Shadow of the Osprey (41 page)

W
ithin the walls of her tiny room at the top of the stairs Miss Gertrude Pitcher sat at the edge of her bed and stared at the flicker of the lamp wick. Her position as governess that Missus Penelope had secured for her was everything she could have dreamed of. The children were a delight and the master and mistress of the house were wonderfully generous. The Baroness certainly had a considerable amount of influence in Sydney social circles.

But Gertrude hated being alone when the night came and her busy duties caring for the children were at a temporary standstill. For it was in the dark hours of the night that the memory of a great betrayal crept into her room to sit at the end of the bed and torment her with overpowering guilt. Now she was exposed to a truly close family, the torment seemed to be greater, and she often cried alone in the privacy of her tiny room. Mister Granville White’s threat – to do her a terrible mischief – should she tell Missus White of what had occurred in the library with Dorothy was rapidly fading in its ability to terrify her anymore. But the guilt she lived with every time she looked into the innocent faces of her young charges in this new household was far worse than anything Mister White could do to her.

Gertrude turned down the wick on the lamp by her bed and undressed in the dark. She slipped into a long nightdress and crawled between the crisp sheets of her single bed. She lay staring in the dark. Weeks had passed and still Dorothy’s screams of despair and pain echoed in her mind. Gertrude twisted and turned as she vainly attempted to stop the screams in her head. The anguished, pain-stricken face of the little girl floated near the ceiling and Gertrude clenched her eyes shut to make it go away. But the tormented face remained in her head and she cried out in her despair.

Was not the desertion of a soldier in the Queen’s army an aberrant crime punishable by death, she thought, as she threw back the bed sheets and placed her feet on the cold floor. Nigh on thirty years she had devoted her life to children. She had no other family other than a brother in England. She had always been alone in the colonies, except for the children she had raised for other people – children who had grown to adults and loved her for the maternal concern she had lavished on them.

Gertrude reached for the lamp and lit the wick. The room was filled with a soft light and the demons dissolved. The time had come to stop fearing Mister White. She would leave this place and go to one where he could no longer hurt her with his threats. Before she did, however, she would expose the man feted to become a knight of the realm for what he was – a truly evil man with no soul.

For a long time the governess had known this time would come. She had prepared herself carefully, and had all that she needed hidden in the room.

Calmly Gertrude changed from her night wear into the best dress she owned. She pinned back her hair into a bun and sat down at the table in her room. From a drawer under the table she took writing paper and by the light of her lamp she wrote a short letter.

When the letter was written she placed it in an envelope and wrote across the front ‘Missus Fiona White’.

B
y mid-morning Michael and his party found the going harder. The rainforest closed against them with a tangle of vines and brush as they descended from the ridge and into the narrow valley below. Under the canopy of the close-packed trees, they sweltered in the still, humid air.

The stagnation in the valley brought back terrible memories to Luke. He vividly remembered similar conditions years earlier when he had trekked across the mountains west of Port Douglas to the dry plains and broad valleys, south of the Palmer River.

In the late afternoon Michael called a halt at the edge of a mountain stream and their battle with the undergrowth and scrub of the valley was temporarily set aside while water canteens were refilled from the stream that gurgled crystal clear over a rock and pebble bed. With sweet notes it swept along fallen leaves from the forest giants and swirled around rocks where tiny shrimp-like creatures scuttled out of sight of predators.

Hue modestly excused herself to go into the bushes while the men stripped to wallow in the shallow stream and wash the cuts and leech bites that covered their sweat-grimed bodies. The water soothed their tired bodies, lulling the bushmen into a lethargy. But Hue’s agonised screams galvanised the men into action. They tumbled from the stream snatching their clothes and rifles as they ran to her.

John had been standing guard whilst the other three bushmen had been bathing and was the first to reach Hue. She stood with her pants around her ankles and clawed frantically at her arms and legs.

‘Jesus!’ Henry gasped. ‘She’s brushed up against a stinging tree.’ The nettle-like leaves were covered in tiny glass-like spikes and Christie shouted a warning to the others to be careful not to go near.

The pain inflicted by the leaves was excruciating. The young woman’s delicate skin was particularly vulnerable, and such was the extent of the searing pain, that she was not even aware that her pants were still around her ankles as John gripped her wrists to stop her scratching any further. He pulled her away from the tree and sat her down in a small clearing. ‘It will sting and hurt but it will not kill you,’ he said, as tears of pain and confusion welled in her eyes. ‘You have been stung by the leaves of a tree.’ Hue responded positively to his soothing words and fought to control her panic while the men averted their eyes to her nakedness, a reflex action to years of learned respect for the sanctity of a woman’s body.

‘We’re going to have to rest up here,’ Michael said flatly, ‘until the girl gets over the worst of the stinging.’

‘How long?’ Luke asked, as he gazed through the gloom of green foliage. He was half-expecting to see Mort and his men close behind them.

‘Not long. Maybe half an hour,’ Michael replied. ‘Means we will have to send somebody back the way we came to stand guard.’

