Ironbark (25 page)

He felt frustrated, anchored in hospital and unable to find out what was happening in the outside world. The nurses kept telling him he had to be patient. Maybe next time Mac was given the Goulburn coach route he could fill him in on the fate of his passengers. Jake caught himself smiling at splintered fragments of memory – the widow pressing his face to her naked bosom to warm him. Right now he could almost smell the rosemary oil on her body, feel the cool touch of that silver amulet between her breasts. Startled by the sensual power of that memory he said the words out loud. ‘I sure hope that night was real. I'd hate to think it was just my fever making me imagine things.'

• • •

Two nights later another visitor turned up.

Jake looked at the slightly built young man standing in the shadows of the darkened ward and was suspicious that this visitor was
not
a total stranger. Jake could always smell a man who was on the wrong side of the law.

The youth kept his broad-brimmed hat low over his eyes as he pulled a chair to the bedside and asked, ‘How are you getting along, lad?'

Jake was cagey. ‘I know you, don't I?'

‘We met once under trying circumstances.'

Jake recognised the cheeky grin. ‘Shit! You're the bloke who refused to shoot me! I reckon I owe you my thanks.'

‘But you've already repaid me – I relieved you of all your money, remember?'

Jake laughed for the first time in weeks. He decided not to admit his coin pouch was a blind for bushrangers. As always, promissory notes had been safely stashed in his left banking boot.

Will Martens formally introduced himself. ‘Are they doing right by you in here?'

Jake shrugged. ‘I'm going crazy. Bad as being in the
stur
. Can't stand being cooped up.'

Will nodded wryly. ‘Neither can I. But be thankful they gave you a bed here. A few weeks back when I was last at Gideon Park my stripes got infected after a flogging. I asked permission to come here. It would have cost my master Jonstone one shilling and sixpence per day for a convict's bed but the Devil Himself vetoed it.' He mimicked the man's soft vindictive tone. ‘No malingering Prisoner of the Crown is going to shirk work by lying around in hospital. Not while I'm Overseer of Gideon Park!'

Jake grinned. ‘You've got that bastard down to a tee, mate. How did he treat you? They say he's a totally rotten mongrel – God's worst mistake.'

‘That's just the polite way to describe him in front of ladies.'

They talked nonstop for an hour. Jake was delighted to discover Will was as passionate about horses as he was. They had a friendly tussle weighing the merits of thoroughbred Barbs and Arabs. But Jake was concerned that a lad like Will was a pawn in an evil chess game, so he turned the conversation back to Gideon Park.

‘I ain't got much time for Jonstone. A gent who keeps his own hands clean but turns a blind eye to his overseer's methods.'

Will tried to make light of it. ‘Jonstone's not a bad egg, but he's in Sydney Town more often than not. He would never believe what the
Devil Himself gets up to in his absence. I'd rather die from a trooper's bullet than be sent back to Gideon Park.'

Jake knew this was a common convict sentiment but he hoped this lad would fair better.

‘The law says government men with a grievance have the right to go before the magistrate and be assigned to a decent master.' Jake added, ‘In theory, anyway.'

Will shrugged. ‘Every magistrate has bounced me back to Gideon Park. The beaks are so matey with Julian Jonstone they dine at his table. There's no chance they'd ever dish out a bit of justice for the likes of me.'

‘If I can help you, mate, I will,' Jake promised. ‘But I draw the line at supplying arms.'

Will nodded. He asked Jake to tell him about his plans to breed thoroughbreds. Jake talked until he was dry enough in the throat to ask a favour.

‘Could you smuggle in a bottle of Albion Ale? Or anything else that's going. There's an inn just down the road.'

Will looked uneasy. ‘You want
me
to walk into the Policeman's Arms?'

‘Nah. Solomon Moses just renamed it the Travellers' Home Inn.' Jake lowered his voice. ‘I've got a young nurse trained to fetch me the odd bottle. Thing is, I've run dry.'

‘No sooner said than done, Jake.' Will was already out the door.

He returned bearing a ragged bunch of flowers that looked as if they'd been plucked from someone's garden.

Jake registered his disappointment. ‘Thanks a
lot
!'

