A Tattooed Heart (30 page)

‘No, I don't. Look, who am I talking to?'

‘If you don't mind,' Harrie said, ‘can we just say that Leary has something of ours, and we've come to take it back.'

‘Well, good for you.' The woman stuck out her hand. ‘Ann Binder, publican. You make sure you give him a good hard kick in the stones for me.'

Harrie and Friday both shook and Friday asked, ‘You don't know where this Iris Kellogg mot lives, do you?'

‘Ah . . .' Ann rubbed her chin. ‘Now that I can't really tell you. Newcomen Street, maybe? And as I say, I'm not even sure he's in town. But let me know how you get on.'

We will if we can, Harrie thought. ‘Thank you very much for your help, Mrs Binder.'

‘My pleasure. Anything to drop the slippery bugger in the shite. And if you don't mind me asking, why
are
you both sopping wet?'

Friday said, ‘It's raining.'

‘Is it?' Mrs Binder glanced towards the nearest window. ‘I hadn't even noticed. Fancy.'

‘He is staying with some woman called Iris Kellogg,' Aria said.

Friday inspected her pipe fixings, but the tobacco was damp. ‘Bugger. We heard, but we couldn't find out for sure where she lives.'

Sarah said, ‘A cove in the Crooked Billet said she has a house on Newcomen Street, but when I asked which one he laughed and said, “This ent London, you know,” told me I was barking up the wrong tree and to get myself a good, virile man like him. Tosser. I wonder if she's a whore.'

‘She were,' Robbie said. ‘Someone told us she's off the game now. God, I'd hate to live in a town this small.'

‘Where did you hear that?' Friday asked.

‘Dunno, some pub on . . . where?' Robbie looked at Walter.

‘King Street.'

‘Yeah, King Street.
And
we got told off for asking about Leary. 'Parently we should steer clear.'

Sarah said, ‘What exactly were you told?'

‘We went in and said to the bartender we were looking for me uncle, Jonah Leary. And he said the only Leary he knew of was a cove staying in Newcomen Street with a mot called Iris Kellogg who used to be a tart. I said, “That sounds like Uncle Jonah. Whereabouts in Newcomen Street?” and he said, “I dunno that I'd feel right sending lads your age to the house of a woman like that, and I've not heard good things about Jonah Leary.” And I said, “That's too bad, 'cos me mum's very poorly and she wants to see her brother before it's too late,” and he said, “Well, it's a shame you can't pick your relatives.” But he told us. It's the little house with the picket fence and the lavender path.'

‘Got you, you bastard!' Friday crowed.

‘What's the time?' Harrie asked, then pulled out her own watch and squinted at it, astonished. ‘God, it's not even midnight. I thought we'd been here a lot longer than that.'

‘Newcomen Street, then?' Friday said.

‘Wait a minute, let's not go charging off,' Sarah cautioned. ‘We need a plan.'

Friday muttered, ‘You and your plans.'

Aria stepped forwards. ‘We do need a plan, and I will make it. Trust me. I am the best at this.'

They all looked at her.

Sarah parked her hands on her hips. ‘Who says?'

Aria said, ‘I do. How many raiding parties have you led?'

‘That would be none,' Friday replied helpfully.

‘You will all listen to me and you will all do as I say,' Aria commanded, and it
was
a command. ‘This is what we will do.'

Before the missionaries had come to Aotearoa with their new religion and set about interfering with the natural order of things, Aria had taken part in a number of raiding parties and, with other womenfolk of her family, had also successfully defended her home against attack when the men had been away. She knew how to fight, she knew how to strategise and, being the progeny of arrogant and privileged Mahuika Aramakutu and the great warrior Tumanawapohatu Te Kainga-mataa, she harboured a streak of ruthlessness a mile wide. She knew she could get the child back. Someone might die — the Leary man, and possibly his woman — but that wouldn't matter, as long as Harrie was happy again. Because if Harrie was happy, then Friday would be, too.

They would have to enter the house quickly, using the element of surprise they currently possessed, which they would not possess for much longer if they continued to march around the streets of this unattractive town in a conspicuous group. Yes, it was nighttime, but they had been into possibly every drinking establishment asking after Leary, and word did spread.

