The Cedar Tree

by Nicole Alexander

  The children were in their usual places – the baby under the table and the little boy playing on the floor. The child reached for Brandon’s trouser leg as he passed, and he leant down and patted the boy’s head before sitting at the table. As Hetty served up the food, he listened to the scrape of her spoon against the wall of the cooking pot. A horse nickered in the distance. He was still unused to the woodless breadth of land around him. All he knew of Australia were waterways and belts of trees. Of cutting and rushing to the next dense stand. Following the men who would make their fortune, hoping to make his own. But perhaps he’d not seen clearly enough. A man could work all his life and still not be accepted or succeed if he was a square peg in a round hole.

  ‘You leave your children alone during the day?’ said Brandon, when they were partway through the meal.

  Hetty gave a giggle and pointed to his mouth. Embarrassed, he wiped at the meat juice dribbling down his chin. It was the best possum curry he’d tasted since arriving in Australia.

  ‘I have to. Tommy is used to it now. ’Course, if he climbs on a chair or the table or pokes at the fire . . .’ Her lips twisted in concern. ‘He’s had more than his fair share of spills, but with age he’ll learn.’ She spooned up some meat from her bowl and fed Tommy the morsel. Then she lifted the boy’s clothing to display a burn mark across his back. ‘I came back to feed the baby and Tommy had knocked the pot from the fire.’

  The boy escaped his mother’s grasp and began running around the table.

  ‘It must be hard at times,’ said Brandon.

  ‘What good can come of worrying?’ She leant across the table for his empty bowl, the material on her neckline falling open to reveal the rise of her breasts. Hetty noticed where his attention drifted, and her face coloured slightly. She carried their plates across to a bucket of water.

  ‘What’s it like being a Protestant?’ asked Brandon.

  ‘It’s boring, really.’ She dipped the bowls in the water and then sat them near the fire to dry. ‘There’s no praying to the saints, no worship of Mary, no popery. That’s what Mr Truby calls it. The first time he ever said the word, his lip turned up at the corner like a cat’s snarl. He also said that most of us poor Irish are uneducated and that’s the way the Catholic Church likes it. He’s right. Most of what’s said is in Latin.’ Hetty walked to her cot, the alcove concealed by a curtain of hessian.

  He observed the way she moved. The neatness of her walk. The way the cloth of her skirt draped either side of her rounded bottom as she leant across the bed. Hetty was not one for the petticoats and cheap crinolines that other women of her class wore and he realised that he admired that about her. Brandon followed her across the room so that when she turned, clutching a clothbound Bible, she almost fell into his arms.

  ‘What is popery?’ he asked, resting his hands on her waist.

  ‘Candles. Incense,’ replied Hetty, reaching back to drop the Bible on the bed.

  ‘And what about the old gods?’ Brandon drew her closer. ‘Do you know them?’ He rubbed a thumb along her scarred skin.

  ‘Yes.’ She fitted her hips against his thighs. ‘The shapeshifting Morrígan, a queen of war and fate. Sometimes I pray to her. Is that so very wrong?’

  She ran her palms across his chest. Brandon reached down and began to lift her skirts. He hoped she had no expectations. That, like him, she only cared for this moment.

  The door flew open. Maggie stood on the threshold.

  Brandon moved quickly to the far side of the room. The guilt that flooded through him was beyond anything he’d experienced, the sensation confusing him to the extent that he was incapable of speech.

  Hetty in comparison was far more assured in her reaction, as she folded her arms across her chest. ‘You took your time today. Haven’t you washed floors before this?’

  Maggie placed a hand against the doorframe, as if without the support she might fall. ‘How could you, Brandon!’

  ‘Oh my girl, you have a lot to learn,’ said Hetty. ‘One day your petty attitude will be your undoing.’

  ‘She’s not one of us,’ said Maggie.

  ‘Maybe I’m not either, Maggie. Maybe I’m sick to death of the Green versus the Orange, and the narrow-mindedness that goes along with it. Maybe I don’t want any type of religion at all,’ said Brandon.

  ‘Except for the old gods,’ said Hetty, moving closer to Brandon and taking his arm.

