To Chase the Storm: The Frontier Series 4

by Peter Watt

  ‘So what are your plans?’ Texas repeated.

  ‘Thought I might stick with you for a while,’ Matthew answered as they entered the coolness of the hotel’s main bar to be met by the rest of the stockmen who had made the drive to Moree.

  ‘Well, pardner,’ Texas drawled, ‘I have some leave due according to the boss, your ma, and I intend on seeing the bright lights of Sydney before returning to Balaclava.’

  ‘Thought the same thing myself,’ Matthew grinned.

  ‘You are going to be in a heap of trouble with Miss Kate,’ Texas frowned. ‘She gave me the impression that you were to head back to Townsville as soon as the drive was over.’

  ‘I will,’ Matthew said. ‘As soon as I take my leave in Sydney.’

  Texas shook his head and pushed his way towards the bar. ‘Just make sure that you tell Miss Kate that I had nothing to do with you going to Sydney – or I will be looking for another job.’

  Matthew thrust out his hand. ‘Promise,’ he said as he gripped the American’s hand. ‘Going to Sydney was all my own idea. So, when do we leave?’

  Texas groaned as a glass of foaming brown beer was placed before each man. As Matthew raised his glass he had a fleeting memory of a time that now seemed so long ago when he had gone south from Townsville with Saul Rosenblum to enlist. He raised his beer and muttered, ‘To you, Saul, old mate, wherever you are.’

  Matthew had never believed that Saul had been killed at Elands River. Maybe captured, and if so he would eventually one day return to Queensland. But not killed.

  When Matthew awoke next day, still dressed, he had trouble putting together the time between his first beer and the sun rising over him as he lay on his bed on the hotel verandah. From the soreness of his knuckles and the blood on his face, he strongly suspected that he had been involved in a fight. He groaned as the shadow of Texas fell over him.

  ‘Time to go, pardner,’ Texas said with a broad grin. ‘Daylight’s awasting and Sydney’s acalling.’

  FORTY-FOUR

  No matter how much Patrick attempted to persuade himself that Catherine no longer existed in his life, the memories of happier times haunted him. He lay on his bed in the small hotel room and stared at the ceiling. There he could see a young and happy woman who had followed him halfway across the world to express her love, and from that love had come three children. The remembrance of a passionate time when there seemed no possibility of it ever ending caused Patrick to squeeze his eyes shut, as if the act could make the painful memories go away.

  He had attempted to justify to himself that the only reason he had travelled to Ireland was his mission to make contact with Martin, but he knew that was a lie. He had come to see his estranged wife and try to resolve their seemingly impossible situation. Only then would he be able to get on with his life.

  Patrick had made his decision and it was time to do something about it. The small revolver lay on the bed next to Patrick’s shaving kit. He picked it up and carefully loaded the .32 calibre bullets in the chambers. Not a powerful weapon, he reflected, but still a gun that could kill at close range.

  He pocketed the revolver and left his room to walk through the bar of O’Riley’s, aware that the patrons had fallen into silence at his presence. But he bid them a good day despite their sullen hostility.

  Patrick stepped onto the cold and bleak narrow street. Hunched against the drizzling rain, he set off with a soldier’s walk towards the edge of town but became immediately aware of a man who emerged from the shadows to dog his footsteps. Patrick felt the reassuring butt of the pistol in his pocket.

  The night was falling when he reached the old Fitzgerald mansion and Patrick stood uncertainly outside the house. He could see a light shining through a window upstairs and then stepped forward to knock. It was some minutes before the door opened to reveal Catherine’s gaunt face. She stood with a stricken expression staring at her husband.

  ‘It is good to see you, Catherine,’ Patrick said gently.

  ‘You should come in,’ his estranged wife said, ‘or you will freeze to death.’

  Patrick glanced over his shoulder as he stepped inside. He could not see the man who had followed him but knew that he was most probably waiting and watching from the gathering cloak of night.

