Falsely Accused, page 15
“We’ll starve.”
“There’s plenty of food around. We’ll live off the land until we find our utopia. Change out of your gown—there are pants, jacket and boots in my saddlebag.”
“I’m sorry about this.” She touched his cheek. “You would be on your way to the Americas if it wasn’t for me.”
“It’s too late to worry about that now. If we can make it into this Port Phillip region, we can stay there until the place gets settled. It’s only a matter of time, according to the whalers.”
“How long do you think?” Visions of being stranded in some uninhabited colony for years caused the food to gag in her throat.
“Two, maybe three years.” He shrugged.
“I couldn’t bear it.”
“Well, my dear,” he sneered slightly. “You’ll just have to be satisfied with my company.”
“It isn’t that. I love you and want to be with you, but if something happens, I’d die out here on my own.”
“Nothing will happen to me,” he growled, dragging her into his arms, and plundering her mouth with his. Under his savage onslaught, her lips parted to allow him even deeper access. He pushed away her bodice, and with a thumb and forefinger worked one nipple into a hard, throbbing peak. She knew what he wanted, even before he nudged her thighs apart. Oh, God, she wanted him, too.
As their bodies rocked and writhed together, Jake unleashed in her an all-consuming, primitive need. The sun turned into a fireball, the sky became so fiercely blue she closed her eyes to stop them being burned out of her head. Her mouth dried up, heat seared her skin, like the touch of a naked flame, until her body was damp with perspiration.
Jake’s labored breath roared in her ears, and the weight of his body embedded the bracken ferns into her back. Like a volcano, he erupted deep within the sacred orifice of her womanhood. Even after his seed poured forth, they remained together as one.
“It’s good between us, my lovely,” he whispered, burying his face in the moist valley between her breasts. Within a short time, she felt him harden and throb inside her again.
“We’ll find our utopia one day, even if we have to travel a thousand miles to get there.”
“I’d like that,” she answered sleepily, as a satiated lassitude invaded her limbs.
“Wake up.” She blinked several times before being able to focus her eyes properly, and Jake shook her slightly.
“We have to be moving, we’ve stayed longer than I intended us to. Here,” he passed over a bundle of clothes. “Put them on, hurry up.”
“Turn your back please.”
“Your body holds no secrets from me.” He leaned across and whipped away the gown she held across her nakedness. “Beauty such as yours shouldn’t be hidden by clothing.
He ran his hands across her stomach. “Already the child thickens your waistline. Give me the gown.” She watched as he shoved it in one of the saddlebags. “We can use it to swaddle our son in when he’s born.”
“I wish we could stay here for a little longer, Jake. I feel as if I could sleep for a week.”
“I’m sorry, my sweet; I know it’s hard for you, but we must keep going.”
Over the next few months they journeyed across terrain so steep and treacherous, any slip meant death. They carried no maps, but Jake took his bearings from the sun and stars. No white man had ever traversed this trail before, yet they could leave no signs. They forged their way through virgin bush, over mountains, down into gullies, across streams and over flat, rolling plains.
Their staple diet consisted of roasted eels, opossum, roots and berries, supplemented now and again by wild honey and fish. They saw no one, although Jake declared there were aboriginals in the area. He hunted the same way as the aborigines with spears, and lit their cooking fire by rubbing two sticks together. She felt resentful because he obviously enjoyed the challenge of pitting himself against Mother Nature.
They stopped no more than a day in any one place. There was grass aplenty for the horses, but they quickly lost condition because of the continual travelling. Jake had become possessed by demons that would not allow him to stay in one place for more than a few hours.
“No one will follow us out here,” she complained one morning. “Can’t we rest for a few days?”
“Not yet, I have to find a suitable place. I want to make us some clothes and shoes, the horses need to put on some condition, too.”
The sun had scorched his skin to a deep mahogany because he rode stripped to the waist. When he went out hunting he wore a loincloth fashioned from hide. Her burgeoning waistline now made it impossible to do up her pants, they were held together by a belt plaited from reeds. She wore Jake’s shirt as a top, soon even this would not fit.
