This Golden Land

by Wood, Barbara

  Iverson murmured to Neal, "We haven't the manpower to stop them."

  "Look!" Fintan said, pointing. Marcus and Neal turned to see several men running around the side of the building. In the next instant, Joe Turner and his brother flew down the steps after them.

  "Is there a back way in, Doctor?" Neal asked, imagining the mayhem should those men get inside.

  "Yes, and it's unlocked. The keys are in my office. Mr. Scott, we should send for the police."

  "I'm afraid there isn't time."

  Their eyes met. "You go, doctor," Neal said. "Fintan, you take off after that bunch. See if you can find help. Hospital attendants, visitors, anybody. I'll hold these men off."

  Neal turned to the crowd and held up his hands. "Listen to me! There isn't room inside for all of you. And you will only end up frightening the patients.

  "We have a right to go inside!"

  "Very well," Neal said, squaring off with the angry chimney sweep. "You want to check on loved ones, reassure yourselves they don't have the fever? Is that right?"

  "Damn right, mate!"

  "So you really believe there is contagion in this building."

  "Plague!" shouted several at once.

  "And you're willing to infect yourselves? On purpose?" He flung out his right arm and pointed at the entrance where bluestone columns stood majestically on either side of the doors. "You will deliberately walk through there and expose yourselves to whatever lethal sickness lies on the other side?" He then pointed to one of the men nearest him. "You, sir! How many children do you have?"

  The man made a face. "What does that matter?"

  "Because that's how many mouths will go hungry if you cross that threshold and become infected."

  Neal leveled his gaze at those nearest him, and then he shouted over their heads, his voice carrying above the crowd so that those gathered under a glowing street light could hear: "How many of you men are willing to make widows of your wives? How many of you women are ready to leave orphans behind? How many of you don't want to live to see Christmas?"

  This gave them pause, as they looked at one another, exchanging uncertain glances, murmuring sudden doubts and indecision.

  "Does this make sense to you?" Neal pressed. "The doctors in this hospital know what they are doing."

  "No they don't!"

  "Doctors don't know a bloody thing!"

  "All right," Neal said. "Yes, there is fever here, but it is being contained and the other patients are being protected from it."

  "Then why can't we go in?"

  "Because you will spread the contagion."

  But then someone on the steps remembered overhearing what the American had said about a bride-to-be. "You have a lady in there!" he shouted. "A woman you're going to marry. And you said you weren't worried that she was inside. And there's lady volunteers, you said. What about them? Ain't they spreading it?"

  "Yeah," echoed another man. "And ain't they got husbands and kids?"

  "You can't have it both ways, mate," the chimney sweep snarled. "Either it's safe in there or it's not."

  "You know what I think?" shouted a burly man with the red nose and blood shot eyes of a heavy drinker. "I think they don't know what's going on in there. I think their lyin' to us, and as for me I'm taking my brother out. He just has a broken leg. I can take care of him at home, which I shoulda done in the first place."

  They surged up the steps and Neal braced himself for a fight.

  At that moment, the front doors opened and Dr. Iverson emerged, to much jeering and hissing from the crowd. "I got to the back door just in time," he said to Neal. "I don't know how long it will be before they seize a piece of lumber and use it as a battering ram. We have to find a way to control this mob."

  Fintan returned from the back of the building, Joe and Graham Turner with him.

  The main door opened again and Hannah came out into the night. "Neal! I didn't know you were here. Someone told me that—" And then she saw the Turner brothers. "You must be Joe Turner," she said, going to the younger of the bearded men. "Someone told me you were here. I am Hannah Conroy, I knew your wife."

  "You're the midwife," he said, running his sleeve under his nose. "Nellie wrote to me about you. She said you were very kind to her. Is she all right? May I see her now?"

  "I am so sorry," Hannah said softly, laying a hand on his shoulder. "Nellie did not survive."

  Turner started to sob anew. Hannah's heart went out to him. Despite the manly beard, Hannah saw that Joe Turner was very young, barely more than a baby himself, she thought. "Mr. Turner," she said gently, "Nellie didn't suffer. She went peacefully." Hannah hated to lie, but sometimes it was necessary for another person's peace of mind. Even her father, a steadfast Quaker who believed in truth above all, occasionally spun a small fiction for grieving family members.

