Flight of the Eagle (42 page)

Peter glanced up sharply at Gordon. He was staring with rapt interest at the cave wall. The sun was now at such an angle that it briefly flooded the gloomy interior with a golden glow and the figures seemed to come awake and take on a life of their own. Hunts continued as the stick-like figures pursued forever the giant kangaroos; corroborees danced and an eagle soared against a black sun over the red earth. ‘You feel that, too,’ he said softly. ‘Like a force guiding our actions in ways we are not aware of.’

‘Like I had a fear I might end up killing you,’ Gordon answered quietly. ‘Or you me. That's why I had to come to you alone and prove to myself we could break the power of the spirits.’

‘You are starting to think like a blackfella,’ Peter chuckled softly. ‘You sound like you believe in blackfella magic.’

‘Maybe I remember the things Wallarie taught us when we were kids,’ Gordon said, as he turned to glance over at Peter sitting by the fire. ‘And I'm not a blackfella like you,’ he added with a wry grin. ‘You come with me and I'll do as you say. Wallarie can keep his freedom.’

Peter rose from the earth and walked over to where his clothes lay in a heap with his rifle. He dressed quickly and handed his rifle to Gordon who asked sardonically, ‘Why is it that I have the feeling you outwitted me from the moment I set foot in this place?’

‘I was much smarter at school than you,’ Peter replied with a grin.

‘I suppose that could be true.’

The two men emerged from the cave into the brightness of the early morning sunshine and they walked side by side through the scrub, chatting as they had when they were growing up together. Gordon even discussed how Kate might be able to get the best lawyers from Brisbane to represent Peter at his trial. And Peter talked on about the coming wedding between his best friend and his sister.

As they walked down to the waterholes they were once again the two boyhood friends who had sworn eternal friendship by the campfire of the Darambal man. They laughed together for the first time in many years.

But their laughter was short lived as they walked into the camp. With blood on his face Wallarie lay on the earth surrounded by the troopers who greeted Gordon with the announcement that they had caught the infamous Aboriginal bushranger attempting to free Matilda.

Then it all happened so fast!

Gordon James would be forever haunted with the dreams of those fateful seconds. Peter snatched a rifle left leaning against a tree by a careless trooper and yelled for Wallarie to run. The old warrior rolled to his feet and grabbed a revolver from the hand of a trooper who had been distracted by the sight of Peter pointing a rifle at them. Each second seemed like a minute.

A trooper raised his rifle and Peter swung round to point the rifle directly at the man. Gordon instinctively snatched at his own holstered pistol and found it pointed at his boyhood friend. ‘No!’ he screamed as he noticed Peter squeezing the trigger for the lethal shot. ‘Peter, no!’ he screamed again, and in the blink of an eye, he fired. He was hardly aware of the kick in his hand as the weapon discharged. In his horror he was vaguely aware of the shattering impact of the bullet striking Peter in the side of the head and his friend's blood spattering his outstretched arm. Peter crumpled and the unfired rifle fell from his lifeless hands.

Wallarie was gone.

But Peter lay dead at Gordon's feet as Matilda wailed her grief. With the fury of a wild animal she flung herself on his body and wrapped her manacled hands around his bloody head. Stunned by the speed of the events, Gordon stood frozen, his pistol dangling at his side whilst the troopers scattered in a desperate attempt to get to their horses. But the wily Darambal man had cut them loose and run them off as he escaped on one of the police mounts.

The gun fell from Gordon's hand as he reeled away. He staggered like a drunken man until his legs gave way and he collapsed to the hot earth where he sat staring back at the woman who smothered Peter's body. Around him troopers cursed as they ran after their horses in the scrub.

Something unexplainable had reached out and touched them with its bloody hand. Just as it had years earlier to touch their fathers' lives. It was an unrelenting curse on their lives that was at its strongest at the source itself. Sick with the terrible realisation of what had occurred in the beat of a heart, he was barely aware that something hard and smooth lay under his hand. He sat transfixed. He forced himself to look down. He gasped at what he saw. The skull of a child lay in the sandy earth.
They had camped on the site of the original slaughter of the Nerambura clan.

