3 Great Historical Novels (33 page)

Rhia didn’t recognise the man in the visitor’s cell. She supposed he was shopping for a wife. The lines etched into his face and the Parramatta shirting placed him as a convict, or an ex-convict.

When he smiled she knew him instantly.

‘You’ve grown up,’ Michael Kelly said, ‘though you looked better with your hair.’ The sight of Michael Kelly, here at the ends of the earth, was a joy as fathomless as all of the oceans she had crossed, something beyond all the months of fear and loneliness. She reached across the table and took his hands in hers. Michael’s hands were rough and sunburnt brown, and he gripped her as if she might try and get away.

As if she would.

She held back her tears, and she could see that he was doing the same.

‘I’ve something for you.’ He reached into a pocket inside his waistcoat and laid a thick, brown envelope on the table. Rhia picked it up, her hands shaking so much that she wondered if she could even open it. She turned it over. The wax seal was scarlet. She peered at it, trying to make out the insignia.

‘That is the seal of the Governor of New South Wales,’ said Michael quietly. This meant nothing to Rhia. She looked to the superintendent, who stood with her arms crossed and her eyebrows raised.

‘Now, we don’t see one of them often,’ the superintendent grunted, but her voice had a less aggressive quality. Usually the woman talked in a low growl, as though she was some kind of sheep hound. Now she just shrugged. ‘You’d better open it, hadn’t you, Mahoney?’

Rhia broke the seal. The document was brief, only a few lines. It made her crumple. Michael made no attempt to interfere with her messy weeping except to give her his handkerchief and tell her it was clean. The superintendent remained silent, in spite of the noise.

‘I hope those are happy tears,’ Michael said when she quietened enough for him to get a word in.

Rhia laughed and the sound startled her. When had she last laughed? She looked at the single page in front of her, at the one sentence that mattered:
This ticket of leave is granted to the prisoner of Her Majesty, Rhiannon Mahoney.
There was a date,
4 October 1841,
that meant nothing to her – could be tomorrow, or long weeks ago, she had lost track. She blinked and straightened her back, feeling freedom surge up her spine and into her limbs.

‘But why are you delivering my pardon, Mr Kelly?’ There were any number of things she could have asked him. Why he was still in Australia, how he knew where to find her, what on earth she should do now. She was full of questions, but too light-headed to care much about answers.

‘Let’s just say I know someone.’

Rhia was trying to comprehend what the document in her hands actually meant. ‘Then whoever committed the crime I was accused of has confessed?’

Michael laughed mirthlessly. ‘What a fine thing, to hear that someone still expects the best from people, even after spending the better half of a year in the company of prisoners.’

‘I’ve spent the better part of a year in very good company,
and I’ve learnt a thing or two.’ Neither of these things had occurred to Rhia before this moment, and she suddenly felt like weeping all over again.

‘I can see that, but we’re taking up the good superintendent’s valuable time. I don’t expect you’ve much in the way of goods and chattels?’

‘A trunk in the lock-up.’

‘A trunk! You’re travelling in style then. There’s a barge departing Parramatta at sunset that will have us in Sydney just after sun-up tomorrow.’

The first leg of her journey towards freedom. It must be a dream.

Taking her leave from the female factory took little time. In the cold spinning room, Jane was immediately tearful and Georgina pretended to be happy for her. Rhia had not expected to feel any sadness in leaving, but these women had become like family, and suddenly, they no longer had anything in common, and they all knew it. They probably thought she would forget them. As if she would.

Nora and Agnes were in the kitchen garden with a dozen or so others, in their thick brown aprons, breaking the hard earth as penance for their unbreakable spirits. Nora straightened up when she saw Rhia. She stood still, resting on her spade, in defiance of the warden at the other end of the patch. ‘Didn’t I tell you, Mahoney, that it wouldn’t be for ever? You’ve got our blessing, hasn’t she, Agnes?’ Agnes nodded, but she wasn’t brave enough to stop digging. ‘We always knew you weren’t a thief,’ she said, with her sly grin.

