Ironbark (69 page)

‘Leslie!' she cried out in a strangled whisper. ‘It's coming now!'

She clutched her skirt to her thighs in a useless attempt at camouflage. For the second time Keziah's waters had broken early. Jake's babe was demanding to be born.

Pandemonium broke out as the court was hurriedly cleared. Under shouted instructions from Dr Ross, two men formed a human cradle to
carry Keziah from the court. Leslie ordered them to take her to the nearby inn, but one English guard argued the toss.

‘Call yourself men?' Keziah shouted. ‘Do you want me to give birth in the street?'

The guard was a stickler for the law. ‘We must take you back to your cell. Judge ain't yet passed sentence.'

Keziah grabbed the man by his ears and pushed her face into his. ‘I've already killed one man. Do you want to be the next?'

Leslie Ross roared at him. ‘Damn your eyes! Do as the lady says or I'll charge you dogs with obstruction!'

Keziah's nails dug into the man's ears. ‘Get me to the Surveyor-General's Inn
now
or I'll put a Romani curse on you. I'll cover you with boils so bad no one will be able to tell your face from your arse!'

The guards' jaws dropped. Leslie thundered out the order. ‘You heard the lady. Full speed ahead!'

They carried her at breakneck speed, tumbling through the entrance of the Surveyor-General's Inn with Keziah yelling blue murder. Drinkers scattered in all directions.

Keziah grabbed hold of the billiard table with both hands and refused to let go. ‘The babe's coming – now!'

The guards dumped her onto the table and fled for the exit. The publican's wife rushed in ready to do the doctor's bidding.

Leslie rolled up his sleeves. ‘Hot water, sheets, towels! On the double!'

As Leslie was removing Keziah's undergarments a drunk stuck his head around the door. He looked at the scene in disbelief and hollered out, ‘No women allowed in the pool room!'

Keziah released a mighty bellow and the drunk vanished from sight.

Remembering Gabriel's birth, Keziah rode every contraction like giant waves that would take her to the shore. In a brief moment of respite she gripped Leslie's hand.

‘I beg you! Don't ever tell anyone I said all those terrible things! Promise me!'

‘Believe me, lass, I've heard worse language from a priest on the operating table. Right now I want you to do your damnedest
not
to push for a bit, even if you feel you must. The babe's coming feet first. I need to give it a wee helping hand.'

‘
Mi-duvel
, it's a breech?' She bit her lip and made every effort to restrain her violent urge to bear down. ‘I don't give a tinker's damn which end comes out first – just get it out!'

His words conveyed quiet confidence. ‘Right you are, lass. Coming, ready or not.'

As she felt something very large and determined pushing its way out of her womb, she closed her eyes and begged her ancestors,
Please don't let Jake's babe die!

Leslie's face was red and his beard damp with sweat as he worked to free the squirming wet mass from between her thighs.

Keziah lifted her head and tried to look between her raised knees to see what he was doing. ‘I don't care if it's a boy or girl. Is it
alive
?'

As if in answer she heard a gutsy wail that sounded sweeter than an angels' choir. Leslie wrapped its slimy little body in a towel and returned her joyous smile. He placed the lusty red-headed baby Viking in her arms, swaddled in a towel emblazoned with the trademark Albion Ale.

Keziah looked into a tiny face that was bright red with outrage.

‘I don't know who you are, little one, but you're
very
clever to begin life on the billiard table of your papa's favourite inn.'

‘Aye, you've done well, lass. A fine, healthy boy. Made his entrance kicking and screaming – he's got every mark of Jake's bloody-minded determination.'

Keziah gave the babe her breast to calm him and tenderly whispered his true Romani name. ‘That will trick
The Beng
, if the devil should come looking for you.'

Mr Harper, the publican, stood in the doorway, arms folded across his chest like a proud father. Leslie responded warmly to his invitation to wet the baby's head.

‘Thank you kindly, Sir. A neat whisky would go down quite nicely. It's been a damned difficult day, one way or another.'

Harper brought him two double whiskies and the bottle they came from. Leslie raised the first glass in the direction of the prison walls.

‘To you, Jake,
Slainte
!' He tossed it down and before downing the second one, tactfully lowered his voice to distract Keziah from her inevitable sentence. ‘Above all, lass, here's to your freedom!'