  Maggie pointed a finger at Hetty. ‘She’s hexed you. Between her and the Englishman they’ve taken your soul. How dare you lecture me on how to live my life?’

  He loosened Hetty’s grip and walked towards his stepsister. ‘Let me explain.’

  ‘I thought there was something between us that bonded us, like a real brother and sister, so that although we might have our disagreements, we understood what the other thought. But now I see I don’t know you at all,’ said Maggie angrily.

  ‘Maggie, you know what you mean to me.’ Brandon tried to reach for her but she stepped away.

  ‘If I did, I don’t anymore,’ said Maggie, turning to leave.

  ‘Wait. Sean’s gone. He ran away two days ago.’

  ‘Of course he did. When the postal rider came the day of the mill fight, he had the news. About those farmers being burnt out. Sean’s name was mentioned. It’s all anyone is talking about here. It’s just as well he’s run away.’

  ‘You knew? And you said nothing?’ asked Brandon.

  ‘And how is a person meant to gauge what side you’re on?’ she spat. ‘I see that I was right.’ She hurried from the cottage.

  Brandon tried to follow, but Hetty caught his sleeve.

  ‘It will do no good, Brandon. Wait until the morning. Once she’s settled down a little it will be easier to speak to her. Find her now and there will be no reason to what she says. You might even make things worse.’ She led him to the table, and made him sit. Hetty sat opposite, covering his clenched hands with her own.

  ‘You don’t understand. This is Maggie,’ said Brandon, slowly pulling away from her grasp.

  Hetty gave him a hard stare. ‘I hoped I was wrong about you. But now I see I was right all along. I think you’d better leave.’

  Chapter 39

  A few evenings later, Brandon came across McCauley sitting in a broken-backed chair out the front of the men’s quarters. He was plaiting a whip, the wattle of his chin quavering as he pulled long strips of rawhide back and forth. The ten-foot-long strips of leather lay curled in a pile at his feet. He glanced at Brandon as he approached and then drew his concentration back to his task.

  ‘I’ve been looking for you,’ said Brandon.

  ‘What? No hello for a friend?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You’ve come about that cousin of yours, but I’ve not seen hide nor hair of him since he ran off,’ McCauley told him.

  Brandon sat on a stump next to the slaughterer as the evening sky changed from mauve to navy. He’d been hopeful, but he was not surprised that the man knew nothing of his cousin’s whereabouts. Sean obviously knew his name had been mentioned in connection with the Fenian attacks and he’d gone into hiding. ‘It’s quiet tonight. Where are the rest of the men?’

  McCauley broadened his one good nostril, the vacant hole on the other side increasing in size. ‘Reckon the men don’t like my company. That and the stench. It’s hard to get the smell of meat out of a person.’ He trimmed a length of leather with a pocketknife. ‘Anyway, it seems to me you’ve got a woman problem. There was enough of a din going on the night afore last to wake the dead.’

  ‘You heard that,’ said Brandon.

  ‘A man hears many a thing out here. So much silence makes us good listeners, and a woman’s voice, well, it has an incantation of its own. My mother’s voice was so soft it sounded like the warble of a small bird. But the other night, well, it was more like a nest of geese. The men took bets on what the barney was about. The word is, Hetty has a hankering for you. A man could do worse.’

&nbs
p; ‘I suppose, but I’m not looking for a wife.’

  ‘That won’t stop a woman. And you’ve got the confidence of the squatter. The boys smelt grog on you the other day. It’s a dry camp here, lad. Any of them would swap places for a chance of a snifter at the end of the day. Some’ll trudge twelve mile to the shanty downstream. ’Course, after a while, they don’t come back,’ said McCauley.

  ‘It was only sherry and it’s not like I drank it all.’

  McCauley threw the partially completed whip into the air. It landed with a thump and a scattering of leather strips. ‘Well aren’t you a father’s favourite. Depending on your father, of course. Mine would have whipped me for leaving a drop in a glass.’

  ‘It’s only because I’m working over there and Miss Schaefer’s away. He’s lonely,’ said Brandon.

