The Secret Rose (42 page)

Musha! What good would that be to ye? Nae, the lad’s sleeping deep, ’tis all.

“Then why…?” Aisleen shook her head and looked down at her hands. “You’ve never shown yourself when Thomas was present.”

Ah, well, being that he’s a hard man to best, and that I’ve nae cause to come between a man and his wife, it seemed best.

Aisleen looked up again. He was only a wavering image in the distance. Behind him—no, through him—she saw the outline of a mountain. “Who are you?
What
are you?”

His voice was shaken by laughter.
Trust a woman to be asking foolish questions. I’m meself, of course!

“You look like my husband.”

Do I now? Well, that’s nae so much a shame, would ye say?

Aisleen did not respond.

So it’s to be like that, is it? Very well. Top of the morning to ye, colleen!

“No! Wait!” Aisleen scrambled to her feet and took a step toward him. The vision wavered as though rippled by a breeze and then steadied. “Why have you come?”

What answer would ye like, lass?

She hesitated. “Am I mad?”

Laughter shimmered the air, littering the day with bright petals of amusement.
No madder than the next, and saner than some!

“Blarney!” Aisleen scoffed. “You never offer anything but clever words and useless riddles.”

Can ye do better?

“In what way?”

There’s the matter of yer man lying there neglected, for instance.

Aisleen paled, her eyes sliding guiltily toward Thomas’s bloodied face and away. “I can’t. I can’t bear to touch him!”

Och, well! If ye cannae, ye cannae.

The glib answer made her squirm inside. She put a hand to her throbbing brow. “I don’t know what to do!”

Of course not. That’s why ye were lying there weeping and wailing for a Good Samaritan to make his appearance. A fine plan that is, lass. I’d as lief I’d thought of it meself.

Anger stung her “Don’t mock me. It’s all very well for
you to speak, when you’ve not offered a single helpful suggestion. Go away!”

She turned and marched over to the horse, which stood patiently cropping the short grass in the shade of the tree that flanked the river. A quick survey of Jack’s saddlebags reassured her. He had been well provisioned for his journey.

Jack.
Aisleen leaned her head against the saddle. Was he dead? If not, he would come after them. But how would he know where to find them?

She thought then of what Jack would say if he
did
find them and discovered that she had not even attempted to tend Thomas’s wounds. The idea so appalled her that she grabbed the billy can from his saddlebag and went to the riverbank. But the water was more than six feet below her, a sheer drop that allowed no method for her to climb down and fill the pail. She scanned the gorge, seeking a place where the bank was less
steep, but she did not see one.

She stood there a moment, thinking. She needed a rope with which she could lower the pail into the water. A check of the saddlebags did not provide that. She found a knife in the provisions and began to hack at her skirts, tearing off long, thin strips which she then plaited together to make a stout rope.

She was quite proud of herself when she had fished up the first pailful without losing more than half the contents. She cut the legs of her pantaloons off just below the top of each thigh and, using a portion of the material, began to clean Thomas’s face. The work was painstakingly slow.

Pail after pail of water turned red with blood as she gently sponged his wounds. When she had cleaned his face and body as best she could without moving him, she sat back on her heels and studied the results. His eyes were swollen shut and his lips were cracked, but she had no salve for them. Cuts gaped open above his brows and on the ridges of his cheeks. She had no sticking plaster with which to close
them. She was certain at least two of his ribs were broken, but as she pressed her ear to his chest, she did not hear the betraying hiss of a punctured lung. He could not be moved until his chest was bound tightly.

Tears stung her eyes, but she blinked them back. What good were they? Because there was nothing else to do, she went once more to look through Jack’s saddlebags. This time she picked up and recorded in her mind each item. There were small packs of rice, flour, sugar, dried peas, beans, dried beef, salt, and tea and—wonder of wonders—a small tin of lard. She took the tea and lard, remembering that once she had seen Miss Burke apply crushed tea leaves to a small finger wound one of her pupils had received while cutting her quill.

She knelt down beside Thomas and opened the packet of tea. Rolling the dried leaves between her fingers, she sprinkled it into the first wound over his left eye. When it was thoroughly dusted she pressed the wound firmly closed with her fingers and held it so for five minutes. When she removed her hand, the wound remained closed and unbleeding. She repeated the procedure until every wound on his face had been so treated, and then she opened the lard tin and smeared his lips lightly with grease.

Binding his chest was the most difficult task of all. Though he never gained consciousness, pitiable moans occasionally broke from him as she rolled him from one side to lay the remaining strips of her skirts under him. When she had pulled tight and tied the last piece of cloth, her face was damp with tears of sympathy.

It was midafternoon when she finished binding his wounds. Her back ached from tossing and hauling up innumerable pails of water, some of which she had given to the horse. Her head ached from working in the sun without a bonnet, which she had left behind in the coach. She was half-naked. A jagged ruff of skirt, petticoat, and pantaloons covered her
from waist to knee, and a part of this she fully expected to lose to bandages by morning. Two things kept her from resting. She was hungry, and night was coming on.

Between the river and the mountains stretched a wide strip of woodland. She went there and gathered wood for a fire. When she had coaxed a blaze from the timber with Jack’s flint, she sat back and hugged her knees a moment, grateful, this once, that she had been in the cook’s company long enough to learn how to set a campfire. She made a tripod for the billy and hung it over the flame to make tea.

As she cradled Thomas’s head in her lap, the late-afternoon sky turned golden and then flame. From the forest, a flock of parrots came to perch in the tree above her. Their bickering drew her attention away from the sunset, and she saw in amazement the equally brilliant plumage of the parrots, their feathers emerald and saffron with a blood-red patch of color on their rumps. They stayed only a moment, sounding to her city ears like a classroom of schoolgirls all talking at once, and then flew off, green wings flashing like emerald lightning in the sky.

