The Lace Balcony (10 page)

‘Ah, darling, how kind of you to take time to collect me. We haven't quite finished the sitting, but I feel sure Monsieur Bonnard will have no objection if you observe him at work.' She prompted the artist, ‘That's right, is it not?'

Jean-Baptiste looked as if his neck had just been saved from the guillotine. He made a deep bow. ‘I am honoured by your interest, Monsieur.'

The remainder of the sitting was conducted in total silence, but the signs were unmistakable. Her protector was seething with rage.

•  •  •

The sun was setting when Vianna awoke with a start on the chaise longue, not the first time she had fallen asleep at the end of a sitting. From an adjacent room Severin's voice dominated the artist's protests. She quickly exchanged Venus's robe for her own clothes. When his anger showed no signs of abatement, Vianna crossed to the easel, where her portrait now faced the wall.
Damn you, Severin. What right do you have to refuse me permission to see my own portrait?

She risked a glimpse of the painting. The beauty of the work stunned her.
So this is how Jean-Baptiste sees Venus. I feel awed that his portraits of me will be admired by all Sydney Town.

She moved away just moments before Severin re-entered the room and took hold of her arm in an overt sign of possession.

‘Remember, Bonnard. Your paintings are to be exhibited as I see fit. A patron holds all the cards. Fame or failure rests entirely in my hands.'

In the doorway Vianna imperceptibly turned her head, just long enough to give Jean-Baptiste a broad wink – on Severin's ‘blind' side. The artist's eyes smiled in acknowledgement.

On the return journey to Severin House, Vianna made it her business to charm Severin and deflect his jealousy. ‘You are pleased with my portrait, darling?'

‘It will do. It is not for sale. I shall hang it in Severin House.' He eyed her coolly. ‘Remember the night we met? You failed to hide your desperation, your fear you would end up selling your body on the streets. You were ready to do anything. Take
any
man as your protector.'

Vianna felt all joy drain from her. ‘How chivalrous of you to remind me.'

‘You were ripe for the plucking. I took you to bed. You failed to please me but I recognised your potential. The device I installed for you increased my pleasure and yours. Remember?'

Vianna blanched at the memory of the device she had been forced to practise with daily for months – a gradual progression which had finally ended the pain she experienced in connection. And succeeded in giving Severin maximum pleasure.

‘Your patience was admirable,' she said shortly. ‘I seem to remember I was the one who had to use the device.'

‘It was necessary – to transform you into a courtesan equal to the greatest beauties of the age. You are what I made you, Vianna.'

His fingers curled around her throat. Vianna knew she must betray no sign of her fear or pain. Silence was her only weapon.

‘I have used that young fool Bonnard to complete the transformation. Two weeks from now ‘The Sydney Town Venus' will be a byword in the Colony.'

He released his grip on her neck, but his voice was soft with danger.

‘Take great care, Vianna. I am not a man to tolerate betrayal. I left behind in England a name that bears witness to this fact. A woman's name – written on a tombstone.'

Despite the return of Severin's charming smile, Vianna's hands were suddenly ice cold.
So now I know. There is only one way out.

Dawn failed to deliver Mungo fresh water and a crust of bread. Instead the door to his solitary hole rattled and a rough voice broke through the grey half-light. It was the first human voice he had heard in weeks that hadn't been drawn straight from his own mind. Mungo recognised that it belonged to the old lag Ricketts, one of the rare guards who had retained a human streak, unlike some former convicts whose previous years under the lash had made them as cruel as the masters who had brutalised them.

Mungo's return to reality, such as it was, forced him to resume his accustomed mask to disguise his true feelings – the one freedom that remained within his control. As always after a period in solitary confinement, when time had been lost, his voice sounded rusty with misuse. Yet that didn't make sense. Hadn't he been talking to Stimson well into the night? Or had that all taken place in his mind?

‘Ain't seen you in a month a Sundays, Ricketts. What kept you?'

‘Move your body quick smart, lad. You've had time aplenty to repent your sins. Holiday's over. It's back to work with ye – by special orders of Captain Logan.'

