by Judy Nunn
‘It’s beautiful,’ she said in awe. ‘Where did you get it?’
‘From Foong Lee. He believes it to be a symbol of love. He offered it to me many years ago in return for a favour I did him, but I refused to accept it at the time. What was the point? I had no-one to share it with. He said he’s been keeping it in trust for me ever since.’ Paul grinned. ‘The wily old fox, his timing is perfect, isn’t it? Look inside.’
Henrietta opened the locket. Two faces looked at her from the interior. On the left hand side was a picture of herself, and there was one of Paul on the right. She remembered the photograph, the one and only time they’d been pictured together and it had been the day they’d first met.
‘The garden party at Government House,’ she smiled. The photograph had appeared alongside Paul’s newspaper article the following day, Aggie had saved her a copy. Henrietta recalled there had been at least another dozen people in the shot. Paul had carefully cut their own faces out from the crowd.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘courtesy of the Northern Standard. I kept the photograph all these years, it was the only reminder I had of you.’ He grinned self-deprecatingly. ‘It’s a bit soppy of me, isn’t it? You can remove the pictures quite easily. Look,’ he took the locket from her and, with the penknife on the desk, he carefully prised out the photographs, ‘there’re some beautifully engraved initials underneath.’
Henrietta examined the initials. ‘L v.d. M’ and ‘B v.d. M’. She wondered who they were. When had they lived? What had become of them? Had their love continued to blossom into the autumn of their lives as hers and Paul’s could not? She hoped so.
‘It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.’ She picked up the photographs and painstakingly re-inserted them beneath the lips of the curved interior. ‘And the pictures aren’t soppy at all,’ she said, ‘they’re perfect.’ It was indeed the perfect token of his love, and she would treasure it always. She closed the locket and held the chain around her neck. ‘Will you do it up for me, please?’
Paul was as happy as a schoolboy at Henrietta’s obvious delight in his gift, but he was doing his best not to show it. ‘We don’t know the locket’s history,’ he said as he did up the clasp. ‘It’s antique of course, seventeenth-century Foong Lee thinks …’
She rose, took off her blouse and stood in front of the full-length mirror to admire the locket as it rested on her skin. It sat exactly where it should, she thought, upon her breastbone, close to her heart.
‘… and possibly Dutch judging by its craftsmanship and the initials,’ Paul rambled on. He gazed at her breasts, the glorious fullness of them couched in the lace of her white brassiere. How he wished he could make love to her. ‘It’s certainly valuable, you should probably have it valued and insured.’
She looked at him in the mirror and he hastily averted his eyes.
Henrietta undid her brassiere. ‘Get undressed,’ she said.
He sat on the bed, defeated and forlorn. ‘Henrietta,’ he said, ‘you know that I can’t.’
‘Can’t what? Get undressed? Oh for goodness’ sake, Paul, then I’ll do it for you.’ She dropped the brassiere, knelt half naked at his feet and took off his shoes. He allowed her to do so and then she made him stand up, but when she started unbuttoning his shirt, he once again demurred.
‘Henrietta, please …’
‘Oh my dearest love,’ she smiled as she kissed him with the utmost tenderness. ‘I just want us to lie together naked, to hold each other whilst we sleep. I don’t mean to be provocative.’
Paul looked at the sight of them in the mirror, a wizened old man and a voluptuous half-naked woman, and he burst out laughing. The laughter then turned into a cough, and when he finally recovered, he wiped the tears from his eyes and turned her to the mirror. ‘Look at yourself, Henrietta, just look at yourself. You could be nothing other than provocative, you are a totally sexual creature.’
Henrietta looked in the mirror simply seeing herself half naked; she had never considered herself a ‘sexual creature’, but she was delighted that she’d made him laugh so wholeheartedly.
‘So get your clothes off and give me a cuddle,’ she said, ‘I promise I won’t do anything threatening.’
The laughter having relaxed him, Paul started undressing. ‘It’s a pretty tired old body, I must warn you,’ he said.
