Flight of the Eagle (40 page)

When Gordon was satisfied his men were well provisioned and comfortable he strode across to the main house to have afternoon tea with the manager and his pretty wife. Gordon noticed that she was showing the first swelling signs of a pregnancy and for a fleeting moment had an image of Sarah carrying a baby in the future. It was a gentle and warm image that caused him to smile.

He reached the verandah and wiped his boots clean before knocking and being invited inside. An Aboriginal maid took his cap while Gordon unbuckled his gun belt to hang it on a coatstand in the hallway. The house was not luxurious by city standards, but it was at least spacious and clean. The original bark hut that Donald Macintosh had built was now used as a shed to store hay for the horses.

Gordon joined Duncan and Mary in the backyard under the shade of a rotunda-like building where grapevines struggled to enclose the shelter. Tea and scones were served by the Aboriginal maid as the three chatted about the latest prices of wool and beef transport costs and the news from the far-off Sudanese war.

South of the Glen View homestead from the summit of the old volcanic plug, Wallarie gazed across the plains at the orange ball slowly being swallowed by the scrub. No sound of the children's laughter or the old people's bickering at the end of the day, he reflected sadly. Just the gentle sounds of the bush lying down to rest for the night, the sounds of the earth as they'd been even before the coming of his people way back to the Dreaming.

The warrior tugged absent-mindedly at his long beard now shot with grey streaks. His thoughts were on times long past when he and Tom Duffy sat side by side gazing out across the same bushland. That had been the time of the walkabout into the channel country and back with the small party of survivors from the dispersal.
So long ago!

And the squatter's shepherds had killed the old man and boy who had been with them on the trek. They had shot the old woman and taken Tom's woman for their own. But he and the Irishman had tracked the killers and exacted a bloody vengeance on them. That was when he had been taught the killing ways of the white man he remembered. How to ride and shoot and talk their language. But now he sensed that Gordon James was close at hand.

The sun was almost gone and the hush of that time between day and night settled on the hill. The old warrior eased himself to his feet and scooped up his odd mix of weapons: a Snider rifle and stone axe.

He would find Peter at the bottom of the hill by the campfire and retell the stories of the Nerambura. He would explain the meaning of the sacred tableau of painted figures on the wall of the cave and they would feel the spirits of the sacred place come to them. In the morning he would prepare Peter for his initiation into manhood. Granted it would not be a true initiation, the Darambal man admitted to himself. But it would be better than no initiation.

He found Peter sitting cross-legged before the fire in the cave. The young man had left his woman, Matilda, at their campsite down on the waterholes below the hills. Not in the place of the slaughter – that was taboo land – but further up the creek line. She would wait for Peter's return to her as a true Nerambura man.

FORTY-ONE

C
aptain Patrick Duffy reported back to brigade headquarters. His three-week ordeal wandering in the Sudanese wastelands had left him gaunt and haunted. He had said very little to anyone of his experiences and when he did speak it was only to say that he had been lucky.

Luck and an inherent toughness of body and spirit had kept him alive when he had stumbled on the Dervishes in the night. He had survived where lesser men would have despaired and died. The ragged remains of his uniform, now stained black with blood, said it all. No-one was about to closely question the captain who seemed to have genuinely blocked from his mind all that had occurred before he had been found by the camel patrol. Time might make him less reticent about his experiences, but for now he was silent and brooding.

On the night of his ill-fated mission he had fired blindly into the shapes looming out of the night and then escaped in the dark. But instead of attempting to make his way towards his own lines he had chosen to use the darkness to escape deeper into enemy held territory. He had guessed correctly that the Dervish would automatically assume that he would make a dash for the Zareba.

The following morning, as the sun rose over the tortured land of stone, sand and thorny scrub, Patrick lay hidden amongst the rocks of a small hill deep in the heart of the Dervish patrolled land. He watched helplessly as the roving bands of heavily armed Dervish warriors patrolled between him and the withdrawing army of khaki clad soldiers of the British force. He had been right in not attempting to head for his own lines.