‘Well thanks for nothing, then,’ said Rhia with a small laugh. She wouldn’t cry. She hadn’t ever dared to cry in front of Nora and she wasn’t about to start now.

‘Give my love to damp and dreary London and don’t forget us,’ was all Nora had time to say before the warden bore down on them, scowling at Rhia and giving Nora a shove in the ribs to get her back to work. Nora winked at her and went back to digging and humming to herself cheerfully, making the warden stew all the more.

In the sleeping quarters, Rhia collected her red book from beneath her bedroll and walked, without a backward look, from the last place in which she would ever dream of freedom.

In the superintendent’s office, where she had to sign something, she listened inattentively to passionless words of caution and advice. The world was full of temptation and sin and Rhia was being given a second chance. She turned away while the superintendent was still sermonising, and walked out the door.

Michael collected her at the gates in a cart that had her trunk tied with a rope in the back. They drove through Parramatta on a wide dusty road with bungalows either side and horses tethered to verandahs. The town had the vaguely desolate air of a place that was waiting to be noticed, or to be called home.

‘There’s an inn this side of town where you can bathe and change,’ Michael said after they’d gone a mile or two in silence. ‘I don’t expect you’ll be wanting to wear that fine uniform any longer than necessary.’

‘No, I don’t,’ Rhia agreed. The thought of taking off the coarse cloth and never putting it on again made her want to dance a jig. There was so much to say and, at the same time, nothing. There was plenty of time for talking.

The inn was whitewashed stone, low and long, with a neat drive and a canopy of tall, purple flowering trees behind.

‘Jacaranda,’ Michael said, smiling at her wide-eyed gaze. ‘That’s what the Originals called them. First sign that summer’s
on the way. I sure won’t be missing the summers here. I’ll tip my hat to the damp and the cold and the fog from now until the end of my days.’

‘It’s a long time you’ve been here.’

‘Aye, it’s a long time.’

If the innkeeper’s wife thought it unusual that someone with a shorn head and convict’s clothes should want a room for the afternoon, she didn’t show it, not after Michael had paid her. She bustled around in a spartan room with a fireplace, bare floorboards and an iron bed that felt to Rhia like a queen’s chamber. She put a copper hipbath by the fire and poured in kettle after kettle until it was full of warm water, then threw in a handful of eucalypt leaves and left Rhia to bathe.

The bath was large enough to sit in with her knees pulled up. The warm water slipped over her limbs like silk. She still couldn’t believe that she had woken this morning in prison and was now bathing in scented water. She didn’t step out of it until the water was cold and her teeth chattering.

She lay on the bed, simply, indulgently, because she could. It was not a soft bed, but it smelt of sunlight and linen. Her trunk sat in the middle of the floor. She hardly dared to open it, dress in something that was not the colour of dirt, pretend to be someone that she knew she would never be again.

She edged towards the trunk slowly and lifted the lid. Before, when there was no chance of wearing the clothes that lay within, it had been safe to look. She removed the gown that lay closest to the top, her green alpaca. She was a stranger to every detail of freedom, and suddenly the idea of being faced with a choice scared her. She rummaged around for a shawl, stockings and boots, hardly caring if they matched, hardly remembering that, once, the minutiae was meticulously chosen and coordinated. She dressed slowly, half remembering,
half forgetting the downy feel of a cashmere petticoat against her legs, silk stockings sliding through her fingers, the soft leather of calfskin.

She could hear Michael Kelly outside, presumably talking to the innkeeper on the verandah. The hallway was timber from floor to ceiling and ran the length of the building. Halfway along it stood a mirrored dresser. She could not remember the last time she had seen her own face. It was in another life. She knew she should walk past the glass without looking.

But she couldn’t.

She turned towards the glass slowly. A startled creature stared back. Could this face be her own? Her skin was darker by a shade, and her spiky hair made her look boyish. Her face was narrower and her eyes seemed larger. Her dress looked too big. She leaned closer. The skin beneath her eyes looked bruised. She turned away. She had seen enough.

When Michael saw her, clean and in her own clothes, he looked surprised. Presumably she now looked more like a woman. She didn’t feel it.

