Morgan's Run

“It is not fair!” Richard said to Stephen later, fists clenched. “That trained monkey in Government service wrote my daughter’s name in his fucken register as Catherine Clark. And rubbed my nose in it by making me watch.”

Stephen eyed the muscles tensing under the skin of Richard’s arms and shivered involuntarily. “For God’s sake, Richard, hold your temper! It is not Crowder’s fault, nor is it King’s fault. I agree that it is not fair, but there is nothing ye can do about it. Kitty is not your wife. Kitty ca

“There is one thing I can do,” said Richard through his teeth. “I can murder Lizzie Lock.”

“Ye’re not capable of that, so stop talking as if ye are.”

“While Lizzie lives, my daughter is a bastard. So will the other children I sire on Kitty be bastards.”

“Look at it this way,” Stephen coaxed, “Lizzie Lock is well settled with Tom Sculley, but Tom Sculley is learning fast that he is not a farmer, hence his move from grain to poultry. Sooner or later he will sell out and quit the island. From what the marine free settler gossip tells me, he says he wants to visit Cathay and Bengal before he is too old. D’ye think for one moment that he will sail for the Orient without Lizzie Lock on his arm?”

Closing his eyes, Richard slumped despondently. “I am trying to look at it your way. Ye mean that if Lizzie departs for the Orient, I can wait a while and then pretend I am a single man.”

“Exactly. If necessary, I will pay some furtive forger in a London alley to use some Wampoa merchant’s address and write a touching letter to the Gentlemen Sheriffs of Gloucester explaining that Mrs. Richard Morgan, née Elizabeth Lock, has passed away in Macao, and does Gloucester know of any relatives? That will prove that she is dead, after which ye can marry Kitty.”

“Sometimes, Stephen, ye’re the bitter end.” But the ploy worked; Richard opened his eyes and managed a laugh. “Does this fine consoling speech containing references to London alleys mean that ye’re leaving us soon?”

“I have had no word beyond the lieutenancy, but ’twill happen.”

“I will miss ye something terrible.”

“And I you.” Stephen threw his arm about Richard’s shoulders and propelled him gently in the direction of home. Good, his rage had cooled. Superficially at least. God rot the Reverend Johnson!

“It affects him far more than it does me,” said Kitty when Stephen related what had happened. Richard had gone off to the bath pool he had made, there to wash himself clean of the sawpits and Thomas Restell Crowder. “I am sorry that Kate’s name is not Morgan, but who could deny that she is a Morgan? What is marriage anyway? At least half of us convict women are not officially married, but that does not make us any less wives. I do not repine, Stephen, truly I do not.”

“Richard is a churchgoing believer in God, Kitty, and thus he finds it extremely difficult to deal with the fact that his progeny are bastards in the eyes of the Church of England.”

“They will not be bastards after Lizzie dies, and she is old,” said Kitty comfortably.

How to explain to her that marriage later could never remove the slur? Stephen decided not to bother trying. Instead he grabbed at Kate. “Hello, my peach! My darling angel!”

“Kate is not an angel—she is exactly what you called her, a shrew. Strong willed! Goodness, Stephen, she is but six months old and already she rules us with a rod of iron.”

“Nay,” said Stephen, holding the mite’s serious stare with smiling eyes, then kissing her on both plump cheeks, “she needs no rod of iron to rule Richard. A wisp of thread or a feather would do equally well. Is that not so, my Kate? Where is your Petruchio, I wonder? In what guise will he come?” He handed Kate back.

“Petruchio?”

“The Shakespearean gentleman who tamed Kate the shrew. Take no notice, ’tis just my whimsy.”

A silence fell. Stephen contented himself with contemplating this Norfolk Island mado

What else was she? Not intellectually brilliant, but not stupid by any means. The mouse who had hidden in the forest had long gone. During the two years she had lived with Richard Morgan she had blossomed into a plain-faced, fabulously seductive woman. The trouble was, did Richard have her love? Stephen was never sure because he fancied she was never sure herself. What she feels for Richard is sexual enchantment. That binds her to him, as babies do, but still. . . . She does not see any allure in him—why, I will never know. Is it his years? Surely not! He carries them with as little effort as he saws.

“D’ye love Richard?” he asked.

Those ale-and-pepper eyes looked sad. “I do not know, Stephen. I wish I did, but I do not. I am not educated enough to make those sorts of judgments. I mean, how do you know that you love him?”

“I just do. He fills my eyes and my mind.”

“He does not do that to me.”

“Do not hurt him, Kitty, please!”

“I will not hurt him,” she said, jigging Kate on her knee, then smiled and patted his hand. “I will stick to Richard through thick and thin, Stephen. I owe it to him, and I pay my debts. That is what transportation is supposed to teach us, and I have learned all my lessons. Except that somehow I never get around to reading and writing. House and babies come first.”

When Kitty told him she was with child again, Richard was appalled. “Ye ca

“Not really. There will be fourteen months between them,” she said placidly. “They will fare better if they are close in age.”

“The work, Kitty! Ye’ll be old before your time!”

That made her laugh. “Gammon, Richard! I am very well, I am young, and I am looking forward to the arrival of William Henry.”

“Kitty, I was happy to wait, truly—oh, damn that word, I am picking up the habit of it!”

“Do not be angry,” she pleaded. “Olivia said that I would not fall while ever I gave Kate the breast.”

“An old wives’ tale! I should have waited.”

“Why?”

“Because another one will be too much for you.”

“I say another one will not be too much for me.” She handed Kate to Richard and picked up an empty bucket. “I am off to get water for the house.”

“Let me get it.”

Her teeth showed, her eyes blazed. “For the hundredth time, Richard Morgan, will you stop fussing and clucking? Why do you never want to give me the credit I deserve? I am the one grows the babies! I am the one says when that will be! I am the one lives in this house for all of my days and nights! I am the one decides what is too much for me and what is not! Leave me alone! Stop making all my decisions for me! Let me do as I want without forever plaguing me—this is too much, that is too little, why did I not ask you to do it—I have had enough! I am not an orphan child anymore, I am grown up enough to have babies! And if I want another one, I will have another one! You are not my lord and master, His Majesty the King is!”

She marched off with the bucket, radiating rage.

Richard sat down on the top step with Kate on his knee, both of them silenced.

“I think, daughter, that I have just been put in my place.”

Kate sat bolt upright, unsupported, and looked at her father out of speckled eyes neither William Henry’s nor Kitty’s; hers were a fawnish grey which tended to disguise the presence of the dark dots peppering them. Those who found them had looked deeply. Her beauty was manifest, though perhaps it was simply the beauty of babyhood, but her coloring, like Richard’s two dead children’s, was striking—masses of black curls, finely marked black brows, thick black lashes around those widely opened storm-hued eyes, a full red mouth and Richard’s flawless brown skin. Kitty was right, she was definitely a Morgan. A Morgan named Clark.