‘How kind. I thought The Great Man had forgotten me.' Mungo rolled over and staggered to his feet, surprised to be singled out for special attention from the Commandant himself. ‘Tell me, Ricketts, why do I get sent to Coventry when the other poor bastards continue to cop the lash, forced to work before they've had a chance to heal?

‘Who knows? Maybe Logan's trying to break your spirit. 'Cos you're one of the rare ones who never cries out, no matter how many stripes you cop.'

‘What's the bastard been up to while I've been in here?'

‘Himself has been off on another expedition into the hinterland, in search of new rivers and mountains to impress Governor Darling. Making a fine name for himself is our Commandant.'

‘Yeah, if he's not half careful he'll end up in the history books – and be given a knighthood.'

Ricketts gave a non-committal grunt.

‘Where have they assigned me, Ricketts? Back to the iron gang?'

‘You'll know soon enough.' Ricketts wagged a cautionary finger. ‘Use your head, lad. Next time you're forced to watch a man flogged to death – keep your trap shut. Or Logan'll have
you
back on the triangles in a trice. And from the looks of you your back ain't healed proper yet.'

Wincing under the forgotten power of tropical sunlight, unsteady of gait and shuffling on legs weak from disuse, Mungo followed the guard along the track past the military officers' quarters. This morning the regiment's officers and their wives and children were nowhere in sight. He knew that Logan's 57th Regiment had a proud history, known for their valour in battle as ‘The Die Hards.'

Die Hards indeed. Only now Logan feels free to inflict that fate on his prisoners – like
we
are the enemy.

Ricketts appeared to be headed in the direction of the Commandant's quarters but pulled up short beside an ancient horse's trough that served for convicts' ablutions. Mungo obeyed the order to strip off his rank clothing. He wasted no time in washing the filth from his body. He noted with surprise that the almost continual running sores caused by leg irons around his ankles had almost healed thanks to his enforced inactivity.

That's the one damned thing the hole has in its favour.

Standing naked to dry in the sun, his long-limbed body still muscular, but now as pale as a turnip, Mungo took pleasure in shaking his head in the manner of a dog emerging from a creek, sending out a spray of water. He was suddenly aware that the length of his hair served as a calendar, a rough indication of the length of time he had been incarcerated in solitary confinement. His head had been shaved when he entered the hole. It was now close to his jaw line.

He was surprised when Ricketts handed him a neatly folded pile of slop clothing. Mungo instinctively raised it to his face, overcome by the fresh smell of sunlight and eucalyptus on clean Indian cotton.

‘These have been washed in eucalyptus soap!' Mungo exclaimed.

‘Aye, the
Isabella
brought us a nice motherly woman amongst the batch of Volunteers. One woman to eight male do-gooders. She took
it on herself to oversee prisoners' laundry during Logan's absence. So enjoy clean slops while you can, lad.'

Feeling as if he had been reinvented as a man in a fresh body, Mungo marched with his head high towards the office near the Commandant's quarters. From the corner of his eye he made out the figure of a woman in a dark green gown seated on Logan's veranda, a young boy at her knee as she fanned the little girl she nursed in her arms. From the line of her head, Mungo felt sure the lovely Mrs Logan was observing him, but tempted as he was to drink in the gentle beauty of this rare domestic scene, he kept his gaze resolutely fixed ahead.

A cat might look at a King, but to be caught staring at Letitia Logan would cost me two hundred stripes of the cat. Logan has caused men to be flogged to death for lesser ‘misdemeanours'.

But Mungo's head swivelled around when he glimpsed a flash of a red military coat. The officer joined Mrs Logan on the veranda.
No mistaking Logan.
Dark auburn hair, the handsome face clean-shaven except for long sideburns, the Commandant was noble of bearing. Logan reached down and ruffled his son's hair and little Robert Abraham looked up at his father in awe, the man a hero in his eyes.

Mungo was confronted by the paradox of Logan's nature. As a soldier his valour was unquestioned, one of the celebrated Die Hards who had fought on many fields of battle, carried out the Duke of Wellington's orders and routed the French during the Napoleonic Wars – though Logan's exact role was unknown.