  Inside, Patrick felt awkward. Catherine had changed – but so had he. It had been over two years since he had last seen her and time had taken its toll on her beautiful vitality.

  ‘Why did you come?’ Catherine asked as they stood facing each other in the dark foyer.

  Despite the dim light he could clearly see that she was on the verge of breaking down. ‘You are my wife and I love you,’ Patrick simply replied. ‘I have come to take you home with me.’

  Catherine spun away and took a couple of steps into the house. ‘It is not as easy as that,’ she said, anguished. ‘Too much has happened for us ever to be together again.’

  ‘I know about the child,’ Patrick said quietly. ‘That is all past and I know that our children need you with them – as do I.’

  ‘But do you, Patrick? Do you really need me by your side again?’

  Patrick felt the weariness. He had been betrayed but somehow he could not stop loving the woman who had fled their marriage with another man. Despite all that he had experienced in his life – war and the loss of loved ones – his love for Catherine was the one constant that would not leave him.

  ‘I need you,’ he replied. ‘I have never stopped loving you. I don’t know why that is, but I do know that I still love you regardless of all that has happened.’

  Patrick’s words stabbed Catherine as sharply as any dagger. The guilt of her passion for Brett Norris was still very much a part of her life.

  ‘You cannot say that when you don’t really know me,’ she answered in a strangled voice. ‘You have never really known me. To you, I was just something in your life – like a pretty ornament – not truly the person to share your life.’

  Patrick went to protest but Catherine already knew what he would say. She held up her hand but could not bring herself to look into his eyes. To do so would have weakened her resolve. From the moment she had heard the stories from her housekeeper of his arrival in the village she knew it was inevitable that he would call on her.

  ‘It would be better that you leave the house and return to Sydney,’ she continued. ‘We are different people, Patrick, you and I.’

  ‘The children?’ he protested.

  ‘The children are better off without a mother as evil as I.’

  ‘You are not evil,’ Patrick said, advancing towards his wife. ‘How could you say that?’

  Catherine turned to look into his emerald eyes. ‘I am either evil – or I am going mad,’ she said sadly. ‘Either way, you and the children are better off without me.’

  ‘I believe neither,’ Patrick said seizing Catherine by the shoulders. ‘You are my beautiful wife and mother of my children. I love you, Catherine, and want you . . . no, need you back in my life, to make me a complete man again. Please don’t shut me out. We have shared too much together.’

  Catherine stared up into her husband’s eyes and saw the depth of love in his soul. She felt a terrible wave of pity for him and broke down in tears. Patrick drew her to him and wrapped his arms about her head and shoulders as she sobbed against his chest. He gently stroked her thick mane of red hair, now prematurely streaked with grey, and Catherine felt his love envelop her. It was both gentle and strong.

  ‘Oh, Patrick,’ she said in a muffled voice as she clung to him, ‘I wish I could give you what you want but I cannot. I need time to think.’

  Patrick held his wife at arm’s length and kissed her on the forehead. ‘I think I understand,’ he said. ‘I will be leaving the village in four days. I will come back to fetch you away from here and take you with me to Sydney.’

  Catherine wiped at the tears with her hand and tried to smile for Patrick’s sake. ‘I promise you that I will think on what you have said.’

&
nbsp; ‘Then, I will be back,’ Patrick said. ‘And when I return we shall depart Ireland.’

  Reluctantly Patrick left the house, recognising that his wife needed time to consider. But walking away from the house was the hardest thing he had ever done in his life. Every instinct told him to stay with her and prove his feelings. He was hardly aware of the man following him.

  From an upstairs window Catherine strained to see Patrick as he vanished into the night. Her heart ached to see him disappear from her life. She fell to her knees and sobbed for the loss of her soul. There was so much that she wanted to tell the man who seemed to love her without reservation. If only life could be so simple, she thought in her despair. And that she could turn back time. But Brett Norris was expected within days and that was an issue she had not resolved.

