Vengeance, page 18
He changed the subject. ‘What will you do when your sentence is finished?’
‘Take work as a seamstress.’
‘Here in Hobart Town?’ Ralph was astonished. ‘You would not return to England?’
‘I’ll never go back.’
She said it with such vehemence, Ralph almost flinched. All I want is England. England with Ann and Harry. It was his first thought on waking and his last wish before going to sleep. ‘I cannot imagine staying here,’ he said.
‘I can’t imagine anything else. The one good thing about the past is that you can leave it behind.’
A drop of rain stung Ralph’s cheek. The clouds filled the sky now. More drops fell, freckling the ground. In a moment, there would be a proper cloudburst – the wind was rising.
‘Come with me,’ Mary said. She led him at a run through the emptying streets, to a whitewashed cottage on the southern edge of the town. By the time they arrived they were both soaked through. Ralph did not pause to ask where they were.
They stood dripping in the front hallway, breathing heavily.
‘This is where you live?’ Ralph said. All his senses were heightened. Rain rattled on the roof shingles, but inside the house it was so quiet that he could hear his own breathing, the thump of his heart against his ribs.
Mary led him into a neatly kept parlour and laid a fire in the grate.
‘Is your mistress here?’ From their previous conversations, Ralph knew Mary worked for a widow who owned a share in a brewery.
‘My mistress always pays her calls on a Saturday. I think she does it as a kindness to me.’
Ralph tried not to wonder how many other men Mary had received in this parlour while her mistress was out. It was none of his business.
In all the hours they had spent together, they had never struggled for conversation, but now they were both suddenly tongue-tied, like young lovers. The fire smoked and sputtered as the wood struggled to catch. The heat from their bodies fogged the windows, so that all they knew of the world outside was the relentless drumming of the rain.
Mary broke the awkward silence. ‘I’ll show you something.’
She took his hand and led Ralph upstairs, into a small room tucked under the eaves. It held a small bed, a washstand and a mirror, a linen chest and a wooden chair with a dress draped over it. The walls were plain, except for a framed piece of embroidery above the bed. Neat stitches spelled out PATIENCE IS A VIRTUE, the letters surrounded by lilies and ivy.
Ralph looked uneasily at the bed.
Think of Ann, he told himself.
Mary took a comb from the nightstand, knelt, and dug it into a crack in the wooden floor. She lifted one of the boards away, revealing a small wooden box hidden underneath.
‘My valuables.’
She opened the box. Nestled inside was a strange collection of oddments: a pin cushion made to look like a black man’s head, a pair of scissors, various lengths of ribbon, a silver snuff box, a pocket watch.
‘Where did you get these?’ Ralph asked.
‘I took them.’ Mary held up one of the ribbons against her bodice, like a dressmaker choosing fabric. A light had come into her eyes. ‘Thirteen. One for each year.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I wanted them.’ She pouted. ‘Just once a year, I like to remind myself that they can’t take everything from me.’
‘If they caught you, you would lose your ticket-of-leave.’
‘I’m always careful.’
Mary closed the box and put it back under the floorboard.
‘What are you here for?’ Ralph asked. In all the time he had known her, it was the one topic they had never discussed. Every time they came near the subject, Mary had closed up.
She would not meet his gaze. ‘I’m not a thief.’
‘I never said you were.’ Even in a drab room on a dark afternoon, everything seemed charged. Standing opposite Mary, Ralph could almost feel the energy filling the space between them.
A lock of hair hung loose over her cheek. She pulled it to her mouth, chewing on it like a little girl, her eyes sliding away.
‘My husband, John, he was a tailor.’ She spoke quickly, her words rushing out. ‘One day a runaway horse knocked him down, broke his arm. It wouldn’t heal and he couldn’t work. I took a job as a lady’s maid, but there were so many girls like me. We were sixpence a dozen. The pennies I earned weren’t enough for me to live on, let alone the two of us.’
In the dim room, Mary looked more like Ann than ever. The story was familiar, too. Back in England, Ann’s husband Frank had also struggled for work after the war, as machines had replaced labourers. Ann and Frank had chanced on a government scheme – to settle people in the Cape Colony. Mary had not been so lucky.
