Flight of the Eagle (31 page)

‘The carriage is just outside,’ he said when Michael came close. ‘It will take us to our meeting.’ Michael nodded and followed.

The carriage was a fine piece of very expensive craftsmanship drawn by four beautifully matched greys. A well-dressed carriage man sat atop the seat with a long riding whip in his hand. He stepped up and into the carriage where he sat opposite Godfrey who sat facing the rear of the open carriage. The carriage man flicked the four horses into motion.

After half an hour of travelling it was dark. They had left the gas-lit streets of urban Sydney and were on a reasonably smooth dirt road that Michael knew led eventually to the south headland of Sydney Harbour. Shops and streets had given way to bush and the more luxurious homes of the colony's aristocracy and wealthy merchants.

Neither man spoke on the trip and even in the dark Godfrey noticed Michael's hand was never very far from the pocket of his trousers. ‘Do you have one of those greased leather holsters, Mister Duffy?’ he asked and Michael glanced at him with a mildly surprised expression.

‘That's right, Colonel,’ he answered. There was no sense in lying.

The colonel frowned and stared past Michael's shoulder. ‘And who may I ask is the person who has obviously hired a hansom cab to follow us?’

Michael's mildly surprised expression turned to a frown of puzzlement. ‘I thought you might know that answer, Colonel,’ he stated softly. ‘One of Mister White's men, no doubt.’

‘I most certainly hope not!’ the colonel replied and Michael experienced a moment of confusion. If they were being followed, as the colonel had noted, then it was not likely he would have mentioned the fact.

‘Where are we going?’ he asked and Godfrey glanced around himself before answering, ‘Not
where
we are going, Mister Duffy, as we are already there.’

The Irishman stared into the night and could see a huge home with a magnificent driveway bordered by mature trees. He knew immediately where he was.

‘I don't think you will need to use your gun here, Mister Duffy,’ he said lightly, smiling at Michael's confusion. ‘I doubt that Lady Enid Macintosh will prove to be that much of a dangerous foe.’

Michael returned the smile with a sheepish one of his own. ‘That remains to be seen. From what I have heard of Lady Macintosh's reputation …’

The colonel laughed softly. ‘You could be right, Mister Duffy.’

The cab following them stopped just out of sight as Michael and the colonel passed through the intricately decorated wrought iron gates.

Michael glanced over his shoulder at the pinpricks of the cab's light in the night. He shook his head and smiled. He now had a good idea who had followed them.

They had never actually met before. But Michael, whose life had been inexorably changed through her unyielding opposition to her daughter's future with him, felt he knew much about the matriarch of the Macintosh family. Nevertheless, he was taken aback by the woman. She appeared so frail, unlike the woman he had always imagined from Fiona's descriptions years earlier.

She sat in a chair with her hands joined in her lap. After the introductions George Godfrey stood protectively beside her chair in a manner that intimated a long and warm friendship.

A clock ticked unobtrusively in the background and sweet steam rose from the creamed coffee in Michael's cup. He was aware that Lady Macintosh was examining him closely with her emerald green eyes and guessed she must have been a stunning young woman. It was obvious from where Fiona inherited her own beauty. The intense appraisal did not cause Michael any discomfort. It was as if Lady Enid was looking for something.

Finally Godfrey broke the strange silence and cleared his throat. ‘I'm sorry if you were under the misapprehension that I was working in the interest's of Lady Macintosh's son-in-law, Mister Duffy.’

‘Suspicion is something I have come to accept as part of life, Colonel,’ Michael replied. ‘However, I do not see why you did not tell me it was Lady Macintosh you wished me to meet.’

Godfrey shifted ever so slightly before he answered, thereby disclosing to Michael his discomfort. ‘I agreed with Lady Enid's opinion that you might not meet with her.’

‘A lot of things have happened in my life,’ Michael replied, without displaying any emotion. ‘Some good, most bad. But your care and concern for my son in the last few years wipes away any animosity I may have held for you. I know now that you had no complicity in the matters concerning my reasons for fleeing the colony, Lady Macintosh.’

He could see an expression of gratitude flicker in her aristocratic features. Time had brought them together in a strange and unforeseen alliance; they both shared common blood in Michael's son.