An audacious explorer, he had conquered the almost vertical mountain he named Mount Lindsay, the highest known peak in the Colony. Logan's brother officers appeared to admire him. As husband and father he was said to be loving and protective. Yet in Mungo's eyes Logan's humanity ended there. As Commandant and Magistrate he was a tyrant. Every convict at Moreton Bay who had managed to retain half a brain fervently wished him dead.

Ricketts pointed out a newly erected, low-roofed timber building. ‘There you are. This new bloke lives and works there on his own, but he's said to be connected to Logan in some way. A new settler. You better watch your step. He could be working on God's side of the fence – or Logan's.'

After the guard headed in the direction of the chapel, where he served as a lay preacher, Mungo hobbled up the veranda steps and entered the office.

Alone in the room was a man Mungo judged to be close to thirty. He looked up from his desk and paused in the act of sorting papers. His sandy-red hair was tied back in the old-style queue, his eyes unnaturally bright, his skin covered by a film of sweat that suggested either failing health or failure to adapt to the semi-tropical climate. His voice had a strong Scottish burr and his manner was surprisingly mild.

‘Your full name, lad?' he asked.

Caught off-guard, Mungo almost revealed it. ‘Sean O'Connor, Sir.'

‘Ah, Irish. From the North or South?' he asked, appearing to have no agenda.

Mungo answered in a rush. ‘Neither. I'm native born. A Currency Lad. Given a four-year colonial sentence. Against all odds I've managed to survive more than two of them in this hell-hole,' he added hastily, ‘Sir!'

Why the hell did I say that? It's a dead giveaway Logan's a tyrant.

The older man nodded sagely. ‘Aye. That's no mean feat, given the statistics of dead and missing prisoners. The name's Gordon. Alexander at birth, Sandy for preference.'

He offered his handshake then waved Mungo to take a seat, gestures that caught Mungo by surprise.

One of Logan's officers would have marched me off to the scourger by now. What's this bloke up to?

‘I've been checking your record, O'Connor, along with a few others with special trades and talents. It would seem that out of the four classes of convicts, you were originally placed in the educated class. Is that so?'

‘I was, Sir.'

‘But for some reason not noted in these records you were removed and sentenced to one hundred lashes – a degree of punishment which I understand is considered quite moderate in this neck of the woods.'

‘Not if you're on the receiving end, Sir.'
I've gone too far this time.

Gordon looked up sharply then flipped over a page. ‘As a result you were relegated to the iron gang class. From which you were absent
without leave for four-and-twenty hours on two occasions. Flogged – one hundred strokes on each count. I can't quite decipher the clerk's handwriting. No reason given why you were absent without leave.'

‘
Two
hundred lashes on both charges, Sir. I remember every stroke. Absent without leave is a polite way of putting it. Truth is I bashed a convict overseer with a shovel – then four of us bolted into the bush.'

‘I see. The cause of your bid for freedom?'

What's he going to do if I tell the whole truth? Hang, draw and quarter me?'

‘We'd had our water rations cut – as punishment for insubordination. A man in the iron gang had just died of thirst – you can't work long without water in this heat. I know. I was there. The body organs shut down, muscles seize up, the body bloats up, fails to sweat. Vomiting, diarrhoea, shock, coma. It's not a pretty sight. You want the full details of his corpse, Sir? I helped bury him.'

‘No need, O'Connor. I graduated from Edinburgh University Medical School, served as a naval physician. Intended to go into practice except my damned lungs packed up on me. I was sent out here to New South Wales “for my health”. A common euphemism for dying.'

Mungo took a closer look at him. The man's face was an unhealthy olive-grey, the skin stretched taut across the cheekbones. Beneath his jacket his chest looked concave.
A ripe candidate for phthisis. He'll be lucky to see in the New Year.

Dr Gordon made a sound somewhere between a cough and a short laugh of self-deprecation. ‘I wanted to see something of the world before – while there was still time enough.' He continued crisply, ‘So, O'Connor, I note you were engaged in the cultivation of maize – aye, and tobacco – before the drought ruined the crops and all hope of feeding the settlement. Then you were transferred to an iron gang, building roads and a bridge across one of the many rivers the Captain discovered, no doubt?'