Fortunately the town was small, with only three longer streets parallel to the shoreline, dissected by shorter streets running up a steep hill overlooking what was presumably the Hunter River. Aria thought the open ocean probably lay on the other side of the hill, as she could hear waves breaking onshore. They had started at the wharf end of the town, hunting down street names on buildings, and now here they were on Newcomen Street, searching for a house with a picket fence and a lavender path.

‘Is lavender in flower at this time of year?' Friday asked in a loud whisper.

‘Shush!' Sarah warned.

Unnecessarily, Aria thought. It was not that silent out. There were the waves on the river's edge and the ocean shore, the wind in some nearby but invisible trees, and the racket of night birds.

‘It doesn't flower till early summer,' Harrie said.

‘Well, that's no bloody use, is it? It's only September.'

‘Nearly October. Some might be out.'

‘Shut up,' Aria said. She would smell the lavender. The wife of Reverend Four-Eyes Williams, Missus Marianne, grew lavender in her garden at Paihia, and it always made Aria sneeze whether it was in flower or not. It was common knowledge among her people that Pakeha noses did not work properly, perhaps because they had had to smell so many bad stinks in England. Friday was getting bad-tempered. She must be badly wanting her gin by now. She needed a distraction. ‘Come with me: we will find the house.'

She and Friday set off, their boots slipping in sand, Aria noting that Newcomen Street didn't actually appear to have very many buildings on it at all — less than a dozen positioned in the middle of good-sized plots of land, including a public house, what might be a commissariat store, and a handful of cottages. In two of the cottages, light flickered.

Outside the first, which did have a short length of picket fence along its street frontage and lavender somewhere in the yard — she knew because her nose was tickling — she said to Friday in a low voice, ‘You go around this side, I will go around the other. Perhaps we will see something through the windows. Do not let yourself be seen.'

‘As if,' Friday said, sounding insulted.

Aria suppressed a grin. Friday was not bad at sneaking around, but she did have a tendency to thump, clatter and barge when she was over-excited. Not like Sarah, who could disappear at will when she wanted to. Friday was strong, though, and very handy with her fists, qualities Aria found both useful and appealing.

As Aria approached the lone window in the northern wall of the cottage, she became aware of male voices inside. She flattened herself against the rough brick and peeked around the window frame. At a table sat four men playing cards, the military jackets hanging on the wall behind them the colour of old dried blood in the lamplight. Soldiers, obviously. A mosquito fastened itself to her hand: she ignored it. Three of the men smoked pipes, the air above them heavy and blue, and they shared a bottle of something the colour of amber. It would not do to disturb them.

Finally she moved away. At the front of the cottage she waited for Friday, who appeared out of the darkness, scowling.

‘Fucking soldiers,' she whispered as she squatted next to Aria. ‘They must be policing the town.'

‘Was it Sarah who said there is a big gaol here?'

‘That's what Leo reckons.'

Aria pinched her nose: this close to the lavender, its sharp scent felt like forks being inserted into her nostrils. ‘Perhaps they work in the gaol,' she murmured nasally.

‘Probably,' Friday agreed, ‘but they'll be —'

Aria exploded in a mighty sneeze, then another and another. Racked with spasms, she felt Friday hauling her to her feet, then everything flipped sideways as she stood on her own hem and crashed to the ground again.

From inside the cottage came voices, the clatter of chair legs on a hardwood floor, then the front door was wrenched open, spilling a fan of light out onto the yard.

‘Get up!' Friday cried.
‘Get up!'

Suppressing a final sneeze that blew snot over her top lip, Aria scrambled to her feet, but too late as a hand tangled in her hair and jerked her backwards.

‘What have we here?' the soldier demanded in a Scottish burr.

‘Get your filthy hands off her,' Friday spat.

Aria knew Friday could have run — she'd had time — but she hadn't.

‘Answer me,' the soldier said. ‘What are you doing here?'

‘Nothing,' Friday replied. ‘Standing in your yard. We got lost.'

‘This yard is off limits to civilians. It belongs to the Crown. Did you not see the notice?'