Duncan Cameron was warned by the yapping of the station dogs that the police patrol was returning. He met the men riding in and noticed that a body was strapped over the front of the saddle on the horse ridden by Inspector Gordon James and guessed that the police had found one of the men they had gone in search of. But there was a sombre mood hanging over the returning patrol that Duncan had not expected. Behind a trooper rode a girl whose features indicated that she was of mixed race.

Gordon reined his horse up to the front gate to the homestead yard but did not dismount.

‘See you got one of them,’ Duncan commented and the young inspector nodded. ‘You taking him back with you?’ he asked, as he stared at the body slung over the horse in front of Gordon's saddle.

‘No. I want to bury him here. At Glen View,’ Gordon replied. ‘The place where his grandfather Tom Duffy is buried. I'll need to borrow your man to show me where his grave is located.’

‘I can't see any harm in your request, Inspector James,’ Duncan said. ‘Seems only fit he lay with kin under the sod. What is going to happen to the girl?’ She had an intelligent look about her that impressed him.

‘I was hoping you might be able to use her around here when we're gone. She speaks good English and I've been told she's pretty handy at cooking. She lived with an old prospector and looked after him. Think she might be expecting a kid to Peter Duffy. That a problem for you?’

‘That's not a problem,’ the Glen View manager replied. ‘Missus Cameron is expecting and we might have need of the services of a wet nurse in the future. She can stay on here and generally help my wife out during her confinement.’

‘Good!’ Gordon grunted, and issued orders for the girl to be released into the manager's employment. At least Peter's child would be born on Nerambura land, he thought bitterly. And Cameron appeared to be a fair man who would look after her.

Before he left Glen View, Gordon was taken to the place where Patrick Duffy and his faithful Aboriginal friend Old Billy were buried. The graves were hardly discernible in the clearing. Time and the elements had reclaimed the once freshly turned earth and covered the ground in wild grasses. Only the small piles of stones gave a true indication as to the graves of the two teamsters – murdered by Morrison Mort years earlier, and buried by Tom Duffy.

A grave was dug a few feet from where Patrick and Old Billy's bones lay in the earth and Peter Duffy was laid to rest beside a paternal grandfather he had never met. The tragic irony was not lost on the young police officer.

Nor did his order to call off the search for Wallarie come as a surprise to his men. They also began to realise the terrible coincidences of their hunt. Whispered stories by the campfire embellished the power of the curse. It was concurred that it would be extremely unlucky should they persist in going after the old Darambal bushranger.
Let some other patrol finish the job
, they said amongst themselves.

When the burial was completed Gordon led his patrol north to Townsville, where he now had to confront Sarah and tell her that he had killed her brother. As he rode with his men he did so with little conversation except to issue orders. He was racked with grief for what had occurred – and for what was to be with Sarah.

Wallarie came in the night. He did so with great trepidation as he knew he was breaking the taboo of being in the presence of the dead. He sat a distance from the freshly dug grave and chanted a death song to see Peter's spirit on its way into the Dreaming. At least he would go as an initiated Darambal man, he consoled himself as he sat cross-legged in the dark.

Soon the sun would rise and the old warrior knew he must once again trek from the lands that had been his people's hunting grounds. The safe places in the colony were shrinking as more and more Europeans settled the far places of the horizon. Where would he go? The spirits of the Dreaming no longer spoke to him. Where would he be safe to live out his years? Never before had he felt so alone.

The sun rose over the plains and Wallarie rose to face the hill towering over the scrub. Was it a whisper on the breeze that spoke to him? ‘Whitefella not catch old Wallarie,’ he swore to the ancestor spirits. The spirits of his people had called to him from a long way and he would go where he would be safe. He would go, where an old promise had been made, to a spirit man of the white man's religion.

Maybe this would be the last time he would know the freedom of his traditional life, he thought. Or maybe not. Scooping up his spears he took the first step to seek out a man who had come from over the seas.

