Barney and the Secret of the French Spies Read online

  How had she guessed? I shook my head dumbly.

  Mrs Macarthur put her hand on Elsie’s forehead, then listened to her breathing. ‘Congestion of the lungs, if I am any judge. And I am, by now. Poor child.’ She put down the basket, sat in the chair by the bed and took Elsie’s hand.

  I stared. Mrs Macarthur was one of the most important women in the colony. Her husband was an officer in the Corps that had made themselves rich with illegal land grants and importing rum. The Corps hated Mr Johnson because he helped the poor and spoke out against the wrong things they did.

  Mrs Macarthur too often said she thought Mr Johnson was boring and Mrs Johnson dowdy, in her plain dresses with her hair pulled back with no curls, spending her time teaching convicts how to read instead of going on picnics with the officers or making her family rich.

  But there was Mrs Macarthur, sitting with Elsie.

  ‘You’re not scared of infection?’

  Mrs Macarthur shrugged, looking at Elsie, not me. ‘Not from congestion of the lungs. That is caught from cold and bad miasmas, and there are plenty of both in this colony of mud and stenches. Perhaps Elsie even came down with it walking back from cooking for my dinner party.’

  ‘Is that why you’re visiting her?’ I asked.

  Mrs Macarthur smiled at me, and I saw how she’d charmed Governor Phillip and majors Grose and Paterson and all the officers. ‘I came because I like her,’ she said simply. ‘I admire her too. Elsie has a talent for dressing well, doing what she can with frills and embroidery. She is the only excellent cook in the entire colony. She works hard. And even though she could not . . . would not talk, I knew she was intelligent. I hoped she might become my housekeeper when she was older. But you don’t want that, do you, Master Bean?’

  ‘No,’ I said, sitting on the bed. I supported Elsie’s shoulders while she coughed again, then wiped her face. ‘I don’t want Elsie to be anybody’s servant.’

  Mrs Macarthur nodded. ‘You’re a good boy. I’ve heard your wool is excellent.’ She gave a half-smile. ‘Who knows? One day your family and mine may even sit down to dine together.’

  She looked sympathetically at Elsie again, now quiet and propped up on her pillows. ‘Her accent is cultured,’ she added. ‘Don’t worry, Master Bean. I won’t tell anyone her secret.’

  ‘That she can talk?’ I whispered.

  Mrs Macarthur stared at me. ‘You really don’t know her secret?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘I . . . see,’ Mrs Macarthur said slowly. ‘The Johnsons must have guessed, though, which is why they’ve put her in isolation, where none will visit her and hear her talk.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘She’s saying words that don’t mean anything. Or if they do, I can’t understand them.’

  ‘They’re not nonsense.’ Her voice was sharp again. ‘How much do you care for Elsie, Master Bean?’

  ‘I love Elsie more than my own life,’ I said.

  ‘Well then, I will tell you the secret Elsie has been keeping from us all for so long. Mr and Mrs Johnson have put her here so no one else can hear her speak French in her delirium — true French, the French of France, not the kind my governess taught me. This girl you love must be French, and so is an enemy of our nation.’

  Mrs Macarthur met my eyes. ‘But I will tell no one. I hope that one day, when she and I are both old women perhaps, she will tell me how she came to be here. I will pray for her, Master Bean, even if I do not spend half my life on my knees like your Mrs Johnson.’

  She bent and kissed Elsie on the forehead. I hadn’t thought a grand lady like Mrs Macarthur would do that for a servant. I’d learned so much that day my mind felt like it had been through a chaff-cutter.

  ‘I’ll send a servant with a mustard plaster and brown paper for Elsie’s chest. I doubt Mrs Johnson has either to give her.’ She looked at me sternly. ‘Wait for Mrs Johnson to apply it. I’d send my maid to do it, but the fewer who know Elsie doesn’t have typhus the better. I’ll bring more beef tea tomorrow. It’s a family recipe.’

  I stood as she stood, then automatically bowed as she left. I didn’t bow to ladies back then — I still don’t. I’d left that bowing stuff back in England. But I bowed to Mrs Macarthur that afternoon.

  Then I sat back and wiped Elsie’s face again with the scented water.

  CHAPTER 4

  Waiting and Hoping

  Elsie sang a song after that, all breathy and gasping.