  "Did ya hear that?" shouted one of the men on the steps, turning to face the crowd. "They killed his wife! Poor woman came in to have a baby and she perished of the plague! We won't let that happen to our wives!"

  Hannah stepped forward, raising her hands. "Please, everyone stay calm! We have things under control." She moved into the light of a lantern, her white bodice glowing, her dark skirt like a cloud about her legs. The white lace cap on her dark hair was transformed into a soft halo. She stood tall, poised and confidant, and for an instant, all eyes were on her, voices quelled, the night filled with an uneasy silence.

  And then the men on the steps decided they had delayed the rescue of their sisters, mothers, fathers and children from the hospital long enough and they started for the doors.

  Just then, to everyone's surprise, the Aborigines rose to their feet, and the crowd fell back in fear.

  Neal frowned at the natives, saw their eyes, their unreadable faces, and then looked at Hannah. "That's strange," he murmured. "They are looking at you."

  "Me!" she said. And then Hannah saw that that he was right. Twenty pairs of deep-set eyes, shadowed and piercing, were fixed on her. "But why?"

  "I don't know. You are the first person they have reacted to."

  Shouting erupted. The throng flowed and ebbed like a turbulent sea. "They're going to kill us!" "We'll all be slaughtered!"

  One of the men on the steps rushed up, but Neal caught him and wrestled him back. "Outa the way!" the man grunted. "They ain't satisfied with putting a curse on us and killing us with plague. Now they're going to send spears through us."

  Fintan ran to Neal's aid and together they restrained the man. Iverson raised his arms for silence, but he received only a dull roar. He spoke over it, as loudly as he could without revealing his own fear: "We have nothing to be afraid of from the natives! If they had wanted to kill us, they would have done so by now. Allow us to ask them what they want and then perhaps they will go away."

  "I say we kill 'em!" came a shout from the crowd, followed by a bonechilling chorus of agreement.

  Neal said, "Stay here, Hannah. I'm going to try talking to them."

  All eyes turned upon Neal as he cautiously approached the group. The natives had risen in unison, yet Neal had not heard any of them speak. Who had given the command? He drew near with conflicting feelings: fear, as he remembered the massacre at Galagandra, but also admiration and respect, as he thought of Jallara and her people. He sized them up—the white-haired elders adorned with paint and necklaces and feathers—then asked in English, "Which of you is the leader?"

  Lamps and candles in the hospital windows shed light over the scene, and the white paint made the natives look like other-worldly specters. They were so like Jallara's people, Neal thought, and yet not.

  When he received no response, he decided to try a few words in Jallara's dialect, phrases taught to him by Thumimburee that were used only among men. To Neal's surprise, a white-haired elder turned to face him. The onlookers shifted and murmured among themselves, fists tightening, ready to defend their fellow white man.

  When Neal repeated the phrase, a girl stepped forward, wearing a plai
n dress and barefooted. Her black hair was long and silky, like Jallara's. "Hello, sir, I am Miriam. We do not speak your tongue."

  He looked into her round face and deep-set black eyes, and thought: But it did the trick. This old fellow knew I had spoken a dialect of native language.

  "I would like to speak to your chief, Miriam. Can you help me?"

  "My father's father is chief. I speak English. I say what father's father say."

  Neal respectfully addressed the elder as he spoke through the girl, "Why have your people come to this place?"

  Miriam spoke to her grandfather and translated his reply. "He say he cannot talk to white man about this. It is sacred. Taboo."

  Neal thought for a moment, taking the measure of the elder who stood before him with white hair and a long white beard, dark eyes peering out from a layer of thick white paint. "Why did you stand up when the white woman came out of the building?" He gestured toward Hannah but received only silence and an impassive expression.

  He decided on another tack. "What is the Dreaming of this place?"

  When Miriam translated, the chief gave Neal a look of curiosity. As he responded, and Miriam translated, the old man watched Neal carefully. "Crocodile Dreaming," she said, and Neal nodded in understanding.