  Catherine lay huddled in a corner of the hall and listened to the rain beating a mournful tune on the window pane. For a brief moment she thought about Patrick trudging back to the village, cold and wet, and the thought touched her in a way that only exacerbated her despair. What if this loving and gentle man should catch a cold and sicken to the point of death? What else would her children have in their lives?

  Sean O’Donohue was angry when the man he had been following disappeared on entering the outskirts of the town. ‘Bastard!’ he swore, and continued into the narrow, deserted streets of the village. At least he knew where Major Duffy was staying. No doubt he was heading back to the warmth of his hotel room.

  Suddenly an arm wrapped around his throat and he was wrenched off his feet.

  ‘Don’t try anything, laddie,’ a voice hissed in his ear as Sean felt the painful thrust of a gun’s barrel in his ribs. ‘I have stalked men far more dangerous than you and most of them are dead now.’

  ‘You’ve got the wrong man, mister,’ Sean protested. ‘I was just out for a walk.’

  ‘No fool goes out for a walk on a night like this unless he has important business,’ Patrick growled. ‘So I would be wanting an answer as to why you were following me, or you just might disappear forever – and that is a promise.’

  ‘I think you know why,’ Sean said through gritted teeth as the gun bit deeper into his ribs. ‘You are a Brit, and any Brit in these parts attracts interest.’

  ‘You’re wrong about that,’ Patrick said quietly. ‘I am an officer in the Australian army, not the British army – but I don’t expect someone as bog stupid as you to even know where Australia is.’

  ‘I know where Australia is,’ Sean replied angrily. ‘It’s the place the Brits sent all their convicts.’

  Patrick released his grip and Sean massaged his throat.

  ‘You can turn around,’ Patrick said.

  Sean turned to face the man who had materialised out of the night to ambush him so easily. He had a sudden, grudging respect for the grandson of the legendary Patrick Duffy who had caused the occupying British army so much trouble in the county over a half century before. But this made his grandson no less a traitor in the Irish rebel’s eyes as Duffy had faithfully served the Queen for many years.

  ‘Am I free to go?’ Sean asked in a surly voice and Patrick nodded.

  As he was leaving Sean clearly heard the Australian’s softly delivered warning. ‘Don’t be going out to the Fitzgerald house again. Or I will personally hunt you down and kill you.’

  Sean believed every word Major Duffy said.

  ‘Oh, and by the way,’ Patrick called to the back of the retreating man. ‘If you happen to come across Father Martin Duffy, please give him my regards, and tell him that his cousin Patrick would like to meet with him.’

  Sean knew the Australian’s relationship to the renegade Jesuit. He would pass on the message.

  O’Riley was behind the bar when Sean entered from the cold night. He could see the angry scowl on the young peat digger’s face. ‘Top of the evening to you, Sean,’ the publican greeted cheerily. ‘And what would the dark look be for on such a grand evening?’

  Sean stepped up to the bar. ‘Have you seen the priest?’ he snarled, ignoring O’Riley’s cheerfulness.

  ‘He’s around,’ O’Riley shrugged as he polished a tumbler with a clean cloth. ‘Would you be wantin’ to see him?’

  ‘Just tell him that his traitorous cousin asked after him.’

  O’Riley leant across the bar. ‘You talk to Major Duffy tonight?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘You could say that,’ Sean answered. ‘But the next time we meet, Major Duffy will be a dead man, you can bet on that as a sure thing.’

  The publican frowned. He could see the fire of hate burning in the fanatical young man’s eyes and felt uneasy. No-one had sanctioned the execution of the Australian. After all, there were many in the new country who sympathised with the Irish plight. Many of Irish ancestry had indeed fled to the Australian colonies – or been transported. These were now the people they needed to protest from foreign shores against British occupation of Ireland. Major Duffy may have once fought for the Queen, but so too had many loyal Irishmen, seeking a way out of soul-destroying poverty by enlisting under the colours of the Union Jack.

