Cry of the Curlew: The Frontier Series 1 (29 page)

Reconciled to her forthcoming marriage to her cousin, Fiona often thought about what life with him might be like. He was rather handsome and there was something deep and dark about him that fascinated her. It was as if he was Heathcliff from Miss Bronte’s novel that she had read in the garden, rugged against the biting winds that swept up from the valleys.

She had chosen to read the novel with the mountains, valleys and mists as her companions because they gave greater pleasure to the atmosphere of the haunting and dark tale of love and passion.

Fiona had often cried alone in the garden when she placed the leather-bound book in her lap and she remembered Michael’s strong arms around her. But she was also practical enough to know she would probably never see him again.

She had read in the Sydney papers of his being wanted for questioning in regard to the murder of a man only days after their wonderful time together at Manly. Despite the newspaper reports, she knew Michael could not be a killer as they described him. He was far too gentle and loving to cold-bloodedly kill another human.

Fiona had confided her feelings to Molly, who was a sympathetic listener.

‘’Tis a terrible thing, my darlin’ girl. But life must go on,’ she would always say, as she held the young woman to her breast, as she had when Fiona had been a child suffering nightmares after reading the terrifying novel
Frankenstein
. Fiona had found the book, which belonged to David, and she had avidly consumed the ideas of a creature made from the parts of dead men. She was only ten then, and reality and fantasy had been difficult to differentiate for an impressionable young girl. Molly had provided her ample bosom then for Fiona to lie against as protection from the nightmares. Molly was always there for her.

Molly paused in her knitting as the wind reached a howling violence outside and a tree limb cracked in the night like a rifle shot. The foul weather brought back memories of her own childhood in Ireland before they had sent her as a young girl to the far-off convict colony of New South Wales.

Raped repeatedly by the soldiers and sailors of the convict transport ship, she had become pregnant at fourteen and her own child had died in the workhouse at Parramatta before Molly was Fiona’s present age.

Enid and Donald Macintosh had secured her release from the terrible place to work for them as a domestic servant under a government scheme to use the services of convicts. She had proved a reliable servant and she had been appointed nanny to all three of the Macintosh children. But it was Fiona she felt closest to.

Fiona had been rejected by her natural mother from birth. Enid preferred to lavish her attention on Angus and David. It was as if she despised the fact that Fiona had been born a girl instead of a boy. And now Molly was going to hold the baby of the young woman whom she had once held squalling in her arms seventeen years earlier.

She glanced across at the pretty face of
her
little girl and felt a loving maternal ache for her. She was so young and the pregnancy had taken her childish innocence from her forever. The ache of nostalgia for things past turned to a terrible guilt and she looked away lest she see the pain in her face. God forgive me for what I am going to do, she prayed silently. Fiona, me darlin’, if you only knew the pact I have made with your mother, you would kill me without hesitation.

But the pact was sealed with Enid Macintosh and Molly knew what she most wanted. So strong was her desire for her final dream to become a reality that she was prepared to betray the one person who most loved and trusted her in the world.

The wind rose even higher in its wailing cry and to Molly it was like the shriek of the banshee. She shuddered superstitiously. Had this been the answer from God to her prayer for forgiveness? Could there be forgiveness for what she was to do when Fiona’s baby was born? She well knew the reputation of the infamous baby farms of Sydney. Baby farms was a strange way to describe places that committed systematic infanticide on unwanted babies. And the unwanted fruit of the Duffy and Macintosh bloodlines was destined for such a place.

The storm raged through the night but the morning came as a brilliant burst of sunshine in the mountains. Butterflies appeared as if conjured by the spirit of spring to fill the garden with their fluttering colour. Birds warbled their welcome to the blue sky and the tall and majestic gum trees stood as salutes to the sun.

Fiona harried Molly to assist her to dress for a day in the garden, where she could luxuriate in the warmth of the wonderful spring day under the shade of a spreading eucalypt. Being with nature this day had a strong call for the young woman expecting her first child. It was as if the beauty of the mountains could be absorbed by her body to give strength to the unborn child.

Molly fussed around her with blankets and slippers to keep her warm. She only agreed to leave Fiona alone so long as the blanket remained across her lap and she promised that she would call on her if she required anything.

Before midday, Fiona complied with the promise to call for her nanny. It was not so much a call as a cry of distress, as the pains came in crippling waves.

Molly came running and, with the help of the brawny coachman, she helped the pain-racked young woman inside the cottage. Urgent orders were snapped at the various members of the staff to fetch hot water, clean cloths and the doctor from the nearby settlement of Katoomba.