‘Well I can’t have everything, can I? It’s the body of the man I love,’ she dropped her skirt to the floor, ‘so it’ll just have to do.’
‘Can we at least turn out the lights?’ He switched off the desk lamp, draped his shirt over the chair and started unbuttoning his trousers.
‘Oh dear, the blushing bride.’ Henrietta had stripped off her panties and stood naked before him, wearing nothing but the locket. ‘If we must, I suppose.’
‘On second thoughts no,’ he said as she crossed to the light switch. ‘I’d be a fool to deprive myself of such a vision.’
‘Just the bed lamp? Then we won’t have to get up.’ Henrietta turned on the bedside lamp and pulled back the coverlets. After she’d switched off the overhead light she lay on the bed and waited for him, the locket gleaming between her breasts.
Paul finished undressing a little self-consciously and lay beside her. She cuddled herself up to him and the feel of her skin against his was exquisite. As they lay in each other’s arms, he felt the tension float out of him like a rising mist. Even the pain, which was ever constant these days, seemed to lessen. It was a miracle.
‘I’m sorry about the bag of bones,’ he said.
‘Well they’re my bag of bones, aren’t they?’ she whispered. He was so frail and emaciated she was frightened to hold him too tightly for fear he might break, but she was overcome with a love so tender, like that of a mother with a newborn child.
Half an hour later Paul was sound asleep, and Henrietta lay for a long while cradling him with his head to her breast, before she too dozed off.
In the morning, he asked her to go to the room that he’d booked for her. She was to pull back the bedcovers and order breakfast for one.
‘Really, Paul,’ she smiled, ‘I don’t think that’s necessary …’
‘Please, my darling,’ he insisted, ‘it’s the way I want it, please play my game. I’ll be with you shortly.’
She humoured him, although she thought it was childish, but Paul wasn’t really playing a game at all. The hotel was a hotbed of gossip, it simply was not worth the risk to Henrietta.
Forty minutes later, when she’d showered and changed and her breakfast had been delivered, there was a gentle tap at her door.
Paul stood there with his coffee and toast. ‘I waited until the maid had gone,’ he said. ‘There’s a certain sense of déjà vu about this, isn’t there,’ he added as he ducked into the room and she closed the door behind him.
But as they sat in silence sipping their tea and coffee, Henrietta experienced no sense of déjà vu. There was no element of illicit liaison in their companionship this time. Rather they were like a happily married couple, each warm and comfortable in the other’s presence. They might have been together for twenty years, they so complemented each other.
‘Foong Lee’s picking me up in half an hour,’ Paul said when they’d finished their breakfast. ‘Shall we meet accidentally in the foyer?’ he looked at his watch, ‘Say, in about ten minutes?’
Henrietta was shocked back to reality. So soon? Surely not. She had expected to spend the whole morning with him. She felt a sense of panic, the immediacy of their parting frightened her.
Paul knew that he’d shocked her. It had been deliberate. He’d promised himself there would be no lingering farewells. ‘It’s the way I want it, my darling girl,’ he said, rising and holding out his hands to her, ‘and it’s easier this way. Besides,’ he tried for a touch of his old flippancy, ‘it rounds things off nicely, don’t you think?’
As she stood, taking his hands in hers, he could still see the shock in her eyes. He kissed her. ‘My love,’ he sa
id, tracing the outline of her face with his fingers, ‘my Henrietta. You have made me happier than I have ever been in my life.’
‘I love you, Paul,’ she whispered.
‘I know you do,’ he smiled, ‘that’s what’s so wonderful.’
They held each other close, and Henrietta did not weep. She could do that in the car, now was not the time.
‘I’ll see you downstairs,’ Paul said. He didn’t look back at her as he left.
‘Henrietta,’ he called out in the foyer ten minutes later, ‘you’re leaving?’
‘Yes.’ She remembered the words. ‘It was just an overnight stay.’
He smiled gratefully. How brave and wonderful of her to play the game. But then that was his Henrietta. ‘It was lovely to see you.’
‘You too, Paul.’
He walked to the main doors with her as the porter carried her overnight bag.