  ‘À la ronde du muguet

  Sans rire et sans parler . . .’

  I didn’t understand it, but it sounded like a child’s lullaby. She still didn’t know me.

  I managed to spoon more broth into her, plus some of Mrs Macarthur’s beef tea, because I knew it would be strong with beef bones and marrow and port wine, the kind of broth Mrs Johnson couldn’t afford the time nor expensive ingredients to make. I sponged her face again. I’d just dipped the cloth into the scented water once more when I found her looking at me.

  ‘Barney?’ she said. ‘Tu es Barney? Je t’aime, Barney, mais je ne peux pas te le dire . . .’ Her eyes shut again.

  I felt like my heart was ripped out of me. Elsie was finally talking to me and I couldn’t understand her. All these years of waiting . . .

  And yet Elsie had talked to me ever since I’d known her. She’d spoken with gestures and smiles, and by making me plum puddings to take to the farm and a new shirt last birthday and knitting my stockings . . . Elsie had been saying she loved me all these years, just like I’d been saying I loved her, even if I’d never said the words aloud.

  I felt a bit better after that. But not much.

  Someone knocked on the door. I opened it. A man in convict garb, but neat and clean, handed me a basket and a pile of what looked like furs. ‘From Mrs Macarthur,’ he said, then hurried off, obviously scared of typhus.

  I took them back to the bed. A big warm o’possum-skin blanket, the softest kind of blanket in the world. I laid that over Elsie. I’d given her one as a Christmas present, but Mrs Johnson must not have brought it down. Brown paper and a pot that must have the mustard in it. A man’s warm jacket made of kangaroo skin and a raised meat pie. What use would they be to Elsie?

  They must be for me. I needed to keep warm too, with the night coming and the cold bite snapping from the harbour, or I might get sick too. I had to eat as well.

  The jacket was only a little too big. I’d never grow tall — Mr Johnson said when you’d been starved like I was when you were very young, you hardly ever did grow tall. But I had broad shoulders and solid arms now, from the farm work.

  It was a good pie. I wondered if Elsie had made it. She’d been doing work for Mrs Macarthur now and then for four years, saving money for the day the Johnsons would sail home. They couldn’t afford to take us too, and anyway, we didn’t want to go. This colony was my home, and Elsie’s too . . .

  Or was it? Who was Elsie? I’d given her Ma’s name, back when I found her, starving and hiding in the rock ledges above the colony, in her faded pink dress, so different from any of the clothes brought for the convicts on the First Fleet.

  I gazed at her again as she lay on the pillows. Elsie had to live, to tell me who she was and how she’d come to be here.

  She had to live because . . . because I couldn’t bear it if she didn’t.

  Mrs Johnson came back just before dusk, bringing more hot soup and a pannikin of stew for me. I went outside while she put the mustard plaster on Elsie.

  ‘Barney? You can come in again now.’

  Elsie wore a fresh nightdress, but she looked so small, so pale. ‘When . . . how long . . .?’ I couldn’t say the words.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Mrs Johnson softly. ‘The longer she lives, the more chance there is she will recover. We are all praying for her.’ The Johnsons had five hundred convicts in their school now, though most of them didn’t come to church. But school still started with a prayer. All those voices, praying for Elsie. And my voice . . .

&n
bsp; I sat with her all that night. She didn’t speak again. Sometime I must have slept too, because I woke stiff and aching with my body slumped in the chair and my head on the pillow next to Elsie’s.

  And she was awake and looking at me.

  ‘Hello?’ I said cautiously. She gave a small smile, but even that set her coughing. I held her till the coughing stopped, then held up a cup of broth, cold now, for there was no fireplace to heat it in the isolation hut. ‘Mrs Johnson will bring something warm soon,’ I promised.

  Elsie gave a weak nod. Her fingers reached out and found mine. She closed her eyes, her hand in mine.

  I wanted to tell her I knew she could speak French now. That Mr and Mrs Johnson knew, and Mrs Macarthur.

  I wanted to tell her we all loved her and would keep her secret.

  I wanted to tell her a million things and ask a million questions. But not till she was stronger.

  And then I’d ask her the most important question of them all.