“I hate moving all the time. It can’t be good for a woman in my condition.”
“You’ll survive,” he said unsympathetically.
“Where are we going, Jake?”
“I’m trying to find a suitable place where we can hole up for a while. By my reckoning we’ve come more than halfway.”
Maryanne wondered why she bothered arguing, because he always did as he pleased anyway. Deep down she feared he would never love her, too selfish and intent on having his own way to worry unduly about her.
This one particular afternoon, they stopped beside a bubbling brook that danced over shiny white pebbles. It was such a pretty place, with delicate ferns, colorful flowers and majestic river gums, even a little sandy beach.
“We’ll camp here for a time,” he decided.
“Oh, yes, it’s lovely.”
“I want to get some kangaroo skins to make into clothes, and the horses need to put on some condition.”
While Maryanne sat with her swollen feet dangling in the water Jake cut saplings with his tomahawk and built a temporary holding yard. Unsaddling the horses, he turned them loose. He constructed a rough shelter and roofed it over with pieces of bark.
“I’m off to get us some food. Don’t wander away or you might tread on a snake,” he warned, flashing a devilish grin before loping off.
Will I still be able to love you once the passion has worn off, she wondered. What did they really have to bind them together? Nothing, except Jake’s seed that had come to fruition in her body. He was as savage as this brutal land. They would never find their utopia because it probably didn’t exist. They were condemned to roam around for eternity. She didn’t know when the child would be delivered, but trembled just thinking about it. No midwife, not even another woman.
“Poor baby.” She patted her swollen stomach. “You don’t even have anything to wear. You’re worse off than the child of Bethlehem at least he had some clothes and a manger to lie in.”
She dozed off in the warm sun. A terrible snarling, followed by terrified whinnies wakened her. She was shocked to see a pack of wild dogs attacking the horses.
She got up and ran as fast as she could, screaming and waving her arms. Jake’s horse kept rearing in one corner, while hers fought for its life.
Picking up a stone, she threw it with all her strength. She rushed towards the lean-to and pulled Jake’s pistol out of the saddlebag. The shot echoed loudly and she heard a yelp of pain as one of the dogs dropped to the ground. Jake’s horse leapt the fence in terror and raced away. Her horse went down and she couldn’t save it on her own. All she could do was watch in terror, as its flesh got ripped away by frenzied teeth.
Crawling towards a large tree she awkwardly started climbing. It was terrible, the bark cut into her hands as she tried to swing her legs up on to a branch. I’ll never make it, she thought frantically, but I must if I don’t want the dogs to come over and tear me to pieces.
Sheer desperation gave her the strength to try again, and finally, after several failed attempts, she made it to the lowest branch. Not high enough. Oh God, she almost felt their hot, panting breath on her skin. A couple of feet higher then she would be safe.
Her back ached and she sank her teeth so deeply into her bottom lip it started bleeding. Would the dogs smell the blood and be drawn to it? She threw a terrified look at the holding pen. If only she hadn’t. It was sickening, eight or ten dogs ripped at the horse’s carcass while one huge hound ran around with a bloodied chunk between its jaws.
Jake broke out of the scrub with a raised spear. He threw it, there was a howl of pain and one of the dogs lay dead. Three times in quick succession he let fire. Each time the spear found its target.
In a snarling fury the survivors turned on him. One more fell victim to Jake’s spear, before the pack closed in on him. Maryanne started screaming.
He wielded his tomahawk; the horrible sound of steel connecting with bone as heads were split wide open would haunt her forever. Two of the dogs fell; another staggered away leaving a gruesome trail of intestines, while the survivors dashed off.
Jake had to climb up the tree to rescue her, because she couldn’t move. She didn’t cry, tears were beyond her, but she recognized the low, guttural moans as coming from her own mouth.
