The Isis Knot (38 page)

How long after Father finally stumbled from the alley, abandoning his only son, had he died? Had he passed away still mourning the wife whose fate had started his descent into drink and poverty in the first place? She couldn’t even clearly picture his face anymore. Strangely, it didn’t make her sad.

“He just left you there?” she said. “On the streets?”

His Adam’s apple bounced as he swallowed.

“What did you do then? Where did you go?”

He yanked his hands away and gazed at his knees. “Natalie took me in for a little while.”

“Natalie? The whore?”

“She wasn’t heartless, just simple. And crass. I stayed with her for a year, sleeping in the corner of her room and in the hall when she had someone in her bed. And then one day she just didn’t come back. There was talk of her being murdered.”

Elizabeth gasped. “What happened to you then?”

He rubbed his hands together. “I took the blanket I’d slept on for a year and set out walking. I had no concept of direction or where I was headed. I just didn’t want to be near Whitechapel anymore. Too many bad things had happened to me there. Everyone who had ever taken care of me had left. Mother. Father. Natalie.” He looked directly into her eyes. “You.”

So, so long ago. She pushed aside the resurfacing guilt. “We…I was going to go back for you. Truly.” The words felt like grit on the back of her tongue. How quickly love and devotion had made her forget Mr. Moore’s promise to someday go back for her brother. Soon Stumpy had faded into nothing, and now here he was. In New South Wales, of all places.

“Tell me more,” she said, to divert the conversation away from herself and her actions. “So you just wandered the streets of London? For how long?”

“I don’t remember. Months, maybe. It had grown quite cold in the city by the time Wren found me.”

“Wren?”

“The master of horse for Mr. Bancroft.”

“Should I know who that is?”

“I was scared and so hungry after leaving Natalie’s. I met Wren outside the Berington Arms Hotel, where I’d taken to begging. One evening Bancroft’s coach veered around the corner, right into a puddle that drenched me from head to foot.

“I stood there in the gutter, cold and wet and crying. Bancroft got out, saw me all alone, and told Wren to attend to me. I don’t remember the weeks after Natalie disappeared, but I remember that day like yesterday. I remember the way Bancroft slapped his gloves together before pocketing them, the way the horses smelled. The relief of knowing I’d have someone taking care of me.”

Chin in her hand, she leaned closer to the stranger who was her younger brother.

“Wren and I became fast friends. He had a good heart, and gave me dry clothes and a blanket and meat pie for the night. When Bancroft left for Worchester, Wren somehow convinced him to allow me to go as well. I helped him in the stables and wherever else he needed me. I was so grateful.”

“How long were you with them?”

Jem cleared his throat and his chin fell to his chest. “Until ten months ago. Or is it eleven? Until I was sent to Portsmouth. Until I was transported here.”

She gasped. They’d been in Portsmouth at the same time. After all that time apart, they had both found themselves on convict hulks bobbing in Portsmouth harbor, waiting for the Crown to send them to New South Wales. How many nights had she sat at the
Remembrance
’s railings, staring out across the waves at the countless other hulks? If she’d called out one night, would her brother have heard?

Looking at him now—scrawny, pale, drained—she was surprised he’d survived the experience of Transportation. Hardy or brave or adaptable, he was not. Particularly not now, with his shy childish eyes and the habit of looking away when speaking or being spoken to.

Elizabeth took Jem’s chin between thumb and forefinger. Guilt and shame drew veils across his eyes. So much hardship. “What could you have possibly done to be sentenced here? You’re not a criminal. You’re not like Father. You never even stole, like me.”

Tension drew deep lines across his brow and made half-moons at the corners of his lips. She squeezed his hand.

“It’s all right, James.” She took care to use his given name. “Everyone here is like you. Everyone here has been dishonest in some way.”

“But what I did…it was terrible.” His chin started to quiver. “I’ve never told anyone. Not even…” He drifted off, and a severe pain scrunched up his face.