  ‘Don’t be goin’ and doing anything rash,’ the publican hissed. ‘Major Duffy’s grandfather was the big man here, as well as in the Australian colonies.’

  ‘Did you know that Major Duffy turned Protestant?’ Sean replied. ‘Maybe that should tell you something about his loyalty to his blood.’

  O’Riley did not know about Patrick’s conversion and the news came as a shock. If what the young peat digger said was true, then a shadow was indeed cast on Major Duffy’s kinship to the values of his ancestors. Was it that he had gone over to the British in every way? And if he was seeking out his cousin, Father Martin Duffy, for what reason? O’Riley felt a dread he could not comprehend. Whatever it was, the Australian’s presence in the village bode no good. Maybe young Sean was right. Maybe the major should become a legitimate target.

  Father Eamon O’Brien closed the door to the confessional box, leaving behind the world of sins mortal and venial. The church was empty as penitents had intoned their Hail Marys and Our Fathers and left for hearth or pub.

  The priest sighed and wondered how much whisky was left in the bottle in the kitchen cupboard of the presbytery. The burden of the knowledge he carried was weighing like a millstone around his neck. In many ways he wished Father Martin Duffy had taken the confessions this day.

  Eamon genuflected before kneeling at the altar to pray for guidance. God did not speak to him but at least praying gave him time to reflect on what he could do to save a life, without defiling the sanctity of the confessional. His parishioner had confessed to a sin yet to be committed and Eamon had argued vehemently that confession would in no way absolve the man from his sins if he went ahead.

  How could he tell his friend Patrick Duffy that he had been marked for execution? Maybe a warning was not strictly a breach of the sanctity of the confessional. He would not, after all, be breaking his sacred oath.

  Eamon crossed himself and rose, glancing up at the depiction of the agonised figure of Jesus on the cross. How could men still condone murder with absolution through religion? For Father O’Brien, his faith was one of love and forgiveness – not hatred and politics.

  FORTY-FIVE

  Saul Rosenblum sat quietly by the swamp, gazing at the young eucalypt saplings. How well they were growing, he mused. They had taken to the ancient lands of Moses and Abraham as if they were always meant to be a part of the ongoing story of the chosen people.

  Since the arrival of the arms supply from Europe, Saul had gained a reputation as a hard man. The young people of the moshava both admired and feared him as he went about training them in the use of the few rifles they had acquired. He and Ivan’s search for the missing girls and the bloody end to that story were well known to all, but only the newcomer, Aaron Herzog, had expressed his disapproval of the way Saul and Ivan had handled the situation to the leaders of the moshava.

  ‘It is not God’s way to kill on
the Sabbath,’ he had stated. When his criticism was related to Saul he was only held back by the giant Russian from going to the pious man and thrashing him within an inch of his life.

  ‘It is not the thoughts of the others,’ Ivan had soothed. ‘But I fear his kind will try one day to control us after we have tamed this land.’

  To find peace Saul would often ride to this swamp which the eucalypt roots were struggling to strangle so that the land could be tilled for agriculture.

  ‘Jakob wants to see you,’ Ivan said from behind him. ‘He says we have visitors.’

  Saul rose from the earth and waved an acknowledgement to his friend astride his horse. ‘I will head up and see him now,’ he answered.

  When Saul rode back to the little village he noticed a group of well-dressed Europeans – both men and women – standing around a column of horses and pack donkeys. From the amount of stores packed on the donkeys Saul immediately concluded that it was some kind of expedition.

  Jakob hurried to meet Saul, who dismounted and gazed around curiously. ‘We have guests, Saul,’ Jakob said. ‘A party from England who are interested in searching for ancient ruins in this area.’

  Saul made a closer appraisal of the English, two women and three men. The women were of middle age and dressed in long white skirts and blouses, now dusty brown after the long trip from the coast. The men were dressed in the attire of English gentlemen abroad: pith helmets and walking clothes more at home on the slopes of the Swiss Alps.