But before the doctor had time to arrive, Molly held the red and slippery baby boy in her arms. The coachman paced up and down the stone verandah outside the cottage like an expectant father while the cook made cooing sounds of wonder between cleaning mother and child.

Fiona lay exhausted against the sheets in a lather of sweat and she was hardly aware that her labour had lasted into the early evening while she had held Molly’s hand and cried out in her agony. It had been a difficult birth but the Irish nanny’s skills as a midwife had helped ease her pain.

The doctor had arrived by buggy, examined his patient, and declared that she required nothing more than rest and time to recover. He’d dispensed a draught of laudanum and left with a fat envelope swelled by pound notes to buy his silence. Enid’s meticulous planning left nothing to chance and now it was up to Molly to dispose of the baby as they had agreed in their unholy pact.

In the early hours of the following morning, Fiona awoke from her deep opiate-induced sleep to call for Molly. Molly did not come to her. But the milk in Fiona’s swollen breasts did come without having her baby to suckle.

All she could remember as she lay in the darkness of her bedroom, of the life that had lived in her body, was that it was a wet, slippery and squirming thing that had bawled when exposed to the world for the first time. A boy, Molly had told her, before he was taken from the room and from her life.

Fiona sobbed as she had never sobbed before. For now she knew what it meant to experience the greatest sorrow of a woman and somewhere in the depths of the night, in the dark corners of the room, she thought she heard echoes of a frightening whisper. A spirit whisper, swept off the harsh brigalow plains, and carried on the wind from a place where children lay dead in the arms of their mothers.

TWENTY-SEVEN

F
or two days and two nights Fiona called for Molly. But still she did not come.

The staff assigned to her confinement whispered outside the young woman’s bedroom and shook their heads sadly.

On the third day her mother arrived and, after a short conference with the staff, Enid went to her daughter’s bedroom where Fiona lay against the pillows gaunt and hollow-eyed. She turned her face slowly to her mother, who sat in a chair, watching her with maternal concern clearly etched on her face.

‘I was informed by Missus Weekes that your labour was difficult,’ Enid said formally as though addressing a stranger rather than her daughter. ‘Although Doctor Champion informed me at Katoomba that you would recover fully with a few days’ rest.’

Fiona stared at her mother. ‘Where is Molly?’ she asked in a hollow voice.

‘No one seems to know.’ Enid frowned. ‘The damned woman was supposed to report to me in Sydney but she has not. I fear she has broken her service without notice and cannot expect any reference if she comes begging to me at a future time. Disloyalty is an unforgivable sin.’

‘Where did she take my baby?’ Enid was aware that her daughter was fixing her with feverish eyes as if a revelation had come upon her in her recovery period. Without waiting for her mother to reply, she answered her own question. ‘She took my baby to one of those terrible baby farms I have heard Molly speak of. She has taken my baby to be murdered. Hasn’t she, Mother?’

The accusation caused Enid to glance away. ‘I will not lie,’ she replied defiantly. ‘So I will not answer your question, Fiona. I expect you to understand your duty to the family. To appreciate how important your place beside Granville is to the future of the family. It will be you who will bear the children who will carry our blood heritage into the next century.’

‘I carried a child in my body all these months,’ Fiona said in a pleading voice. ‘Did not that child carry our blood, Mother? Was not that child part Macintosh?’

‘Tainted by Popish Irish blood,’ her mother retorted angrily. ‘A bastard not born to our class, and my decision was the only one that could be made under the circumstances. I would suggest that the sooner you forget this episode of your life the better it will be for your future happiness. Oh, I understand that you will naturally grieve for your loss for a little while, but time will heal your grief just as it has mine for the death of your brother. What has happened has been God’s will and your sacrifice is His way of helping you repent for your sin . . .’

‘Sin? My sin? Does the murder of my child constitute a sacrifice?’ Fiona spat. ‘Is our God the pagan god Baal of the Bible, who demands human sacrifice?’

‘Do not blaspheme,’ Enid shot back savagely. ‘God will not be mocked by your blasphemy, Fiona. God has ordained that we must provide generations to give wise guidance to those people born of inferior blood . . . the black people . . . the Irish . . . and others like them.’

‘I want you to leave, Mother,’ Fiona said, turning her face away. ‘I do not want to be in your presence unless absolutely necessary. Not because you have killed my baby, not because what I have done in allowing him to be taken from me makes me as guilty as you . . . but because you dare to justify murder in the name of God and duty. Go, Mother. Go now and leave me with my pain. A pain I doubt you could ever be capable of knowing.’

Enid stood and stared at the back of her daughter’s head. She could hear Fiona’s sobbing and she wanted to reach out and hold her, despite the bitter words that had come between them. Instead she consoled herself in the knowledge that her daughter would heal with the natural progression of time and Doctor Champion’s doses of laudanum.