“You can tell me.”

He shook his head.

“It helps to voice it, to admit what you’ve done. I’ll forgive you, I promise. The guilt will disappear.”

As she said it, she tried to remember what true guilt felt like. Whenever she’d lied or stolen to get information in her pursuit of Samuel Oliver and his gold piece, she’d always told Mr. Moore. As soon as she’d confessed what she’d done in his honor, he’d give her that beautiful smile and kiss her forehead, and then tell her to never feel guilty when serving a greater purpose. As simple as that, Elizabeth would feel at ease.

“You will not forgive this.” Jem sniffled, and in that moment he looked exactly like the Stumpy she had left. “A little girl died because of me.”

Elizabeth couldn’t help the impulsive reaction. She dropped his hand and stared at him. “What? You killed a child?”

He started to cry. “One day Wren was trying to make a sign for the barn: Bancroft’s coat of arms. But it turned out something awful and I offered to help. Do you remember how I used to draw?”

She recalled a pudgy little hand clutching a charred end of a stick—the remnants of the occasional and coveted fire—and the creatures and faces that appeared on the stone walls of the alley.

“I remember,” she whispered.

“I…I did such a good job with the sign that Bancroft asked me to do something else. Something just for him.” A new wave of tears spilled over his lashes and he wiped them away. “At first I didn’t know what I was doing. I just copied the words and numbers as he told me—after I went to Worcester, you see, Wren taught me how to read and write. Bancroft made me swear not to tell anyone what I was doing for him. Every time I made a page for Bancroft he looked so pleased and I started to feel so good about myself.”

“I don’t understand. What does scribing pages have to do with the death of that little girl?”

A sticky bubble ballooned from his nostril and he snorted it back. “They were bank notes. The pages.”

Elizabeth blinked. “Bank notes?”

At last Jem lifted his head. “He made me into a forger.”

She bit a finger to keep from laughing, for she knew it would destroy him if he saw her laugh at his misfortune. “James, you scrawled fake numbers on parchment. People are here for far worse. Or less. I stole shoes because mine had worn out and I had no money.”

“But the girl…”

“You made it sound like
you
killed her.”

“I did! Oh, Lizzie, I may not have been holding the reins, but her death was my fault. When the Crown grew suspicious of Bancroft they stormed into Worchester. He panicked and sent Wren away in a wagon carrying most of the forged notes. On Wren’s way out of the estate, the horse and wagon struck a small child who had wandered into the road. A street child begging at the back gates, just like I’d once been. She was killed instantly. I saw it from the window. I can still see it.”

“But it wasn’t
you
. You just said you weren’t at the reins.”

“But if it weren’t for me…if I hadn’t done as Bancroft wanted…”

A taste for vengeance—Mr. Moore’s influence—pricked at her. “Is he here too? Bancroft?”

Jem shook his head at the stars. “He blamed it on me. All of it. Said I forged everything without his knowledge, that I broke into his study and used his seal and wax. I was even in there when the Crown came, trying to burn false ten-pound notes in the fireplace at his order.”

The regret on her little brother’s face quickly morphed into anger. His huge eyes narrowed on her. “Why did you leave? Why did you leave
me
?”

That accusation managed to wedge its way past the careful barriers she’d been taught to erect during her time with Mr. Moore. It made her feel awful and unfocused, so she tried to shove it away.

Where to begin? What to tell Jem? Though Mr. Moore was no longer by her side, she still honored the vow of secrecy she’d made to him.

Elizabeth exhaled long and deep. “It’s a long, long story. But I left for the promise of a better future. I left for love.”

As she looked into Jem’s eyes, her heart constricted and twisted. The pain of it was nearly unbearable. Where did it come from? What was this? And then she knew: guilt. No matter how hard she’d tried to keep it out, it had found its way in.

She’d felt no guilt when she’d killed Thomas. She’d felt none when that man in Parramatta had jumped in front of the bullet meant for Sera.