  Tapping his chest, said, "I am Thulan."

  But the word meant nothing to the elder, so Neal said to Miriam, "Tell your father's father that my Dreamtime spirit is a lizard the white men call thorny devil. Do you know the word for that?"

  She nodded with enthusiasm and spoke to the elder, whose thick brows lifted in surprise.

  Encouraged, Neal unbuttoned his shirt and exposed his chest, allowing the chief a long look at his tattoos. Sounds of surprise erupted from the crowd of white men. They talked among themselves, speculating on this unexpected turn—had the American been captured and tortured by natives?—while the leader of the Aborigines studied the white man who had undergone a secret Aboriginal initiation rite.

  The elder finally spoke, exotic syllables tumbling from his lips, familiar to Neal and yet foreign, for this dialect sounded like Jallara's. Miriam said, "He ask if you go walkabout."

  "I did. I went walkabout in the great wilderness in the west. Spirits spoke to me in a vision."

  When Miriam translated, her grandfather stood silently for a long moment, the night wind lifting his long white beard to expose the scars of his own initiation scars, incised in his skin long ago. He stared at Neal, dark eyes beneath heavy brows unreadable.

  Finally he nodded in satisfaction and spoke, and Miriam translated. "My father's father say this sacred ground, and sacred ground is sick. Crocodile spirit very unhappy. We come for healing ritual. But white men must go away. Taboo to watch."

  Neal surveyed the onlookers who wore modern jackets and trousers, bowler hats and tweed caps, the women in long dresses and shawls—people from another world who would have no understanding of what was going on here. But he knew it would be impossible to tell them to leave. If anything, mistrust and suspicion about a secret Aboriginal ritual would only make them stay all the more.

  "You tell men go away," Miriam repeated. "Cannot cure sickness with white man here."

  Neal studied the situation—Aborigines protecting their sacred ground, frightened and angry white men thinking the natives had made their loved ones sick.

  When the chief and his people shifted their attention away from Neal, he looked over his shoulder and saw that once again they were watching Hannah.

  "Why," Neal began, "does the white woman interest you—" But he was interrupted by the appearance of an old Aboriginal woman, pushing her way through, speaking to the chief and making him step respectfully away.

  She was small and bent, her long white hair coarse and wavy and growing over her shoulders and down her back. Her aged body, painted white and draped in necklaces of teeth, feathers and nuts, was plump. When she spoke, revealed strong white teeth. And yet Neal guessed by the wrinkled face and curve of her back that she was very old.

  She spoke rapidly, and Miriam said, "White woman must come here."

  "Why?"

  When he received no answer, Neal looked back at Hannah who, guessing that she was needed, went down the steps to stand at Neal's side. Another rumble went through the crowd of white people—a nervous, jittery sound. Light from lanterns and torches illuminated faces strained with fear. What did the blacks want with a white woman?

  Neal saw that the old Aboriginal woman's gaze was fixed on the magic stone around Hannah's neck, lying at the base of her throat. The old woman then glanced at Neal, the white man with tribal tattoos, and then again at the white woman with a native talisman around her neck, and she seemed to be arriving at a decision.

  "Neal," Hannah said quietly, "what is this all about?"

  Miriam spoke up. "Crocodile Spirit speak to Papunya in a dream. Tell her to come and heal the land."

  Hannah turned to the girl, whom she judged to be around fifteen. A small Christian cross on a string lay on her chest. "Papunya?"

  "Papunya is clan clever-woman. She is my mother's mother's mother."

  Hannah addressed Papunya: "Yes, there is sickness here, and we cannot find the cause or cure. Can you help us?"

  After Miriam translated, the old woman turned away and took a large wooden bowl from another native woman. The bowl appeared to have been carved from a single block of wood, and she showed Hannah the contents, with Miriam explaining: "These sacred objects come from this place long time ago. Now we bring them back. Land needs these sacred things. We heal the land, we send away sickness with sacred objects that the land knows."

  Hannah saw feathers, bones, stones, dried leaves, clumps of earth.

