by Cat Lindler
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Hobart
Cullen slept in a room over the stables at Talmadge House and had taken up the task of caring for the horses and helping Jasper and Pettibone guard Samantha. Cullen carried out the latter duty in his own way. With ships arriving and departing Hobart’s harbor daily, the streets in town saw much activity. Young boys—ships’ cabin boys and settlers’ offspring—swarmed the byways as thickly as flies in a slaughterhouse. Cullen moved among them like a will-o’-the-wisp. He possessed a knack for moving quickly, blending in, and remaining unobtrusive, managing even to avoid the notice of Samantha’s other two bodyguards.
On the day Samantha slipped away from Madame Louella’s, meeting Steven Landry on the docks, Cullen had, as was his usual habit, stationed himself outside the back entrance to the shop. Samantha’s recent passive attitude and willingness to follow Christian’s orders had struck him as suspicious. Less trusting than Jasper and Samantha’s family and being a schemer himself, he sensed she was up to tomfoolery. Therefore, he often tagged along at a discreet distance whenever she went into town.
He was unable to figure out the significance of her assignation with Landry and kept the meeting to himself. After that incident, he subjected Samantha to even closer scrutiny.
Landry made his skin crawl. Even though the merchant was a welcome visitor at Talmadge House, Cullen watched him like the last piece of salt pork on a becalmed ship. The man made numerous visits to the Blue Boar Inn, a tavern no respectable gentleman would frequent. His business there remained a mystery, though Cullen suspected it was dirty business. He debated confiding in Jasper or Pettibone. However, he had no evidence against the man, only suspicions, and after that first meeting with Samantha, she and Landry never met in secret again.
One moonlit night several weeks after Steven Landry became a fixture at Talmadge House, Cullen lay awake on his pallet, the skin of his nape prickling. Something was brewing. Something bad. He wished, as he did each day, that Christian and Garrett would return. They would know what to do. He couldn’t verbalize his unease, though he felt it deep in his gut, like pressure dropping from a storm on the horizon before a typhoon.
When voices in the alley drifted in the window above his pallet, he sat up and strained to distinguish the words. At first only murmuring. Then hooves stamping, horses snorting, clinking bridles, and creaking saddles. He jumped up, pulled on his clothes in the dark, and covered his shirt and trousers with the black cloak he used as a blanket. At the last minute, he shoved a revolver he’d borrowed from the ship into his belt.
Cullen slithered out of the barn with the caution of a hayloft cat. He slipped into the gardens, where he crouched among the rhododendrons, positioning himself within view of the back of the house and the gate leading from the yard. The moon’s light revealed the silhouettes of riders in the alley.
At a motion from the house, he turned his head. A man climbed out of Samantha’s window and made his way down the trellis between the trumpet vines. Another figure, shrouded in a cloak, followed the first. The moon came out from behind a cloud, and Cullen recognized the two—Steven Landry and Samantha. His chest tightened. Samantha was following Landry, not being dragged away or carried off. She was leaving with him willingly, running away from Christian.
His hands fisted. How could she do this to Christian? Bitter disappointment and shattered illusions fell about his feet, bringing the sting of tears to his eyes.
Cullen dashed to the stables, saddled his favorite horse, a fleet-footed black gelding, and took off after the group. From his location behind the riders and off the road inside the tree line, he counted six men in addition to Landry and Samantha. Their racket and the dust they stirred up masked his pursuit.
He followed throughout the night and all the next day. Nonetheless, he fell behind. His twelve short years of life included survival on the London docks and duties aboard a seagoing vessel but lacked the services of a riding master. He slid around on the gelding’s back like a lopsided bag of potatoes. The clatter the horses made kept him on track at first. When they crossed the Derwent and traveled farther from town, however, heading southwest along a roughly hewn road leading to the primitive settlement of Huonville, he lost sight of his quarry. Hours sped by, and his dubious skills as a horseman caused him to lose more ground every mile he traveled.