  McCauley lifted a finger bent in three places. ‘He’d be lonely even with his young niece stopping at home. Miss Schaefer prefers Sydney Town. She’ll have a plan, that one. Probably thinks after he’s gone that she’ll sell it all up and take her coin south.’ He gave a chuckle and, reaching for the whip, began twisting the hide together with knobby thumbs. ‘The girl will be on the receiving end of a bit of comeuppance when the time comes. The boss rode in here like many a squatter and took what he wanted, but the land he uses and what he’s paying for are quite a few thousand acres in difference.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Brandon.

  ‘It’s simple. He leases Crown land but he uses a whole lot more than what he pays for. Since ’61, when the Land Acts came into being, he’s been fighting his cause down in Sydney. He’s trying to keep his holding intact. He doesn’t want any selector coming in and buying up land he’s been working for over two decades.’

  ‘What will happen?’ Brandon picked up a leather strip sliced from the cow hide and twirled it.

  ‘If I knew such things, boy, I’d be hobnobbing with the best of them down south. What I do know is that the squatters have too much of a hold on the land and that it’d be fairer if it was split up a bit. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no supporter of the government, but it’d be a pity to see New South Wales end up like England.’ He rested the partly plaited leather on a trouser leg and eased his fingers into straightness.

  In the dwindling light, Brandon noticed that McCauley had a prime view of the homestead and outbuildings. A soft glow was beginning to show in one of Hetty’s windows.

  ‘You could do worse than that girl.’ McCauley pursed his mouth and stretched his lips back and forth as if testing the fit across what remained of his teeth.

  ‘She and I don’t exactly—’

  ‘What?’ said McCauley. ‘You expecting it to be all dripping and bread? I’ve heard she bites, but a man needs a bit of spirit. Slap your spurs on and go for a ride, eh?’ He chuckled.

  ‘What happened to her husband?’

  ‘Never laid eyes on him. Not once. The story I heard was that he was sent out as a boundary rider and kept on going. He had a horse and a rifle. Probably more than what he’d ever owned in his life. But there was also a whisper that he tried to buy a few acres of the land Truby’s sitting on. Went to an agent and tried to broker the deal under the new rules. Never came home, did he?’

  ‘Does Hetty know?’ said Brandon.

  McCauley’s lumbering jaws moved, as if he was chewing something. ‘She’d have her thoughts as to what went on. It always seemed strange to me that Mr Truby let her stay.’

  ‘Hetty told me it was because she was good with the falcons.’

  ‘Someone has to bash in the brains of those mice, I suppose.’ The leather flapped between his fingers as he resumed his plaiting. ‘Always good to have a spare whip, although there’s nothing worse than breaking in a new one. It’s not like I can rope the old whip to it and train it up, like I do with a new bullock. Which reminds me, I’ll be taking those four head of yours when I leave. Ain’t no grudge on my part. I’m just doing my job,’ said McCauley.

  The loss of the bullock team, shabby though they were, was a blow, but it meant little after Sean’s disappearance, and even less compared to the fact that in a few days, the agreed fortnight would be up and then Brandon would have to decide what to do with Maggie. Should he take her into the village and place her with a family, trusting strangers to keep an eye on a girl whom he himself hadn’t seen since the argument in Hetty’s cottage? Or should he desert Mr Truby with Maggie in tow, try to find Sean and leave the district?

  ‘Go on, then. Get yourself out back. There’s a bit of cow meat left if you want it,’ said McCauley.

  The men’s quarters was an oblong building lined with rows of cots, a couple of tables and two chairs carved out of tree stumps. Brandon walked through it, sidestepping his bunk with its sagging canvas stretched across the frame. The smell of perspiration seemed to have seeped into the walls so that the room was heavy and airless with the exhausted sleep of men who spent all day working the fields and riding after cattle. Outside was a small shack that served as the cookhouse, however McCauley had prepared his food near the campfire. Brandon squatted by the fire and lifted the lid. A chunk of bread sat atop overcooked meat. He used the bread as a shovel, eating what was left and then ran the bread around the inside of the container.

  ‘So, you’re the one that’s caught the squatter’s fancy.’

  A man appeared from behind the cookhouse. A saddlebag was strung across one shoulder and he was lean and pasty-white. Brandon knew him for a cedar-cutter, one of Hackett’s men. He rose warily, chewing the last of the bread.