‘I’ll go,’ Luke volunteered.

John had quickly stripped Hue of her clothes and explained that they would need scrubbing in the stream to wash away any nettle barbs. She whimpered, and her face was contorted with pain as she gripped his big hand, as a child would an adult. Her dark eyes held his as if she were imploring him to take away the agony. But he felt helpless. There was very little he could do but empathise – and wish he could take on her pain himself.

He sat Hue gently on the bank of the mountain stream and placed his shirt around her slim body. Although the coarse shirt helped keep her warm she still shivered uncontrollably from the effects of both the stinging tree and her acute embarrassment at being seen naked in front of the bushmen.

Michael knew they should have a fire to help warm the girl. But he also knew that the smoke would mark their position to anyone who might be on the ridges above them. Nor did John request a fire for her. He also appreciated the deadly position that they were in. It was not only Mort they had to fear but possible detection by the Aboriginal warriors who had slaughtered their horses.

While John tended to Hue’s stings, Henry very cautiously scrubbed Hue’s clothes, using sand to remove the tiny poisonous barbs. Even Christie who disliked the Chinese felt sorry for the young woman. He watched as the girl whimpered and John stroked her long ebony hair while crooning soothing words as one would to a child in distress. Christie yanked a blood-bloated leech from under his shirt and flicked it into the bush. He tugged thoughtfully at his beard as he scanned the crest of a hill that rose to one side of the trail. He had earlier seen the faint wisp of smoke rising from the hill and guessed it was an Aboriginal fire. According to his calculations it would have been impossible for Mort to have been on the steep ridge. ‘Mister O’Flynn,’ he called softly, as he squatted on his haunches gazing up at the ridges. ‘I think I’ve got an idea that might help us.’ He did not wait for Michael to respond. ‘I’m going to talk to the darkies. Might be our only chance if Mort is after us.’

Michael gave him a look as if to say he was mad, but he remembered that the bushman spoke some of the Aboriginal dialects of the north and nodded. They were both aware of how grim their current situation was. Henry was having trouble keeping up and now the girl was temporarily incapacitated. ‘You talk the lingo here Mister Palmerston?’ Michael asked.

‘I hope so,’ Christie answered with a grim smile, and rose to his feet.

John left Hue while he attended the impromptu briefing Michael had called. She was much calmer and had steeled herself against the stinging pain that continued to plague her. He glanced back at her sitting at the edge of the creek and smiled when he caught her eye. Hue returned a weak smile of reassurance. She thought about his gentle and caring manner and tried to dismiss the disturbing thoughts that she was attracted to a man who was neither European nor Chinese. In her culture such people were non-people.

The men gathered around Michael in a small clearing by the creek. ‘Mister Palmerston is going to try and make contact with the local blackfellas,’ Michael said, turning to Christie who crouched sketching a map in a patch of earth he had cleared.

‘I will get food,’ Christie explained. ‘And maybe they can help us with this Mort fellow if he is still following us. Best you stay put until I get back.’

‘For how long?’ Henry asked quietly.

‘Until tomorrow morning,’ he replied. ‘If I’m not back by then you carry on. Take this valley until you come to where the creek strikes a river. When you are across the river you’ll come to some hills. When you get to the hills strike north. That’ll take you into Cooktown – a day’s walk.’ When he had finished his briefing, he snapped the twig he had used as a pointer for his crude map and tossed it aside. He rose, slung his rifle on his shoulder, and was swallowed by the thick scrub as he strode away.

When he was gone Michael organised the camp for the night. Luke attempted to catch the tiny crustaceans that hid around the rocks in the calmer waters of the stream. He was only partly successful, however, and the few he did catch were eaten raw.

During the night they shivered and slept only in snatches between sentry duty. It was going to be a long and uncomfortable night, Michael realised, and felt the gloomy darkness of indecision. Should he have pushed on regardless of Hue’s injuries? Had he decided wisely in letting Christie go in search of the tribesmen?

Just after midnight Michael inched his way into the scrub. It was his turn to relieve Henry of sentry duty. Vigilance was an utmost priority as the trail they had left when they hacked their way through the dense scrub was like a finger pointing in their direction. But at least the night concealed them so utterly that even Michael had to move by feel, using landmarks he had memorised before nightfall.

‘It’s me Henry,’ he hissed when he was close to a tree with a massive trunk.

‘Over here Mister O’Flynn,’ came the soft reply from the inky darkness. Michael adjusted his course to grope towards the disembodied voice and found Henry sitting with his back against the rainforest giant. He plumped himself down beside the Englishman. ‘How is your leg?’

‘It’s not good,’ Henry sighed, and instinctively rubbed the old injury. ‘But I think it will keep me going for one more day. Then I don’t know.’

‘If it gets so bad that you can’t go on,’ Michael said softly, ‘I will stay with you. Luke can keep going and send help back to us when he gets to Cooktown.’ Henry attempted to protest but was cut short. ‘You don’t have any say in the matter Henry,’ Michael said roughly. ‘You are in my command for the duration of this expedition. As such, I am responsible for making the decisions as to what happens to my men.’