When night lifted and Samantha’s escort emerged, fully visible in the weak morning light, her earlier reservations resurfaced. She shivered and shot an appalled look at the men accompanying her and Steven. A repulsive lot, ugly, dirty, and scarred, they wore a mélange of cast-off finery and sailors’ breeches swathing their muscled bodies in tatters. Weapons bristled. Daggers in their boots, pistols, and the occasional cutlass shoved through their belts. She transferred her gaze to rest on Steven. Though his features were devoid of emotion, when he glanced her way, he sent her a reassuring smile.
She tried to return the gesture, but her lips had frozen into a clenched-teeth grimace.
They pounded the road as though all the demons of Hades rode on their heels. With the exception of Steven, the men were poor riders. The horses labored under the strain of keeping their bouncing loads mounted. Steven’s trusted friends? They more resembled pirates or footpads than merchants. Her hasty decision to leave Hobart with no word to her family now seemed ill-conceived. No one spoke to her. Only the occasional encouraging smile from Steven kept her moving forward.
They reached Huonville, located on the banks of the Huon River twenty miles from Hobart, and prepared to board a raft. The men cursed fluently, struggling with the horses, whipping them, and having to drag them aboard the tipping craft. Samantha watched in horror the display of inept handling and cruel behavior. When she voiced a suggestion to blindfold the animals, the men snarled and brushed her off as though she were a bloodsucking fly.
She made her way to Steven’s side. “Where are we heading? Who are these men? They look dangerous, and they are incompetent. They know naught about horses.”
He laid a hand on her shoulder and pressed lightly. “From this point, our journey turns westward into wild territory,” he replied, voice calm though his features strained, as though he wrestled with some inner demon. “We require adequate protection.” When he looked at her, his eyes were unfocused. “My men may be rough around the edges. Nevertheless, in a pinch, they are good companions. In the event we meet with hostiles, you’ll be thankful for their presence.”
Though she bit her lower lip and said nothing more, serious doubts bedeviled her. When Steven motioned to her, she boarded the raft, and they pushed away from the shore to catch the river’s westward current.
Dusk settled over the land, and Huonville came into sight. Tracks on the road indicated that the riders had turned and headed for the river. When his horse stumbled and came up lame, Cullen swore. Every nerve and muscle screaming, he slipped off the gelding’s back and checked its hoof. A thrown shoe. The reins in one hand, he hobbled toward the riverbank as Samantha and Steven pulled out of sight down the Huon around a bend in the river.
Cullen approached the rough raftsmen along the shore. “Ye know where that raft’s ‘eadin’?” he asked one man with a peeling bald head and a face like a bowl of bread pudding.
The man glowered as if Cullen were a louse that needed squashing. “What’s it ta ye, nit?”
Cullen cinched up his breeches. “They be friends o’ mine. I was supposed ta meet ‘em ‘ere, but me ‘orse threw a shoe.”
The man studied Cullen with an air of suspicion. “Well, be they friends o’ yourn, I reckon ye know where they be ‘eaded.”
Cullen let out his breath in a noisy exhalation. “‘Ave ye another raft fer ‘ire?”
The man shook his head. “Nay. They’s all promised.”
“‘Ow about a smithy?”
“Nay. Ye’ll ‘ave ta take yer nag ta ‘obart.”
From the look on the man’s sullen features, Cullen had reached a dead end. Perhaps if he had a heft
y purse with him, but he didn’t. His shoulders dropped. Gathering up the gelding’s reins, he trudged back down the road toward Hobart.
Three days later, an exhausted, hungry, and very dusty Cullen led his lame horse into the stable at Talmadge House.
Samantha, Steven, and their contingent of bodyguards floated down the river for four days, past tremendous Huon pines, some more than eight hundred years old, carpeting the rolling hills on both banks, creating dense forests that often crept up to the river’s edge. Myrtle beech and swamp gum vied with the pines for space and light, along with the occasional leatherwood, swathed in white and pale pink blooms. Samantha drew in the heavy fragrance they threw across the water.