Keziah was so exhausted she scarcely had strength enough to hold the baby. ‘We both know what's ahead, Doctor. I told the truth and put my head in a noose.'

She grabbed his arm, her fingernails biting into his flesh. ‘For God's sake, don't let Jake play the hero and try to rescue me! They'll shoot him down like a dog.'

‘I promise you he'll be safe. Now rest easy, lass. You've earned it.'

‘No! I'm a lost cause. I've ruined everyone's lives.'

He gently removed the babe from her arms. ‘Tomorrow the world will be a better place.'

‘Tomorrow will never come,' said Keziah.

Lying in darkness in a dank, underground storage room of Berrima Gaol, Jake felt as though he was in the bowels of the earth as he hacked at the final inches he needed to dislodge the sandstone block – Will Martens's escape route.

His eyes watered with sandstone dust as he pushed the stone free. He heard it land with a soft thud on the grass outside. The blast of fresh air was sweeter than wine. He anxiously re-examined the hole.

Easy for Will, he's built like a slip of a girl. The hole bloody better be big enough to squeeze my carcass out.

Inch by inch he forced his body through the oblong hole. When he eventually landed on the other side he swore in triumph under his breath.

The night sky was peppered with stars and a crescent moon emerged from behind the clouds. Jake gave his eyes time to grow accustomed to the darkness outside, which was marginally lighter than the storeroom. It was then he saw a pair of boots. The flare of a pipe in the darkness. And a voice.

‘I thought you might try to use Jabber Jabber's escape route.'

Jake looked at the chaplain, defiant. ‘I warned you I'd kill to get my woman out of here and I meant it. I'll have to silence
you
, Rev, if you're silly enough to try and stop me.'

‘Go ahead and try, Jakob. You're not leaving this place while I'm alive.' He added with emphasis, ‘Not
tonight
you won't.'

Jake's acute disappointment turned to sarcasm. ‘Is tomorrow all right with you, Rev?'

‘You're no fool when you stop to use your brains, son, so hear me out. You owe it to your woman and your children to stay alive. What chance do you have if you bolt now? If you're dead lucky you'd get to see Keziah once before you're recaptured. Then you'd be packed off to Norfolk Island and as a second offender you'd die there in chains.'

‘You heard the jury, Rev. Guilty. I gave her my word she wouldn't give birth in gaol.'

‘You got your wish, son.' The chaplain passed on all the details of the birth that Leslie Ross had asked him to convey to Jake.

‘Jesus wept. A son! Why didn't you bloody tell me?'

For once the chaplain lost his temper. ‘Because you bolted, you daft fool! I've been searching for you
inside
to tell you to hold your fire! I told you there was a strong rumour you're likely to be released, but no, Jakob Andersen has to play the bloody hero and dig his way out! Do you want the troopers to shoot holes in your damned fool head?'

‘Watch your language, Rev. Your bishop will rip off your dog-collar!'

Jake could not wipe the grin off his face as the news sank in. ‘A son, eh?'

‘Now the trick is to get you back to your cell, past a guard who's none too partial to Currency Lads who are matey with bushrangers.'

‘I
could
go back the same way I came through the hole,' Jake offered.

‘Do it my way. If a guard challenges you, I'll say we're on our way to confession. Heaven knows with your record that would take a month of Sundays.'

‘Right,' said Jake. ‘But first I've got to push the stone back for the next poor bastard to escape.'

• • • 

‘Don't push your luck with me, son!'

The sky was a cloudless stretch of icy blue, so high it seemed to stretch to a universe beyond the heavens. Jake winced in the face of the bright sunlight as he was frogmarched across the courtyard.

His shaven scalp itched and he would have welcomed a delousing
almost as much as a cold Albion Ale. He had just spent a week in the blackness of solitary confinement in ‘the hole' as punishment for his involuntary ‘blasphemous utterance' when a guard prodded his groin with a truncheon.

Only one hour ago, the prison superintendent had ordered Jake to be pulled out of ‘the hole' and announced he was free. It seemed the reason was due to fresh evidence given by Daniel and Iago's widow at Keziah's trial, which had overturned Iago's previous testimony.

Jake couldn't fathom it.
But who am I to argue with a full pardon? I'd best clear out before they change their bloody minds.