When the billy boiled, she sprinkled in the tea and set it aside a moment to brew. A cooling breeze blew in from the forest at her back, and she remembered with misgiving how cold the nights became in the mountains. She touched Thomas’s cheek and found it warm but not yet feverish. He needed protection against the chill of the night, but there was only one thin blanket rolled behind the saddle. When she had tucked it about him she added another faggot to the fire to brighten the flame. Jack would come soon, she told herself, and when he did he would lead them to safety.

The tea tasted unbelievably good. When she had drunk her fill and chewed a bit of jerky, she soaked a piece of cloth in the tea and brought it to Thomas. Forcing his mouth open, she squeezed a little of it between his lips He
coughed and choked, the spasm jerking him forward, and a long, low groan sighed out of him as he fell back.

Guilt pricked her as she stroked his brow. She had only wanted to give him a drink. Perhaps later he would awaken enough for her to pour a sip down his throat.

Not long after, she spied in the distance several figures slowly making their way out of the forest. She jumped to her feet in hope. Were they men? It was too great a distance to tell. She raised her arms and waved frantically as she ran toward them. “Here! Here! Help! Help!”

They saw her at the same moment she realized that these were not men but animals, and each stopped short. The beasts had tall ears rather like a rabbit’s. Clothed in almost black or gray fur, they sat upright. One creature scratched its chest with a small forepaw, and Aisleen smiled. They looked harmless enough and, eager for a better look at them, she moved closer. But they were not so curious about her. All of a sudden they sprang in every direction, jumping in long, bounding hops that took them back into the cloaking darkness of the forest.

Kangaroos!
Thomas had told her an outlandish tale about such beasts, but she had not believed him. She half-expected to hear the mocking laughter of her ghostly tormentor; but she did not feel his presence, and as she made her way back to her camp, she felt very alone.

She gathered the wood for the fire close and then lay down beside Thomas. He was silent and still except for his breathing. She watched him a long time, ashamed of her cowardice in the face of his distress. She had wanted to run away. Now she felt only a fierce protectiveness toward him. She put a hand over his eyes, praying that they would be fine when the swelling subsided.

After a moment’s reflection, she got up and poured out as much tea as the tin cup could hold and then went to fetch more water. The river water was very cool, and she soaked a piece of cloth in it and placed it over his eyes to help the swelling. As it became warm from his skin she wet the cloth, again and again, and placed it over his eyes.

When she was too weary to continue, she bent and kissed his mouth very gently and then lay down so that he was closer to the fire. She cuddled close to him to add the heat of her body and fell instantly asleep.

Surely thine hour has come, thy great wind blows,

Far-off, most secret, and inviolate Rose?

—The Secret Rose

W. B. Yeats

Chapter Seventeen

He floated in a thick dark sea of agony. The pain crested in endless seething waves that battered his face and chest and groin. In the beginning, there had been fists and boots. Later the blows did not separate themselves but became a pelting of indefinable origin that left him sobbing and cursing to keep from shaming himself with pleas for mercy. There was none. Sean was mad, mad with the years of bestial service in the hellhole penal colony of Norfolk Island.

“Not my fault!”

He had not betrayed his friends all those years ago. Why had Sean believed the lying English? He and Sean had been saved from the hangman’s knot not on his confession but by a quirk of fate that perhaps would never be explained. Was he to die now, after all the years of suffering and loss were behind him?

Aisleen.
No! He shut his mind to thoughts of her. He must not do that to her. It would be too cruel. Too cruel!

Nausea swept him and he was sick. Then there was oblivion.

*

Silence. The blessed sound of silence. Nothing moved. He could not even draw breath. Was he dead?

He choked, the spasm his body’s effort to keep him alive. He groaned as intolerable pains radiated out from his chest and groin. Broken ribs. Was his manhood shattered? Where was the sky? He whimpered. Blind!

*

The rich, fecund odor of soil mixed with the stench of vomit was his first impression upon regaining consciousness. He had been unbound and lain out on the ground. The aroma of crushed grass tickled his nose. Alive. But for how long? Cautiously he flexed his fingers. They were stiff, aching from the rheumatoid tension of the beating. But they were whole.

Nothing else seemed whole. He could not move arms or legs. His face ached. His teeth—he felt about in his mouth with the bruised edge of his tongue. Several were uncommonly loose, but there were no gaps. He would have smiled at his own vanity had it not hurt too much. His arms would not move. His eyes were glued shut. Was he blind?

Fear gripped him, turning his bowels watery. Blinded and left in the bush. It was a vicious revenge. There were a
thousand ways to die. He might tumble down a chasm and
break a leg or drown in a rushing stream. He was prey for wild boar, a dingo pack, any and every danger in the bush.

Panic released reserves of strength he had despaired of a
moment earlier and pushing with his hands, he levered his torso up and away from the ground.

Fiery pain careened through his body. Knifeblades of pain dug into his chest. His breath burst from his body in a cry of agony. The ground seemed to rise up and slam his face with a stunning force.

*

There was a voice droning in his ear. It was a weeping voice, a soft, pretty, girlish voice. Aisleen’s voice? No! He mustn’t think of her. She must not know what was happening to him. She was too fragile, too gently reared to withstand the shock of it. She must never know how he died, when he died. The bond between them, the one he had discovered long before she had, must not bring her pain.

His mind floated between the worlds of consciousness and unconsciousness. Sometimes he felt the heat of the sun slanting down upon his face. Other times cool water—was it rain?—bathed him. His face was swollen, the skin stretched so tautly over the bones that he wanted to scratch it to gain relief, but he was too weak even to lift his hand. His mouth was dry, his tongue thickening.