This Golden Land (15 page)

     Hannah froze as the snarling beast bared its fangs, hackles rising.

     Her mouth ran dry as she forced her feet to move back one small step. As she did so, the dog took a wary step toward her. Hannah went back another, and the dog advanced another. Hannah continued to retreat, hoping she would reach the light and noise of the kitchen, which might send the dog away, but with her last step she felt a tree at her back. She could go no farther, and the dog continued to advance.

     Hannah was wondering if calling for help would drive the dog off, or make it attack, when she suddenly heard a low voice nearby. "Don't move. Stay perfectly still."

     Hannah held her breath as a man stepped out of the darkness and moved in front of her, his back to her. He spoke to the dog in a calm voice. "It's all right, mate. We're not here to harm you. We're just passing through."

     The night's cacophony seemed to grow louder as the stranger stared down the snarling dog, speaking calmly to it. Hannah had no idea who the stranger was. He had come from the direction of the road, and he wasn't dressed like the gentlemen in Lulu's house. He seemed, in fact, to be wearing work clothes. His head was covered in a wide brimmed slouch hat, and he smelled of tobacco.

     "I'm sorry we've taken your territory," he said calmly to the dog, "but that's just the way of things now. Let's part friends, all right?"

     The moment stretched and became surreal as floral fragrance filled Hannah's head, and she could hear music and laughter from the house, while a strange man stood between herself and a savage dog.

     And then the growling stopped, the hackles lowered and after a moment the dog turned and slunk away into the night.

     The stranger stepped back and turned to face Hannah. "Are you all right?"

     She placed her hand on her chest as she released a shaky sigh. "My heart is racing! Whatever it was you did, thank you."

     He glanced back through the darkness and said, "They don't understand that this isn't their territory anymore. They come for what they can find in the rubbish, now that their hunting ground is gone."

     "What kind of a dog was that?"

     "That's what the Aborigines call a dingo. You can't tame them and they're often dangerous. Where are my manners? Jamie O'Brien, at your service," the stranger said with a smile as he lifted his hat.

     Hannah saw dark blond hair, and in the shadow of the wide brim of the hat as he reseated it, eyes that squinted over craggy cheeks and rugged jaw. Mr. O'Brien's skin was weathered like a sailor's—his squint reminded her of Captain Llewellyn—and she wondered if the hair were naturally blond or sun-bleached. He stood a head taller than her, but he was neither husky nor broad-shouldered, rather he was lean, and as he wasn't wearing a jacket—over his white shirt he wore a black leather waistcoat with silver buttons—she saw a tight, compact figure. His sleeves were rolled up, and Hannah saw well muscled forearms. She noticed something attached to his belt, a leather sheath with a knife handle sticking out. A man used to fending for himself.

     Hannah sensed strength in the him, despite his slender build, and guessed that he was not a town man but one of those rugged types who come in occasionally from the farms and ranches and even the Outback. A drover, perhaps. His hands, she thought, would be calloused.

     She realized he was staring at her in an odd way. He had told her his name, and now he was studying her as if he was expecting a reaction. Was she supposed to know who he was? Was he famous in some way?

     And then she realized he was waiting for the courtesy to be returned. "Hannah Conroy," she said, aware that he stood close, giving her no room to move away from the tree. His eyes, the pale blue of a man who spends all his time outdoors, held hers, and she saw creases of amusement at the corners.
Yet she did not feel he was mocking her. When she detected the scent of fresh clean soap and shaving cream, and because he was on the path leading to Lulu's house, she guessed why he was here.

     "What's a fine lady like yourself doing at a place like this?" he asked, glancing past her toward the house.

     She explained that she was a midwife, called to help one of the girls.

     He glanced down at the carpetbag in her hand. "A midwife is it?" he said softly, the corners of his eyes crinkling in amusement. "For someone in
Lulu's
house?"

     "One of the ladies fainted."

     "Ah." He fell silent then, and Hannah saw changes in his pale-blue eyes, like ocean tides. "Ah," he said again as if suddenly understanding something new, and trying to find a way to understand and accept it. He couldn't seem to stop staring at her.

     "Thank you again for sending the dog away," she said, and looked right and left, to see how she could gracefully sidestep him. His frank stare, that had begun in amusement and curiosity, had turned grave, and Hannah wondered for an instant if he was dangerous.

     The colony of Adelaide was the gateway to the country's vast interior, with opportunists flocking from all over the world to come in search of opals, gold, diamonds, even the lost treasure of King Solomon. There had been no strikes of gold or opals as yet, but rumors were a powerful draw. Already copper and silver had been discovered, promising that more riches lay just on the other side of Adelaide. And so this frontier town of eight thousand souls that was the staging platform for explorers, visionaries and gold seekers, was also teeming with men and women looking for get-rich-quick schemes—confidence artists, swindlers, grifters, gamblers and flimflam men, along with the usual petty thieves, pickpockets and purse snatchers.

     Perhaps this stranger was one of the latter. But he surprised her by plucking a rose from a nearby bush and handing it to her. "The Aborigines say that flowers were created by the ancestors back in the Dreamtime, which was a long, long time ago. The ancestors were magical people, and everything they did or thought was transformed into something solid. It's said that every time an ancestor laughed, a flower was created. And because
people laugh more in the springtime, that's why there are more flowers in springtime. That's what the blackfellah says anyway."

     Jamie O'Brien's accent intrigued her. In this colony of immigrants from all over the British Empire, one heard a range of accents from the Queen's English to cockney, Irish and Scottish brogues, and the sometimes incomprehensible speech of the Welsh. But there was another accent, a newer one, which Hannah suspected was a hybrid of all the rest, and it was spoken by those few who were native to the continent. Hannah realized that her rescuer might not be a fortune hunter after all, newly arrived at these shores, but was in fact native born to Australia, a rarity in the colony.