She swept from the room and called for the coachman who tended the horses at the cottage. He ambled from the stables, wiping axle grease on the sides of his leather apron. He was a big and brawny man whose powerful arms bespoke his time bending red-hot iron in the blacksmith’s forge.

‘Tell me what transpired after the baby was born, Hill,’ she commanded as she stood like a diminutive doll before the huge man. ‘And get that surly look off your face.’

‘Sorry, Missus Macintosh,’ he mumbled as he bowed his head. ‘I done what you asked. I took Miss Molly down to Sydney an’ she left with the kid.’

‘Left her where?’ she snapped. The big man shuffled his feet and could not look her in the eye. ‘Speak, man. Where did you leave her?’

‘At the place you said to go.’

‘Why didn’t she return with you then?’

‘I doan know,’ he mumbled. ‘She never come back to the carriage. I looked for her but she weren’t anywhere to be seen. She jus’ disappeared into thin air.’

Enid stared at him for a short while, but he did not elaborate any further on the Irish nanny’s disappearance. ‘Thank you, Mister Hill,’ she said formally. ‘I am sure you are telling the truth and I’m sure Miss O’Rourke will make contact with me in the near future.’

‘That all, Missus Macintosh?’ the coachman asked and was relieved to be dismissed.

He had never liked the thought of taking the baby to one of the infamous baby farms as he had too often been involved in the delivery of life himself, albeit horses and sheep. The idea of destroying a perfectly healthy creature was against all he held precious. But the whims of the gentry had to be pandered to if he was to keep his employment. He had actually been relieved when Molly had not returned to the coach, although he had wondered what had happened to her. He hoped the baby would be safe somewhere. The little mite had grasped his thick finger with his tiny hand during a stop at an inn on the way down to Sydney. In doing so he had infused the brawny coachman with a part of his little life. No, it was not easy to be a part of destroying a helpless little life – man or animal.

David Macintosh sat at his desk in his office and stared at the newspaper article. If what it said was true then the ramifications would certainly ripple around his family circle. So engrossed was he in the article that he had forgotten the cup of tea George Hobbs had placed on his desk and the tea was cold by the time he neatly folded the paper and placed it beside the cup and saucer.

He leaned back in his swivel chair with his hands behind his head, staring at the door to the office. He wondered what Granville would say when he was told the news. News that would certainly affect his soon-to-be brother-in-law.

David glanced up at the loudly ticking clock on the wall and he noted that it was almost ten o’clock in the morning. Granville would be on time for their appointment. Whatever else he found irritating about his cousin, punctuality was his one saving grace.

The appointment had been made to discuss the implications of Robert Towns landing his first cargo of South Sea Islanders in Brisbane, where they were to be assigned to work on his cotton plantation on the Logan River, south of the growing colonial town.

In turn, Granville would introduce the newly appointed captain of the
Osprey
to him and discuss the islands he had identified as the most likely places to recruit black labour for the Macintosh sugar and cotton plantations.

But David did not have to be introduced to the new captain. He already knew the man. They had met earlier that year on his trip north to Queensland.

The clock chimed ten and, on cue, Hobbs poked his head around the corner and formally announced Mister Granville White’s arrival.

David rose from his chair when Granville entered the room with the new captain of the
Osprey
.

‘Ah, Granville,’ David said as he put out his hand to Mort. ‘I see you have Mister Mort with you.’ Mort accepted the extended hand and David was surprised to feel how limp his grip was. It was not what he expected from the reputedly hardened former Native Mounted Police officer.

‘Pleased to make your acquaintance again, Mister Macintosh,’ Mort said with polite deference to one of his new bosses and released his hand. ‘Your father forwards his good wishes to you,’ he added solicitously.

Granville sat in a leather chair in a corner of the office. He crossed his legs as he brushed back his thinning hair with a swipe of his hand. It was an unconscious gesture as his receding hair was a blemish on his vanity. ‘Our Mister Mort is a man of many talents, David,’ he said, wiping down his trousers of the imagined grime from David’s office. He was fastidiously clean to the point of obsession. David tended towards being untidy at times, which irked Granville’s sense of all things having a place – and a place for all things. ‘Appears our Mister Mort holds master’s papers from his days prior to joining the Victorian constabulary back in ’54,’ he added. ‘One could say the right man in the right place for our South Sea venture.’

‘That is correct.’ Mort was quick to confirm Granville’s disclosure of his previous experience at sea. ‘My original career was on the Hobart–Melbourne route. I was the first mate of the
Vandemonian.’