  CHAPTER 5

  Mystery

  Mr Johnson had two convicts carry Elsie back home on a blanket the next day. Her delirium had gone, so there was no danger of anyone overhearing her speak French. As far as she knew, no one had guessed her secret. She lay in her bed back at the Johnsons’ house, silent again.

  I longed to tell her I knew she could talk, as I sat with her, feeding her broth again, but Mrs Johnson had warned me quietly not to speak of it while Elsie was so weak.

  Would I have had the strength and determination, I wondered, not to speak at all for so many years? I wanted to tell her she was wonderful, brave, incredible.

  I wanted to tell her I loved her too.

  Instead I talked about the farm, and how I’d nearly been strangled by a sheep, making a joke of it so it seemed I’d never been in real danger, and how Bill had tried to drink the billy of liquid soap she’d sent down to us, thinking it was soup, and how he’d burped bubbles even after he spat out the first mouthful: things to make her smile, not worry.

  I stayed a few more days, till I knew Elsie was really recovering, then took the boat back to Parramatta with Mr Johnson, to check all was well with my farm.

  We stood on deck, under the flapping sail, watching the small farms on either side of the river pass. Only a few years ago this had all been bush, with thin blue spires of smoke from the Indians’ fires.

  Now the land was carved into squares of orchards, or fields of wheat, some stunted, planted in ground that hadn’t been dunged nor the tree roots grubbed out properly, others ready to give their grain come summer.

  Here and there some lucky farmer had a cow — I even saw a few horses. But mostly there were sheep, and goats, and ragged children who ran down to the river’s edge and waved at us.

  I waved back at the children, then glanced at Mr Johnson. He looked like he still carried every man who’d ever died in the colony: not just their bodies but their souls. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a man look so tired.

  ‘You need to rest more, sir,’ I ventured.

  He smiled at that. ‘And so my wife keeps telling me. But how can I rest, with so many souls and bodies in such desperate need?’

  I quickly looked around, but no one could overhear us. ‘Sir . . . I know Elsie was speaking French when she was ill.’ I hadn’t told him or Mrs Johnson that Mrs Macarthur knew too. Mr Johnson had testified for Governor Hunter in his dispute with so many officers of the Corps — Mr Macarthur had written to the government back in England accusing the governor of all the crimes Mr Macarthur and his fellow officers were guilty of.

  I trusted Mrs Macarthur, even if I didn’t trust her husband, but Mr Johnson had enough to worry about without knowing she was also aware of Elsie’s secret.

  ‘Luckily the others who might have heard would just think she was mumbling nonsense.’ Mr Johnson gazed down the river, as though rehearsing his sermon in his mind.

  ‘But, sir, how could she have come here?’

  He looked back at me. ‘I thought you might have known that, Barney.’

  I stared at him. ‘I’d never have kept that from you, sir. Not when we were at war with the French.’ Our Governor Hunter had been a hero in that war. England and France were at peace just now — or were we? The colony was nine months away from the latest news. A war might have been and gone before we heard about it.

  One thing was sure, though. I’d read it in the history book Mrs Johnson used for teaching. England and France had been at war with each other on and off for near on a thousand years. If we weren’t at war with the French right now, we would be again.

  ‘I told you all I knew about Elsie, sir,’ I said quietly. ‘I found her hiding among the rocks the day after my ma died. Almost a year to the day since we arrived in Port Jackson.’

  ‘January 1789,’ said Mr Johnson. ‘It was a hard year, that one.’

  It was. The rations cut again, and few willing to labour to grow crops, and the Indians dying of the plague, yet the plague sparing all of us colonists.

  ‘Me and Elsie were living off my rations and oysters and wild greens,’ I said. And what I could steal sneaking round by moonlight too, but I wasn’t telling Mr Johnson that. Elsie hadn’t understood me at all when I first met her, unless I used gestures. I’d thought she couldn’t hear properly, but she’d just had to learn our language. ‘Then you and Birrung found us.’ I smiled. ‘And life became good, thanks to you and Mrs Johnson.’

  ‘And to the Lord God, who has blessed us with this safe and fertile land, and hands strong enough to work it,’ said Mr Johnson.

  ‘Yes, Him too,’ I said. ‘But how did a French girl who couldn’t speak English come out here on the First Fleet?’