‘Goodbye, Henrietta.’ They shook hands.
‘Goodbye, Paul.’
Jeronimus Cornelisz hung from the gibbet. Mutilated, blood dripping from the stumps of his wrists, he twitched and shuddered in his death throes. ‘Revenge!’ he’d cried as the rope had tightened about his neck. ‘Revenge!’
Lucretia had watched as his arms had been placed on the chopping block, and she’d watched the fall of the axe as it had severed both his hands. She’d felt nothing. And as he’d been hauled into the air, screaming his outrage, still she’d felt nothing.
Now, in the last seconds of his death, his eyes met hers. Had he sought her out? They were the eyes of the Devil himself, and she could see no remorse in them. But she did not turn her head. She remained staring at the monster until she knew that there was no life left in him. Then she walked away, down to the shore to stare across the brief expanse of sea to Batavia’s Graveyard.
The executions were taking place on Seals’ Island, and Cornelisz had been the first to swing. Seven other mutineers were to meet a similar fate, although prior to their hanging they would have only their right hand severed. Lucretia had no need to watch further.
Behind her, she heard the axe on the block, and a scream of agony, followed by cheers from several of the onlookers. She was not the only civilian who had chosen to see justice done that day.
Commandeur Pelsaert had been surprised when she’d accepted his offer to attend, but he’d said nothing. Perhaps it was right that she should observe the death of her tormentor, perhaps it would help release some of the demons which must plague her.
The unbelievable had happened. On 17 September, little more than three months after the wreck of the Batavia, Commandeur Francisco Pelsaert had returned aboard his rescue vessel the Zaandam. And the timing of his return was nothing less than miraculous.
Upon that same day, and at that same hour, the mutineers had launched their final assault on Weibbe Hayes and his men. Hayes had refused to join forces with Cornelisz, and he and his soldiers had withstood the mutineers’ attacks on their position in the High Islands. After several weeks, however, their defence finally weakening, they would most surely have met their deaths had the Zaandam not been sighted, for upon the sighting the mutineers called an immediate halt to their advance.
Now, as Cornelisz swung lifeless from the gibbet, Pelsaert noted that Lucretia van den Mylen simply walked away, her bearing as regal as it had ever been. He wondered what was going through her mind. A woman like that, forced to suffer such horrors.
But Lucretia was not dwelling upon her horrors. Nor was she relishing the death of Cornelisz. He would haunt both her waking and sleeping hours for the rest of her life, she knew it, but for this brief moment she was free of him, she had seen him dead, and her thoughts once more turned to the boy.
In the weeks following his departure, Lucretia had clung to her thoughts of Dirck Liebensz. Without the locket she had felt lost and alone, and the hope for Dirck’s survival was her only comfort.
She did not regret giving the boy the locket, telling herself that if she and Boudewijn had ever had a son, perhaps he would one day have grown to become a fine young man like Dirck. She had survived on such thoughts.
Since the arrival of Pelsaert and the fortnight of trials and formal proceedings which had ensued, other things had occupied Lucretia’s mind, but now she was flooded with thoughts of the boy. She gazed out across the barren islands of the Houtman Abrolhos and wondered. Had Dirck Liebensz lived? Had the locket guarded him as it had guarded her?
The locket gleamed brightly about the black neck of Gitjil Djandamurra as he squatted and rubbed the firesticks together. Women nearby were preparing fresh-water mussels and gutting wallabies and goannas in readiness for the cooking fire. Others were collecting wood. There would be a feast after the men’s corroboree tonight.
A little further along the valley, by the river, a group of men painted each other’s bodies with intricate designs. The white of the burnt sea-shell lime and the kaolin clay was stark against their black skin. Silent, concentrating on the task at hand, they were mindless of the children at play in the water. The youngsters splashed each other, and swung from tree branches into the river, and squealed and giggled with a boisterous and boundless energy.
Including women and children, this clan of the Yamatji people numbered fifty in all, and Gitjil Djandamurra was the chief of their elders.