FORTY-THREE

T
he library of her mother's home held sad and bitter memories for Fiona. Here she had experienced the terrible confrontation with her mother, almost a quarter of a century earlier, when she had been a girl in love with the handsome Michael Duffy.

Once again she stood in the sombre light of the library, confronting her estranged mother. The two women had lost little of the venom they held for each other. They exchanged poisonous glances across the room.

‘You may sit if you wish,’ Enid said coldly as she took a chair behind the big wooden desk. ‘I will have Betsy bring us tea.’

‘Thank you,’ Fiona replied without any sign of emotion. She could not bring herself to add
mother.

Enid rang a tiny hand bell and Betsy entered the room. Enid issued her desire to take tea in the library. The maid bobbed her head and when she was gone Enid broke the icy silence. ‘Your desire to see me is somewhat unexpected, Fiona,’ she said. ‘Has there been a death in the family?’ she questioned sarcastically.

‘I no more desire to be here in your presence than you desire mine,’ Fiona replied, facing up to her mother. ‘I requested this meeting because of recent events that I am sure affect you as much as they affect me.’

‘From that I presume you mean the news of my grandson's safe return to his regiment?’

‘Your
grandson?’ Fiona spluttered with a short and bitter laugh. ‘You mean
my
son.’

You gave him up when he was born, Fiona,’ Enid retorted. ‘Or have you forgotten?’

Fiona fought to keep down her bitter rage but paled visibly as the blood drained from her face. Not only had she lost her baby boy but also her beloved nanny, a woman who had been a mother figure to her. She composed herself and the blood returned to her cheeks. ‘I know the lies you have told my son,
Mother,’
she replied. ‘I know that you have convinced him that I never wanted him. As much as you never wanted me in your life. Oh, I know you have told him of how I plotted to have him sent to one of those dreadful baby farms so that I could marry Granville.’

‘And did you not agree to get rid of Patrick?’ Enid countered triumphantly.

‘It was not that way’ she whispered in a choked voice. ‘I was young and confused. And
you
took advantage of my confusion.
You
convinced me of how important it was to dispose of my son to a good family, for his benefit as much as mine. You know I would never have let him go if there was the slightest chance he might be sent to a baby farm.
You
know that, Mother! So long as God is my witness, and yours!’

‘I do not know that,’ Enid countered and Fiona detected just the slightest quaver in her mother's voice.

Enid was puzzled by the strange expression that had crept into her daughter's face. Had she given away the guilt that had haunted her for so many years? The guilt that was hers every time she looked into the emerald green eyes of her grandson and saw a part of her own daughter there. The eyes of the man whom she had come to love more than any other human alive? How ironic life was when the object of shame became the subject of pride!

‘I have the means to rid you of your guilt and shame, Mother,’ Fiona said softly, as if reading Enid's thoughts. ‘That is why I have come here.’

‘I have no guilt for anything I have done in my life,’ her mother replied stiffly. ‘I have nothing to be ashamed of.’

‘Well, if that is so, then I have come here with an offer that I know will at least appeal to the high price you put on the Macintosh name. I may be in a position to give you the majority holdings in the family's estates. All I ask in return, is that you tell my son the truth of those years past.’

‘How can you?’ Enid scoffed dismissing her daughter's appeal. ‘How can you when you treacherously sold your shares to your husband? Or has that slipped your mind?’

‘Has it slipped your mind that my daughters hold two-thirds of a third share in the estate?’

‘I suspect your husband also knows that,’ Enid replied facetiously. ‘And, knowing his penchant for dubious business dealings, I also suspect that he is poised to use his position to buy out Helen and Dorothy's shares at the first possible opportunity.’

Fiona smiled grimly and Enid could see that her daughter had already thought of this. ‘He is currently unable to raise the money to buy out my daughters' shares. But I have the capital from my transfer of shares to him and that allows me to make an offer to my daughters that I am sure they will accept.’

Enid gazed across the dimly lit room with just the glimmer of a growing respect. But she was confused as to why her daughter had sold her one-third share to her husband in the first place. ‘It has always bewildered me why you would give your husband so much power. Did you do so to hurt me further or to destroy the Macintosh name?’