Nor could he make contact with the patrols of mounted lancers whom he could see only as tiny figures on the horizon. They were obviously searching for him. Dervish snipers and ambush parties lay concealed and would welcome the lancers with bullet, spear and sword should they be foolish enough to stray too far from the main force of the British square. Any attempt to attract the attention of the roving patrols could possibly lead them to their deaths. By sunset, thirst drove Patrick from his well-concealed position where he had watched with despair the tiny cloud of dust marking the withdrawing British army.

Patrick knew he must first find a source of water and he was fortunate to stumble on an old well in the hills that had been overlooked by both the Dervish and British forces. It was not poisoned and he drank the cool and muddy water as if it were the finest of champagnes.

For the next three weeks he lived the life of a nocturnal beast of prey, hunting for supplies from the unwary Bedouin in the vast fortress which was the Sudanese desert. Using stealth, and the razor edge of his knife, he accumulated a small but adequate store of dates and unleavened bread. It was enough to give him the strength to live to see the burning sunrise each following day.

His lethal and stealthy forays into the camps of the desert people caused an unprecedented terror that outweighed the previous presence of the British army. At least they had been able to see the British infidels. But this nightly visitor was like some demon of the desert! An evil spirit that came when the sun lost its heat and the desert was as cold as a corpse. A devil that left the throat cut of the restless camel driver and was never seen in the day – which only proved he was not human.

Patrick always travelled a little further north-east each night but not in a direct line as he knew the Dervish patrols would expect him to do so. Patience and caution became his principles of survival as he made slow but sure progress towards the port of Suakin.

Living like this, Patrick was stripped of everything but his cunning and instinct to survive. No longer did he have thoughts of whether he should renounce his religion and accept the Macintosh name; no longer thoughts of fox hunts or fancy balls of his past English life. Just thoughts of where his next hiding place would be and finding a camp to raid when the night came.

Near the end of three weeks he had reached the end of his endurance. Time had become a meaningless blur and his tattered uniform was stiff with the blood of the uncounted men whose throats he had cut in his quests for supplies.

At times he would sit in the shade of a thorn bush on sunset and stare westwards across the plains softened by the disappearing sun. And sometimes in the lonely stretches of his three weeks he thought about Catherine. But they were thoughts for the pain she had caused him by letting him think she would be waiting for his return, only to taunt him with her cruel silence.

Still, Patrick knew that beyond the horizon was the place of Celtic mists. A place of magic and the home of the Morrigan. And often his thoughts would turn from pain to a bitterness fed on the despairing hate that gave him the desire to live and eventually confront Catherine with one question, one word:
Why?

Then the day came when he watched the three figures mounted on camels shimmer in blurring outlines against the horizon. His first instinct was to bury himself deeper in the sand under the mimosa tree. But the flash of light caught his attention. Were they possibly a British patrol? Had the flash come from a set of binoculars or a telescope? As far as he knew the Dervish did not use the ocular aids in the desert. But he was almost beyond caring whether he lived or died. If they were Bedouin then let it be he went down fighting, he thought as he forced himself to his feet. And with the last of his strength he staggered towards the patrol.

Major Hughes greeted Patrick with a display of genuine delight. His decision to send Patrick on the reconnaissance mission had weighed heavily on him and when he had received the report that he was missing in action it had become a crushing weight on his conscience.
Had the aim of the mission been worth the price of one of the brigade's finest young captains?
Days earlier he had privately celebrated Patrick's return to Suakin by uncorking and consuming a bottle of his best port wine as soon as the news came through. It had been an almost miraculous survival.

Now, Patrick was invited to sit in a cane chair draped with a tiger skin that the brigade major had acquired whilst he was in Burma. It now travelled with his mess kit wherever he served as a soldier of the Queen – a personal idiosyncrasy not confined to the B.M. as other officers also carted exotic, and sometimes bulky, items with them on active service.

