by Laura Parker
“Ye’ve a bold spirit, Miss Fitzgerald, and I’ve already said I like ye for it. Here, then, take yer revenge.”
Before she could prevent it, he took her right hand in his and slapped the butt of the gun against her palm. “If ye think me a liar and cheat, that I do not mean to marry ye, then pull the trigger.”
Aisleen stared at him, her mind too muddled to make coherent thought. She held the gun gingerly, as if it might recoil on her and bite. And well it might, for she had never touched one before.
“Well, then?” Thomas encouraged. “Either ye’re believing me to be the lowest of rascals or ye know I’ve made ye an honest proposal. Which is it?”
The ludicrous situation both frightened and exhilarated her. She brought a hand to her lips and discovered that they were trembling. But it was not in fear. She was near laughter. At any second, she felt it would burst out in loud, ringing peals. The realization appalled her. She detested dramatics, particularly her own, but the man before her had driven her so far from self-possession that she no longer trusted herself.
“Since I’m not lying on the carpet bleeding, I take that to mean ye believe me,” Thomas said quietly. He gently pried her fingers from the butt of his pistol and casually thrust the barrel back under the loop of his belt.
“Well now, that’s better. I can see I’ve surprised ye, Miss Fitzgerald, and I know a lass will have her way in such matters. So here it is, then. Ye’ve until Saturday three weeks hence to turn the matter over in yer mind. Then I will come for yer answer.”
He turned to the matron as Aisleen slipped sideways away from him. “G’day, Mrs. Freeman. G’day, Miss Fitzgerald, until the end of the month.” As the two women remained silent and motionless he walked out, closing the door behind him.
“Well!” Aisleen turned an incredulous look on Mrs. Freeman.
“Dear me, dear me!” Mrs. Freeman sank heavily back into her chair and reached for a paper with which to fan herself. “I’ve never seen the like. Pistols and proposals. What will James say?”
Aisleen bit her lip. She was not altogether convinced that the man was serious. “I do suppose I should be grateful that he came here and spoke in your presence rather than accosting me on the street,” she mused aloud. “I was warned about the eccentricities of bushmen, but I must say I did not take the warning seriously, until now.”
“The man must be mad!” Mrs. Freeman answered. “It’s the sun that turns their minds. Scraping and lurking about in the bush, no one to talk with for weeks on end, it’s enough to turn the hardiest stock.”
“Oh.” Aisleen resisted the urge to glance out the window, where she knew she could have seen him crossing the promenade. She had stared quite enough for one day. She only hoped he had not misunderstood her glance. She had been in awe of the perfection of nature’s craft, nothing more. The man himself, she well knew, could be the soul of Satan come to life. “He proposed!” she murmured in stunned amazement.
“So he did, Miss Fitzgerald,” Mrs. Freeman replied and broke into a chuckle which made Aisleen wonder what the woman thought of her to have aroused such passion in a stranger.
“Well, it is finished. He will not come again,” Aisleen said firmly.
Mrs. Freeman did not respond, for she was not at all certain what the squatter named Gibson would do next. Perhaps the third Saturday of the month would bring the answer.
He bore her away in his arms,
The handsomest young man there…
—The Host of the Air
W. B. Yeats
Chapter Six
“This passes all belief!” Aisleen said in bewilderment as she sat on the side of her bed with her arms folded tightly across her bosom. The light of dawn lay in a long, faintly-veined stream across her pillow. In its flood, motes as bright as tinsel drifted lazily. All about her, the inhabitants of the barracks lay supine, cherishing their final minutes of sleep.
But not I! Aisleen thought angrily. She had awakened in a cold sweat with the suffocating thickness of smoke clogging her nose and mouth. At least, she thought she had smelled smoke. Yet all about her was bathed in utter peace. The freshness of the morning air mocked her burning throat and stinging nose. There was no fire. It was only another dream.
During the past three weeks scarcely a night had passed without her sleep being interrupted by some discontent. A few nights earlier she had been dragged to consciousness by an excruciating pain in her left calf. The agony had passed almost immediately, but for the rest of the day she had limped about, forced to explain the inexplicable malady as a muscle spasm.
I am not a child, Aisleen chided herself, only to wince in pain as she swallowed. If she had drunk scalding tea her throat could not hurt more. She was well past the age for hysterics. The sheer fabric of nightmares should not bind her in fear. Yet their disturbing aftermath lingered in physical expression: first the pain in her leg and now the parched aching of her throat.
