Dream Time (historical): Book I (27 page)

Francis’s drinking deepened along with the drought.

Amaris watched the running creek turn into a series of billabongs, pools of water left in dried-up riverbeds. By the end of the following year, the grass had long since disappeared. The face of the countryside was shifting red and gray sand, blowing wherever the wind carried it. Dead sheep and fallen tree trunks became sand hills. Birds were dropping dead out of leafless trees.

She had sent to Sydney with Francis and Sin only seven hundred bales of wool, whereas the year before she had sent away more than two thousand. Her flock had dropped from one hundred thousand to six thousand.

The gardens yielded no vegetables, and meat was lean to starvation. Butter and milk had long been food only in name. How was she going to feed over fifty-six people for whom she was now responsible?

When she looked into her five-year-old’s trusting eyes, she both wept and raged inside. She was helpless against the elements, against the wrath of nature.

“Stop pacing the floor,” Francis said one evening from the dining table, where he sat drinking rum. “You’re making me jittery.” He was not a reader like she; and with so little opportunity for socializing with his peers, he found nothing better to do than drink.

“Tis not my pacing that’s making you jittery, ’tis your drinking,” she snapped.

“Mama? Are you a bad girl?” Robert peered up at them through his incredibly long lashes. He sat on the hardwood floor and played with a corncob horse Baluway had fashioned for him. Next to Robert, Rogue watched her just as intently.

She had to smile. “No, not bad—or mad. Just . . . just talking aloud.”

Later that night, in bed, Francis voiced her own fears. “If rain doesn’t come soon, we’re going to lose the place.”

Hands behind her head, she stared up into the dark. The place is always mine . . . ours. We won’t lose it.”

Francis, only a hand length away, didn’t even try to touch her tonight. She could smell his rum-laden breath. “The land is worth nothing if we all die of starvation.”

“We won’t.” She was tired of trying to reassure him when she wasn’t even certain herself.

“Damn it, look at yourself. He put his hand on her pelvis. “Your hip bones are as prominent as a skeleton’s. “You’re not eating enough.”

“Tomorrow, the major, Sin, Thomas, Sykes, and a few other graziers are coming over to discuss finding a solution. I won’t let us starve, so stop worrying, Francis.”

“Well, neither will I. If I have to, I’ll go to Sydney and request a loan from Nan Livingston. She’s always been supportive of me. More than you have. You don’t trust me to do anything. Always suggesting a better way. Or following along behind me and doing it over.”

The mention of Nan Livingston struck ice in her heart. Wouldn’t Nan enjoy taking over Dream Time! What revenge! “You’re rambling drunk.”

Later, as she lay in bed, she tried to still the welling panic. There had to be a way to keep the run from going under.

The candle sputtered. She reached to pinch it out—and stopped. Tallow! If not mutton, then tallow! She couldn’t wait until the next afternoon.

Hands jammed in breeches pockets, she paced before the five men crowded into Dream Time’s small office. Its window looked out on the garden, which now consisted of little more than brown withered vines and wilted flower stalks whose blooms had never unfurled.

“I’d say that the Livingston woman would sell her soul in exchange for power,” the major was saying.
“She and Randolph are going to duel it out yet, mark my words.”

His words brought her steps to a halt. She pretended to be studying the landscape outside. Nan Livingston. A shadow that followed her, even into the Never-Never.

“I disagree,” Sin said. “Nan Livingston is ruthlessly ambitious. That’s all. A lesson that wouldn’t hurt for everyone in this room to learn.”

“Well, we don’t have to worry about the high cost of shipping the Livingston woman charges, since our sheep are bringing not a farthing.”

Hands still in her pockets, Amaris turned back to the men. “Gentlemen, sheep are worth about six pence each for mutton, but only if a buyer can be found. Surely there must be enough in a sheep to make it worth more than that.”

She paused, dramatizing the moment. “I suggest there is. Tallow. People need soap, candles. Tallow used for these is running between two and three pounds a hundredweight in London. If we boil down a sheep, we’ll render between twelve and twenty-five pounds of tallow. If we boil down eight hundred sheep and send the tallow to London, it will fetch us six shillings per sheep. That, gentlemen, is a good deal better than six pence!”

A silence held sway in the room. Then the major slapped his thigh. “By Jove, Amaris, you may have something there.”

“Her simple arithmetic may well save the Australian sheep industry from oblivion,” Sin said.