‘What do you mean “off limits”? It's just a shitty bit of dirt.'

Friday, shut
up
, Aria thought desperately.

‘Trespassing on government property is a criminal offence,' the soldier warned. ‘I could take you both into custody.'

‘Think so, do you?' Friday parked her hands on her hips. ‘You just try it, you pig-faced, shit-breathed, cocksucking bastard.'

Aria winced, and not because the hand in her hair had tightened into an angry fist. The look on the man's face, she could see, had turned thunderous.

‘Right, you're under arrest by warrant of the Crown, the pair of you.'

The soldiers had all come outside now. Four men against two women. Regardless of the soldier's grip on her head, Aria lifted her chin and stared imperiously down her nose at them, knowing she would have to fight hard to get Friday and herself safely out of this one.

But she could. And she would.

‘Why are soldiers always such arseholes?' Friday remarked. It was true — in her experience she'd met very few decent ones. Give her a tar any day.

She and Aria were sitting at the table, facing their four captors. The door had been locked and the flimsy curtains drawn — both ominous signs. She'd tried to get to her watch to check the time but her hand had been slapped away from her pocket. Surely when she and Aria didn't arrive at the agreed rendezvous point at the
intersection of Newcomen and King streets, the others would come looking for them?

‘Why are whores so mouthy?' the sergeant countered, for that's what he was.

He was of average height, fit-looking, possibly in his thirties, bristle-faced at this late hour, and had a mean glint in his eye. His men were younger, one a boy of perhaps only sixteen or seventeen. The sergeant was thick, though: he hadn't checked them for weapons and she knew Aria was carrying at least one knife. She hoped to
God
she didn't decide to use it. They'd be in far worse trouble if she did.

‘I am not a whore,' Aria said icily.

‘What are you then?' the sergeant asked, his booted feet up on the table.

‘I think she's one of them Maoris,' another soldier suggested. ‘From across the Tasman.'

‘What about you?' the sergeant said, addressing Friday. ‘Are you a whore? You look like one to me and that trap of yours is straight out of the gutter.'

‘None of your bloody business.'

‘Or are you runaways from the Female Factory?'

Friday stared at him, her apprehension ratcheting up several notches until it turned into crawling, prickling fear. What the hell did he mean? ‘The Factory at Parramatta?' she blurted.

Watching her, his eyes narrowed thoughtfully. ‘No, the Female Factory here, over at the gaol. Turner, have we had any reports of an escape?'

Turner shook his head. ‘Not today, Sergeant Weir.'

Aria snorted. ‘If we were escapees from the gaol, we would not be loitering around outside a filthy little hovel filled with the king's soldiers, would we?'

His eye still firmly on Friday, the sergeant ignored her. ‘You know, you do look bloody guilty. I'd put money on you being a couple of runaway lags. If there'd been a breakout at Parramatta,
we'd've been advised, but we haven't, so maybe you're assignees. Is that it? A couple of bonded convicts? Where are you from? Port Macquarie? Sydney?'

‘You are wasting your time with fruitless guessing,' Aria said. ‘We are not runaways.'

Sergeant Weir's boots came down. ‘Well, just to make sure, tomorrow I'll be sending word to the Superintendent of Convicts in Sydney Town, and the pair of you can cool your heels in the gaol here until I've had confirmation back you're not on any muster lists. Should only take a week or two.'

‘You can't,' Friday said. ‘You don't know our names.'

‘The muster lists have physical descriptions on them, don't they? You're, what, five feet six, big build and all that copper hair. There can't be too many like you around.' The sergeant nodded at Aria. ‘And even less like her.'

Friday struggled to keep her expression neutral. Aria's description wouldn't appear on any lists but hers would, along with the fact that she wasn't permitted to leave Sydney. She'd be sent back to the Parramatta Female Factory for this. And without her and Aria, the others might not be able to rescue Charlotte. Oh,
why
hadn't she kept her gob shut? The bastard might have let them go if she had. She glanced at Aria and saw in her dark eyes not the accusation or censure she expected, but certainly weary regret.

There was still a chance, though; they could try to run as they were taken to the gaol tonight.