‘We had a little girl. I held off weaning her for as long as I could, but she was a hungry thing. I gave her all we had, but still she kept crying for more. I couldn’t sleep, and I didn’t eat. It started that I’d faint at work from being so worn out, which made my mistress angry. I feared she’d put me out, and the baby wouldn’t stop crying, and my husband barely left his bed . . .’
There was no self-pity in her voice. Her eyes were clear. ‘The lady I worked for had a silver cup. Worth more than what she paid me in a year. It was at the back of the silver chest – she never used it for anything. I polished it every week, and every week I saw my reflection in it growing paler and thinner. Imagine, holding it in my hands, knowing that I could get all I needed for my child and my husband if I just dropped it in my apron.’ She shook her head, even now feeling the injustice of it all. ‘Imagine how much strength it took to resist.
‘One day, I took it. Gave her my notice the same day. Thought it would be months before she noticed it had gone. With any luck, she’d blame the next girl. But she was a sly one. Every time a maid left, she counted everything in the house.’
Mary paused. Reliving her story seemed to have physically transformed her. Her cheeks seemed thinner, her back stooped, just the way Ann had been when Ralph had found her.
Without thinking, Ralph wrapped his arms around her. She sank against his chest and he held her there, stroking her hair.
‘Even then, I might have got away.’ With her head against him, he felt her voice resonate in his chest. ‘A friend tipped me off, told me that my mistress had called in the magistrate. I might have slipped away, never looked back. But I couldn’t.’
She spoke so softly that her words were almost lost in the noise of the rain pounding outside. ‘I couldn’t leave my daughter. I thought I could creep in, fetch her and be gone before anyone knew of it. But when I went home, there were two bailiffs waiting for me. They ripped her screaming out of my arms. That was the last time I saw her.’
Ralph was not sure what to say.
‘It was a long time ago,’ Mary said. Then, in an instant, something changed in her. Her body was suddenly alive. She leaned away, arching her back so that her hips pressed against him.
She looked up at him, her lips slightly parted.
Ralph found himself bending down towards her. His body seemed to be moving with a will of its own, months of pent-up frustration suddenly unleashed. Her lips were warm. Her tongue flicked inside his mouth and he groaned.
Still kissing him, she pulled him over to the bed in the corner. They collapsed onto it. Her hand fumbled with his trouser buttons.
‘No!’ he gasped.
But she already had his trousers open. Her hand reached inside, her fingers encircling him, making him gasp. His blood seemed to be on fire.
‘No,’ he said again. ‘I have a wife.’
‘There’s no married men that come to Van Diemen’s Land.’ Her hand began to move up and down, sending terrible bolts of pleasure through him.
‘She is waiting for me.’
‘No, she’s not. And you’re not going back to her.’
‘I will.’ With a supreme effort, he pushed her off him.
Mary hung her head as he staggered to his feet, hair falling over her face. A turmoil of emotions flooded through Ralph: guilt, frustration, desire.
‘In another world . . .’
She looked up, pushing the hair from her face. ‘You’re thinking of running.’
‘No.’
‘I saw the eyes you were making at that ship. Like a poacher with a game bird. You’re aiming to take her, aren’t you.’
‘No.’
‘Then marry me.’
If she’d slapped him in the face Ralph could not have been more surprised. He knew convicts were allowed to marry – the authorities considered that it improved a man – but it was the last thing he had expected. ‘What?’
‘In three months, I’ll have finished my sentence. You’ve a good report. The governor would give his permission. We could live together.’
‘I have to be free.’
‘You’d be free enough.’
Her face shone with hope. Suddenly Ralph wanted nothing more than to make her happy. And why not? He imagined letting go of the cords that tugged him back to Africa, banishing the demons that drove him on, living in peace: married, happy, free enough.
When was the last time you were happy where you were? He felt exhausted. Tired of running, tired of fighting. But . . .
‘I cannot.’