  ‘What do you want? Is this about Sean?’

  ‘Not exactly.’ The man lifted the lid of the pot, traced the inside of it and licked his finger. ‘Young Maggie’s being cared for.’

  ‘What are you talking about? She’s here,’ said Brandon.

  ‘Is she? Have you seen her lately?’

  Brandon blinked. He hadn’t seen Maggie. Or even asked after her, as Hetty wasn’t speaking to him.

  ‘Mere slip of a girl, she is. Walked all the way into the village by herself.’ He knelt on his haunches and poked at the smouldering timber. ‘You know she’s going to have a child? It’s true. Young Niall has been doing the job for a while now.’

  For a moment, the land surrounding Brandon seemed to constrict in size.

  ‘What did you say?’ Brandon wanted to tell the man he was wrong, but he’d seen Maggie in bed with Hackett’s son and if it had happened once then there was bound to have been other occasions.

  The stranger appeared amused. ‘The thing is, though, the lad can’t be sure the child is his. It’s a fair quandary,’ he said.

  ‘What are you insinuating?’ said Brandon angrily.

  ‘Only that if the girl is so willing to open her legs then it begs asking if she’s done the same for another.’

  Brandon remained still for a moment, staggered by the bluntness of the man’s words. Then he rushed forwards in a fury, knocking the man over, and punching him. The stranger rolled away and got to his feet, fighting back, impassively at first, then, as if wearied by the onslaught, he delivered a single blow to Brandon’s stomach. He doubled over in pain.

  The man retrieved his hat and saddlebag, which had been lost during their struggle. ‘If you want your sister back, Mr Hackett expects a show of good faith.’

  ‘You’re holding her against her will?’

  ‘Let’s just say she’s having a little visit with the Brotherhood.’

  ‘Whatever Hackett wants of me, it has nothing to do with Maggie,’ said Brandon tersely.

  ‘Doesn’t it? You came to the meeting by the river. It makes a person uneasy, knowing that there’s certain happenings you’re aware of and that you walked away from.’

  ‘Those farmers were innocent.’

  ‘There’s twenty men who’ll say you were there. Twenty men who’ll lay blame on you for the fires. Men who’ll name you as the leader of the Fenians in this district.’

  Brandon shook his head. ‘This isn’t Ire
land. I want no part of this.’

  ‘And Maggie?’ The man glared at him from under the bent brim of his hat.

  ‘Is Sean involved?’ asked Brandon reluctantly.

  ‘This is between you and Mr Hackett,’ said the man.

  ‘What does Hackett want?’

  ‘Information in exchange for the girl. He wants a map of Truby’s run.’

  ‘And how am I supposed to get that?’

  ‘You’ll find a way.’

  ‘You want me to break into his house? To steal?’ Brandon was astounded. ‘I can’t do that. If I get caught, I’ll be jailed for sure.’

  ‘And then where would your poor sister be? With child and no one to care for her.’ The man stared at him, as if wondering what all the fuss was about. ‘I’ll be back here in two nights.’ He took the saddlebag from his shoulder and threw it to the ground. ‘Put the map in this and hide it behind the cookhouse. I don’t expect to leave empty-handed.’

  The man walked into the dwindling light and re-emerged a few moments later on horseback. He tipped his hat, as if they were friendly acquaintances, and then rode out into the warm evening, although to Brandon it had taken on an unshakeable chill.

  Before him, the fire smoked dismally as the last of the wood turned to ash. His body grew slack and he stared at the fire before returning inside the men’s hut.

  ‘What did he want?’ McCauley stood in the middle of the quarters.

  ‘Nothing,’ Brandon replied, lying down on his cot.

  ‘Sure, no one ever wants anything. That’s why a person would ride out here, for nothing.’

  ‘It’s best you don’t get involved.’

  Brandon turned on his side, away from McCauley. He’d ruined Maggie. He’d dumped her in the village so that he could pursue his fortune and in doing so had become no better than any other cedar-cutter. He had become a destroyer of things – of trees and people’s lives and of friendship – leaving only broken forests and sawdust in his wake. And now he was being forced to destroy his chance for a new beginning.