there are few stonemasons in the colony.’

  I didn’t like to ask what a stonemason did. Not hammer rocks out of the quarry, I reckoned, because the convicts in chain gangs did that, or bash boulders into cobbles to line the roads. It had to be something fancy. I nibbled my tart again. There was creamy stuff under the apple.

  ‘So they’re after giving me the overseer’s job at the Castle Hill Farm quarries and a cottage of my own. They let me free,’ said Mr Cunningham. He grinned. ‘They’re idiots.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’m a rebel still, boyo, and rebellion’s coming here too.’ He met my eyes. ‘Know why you’re starving in the street, and wearing rags, while some folk swagger off to their fine houses?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘The English, boyo. The English keep Ireland slaved. The English redcoats keep us all slaves here too. There’s food aplenty growing in New South Wales, but most of the crops go to making rum, not bread to fill men’s bellies.’ He must’ve seen I didn’t con what he meant. He tried again. ‘Everyone who sells rum has to pay the officers a cut. Plus the officers grant themselves vast estates. Land, of course, needs working to make them richer, and so they take the convicts for their slaves. If any man says “nay” to a redcoat or magistrate, they’re for the dead man’s dance up on the gibbet.’

  ‘Or get flogged,’ I put in. I hot-footed it to Floggin’ Green every time someone was put to the lash. I didn’t enjoy the blood and screaming like most folks, but it was easy to damble a pocket or two in the crowd.

  ‘I’ve been given a hundred lashes,’ said Mr Cunningham. ‘Scars only last a man’s lifetime. Slavery can last for centuries. The English stole our land,’ he continued slowly, still making sure I understood. ‘But the English can be defeated. Sure, an’ the Americans did just that, and the Frenchies showed us how people can rise against their oppressors and govern themselves. What they can do, we can do as well.’

  I blinked at him. All I’d ever known was soldiers doing what they liked, taking a ham from a market stall or a woman from the shanties. I’d never thought anyone could stop the redcoats. But now I came to think about it . . . ‘There’s more convicts than there are redcoats.’

  ‘You’ve got the right of it, boyo.’ Mr Cunningham grinned at me, like I’d said something clever.

  I flushed with pleasure.

  ‘The idiots have sent a good six hundred rebels to the colony now. That’s six hundred rebel leaders. A new dawn is coming, boyo. The fires of freedom will be lit. Every convict is going to follow us, aye — and farmers and merchants too. Every man the redcoats have slaved or cheated will cast off their chains and stand together.’

  ‘But soldiers got swords and bayonets and muskets.’

  ‘And armouries where they keep them, that can be broken into —’ Mr Cunningham stopped. He looked at me as I picked the last crumbs from my shirt. ‘Would you fight too, little Frog? Would you risk your life and be a rebel, or be content with your rags? Would you face death to be free?’

  In all my life, no one had ever spoken to me as if I mattered. I’d been a flea, a frog, hopping about, hoping not to be noticed. But this man seemed to care about my opinion.

  At last I replied, ‘What’s bein’ free like?’

  He looked at me seriously. ‘Freedom means being able to choose what life you live. Freedom means men elect their leaders — all men, not just the rich and the English. Every man will have a right to own land, every child an education.’

  ‘What about apple tarts? And clean straw to sleep on and no rats to bite you?’

  Mr Cunningham looked at me with those bright, clear eyes. ‘Freedom means the apple tarts of life are shared equally, and death to rats and tyrants.’

  He gestured out towards the Parramatta shanties that lined the river. ‘What have the English made here in sixteen years? A prison hell-hole. But if we stand arm in arm, we can be free. Well, Master Frog, would you fight with us? Fight to make the colony the great Republic of New Ireland, not the backside of the Empire of England?’

  I didn’t understand much of that either. But I knew my answer.

  ‘I’d fight for you,’ I said. Mr Cunningham was the first person to care what I thought. The first person I’d met who cared what happened to people like me. Of course I’d fight for him!

  He grinned again and stood up, brushing some dead leaves from his trousers. ‘There! If a boy like you will fight for the cause, so will all the oppressed in the colony.’

  He didn’t seem to notice I’d said I’d fight for him. I didn’t even know what a republic was.

  He held out his hand. ‘I must go. It’s been good speaking to you, Master Frog. Together we are strong, boyo. Together we will change the world.’

  I wiped my hand before I put it in his. His hand was calloused, but not ingrained with dirt, like every other hand I knew. An overseer, not a labourer.

  A rebel and a leader.

  CHAPTER 3

  Hope

  I followed him when he strode up from the river, of course. Partly because I was curious, and partly because he was headed towards the taverns and a tavern is always a good place to dimble-damble.

  But mostly I followed him like a moth is drawn towards a lamp. He shone among the grubby convicts, the tavern froth of Parramatta, a head taller than any other man, his shoulders broad. Maybe his eyes were so clear, I thought, because they looked upon a future none of us could see.

  I waited till he’d gone inside a tavern just up from the wharf, then slipped through the door.

  The room was as flash as they came in Parramatta, with stone walls and tables and chairs as well as benches, mostly empty, for the market crowd had left and the bell for work’s end hadn’t sounded yet. The tavernkeeper was busy tapping a new barrel, with only half an eye on the room.

  Mr Cunningham headed straight for a table in the corner. Three men already sat there, all with short croppy haircuts and tankards of ale in front of them. They nodded as Mr Cunningham sat down, then pushed a tankard over to him. He said something I couldn’t hear and drank.

  I sat on one of the benches by the wall and picked up an empty tankard as if I were
drinking, then quickly slid underneath a table. I crawled across the floor, hidden by the chairs and table legs, then stopped two tables from where the four men sat.

  They wouldn’t notice me if I was careful. People notice movement, mostly. A good dimble-dambler knows you hide best when you are still. I hugged my knees to my chest. And listened.

  ‘. . . and the men at Green Hills?’ asked Mr Cunningham quietly.

  ‘Aye, we’re ready there too. The men will gather as soon as they see the signal fire.’ The speaker was shorter.

  ‘And Sydney Town, Mr Holt?’

  Mr Holt looked wary. ‘The men are ready to rise. But we have no weapons, and the armoury is too well guarded.’

  ‘We can decoy the redcoats from Sydney down here for you,’ said Mr Cunningham. ‘That will leave you and your men free to take the barracks and the armoury.’

  He turned to the third man. ‘Set alight whatever you can here as soon as you get the message, Mr Johnson. The redcoats will all head to Parramatta, leaving Sydney undefended.’

  ‘You want to fight them here?’ demanded Mr Johnson.

  ‘Of course not. That is just what we want them to think we plan to do. We don’t fight till we are one big army, and well armed. The Parramatta rebels need to head to the signal fire at Toongabbie, away from the redcoats.’

  Mr Cunningham looked at each of the others. It was easy to see he was the leader.

  ‘This is the plan then, agreed? Have the signal fires ready to light upon the hills. I’ll send messengers to Parramatta, Green Hills, Hawkesbury and Sydney Town as soon as the Castle Hill fire is lit. Tell your men to gather at each fire, then we all march to Sydney Town.’

  He smiled. ‘No one can stop us now. It’s two hundred rebels or more we have at Castle Hill alone, and another hundred at least who we can count on out on the farms between here and there. We should be a thousand strong or more by the time we march into Sydney Town.’

  ‘The winds of change are rising,’ said the man sitting next to him, draining his tankard. ‘And men are rising too!’

  Mr Holt looked even warier. ‘I don’t like it, man. Too many blabbermouths are talking rebellion.’