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

But there were no questions. Just the rhythmic plinking as the water dripped from the cloth back into the basin. A crow glided across the jail yard and perched on top of the stair rail.

“Has it stopped bleeding?” I asked.

“Almost.”

I got unsteadily to my feet, turning to face my reflection in the narrow window behind us. Lottie’s attack had left a congealing red stripe above my eyebrow, but the cut was not as enormous as I had imagined it might be. The side of my eye was already cloudy with bruising.

I squinted at my reflection. It was the first time I’d dared to examine myself since I’d arrived in Parramatta. My hair hung in lank, coppery snarls, damp and darkened around my face. My cheeks were hollow, pink from the sun. But it was my eyes that caused my loud intake of breath. They were brighter and fiercer than I could ever remember; the flat grey planes of them alight with flecks of blue. There was my anger, my fear, my frustration. There was four shillings, and I have shelter and who found the body?

New South Wales had left a blaze inside me.

“I ought to go back upstairs,” I said, “before the superintendent has me in the cells with Lottie and Hannah.”

“You’re to come with me to the courthouse,” said Blackwell. “The magistrate wishes to speak to the person who found the body.”

“So you were telling the truth. When you said there would be an investigation.”

He looked me in the eye for the first time. “Why would you doubt that?”

I didn’t answer.

We walked out of the jail towards the courthouse without speaking. I felt a faint flicker of nerves. The last time I’d been before a magistrate, I’d been transported upon the seas.

A few yards from the front door, Blackwell stopped walking. He looked down at me, eyes fixed to the cut streaking my forehead. “Eleanor,” he said, his voice low, “you’re not to put yourself in danger for me again. I don’t require protecting.”

He strode up the steps to the front door before I had a chance to respond.

CHAPTER EIGHT

I followed Blackwell into the courthouse, and down a long stone corridor with doors on either side. Our footsteps echoed in the stillness. He stopped at the door at the end of the passage and knocked loudly.

“Enter.”

Blackwell opened the door to a small meeting room. A table took up most of the space, wooden chairs on both sides. White light filtered in from a window high on the wall. Inside, I could see the round-shouldered figure of Reverend Marsden, dressed in his customary black, along with two soldiers.

“Eleanor Marling, Reverend,” said Blackwell. “She’s the one who found the body.”

The reverend walked slowly towards the door, rubbing a chin that disappeared into the mottled red folds of his neck. He looked me up and down, taking in the gash on my forehead, the blooms of blood on my Navy Board skirts. “You’re a government woman.” It was not a question. But I said:

“Yes, Father.”

The bridge of his nose creased, then Marsden turned back to Blackwell. “It’s not necessary for me to speak to her, Lieutenant. Please see her back to the factory.”

*

Lottie and Hannah were put in solitary confinement for three days. A part of me was glad for the reprieve. I had no desire to try and explain my actions to Lottie. And I felt more than a hint of anger towards her over her attack. I knew Blackwell a target of the rebels, for reasons I didn’t fully understand. And I knew Lottie was loyal to the Irish croppies. But surely that didn’t warrant the whole stool-swinging debacle.

When she reappeared in the factory at the end of the week, she was uncharacteristically quiet. Shadows of exhaustion underlined her eyes, her hands discoloured with grime and the stale smell of the cells clinging to her skin.

For a long time, we sat beside each other without speaking. She glanced at the cut and bruising on the side of my face. I wondered if an apology would be forthcoming. But when she finally spoke, what she said was:

“Are you really sleeping on the street, Nell?”

I didn’t look at her. “No,” I said finally. I was surprised it had taken her so long to realise. I focused my gaze on my spinning.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see her wheel was motionless.

“Tell me I’m wrong,” she said. “Tell me you’re not lodging with him.”

I knew there was no need to reply. I had been expecting an outburst, but her silence was much more brutal.

“No,” she said finally. “You’ve got to get out of there. Do you understand me?” She looked at me with an intensity in her eyes I had never seen before. “The street is safer. Risking the savages is safer.”

Anger tightened my chest.

“Is this about what Maggie said?” she asked. “About having sway with a powerful man?”

I laughed coldly. “Power?” I repeated. “You think this about power? I was desperate, Lottie. I was sleeping outside the church. A person has to think of survival before they can think of power.”

She shook her head. “Any man in this place would have taken you in. And yet you went with Blackwell.”

“You’re mistaken about him,” I said, my voice coming out thin. I wasn’t even sure she had heard me over the rattle of the looms. Her long silence suggested she hadn’t. But then finally, she said:

“You trust him then? Is that why you… did what you did?”

I gritted my teeth. Why I did what I did? Had she not even the courage to say it aloud?

Why you stopped me from attacking him…

“Nell?” she pushed. “Do you trust him?”

I did trust him, I realised. And