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

I hugged my legs, pressing my eyes hard against my knees. A trivial detail. Owen had likely caught Blackwell unaware. Or he had heard me calling for him. Had raced out of the house to help me.

But the thought gnawed at the back of my mind.

The jacket unbuttoned.

And in the darkness I was back there again; in the street outside the Grants’ house, with Brady’s hands on my shoulders and my fingers reaching for his pistol. I felt the metal, felt my hand slide around the stock. And then? I dug into my memories, into that fragment of a second before I had been struck. Had there been the sound of a gunshot? Had I pulled the trigger?

I heard myself breathe louder, faster. Dan Brady, lurching in front of me as I thrust my knee into his groin. Dan Brady stumbling, my hand on his weapon. Had I put a bullet in his chest?

Brady was tall like Blackwell. Dark-haired and broad-shouldered. The two men could easily be mistaken from a distance.

And at once I was on my feet, pacing back and forth across the lightless cell, my feverish mind grappling at the possibility. Was it was Dan Brady’s body that had been lying at my feet?

*

I knew I was walking a straighter path to the hangman. But the next morning, I told the captain I had pulled the trigger on Dan Brady. Told him the body had been defaced. Made to look like Blackwell.

I knew the bloodstained ticket of leave in my pocket would send me to the gallows, no matter what I said in that interrogation room. But I needed the truth to be known.

Was Owen seeking to punish me? Had he broken into the house and gone to Blackwell’s room to find it empty but for his belongings? Had he defaced Brady’s body to disguise his identity? Put him in Blackwell’s uniform and left him lying at my feet?

I felt deathly certain of it. Knew Owen had done this so I might believe he had killed the man I loved.

I told my story again, of the altercation outside the tavern, ending with my new and firm belief that I had pulled the trigger on Brady before I had been knocked out. But there was nothing but my word to support my story. Nothing beyond my desperate belief to suggest the body did not belong to Blackwell.

“If the lieutenant was not killed, as you claim, why has he not come forward?”

I closed my eyes. It almost felt as though the soldiers wanted the dead man to be Blackwell. What an example they could make of me then; the factory lass who had murdered a soldier. My body would hang in a gibbet over Pinchgut Island, to greet the ships as they bucked their way into the harbour.

“Perhaps Owen found him,” I said. “Perhaps he’s harmed him.” This, of course, was the other reason I was so adamant that the body was proven to be Brady’s. Because I knew there was every chance Blackwell was in danger. And I needed him to be found.

The captain was quick to remind me there were no witnesses to the shooting. Nothing but my word to go on. The rest did not need to be said. The word of a factory lass found covered in blood with a pistol beside her.

“What of Dan Brady?” I asked. “You’ve not found him, have you.” But I knew hunting down Brady, an emancipist with no fixed address, was not something the redcoats were willing to entertain.

Back in my cell, I paced. My heart was racing and my skin was damp with sweat. I was overflowing with fear. But the fear, I realised, was no longer for myself. I was a factory lass with blood on my hands. I’d escaped the hangman once, but I knew I would not do so again. Somehow, knowing I had no chance to win made it easier to push away the terror.

But my fear for Blackwell was consuming. Now I had let myself believe he was alive, I couldn’t bear to go back to the alternative. But there had been no sign of him since the morning of Brady’s death. Had he fallen into the hands of the rebels? If he were still in Sydney Town, he would surely have been sighted. I would not be being held for his murder.

I had no answers, of course. Just a desperate hope he still lived. The optimism felt dangerous. A thing that could all too easily be torn away.

*

Two and a half years ago I had stood in a courtroom dock at the Old Bailey and listened to the judge sentence me to a lifetime in New South Wales.

It had felt like a reprieve. I had been expecting a walk to the gallows.

I’d learned later that a literate, well-mannered woman like me was never destined for the hangman. I was a desirable thing for this new colony.

Now here I was with the murder of a soldier to my name. I knew well my education would not save me.

The trial was short. A foregone conclusion. Beside me, the other prisoners shifted in the dock; sent to the coalmines, sent to Toongabbie. Two hundred lashes, three days on Pinchgut Island.

I let my mind escape. I thought of birdsong and pearly light and the distant sigh of the sea. Thought of the rugged beauty of this place I had not learned to truly appreciate until now, when it was far too late.

Though I could not claim to be surprised by it, the verdict still weakened my knees.

“For the murder of Adam Blackwell, you are sentenced to hang by the neck until you are dead.”

PART FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

And so tomorrow morning I am to die in the orange light of New