Fortune

February 4th, 1834

News has reached town this morning that the new schooner, the Frederick, built at Macquarie Harbour, and which had been expected to arrive in Hobart Town for the last three weeks, has been piratically seized by the prisoners left at that abandoned settlement, for the purpose of bringing the vessel to this port. Captain Taw has arrived by the mail this morning from Launceston, bringing the above intelligence. It appears that the prisoners took advantage of some of the soldiers being on a fishing expedition, when they overpowered the remainder, and took forcible possession of the vessel. The Frederick is spoken of as being a fast sailing vessel, and as the pirates have had three weeks’ start, there is little chance of their capture.

On the morning she received the letter from Berlin (it had taken eight months to reach Valdivia) Elisabeth Montoya went out to the markets to buy flowers for the house. Her maid Samanta came with a large wicker basket and they filled it with white, red and yellow roses, peonies and lilies and purple bellflowers. The sky was clear and high, the sea was gentle and everything was beautiful and bright. The scent of flowers in the crisp air was intoxicating as they walked between the colourful stalls.

Elisabeth thought of her aunt. She recalled Margaretha now with love, free of any bitterness and the frustrations of her youth; and Elisabeth was sad not because of her aunt’s death (we must all die) but because for the first time she understood her aunt as a woman. One who’d lived a long life and been unloved and alone through most of it. And Elisabeth knew that she too had to bear some of her aunt’s long life.

She remembered once seeing her aunt in bed, very late in the morning (as per usual), through the door a servant hadn’t completely closed behind them. Aunt Margaretha was lying back on her many pillows, head turned to the window, exhausted it seemed to Elisabeth, and grotesquely wigless, her thinning hair revealed, her bare face pale and bloated, cheeks scarred and veined, a wreck of a woman. As her aunt had always been displeased with Elisabeth, had scolded her since she could remember, had never praised but only criticised, she was glad to see the old woman there, defeated and vulnerable.

They left the market and went to a bakery for bread and pastries. Then Elisabeth sent Samanta home with the basket of flowers and the food and decided to walk down to the water. She found a bench that looked across the docks and sat down to smoke a cigarette, rolling the tobacco and licking the paper just as Alejandro had taught her all those years ago.

As she lit the cigarette, Elisabeth recognised some ships out on the water that were part of her business interests, unloading cargo and replenishing water barrels. The docks were busy with dozens of luggers coming and going, and there were men leading horse wagons down the piers and carrying sacks on their shoulders and rolling barrels over the smooth flagstones. They wore peasant pants and rope-soled shoes and blue caps. Some of the men looked over at her and smiled. A few were game, tapped fingers to their lips and blew her kisses.

Elisabeth finished her cigarette. She closed her eyes and felt the warmth of the sun on her face. She stayed like that for a long time.

When they asked him to join the crew (‘Say a word to anyone an’ you’re fuckin’ dead’) John Myer didn’t hesitate. There was nothing he wouldn’t have risked to get away—by this time not even his life, which was only a burden. As the other men pressed him and threatened him, offered the place among them though with coiled reluctance (those stinking, chained, angry men), John Myer had felt the shuddering of the earth beneath his feet, the vibration of it right through his body. He’d arrived at some point that he recognised, that had been waiting for his attention all this time. It was not for him to wonder how or why. All that John Myer knew, intuitively, was there would never be another chance.

Nobody was killed (a few heads were busted) and it was as though the cell keys had been left in the locks. Help yourselves, boys, off you go. And to boot, a nearly finished brig, only a handful of guards (fishing!) and the penal settlement already abandoned except for the convict shipwrights and labourers.

Six weeks later, in the boundless Southern Ocean, they sighted land without a day to spare, their lives in the balance and fading. ‘Huzzah!’ They cracked the Frederick’s hull and sank her, took the longboat into shore. Fixed their stories of shipwrecked sailors and hoped for the best. But never going back, each man swore it in his heart; oh no, never.

‘You’ll behave,’ James Porter said, eyes on the beach ahead of them. ‘We’re not in the clear yet.’

John Myer knew it was true. He pulled at the oar, dragged the choppy sea and heaved with gritted teeth. Fatigue heavy through his flesh. Not clear yet, but close.

Samanta was concerned about her mistress. For weeks now the señora rarely left the house. They no longer went together to the flower market or to the bakery for cherry pastries, no longer took walks down to the water in the evening, no longer visited the offices where her businesses were run and the managers and accountants and clerks there greeted her with great respect and manners, pulling out and offering their chairs, even to Samanta. The señora was still a beautiful woman and often courted and always invited to the most fashionable soirées and salons in Valdivia. But she would not attend or be courted any longer. Her fine silk dresses hung sadly in the robe. Samanta believed the señora’s malaise had ruined one of the lemon trees in the courtyard. She feared for the health of their well water.

Thankfully (Samanta had been praying to the Virgin) the señora did finally take a walk one day and was gone for most of it. The sun and air would do her great good, Samanta thought. She opened all the windows in the house and all the cupboard doors, and beat the rugs and swept and mopped the floors. She aired the blankets and pillows and she wiped every shelf clean of dust and she chose the brightest tablecloths and cushions for the house. And as she did, Samanta softly repeated the Indian chants her mother had taught her when she was a child, the ones she could only ever whisper in case her father heard them sung, for which crime mother and daughter would both be beaten. The chants were ancient, in the language of her mother’s people from the mountains (which Samanta could not otherwise speak or understand), and they dispelled bad spirits and called on the good. She’d always felt the truth of them and was certain the Virgin understood, too. It was never a simple thing, to air a dark home.