‘If I remember rightly, the
Vandemonian
was a brig,’ David said as he returned to his chair. ‘So the
Osprey
should suit you. Have you inspected the
Osprey
yet, Mister Mort?’

‘I’ve taken Mister . . . should I now say, Captain Mort . . . aboard before we came here,’ Granville said, answering David’s question. ‘I think, considering Captain Mort’s considerable experience with dealing with our black brethren, he will be admirably suited to the task ahead of him. And I think your father was rather astute in recommending him to us.’

But David was not so sure about his father’s wisdom. His own discreet inquiries about the enigmatic man’s background had tended to paint a picture of a man with a dubious past. And there was the matter of his rather sudden resignation from the Queensland Native Mounted Police where it was rumoured, albeit unsubstantiated, that he had unnecessarily killed a trooper and he had been forced to tender his papers by his second-in-command.

And it was also rumoured that Mort was the illegitimate son of a serving girl from Sydney who had been dismissed when her unfortunate indiscretion with her employer could no longer be concealed from the man’s wife. The young girl had been thrown on the street and turned to prostitution in Sydney’s infamous Rocks, where Mort was born. But despite the man’s lowly origins he had to give Mort his due. He had been able to rise above his past to get where he was now.

Seeing Mort and Granville together in his office, David felt they were two men cut from the same cloth, except from vastly different sides of society, and it was a comparison that did not sit well with him. One Granville to deal with was bad enough, David thought, but another! However, his father had recommended the man for the position as captain of the
Osprey
, and his father was the ultimate decision maker in the family. His wishes were to be respected regardless of the doubts David harboured concerning Mort’s suitability.

David suddenly remembered the article he had been so engrossed in before his cousin’s arrival. ‘To digress for the moment, Granville,’ he said. ‘Have you read the report in the
Bulletin
covering the campaign in New Zealand?’

‘No. I haven’t had the chance as yet.’ Granville frowned. ‘Why, is there something I should know?’

‘Well, if it is of any interest,’ David replied, ‘I have just read that a Michael Maloney was reported killed in a skirmish with the Maoris last week in the Waikato campaign.’

‘Do I know the man?’ Granville queried and was slightly annoyed at his cousin’s theatricals.

‘Apparently you did,’ David answered, raising his eyebrows. ‘According to the report, the man known as Michael Maloney was discovered to be an alias for one Michael Duffy. The report also says that he is reported to be the same Michael Duffy wanted for questioning by Sydney police on a matter of the death of a man here last January.’

Granville tensed. He quickly uncrossed his legs, stood up and snatched the folded paper from his cousin’s desk. He flicked impatiently through the pages until he found the article reporting the Waikato campaign. As he scanned the report, his expression reflected his pleasure. So the Maoris had done what he had not been able to achieve – the death of Michael Duffy. The article also outlined how, after he had been killed, the soldier’s real identity had been exposed by a comrade with von Tempsky’s Forest Rangers. It was also reported that the man known as Michael Maloney – alias Duffy – had died in a courageous lone stand saving his comrades from a Maori ambush.

‘I think Fiona should be told the tragic news as soon as possible,’ Granville said smugly as he closed the paper. ‘I am sure she will need a couple of days to grieve for the loss of a dear friend.’

With the Irishman well and truly dead, he knew she would lose any last flame of secret hope that she might harbour for his return. Now Duffy was nothing more than a ghost and he had never known of a ghost being able to physically hurt the living.

Jack Horton stood at the top of the
Osprey
’s gangplank as the ship lay tied to the wharf. He stared down at the labourers manhandling the last of the supplies aboard for the sea voyage into the South Pacific. He watched curiously as two men on the wharf, carrying a strange stool-like bench between them, struggled up the gangway.

At first he did not recognise the wooden bench for what it was. Then, as its purpose dawned on him, he flinched. ‘A bloody whippin’ stool,’ he muttered uneasily. ‘The bastards got a whippin’ stool.’

Close behind the two sweating men came the new captain, dressed in the fine dark blue uniform of the merchant seaman. He carried a sword on his belt and glanced around the deck with an expression of possessive pride as he came aboard.

‘Good to have yer aboard, Cap’n,’ Horton said solicitously as he eyed the bench being taken below deck to the captain’s cabin. ‘’Ave’nt seen one of ’em in a long time.’

‘You must be Horton, the first mate,’ Mort said without extending his hand. ‘I want to see you in my cabin now.’

Horton followed Mort below and watched nervously as the two labourers placed the bench in the little space the cabin provided. It sat like some heathen altar with its timber smoothed to a dark polish from much brutal use in its bloody past.