‘Smell them!' Will insisted.

When Jake bent his head to examine them, he saw the neck of a beer bottle planted at the heart of the bouquet. He raised the flowers to his lips and drank deeply.

‘Will Martens! Your blood's worth bottling.'

After the young bushranger gave him a silent salute from the doorway and disappeared into the night, Jake weighed the kid's chances. Few bolters managed to survive beyond a year or two.

He felt a wave of frustration over the brutal treatment meted out to young Will, in contrast to the humane second chance his pa was given as a youthful prisoner in Governor Macquarie's era.

The whole system is a bloody lottery. Those Whitehall blokes who run the whole show deserve to be transported themselves to get a taste of what it's like.

Keziah felt a keen sense of pleasure as she hung the mirror on the wall of the schoolteacher's two-room cottage. Assigned carpenters had finished her roof and the windowpanes were in place, the fireplace was whitewashed. She moved the bunk bed with its striped palliasse to a more pleasing angle then scrubbed the wooden table, chairs and shelves with vinegar.

Today was a milestone – taking up residence in her first ever home that wasn't drawn by a horse. She would have preferred a
vardo
, but this cottage had all the novelty of a toy.

As she waited to take the bread from the oven, she hung up the pots and pans bought from Sunny Ah Wei's oriental emporium on wheels. Nailing her calendar to the wall she smiled wryly at its picture of children dancing around a snowman to celebrate an English Christmas. What a contrast to her first Australian Christmas. No snow, holly or mistletoe but a day of sweltering heat spent feasting on the traditional English Christmas fare of mince pies, roast turkey, plum pudding and the singing of carols around George Hobson's family table.

Although past, present and future were intertwined for her, like the three strands of a plait, the calendar proved that less than two months had elapsed since her arrival as the schoolteacher Saranna Plews. Keziah found it difficult to measure the transition to such a radically different life. Here in Ironbark time seemed to hurtle in haphazard leaps and bounds.

Today her major problem loomed large. Each day she swathed herself in shawls to disguise her growing belly. She did not dare to seek medical advice from the Scottish physician Dr Leslie Ross who lived at the Haunted Farm but whose buggy was periodically seen at Ironbark.
And what of the school? George Hobson had indicated she was expected to keep the school doors open all year – except for the two weeks around Christmas. So how would she manage when the time of her travail arrived in March? How could Miss Plews teach school and manage to deliver her babe in secret? And what else would 1838 hold in store for her?

Although she hungered for news of Gem, a meeting with her passionate husband at this late stage of her pregnancy was unthinkable. Her one hope in convincing Gem he was her first and only love was to face him when the babe was
out.

The delicious smell of bread made her mouth water. Would there never be an hour of the day when this unborn babe didn't make her so ravenous? She set the table with a red cloth, removed the cooked lamb from the meat safe that swung in the open window to catch the breeze. Its hessian sacking cover had dried out, so she soaked it in water and re-covered the safe to cool the contents. The black cast-iron kettle whistled cheerily.

When Keziah sat down to enjoy her first meal in her new home she remembered just in time to thank
The Del
for the blessings of her little refuge.
Help me behave like Saranna – a lady – in public. Keep the lid on my Romani temper.

Through the window she saw that George Hobson's buggy had been delivered as arranged so she could drive to Bolthole Valley. It was said the general store owner there, Matthew Feagan, was the unofficial ‘town crier'. Keziah not only hoped to gain news of the bushranger known as The Gypsy but also of Jake Andersen's progress, and exactly where in Bolthole cemetery Saranna Plews had been buried as Keziah Smith.

• • •

On the cross-country route to Bolthole Valley Keziah eyed the posy of native flowers she had gathered. How strange life was.
Baxt
had chosen her to cheat the Angel of Death from claiming Jake Andersen's life. Yet
here she was on her way to place flowers on her own grave.

The track ran through a forest that had been hacked out by an earlier generation of timber cutters intent on felling the tough ironbarks. Occasional glorious angophoras grew in unorthodox patterns, each mushroom-pink trunk stained with rust-red resin that looked like bloodstains. The sticky sap healed their old wounds and left a legacy of welted knots wherever a branch had been torn off by a storm. To Keziah these trees were a symbol of healing, of survival.