She clung to him, almost demented with fright. “Keep your eyes shut, sweetling, it’s not a pretty sight around here.”
In the lean-to, he laid her down, and squatted next to her. There was a white sickliness about his mouth. His face and chest were spattered with blood and ugly bleeding bites covered his arms and legs.
“I’ll light us a fire before cleaning away outside.”
She couldn’t tell him not to leave her alone in words, just beseeched him with outstretched arms.
“I won’t be far, sweetling, but I have to clean up this mess.”
He left her cringing in the corner.
It was almost dark before he returned. “I found my horse, thank God. I’ll set a large fire tonight so those mongrels won’t come back.”
He treated her gently, bathed her face and hands with warm water, and tried to feed her pieces of white, fleshy meat.
“You must have something,” he insisted. “For your own and the child’s sake. See it’s good.” She watched him eat. “Put out of your mind what happened before, it’s the way of the wild.”
She turned her head away. “Eat a little for me, then you can sleep.”
Maryanne chewed without tasting and swallowed the pieces he put in her mouth. It was easier that way.
“We’ll rest up here for a while, you’ve had a bad fright, and I want to get our winter wardrobe ready. It’s a strange colony we’ve been exiled to. In the summer it’s so hot, but there are places where it actually snows. I’m going to use the knowledge I picked up from the aborigines to fashion our clothes. I used to watch the women working when I first arrived at their camp, too weak to do anything else much.”
Jake built up the fire before he lay down beside her. He wrapped his arms around her and pressed his lips into her hair. “You’re too sensitive, my delicate English rose,” he whispered. “I’m an unfeeling brute, but I’ll ask nothing of you tonight.”
He ran his hands across her swollen stomach. “Our son is restless, feel how he kicks around.”
The tears suddenly rolled down her cheeks, and he used his tongue to soak them up.
“You’re crying like your heart is going to break, sweetling; hush, you mustn’t.” He rocked her gently, humming some lullaby she vaguely remembered from long ago. His breath felt warm against her cheek, and she let herself drift away from the horrors of before.
***
Next morning the sun had climbed high in the sky before she awoke and dragged herself outside. No sign of Jake. The fire had died down to a pile of red embers. Maryanne glanced around fearfully, but could see nothing of last night’s carnage. Jake’s horse ambled along in the holding yard, but there was now a rough stable of stringy bark and saplings erected in one corner. Outside, stretched over rocks to dry, were several skins.
Feeling about a hundred years old, she waddled listlessly down to the stream and scooped some water over her face and arms. Would this pretty place be Jake’s utopia? Could she bear to live here for long? Once she delivered the child and regained her strength, they would probably move on, never to return.
How dainty the pink and white water lilies looked floating on a patch of serene water. Frogs croaked, bees crooned, and there was the faintest stirring of leaves on the air. Such beauty everywhere, but only the strong would survive this savage wilderness.
“Maryanne.” Jake startled her by calling out.
“I’m down by the water.”
He loped towards her, a tall dark man with wild black hair. Stripped to the waist and barefoot, he could easily pass for a native. A huge kangaroo lay across his shoulders. Several evil looking spears were held in one hand, and his tomahawk was stuck into a leather thong he had fashioned into a belt.
“Are you recovered?”
“Yes.”
“Good, I’ll roast this fellow for us tonight. A large hide like this will make a handsome cloak for you.”
She followed him back to their camp, watching as he dug a hole in the ground and put a layer of stones at the bottom before making a fire. He laid some branches across the stones. While he waited for the flames to die down, he cleaned the inside of the carcass. He finally put it in the hole, piled more leaves on top then arranged another thick layer of clay.
“How long will it take?” she asked.
“Several hours.”
He tugged at his beard almost absently before saying. “I want you to learn to be self-reliant, to know how to look after yourself if something happened to me.”
“No!” A lump constricted her throat. “I’d die without you.”