     The evening was suddenly suffused with a strange enchantment. The air was too warm. Summer nights in England were never this warm. Hannah's corset felt tight and uncomfortable, her legs were encumbered by the petticoats and crinoline. She thought of the nubile South Seas twins entertaining men in Miss Forchette's parlor, swaying in their grass skirts.

     Her heart quickened beneath the stranger's nearness and bold scrutiny. He was no gentleman. Yet he seemed to fit in with the night, the ambience suited him. There was a wildness in the air, and in him.

     "I must go," she whispered, finding her throat tight, the breath trapped in her chest. It was fear, she told herself. What else could it be?

     He stared at her for a moment longer, and then the grin came back, carving creases in his craggy cheeks and jaw. Stepping away, he tipped his hat and said, "It was a pleasure meeting you, Miss Midwife. I sincerely hope we meet again."

     Jamie O'Brien struck off on the path toward the house, and Hannah heard the coachman call, "Miss? Are you all right?"

     And the enchantment was broken.

T
HERE SHE IS
," I
DA
G
ILHOOLEY SAID TO HER HUSBAND SITTING
next to her in the wagon. "There's Miss Conroy, going into the post office, just like her landlady said."

     Walt Gilhooley spat a stream of tobacco juice onto the street which was muddy from a recent autumn rain. "I don't like this, Ida. I say we should leave well enough alone. If Miss Forchette were to find out—"

     "I'm not afraid of that cow," Ida said, thrusting out her chin. In truth, the plump middle-aged Ida was terrified of Lulu Forchette, but Ida Gilhooley, chief cook at Lulu's house, was more afraid of what would happen if they didn't secretly fetch Hannah Conroy. If that poor girl were left to die, it would be on Ida's conscience, and she firmly believed in a God who punished sinners. Coming like this to get Hannah Conroy without Miss Forchette knowing might result in an unpleasant confrontation and even more unpleasant consequences, but it was preferable to eternal damnation. "I've got to go in and get her."

     "All right," said Walt, who was Lulu Forchette's coachman and man-of-all-work,
and who wished at that moment he were any place on earth than in front of Adelaide's Post Office, about to drag a lovely young lady into an ugly, and potentially dangerous, situation.

     The central post office was a large brick building with Grecian columns at the main entrance, flanked by post boxes labeled: ADELAIDE, MELBOURNE, SYDNEY, and THE WORLD. The main hall was noisy as people came to send letters and collect mail, or stood writing at counters where inkwells were provided. A long counter staffed by postal workers saw lines of people, and beyond lay the great sorting center for letters, newspapers and parcels.

     Hannah waited patiently in line, but she wasn't really expecting a letter from Neal Scott. After the HMS
Borealis
set sail on her year-long survey mission, she wasn't expected to make port where there was postal service. Still, Hannah held out hope that one of these days there would be another letter to add to the one she had received back in November, seven months ago. She had written to Neal about Dr. Davenport and how much she enjoyed working for him. Hannah had wanted to write more, in fact she wanted to write everyday as it made her feel closer to Neal, and connected to him, but she didn't want him to return to Perth to find an embarrassing mountain of letters awaiting him.

     But if she were to write another letter on this overcast autumn day in May, Hannah would tell Neal about her busy mornings with Dr. Davenport, how he was allowing her to do more and more, such as applying dressings and dispensing salves, how much she was learning from him, and how fond of him she had become. Dr. Davenport reminded her of her father. He was gentle with patients, respectful, didn't rush them. And his treatments were conservative. He wore clean clothes everyday and he even washed his hands. Hannah had assisted him at three childbirths and he had promised her that the next one, should it be without complications, would be hers entirely.

     She might also tell Neal in her imaginary letter that, two weeks ago, she had marked the anniversary her father's passing, and her decision to leave England, by spending a day alone in the park. Sitting on a bench beneath a pepper tree, Hannah had opened her father's laboratory notes for the first time since the
Caprica
, and once again thought of his last words to her. He
had spoken of a letter. But there was no letter among his notes, and she still could make no sense of the collection of scraps of paper, notes, receipts, equations, formulas, and entries in Greek and Latin. Perhaps when she was more educated she could unravel the mystery of her father's portfolio. And so, to that end, Hannah was borrowing from Dr. Davenport's impressive medical library. Although much of it was difficult reading, Hannah was determined to learn.

     She would
not
tell Neal, however, in her imaginary letter to him, that she had been hired by a certain madam who lived outside of town. It was an unusual occupation to be sure, tending to the health issues of a bordello. Hannah had been summoned to Lulu's on a variety of problems: a fight between two girls resulting in one sticking the other in the eye with a hat pin; a brief spell of diarrhea for the whole household for which Hannah had prescribed ginger and rock salt; a sprained ankle; a kitchen scalding; a gentleman breaking his nose during vigorous sport with Ready Rita; and another crisis involving Miss Magenta and the belladonna.

     Hannah didn't know how she was going to tell Neal about her association with the house of ill-repute. She wasn't even sure how she herself felt about it. Lulu Forchette's domain was a world unto itself. Although Hannah never visited the private rooms when they were in use, as she passed by closed doors she nonetheless heard the range of human emotion in the cries and sighs, yells and moans, weeping and laughter coming from the other side. Lulu's house troubled her, but the girls insisted, when asked, that they were happy there because otherwise they would be on the street.

     "Sorry, miss," the postal clerk said. "No letters today."

     Thanking him, Hannah stepped aside and worked her way back through the throng toward the main entrance. As was her habit, she paused at the wall of bills and notices.