Ghost Gum Valley (39 page)

Isabel looked contrite. ‘I'm sorry she broke your heart.'

‘Me? No heart to break, remember?' He paused. ‘So where do we go from here, soldier? You were marching along this track like you knew where
you
were going.'

‘I just wanted to get as far away from you as possible, to wherever this path leads.'

‘Mind if I tag along?'

Isabel glanced wryly at the loaded packhorse. ‘You seem better prepared than I am.'

‘I never travel without a shotgun, a flask of brandy, a box of waxed Lucifers and a horse that can read my mind.'

‘You brought me a mare with a man's saddle. I'm wearing a dress and four petticoats.'

In answer he handed her a bundle. ‘This will give you better protection from any bushrangers we encounter.'

Isabel wordlessly disappeared behind a tree trunk the width of an elephant. When she emerged, she held her chin high despite her embarrassment.

Marmaduke gave a slow whistle of appreciation. His eyes followed the lines of her long slim legs encased in the tightest of breeches, her small bosom disguised by the boy's shirt and jerkin inherited from Murray Robertson. Her hair was tucked from sight under the baggy Stuart tartan hunting cap except for a silky fringe that fell over one eye and made her look more fetching than any actress he had seen on stage in ‘breeches' roles.

‘Yeah,' he said teasingly. ‘I reckon that outfit looks better without the black eye. I could pass you off as a boy, no trouble at all.'

‘I'm glad if that means I'm safe from men, including you.'

‘Safe as houses,' he lied.

The sun was firmly fixed overhead when on the crest of a hill Marmaduke revealed the panoramic view below. Ghost Gum Valley was host to its namesake, the Ghost Gum eucalypts. The slender, pure white trunks and lacy canopies that shimmered in the sunlight had an ethereal quality as if one by one they might dissolve silently without trace. A creek carved through the heart of the valley in deep S-shaped curves like the body of a sleepy blue-grey snake. He heard Isabel catch her breath at the sheer beauty of it all.

‘You can see why the blacks have so many legends about the Rainbow Serpent. Their stories date to their pre-historic Dreamtime and relate to natural features in the landscape. I wish I'd asked them more questions when I was a kid before Garnet ran them off our land.'

‘Your land? Or theirs?' she asked.

Marmaduke gave her a sage look. ‘That depends whether you live under British law or tribal law.'

He took the lead down the sharp zig-zag descent to a billabong that lay tucked like a crescent-shaped lake in the curve of the creek. They dismounted on a grassy knoll. Despite Isabel's hunger, Marmaduke only allowed her to quench her thirst from a water bottle.

‘I brought you on this trip for several reasons. Survival. Do you know the two greatest killers of women in this Colony?'

‘The gallows? Snakebite?'

‘Nope. Childbirth and modesty. Yeah, modesty. Women have been drowned every year since settlement, especially along the banks of rivers like the Hawkesbury–Nepean. Flash floods can make our rivers rise thirty feet in ten minutes. Women drown because they are laced into corsets, weighed down with a ton of petticoats and they're too damned modest to learn how to swim. Can
you
swim?'

When she shook her head in denial Marmaduke saw the fear in her eyes.

‘Right. So now it's time for Survival Lesson Number One. Strip off down to your undergarments. No arguments.'

‘I will do no such thing!'

‘You will if you don't want to drown.'

Her eyes widened in acute panic. ‘I will
not
. I know what it
feels like to drown.
You can't make me!'

‘I can and I will,' he said calmly. ‘Get this straight. No wife of mine is going to die of modesty. Get your gear off or I'll strip it off you!'

Isabel glared back at him haughtily. ‘You are totally uncouth. There's no need to ape Petrucchio in
The Taming of the Shrew.'

‘Yeah, well, stop behaving like the shrew.'

Isabel's blush confirmed to Marmaduke he'd won that round. He had not expected she would be easy to teach but the extent of her fear almost made him change his mind. He saw her out of the corner of his eye as she stripped down to her fine lawn bodice and drawers. In his under-breeches he entered the water at the shallow end, remembering his own fear of water as a boy when he had come to this same billabong to learn to swim.

He tried to gain Isabel's confidence by teaching her to float face up while he supported her neck with one hand, the other under her rump.

‘Don't touch me there!' she snapped through chattering teeth.

Marmaduke sighed.
Her mouth is blue with cold but she still has the bite of a goanna.
‘If you think I'm taking a liberty, you're crazy. Try to relax. When you stiffen up, you sink. It's so shallow here you could stand up in it but you've got to
imagine
it's deep.'

He broke the lesson into short interludes to give her time to dry off in the sun, wrapped in a blanket, warmed and relaxed by nips of brandy. At last he judged the time was right to test if he had earned her trust.

‘You're doing well. Let's have a go at floating on your own. I'll be ready to hold you, come Hell or high water.' He tried to keep his tone light. ‘You can still go on hating me, Isabel – just
trust
me. I've never lost a wife yet.'

Marmaduke led her to the far end of the billabong. The deep dark water was shadowed by two giant eucalypts whose trunks arched across the water like flying buttresses in a medieval cathedral. A few yards beyond them, standing erect like a grey ghost, was the trunk of a eucalypt that had long ago been struck by lightning. He
remembered it had been here when he was twelve years old, quaking in his boots, to receive instructions in the art of swimming from Klaus von Starbold.