“Nerves, that is all it is,” she whispered huskily to herself. She had every right to be anxious. Another day was beginning, and she was no nearer a solution to her problem than the day she arrived.
She had answered every likely advertisement in the Sydney Morning Herald, including those for a lady’s hairdresser, seamstress, and clerk. This last was addressed to men, but it offered the highest wages and she was qualified for it. Not one of her inquiries had elicited so much as a note in response. Yet a majority of the other women residents in the barracks had found employment, while new ones arrived daily.
The morning bell broke the stillness. Aisleen clenched her teeth as it jangled her spine. Immediately, the girl in the bed next to hers groaned in protest. Cots creaked as other sleepers rolled and stretched to awaken.
Aisleen turned and gazed steadily out of the window to hide the distraction she knew was expressed in every line of her face. She was the source of much gossip and speculation among the other women. It had begun with the arrival of that impertinent Mr. Gibson. Within half an hour of his visit, everyone in the barracks had heard of his audacious marriage proposal. It had made her a celebrity of sorts among them, a fact she found quite distressing.
“Wretched man!” she muttered and again swallowed painfully At least that matter had resolved itself. No further word had been heard from him, and she was now convinced that he would not return as he had promised to do. After all, the actions of a man so obviously disturbed were not to be trusted.
“Breakfast, Miss Fitzgerald,” one of her roommates called as she passed Aisleen’s bed.
Aisleen nodded, not turning from the window. Only when the final footsteps had faded away did she turn from the window. The emotional whirlwind had died, but its ravishment left her feeling drained. The thought of porridge made her stomach contract. That aside, she doubted she could swallow a single spoonful. Smoke or dream, her throat was raw.
A quiver began at one corner of her mouth. She had never before been the victim of a nervous complaint. Hysteria was not unusual in women in her rank and circumstance, she knew, but she thought of herself as having far too practical a nature ever to succumb to the weakness.
So, being practical, she went to the foot of her bed and extracted from her trunk the medical volume which she had carried since the day she began supervising children. She turned unerringly to the section entitled “Nervous Complaints” and ran a finger down the paragraphs until she came to the one marked “Fits.” The term “Apoplexy” did not apply to her symptoms but, with a small gasp, she read the following under “Hysterics”:
The patient may suffer warning symptoms: headache, weak pulse, and often believe himself the victim of all manner of maladies, suffering false symptoms of disease. These are apt to follow great depression of the spirit and shedding of tears.
She closed the volume with a snap and replaced it. “Enough of that, my girl!” she said decisively. She simply did not have time to languish about in a state of hysterics. If her throat was sore, she must be sickening. The best remedy for that was
rest.
Lying down on her cot, she fell instantly into a deep, troubled sleep.
*
Thomas flopped belly first on the hard-baked red earth, gulping air into his starved lungs. He had groped his way blindly through the inferno, some instinct for survival driving him to this place from which fresh air was being bled by the flames. Smoke hung heavy in the air. He heard nothing but the omnivorous roar of the nearby blaze. Bush fires were unusual along the Hawksbury River in the spring months but no less dangerous. When they occurred, every able-bodied man for miles around came to the aid of those who stood in the path of the blaze.
For three days, he had worked without pause, and then it happened. In a single blast, the fire had leaped the fire line where he had been digging a trench, hemming him and the men who worked beside him between twin walls of flame. It was one of the peculiar dangers of fire in the colony. The volatile oils of the eucalyptus trees often exploded, sending balls of flame shooting across the sky like earth-born comets to light new fires in bush hundreds of feet away.
He coughed repeatedly, dislodging a shower of soot and ash from his hair. The action rubbed his shirt against his shoulders and red, raw pain radiated across them. He was burned and singed in a dozen places. His lungs felt scrubbed out by steel wool, and his eyes ran continuously in their effort to flush the detritus; but he knew he should not remain in what, for the moment, seemed a safe place. The fire lines had lost their definition when the new blazes sprang up. At any moment, he might feel the lick of flame once more.