In infrequent grassy meadows, wallabies grazed, hopping on powerful back legs. Shorter rufus wallabies and shy pademelons flitted through the forest underbrush. Samantha watched with wonder as an impossible-looking creature foraged on the river bottom. It had a sleek, furred body, a beaverlike tail, a duck’s bill, and webbed feet. Parrot, cockatoo, honeyeater, and scrubtit cries swirled about them, and the sporadic eagle or falcon wheeled overhead.
At night they pulled the raft to shore and tied it to the trees before bedding down on the pine needle-covered ground. Samantha huddled in her bedroll close to Steven at the feet of the pines and tried to ignore the lecherous looks cast her way by the others in the party. The farther they traveled from Hobart and civilization, the greater her apprehension.
Steven’s friends remained taciturn, rarely uttering more than a few words and never to her. Steven stayed close, presenting a buffer between her and the rough men. She welcomed his protection, for though the men kept their distance, their hungry eyes caused her heart to pound painfully. She failed to shake the worry that some malady might overtake Steven before they reached their destination. What would she do then, unarmed and alone with these men?
Even Steven’s company failed to completely erase her anxiety. Though gentlemanly, displaying an outward solicitude toward her and concern for Richard’s fate, he grew more remote each day. At first she believed he fretted over the coming negotiations. However, she soon suspected he hid some dread secret. Something she should know. Why did she leave Hobart in such haste? What if they should reach the ship and Richard was already dead, no longer there, or had never been there? If that were the case, what could be the pirate’s reason for insisting she appear in person?
In spite of her welling reservations, she never once considered departing the company and making her way back to Hobart alone. Even asking Steven to return to Talmadge House was unthinkable. Such a move would be a step backward to exactly where she was before, if, taking into account Steven’s determination to push forward, he even respected her request. If nothing more should come of it, she would learn more about Richard’s fate than she had known before.
One night after many days of travel, they roasted a wombat over the fire. Samantha had suffered from nausea from the journey’s onset and had eaten little. This night her appetite returned, and she consumed the marsupial meat with relish. When Steven offered her a cup of warm ale from a canteen, she drank deeply despite its sour taste.
With a full meal in her stomach and the ale’s warming effect, she moved to her bedroll and stretched out. She fell asleep a short time later and descended into a benumbed state of oblivion.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Lau’ele’ele i sami
The day dawned bright and hot, the sky painfully blue.
A young girl with a shy smile emerged from the shadows of Tapia’s hut. Garrett eyed her with a rake’s appreciation. She appeared no older than sixteen, slim and tiny and as graceful as a swan. Sooty lashes rimmed liquid black eyes. Her golden skin and black tresses glowed with health, and her firm breasts thrust up proudly from her chest.
“My word,” Garrett said, bestowing his most devastating smile on her and turning to James. “Who is this exquisite creature?”
The girl ducked her head and pressed herself to James’s side. “Masina,” James replied with a note of reservation. “Tapia’s daughter. Her name means ‘moon.’”
Garrett caught the possessive undercurrent. “I see,” he said, his smile fading. “Not to worry, old chap. I don’t require a weather vane to determine which way the wind is blowing.”
James nodded, and his adoring gaze settled on the girl.
When Richard and Christian joined them at the cook fire, James turned to Masina. “Will you show us the path to the top of fanua i afi.”
Masina touched each man with a wide-eyed gaze, and her eyes came back to James. “It is tapu to climb fanua i afi. This you cannot do. Tagaloa will be angry. He will punish you and the o tagata o fanua o la’ua.”
James grasped her hands and looked into her fright-filled eyes. “We must, Masina. My friends wish to leave lau’ele’ele i sami. You must help them. Tagaloa does not exist. You know this. You studied with the missionaries who taught you of the One God.”
“Your god will not help us.” Tears sprang to her eyes. “Will you leave with Richard and your friends.? Will you leave Masina.?”
His throat bobbed, and he swallowed. “Will you come with me.?”
She bowed her head, face stricken with sadness. “I cannot. I am o tagata o fanua o la’ua. I cannot live in lalo’lagi.” When they turned to depart, she pushed past them, looked back over her shoulder, and dashed the tears from her cheeks. “But I will lead you because James wants it so.”
