One of Us Buried by Johanna Craven (year 2 reading books TXT) 📕

the wall. Used his wrist to push a swathe of dark hair from his eyes. There was a moment of silence, as though he was debating whether to speak to me. “The rebels,” he said finally.

“Who?”

He sighed heavily. “The Irish rebels. They rose up at Castle Hill in the north a few years ago. Tried to take Parramatta and Sydney Town. Overthrow the government and bring in Irish rule.”

I wrapped my arms around myself, suddenly cold. “What was that they called you?”

Blackwell didn’t look at me. “Sasanaigh,” he repeated. “Englishman.”

I nodded stiffly. But it was the other word that rang more heavily in my ears.

Murderer.

I looked down at the rock that lay beneath the shelf. “Why did they do this?”

Blackwell stared at it for several moments. “They’re angry,” he said. “They feel oppressed and abused. And I represent everything they hate.” He picked up the rock and flung it out the torn window.

The muscles in my shoulders felt taut. It wasn’t just Lottie who despised the lieutenant, I realised. Perhaps in my desperation I had been too dismissive of her warning. Perhaps I ought to have stayed beneath the awnings of the church.

“You can’t leave,” Blackwell said as I edged towards the door. “Not now. It’s dangerous out there. The rebels are agitated. They’ll likely go after you.”

“Because of my English blood, or the fact I’m lodging with you?”

“Both.”

I looked up at him, taking in his face up close for the first time. He was younger than I had first guessed. Little more than thirty, perhaps. I imagined that in England, his hair had been cut to his collar, trimmed within an inch of its life. But in this place, a raggedness had begun to creep over him, the way it had done to all of us. His hair tickled the top of his eyebrows, reached past his collar. His pale blue eyes were sharp and clear, but I couldn’t see behind them. It made trusting him a difficult thing.

Outside, I heard loud laughter. I took a step away from the door. “And I’ll be safer here with you?”

Blackwell held my gaze. “Do you think you won’t be?”

I said nothing. Truly, I had no idea.

CHAPTER FIVE

 

 

“It would be a wise and prudent measure to bring up the rising generation in the Protestant religion, in order to remove that extreme ignorance and barbarism which constitute the natural character of all the lowest class of Irish Catholic convicts.”

 

Rev. Samuel Marsden

A Few Observations on the Toleration of the Catholic Religion in New South Wales

1808-1817

I knew little of the atrocities taking place in Ireland, like I knew little of so many other things. My father had done his best to provide me with a sheltered upbringing; one in which I would be married to a gentleman and keep my eyes and ears closed to anything that might upturn my polished existence. Politics, my father liked to say, was no domain for a lady.

Nonetheless, I had caught word of the rebellion in Ireland some years back. I knew the Irish had allied with the French to overthrow the Englishmen who ruled their land. As an impressionable nineteen-year-old, I had panicked, sure the United Irishmen would gallivant across the seas and turn London upside down.

Father had laughed off my concerns. “This is why young ladies should not involve themselves in politics,” he said, reaching across the supper table and topping up his glass with an enormous glug of wine. “Those witless fools have no mind to take London. I daresay their minds couldn’t even fathom such a notion.”

In London, I’d not known any Irish men or women. But sitting beside Lottie at the spinning wheels, I did not see a witless fool.

“I heard the rebels in the street last night,” I said, careful to sidestep any mention of Blackwell.

Lottie made a noise in her throat, but she didn’t look at me. I could tell she didn’t want to discuss the matter.

“Do you know them?” I asked.

She shrugged, not taking her eyes off the spinning wheel. “Some of them.”

“They want freedom,” I said. “Is that it?”

Lottie looked at me then, her hazel eyes shining. “Aye,” she said, with more sharpness than I had been expecting. “That’s it. Freedom and respect.”

“We all want those things,” I said.

She snorted. “Your people have it.”

I’d had no thought there might be an ‘us’ and ‘them’ between two lags sitting side by side at the factory. “Does I look like I have freedom?” I asked bitterly.

Lottie gave me a dismissive look that stung more than her sharpness. A look that said I wouldn’t understand. A look that said I had no right to argue, or to have an opinion on the matter.

“They’ve taken everything from us,” she said. “Even our God. You think we like spending our Sundays listening to your Protestant poison?”

“I’m sorry,” I murmured, unsure of what else to say.

A part of me ached to ask her about the lieutenant. Ask her if she knew why the rebels had stormed his hut last night. Ask her what had happened at Castle Hill. The settlement was crawling with soldiers. Why was Blackwell the target of the rebels’ rage? But then I would have to admit that I had crept through his door as his housekeeper. And that, I was becoming increasingly certain of, was something Lottie would not take well.

When dark fell and the spinning wheels stilled, we strolled out of our prison and wandered to the river. By now, I had come to understand that our punishment was transportation. Not incarceration.

There were plenty of men who came to join us at the river. Convicts, emancipists, free settlers, with liquor bottles in one hand and pipes in the other. They talked a lot, their shoulders pressed to ours