  Papunya placed the bowl on the ground by Hannah's feet and then received another object from the other native woman: a tall wooden staff carved with intricate designs, from the tip of which objects were suspended on strings—a bird's beak, a crocodile tooth, a scarlet feather, a strip of withered snake skin and a cluster of dried seed pods. As Papunya lifted her eyes to the large brick edifice that covered her sacred ground, Hannah saw no sorrow in the dark eyes, no anger, no perplexity. The clever-woman seemed to be sizing up the situation, as if trying to find a place in her world for this strange intrusion.

  She then looked at Hannah, enigmatic eyes peering from beneath a heavy brow ridge. She spoke, and Miriam said, "Papunya ask who are you, what is your Dreaming."

  "My Dreaming?" Hannah exchanged a glance with Neal and said, "I am a midwife and a healer."

  Papunya closed her eyes for a long moment, and when she finally spoke, Miriam said, "Papunya say you seek hidden knowledge. Very important healing knowledge. You think it is lost but it is only hidden. And it is nearby."

  Neal said to Hannah, "Do you know what she is she talking about?"

  "I have no idea."

  Papunya lifted the tall wooden staff and leveled it at the hospital, its mystical objects clicking together as she pointed and spoke.

  "In there," Miriam said. "What you seek is in there. Crocodile spirit say you find hidden knowledge. You heal sacred land."

  "I'm sorry, I still do not understand."

  Miriam held a brief exchange with the clever-woman, then said, "Cannot say more. Taboo to speak of the dead."

  "The dead? Who? I don't—"

  "Burn the place down!" came a shout from the crowd, and a brick suddenly sailed through the air, breaking through one of the front windows with a crash. When screams came from within, Fintan banged on the doors and was allowed inside, the doors locking behind him.

  The crowd surged, like a living entity, and as men and women pushed and shouted, incited by the rising tension and mistrust of the natives, and fed up with their demands not being met, Hannah quickly said to Miriam, "Please tell me what you are talking about. Who are the dead you cannot speak of?"

  When Miriam's deep, black eyes stared back, Hannah said, "Are you talking about those who have died here in this hospital?"

  M
iriam did not reply. Hannah looked from the girl to the old woman, trying to read their faces but finding only impassive expressions. Suddenly, Hannah heard a voice from the past, her father saying, "I must tell thee the truth about thy mother's death . . . I should have spoken long ago . . . The letter explains . . . but it is hidden . . . find it. . .."

  "Neal," Hannah said suddenly. "I think I know what Papunya is talking about. But I have to go back inside."

  "I'll go with you."

  "No, you stay here. Protect these people. If I am right, then I have a way to put an end to this."

  To the volatile crowd of white people, Hannah said in a clear, ringing voice, "Please stay calm. I will be able to answer all your questions in a moment."

  She hurried up the steps, where Dr. Iverson was staunchly guarding the doors, and when she entered the foyer, saw women huddled against the far wall, with Alice and Fintan assuring them they were safe. Blanche stood over the broken glass, calmly asking Margaret Lawrence to please fetch a broom and a dustpan, and then suggesting to her friend Martha that she take the other women up to the female ward to settle the patients who were certain to have heard the crash.

  Hannah hurried through to the new children's wing which was still in wood framing, with the walls only recently installed so that the long dormitory-style room smelled of sawdust and fresh pine. Quickly retrieving her leather medical bag, she took it to Dr. Iverson's office where she found Alice consoling Mrs. Soames, who had come out of the back room to see what was happening. "There there, dear," Alice said, "it's just a bit of broken glass. Let us go back and see to your husband, shall we?"

  Hannah turned up the lamp on the desk and, with racing heart, lifted out her father's portfolio. Hidden knowledge that is nearby, Hannah thought as she untied the ribbon and lifted the top cover, setting it aside. Something that will heal the sacred land. . .

  Was it the letter?

  Before she left England, she had searched the cottage from top to bottom, finding nothing. She had assumed it would be with the rest of his important medical papers—in the portfolio. But she had examined every scrap of her father's notes and still had found nothing that resembled a letter.