“You can survive. For the sake of my son you must. You can make a kind of bread by collecting lots of grass seeds or wild rice. Shake them in a container so the dirt and husks fall out then grind the seeds between two stones to make flour. Mix the flour with water, make a smooth flat loaf and bake it in hot coals.
“I couldn’t do it, and I don’t even want to know how.” She put her hands over her ears.
He dropped an oath, grabbed her shoulders and shook her. “You will learn, understand? To find water, follow the animals and birds at sunset or sunrise, they’ll lead you straight to it. There are certain trees whose roots and bark hold water. You must be aware of these. I’ll point them out from time to time.”
“You like this, don’t you,” she shrilled, “running around half naked. You’re a savage.”
“Next lesson,” he grated. “You’re not strong enough to throw a spear, but a bow and arrow would do perfectly.”
She didn’t want to learn, but his threats and sneers finally became unbearable. I’ll show you what a pasty-faced parson’s daughter can do, she thought furiously.
Maryanne found that after a few tries, she suddenly got her eye in, hitting the target five times in quick succession. Jake heaped no words of praise on this achievement, but showed his pleasure by squeezing her shoulder.
***
As the weeks passed, her skills improved. Jake did not let her go hunting with him, but she speared a fish on one occasion, and had it cooked by the time he returned.
Their diet included snakes, lizards, goannas, witchetty grubs, eels, wild yams and water lily seeds. Once she got used to eating such strange fare, she realized food was indeed abundant for those who knew where to find it.
She was grinding seeds for flour, when something made her glance up. A party of about ten aboriginal women and children materialized from the bush and walked toward her. Once she would have fainted clean away. If only Libby could see her now.
Except for loincloths, they were naked. The melon-like breasts of three older women flopped as they walked, but the younger two, girls of perhaps fourteen or fifteen, had firm, tip tilted breasts and smooth, flat stomachs. She particularly noticed their stomachs. Long limbed, they moved as gracefully as gazelles, and jealousy burnt a hole in her heart, when she glanced down at her own swollen belly.
A lusty devil like Jake couldn’t abstain for too long. Had he lain with them now she could no longer satisfy his needs? He made few demands on her lately, but was it because she tired easily because of the approaching birth, or did her ugliness repel him?
The children danced and jigged around, and one of them, braver than the rest, eventually sidled up and put out a trembling hand to touch Maryanne’s hair, which was now bleached silver by the sun. Of course, these children would not have seen blonde hair or a fair complexion, because Jake’s skin was as brown as theirs.
They gabbled away, she had no idea what they said, but she smiled and nodded. They giggled childishly as they wandered around the camp inspecting everything, but touching nothing. The horse fascinated them, and they gathered around watching intently as the animal grazed.
Maryanne’s back ached now and a sick feeling churned her stomach. If only she could make these people understand she wanted them to stay until Jake returned. He left at dawn, sometimes not returning until after dark. His excuse about these being the best hunting times became even more flimsy now she had seen the dusky aboriginal girls.
They were quite lovely, with thick black hair, smooth chocolate skin and huge ebony eyes. Always eager to please their men, just like Moondi, fawning and groveling over Jake. She closed her eyes to blot out the ugly pictures, but they kept reappearing.
He shared an affinity with dark skinned people, and here were these dusky young things ripe for the picking. Aboriginal men took several wives, so he could have a harem if he wanted to.
What had he once said? I take and enjoy women whenever I can. Had she not been carrying his child, the son he was so obsessed with having, would he have cast her aside? Left her to Fitzhugh even, and taken his ship to freedom? Oh God, she mustn’t think like this. But like a poison, jealousy seeped all the way through her, until it overwhelmed her reason. When she opened her eyes, the women had departed as silently as they had come, leaving her alone once more.
The damper and yams were cooked, but still Jake did not return. She ate a solitary meal and all the while resentment festered. She built the fire up into an enormous flaming pyre, before crawling into their hut. Even in the corner she could feel the radiating heat. No wild dogs would dare venture within yards of this place tonight.