‘I’ve asked for a meal,’ he said. ‘You could use some meat by the look of you. They’ve only emu and kangaroo, though. Closest thing you’ll get to pheasant or rabbit.’

‘Emu is a bird?’

‘Aye, a big one.’

Rhia didn’t care what she ate, she didn’t care about anything except that she could sit on the steps looking out at gum trees without feeling like their alabaster trunks were the bars of her prison. The sky had turned indigo. The land was alive. She didn’t belong here. The spirits of this place wished only to be left alone.

The innkeeper served some kind of home-made ale and they drank a toast to freedom and to Ireland. Michael wanted
to know some things, so she told him everything she could think of; what had happened in London, what had happened on the transport.

‘I visited your Mr Reeve in Sydney,’ he said when she paused and took a sip from her cup. The home-brew was strong and sharp and you could taste the sun and the eucalypt and the red dirt in it. ‘He’s a liar,’ Michael added, then proceeded to tell her why. Rhia’s head started to spin. The very idea that Mr Reeve was part of it seemed a remote possibility. She couldn’t understand it. Michael wanted to know everything she could think of about the botanist, the things they’d spoken of, his behaviour towards her, his reaction to Laurence’s death. When he told her what had happened to the portrait, her heart sank.

‘How will Eliza Green be able to tell us if one of the men is a murderer if the portrait is destroyed?’

‘I thought there was a template somewhere?’ Michael said. ‘Isn’t it like a stereograph, this uncanny portraiture?’

Rhia shook her head. ‘The negative is made of paper and it was lost.’

Michael looked thoughtful. ‘I say we pay this Eliza a visit. The sheep station where she works is this side of Sydney.’ He looked at her plate, pleased to see that she had made short work of her meat. ‘It’s almost time to go,’ he said.

The passenger barge to Sydney was more comfortable and less crowded than the one that was used for ferrying prisoners upriver. Rhia had room to stretch out on an upholstered bench, though she didn’t believe she would sleep a wink on a night such as this. She had never seen so many stars, and the lantern of the Queen of the Night was full and luminous.

A river had borne her away at sunrise, and now a new sunrise and another river would carry her back home. It could only be Dillon who was responsible for her pardon. She didn’t expect that he would ever forgive her. If she hadn’t been on the
Rajah
, Laurence would be alive.

Rhia sat up and looked around for Michael. He was sitting where he’d been last night, at the aft of the barge where he could keep an eye on things. He had acquired a wary edge that she didn’t remember in the old Michael Kelly. He was changed, like her. He saw her stir and came to join her.

‘I’ve had a word with the captain,’ he said, ‘and he’s agreed to let us off at the Rose Hill jetty, a few miles upriver of Sydney. He’ll deliver your trunk to the Port Authority. It will be safe there.’

Rhia nodded. ‘I wonder what Eliza will think of her daughter’s ideas.’

‘What do you think of them?’

What did she think? Juliette belonged to another life. ‘I think she’s less than sensible and more than a little odd. But I suppose there’s always a chance that she’s right.’

‘Ah yes, the men in the portrait.’ Michael was squinting at the tree line as though trying to piece something together. ‘There’s Ryan and the Quaker Josiah Blake, and what about the three who are still alive?’

‘Mr Montgomery is the Regent Street mercer I worked for, then there’s his associate Mr Beckwith, and another Quaker trader, Isaac Fisher. Isaac is a friend of the Blakes.’

Michael nodded as he sat filling his pipe and looking out over the green water. Some slim silvery fish were leaping into the air a short distance from the boat. ‘Do you know anything about the nature of their common business? Michael asked, lighting a cigarette.

‘They own two ships. The Blakes and Isaac buy American cotton and have it spun in English mills and then woven, dyed and printed in India. Mr Montgomery buys silk from China and France, and Ryan, as you know, was an importer and exporter, not only of Mahoney Linen, but many other cloths. He supplied several London mercers, including the Montgomery Emporium.’