She was overcome by nostalgia for the open road adventures of her lost Romani life.

But like a nagging tooth she was constantly reminded of her biggest problem. What on earth was she to do with the babe after its birth? She prayed he would not resemble his hated father, Caleb, in character as she knew he would do in looks.

She focused her mind on Jake Andersen. She was deeply concerned for him, having last seen him in agony. Joseph Bloom had told her that Jake appeared to be in good spirits, although restless from being confined in hospital so long, and that Jake had seemed somewhat surprised to receive a message from Saranna Plews.

If Jake had heard that the Widow Smith was dead and buried, he must be really confused.
Which is hardly surprising. Some days when I wake up even I forget who I'm supposed to be.

She had taken a risk sending Jake that message. She wondered if she would ever see him again.

Bolthole Valley's main street was almost empty when she stopped in front of Feagan's General Store. She saw the House of the Four Sisters and was surprised by the vehicle parked in front. The tartan ribbon flying from the roof of the buggy proclaimed it belonged to Dr Ross. So the gossip about his visits to the brothel was true! Keziah shrugged. Men were men, even the best of them.

An approaching pair of matrons wearing widow's weeds looked like two black crows armed with shopping baskets. They tilted their noses
at the sight of a barefoot, raggedly dressed Aboriginal girl whose wide-eyed toddler clung to her back as she stood in the shadows of the laneway beside Feagan's store.

Across the street at The Shanty with No Name two seedy-looking stockmen were propped against the veranda posts with a bottle of grog in each hand. Their ribald comments about ‘black sugar' amused the other men ogling the Aboriginal girl.

Keziah threw the drinkers such a steely glance it stopped their laughter. She said ‘good morning' to the girl, who was too shy to respond and disappeared down the laneway into the darkness of Feagan's barn.

Inside his store Matthew Feagan was lamenting Governor Bourke's departure and holding forth about the temporary administrator Lieutenant-Colonel Snodgrass who had hired a convict as tutor. Feagan was outraged. ‘How can we trust a man who handed over guardianship of his own children to an attempted assassin?'

‘Who is the next governor?' Keziah asked.

‘It's said Whitehall's picked a navy man this time. Whoever he is let's hope when he arrives he'll handle the London dispatches on the transportation question better.' Feagan's speech seemed to be peppered with newspaper headlines as if he was intent on extricating every vestige of drama.

‘These colonies can't survive without assigned labour. Mark my words, the new governor will soon wake up to how our society functions. I've added my signature to a landholders' petition to that effect.'

Although Feagan spoke with the unswerving authority of the unthinking, Keziah sensed that at heart he was not really a bad man.

The elder widow asked anxiously, ‘Any more sightings of bushrangers, Mr Feagan?'

‘Not this week, Mrs Hill, it's been a quiet week.'

Keziah's heart sank but then she realised that no news of Gem meant that he was still alive.

She looked up from examining a bolt of calico to ask Feagan about the victim of the coach tragedy at Blackman's Leap. She decided not to reveal she'd been a passenger herself. First she wanted to know how people had identified the dead girl.

‘I understand she was buried in Bolthole cemetery. Did she have a proper funeral?'

‘Of course,' said Feagan. ‘We're all good Christians here. She's buried in the non-denominational corner with a wooden cross marking her grave. No one knows what religion she was.' He added darkly, ‘If any!'

Keziah dared not look up. ‘What are people saying about her?'

‘Some immigrant fresh from Home. No known kin. An Irish doctor's report stated she was a widow called Mrs Smith. A pagan Gypsy most like. Fortune-telling cards were found among her things.'

‘Those cards are the devil's work!' the elder widow proclaimed.

Keziah was only too relieved to hear that the switch of identities had indeed been successful. The Gypsy Mrs Smith was safely in her grave. It was now safe to introduce herself as Saranna Plews to Matthew Feagan the town crier.

The younger widow had a fresh grievance. ‘Mr Feagan, that
lubra
outside. Can't you send her packing? She's got no business here among decent folk. Everyone knows that bushranger One Eye dumped her on society to give birth to his half-caste.'