Ironbark (27 page)

‘You'll put him on the school veranda like we agreed?'

Nerida nodded placidly but Keziah was afraid the babe would be attacked by a wild dingo or some marauding animal. ‘You'll keep him in your sights until someone finds him? There might be snakes about! It's their breeding time, isn't it?' She began to cry. ‘Oh how did I ever get myself into this mess?'

‘Don't you worry none. Won't let anyone steal him. You sleep.'

Keziah struggled to remain awake. She dragged a chair close to the window where she could see the outline of the school veranda and the box in the middle of it. Nerida kept her hidden vigil in the bushes nearby.

Dawn finally broke. Keziah recognised that the figure approaching the school was one of Hobson's assigned labourers, the Glaswegian giant, Sholto. Tattoos covered him so densely he looked like a walking paisley eiderdown. She saw him halt at the sound of the babe's faint cries and heard his words carry on the still air, ‘Gawd almighty!'

Nerida appeared as if out of nowhere and pointed him in the direction of the cottage. Keziah watched him carry the box as gently as a boy carries a nest of rare bird's eggs.

At the first door knock Keziah greeted him with a great show of surprise. ‘My goodness, Mr Sholto. What have you got in that box? A puppy?'

‘Nay, Miss. A wee bairn.'

Nerida stifled a giggle behind her hands.

‘Leave it with me for the time being, Mr Sholto. We'll see it's properly fed.'

Within seconds of closing the door Keziah thrust her nipple in the babe's mouth.

• • •

Two days later Keziah managed to cover the distance to Joseph Bloom's house and casually informed him of the existence of the foundling she had named Gabriel Stanley. She offered to act as its foster mother
until its real mother came forward to claim it.

His reply was serious. ‘Gabriel Stanley could have no better mother than you, Miss Plews.'

She gave him a startled smile.
Mi-duvel! Does he know?

She only had a few precious days to breastfeed Gabriel before she had to return to the school. Sadly she began to drink the necessary herbs to dry up her breast milk. She was grateful to Nerida for weaning Murphy so that she could become Gabriel's wet nurse. Yet at the same time Keziah felt a sense of loss she could not feed her own babe herself.

By the time she returned to the schoolhouse, the strain of keeping the birth secret had taken its toll. Keziah imagined – or did she see? – Saranna's
mulo
. Was this the imbalance some women suffered after a birth? Or was she really going insane?

One night she was convinced she saw the black-bearded horseman observing her from within a ring of trees. A red pinpoint of light glowing in the darkness. Distracted by Gilbert Evans riding past, she turned back to find the mysterious horseman had disappeared. This was no
mulo
. At the place where she had seen him, she found a half-smoked cigar.

Jake Andersen felt the sweat rolling down his back. His shirt clung to his body, his long hair stuck to his cheeks and his breathing came in short, laboured bursts but he refused to pause for breath on the landing of the staircase. He had already run up and down it forty-eight times in succession, determined to reach today's self-imposed goal of fifty. Far more than the number the Doc had recommended he attempt at slow walking pace.

Jake did not doubt that Horatio had sensed the coming breakthrough and would be as eager as he was to take their first ride together since his release from hospital. Despite weeks of being under Doc Ross's bluntly delivered orders at the Haunted Farm, he had been treated more like an honoured guest than a patient.

Sinking down in relief at the foot of the stairs, Jake was reminded of that bleak day when Leslie Ross had cut free Jake's spongy white leg from the plaster cast and fixed Jake with a baleful stare.

‘There's no getting around it, lad. The odds were against ye. Your leg has healed as well as can be expected but it's so weak you'll be forced to favour it, transferring your weight to your good leg. The best ye can hope for is a limp for the rest of your life.'

‘You want to bet on that, Doc?' Jake had said at the time.

Now as he entered the sitting room Jake tried to prepare himself for an even more crucial verdict. He gritted his teeth, determined to distribute his weight evenly to avoid showing the Doc that he was limping.

Leslie Ross had just returned from a call to Gunning to deliver twins. He looked up from the chair in front of the fireplace and watched Jake's swaggering entrance with narrowed eyes.

Jake nonchalantly seated himself in the opposite chair and swung his left leg up onto the footstool.