‘I know your life has been full of tragedy, Mister Duffy,’ Enid said gently. ‘I know my opposition to your acquaintance with my daughter those many years past has brought much of the pain that I see in your face. But I also know that I would make the same decisions today that I made over twenty years ago should the same situation arise.’

‘I would expect nothing else from you, Lady Macintosh,’ Michael replied with a rueful smile for her intransigence. ‘From what I know of your reputation.’

‘Thank you, Mister Duffy. We know where we stand with each other.’ Enid appeared to relax slightly now that their mutual positions on old issues had been established. She took the coffee that Godfrey poured for her and continued, ‘Patrick is so like what I see in you, Mister Duffy, that your presence reassures me that my grandson cannot be dead as the army has presumed. I was watching you when you entered the drawing room and what I felt was your power.’ Michael raised his eyebrows in surprise as she continued. ‘You are a rare man amongst men. I have been informed that you have survived many wars and carry the scars of each one. Your life has always been one spent in extreme peril and yet you have survived. I also believe that Patrick has inherited your power and that he is still alive. I will confess that until you entered the room I had intended to ask you to help me find and recover his body. But meeting you I now firmly believe Patrick is alive.’

Michael listened to the sincerity of her words and felt a strange liking for the woman. He placed his cup and saucer on a polished walnut coffee table. ‘I would never believe my son was dead,’ he said. ‘He has the luck of the Irish.’

‘He is also English – and Scots – by birth, Mister Duffy,’ Enid reminded him quietly. ‘I would like to think he has our luck as well.’

‘That too,’ Michael replied with a grim smile. ‘He will need all the luck he can get if he is to be found safe and well.’

‘I think if anyone can find him it will be you. His father.’

‘You and the Colonel obviously have some plan for me,’ Michael stated. ‘If so, I am willing to be part of it, I assure you, Lady Macintosh.’

‘Colonel Godfrey has valuable contacts in the army. His contacts extend even to the Sudan and he is able to arrange for you to carry letters of introduction. Those letters will assure you of all possible help from the general staff. To ensure that those in the Sudan comply with your requests I have purchased a newspaper. It has correspondents covering the campaign. I am sure my recently acquired employees will be more than willing to assist you by revealing any cases of tardiness or hindrance to your efforts from the army to me.’

That Lady Macintosh would purchase a newspaper company solely to ensure that the correspondents would make themselves available to help him impressed Michael. Then she spoke further.

‘My son-in-law tried to oppose me on the purchase of the paper. But we compromised on another financial matter.’

‘May I?’ Michael requested politely indicating an empty chair opposite Enid. She nodded and he sat down. ‘I am curious,’ he said, ‘to know why you didn't elect to choose someone else to find Patrick. You appear to have the means to hire your own army rather than just one man.’

For a moment Enid lowered her gaze and Michael could see she was deep in thought. She raised her eyes and answered, ‘An army lost my grandson, Mister Duffy, but I believe the love of two people searching for Patrick will find him.’

Michael did not need to know more. She had answered his question in her simple recognition of his paternal love for a son whom he had only seen once in his life, although Patrick's photograph had been carried as his talisman over the years. On impulse he asked, ‘Do you have any likenesses of my son, Lady Macintosh?’

She glanced up at Godfrey who excused himself to leave the room. ‘I have arranged with Colonel Godfrey for you to have bank drafts to cover your expenses,’ she said. ‘You will find they are generous. How you spend the money is of no concern to me, Mister Duffy. I know it is unlikely to be squandered when you are looking for my grandson.’

Godfrey returned to the room and passed Enid a framed photograph. Tears began to appear in the corner of her eyes as she gazed at it before passing it to Michael. While she dabbed at her eyes Michael looked down at the full-length sepia portrait of his son wearing the dress uniform of a Scots' Brigade officer. The face that stared back at him was his own of twenty years earlier. Although the likeness was not in colour, he knew the great difference was in the eyes. Patrick's were the Macintosh emerald green of his mother and grandmother, his own were the blue-grey of his people. ‘May I keep this, Lady Macintosh?’ he asked in a voice broken with barely concealed emotion.