‘Because of your wife?’
‘I am not staying here.’
‘I knew it.’ Mary pulled back, searching his face. ‘You must think me a great fool. I talk of marriage, while for you I was just a little amusement before you went on your way.’
‘Never that.’ He tried to stroke her face, but she smacked his hand away. ‘I . . . care for you very much.’
A pause. All he could see was the sadness in her eyes.
‘Come with me.’ He said it on impulse. Anything to change the mood in the room. ‘We go in a week, when the Liberty sails. You could join us.’
She gave him a sad look. ‘You know how many men I’ve seen try to escape? Some got hanged, and some were gone for six months or a year and then came back in chains. Most went to Macquarie Harbour.’ She shuddered. ‘While I did as I was told, bobbed and curtsied and didn’t fuss when a guard wanted a tumble. And I’ll be free before any of you.’
‘I cannot wait that long.’
‘The only way to survive Van Diemen’s Land is to forget where you came from. You can never go back.’
‘No.’ She was wrong; she had to be. ‘What about . . .’ He realised that she had never spoken the child’s name. ‘. . . your daughter?’
‘What about my daughter?’ Mary parroted his words, harsh and mocking. ‘Either she died, or she grew up to work in the poorhouse. Or maybe she was luckier than me, and found a way out of poverty. Why should I care?’
‘I could take you back to her.’
‘And what would I be to her now?’ There was a wild look in her eyes. ‘She never knew me. I wouldn’t even recognise her. We’re nothing to each other.’
Her words were like a hot poker twisting in Ralph’s guts. ‘I cannot believe that.’
‘I went back for her once, and look where it got us. Her in a poor house . . . me in prison.’
‘You cannot abandon your family.’
‘Trust me, if you try to go back, it will kill you.’
‘No.’
He could not argue with her anymore. Buttoning his trousers as he went, he hurried down the stairs and out of the house, into the full ferocity of the storm.
MISSION STATION, MAHIKENG
A
nn felt the rumbling in her sleep. At first she thought that it was somehow coming from inside her. The vibrations felt like her own body reorganising itself after the ordeal of labour, her muscles and tendons slipping back into place. She hoped that the noise would not wake the baby. After squalling all night, he had finally latched and taken some milk, then fallen into a fitful sleep.
His face twitched in the half-light as Ann looked down at him, where he lay against her breast; his tiny hand curled in a fist, jerking as if he was fighting someone. He must be dreaming, though what a newborn child would dream about Ann could not guess. Were people born with their dreams already inside them? Everything about him seemed so fragile – his little bow of a mouth, his flickering eyelids – that there were times when she hardly dared to touch him.
But he was hers. Hers and Ralph’s. That should have been a joyful thought, but instead it worsened the ache in her belly. Would Ralph ever see the son he had given her?
The rumbling continued. It was coming from outside, Ann realised: the sound of wagon wheels. Out in the yard, people were shouting. Ann lifted her head, and turned her eyes upwards to the thatch above her and the heavens that lay beyond. ‘Please let it be him,’ she whispered, hardly daring to hope.
As carefully as she could, Ann got up and walked to the door. Even the early morning sunlight made her wince after a day in the dark house; she put her hand over the baby’s face to shield his eyes.
Andrew stood to one side of the yard, deep in conversation with Tshidi, while Elspeth, Louis and Clara watched a man clamber down from the box seat of an ox-wagon. Behind him, more men jumped to the ground from the tailboard. Another shard of broken hope pierced Ann’s heart. None of the men were Ralph. Then she saw Harry. For some reason she could not fathom, he had been sitting alongside the driver on the wagon.
‘What are you doing up there?’ she called, panic sharpening her voice. ‘Get down this instant.’
Andrew and Elspeth turned towards Ann. ‘This man, Mr Arend, has news of Ralph,’ Andrew said, his voice strained.
The newcomer lifted his hat to her and bared his teeth in a smile. His men shuffled into a loose line strung across the yard behind him. Squinting against the sunshine, Ann noticed their scarred faces, the knives and pistols tucked into their belts. She held the baby tighter.