‘Thank you for the offer Mister O’Flynn,’ Henry replied quietly. ‘But it’s not necessary. Some things are ordained in life that we cannot change. Tomorrow, I either keep going or I die, one way or the other.’

‘Nothing’s
ordained
in this life,’ Michael snapped angrily. Henry was talking like a man who was already dead and he had heard men talk that way before. It was usually the night before a battle when the agonising wait released the demons of despair that plagued men’s imaginations. ‘If life ordains whether we live or die then let life tell us to our faces. No. If that was so then I should have been dead a long, long time ago.
We
, Mister James, ordain by the choices we make whether we live or die.’

‘My fate has been told to me in a way I do not expect you to understand,’ Henry sighed sadly. ‘From the day I followed that murdering son of the devil on the dispersals, he and I have been under a death sentence. The
how
I do not know. But I think I know the
when
of my death.’

Michael felt a spark of anger. ‘No-one can know when they will die. That’s foolish talk.’

‘Foolish it may be to you Mister O’Flynn,’ Henry replied sadly, ‘but there are things about this land and its people we will never truly understand no matter how many years we are here.’ He paused and stared into the night. Yes, Emma would miss him and grieve for a time. Gordon would some day grow to know of his father as a memory. ‘I have known many men in my lifetime,’ he continued. ‘Men I have whored with in the brothels. Young men who I saw dead before they grew a week older. Strange, when I think about them. Young men who will be forever young. And I have known the men of this land. Fine men as you could know anywhere. One of the finest men I ever knew was a bushranger I once hunted the length and breadth of the colony. I think you know who I am talking about. Don’t you Michael?’

Michael felt a stillness descend on him like an icy cloak. The disembodied voice in the dark was not that of the crippled former sergeant of the Native Mounted Police but the intimate voice of his dead brother Tom. He felt a hush descend on the bush as if all nocturnal life had stopped to listen to his reply. ‘How did you . . . ?’ he whispered hoarsely as his throat was suddenly dry. ‘How did you know?’

‘I wasn’t completely sure until now,’ he replied gently. ‘You gave yourself away when you answered me.’

‘But you thought you knew. How?’ Michael asked. ‘Did someone tip you off?’

‘No. But I was a trap long enough to see things others missed,’ he answered. ‘And your sister Kate told me enough about you to make you as real to me as your brother Tom was. The way you talked. The way you were . . . are. Do you know that you look so much like your brother Tom you could have passed for him? Maybe it was a good thing you weren’t in Queensland when we were hunting him or someone might have got you two mixed up. But it was something else about you. It took the blindness that night gives our eyes for me to see you clearly. I cannot explain what I do not understand myself. Except to say that when you called to me a little while ago, I thought I was hearing Tom. It was like he was calling to me in the dark. But I know he’s dead. I know because I watched him die out there in Burkesland. So when you called, something told me that Tom was also alive in you. The nights out here in the bush can do strange things to a man’s soul. That’s all I can tell you though I know it doesn’t make sense.’

A silence fell between them and the soft sounds of the night returned: the rustle in the treetops of tiny glider possums seeking the branches of trees on which to land, the distant gurgle of the stream and the monotonous whirr of crickets. Finally Michael spoke. ‘Tomorrow we go on and my order still stands. If you cannot go any further with your leg, we stick together until Luke sends back help.’

Henry rose stiffly to his feet and Michael felt his hand on his shoulder. ‘We will see,’ he said simply. ‘We will see.’ How could he tell Michael that an old Aboriginal elder had come to him in his dreams, night after night, to stand in the dark corners of his mind. Logical and learned men could explain the visits as nightmares brought on by his guilt for his participation in the murderous dispersals under Mort’s command. But no, Henry thought, the old Aboriginal was real. As real as Michael Duffy who now sat vigil in the night.

The mist-covered mountains felt the first touch of the rising sun as the damp fogs retreated to the cool safety of the valleys. Mists settled on the placid stream and by the time the warm sun had swallowed the last of the night fogs on the creek, Christie Palmerston had not returned.

Michael had half-expected the worst. Still days from Cooktown they were missing the man with the most experience to guide them out of the rainforests. The previous day had sapped precious energy reserves and left them hungry and tired. He gave the order to move out and, as exhausted as they were, they obeyed. It was just after midday when they stumbled into a broad, flat valley under a sea of waving grasses. Tattered clothes streaked with dried blood marked their battle with the cruel-hooked barbs of jungle vines. Sweat-soaked shirts clung to their backs which were wet and clammy, and salty moisture dripped incessantly from their foreheads to sting their eyes. Exhausted, they paused to gaze down the valley. To be out of the cloying forest was a welcome relief.

Michael scanned the valley of waving grasses high as a man’s waist and his eye followed the line of ridges either side of the valley. His military instinct told him to use the high ground to traverse the valley. But when he glanced back at his straggling file he noticed Henry rubbing his leg and knew that an attempt to climb another ridge could possibly lame him for life.