“There’s plenty of food around. We’ll live off the land until we find our utopia. Change out of your gown—there are pants, jacket and boots in my saddlebag.”
“I’m sorry about this.” She touched his cheek. “You would be on your way to the Americas if it wasn’t for me.”
“It’s too late to worry about that now. If we can make it into this Port Phillip region, we can stay there until the place gets settled. It’s only a matter of time, according to the whalers.”
“How long do you think?” Visions of being stranded in some uninhabited colony for years caused the food to gag in her throat.
“Two, maybe three years.” He shrugged.
“I couldn’t bear it.”
“Well, my dear,” he sneered slightly. “You’ll just have to be satisfied with my company.”
“It isn’t that. I love you and want to be with you, but if something happens, I’d die out here on my own.”
“Nothing will happen to me,” he growled, dragging her into his arms, and plundering her mouth with his. Under his savage onslaught, her lips parted to allow him even deeper access. He pushed away her bodice, and with a thumb and forefinger worked one nipple into a hard, throbbing peak. She knew what he wanted, even before he nudged her thighs apart. Oh, God, she wanted him, too.
As their bodies rocked and writhed together, Jake unleashed in her an all-consuming, primitive need. The sun turned into a fireball, the sky became so fiercely blue she closed her eyes to stop them being burned out of her head. Her mouth dried up, heat seared her skin, like the touch of a naked flame, until her body was damp with perspiration.
Jake’s labored breath roared in her ears, and the weight of his body embedded the bracken ferns into her back. Like a volcano, he erupted deep within the sacred orifice of her womanhood. Even after his seed poured forth, they remained together as one.
“It’s good between us, my lovely,” he whispered, burying his face in the moist valley between her breasts. Within a short time, she felt him harden and throb inside her again.
“We’ll find our utopia one day, even if we have to travel a thousand miles to get there.”
“I’d like that,” she answered sleepily, as a satiated lassitude invaded her limbs.
“Wake up.” She blinked several times before being able to focus her eyes properly, and Jake shook her slightly.
“We have to be moving, we’ve stayed longer than I intended us to. Here,” he passed over a bundle of clothes. “Put them on, hurry up.”
“Turn your back please.”
“Your body holds no secrets from me.” He leaned across and whipped away the gown she held across her nakedness. “Beauty such as yours shouldn’t be hidden by clothing.
He ran his hands across her stomach. “Already the child thickens your waistline. Give me the gown.” She watched as he shoved it in one of the saddlebags. “We can use it to swaddle our son in when he’s born.”
“I wish we could stay here for a little longer, Jake. I feel as if I could sleep for a week.”
“I’m sorry, my sweet; I know it’s hard for you, but we must keep going.”
Over the next few months they journeyed across terrain so steep and treacherous, any slip meant death. They carried no maps, but Jake took his bearings from the sun and stars. No white man had ever traversed this trail before, yet they could leave no signs. They forged their way through virgin bush, over mountains, down into gullies, across streams and over flat, rolling plains.
Their staple diet consisted of roasted eels, opossum, roots and berries, supplemented now and again by wild honey and fish. They saw no one, although Jake declared there were aboriginals in the area. He hunted the same way as the aborigines with spears, and lit their cooking fire by rubbing two sticks together. She felt resentful because he obviously enjoyed the challenge of pitting himself against Mother Nature.
They stopped no more than a day in any one place. There was grass aplenty for the horses, but they quickly lost condition because of the continual travelling. Jake had become possessed by demons that would not allow him to stay in one place for more than a few hours.
“No one will follow us out here,” she complained one morning. “Can’t we rest for a few days?”
“Not yet, I have to find a suitable place. I want to make us some clothes and shoes, the horses need to put on some condition, too.”
The sun had scorched his skin to a deep mahogany because he rode stripped to the waist. When he went out hunting he wore a loincloth fashioned from hide. Her burgeoning waistline now made it impossible to do up her pants, they were held together by a belt plaited from reeds. She wore Jake’s shirt as a top, soon even this would not fit.
