Ghost Gum Valley (18 page)

‘Them whores all got aliases, mate.'

Marmaduke drew himself up to his full height. ‘Look, constable, my fiancée is a born lady, a damned English aristocrat in fact.'

The policeman gave him a squint-eyed stare. ‘Yeah? Then what's she doing
here
?'

Marmaduke's anger was on the brink. ‘Do you recognise her description or not?'

‘No such lady on my watch but we might have a relative of hers in the cells.'

‘A relative? Probably her servant. What's the charge?'

‘Causing a public nuisance. I locked this obstreperous person in the laundry closet to keep the other prisoners from
doing what they do best
, if you take my meaning.'

Marmaduke was appalled. He presumed this referred to sexual connection either in the context of rape or consent. ‘Why protect her from other females?'

The constable pursed his lips. ‘Well, sir. Some would say this prisoner's birth was an act of God, sir.'

Jesus. I knew I shouldn't have drunk that third bottle of champagne
.

Marmaduke gritted his teeth. ‘Please speak plainly, Constable.'

‘We come across this type in the cells, sir. More to be pitied than condemned. A half and half. Neither one thing nor t'other.' He added on a note of pride, ‘What us educated men call a homofrogdite, sir.'

Shit. He means hermaphrodite! She can't be. Or can she? Maybe this explains why the de Rollands were so eager to foist Isabel off on us.

‘What name is recorded on the charge sheet, constable?'

‘A blank, sir. Wouldn't tell me nothing. But it fought like a tomcat to hang on to this here carpetbag.'

Marmaduke discovered the contents were a grey lady's garment and three books. A quick examination revealed one was a scrapbook of Edmund Kean's career. The inside covers of the Bible and
The Complete Works of Shakespeare
contained bookplates in the name of Walter de Rolland.

‘That's her father's name. The person in the cells must be connected to her. I'll pay the fine to prevent this poor creature facing court and I'm happy to cover the costs of
your
inconvenience.'

Marmaduke had no doubt the sum of money he placed on the constable's desk was large enough to open the cell door for him. He was immediately conducted to a windowless room in the basement. When the door was closed behind him Marmaduke stood with folded arms but his decision to employ firm confrontation wavered at the sight of the pathetic figure huddled on a pile of dirty laundry.

‘Stand up and let's see you, eh, lad?'

The boy slowly rose to his feet. He was dressed in a loose woollen jerkin over a pair of skin-tight breeches, torn stockings and buckled
shoes. A floppy tartan hunting cap covered his hair and ears. The pinched white face was dirty and the full lips swollen and stained with dried blood. But it was the eyes that startled Marmaduke. One was so badly swollen it looked like a rotten egg resting on a purple bruise. The other hooded eye was of a startling blue-green colour and filled with such fear that Marmaduke immediately softened his tone.

‘Well, lad, I give you my word I'll pay your fine and get you out of here and properly fed. On condition you explain who and why you are here.'

‘Who's asking? Are you a policeman?' the deep gravelly voice snapped back at him.

Marmaduke gave a snort halfway between amusement and irritation. ‘The hide of you! No, I'm no trap. As it happens, I'm Marmaduke Gamble.'

‘Then God help you.' The deep voice cracked. ‘What's wrong with you, can't you recognise a lady when you see one?'

The tartan cap was whipped off to reveal a head piled up with jagged, spiky hair that resembled the dirty spokes of a wheel. She smelt as bad as a wet, mangy dog.

Marmaduke looked her over and said in a tone of faint distaste. ‘So it
is
you! Jesus Christ!'

‘Wrong again. The name is Isabel de Rolland.'

She stood swaying on her heels and when her face suddenly drained to a deathly white she pitched backwards in a dead faint. Marmaduke leapt forwards just in time to break her fall before her head hit the flagstones.

Slumped unconscious at his feet, Isabel's jerkin fell open to reveal two small buds of breasts pressed against the male under-vest. The breeches were as tight as a second skin but the ‘cod piece' of padding she'd evidently put in place to suggest a penis had slipped askew.

She's only got one redeeming feature. Those legs were born to strut the stage in breeches roles.

‘Now let's be getting you to the hotel,' Marmaduke said, amused despite himself.

Isabel stirred and groaned faintly. ‘Is there food there? I'm so hungry I could die.'

She passed out cold before Marmaduke could answer, so he
scooped her up in his arms, surprised at how light she was even when unconscious and a dead weight.

As he carried her into the sunlight she struggled and cried out in alarm, ‘My books!'

After Marmaduke retrieved the carpetbag she cradled it in her arms like a lost baby and once inside the carriage fell asleep, exhausted.

Marmaduke climbed up on the seat beside Thomas, who despite his bemused expression said nothing.

‘Your restraint is admirable, Thomas. Yes, this
is
my aristocratic fiancée.' He suddenly laughed out loud. ‘For once in my life I wish Garnet was here. I'd love to have seen the look on his face when he saw his prized English rose!'

Marmaduke carefully avoided the scrutiny of the housemaids and carried Isabel upstairs to her suite undetected. Normally he would have called a female servant to undress the girl, but the story of how the de Rolland bride had met her fiancé wearing boy's clothing, sporting a black eye and straight from a night in gaol would be circulated around Sydney by sundown.

So he undressed Isabel himself, preserving what little modesty she had left by rolling her onto her stomach to shake her free of her male breeches. The rear view of her naked body caused a wry smile.

Her face is on a par with a Madagascar ape but her bum is delightfully female.

Rolling her naked body beneath the bedcovers he locked the door behind him and slipped down the back stairs to the kitchen. He tried out a few sentences of French on Emile the chef who looked bemused by the Australian accent flattening his mother tongue but insisted on assembling platters of food.