He stood with the closed prison gates at his back, uncertain of how to make his first move.

Keziah and his baby son had already been transferred to Parramatta. Her three-year sentence in the Parramatta Female Factory was considered light, influenced by her condition as a nursing mother and the great provocation she had suffered at the hands of the Devil Himself. But three years was no consolation to Jake knowing how the loss of freedom would crush Keziah's spirit.

He was about to set off on foot for the Surveyor-General's Inn when he was met by the Doc's buggy in company with a second saddled horse – Horatio.

He masked his surprise and gratitude with a casual greeting. ‘What kept you, Doc?'

‘I indulged in a bit of carousing to celebrate your release, lad.'

At the Surveyor-General's Inn, Leslie ordered a bottle of Scotch whisky. Both silently acknowledged Jake's tension. Prison did that to a man, no matter how heavy his bravado.

‘Get that into you to celebrate your firstborn son! Keziah's just fine!'

‘Thank Christ for that.' Jake felt nervous about the odds against his son. Few babes survived a premature birth. His mother had lost two. ‘Think he'll make it, Doc?'

‘Make it? He's the toughest little bairn I've ever delivered!'

Jake sank the first whisky with satisfaction. Leslie refilled his glass and eyed him carefully as he recounted Keziah's and Daniel's testimonies.

‘I dinna doubt your feelings, lad. Gem and Will Martens being friends of yours. It took guts for Daniel to expose Iago at great risk to himself.'

Jake seethed with frustration that he had not been the one to avenge Gem. ‘Pity the bloody law hasn't found a way for blokes like Iago to be executed twice.'

‘Aye, it did. In previous centuries he'd have been hanged, drawn and quartered.'

On their third whisky they reflected on the monster that Iago had become. Was he born crazy, evil or had he been brutalised in childhood or by the system?

‘I've seen sadists like him the world over,' said Leslie. ‘But I discovered Iago was born of the Quality. He was cast out by a family known to Jonstone. His name was changed and he was banished to the ends of the earth to cover some heinous crime. A man so twisted he inflicted sadistic punishment on his convicts to conceal the instincts he was unable to face in himself.'

Jake scowled. ‘I don't give a bugger
why
he did it. He didn't deserve to breathe the same air as the rest of the human race.'

‘A priest would claim every man has one redeeming feature.'

‘Yeah?' Jake thought for a minute. ‘The best you can say about Iago is that he'll be pinned down by a tombstone for eternity.'

Later, when they were travelling down the road to Ironbark, Leslie told him how Daniel had wanted to bring Jake a special welcome-home gift.

‘A new Belgian percussion pocket pistol with a spring bayonet. I persuaded the fool if you were caught carrying arms today the traps would kill you.'

‘A bayonet, eh? That will come in handy to spring Kez out of the Factory!'

Leslie wore his wise owl look. ‘Bran killed the fatted calf to celebrate your freedom.'

Jake shook his head. ‘Nice thought but what good is freedom when Kez can't share it with me? I'm off to Ironbark Farm to collect my kids from Polly Doyle. Poor little buggers must feel like orphans.'

‘I took care of that. The bairns and your
vardo
are waiting for ye at Bran's forge.'

They separated at the crossroads and Leslie drove west to perform an operation. The second bottle of whisky he had placed in Jake's saddlebag ensured that Jake was mellow by sundown when he spotted Bran's forge. Pearl and Gabriel sat like two little birds on the sliprail fence, squawking their welcome to him.

The living quarters of the forge house were decorated with streamers. The Doc hadn't been joking about the fatted calf. Bran was turning it on a spit over an open fire. Daniel was unable to speak but he gave a silent grin of welcome as he placed a pannikin of wine in Jake's hand.

Jake downed the contents then pointed the empty mug at the spit. ‘Well there's
my
dinner. What are you lot having?'

The children were all over him, laughing and asking questions, and for their sake he tried to appear relaxed and confident, ironing out their anxious questions about Mama and life in gaol. Many bottles of Albion Ale and wine were needed to wash down the fatted calf. After the meal raucous singing broke out accompanied by Gabriel. His new violin was a gift from one of Scotty the Shepherd's mates, a fiddler who had done time at Gideon Park and was grateful for Iago's death.