Rhia watched Michael register all of this, but she couldn’t tell what he was thinking. ‘I heard about Josiah Blake’s death,’ he said, ‘and I heard that he knew something he shouldn’t have and that he was killed for it.’

Rhia remembered the conversation she had heard between Sid and Dillon at the Red Lion. ‘Could he have been shipping opium?’

Michael shrugged. ‘He could have been.’

Rhia remembered something else. ‘My uncle received a letter from Josiah Blake, sent from Bombay before he died. The letter could not be found, but Mr Dillon seems to think it important.’

‘Who is Mr Dillon?’

‘A journalist. A friend of Laurence’s. He thinks Ryan was involved in the China trade.’

‘Ryan? Opium?’ Michael looked doubtful.

Rhia nodded, relieved that he didn’t believe it either. ‘But how did you know about Josiah Blake?’

‘The shipping news isn’t always printed. Plenty of sailors who work in Calcutta and Bombay come through Sydney. Bad news travels farthest and fastest.’

The barge was slowing and heading for a jetty almost hidden by mangroves. The tangle of submerged trees was home to an entire flock of crimson and blue parakeets, of jewel colour.

Michael stood up. ‘I reckon this is our stop.’

He held out his hand to help Rhia onto the jetty, but she leapt from the shallow hull without needing to take it. The rocking of a craft on the water no longer destabilised her, and neither did the unknown depths beneath it. She now knew depths more worthy of fear.

They walked cautiously along the sagging timbers of the jetty. There was a clearing, and behind it towered the trees, the colour of clean silver. Michael sat down on a fallen trunk as though he was waiting for somebody. Rhia sat beside him. The wild land rang with sound; a concerto of birdsong and trilling cicadas and rustling, scuttling creatures. There was a familiar thumping close by and, as usual, Rhia jumped. She might have acquired sea legs but she couldn’t get used to kangaroos. In amongst the misty green of the eucalypts were clusters of brick red and golden yellow. She registered the colours and patterns and stored them away. Something had begun to stir in her. Perhaps Cerridwen was feeling more generous.

‘What are we waiting for?’ she asked Michael

‘A friend,’ he said. Rhia thought he was joking. It was hard to tell. Michael had always been dry, but now he was dry as dust. She asked him the names of the red and yellow trees. ‘Waratah and wattle,’ he said.

Colour was returning.

When a man materialised from the trees, Rhia recognised him. This time, though, he was dressed in breeches and braces
and a too-small shirt, without boots or stockings. His calves were long and thin, though ridged with muscle, and his bare feet looked like dusty shoe leather.

‘Morning, boss.’ The shining black face grinned from ear to ear as though he was enjoying a private joke.

‘Morning, Jarrah. You’ll have met Rhia Mahoney.’ Jarrah nodded at her, still grinning.

‘So,’ said Michael, ‘how far is this place?’

‘Not far, boss. Follow me.’

Jarrah walked through the dry underbrush, as though he was following an invisible path. He seemed to flow through the land soundlessly, almost without touching it; the low hanging branches and spiky shrubs barely moved as he passed.

Rhia picked up her skirts and did her best to keep up. Her cumbersome clothing seemed a little ridiculous in these conditions. She didn’t especially mind the prickle of heat though, nor the insects that swarmed around her face. She could have walked all day, now she was free to.

Michael stopped abruptly in front of her and she almost collided with him. In front of him, Jarrah stood unmoving, his hand held up to signal that they should be still. At first Rhia wondered why he didn’t just step over the branch lying on the ground in front of him, but then the branch curled and slid sideways. It was a brown snake. Jarrah moved so quickly that she couldn’t say how he suddenly came to be holding the tail of a four-foot snake, and cracking its head to the ground as though it were a whip. In another moment he had it draped around his neck. ‘That fella nearly got me,’ he chuckled over his shoulder as he started walking again. ‘Now he’s breakfast.’

They came to the edge of the forest and a vast acreage of cleared land. At the end of a winding drive was a long, low, stone bungalow surrounded by an elegant verandah with
pretty iron railings. Lace curtains stirred between open doors. The cleared land was fenced for miles around and hundreds of sheep were grazing in the fields beyond. No wonder the graziers of Australia could produce such fine merino – the conditions here were perfect and the land just went on and on. Rhia had heard that this continent was the size of Europe and, looking at the endless sky, she believed it could be true.