After placing a tray by Isabel's bedside with cheeses,
petit choux
, tropical fruit and a decanter of red wine, Marmaduke hung a sign scrawled with ‘Do not disturb' from her door handle. Back in his own chambers, he was confronted by the forgotten cabin trunk. Within minutes he had expertly unpicked the padlock, a trick learnt during his own brief sojourn in prison. His examination of the pitiful contents shocked him. He sank a glass of wine then strode around the room, venting his anger in a monologue before an invisible audience.

‘The de Rollands are an honourable family, eh? Garnet provided generous funds for a fashionable trousseau. Those aristocratic bastards must have pocketed every penny. Why did they humiliate her? Sent her down here with wretched clothes no self-respecting pawnbroker would flog. No wonder she wanted this junked overboard.'

Marmaduke deliberated on whether to open the letter sealed in red wax. Isabel had clearly chosen not to read it, a fact that intrigued him. He had so few clues about her he decided to grab whatever came his way. He tore it open. The handwriting was idiosyncratic. Letters sloped crazily left and right and were embroidered with capital letters. His study of graphology made him distinctly biased against the writer.

 

Ma petite Cousine,

 

I cannot convey what conflicting emotions your Departure aroused in me. Take comfort that in marrying into that Barbaric Gamble family you've saved our Uncle from debtor's prison and secured our Ancestral estate for my Inheritance.

I swear on the Royal graves of our Plantagenet Ancestors that within the year I will come to New South Wales to reclaim you. The love that binds us can never be broken. Remember the Curse you carry. You will Destroy any man who loves you. Only a man of your own Blood is strong enough to withstand that Curse. You are Flesh of my Flesh. Think of this Marriage as your Act of Penance – to your Beloved Cousin.

 

Marmaduke tried to imagine the faceless writer of this letter standing before him.

‘So Isabel de Rolland is flesh of your flesh, is she? You sold her in marriage to us
barbaric Gambles
to pay off your debts, yet you didn't even have the common decency to clothe her in the French wardrobe we paid for!' He tossed the letter aside as if it was contaminated. ‘What a goddamned ego! Now this beloved cousin Silas is planning to do the poor girl a big favour. Sail down here to reclaim her, will he? Well he can bloody well think again. First he'll have to get his royal Plantagenet body past this Currency Lad!'

Chapter 12

Isabel woke up as a stranger in a strange room. She was alarmed by the thought she may have been sleepwalking again. Unwanted memories flashed through her mind.

One minute I was seated on the wharf, a perfect lady, even if I was dressed as a boy. All I did was try to stop two drunken mariners molesting a young girl. Then one said something odd – ‘Put your dukes up, ya queer'. The next moment he punched me in the eye.

Isabel gingerly fingered the puffy flesh around her eye, overcome by the shame of being frog-marched to the Watch House by two hefty constables with the Yankee whalers and the girl she now knew to be a prostitute. Afraid her voice would betray her gender she had refused to answer questions. She smiled at the thought of the policeman's odd expression on finding lady's unmentionables in her carpetbag.

Being dressed as a boy gave me a wonderful sense of freedom. If I lived as a boy then I'd be safe from men. I'd never have to marry!

Sitting upright in bed she was horrified to discover she was naked.

‘Who undressed me? Please God, tell me I didn't spend the night with
him
?'

She had only one clear impression of Marmaduke Gamble. Arrogance! She felt humiliated by the way his nose had twitched in distaste at the rank smell of her and the memory now made her desperate to bathe. But how?

The elegance of this unknown room surprised her. The Regency fabrics and furniture would not have looked out of place in Uncle Godfrey's London villa. But there was no sign of a washbasin and jug.
How uncivilised: don't these Colonials ever wash?

Isabel sprang from bed to discover her carpetbag was missing. So where were her clothes?

Tentatively peering around the door to an adjoining room, she squealed with delight – a bathroom with splendid modern plumbing and elegant brass fittings! She shied away from the mirror to avoid
the reflection of her beaten face, but immediately ran a bath, exclaiming in ecstasy over the bars of perfumed soap, the first since the
Susan
set sail.

What luxury! She washed her hair twice to free it from the matted combination of sweat, grime and saltwater accumulated during the voyage. After ducking beneath her bathwater like one of the playful dolphins that had raced beside the
Susan,
she scrubbed her body until her skin glowed pink. She now felt courageous enough to examine her bruised face in the mirror.

Maybe it wouldn't be such fun to be a boy. I'd always be on the wrong end of a fight.

She carefully washed the dried blood from her lips and bathed her swollen eye in cold water until she could
almost
peer out of the slit.

Clean, shining hair restored a degree of dignity. To be dirty was the most demoralising thing in the world.
How degraded women prisoners must feel being unable to bathe for months on a convict vessel
.

With no clothes to wear she improvised by pulling a sheet from the bed and winding it around her body in a makeshift sari. Examining a brand new silver-backed hand mirror, brush and comb set, she discovered they were engraved with the initials I.A.G. Beside them was a card that read,
Welcome to Australia. Forgive me jumping the gun in adding the G for Gamble. I trust you are comfortable in my new hotel
. It was signed
Garnet Gamble
in a different hand from that of the rest of the note.

At least Marmaduke's father has some kindly instincts, ‘Colonial barbarian' or not.

Now she felt ready to tackle breakfast from the tray that must have been left for her while she slept. A wine decanter was an odd substitute for a water jug but the warmth of the wine coursed through her body to give her Dutch courage.

These Colonials must drink wine as liberally as the French. But I have a raging thirst so who am I to quibble?

Startled by the heavy knock at the door she hastily secured her ‘sari', seated herself on a winged armchair and hastily swallowed the last mouthful of breakfast.