‘Yes. I have others. But I doubt that you would need a likeness of Patrick to recognise him now.’

Michael knew exactly what she meant and thanked her.

When she reached out with her hand to him she was helped to her feet by Godfrey and Michael guessed that she was telling him that their meeting was at an end.

‘There is one thing I should say in parting, Mister Duffy,’ Enid said as she paused at the door to the drawing room. ‘I
may
have been wrong in my choice of husbands for my daughter. But knowing my grandson I fear he is very much like what you must have been like as a young man. And, knowing that, I doubt I could have let you marry my daughter.’

She turned and left the room with the regal grace of an empress and Michael grinned broadly after her. He had seen just a twinkle of merriment in her eyes at her parting rebuke and knew she was probably right.

‘I will take you back to Sydney, Mister Duffy,’ Godfrey said as he fetched his umbrella from a stand in the hallway. A pretty young maid in a starched apron showed them to the door.

‘That will not be necessary, Colonel,’ Michael replied. ‘I already have a cab waiting for me.’

The colonel frowned and cocked his head questioningly ‘How is that, old chap?’ he asked.

‘I know only one person who would put his honourable ancestors' souls at risk. And my bet is that this person is lurking outside waiting for my safe exit.’

‘I hope Mister Wong has had the sense to keep the cab waiting,’ Godfrey said smiling. ‘Because it is a long walk back to Sydney.’

John Wong
had
kept the cab waiting but at a high financial cost. Michael found him in the shadows of the sweeping driveway and greeted him with a warm growl. ‘Thought you swore on the lives of your family, and the honour of your ancestors, that you were going back to Townsville?’

John grinned and slapped him on the back. ‘I didn't say
when!
.’

‘No, you didn't, come to think of it.’

‘So when are you returning home to Townsville with me?’

‘As soon as I meet with Horace and settle some old business I have in Sydney,’ Michael replied as the two men strolled down the driveway, the gravel noisily crunching under foot. ‘Then I am going to find my son. Only after all that will I return to Townsville.’

Enid bade Godfrey goodnight and climbed the stairs to the library. She sat at her desk and removed an ornate, leatherbound journal from a drawer. The diary was used to record events she considered of some importance. It did not record such events as births, deaths and marriages which were penned in her copperplate hand in the great family Bible. But it did record the sinister side of her life: meetings in business matters that had very significant ramifications for the future prosperity of the family companies; information she received from her contacts about exploiting business opportunities; monies paid from time to time to grease the wheels of government.

In the latter category Enid found an entry for the payment of one hundred guineas cash paid to a detective of police by the name of Kingsley. It had been in 1874 and the detective had visited her with information he had obtained from a criminal by the name of Jack Horton. The dying man's last act on earth was to tell as much as he knew of the murderous connections of Captain Morrison Mort and her son-in-law, Granville White.

Horton's honesty had been motivated purely by a need to avenge himself on the captain who had deserted him in his time of dire need. Bleeding from a fatal slash to his stomach, Jack Horton also told the detective of Granville's complicity in hiring himself in an attempt on the life of one Michael Duffy. Duffy had killed Horton's vicious half-brother in self-defence.

At the time Enid had received the information she had dismissed the existence of a death-bed confession. Michael Duffy had been reported killed years earlier in the New Zealand campaign against the Maori. And even if she had known he was alive, it was doubtful that she would have used the information to help him prove his innocence.

Enid stared at the carefully compiled notes she had made just after the time of her conversation with the detective. Times, dates and names indelibly recorded in the pages of her journal.

She closed the book and walked across to the window of the library that commanded a view of the driveway below. Should she reveal what she knew of Jack Horton's confession? Was it in her interests to have Michael Duffy cleared?

Michael's existence posed a threat to her grandson's decision to renounce his Irish inheritance and adopt fully his Anglo-Scots blood. His father might well sway Patrick towards retaining his Papist religion. And a Papist controlling what was left of the Macintosh wealth was unthinkable! Even if he was her beloved grandson! No, better that Michael Duffy remain a hunted man in the colony. As such, his contact with Patrick would be seriously curtailed.