‘You still reckon I'm a cripple for life, Doc?'

He tried to stay his anxiety as Leslie re-examined the leg muscles.

‘Well, I'll be damned. You've not taken a word of my advice afore this but from the looks of ye, you've been in training like an ancient Greek for the Olympic Games.'

Jake gave a snort of relief and didn't protest too strongly when he was rewarded with a tumbler full of whisky. The doctor waved aside their usual toast to the death of transportation.

‘Nay, lad. This is a toast to your bloody-minded determination. You Currency Lads must have bones of iron. I was all prepared to give you a cautionary lecture about how to go through life as a cripple. But if I hadna re-set that leg myself I'd be hard pressed to recognise it had been shattered. I canna take all the credit. Your willpower is nothing short of miraculous – even if you did curse like the devil on the operating table.'

Jake grinned, reminded of the heady fusion of whisky and laudanum the Doc had forced down his throat when he lay strapped to the table before the operation.

‘Nothing to it, Doc. I was buggered if I was gunna let a broken leg stop me riding Horatio, winning prize fights and throwing my leg over a girl who likes to be paid for the pleasure of her company.'

‘I dinna doubt nothing short of your death would prevent
that
, lad.'

To celebrate Jake's remarkable recovery Leslie insisted his assigned housekeeper set a place for herself at the dining table.

Jake felt a bit in awe of Janet Macgregor, clearly a good woman gone wrong. Not yet thirty, she was stout but shapely and wore her housekeeper's uniform like a battledress.

‘How come she got transported, Doc?' Jake asked after Janet hurried back to the cookhouse to bring the platters of food to the table.

‘I dinna dare ask,' Leslie confessed. ‘To quote Alexander Marjoribanks, “A man is banished from Scotland for a great crime, from England for a small one and from Ireland, morally speaking, for nay crime at all”.'

Jake was openly encouraging. ‘She's a fine figure of a woman, Doc.'

‘Aye. Janet runs such a taut ship, I'd hate to lose her services but I dinna like the chances of any man trying to worm his way into
her
bed. She's a strict Wesleyan.' Leslie Ross ruefully rubbed his beard. ‘Janet deserves to have a good man make an honest woman of her but as you well know divorce requires an act of parliament, an option only open to the rich and powerful. And what wife wants to suffer the disgrace of being a divorced woman?'

Jake knew this was an oblique reference to the English wife the Doc kept in style at Home because she refused to join him in ‘that barbaric colony'.

‘I'm in the same boat as you. Tied to Jenny till death do us part.'

‘But I trust this will nay prevent you cutting your Gordian knot.' At Jake's blank look, the Doc explained. ‘Removing a difficulty by means of bold measures.'

Jake was evasive. ‘Stuck in hospital counting flies on the flypaper got me thinking. My job with Rolly Brothers is a dead loss as they won't have a bar of me now. Mac Mackie's lined me up to fight Pete the Hammer, a Pommy pugilist in Sydney Town, it'll be winner take all.'

Leslie looked dubious. ‘You're pushing your luck, lad. I much doubt your leg's ready to see the distance over a bare-knuckle fight.'

‘Don't worry yourself. The Hammer's past his prime. He won't last long against me. The prize money will buy me my own wagon. Be my own master. Free to hunt down that flash foreign bugger.'

‘Is murder your only solution, lad?'

Jake just stared straight ahead and allowed his silence to speak for him.

Leslie sighed. ‘It'd be a right pity to send that healed leg to the
gallows. But first things first. How do you plan to celebrate your return to life as a man of action?'

‘At the Four Sisters, Doc. Where else?'

• • •

Freedom! Jake sensed Horatio felt as liberated as he did as he galloped him down the road.

Thanks to Mac Mackie, he had just enough cash to cover his expenses at the Four Sisters but Mac knew Jake was good for this loan and fully expected him to beat Pete the Hammer. Jake was even more conscious that he had a debt of honour to repay. The Widow Smith had saved his life. He would front Saranna Plews at Ironbark village to get the story straight. Was the Gypsy really dead and buried in Bolthole cemetery? Jake didn't want to believe it. He had a vivid flash of memory of her leading the chestnut stallion into the bush.