‘News of Ralph?’ It could not be good. Panic quickened in her chest. ‘Tell me.’
‘I saw him in Philippolis,’ Arend said, his hand finding Harry’s shoulder as the boy tried to pass him, his fingers digging into his shirt. ‘He wanted a wagon. I said I would come here, take you to him.’
Ann nodded slowly, trying to disguise her disbelief. None of this is right. Ralph would never have sent someone else to fetch her and Harry, especially not a man like this. He would have come himself, unless . . .
‘Where is Ralph now?’
‘Away south.’
‘And what of the man I sent with him?’ Andrew said. ‘My servant, Moshewa. Why did he not return?’
Arend waved his hand, a gesture which could have meant many things. ‘Philippolis.’
‘I told you that there are too many wicked temptations in that place,’ Elspeth said.
‘Ralph also wanted me to fetch some things,’ Arend said. His eyes raked over Ann, taking in her figure, the baby in her arms. ‘Maybe you know what I’m talking about?’
‘It was very good of you to come so far,’ Elspeth said, as if the men were distant relatives paying a social call. Only the unnaturally high pitch of her voice gave away her fear. She beckoned to one of the servants. ‘Fetch tea for our visitor.’
Arend ignored her. He was still staring at Ann, waiting for her answer.
‘I do not know what you mean,’ Ann said honestly. ‘We came here with nothing.’
Arend’s eyes narrowed. Letting go of Harry’s shoulder, he advanced towards Ann.
‘Perhaps you’d care to think again.’
Ann shook her head. As she did so, the baby moved in her arms. She wanted to put him down somewhere, away from this strange man, somewhere safe. But she was trapped.
‘We have nothing.’ What has happened to Ralph? She felt a dread certainty that it must be something terrible. ‘Even the clothes on our backs are borrowed.’
Arend tilted his head. He had a long knife in his belt, and his hand stroked the pommel. ‘Ralph said he had a hoard of ivory.’
‘He did.’ It felt to Ann as if the whole yard was closing in on her. ‘But he left it behind when we fled Zululand.’
‘Now he wants it back.’
Hot tears brimmed in Ann’s eyes. ‘He left it lying in the road. He had no choice.’
‘I heard different . . .’ Arend took another step towards her. ‘I heard he left it here. All he needed was a wagon to bring it south.’
Ralph, what have you done?
The baby must have felt Ann’s distress. His eyes fluttered open. Not now, she prayed. If he started crying, she might go mad.
Arend loomed over her. ‘So, will you tell me where the ivory is?’
Ann could hardly breathe. ‘I told you. We left it in Zululand.’
Pain exploded across her cheek. Arend had struck so fast that she had not even seen him move. She stumbled back. Dazed, she was dimly aware of a sudden lightness in her arms; of Andrew charging towards Arend, and Arend’s men rushing forward to grab him, dragging him back; the glitter of steel; and then an explosion so loud and close it seemed to split her head open.
The baby’s crying cut through the ringing in her ears. Her arms were empty. Arend stood in front of her, one arm in the air, a smoking pistol in his hand. With his other arm, he cradled the baby against his chest.
Ann screamed. She ran at Arend, but a man stepped in her way. She scratched and bit and fought, desperate to get past him, but he twisted her right arm behind her back so she thought he’d break it, and when that didn’t stop her, he put a knife to her throat.
Arend surveyed his prisoners. Ann and Andrew, held fast; Elspeth, with Clara and Louis huddled behind her; the rest of the Rolong workers gathered on the church porch, two of his men covering them with their guns.
Arend jammed the spent pistol back in his belt, and pulled out his knife. He held the flat of it against the squalling baby’s face.
‘There is no ivory,’ Ann sobbed.
Arend shook his head, twisting the knife so that the edge of the blade pressed into the baby’s soft cheek. ‘You said that before.’
‘I swear . . .’ Her face was still numb from Arend’s blow. Her arm was in agony, and the baby’s crying was getting louder. His tiny face had gone bright red, eyes screwed up and little legs kicking.