Patrick looked more relaxed than when the B.M. first had seen him brought in from the desert. Then he had been a bearded giant with the dangerous, staring eyes of a hunted wild animal. But even now that Patrick appeared relaxed, the hunted look was not completely gone. A shadow of what he had experienced in the three weeks of his ordeal remained as a haunting spectre behind the eyes.

The B.M. had the task of briefing him on his duties. He was back on active service and his mess bill was overdue for payment. Missing in action did not exclude him from three weeks of rates levied for the food and wine he was denied the opportunity of consuming. However, there was something more important to discuss first.

Major Hughes fingered the letter Patrick had tendered to him through the routine army channels by way of the orderly room. Although the letter was directed higher than himself, it still had to pass through his hands. ‘Do you really wish to resign your commission?’ he asked.

Patrick shifted slightly in the cane chair. ‘Yes. I think it is time I returned home, sir.’

‘You are a damned fine officer, Patrick. And in my lengthy time of soldiering I dare say one of the finest soldiers I have ever had the privilege of serving with.’

His frank praise made Patrick feel guilty. But service in the army had only ever been a temporary stage in his life, an interlude to allow himself to sort out his future aspirations. ‘I will not be leaving the army altogether,’ he said. ‘I hope to parade with a colonial militia unit when I am back in Sydney.’

‘You have probably heard the rumours circulating that we are about to pack up and leave here,’ the B.M. said quietly. ‘If that is so, then I might be able to arrange that you ship out with the New South Waters. Would that suit you?’

‘I was planning to take my discharge in London,’ Patrick replied. ‘I have some business in Ireland before I return to the colonies.’

‘A young lady?’ Major Hughes questioned with a raised eyebrow.

‘Yes, sir, a young lady,’ Patrick confirmed.

‘Well, I will put my recommendation on your request for discharge from your duties to become effective upon our return to England. But remember, you can still reconsider your resignation before we reach London.’

‘I know, sir. It is not a decision that I can say I enjoy. I have a lot of friends around me here. A lot of good memories.’ He winced at the last statement and continued, ‘And a lot I would rather forget.’

‘If there is nothing else then, I should stand you a drink in the mess tonight, Captain Duffy. I'm sure your brother officers will do likewise when they learn that you will be leaving us.’

‘As I'm not leaving until we return to England I doubt that my mess account could stand farewell drinks,’ Patrick said with a rueful grin. ‘Possibly when we are back at the regiment.’

‘Yes, you could be right, Captain Duffy. No announcements until we return.’

Patrick stood, saluted and left the brigade major's tent. He stood in the blazing midday sun and pondered his future. First he must find Catherine and end the tortured thoughts that plagued him. To at least learn
why
she had ignored the flow of letters he had sent her. He had steeled himself to the possibility that she had found someone else and forgotten him. At least, he tried to convince himself, he was prepared to accept such. But a disquieting voice whispered in the depths of his mind that such an outcome was too horrible to contemplate. Time and distance had not tempered his desire for her.

He stood for a moment as thoughts flooded him and he felt absorbed by the vastness of the desert that lay beyond the British army encampment of Suakin. Living day to day beyond the hills, he had seen in the wilderness the bare meaning of life, the simplicity of survival when nothing more than the spirit gave him a reason to live, the omnipotent feeling at the end of his knife as a man's life ebbed from his body and the blood flowed from the severed jugular vein. What use was money and power when a man had only his physical and spiritual strength to survive? Was the man he had met in himself out there all that there was to his life?

Soldiers stripped to singlets sweated and toiled under the same blazing sun as they went about their military chores. The sounds of an army at rest drifted to him: the sharp clanging of a blacksmith's hammer on iron at his forge as he shaped the shoes for the horses; the barking bawl of a drill sergeant on a dusty patch of ground as he reinforced the need for men to act as one; the querulous voices of the army cooks arguing over rations being prepared in the big stewing pots. Such sights and sounds had become as familiar to Patrick as had the jangle of horses and carriages in the cold, wintry streets of London.