Tonight his most urgent priority was to exercise his leg in Lily Pompadour's bed.

En route to the House of the Four Sisters he drew rein before a remote derelict property. He was pleased to see the weathered ‘For Sale' sign remained tied to the trunk of a giant ironbark tree. Even though he didn't have a brass razoo to buy this place, he would need land as good as this to make his dream a reality. To breed the greatest racehorse the colony had ever seen.

The thought of buying Wiradjuri land brought a complex reaction. Anger, respect, sadness – and a sense of guilt not of his making, yet somehow in his blood. Emotions that were linked to that unforgettable day, Christmas Eve 1824, when he was ten years old, standing beside Pa in the market place at Parramatta, peering over the heads of the crowd.

The air was electric with anticipation. Jake sensed this was a moment in history. The planned meeting for an extraordinary event, the result of an invitation from Governor Brisbane to the rebel Wiradjuri leader who the whites called ‘Saturday' but was known as Windradyne to his own people.
After years of bloodshed and guerrilla warfare against the military and settlers, Windradyne was coming in peace.

The noise of the crowd suddenly grew hushed. Jake felt a thrill of excitement the moment he saw the legendary Windradyne. The word passed through the crowd that he had walked across the mountains for seventeen days at the head of two hundred and sixty Wiradjuri men, women and children to be joined today by his tribal allies. Jake was in awe – there must have been about four hundred of them, far stronger and prouder looking than most of the displaced blacks he'd seen around Parramatta and the Nepean. Governor Brisbane's official party was impressive enough. Red and blue-coated soldiers with lace and polished brass, who waved their cockades and were flanked by the elite landowners of the colony, women dressed in finery fit to greet Brit royalty, and journalists from newspapers like
The Sydney Gazette.

Jake nudged his pa. He reckoned he knew what this public display was really about.

‘I'll bet the gov gave up trying to capture Windradyne, Pa. 'Cos he was making the police look silly. Now the gov's trying to make us look noble. Offering him “a peace treaty with honour”.'

Isaac Andersen looked rueful. ‘You just might have a point, Jake.'

‘How much tribal land was taken off the Wiradjuri, eh Pa?'

His father shrugged. ‘More land than would fit inside England, son. But if we didn't settle here some other blokes would have.'

Grand speeches were made by Governor Brisbane and Saxe Bannister, the attorney-general who had brokered the treaty. But Jake had eyes for no one but Windradyne, the tall, majestic figure wearing a great cloak made from scores of possum skins. The man outshone them all. Jake felt shamed when Governor Brisbane handed the leader a small branch as a symbol of an olive branch and a straw hat with ‘Peace' on the hatband. At that moment Windradyne turned his head and Jake felt sure he was looking directly at
him.

Jake knew that most people now thought of Windradyne as nothing
but a memory, a blackfella villain brought to heel in the interests of colonial progress. To Jake he was the only real hero he had ever known.

• • •

Lily gave a shriek of pleasure when Jake issued a warning as he climbed into her bed that night.

‘Been flat on my back for weeks for all the wrong reasons. I'm as rusty as hell, Lily. So I'll need to give you a fair bit of exercise to make up for lost time.'

By the early hours of the morning Jake was finally content to hold her in his arms but he played with Lily to arouse himself again, this time working for the pleasure of hearing her involuntary cries of delight he had learned to distinguish from her professional repertoire.

Completely spent, Lily patted Jake's body. ‘The girls are jealous of me. You're the only client who pays to give
me
a good time.'

Jake felt pleased. ‘It's to my advantage. You never short-change me.'

He kissed her wrists to disguise the fact he was checking for bruises. He wasn't going to allow the Devil Himself to leave his sadistic marks on Lily.

‘You'll tell me if any man hurts you? I'll take care of him for you. Permanently.'

‘You'd kill a man to protect a woman – even a whore like me?'

‘Especially you,' he said, and meant it.

Lily turned his chin to face her. ‘I really like you, Jake. Not just the colour of your money. You have a lovely way of doing business. Since Uncle Charlie put me on the game and sold me to Madam Fleur, I've never gone with a man except for the money. Till you.'