The way he looked at her made her suggestion, made anything, pale in comparison. Just the look that passed between her and him was enough to sustain her, she thought. Now she could live through those emotional droughts when she went weeks without seeing the man who held her heart.

Almost listlessly, her gaze drifted from the brown earth and brown vegetation beyond to the brown fence posts and even farther to the brown horizon. Dull, drab, lifeless. She felt utterly drained.

Then her eye caught sight of color!

On the horizon boiled green-purple-blue clouds. A rainstorm was in the making. A rainstorm of magnitude, judging from the combination of garish colors.

She turned and hurried down the stairs, taking them two at a time, and ran out onto the veranda. “Francis!” she shouted. “Francis!”

She found him in the store. The door’s lock had been removed. Inside, the shafts of sunlight were sifted with dust in the air. The store’s shelves were bare of supplies, and she had stopped coming here weeks before. Her ledger lay dusty on the counter.

At the sound of her footsteps, he turned. For the first time, she noticed that his tawny hair was streaked with gray at the temples and over the ears. “Oh, Amaris, I was just checking to see if any empty food tins remained.”

“Francis, come look! Clouds. Wonderful, boiling rain clouds.”

For a moment, he stared at her uncomprehendingly. Then he ran past her, out the store door, and into the wagon yard to observe the clouds. As if they were some miracle sign from heaven.

She caught up with him. “Beautiful, aren’t they.”

“Aye.”

It was all he said. He appeared mesmerized. They stood and watched the formation rumble across the sky toward them. Maybe thirty minutes passed, and they were still standing. Wives and children came out of their cottages to watch. The hands put aside their work to join the others.

Pinned to the clouds was a tattered blue-black curtain of rain. Robert scampered to the gate, and Amaris opened it and caught him up in her arms. At six, he was tall and awkward as a colt. "Rain,” she exulted, pointing toward the phenomenon.

Soon a breeze gently lifted the tendrils of her hair. Following on the fringes of the breeze were droplets of rain. Great, globular droplets that made plfat sounds as they smashed against the hard-baked earth.

She spread her palm to feel the sting of the rain and stuck out her tongue to taste it. Its dusty smell filled her nostrils. She began laughing.

Francis wrapped his arms around her and Robert, who was laughing also. All three of them. He pushed the wet hair back from her face. “You didn’t give up, Amaris. When all around us station owners were selling out or going under, you found a way to keep us going. You’re beautiful, do you know that?"

She could see he really meant what he was saying. He really thought she was beautiful! After all these years, now that time and weather had begun honing her face so that her character showed through, her husband found her beautiful. Sudden tears mixed with the raindrops on her face.

Feeling the abiding love for this man, her husband, she kissed him. He looked astonished. Then he grinned.

“Kiss me, Mama!" Robert said. His eyes were wide as he tried to assimilate the euphoria that had
swept across the station. Around them, the hands were hugging one another and shouting in exultation.

She and Francis pecked Robert on both cheeks and he laughed with delight.

At last, she thought. At last, they were coming into a family unit in all ways.

The alternative to having no water at all was often having too much. Droughts were usually followed by higher than usual rainfall that could produce floods.

As the rains continued into weeks, then months, Amaris had taken the precaution of having Baluway bring the lambing flock inside for protection. Some of the lambs were put in the shed and others were yarded nearby.

Everything was saturated. The crops could not be put in because the fields stood in water. Clothes in trunks and armoires were mildewed. The sheep had been standing in mud and water for nearly a month.

At first, during the drought, everything had seemed to be colored brown. Now everything was colored gray: the clouds, the sunlight, the river, even the mold.

She tried not to let the weather depress her, but the mud-mired trails made travel difficult. Those visits between Dream Time and Never-Never had to be curtailed.

Then one night she was roused by a shout from Baluway: “The water, it is rising in the sheep yard!”

She grabbed her robe from the end of the bed and rushed downstairs just ahead of Francis, who was struggling to button on a pair of trousers.

“What the bloody hell now!” he muttered beneath his breath.

Rushing out onto the veranda, she found that the house was on an island, the water separating it from the workers’ cottages and other outbuildings. Lanterns in the distance reflected eerily on the water’s surface. She could hear exclamations by those who had been aroused by the rising creek water. From the intervening gulf, Baluway called out, “The sheep, they drown!”