“I hate moving all the time. It can’t be good for a woman in my condition.”
“You’ll survive,” he said unsympathetically.
“Where are we going, Jake?”
“I’m trying to find a suitable place where we can hole up for a while. By my reckoning we’ve come more than halfway.”
Maryanne wondered why she bothered arguing, because he always did as he pleased anyway. Deep down she feared he would never love her, too selfish and intent on having his own way to worry unduly about her.
This one particular afternoon, they stopped beside a bubbling brook that danced over shiny white pebbles. It was such a pretty place, with delicate ferns, colorful flowers and majestic river gums, even a little sandy beach.
“We’ll camp here for a time,” he decided.
“Oh, yes, it’s lovely.”
“I want to get some kangaroo skins to make into clothes, and the horses need to put on some condition.”
While Maryanne sat with her swollen feet dangling in the water Jake cut saplings with his tomahawk and built a temporary holding yard. Unsaddling the horses, he turned them loose. He constructed a rough shelter and roofed it over with pieces of bark.
“I’m off to get us some food. Don’t wander away or you might tread on a snake,” he warned, flashing a devilish grin before loping off.
Will I still be able to love you once the passion has worn off, she wondered. What did they really have to bind them together? Nothing, except Jake’s seed that had come to fruition in her body. He was as savage as this brutal land. They would never find their utopia because it probably didn’t exist. They were condemned to roam around for eternity. She didn’t know when the child would be delivered, but trembled just thinking about it. No midwife, not even another woman.
“Poor baby.” She patted her swollen stomach. “You don’t even have anything to wear. You’re worse off than the child of Bethlehem at least he had some clothes and a manger to lie in.”
She dozed off in the warm sun. A terrible snarling, followed by terrified whinnies wakened her. She was shocked to see a pack of wild dogs attacking the horses.
She got up and ran as fast as she could, screaming and waving her arms. Jake’s horse kept rearing in one corner, while hers fought for its life.
Picking up a stone, she threw it with all her strength. She rushed towards the lean-to and pulled Jake’s pistol out of the saddlebag. The shot echoed loudly and she heard a yelp of pain as one of the dogs dropped to the ground. Jake’s horse leapt the fence in terror and raced away. Her horse went down and she couldn’t save it on her own. All she could do was watch in terror, as its flesh got ripped away by frenzied teeth.
Crawling towards a large tree she awkwardly started climbing. It was terrible, the bark cut into her hands as she tried to swing her legs up on to a branch. I’ll never make it, she thought frantically, but I must if I don’t want the dogs to come over and tear me to pieces.
Sheer desperation gave her the strength to try again, and finally, after several failed attempts, she made it to the lowest branch. Not high enough. Oh God, she almost felt their hot, panting breath on her skin. A couple of feet higher then she would be safe.
Her back ached and she sank her teeth so deeply into her bottom lip it started bleeding. Would the dogs smell the blood and be drawn to it? She threw a terrified look at the holding pen. If only she hadn’t. It was sickening, eight or ten dogs ripped at the horse’s carcass while one huge hound ran around with a bloodied chunk between its jaws.
Jake broke out of the scrub with a raised spear. He threw it, there was a howl of pain and one of the dogs lay dead. Three times in quick succession he let fire. Each time the spear found its target.
In a snarling fury the survivors turned on him. One more fell victim to Jake’s spear, before the pack closed in on him. Maryanne started screaming.
He wielded his tomahawk; the horrible sound of steel connecting with bone as heads were split wide open would haunt her forever. Two of the dogs fell; another staggered away leaving a gruesome trail of intestines, while the survivors dashed off.
Jake had to climb up the tree to rescue her, because she couldn’t move. She didn’t cry, tears were beyond her, but she recognized the low, guttural moans as coming from her own mouth.