Samanta lit smudge sticks and chanted the prayers and brushed the smoke over every wall, drawing loops and sweeping arcs, concentrating on the corners that never received sunlight (where the bad spirits cowered). She went to all three floors and through every room, out onto the balconies too, and even up into the attic with its terrible spiders’ webs. She could feel her good work giving breath back to the sad house.

When the señora returned, Samanta heard the front door slam, the iron knocker sounding twice. Then along the hall the floorboards creaked with pain and the small vases and glass bowls on the shelves and side tables rattled and shook with the señora’s firm striding. A small picture frame slid flat. Samanta came out from the kitchen to see, but her mistress was already on the stairs.

Elisabeth paused on the landing, looked down at the girl but said nothing. She looked right through her and Samanta felt herself shiver.

‘I can fix some tea, Señora,’ she said. ‘Special herbs I have from the mountains, they will help if you are unwell . . .’

Samanta stayed, of course, but was too scared to ascend the stairs and listen at the bedroom door in case the señora heard her coming. She waited in the kitchen. She made the herbal tea and prayed to the Virgin. Samanta knew she couldn’t stay all night, but was torn and in two minds. The señora would be very displeased if she discovered her there in the kitchen, but she felt that she should wait, in case she was needed, in case the señora called for her.

Samanta waited but heard nothing. What could the señora be doing? Samanta waited for as long as she could, but when the dark came, the silence seemed to thicken in her ears. She was afraid. Eventually, like a thief, Samanta crept out of the house and hurried home.

The next morning when she returned, the señora gave her money and sent her away to spend time with her family in Los Lagos.

He’d taken back his true name and found work unloading ships. He rented a small room in a faded blue hotel, full of scarred, tail-less cats over in the poorer part of town, where the lanes smelled of stale urine and the nights were loud with singing and fighting. He’d bought a book from a street stall and read from it every evening (it was Goethe, in Spanish, he had to read slowly). There was a cantina not far away, where every day Johannes Meyer ate grilled fish and drank sweet white wine the colour of straw.

He took his time with everything, settled into a calm that savoured every moment. He walked unhurriedly, ate slowly, worked hard, slept deeply, read and let his imagination roam. One of the cats adopted him. The hours were long and kind and lingered like welcome guests.

He believed them, these hours, or wanted to, but in truth he remained suspicious of the contentment they seemed to bestow. It lessened over time, this suspicion, but never truly faded. He wondered if it ever would (it wouldn’t). His contentment had a cautious air.

He looked over his shoulder from time to time. He approached corners with vague trepidation.

He slid the sack down from his shoulder and brushed the dust from his arm. She was walking towards him with an umbrella against the sun. There was a man with her, short and fat and overdressed, a watch chain bright between his vest pockets, wiping his forehead with a white handkerchief and pointing out into the harbour, showing her the ships. They came closer, walking down the storehouse side of the dock, where the sun blazed hottest against the stone facades. Then they paused for a moment as the man lit the woman’s cigarette. When she lifted her head, she was looking directly at Johannes.

They stood like that only metres apart, eyes on each other, each remembering and yet thinking that it couldn’t be.

She’d sent Samanta away and had been thinking of it for days, recalling the boy at the docks (he wasn’t a boy anymore!). Deeply regretting that she hadn’t approached and spoken to him. Elisabeth Montoya felt an unaccountable sense of loss.

Her true impulse had been to go over and greet him (embrace him!) but she didn’t move, just looked, in a kind of shock. Because he wasn’t an old friend, he wasn’t anybody at all, just a face from a long time ago, and it was this thought that had percolated among a rush of others and held her there, motionless. And then somebody had yelled, further down the dock, and she’d watched him turn to the voice and then bend down to pick up the sack at his feet. She’d watched him shoulder it, bounce it into position, and then turn to look at her again. And then Señor Bonas (who hadn’t stopped talking the whole time) had taken her by the arm and they’d moved on. He was showing her the new dock warehouse that had been purchased.

She wasn’t listening to him. She only felt the man’s eyes following her. With every step away, she’d thought to stop and turn around, but she didn’t.

Elisabeth Montoya walked away with Señor Bonas. With every excruciating step, she hoped to hear him call out, call out after her.

(From Consul General Walpole, Santiago de Chile, to Lieutenant Governor George Arthur, Hobart Town, Van Diemen’s Land)

May 25th, 1834

Sir: I have the Honour to transmit to you the Translation of a Paragraph contained in the Araucano, a Paper published here under the Authority of this Government & which was Communicated to me by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.

By this Paper you will perceive that Ten Individuals whose names are specified in a List also enclosed, presented themselves on the 9th of March last at Valdivia in this Republic stating themselves to have been shipwrecked on the coast of Chile—that the truth of this Account appearing to be liable to doubt, a further Examination into the Circumstances was entered into, the result of which was a declaration of their having absconded from a Port in Van Diemen’s Land, thereby withdrawing themselves from the Performance of the Sentence to which they had been sentenced with the Addition of the Committal of an Act which it would seem can only be characterized by the Term of Piracy.

The Circumstances as stated by them appear so contradictory in many Parts and indeed the Confession of the serious Crimes which they profess to have Committed renders their History so improbable that it is scarce possible to attach credit to it.

October 31st, 1834

Prepare an answer setting forth all the particulars of the case, with the offences for wh. these Convicts were transported, & adding, of course, that their last act was one of piracy & express my anxious desire that they may be sent back to this Colony & add that as soon as a Vessel of War arrives I shall request the Officer in command of Her to proceed to Valparaiso. Let me see your letter as soon as it is prepared—one copy may be sent to Sydney, another to Rio by the earliest oppty.