They stepped from the cover of the trees, but Jarrah stayed, collecting bark and twigs to make a fire so that he could cook his snake. He said he’d keep some for them in the ashes, and Rhia said that she wasn’t very hungry.

They didn’t get far along the drive before two mongrel dogs came hurtling towards them as though they were escaped sheep. A moment later a thin, anxious-looking woman appeared on the verandah, wiping her hands on her apron. She had to be Juliette’s mother, the resemblance was unmistakeable.

‘Good morning to you!’ Michael called. ‘We’re looking for Eliza Green.’

‘That’s my name,’ the woman replied, looking even more apprehensive.

‘You’ve no need to worry, Mrs Green. We’ve word of your daughter.’

‘Juliette!’ Eliza clutched the railing as though her legs might not hold her. ‘You’d better come in,’ she managed finally. ‘They’ve gone into the town, so I can make you a cup of tea. Have you had your breakfast? The young lady looks hungry.’

She bustled them into a large, airy room and then fussed away again.

‘A grazier is a wealthy man in New South Wales,’ Michael observed in his driest tone as they perched on the edge of upholstered chairs. He ran his hand along the smooth, polished wood. ‘That’s cedar. Governor’s wood.’

Rhia supposed this was a drawing room. It was furnished in the gleaming red wood, with Oriental rugs covering wide, glossy floorboards. A pretty pianoforte stood in a corner and oil paintings of the English countryside covered the walls.

Eliza returned with a pot of tea, a flat loaf and some fresh butter. It looked a more appetising breakfast than Jarrah’s snake. Eliza picked up the teapot but her hand was unsteady, so Rhia took it from her and poured them each a cup, glancing at Michael. ‘I think we should tell Mrs Green why we’re here.’

He nodded.

Rhia explained, as best she could, what a photogenic drawing was and what had brought them to Rose Hill. Even to her ears it sounded like blarney. Eliza picked imaginary flecks from her apron and then destroyed a piece of bread with her fingers. When it was reduced to a pile of crumbs, she clasped her hands together.

Rhia waited until Eliza looked ready before she spoke again. ‘Do you know why Juliette might have thought one of the men was a murderer, Mrs Green?’

Eliza looked a little dazed. It was a lot to take in. ‘I know only one man who’s been murdered, and that was my husband,’ she said finally.

Rhia and Michael let this settle on a respectful silence.

‘And what happened to him?’ Michael asked quietly.

She told them how she had been widowed, violently, and had become so impoverished that hunger drove her to steal food. As if that were not enough, she’d been caught, tried and sent away from her child.

Michael was shaking his head. ‘Can you think of any reason why Juliette might think one of the men in the portrait killed her father?’

‘Only if she’d recognised him. But she was only wee.’

‘But she must have a strong suspicion, to want you to see it,’ Michael pressed.

‘Oh, I’d know John Hannam all right. I went looking for him myself. But men like that are cunning, there’s no end to what they’ll do. He’s trampled on my heart and left his filthy mark.’

Michael was nodding, but looking through the doors and out across the fields of sheep. ‘Mrs Green,’ he said finally, ‘what would you say if I told you there’s a clipper leaving Sydney for London in two weeks and you could have a ticket home?’

‘I’d say you have no idea what a maidservant earns, Mr Kelly.’

‘What I’m saying, Mrs Green, is that I’ve a job as ship’s carpenter on that clipper so I’ve no need to pay my own way. I’ve reason to believe you’ll be needed as a witness and I’m willing to pay your passage to London. You see, I was thinking I’d be needing to buy this young lady’s fare, but she tells me she has money of her own.’

Eliza more or less hurtled across the floor and threw her arms around Michael. She was laughing and then she was weeping and then she seemed to be doing both at once.

Michael winked at Rhia. ‘I’d say she’s agreed.’

‘Yes,’ said Rhia, ‘I’d say so.’