She clung to him, almost demented with fright. “Keep your eyes shut, sweetling, it’s not a pretty sight around here.”
In the lean-to, he laid her down, and squatted next to her. There was a white sickliness about his mouth. His face and chest were spattered with blood and ugly bleeding bites covered his arms and legs.
“I’ll light us a fire before cleaning away outside.”
She couldn’t tell him not to leave her alone in words, just beseeched him with outstretched arms.
“I won’t be far, sweetling, but I have to clean up this mess.”
He left her cringing in the corner.
It was almost dark before he returned. “I found my horse, thank God. I’ll set a large fire tonight so those mongrels won’t come back.”
He treated her gently, bathed her face and hands with warm water, and tried to feed her pieces of white, fleshy meat.
“You must have something,” he insisted. “For your own and the child’s sake. See it’s good.” She watched him eat. “Put out of your mind what happened before, it’s the way of the wild.”
She turned her head away. “Eat a little for me, then you can sleep.”
Maryanne chewed without tasting and swallowed the pieces he put in her mouth. It was easier that way.
“We’ll rest up here for a while, you’ve had a bad fright, and I want to get our winter wardrobe ready. It’s a strange colony we’ve been exiled to. In the summer it’s so hot, but there are places where it actually snows. I’m going to use the knowledge I picked up from the aborigines to fashion our clothes. I used to watch the women working when I first arrived at their camp, too weak to do anything else much.”
Jake built up the fire before he lay down beside her. He wrapped his arms around her and pressed his lips into her hair. “You’re too sensitive, my delicate English rose,” he whispered. “I’m an unfeeling brute, but I’ll ask nothing of you tonight.”
He ran his hands across her swollen stomach. “Our son is restless, feel how he kicks around.”
The tears suddenly rolled down her cheeks, and he used his tongue to soak them up.
“You’re crying like your heart is going to break, sweetling; hush, you mustn’t.” He rocked her gently, humming some lullaby she vaguely remembered from long ago. His breath felt warm against her cheek, and she let herself drift away from the horrors of before.
***
Next morning the sun had climbed high in the sky before she awoke and dragged herself outside. No sign of Jake. The fire had died down to a pile of red embers. Maryanne glanced around fearfully, but could see nothing of last night’s carnage. Jake’s horse ambled along in the holding yard, but there was now a rough stable of stringy bark and saplings erected in one corner. Outside, stretched over rocks to dry, were several skins.
Feeling about a hundred years old, she waddled listlessly down to the stream and scooped some water over her face and arms. Would this pretty place be Jake’s utopia? Could she bear to live here for long? Once she delivered the child and regained her strength, they would probably move on, never to return.
How dainty the pink and white water lilies looked floating on a patch of serene water. Frogs croaked, bees crooned, and there was the faintest stirring of leaves on the air. Such beauty everywhere, but only the strong would survive this savage wilderness.
“Maryanne.” Jake startled her by calling out.
“I’m down by the water.”
He loped towards her, a tall dark man with wild black hair. Stripped to the waist and barefoot, he could easily pass for a native. A huge kangaroo lay across his shoulders. Several evil looking spears were held in one hand, and his tomahawk was stuck into a leather thong he had fashioned into a belt.
“Are you recovered?”
“Yes.”
“Good, I’ll roast this fellow for us tonight. A large hide like this will make a handsome cloak for you.”
She followed him back to their camp, watching as he dug a hole in the ground and put a layer of stones at the bottom before making a fire. He laid some branches across the stones. While he waited for the flames to die down, he cleaned the inside of the carcass. He finally put it in the hole, piled more leaves on top then arranged another thick layer of clay.
“How long will it take?” she asked.
“Several hours.”
He tugged at his beard almost absently before saying. “I want you to learn to be self-reliant, to know how to look after yourself if something happened to me.”
“No!” A lump constricted her throat. “I’d die without you.”