She and Francis were closer to the sheds, but even then a rivulet of untried depth divided the house from the sheep pens and sheds. In the dark, there was no gauge as to just how deep the rivulet was. Who knew how much more the water would rise?

Without even looking for Francis, she waded into the water. The rivulet turned out to be a gully rushing with cold water up past her hips.

“Come back!” Francis shouted between cupped hands.

She ignored him and concentrated on finding footholds in the silt. She could tell she had passed the deepest part because the water was receding from her thighs. On the other side, the lambs bleated their terror. Half a dozen or more had ventured too close to the waters. Their carcasses bobbed against the fence, of which only a meter or so showed above the water's crest.

Once on the other side, she let the lambs out and trod through mud with them to high ground farther up. “Rogue,” she ordered, “stay with them.”

The dog watched her, barked, and wagged his tail, as if assenting.

As she waded back to Francis, she reminded herself that the flood would also benefit the land in resulting feed and full water holes. The creek had risen more
than twelve meters, and she could practically row a canoe to the other doorways. Realistically, she estimated that she would probably have five hundred sheep drown.

Francis caught her by the waist and supported her as they returned to the house to wait for daylight. Her robe and nightgown were sopping wet. He helped her strip away her clothing, cold and clammy against her skin. His fingers chafed her flesh. “You’re trembling. Just get out of this and get into bed.”

His hands lingered at her shoulders, then slid to her waist. By the gleam in his eye, she knew he was aroused. “Your nipples are erect,” he murmured.

“From the cold.” She was too exhausted to be excited by the way he massaged the small of her back, then her ribs. She turned from his embrace and took another gown from the chest. “Francis, I am exhausted beyond belief.”

“Of course,” he said and climbed into bed with her, but she could hear the disappointment in his voice.

The warmth of his body next to hers was welcome. Tomorrow she would worry about how many sheep she had lost. Right now, she wanted only to count the kind of sheep that came with sleep.

Yet as she drifted deeper asleep, something niggled the back of her mind. Her nape prickled. She sprang upright.

“What is it now?” he demanded, struggling to sit up beside her.

“The house—’tis too quiet.”

“What?”

Then she knew. A sixth sense triggered something too horrible to bear thinking about. “Robert! All this commotion should have awakened him!”

Throwing back the covers, she rushed from the bedroom to the one across the hall. Fear’s talons clutched at her heart. Robert’s bed was empty!

Francis took one look, glanced at her, then stricken, he dashed from the room and down the stairs. She followed in his footsteps. He ran out into the dark night, but she paused long enough to grab a lantern and light it. Her chest was pounding painfully hard. She could not breathe.

Ahead of her, Francis began circling the house’s perimeter. “The lantern,” he yelled. “Bring the lantern!”

The horror in his voice communicated to her. Oh God, don’t let it be so. No! She wouldn’t let herself think that far ahead.

When they reached the point at which they had set out, he whirled on her. Frustration and panic contorted his features. “Maybe Robert is in the house somewhere.”

“Of course. Aye, that’s it! I’ll go look.” Lifting her gown, she ran back toward the house. She could hear the workers once again stirring, and the lights of other lanterns glinted across the temporary lake like fireflies.

“Robert!” she called, running through the house. “Robert!”

She searched in the parlor, behind his bedroom door, under his bed, then hers and Francis’s. She called Robert’s name again and again in a frenzied voice. She peered under the couch and searched through armoires. Passing a mirror, she caught sight of her face and only then realized she was crying.

“Missus!” It was Baluway. His breechcloth waterlogged, he appeared in the library doorway. “Mr. Marlborough—he’s gone!”

“Baluway!” She grabbed his arm. “We can’t find Robert!” Suddenly she felt hope. The solid little man represented strength. Baluway could track anything. “You must help us!”

“You don’t understand.” There was such a sadness in his face that she knew she didn’t want to hear what he was saying. “Mr. Marlborough .
. . he found . . . he found Robert.”

“He did? Is . .
.” She saw the almost imperceptible shake of the aborigine’s head.

She pushed past him, but he grabbed at her. “Let me go!” she ordered.

“You must listen to me first, missus. Mr. Marlborough, he went into the water after Robert. He was trying to carry the boy ashore. There was a drop off. The Englishman don’t swim too well. I tried to get there, missus. I was too late.”

“Francis ... too?”

He nodded. Water drops dripped from his woolly hair.

A
ll life drained from her. “’Tis raining again,” she commented.

“The angels, they are crying, missus.”