For Marmaduke this billabong held mixed memories of the fear that had limited him to clumsy attempts to paddle like a dog and his repeated failures to swim like a man.

Now as Marmaduke looked across at the opposite bank he blinked into the face of the sun, remembering how von Starbold had stood there, expressionless, his back ramrod-straight, his greying blond hair clipped short in military mode, standing like a soldier at ease watching him.

Marmaduke was exhausted, blue with cold and ready to accept defeat. It was a battle of wills that only one of them could win. His tutor gave him no quarter. His clipped Germanic orders cut through Marmaduke's fear with quiet determination.

‘You can do it, young man. I know you can.'

The high-pitched buzz of cicadas rang in his ears as if mocking his failures. Von Starbold refused to relent. Marmaduke was forced to try again. The deep cold water was his enemy as he struggled to master his fear. He struck out towards the far end of the swimming hole, knowing he would fail...then came the dawning sense of wonder,
‘Maybe I can do it!'
...his pleasure and surprise when he heard the voice calling out, ‘Yes! You did it! I knew you could!'

Marmaduke's eye was drawn to the far bank of the swimming hole, to the memory of his tutor's triumphant laugh. The sun burst from behind a cloud and Marmaduke was momentarily bedazzled. For one moment he thought he saw von Starbold observing him in silence. The bank was empty. There was nothing but a mottled shadow cast by sunlight on the water.

Marmaduke looked across at Isabel and knew she hated him for driving her on, just as he had felt as a child.
If only I could make Isabel trust me.

He dived into the billabong and trod water, fixing his eyes on Isabel's pale, pinched face, a portrait of sheer terror.

‘You can do it, girl. I
know
you can!' he called out.

Marmaduke nodded encouragement and beckoned to her, a confident invitation for her to jump into the water. But she remained
clutching her arms across her chest, her legs trembling. The fragile cotton of her undergarments clung to her, a wet second skin that heightened her look of a vulnerable child.

‘Come to me! I'll catch you the moment you hit the water.' Still she refused to jump. He had been treading water so long his feet felt frozen. ‘I need you to jump, Isabel.'

She shook her head and looked nervously at the opposite bank.

‘That's an order!
Jump
!'

At the very moment Isabel hurtled her body into the air, Marmaduke realised his error. Too late he recognised an unmistakable sound often heard in the bush – the shrieking, tearing noise of falling timber that sounded almost human. He caught a flash of the giant dead trunk as it fell headlong down on them like a juggernaut. No time to drag Isabel free.

Chaos. Foam. Waves of water, dragging him under.

On instinct he dived below the body of the trunk, blinded by the swirl of water, desperate to glimpse her white limbs, any part of Isabel's body he could grasp.

Where the hell is she? Sucked downstream? Unconscious? Sunk like a stone to the bottom?

In desperation the voice in his head cried out.
Listen to me, God. Take my life not hers!

It was at that moment that he glimpsed two pale legs floating, motionless, the toes pointing up towards the surface of the water.

He felt numb with horror.
Why is she upside down?
He struggled to peer down through the darker depths below and glimpsed her face, the eyes wide open in terror, mouth closed, trapped by the length of her hair that was pinned beneath the fallen tree trunk.

Marmaduke's eyes locked with hers. Fear met fear.
She's trapped by her hair, too tangled under the tree for me to drag her free.
He waved his hand in a futile bid to give her confidence then kicked himself up to the surface, dragged his body up the bank, grabbed his knife from its sheaf, clamped it between his teeth and dived back down to her.

When he reached her Marmaduke was overcome by waves of fury at God. Isabel's staring eyes had abandoned all hope, the last stream of bubbles from her now open mouth passed him as he gripped a
rock to anchor him to the bottom of the billabong. He tore the knife from his mouth and hacked desperately at her hair. He looked into her eyes and sent her the message.

I won't leave you, soldier. We'll die together...

Marmaduke could only remember fragments: holding on to Isabel's hair, dragging her to the surface, pushing her limp body up onto the bank, desperately sucking air into his lungs.

Exhausted, he dragged himself to his knees and straddled her body, panting as he rhythmically pummelled her back with his full weight, afraid to look into her open eyes in case he saw that the black pupils had disappeared – and her life as well.

He lost all sense of time but refused to stop. He could feel no warmth in her body, so he cursed God out loud.

‘You bastard! You don't exist!'

And then he felt it – or had he imagined it? A shudder in her chest, a movement he had not caused. And he saw the fingers of her hand twitch. He laughed out loud with joy as she spewed brackish water again and again, coughing and retching. A beautiful sound!

‘Good girl! That's the way to do it!
That's the way to do it
!' He kept laughing at the absurd childhood memory of the words chanted by the belligerent Punch in a
Punch and Judy
puppet show, the words his mother had taught to her cockatoo Amaru.

Half drunk with triumph he continued to knead her back and chest until the water drained from her lungs in a final splutter and Isabel looked up at him. The expression in her eyes chilled him. No relief, no thanks that he had saved her.

‘You're in shock,' he said firmly.

‘No,' she said. ‘We are alive! We cheated death!' She repeated the words like a mantra. She reached out and pulled him down on her, held his head and took his mouth in a kiss of overwhelming hunger.