“You can survive. For the sake of my son you must. You can make a kind of bread by collecting lots of grass seeds or wild rice. Shake them in a container so the dirt and husks fall out then grind the seeds between two stones to make flour. Mix the flour with water, make a smooth flat loaf and bake it in hot coals.
“I couldn’t do it, and I don’t even want to know how.” She put her hands over her ears.
He dropped an oath, grabbed her shoulders and shook her. “You will learn, understand? To find water, follow the animals and birds at sunset or sunrise, they’ll lead you straight to it. There are certain trees whose roots and bark hold water. You must be aware of these. I’ll point them out from time to time.”
“You like this, don’t you,” she shrilled, “running around half naked. You’re a savage.”
“Next lesson,” he grated. “You’re not strong enough to throw a spear, but a bow and arrow would do perfectly.”
She didn’t want to learn, but his threats and sneers finally became unbearable. I’ll show you what a pasty-faced parson’s daughter can do, she thought furiously.
Maryanne found that after a few tries, she suddenly got her eye in, hitting the target five times in quick succession. Jake heaped no words of praise on this achievement, but showed his pleasure by squeezing her shoulder.
***
As the weeks passed, her skills improved. Jake did not let her go hunting with him, but she speared a fish on one occasion, and had it cooked by the time he returned.
Their diet included snakes, lizards, goannas, witchetty grubs, eels, wild yams and water lily seeds. Once she got used to eating such strange fare, she realized food was indeed abundant for those who knew where to find it.
She was grinding seeds for flour, when something made her glance up. A party of about ten aboriginal women and children materialized from the bush and walked toward her. Once she would have fainted clean away. If only Libby could see her now.
Except for loincloths, they were naked. The melon-like breasts of three older women flopped as they walked, but the younger two, girls of perhaps fourteen or fifteen, had firm, tip tilted breasts and smooth, flat stomachs. She particularly noticed their stomachs. Long limbed, they moved as gracefully as gazelles, and jealousy burnt a hole in her heart, when she glanced down at her own swollen belly.
A lusty devil like Jake couldn’t abstain for too long. Had he lain with them now she could no longer satisfy his needs? He made few demands on her lately, but was it because she tired easily because of the approaching birth, or did her ugliness repel him?
The children danced and jigged around, and one of them, braver than the rest, eventually sidled up and put out a trembling hand to touch Maryanne’s hair, which was now bleached silver by the sun. Of course, these children would not have seen blonde hair or a fair complexion, because Jake’s skin was as brown as theirs.
They gabbled away, she had no idea what they said, but she smiled and nodded. They giggled childishly as they wandered around the camp inspecting everything, but touching nothing. The horse fascinated them, and they gathered around watching intently as the animal grazed.
Maryanne’s back ached now and a sick feeling churned her stomach. If only she could make these people understand she wanted them to stay until Jake returned. He left at dawn, sometimes not returning until after dark. His excuse about these being the best hunting times became even more flimsy now she had seen the dusky aboriginal girls.
They were quite lovely, with thick black hair, smooth chocolate skin and huge ebony eyes. Always eager to please their men, just like Moondi, fawning and groveling over Jake. She closed her eyes to blot out the ugly pictures, but they kept reappearing.
He shared an affinity with dark skinned people, and here were these dusky young things ripe for the picking. Aboriginal men took several wives, so he could have a harem if he wanted to.
What had he once said? I take and enjoy women whenever I can. Had she not been carrying his child, the son he was so obsessed with having, would he have cast her aside? Left her to Fitzhugh even, and taken his ship to freedom? Oh God, she mustn’t think like this. But like a poison, jealousy seeped all the way through her, until it overwhelmed her reason. When she opened her eyes, the women had departed as silently as they had come, leaving her alone once more.
The damper and yams were cooked, but still Jake did not return. She ate a solitary meal and all the while resentment festered. She built the fire up into an enormous flaming pyre, before crawling into their hut. Even in the corner she could feel the radiating heat. No wild dogs would dare venture within yards of this place tonight.
