Sara Dane

by Catherine Gaskin

  She looked at him grimly. ‘There’s nothing I can do about it ‒ you’ll just have to get used to it.’

  His puckered, exasperated face stared back resentfully at her.

  Sara frowned down at him. ‘I only ask you to lie there, Davie,’ she said despairingly. ‘If only you’d be quiet!’

  His angry cries split the afternoon air, and Sara, with a shrug of her shoulders, decided there was nothing to be done to pacify him.

  The stallion and Goldie, her own horse, came forward eagerly as soon as she laid her hand on their bridles. The bay was, by this time, thoroughly unnerved by the child’s cries. He stood still and frightened in his box, refusing to come forward. She breathed hard, wondering what to do now. Holding the bridles of the two first horses, and supporting David as she did, she was unable to go into his box and bring him out. Nor could she afford to wait any longer. The only thing was to leave the box door open, and trust that he would follow the other two.

  She settled David as securely as possible against her hip, and pulled at the bridles with her tensed, sweating hand. It would take ten minutes, she calculated, to reach the edge of the cleared land. The screen of the surrounding bush was thick and comforting; once they were within the fringe of it, the horses would not be seen by anyone who did not actually stumble on them. Tethered there, they would be safe and unseen. Safe … Her mind echoed the word doubtfully. There were still the hours of the night to live through before she could be certain of safety ‒ for her child, the house and stores, and herself. The thin column of smoke above the trees was there to remind her of what she might yet expect.

  As she crossed the yard, tugging at the bridles to force the horses to a better pace, she heard a clatter at the stable door. Looking back she saw the bay gelding; he paused a moment, hesitant and nervous. Then, seeing the other two horses, he trotted over to join them, falling in meekly at the rear of the procession.

  Sara’s mouth relaxed in a faint smile of relief before she turned her face once more towards the edge of the cleared land.

  Sara stood in the kitchen doorway and gazed warily about her. Everything was exactly as she had left it to go for the horses. Annie’s cooking-spoon lay on the floor in a pool of congealed fat. The last of the afternoon sunshine threw her shadow before her, long and thin. Her wrist ached with weariness as she raised the pistol level with her waist. Then she stepped inside.

  Finding himself once again in the warm familiarity of the house seemed to bring to David a renewed sense of his grievances. He struggled wildly in his improvised sling, setting up a lusty howling that was part hunger and part anger. Sara clamped him firmly to her side with her left hand, and tried to stifle his cries against her breast. The sling, which had taken his full weight during her tramp across the fields with the horses, was cutting into her neck like wire. His waving arms beat at her, and with every fresh attempt he made to escape, the hard knot of the shawl bit deeper into her flesh.

  She held back her tears of fatigue and vexation, and paused to listen to the wild hammering on the storeroom door that had greeted David’s first cries. The hammering went on, and his screams became piercing. Sara held him tighter, fixing her gaze on the door, the pistol held level.

  Through the confusion and noise Annie’s voice reached her.

  ‘Open up, ma’am! Oh, open up, for God’s sake! The others have gone!’

  Sara did not reply. Her eyes narrowed in suspicion; she edged closer to the large kitchen table, resting David’s weight on it, giving herself better control of the pistol.

  ‘Oh, ma’am … ma’am! Let me out, for the love of God!’

  The words carried in them a sob of despair and fear; they were cries from a woman terrified and alone. Two years had taught Sara to know Annie Stokes thoroughly ‒ she was a rogue and an intriguer, but she was no actress. Sara felt that for once she was speaking the truth. She placed the pistol on the table, and fumbled for the key of the storeroom.

  She opened the door, and Annie stumbled forward stiffly.

  ‘They’ve gone!’ she gasped, her Cockney’s whine rising, shrill and unnerving. ‘Through the window!’ she added unnecessarily.

  Without speaking a word, Sara stood looking into the storeroom. The young Irishwoman’s shrewd brain had seized upon the situation, and had taken the chance of a breakout. Without being at all sure of what was taking place, she had gambled literally with the skin of her back, on the chance that she might follow the protection of the firearms and food of the men convicts in their escape into the bush. The second woman, slavish in her attitude to Mary, and too stupid to properly grasp what was happening about her, had, as a matter of course, gone also.

