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

was led into a vast sandstone building. Led down a narrow corridor into an empty room. A table with three stools sat in the middle. A tiny window above the table let in a spear of sunlight. The soldiers shoved me onto a stool. And there I sat in my bloodstained skirts, clasping my bloodstained hands.

For a long time, I was left alone on that stool, in front of that table, with the morning light building as it streamed through that tiny window. A guard stood at the door, rifle across his chest, not saying a word. I felt an old terror. The terror I had felt when I had heard high treason and death by hanging.

Finally; two marines. A captain. An ensign. They asked me my name. Asked me my status. I pulled my ticket of leave from the pocket of my dress, and sat it on the table. The edges were stained in blood.

The captain leant forward and placed the pocket watch on the table. “Who does this belong to?”

I swallowed hard. “It belongs to Adam Blackwell.” I looked down at the blood on my hands, feeling sickness rise in my throat. Feeling a little hysteria rise with it. “Let me wash. Please. I need to wash.”

“You’re not going anywhere.”

I squeezed my eyes closed and tried to breathe deeply. I felt as though I were trapped in the worst of my nightmares. “I didn’t kill him,” I said. “It was Patrick Owen.”

A moment of silence. I kept my eyes on my knotted fingers. I couldn’t look at that watch. Couldn’t look at the stains on the edge of my ticket of leave. I thought of Blackwell handing it to me as smoke poured from the factory above the jail. Thought of the fleeting kiss he had pressed into my neck. I blinked back my tears.

“Tell me what happened,” said the captain.

But of course, I knew nothing of what had happened. Nothing beyond the moment Owen had struck me with the plank of wood.

I garbled through a tangled tale of finding the rebels outside Captain Grant’s house. Of my altercation with Brady. Of Lottie’s cries and Owen’s laughter and the blow to my head that had left me unconscious in the street. “The next I knew,” I said, “Lieutenant Blackwell’s body was beside me.”

“You did not see Mr Owen kill Lieutenant Blackwell.”

A question? Or was he painting a picture of my guilt?

And then I told them, as slowly and calmly as I could, of the way I had taken Lottie back to my room at the Whaler’s Arms. Of the way she had disappeared in the night and gone for Owen. Told him of the lieutenant’s whereabouts.

I spoke of the events that had taken place at the Owens’ cottage after the Castle Hill rebellion. And I spoke of Patrick Owen’s need for revenge.

“How did you come to know Lieutenant Blackwell?” asked the captain.

I knotted my fingers together. “I met him in Parramatta. He… offered me a bed.”

“Ah.” And that one word was all it took for me to know my story had been taken for fiction. I was a concubine from the factory above the jail. As striking an admission of guilt as there could ever be.

Do you know why Lieutenant Blackwell was in Sydney?

Yes. He was returning to England to see his wife.

That must have angered you I’m sure. Perhaps enough to kill?

My body shook with anger, fear, grief. But I clenched my fists and pressed my shoulders back. I would not fit neatly into their story. I was not a jealous government lass driven to murder.

I used a clean patch of skin on my wrist to wipe my eyes. “It was Patrick Owen,” I said again. But I had no proof. I could not even claim to be a witness. “The body,” I coughed. “It was… defaced. How do you imagine I might have done such a thing? With what weapon?”

But the look the captain gave me said he knew the weapon would be found. And he knew that I was capable.

The guard led me down the passage and unlocked the door to a narrow stone cell. He followed me inside and locked the door behind us. Shoved me hard against the cold stone wall. Pain jolted down my spine.

“Blackwell was a friend,” he said. “A schoolmate.”

I heard a sudden, hysterical laugh escape me. Because of course he was. Because this place was ruled by redcoats who had studied together, trained together, fought together. And they would band together to see that everyone below them fell into line.

And when I laughed, I also cried; sobs that came from deep inside me and stole my breath. I turned away from the guard and crumpled to the floor, my head pressed to my knees.

I waited to be thrown against the wall again. Waited to be struck, or for some fierce interrogation. But the guard didn’t speak again. Engulfed in tears, I did not hear him leave. Did not hear the door open, or close, or lock. All I knew was when I finally looked up in an attempt to catch my breath, the dark was thick and I was alone.

That night, I huddled in the corner of the cell, shivering in spite of the thick, wet heat. In fleeting moments of clarity, I told myself I would fight. I would make sure the world knew Patrick Owen had been the one to pull the trigger. But my resolve was without determination. My will to fight was swamped by grief.

Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Blackwell’s beaten body, stained in blood, his face unrecognisable, the uniform he had always worn so neatly hanging open at his sides.

I heard myself inhale.

The jacket unbuttoned.

In all the time I had known him, Blackwell had never worn his