  ‘There is only one way I can think of,’ said Mr Johnson. ‘She didn’t come with us at all.’

  ‘Then how did she get here, sir?’ I tried to imagine Elsie riding here on an eagle or on the back of a Chinese dragon like in one of Mr Johnson’s books, or paddling around the world in a canoe.

  He shrugged, as if the answer was obvious. ‘Barney, remember the two French ships that came into Botany Bay just after our fleet arrived there?’

  I stared. ‘No, sir. What ships?’

  ‘You must have seen them!’

  I shook my head. ‘I was down below in the dark, sir. Remember, they didn’t let us convicts up till we had sailed away from Botany Bay to Port Jackson. They didn’t even tell us what the new land was like.’ Even once we’d sailed to Port Jackson, there’d been weary days before we were let up into the sunlight. I could still remember how the brightness had cut my eyes and slashed at the whiteness of my skin. It had all been pain and terror and too much light, and then, suddenly, I could see — the green trees trickling down to the white caped ruffles of the harbour, the green and red birds quarrelling above us. I had never seen land so beautiful. Never knew it could even exist. And it was mine for life . . .

  I’d had maybe ten moments of pure joy in my life till then. That first sight of my new home was one of them.

  King George III had exiled the convicts like Ma as a punishment for their crimes, but for me New South Wales was the greatest gift I ever had. Except for Elsie.

  ‘There were two French ships at Botany Bay,’ said Mr Johnson quietly. ‘L’Astrolabe and La Boussole. They arrived just as our fleet was trying to leave the bay to sail to a better harbour with more fresh water and grass for the colony. But the wind was so strong the French could not enter the bay, nor could our ships leave — one was nearly wrecked trying. We all had to wait till the wind passed. Did you really not know about them?’

  I shook my head again. Most of us convicts had been very weak after so long in the darkness and eating stale food, though Captain Phillip had done his best for us — far better than later convict ships’ captains. I’d only been eight years old and as weak as a kitten.

  ‘Once we landed, Ma shared a tent with the other women gathering oyster shells,’ I said, ‘down by the Oyster Cove, not with the others. She didn’t even go to the
party that first night the women and children were allowed off the ship. Even afterwards, she kept away from the other convicts as much as she could, and kept me away too. She probably never even heard about the French ships.’

  Few convicts would bother about a couple of French ships anyway, not then, when we were so weak from the journey and strangeness in a new land, trying to survive. It was hard even getting used to ground that didn’t go up and down like the sea, and so much light pouring down on us.

  Mr Johnson’s face clouded. ‘Your mother was a good woman, despite her crime, Barney. She broke the law only to try to protect you. She kept you as safe as she was able.’

  I nodded. I knew too well, as I’d had to hide from bashings and thieving and worse for nearly a year after she died. ‘How long did the French stay, sir?’

  ‘Six weeks. Some of the convicts knew they were there, for they walked across country to try to persuade the French to let them join as crew and escape their sentences here. But the French captains were good men and refused to take them.’ He hesitated. ‘Barney, there is another reason our fleet moved so swiftly from Botany Bay. As soon as the lookout reported seeing strange sails on the horizon, Captain Phillip realised they might be French ships. He had spent much of his life at sea fighting the French — he’d even spent time in France secretly reporting on their ports and assets.’

  ‘Captain Phillip was a spy, sir?’ I admired a lot the captain who’d brought us across the world safely. I admired him as governor too, working himself half to death even after he received the spear wound in his shoulder. I’d never have guessed he might have been a spy as well!

  Mr Johnson nodded. ‘Why do you think England set up a colony halfway around the world, Barney?’

  ‘To get rid of all the convicts, sir,’ I said promptly.

  He smiled a little bitterly. ‘There are cheaper ways to rid England of convicts, Barney. Let them starve or die of typhus on rotting ships in the Thames. My wife and I came here to bring knowledge of Our Lord to the convicts and to the Indians of this land. But for the British government, New South Wales was to be a port to supply the navy, in case war with the Netherlands meant our ships could no longer resupply at the Cape. Our supply base here in New South Wales means English ships can now attack Dutch ports like Batavia, or French ports in Mauritius or India, and supply ships for the southern whaling grounds or the route to China.’