  Together they had rolled a row of molasses kegs to form a platform beneath the shutter, and then using their combined strength, they had battered away at the wood with an empty keg. Reflecting on the terrifying power in the arms of that clumsy, slow-witted creature, Sara could well understand that it had taken them only a short time to make their escape.

  The wall beneath the shutter was badly scarred, and there were splinters of wood lying thickly on the floor. She turned away dumbly, her shoulders drooping.

  Annie had begun wringing her hands. ‘I didn’t go, ma’am!’ she wailed. ‘They said I was a fool … But I wouldn’t go with them, Mrs. Maclay, ma’am! I wouldn’t leave you … now.’

  Sara nodded mechanically. ‘Yes, Annie. Yes … I know.’

  Annie had much more to say, a stream of information, comments, and emphatic protestations of loyalty. Sara listened with half her mind, picking out of the flow of words only the bits that were important. Gradually the story was pieced together. Annie gabbled on, telling her how they had known of the hasty arrival of Charles Denver’s overseer, and had guessed, by his agitated manner and the column of smoke above the trees, most of what had happened. Being locked in the storeroom at gun-point had confirmed their guesses. Standing on a keg, with her eye pressed to a crack in the shutter, Mary had seen three convicts, whom she did not recognize, armed with a gun, a roughly fashioned pike, and a pickaxe, slip quietly past the house. They had not attempted to enter, but made towards the outhouses. It was then, Annie said, that the Irishwoman had ordered her companion to help her batter down the shutter.

  Sara cut her short. ‘Three strange convicts, you say? And armed?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  Sara feverishly hoisted the sling around her neck, pulling it over her head.

  ‘Here,’ she panted, thrusting the angry, screaming child into Annie’s arms, ‘take him, and give him something to eat. See if you can make him quiet.’

  Cut short in her recital, Annie looked at David with an expression of astonishment, and then gave a gasp as Sara turned and fled from the kitchen.

  In Andrew’s office Sara unlocked the cupboard again, taking out the second gun of the three he kept there. She loaded it as he had taught her, thankfully remembering the hours of practice he had insisted upon in preparation for just such an hour as the one which faced her now. She loaded and checked the ammunition meticulously, and then turned to go back to the kitchen.

  But beside Andrew’s desk she hesitated and halted. She thought a moment before sliding open the top drawer. Her hand fumbled among the quills and extra candles, closing over a small, carved dagger, of Italian workmanship, which they sometimes used for cutting paper. It was a delicate, evil-looking thing with a slim blade, and as she picked it up her mind was grimly moving forward to what might happen if the convicts overran Kintyre, recalling too clearly Evans’s blood-stained hands and his story of finding Denver’s battered body.

  As she stood there, she heard the first shots fired ‒ four of them.

  She laid the gun down on the desk for just the few seconds she needed to push the dagger into the bodice of her dress, so that the carved handle didn’t show. The coldness of the pointed steel between her breasts was a faint comfort to her.

  Then she picked up the gun again and started towards the kitchen.


  At the sound of the shots Annie had commenced a peculiar, monotonous shriek ‒ something between a howl and a scream. Sara clenched her teeth. She was going to put a stop to that unearthly noise if it was the last thing she did. If she was going to die, it wasn’t going to be to the sounds of Annie’s shrieking.

  As she reached the kitchen she heard the crack of another shot being fired.

  The single shot had silenced Annie abruptly. She turned to Sara with a desperate look of appeal.

  ‘It’s all up with us now, ma’am! We’re finished!’ With a half-sob she pointed to the window.

  ‘There’s Trigg, now ‒ wounded, by the looks of it. And no sign of Hogan.’

  Sara sprang past her to the open shutters, the sickness of fear deep in her stomach. She was suddenly too much aware of the dependence of Annie and David upon her, and her own hopeless inadequacy in defending them if the convicts attacked the house. It was mainly for reassurance that she raised the gun and steadied it against the window frame. If the convicts came, two guns wouldn’t hold them off for very long. She hoped Annie wouldn’t realize this too soon.