But Jem…she’d never spoken to Mr. Moore about her guilt over leaving her brother behind in London. She’d merely forgotten about the little boy who’d once depended on her, and that neglect crashed over her now.

“I’m so sorry for leaving you. So, so sorry. Please believe that. But we’re here together now. We can help each other. Come here.”

She stood and opened her arms. Jem also stood, wobbling, then collapsed into her embrace. For a moment, deep in her mind, he felt fleshy and young and innocent.

“I found out what happened to Mother,” she said into his shoulder. “A few years after I left London I learned that she’d gone mad, only we were too young to understand it. That day we woke up and she was gone? She’d been taken away to an asylum. Father was so heartbroken, so ashamed.”

Jem squeezed her tighter. “I can’t believe I’ve found you again. Everything has been so awful.”

Breath hitched in his throat. Suddenly he jerked away, holding her at arm’s length.

“What is it, Jem?”

He paled so drastically she thought he might faint, but then a new resolve transformed his features. Hardening them. “That woman. I know her.”

“What? Who?”

“The woman you asked the fisherman about. Sera. I know her.”

The world spun again, and she clung to his arms for balance. “You do?
How
?”

He took a deep, shuddering breath. “I came to Sydney with her. Her and William.”

Elizabeth’s mind zigged and zagged, trying to follow. The old, drunk rancher she’d left out in the bush had made no mention of another man traveling with Sera. “William?”

Jem nodded. “Another convict. We arrived together on the
John Barry
. He’s older and he’s…watched out for me.” A wistfulness filled Jem’s voice.

Could it be? The blond man who’d jumped in front of the bullet Elizabeth had intended for Sera?

“He’s alive?” The feel of the gun in her hand, the power behind the trigger, still rattled her arm. The only guilt she carried over that was the fact that she’d missed her target.

Jem frowned. “Why wouldn’t he be?”

She ignored him and twisted Mr. Moore’s ring, now returned to its rightful place on her thumb. Fortune had brought Jem back to her so that he could help her find the cuff. It took every bit of her self-control to not dance and shout with a happiness only reserved for the enlightened.

Mr. Moore, my love, I’m so close. Thank you for sending me my brother. Now it’s my time to win you back. I will finally bring you what you seek, what we’ve been hunting all these years. And finally, you shall be mine.

Her fingers dug hard into Jem’s arms. “Where is she?”

He paused and chewed his lip, his eyes narrowing in a way she remembered. It was how he used to glare at Father after he’d beaten one of his children. Elizabeth could use this.

“I would imagine she’s still in our room,” he said. “Or at the Waldgraves’. She and I argued”—his lip curled—“and then I left. I’ve been hiding in the Rocks, moving from place to place, avoiding going back—”

“You don’t like her? This Sera?”

His jaw clenched. “No. But William…he…
cares
for her.” The word came out smeared with contempt and jealousy, and all her brother’s secrets were laid at her feet, because the way he’d said “William” said much, much more.

She reached up and caressed his dirty face. “Darling, let me take care of you again. I don’t want William. He means nothing to me.”

A wicked, wicked grin curled Jem’s lips. “If you can separate the two of them, I’ll tell you where she is.”

Elizabeth nodded, the energy in her soul threatening to burst out of her skin. “I can. I’ll take her away from him. Now, where is she?”

Jem looked supremely satisfied. “Follow me into the Rocks.”

CHAPTER 24

Now you know
, Amonteh whispered through William’s mind, rousing him from the trance in which the long, tragic story had kept him.
Now you know what I had to sacrifice and what I have finally found again
.

William knuckled the memory of sand and dust from his eyes. Sera’s body pressed against the length of his side, one lean thigh thrown over his, the olive-skinned arm bearing Isis’s cuff draped across his waist. He swept her hair off her cheek. A warm, constant stream of energy connected them now. He felt her movements milliseconds before she made them. Her essence swirled around him like a calming breeze.