Although his plan is to lead an ordinary quiet life, Tress Tresilian, a Cornish fisherman, finds himself transported to the New Holland Port Jackson penal colony for a crime he did not commit. A chance meeting with Big John Caesar, a convict with a surprisingly illustrious past, sets him back on his feet. Tress learns that Caesar is descended from Madagascan royalty and that his young niece, Ilona, has just been betrothed to a tribal elder against her will. When Caesar's old adversary, Joseph Beaumont, arrives in the colony as a high-ranking official in the newly formed NSW Corporation, old rivalries are reborn. To escape her intended marriage, Ilona-now thirteen-flees both her home and her fate to join her uncle in the colony. Beaumont makes no secret of his ambition to become Madagascar's first French governor-and he sees Ilona as a means to gaining that end. Now, the only way that Ilona can be saved from Beaumont's ambitions is by marriage to another man, and Tress reluctantly takes on the role. But his dawning love for his child wife leads him to take on roles he could never have envisioned for himself-that of a cunning thief, a daring adventurer, and an escapee with a price on his head. To save Ilona, Tress must survive many threats and challenges, including betrayal, rough seas, and the harsh penal settlement of Norfolk Island. Tress has no idea that a small Aboriginal child holds the key to his success-and his ultimate happiness in Ilona's arms.

Laughter on the Wind

By P. G. Edwards

Balboa Press

Copyright © 2012 P G Edwards
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4525-0287-8

Chapter One

(End of June 1790)

Seagulls? Was that gulls he could hear?

He realised the sound must have been there for some time, persistent, taking time to seep into his subconscious.

Tress Tresilian opened his eyes, blinking to clear the scratchiness of his painful lids. Visually the effort made little difference. It was hardly lighter with them open than it had been with them shut, only now the smell seemed stronger, as if he could also see it—a weighty reek of raw sewage and putrefaction in the suffocating heat

But the sound was still there, sea-birds, wheeling close overhead.

The ship gave a corkscrewing lurch, making his head roll and start to ache again. Beside him a man groaned, then contorted abruptly and wrung out a succession of painful dry heaves. The man's straining mouth cracked and started to bleed again, while a viscous thread of saliva squeezed out, lengthened stickily and glued itself to his straggly beard. The man sat wilted and still, his chest wheezing like a broken pair of bellows. He groaned again as another staggering shock from the ship rocked his skull.

Tress breathed cautiously, waiting for his own stomach to steady. 'Hang on Bill,' he said in time, 'we're almost through.' His voice was a painful croak, scratched across his rusted vocal cords. 'Listen, do you hear the birds? We're almost there.'

The man called Bill lifted his head as if it weighed a ton. He blinked stiffly, forcing his eyelids apart as if also expecting the second sense to help the first, then gave up the effort and let them fall shut again. His head dropped onto his chest with a jerk, as if his stringy neck had snapped.

Tress closed his own eyes again. His sigh was gagged in his throat by the smell as he tried to relax, to make himself be patient and wait for just a few minutes longer. All around him the air stirred with invisible semi-life. He could feel it, an entity, palpable against his own vile skin, keeping his stomach rolling in revulsion, denying his lungs the relief of full expansion.

In self defence he tried to doze again. If he could only doze, then the smell became tolerable, but the birds had roused him now, spoiling his one chance of relief. Heavily he breathed through flared nostrils, filtering oxygen through the stink, striving to fill his lungs.

Soon it would be over. In a few minutes the hatches would be unbarred again, and that would be the end of it, no more returning below deck into a reeking darkness. That had been the worst of it all, after a spell in the fresh air, being forced by a snarling guard to re-enter the gaseous pit.

They were almost through.

Something twitched in his chest: a hint of remembered excitement. Until now the journey's end had been a myth only, not worth the energy needed for process of thought. Everyone knew, after all, that hell was for eternity. Except the Bible's devotees and preachers had all lied. Hell was not the promised land of fire and brimstone. It was a cramped, lightless space, filled with sludge and rotting flesh and everything foul exuded by the human body.

It was difficult to accept, after so long of not believing, that misery might after all have an end.

'Solid earth.'

The words came out aloud, pushing past his woolly tongue. His eyes flickered open again. A crack in his mind jolted open, allowing a peep at the picture.

'Green grass. Blue skies. Rain!'

The image brightened. He nudged his sick neighbour, making the man's head flop and roll again. 'Think of it, Bill. Rain! How does that sound to you? Sweet running water. Dear God, we have to be there soon.'

Bill's eyes stayed closed. Through the murk Tress could see his head dangling, rolling on his chest with each dip and sway of the ship.

He dropped his own head back against the scummed boards that had been its main support for interminable months and tried to shut out the noises going on. In pauses between the phlegmy rattle of coughs the scratching took over, skeletal fingers picking at suppurating sores, punctuated by an occasional wet evacuation of a helpless set of bowels. Behind the sounds lay a general shifting, snuffling wheezing, and the gentle rattle of chains.

Minutes passed. He might have dozed a little because the smell seemed less strong, but the tramp of boots overhead brought it oozing back. Two pairs of boots were heading for the hatch, thumping on the boards, stamping to a halt. They were coming! Good God, they were fetching them out! Fixing his eyes on the place where the hatch should be, he waited for the first rays of light.

Bolts were worked back, stiff in their salt-caked sleeves, coming free with a jarring clash. A beaming square of light sprang in, pristine and brilliant, thickening and curdling as it met an updraught of rancid air. The square darkened as a head was poked in, then brightened again as the head was hastily withdrawn.

'Oroight ya mangy sons of vermin,' a voice called down from a safe distance. 'Art wiv y'all! Quick abart it. Look smart!'.

A guard appeared, elongated against the light, bending from his waist to risk another look into the hole. 'Git art o there! Shift it nar!'. He sounded strangled, holding his breath.

The prisoners nearest the hatch stirred, then lumbered to their feet. Stiffly they scuffled one by one to the ladder in linked procession and began to lift themselves up, their faces upturned to the light, their eyes blinking and squeezing shut against its glare. Patiently they stopped and waited, clinging to the rungs while a man ahead could make some progress. At the top of the ladder the first prisoner was hauled out through the hatch, dragging the row of men upwards again by their chains.

Obeying its tug Tress clambered to his feet. He nudged his neighbour with his foot to rouse him, then bent and helped him to his feet. Supporting Bill awkwardly between their shackles he waited his turn to move, still having difficulty accepting that this was really the very last time. But the seagulls were there, wheeling across the patch of blue behind the soldier's head, flashing the message home with their sparkling wings. This wasn't to be just another too-short a spell in the fresh salt air, with time only to purge his lungs and rebuild strength enough for another lifetime's endurance in the pit. This time, glory, it was for all time!

His muscles protested as he tried to load Bill onto his back, battling with their chains. The birds' cries grew louder as they skimmed across the square of light, banking excitedly towards the hole as he inched towards the ladder, celebrating his release, welcoming him home.

Release! Home! He might have smiled, only his mouth was too caked and cracked to do more than twitch at a corner. This was the official first day of his prison term, yet with the opening of the hatch his sentence seemed about to end.

Sunlight spilled to greet him, golden and spicy like freshly-ground nutmeg. It coated his head with a fresh dry warmth, then his arms, soaking into his skin like summer rain as he sucked in deep breaths, climbing slowly.

At the top of the ladder a soldier reached down and hoisted Bill off his back, scraping another layer of skin off their wrists by the tightened manacles. Quickly Tress followed Bill out and helped him to his feet. 'Bear up old man,' he whispered as he sorted out their chains. 'Not much longer now.' His scabbed mouth scarcely moved....