  The principal outhouses were about three hundred yards from the house itself. They formed a square, facing inwards ‒ two huts were allotted to the convicts for sleeping quarters, with a smaller one for Jeremy and Trigg. There were two store-houses for the convicts’ provisions and farm equipment, and the long hut, which Andrew used to house the extra labourers he hired for seasonal work ‒ harvesting and sowing, and the quick clearing of new land. He had built the outhouses at this distance because he had not wanted the presence of the convicts to weigh too heavily upon his own life. They were necessary to the workings of Kintyre, but, beyond that, he baulked at giving them recognition. At this moment, Sara wished that the distance were twice as much.

  In the fading light she strained her eyes to see across the kitchen yard. In the space between the stables and the barn, she recognized the figure of Trigg. He leant, as if he were breathless and weak, against the wall of the barn; he was hugging his right arm close, and his head was thrust back as he sucked in great gulps of air. He rested for only a few seconds in the shelter of the wall. Then he lowered his head and ran, with just one backward glance, across the yard to the kitchen. Sara tensed herself, waiting for some sign of pursuit, but there was none. Wounded, and unarmed, Trigg was of no importance to the convicts for the time being.

  She lowered the gun, but still kept her place by the window as Trigg stumbled up the two steps to the kitchen, and stood there, leaning heavily against the door-frame.

  He was very white; his whole right arm, from shoulder to wrist, was covered in blood. He wore no coat, and the blood was already running in a thin stream from the tip of one of his fingers. He tilted his head back, gasping for breath, looking spent and exhausted, as if that last dash from the convicts’ huts to the house had entirely drained his strength.

  Annie let out a horrified squawk, and at a nod from Sara, laid David, quiet now, down on the table, and rushed to help him.

  Sara, unmoving, looked at them both. Annie’s loyalty had proved itself now, but Trigg … She was still suspicious of Trigg. His dash to the house might have been a gallant effort to protect the women and the baby; it might have been a determination to crawl into shelter to nurse his wounded arm. She was prepared not to place overmuch trust in him, but he pushed Annie aside and turned to her.

  ‘Hogan and me, we had our men rounded up and almost in the huts when those other devils arrived, ma’am,’ he gasped weakly. ‘Not a chance they gave us, but came up behind, round by the stable, and fired. There’s about ten of them, ma’am … and four have guns. There was no holding our lot, once they got the gist of what was happening. I got it in the arm, and then had to run for it … or stay and be murdered.’

  His voice had died a little more. He said falteringly, ‘Mary and Bessie have gone with them. I heard them yelling. I knew you and Annie and Master David were here alone.’ He made an effort to straighten, but it was feeble. ‘I’m not much use now. But I reckon I could still fire a gun.’

  Sara nodded, running her tongue across her dry lips. How wrong she’d been about Trigg; she found it difficult now to look at him without shame.

  ‘And Hogan?’ she asked faintly.

  ‘He got it in the back … twice. ’T ain’t much chance he’s alive now.’

  III

  There was nothing to do then but wait. During the next hour Sara didn’t stir from her post at the window, the gun propped beside her. In enraged helplessness she watched the plunder of the storehouses, and then, finally, what she had been dreading ‒ and waiting for as well. The first pale flame shot above the roofs of the storehouses. At dusk a stiff breeze had sprung up; it fed the fire which raced from building to building with a swiftness that struck terror into her heart. Soon the outhouses were a blazing fiery square in the early darkness. The wind came in her direction, and brought the wild voices of the escaped men. The rum they had plundered from the stores added frenzy to their success. It had given them a new boldness ‒ a boldness which the certain knowledge that they faced the lonely bush and the river, and the solid, unknown mountains beyond it, had not yet chilled. They shouted and yelled to each other in the flush of victory. Sara could soon see their figures outlined against the flaming huts; she watched their staggering progress, their determined shouldering of the bags of food they had looted.