A spark was ignited by the friction of the firesticks. Then another and another, Gitjil patiently teasing the sparks with a dry leaf until a small fire was ignited. He rose, leaving the fire to be tended by the women and, muttering several words in his harsh tongue, he gestured for the young man standing beside him to follow.
Dirck did so, and they joined the other men, Gitjil instructing his own son, Yundjerra, to prepare Dirck for his first corroboree.
It had been a long trek from their previous campsite and Dirck was tired, unaccustomed to walking the distances the Aborigines quite happily travelled in a day. To them the fifteen mile hike from the mouth of the Hutt River across the Murchison Plateau to the valley had simply been a day’s walk. But, already, Dirck’s calf muscles were seizing up and his back was aching.
He forgot his fatigue, however, as Yundjerra decorated his body; he was excited at the prospect of this first step on the road to his initiation. Previously, when the men had held a corroboree, he had been instructed to stay with the women. Tonight was proof of his gradual acceptance into the clan.
Yundjerra, a strong young man around the same age as Dirck, daubed him with white lime and clay, and he and the others laughed amongst themselves at the paleness of Dirck’s skin. The paint hardly showed up, they were saying to one another. Dirck grinned back at them, understanding the reason for their mirth. And, as he did, he recalled the terror he’d felt upon his first sighting of the black men. Was it only a month ago? It seemed a lifetime.
It had taken Dirck less than two days to travel the forty miles to the Great South Land. His small supply of bread and the fresh water in his flask had proved ample provisions and, with the aid of the south-westerly drift and the winds, he had travelled north to the mouth of the Hutt River.
But that was when his troubles had started, for the breakers picked up his small raft like a plaything. It was overturned in an instant and then he too became a toy at the ocean’s mercy. He fought with all his might against the breakers and the rip, one minute being smashed towards the shore, the next dragged back out to sea. He must have made some headway, however, for the sea, as though finally recognising his efforts, mercifully washed him up on the shore, half drowned, more dead than alive.
His lungs heaving, he coughed and vomited sea water into the sand, which he couldn’t fail to notice seemed strangely pink. When he’d recovered himself a little he raised his head and looked about. The shore and the coastal sandhills were indeed pink and quite beautiful, a result of the garnet in the rocks of the area. But Dirck was quickly distracted from the beauty of his surrounds, for the black men suddenly appeared out of nowhere. They circled him as he lay on the beach. There
must have been at least a dozen of them, naked and as black as night, their spears raised. It was a fearful sight and Dirck relinquished all hope. So this was to be his fate. Exhausted, he sank his head into the sand and awaited his death, praying that their spears would be merciful and find their mark.
But Gitjil and his clansmen were intrigued. They had never seen a white man before. They rolled him over on his back and started stripping his clothes from him.
Dirck could hear them jabbering all the while. He watched as they lay their spears down on the sand, they seemed intent on having fun. Dear God, were they going to torture him?
They pulled down his breeches, pointing at his genitals, laughing and nodding approvingly, it appeared the white man was the same as them. It was a source of fascination.
Then one of them, a big man with a head of silver-grey hair and a white beard, startling against the blackness of his face, saw the locket. He gave it a gentle tug but the chain would not break, so he grasped it in his fist and fiercely wrenched it from around Dirck’s neck.
Gitjil held the locket up to the sun. It was a thing of great power. The sun’s rays darted off this thing he held in his hands, as if it were a tiny sun all its own. He knelt on the sand beside the white man, and he asked the white man what it was.
Dirck listened to the strange staccato tongue of the native. He was asking questions about the locket, and the others were standing around waiting for answers. Dirck realised that this man was the leader, or at least one who commanded the respect of the group. He was older than the others too, probably in his fifties, it was difficult to tell. One thing was quite obvious, however, he was fascinated by the locket.
Dirck heaved himself up onto one elbow and, in a rasping voice which sounded unlike his own, he said, ‘It is yours,’ and he waved his hand in a gesture of good will. ‘A gift. You take it, it is yours.’ He remembered no more than that. The small exertion of his energy made the world spin and he lost consciousness.