She started up a narrow trail leading into the jungle. The route appeared little used, no more than a track for the wild pigs brought to the island by the missionaries, overgrown with ferns and lianas. Richard and Christian slashed a path with daggers through the foliage where no passage seemed to exist.
The forest air was heavy and moisture laden, the way ill defined and shadow filled. At the passage of a goshawk, great conclaves of horned parakeets, red-fronted parakeets, and rainbow lorikeets screamed like demented lunatics from the uppermost canopy, resulting in jumpy muscles and unsettled nerves among the company. Several of the giant geckos scurried beneath ferns and drew Christian’s gaze downward. Overhead under the broad leaves, like ripe, russet coconuts, hung fruit bats the size of a man’s hand, wings secured about their bodies, awaiting dusk. Large and small rats, feeding on insects and succulent vegetation, scampered along branches beneath the bats, creating a noise like wind rustling the foliage. As most oceanic islands had no indigenous mammals other than bats, the rats were clearly another fauna introduced by white men.
The group emerged from the jungle onto a black, glassy plain, broken by fissures through which lava had flowed, rising in a nearly seamless, obsidian wall. The cauldron churned far above them. Masina circled the lava field and took up another faint track. After traversing the mountain’s eastern base, they came across a field of basalt, dark gray and crumbly, with bubbles on its surface formed by steam from the expanding lava. Halfway into the field, she turned into a cleft bisecting the basaltic flow. There within its gloomy interior, rough steps carved out of the rock led upward.
Masina came to a halt at the crater’s top, her body shaking like a palm in a gale. Sulfurous fumes arose in a turbid atmosphere below them. Magma seethed under its surface with flames erupting and burning in the molten soup. Looking into the volcano’s heart was like glimpsing the gates of Dante’s Inferno. Heat baked their skin. The arid air scalded their throats. When they took a breath, it seared their lungs, and they inhaled in shallow pants.
Christian and Garrett turned their backs on the cauldron to gaze out over the entire island and beyond. Puffy clouds drifted across the azure sky, against which red-tailed tropic birds dipped and soared. Beyond the rise of the volcano, riotous jungle clothed the land and the nearby green-carpeted peak of fanua o la’ua. The coral reef enclosed a turquoise lagoon with transparent water revealing the shadows of large fish swimming beneath the surface. The ocean beyond the reef became emerald with rolling swells breaking in white foam on the coral. Between the trees an
d the water lay a narrow belt of black volcanic sand. To the northwest, the tsunami’s destruction revealed itself in a swath of broken coconut and breadfruit trees and another lagoon filled with floating debris.
Christian pivoted slowly, shading his eyes with his hands. He wished for a spyglass. Nonetheless, a faint hump of land rose from the sea to the east and another, larger outline far beyond that. He pointed, and Garrett peered in that direction, shading both eyes with cupped hands. “Unless my eyes deceive me,” Christian said, “we’re on a chain of islands. If we travel east, we may eventually make the mainland. What do you think.?”
“That we have no other choice,” Garrett replied grimly, lowering his hands.
Christian nodded.
When the earth beneath their feet trembled, the cloud of gases over the volcano widened and streamed upward. A warm, noxious rain enveloped them. A gust of wind tore it apart, and Masina uttered a strangled scream. Christian whirled around. Her arm unsteady, she pointed down the path they had taken. Far below, Kiha led a heavily armed group of warriors up the side of the volcano.
“The tapu,” she whispered. “Now Kiha will sacrifice us to the gods.”
The volcano boiled behind them. The ground shook beneath them. Cinders and ash erupted from the cavity and dropped about them. As the activity increased, James grabbed the terrified Masina, and they sprinted toward the other side of the crater. Flaming lava bombs shot from the magma to fall into the jungle. The warriors making their way upward paused, turned about, and scurried back the way they had come. Lava seeped from fissures and streamed downward, cooling and depositing another layer of volcanic rock. Christian paced along the edge to look out into the jungle. The eruption appeared to be confined to one slope. With lava flowing across the eastern face of the volcano, the four men and Masina dashed toward a less-used path winding down the southern side. Following Masina’s lead, they descended.