  They made no attempt to come near the house. She imagined this was because they had found the empty stable and thought the Maclays had ridden off and left Kintyre to whatever fate threatened it; and because they were already loaded with as much food as they could carry. For a while she waited, terrified that the possibility of firearms and more ammunition might lure them to the house. And then it occurred to her that they wouldn’t bother with the house ‒ they were working against time, and once they had their food collected together they would be off. If, as Evans had feared, they had seen him ride in the direction of Kintyre, then they wouldn’t linger; every minute they expected the arrival of troops. The trek to the river and the two boats moored at the small landing-stage began soon after the outhouses were fairly ablaze.

  Sara clenched her hands tightly in an effort to keep her rage in check; she felt sick, and there were tears in her eyes as she watched the roof of the nearest hut cave in with a crash that sent sparks flying in all directions. She knew ‒ none knew better ‒ why they wasted precious minutes firing the outhouses. They were making their only effective protest against their masters and gaolers. Their memories of the holds of the prison ships, the lash, and the chain-gang came up to urge them on in their destruction. They called to each other in their drunken courage before setting out to beat the trackless forest, certain that they would find a way across those baffling blue hills, and that somehow they would survive where no white man had lived before. They each of them must have known that the chance of survival was slender; and the knowledge seemed to have made them even more desperate. Sara knew it all, she knew the feeling running strongly among them, one to the other ‒ the anger, the bitter resentment, needing only one spark falling from a hot head to set their fury alight.

  When the last of the escaped convicts appeared to have made his way to the boats, and the fires were beginning to die down, Sara roused Trigg and Annie. David was asleep in a basket under the table, so she left him undisturbed. Trigg’s arm was bandaged and in a sling made of torn sheeting; he was still in great pain. He followed Sara out of the kitchen and across the silent yard, stumbling several times on the path down to the huts. Sara handed the lamp she carried to Annie, and supported him herself on his uninjured side. In her right hand she carried the gun. The wind blew towards them from the dying fires, bringing a warm breath against their faces, smuts and hot ashes, and the smell of roasting salt meat.

  They found Jeremy lying face down in the middle of the square. Annie helped Sara turn him on his back. He was quite still, making no sound as his body rolled over. There was bloo
d on the shoulder of his coat, and it had clotted in his hair and on the side of his face. Sara wasted no time searching his face, in which there was no sign of life; she tore down his shirt, and bent to listen for his heart.

  In a few moments she raised her eyes to the two heads that bent anxiously over her.

  ‘He’s alive!’ she said.

  Then she looked at Trigg. ‘Can you manage to carry the lamp and the gun?’

  He nodded.

  To Annie she tossed a sharp order.

  ‘Give me your apron. We’ll have to tie up his head before we try to get him back to the house. Somehow we’ve got to keep him alive.’

  IV

  Sara gave a final glance at the sleeping figures around her in the sitting-room, before she reached out to take up the lantern from the table. She rose with no more noise than the rustle of her skirts.

  Annie was sitting on the floor, as far as possible from the window, her back gently sagging against the wall, her mouth hanging open in sleep; every now and then her breath made little hissing noises through the gaps in her teeth. David was beside her, in the basket brought out of the kitchen. Jeremy and Trigg lay against the opposite wall; Trigg in the quiet, motionless sleep of weakness and exhaustion; Jeremy was conscious only for brief periods, the rest of the time he twisted and turned in a kind of fever. Throughout the night he had occasionally woken to ask her for water, his eyes flickering over her face in a few moments of clarity before he slipped back into semi-consciousness. Sara paused before him now, holding the lamp directly above his head. He was not as badly hurt as she had first feared ‒ a bullet had grazed his temple, and there was another still lodged in his shoulder. He had lost a good deal of blood.

  He turned his head away painfully, and she lowered the lamp. Jeremy wasn’t going to die, she told herself firmly ‒ not if a surgeon arrived in time to remove the bullet. Her tongue flicked nervously over her lips as she calculated the chances of a surgeon being among the first of the troops to reach the Hawkesbury. It seemed a very slight chance.