Curling his hands against the red earth, he pushed himself up into a half-sitting position, only to groan as his left calf muscles contracted in protest. Reaching back, he began to massage it gently with the knuckles of his blistered, broken-skinned hand. The weak limb did not always cripple him, but a week earlier, he had wrenched it while stacking supplies. He hoisted himself up, using his good leg, but he could not gain his feet. His left leg trembled under his weight and threatened collapse if he put his full weight on it. Swearing under his breath, he balanced on one foot and looked around. It was daybreak. Moments before the explosion, the eastern horizon had been showing pure pastels in counterpoint to the livid red-orange flames reflected in half the sky. He had to move, even if it meant hopping about like a kangaroo.
“Tom! Tom, you bastard! Answer me, you bloody get!”
Thomas grinned as the profanity reached him over the roar of the conflagration. He should have known Jack Egan would find him. “Jack!”
A short distance away, a man appeared out of the swirling smoke, a gigantic figure against the gray-white haze. Thomas tried to hail him, but a racking cough unbalanced him and he tumbled to his knees.
Without a word, the man ran forward and lifted Thomas and carried him, childlike, in giant strides across the flame-scarred ground.
“Thanks,” Thomas croaked.
“Keep yer bleedin’ trap shut!” came the gruff reply above his head.
“The other lads?” Thomas rasped.
“Safe enough. Only one damned fool doubled back on the fire.”
Despite the caustic words, Thomas closed his eyes and concentrated on his breathing. That was what a mate was for: companionship and dependability.
Suddenly they broke through the pall of sickly sweet rosin and dry cinders, and a cheer went up from the men camped in the clearing beyond. Thomas grinned. A man needed his mates, he did that.
Jack dumped him none too gently on the ground beside a dray wheel, but his huge face, blackened by dirt and smoke, was etched with concern as he bent over Thomas.
He shoved a tin cup he’d taken from another man at Thomas. “Drink.”
Thomas did as he was told, only to gasp and choke as the raw whiskey fanned new flames from his burning throat.
Jack hunkered down and grabbed Thomas’s chin, turning his face this way and that. Then he reached for Thomas’s hands, examining them. Finally, he grabbed the cuff of Thomas’s left pants leg and shinnied it up to the ankle. With surprising gentleness he felt along the calf, testing the bulk of muscle and then delving into the unnatural hollow of the scar tissue.
Thomas sucked in a quick breath as Jack began massaging the crippled muscles, but he said nothing as the man worked out the knotted flesh.
After a moment, Jack pulled down the pants leg and rose to his feet. “What bride’ll want a man who’s shod of his hair and hide?”
Afraid that it had been singed off, Thomas grabbed his hair with both hands and then touched his brows. They remained.
“Flaming fool!” Jack spat and abruptly walked away.
Thomas gazed after the man a long time. He had known Jack for nearly five years, yet the man remained as strange and unpredictable as the bush fire they had fought for the past week. There was a violent intensity in his pale eyes that kept most people at bay. Jack was not a good man or an easy man, but he was reliable.
Thomas drained the whiskey in his cup. Jack did not approve of much, and he disliked women most of all. Well, with or without his mate’s approval, he was going back to Sydney at the end of the week and wed Miss Fitzgerald. She was what he needed to fill his loneliness. It was quite simple once he thought about it. He had always wanted a family, and for that, he needed a wife.
He had seen the priest, and the banns had been read each Sunday of these past three weeks. Miss Fitzgerald would be angry, he suspected, when she learned what he had done without her consent. But then, he did not expect anything else. That was one of the reasons he had not remained in Sydney to court her. Five minutes in her company had convinced him that his presence would only antagonize her. He had taken her measure, knew what he wanted, and taken steps to ensure that he would get it. If not for the fire, he would have returned to marry her a week earlier.
He raised a hand to suck his bleeding knuckles. At first, he did not credit it, the splatter of wetness upon his face. Then he heard the gentle rumble of distant thunder followed by a round of hoarse cheers from the weary men about him. A second later heavy, cold rain splashed down, raising feathers of red dust from the ground. The break they had prayed for was at last upon them. Rain would do what they could not—smother the flames.
Thomas closed his eyes, allowing the whiskey to pull him down into the deep sleep of exhaustion.
October 1857
The days moved much too quickly in New South Wales, Aisleen thought as she tied the strings of her seventh starched petticoat about her waist. Underneath them she could already feel the chafing itch of her horsehair crinoline. Twice she had paused in dressing to apply talc to her shoulders, arms, and bosom. The heat had drawn more moisture to the surface of her skin, and the headache that had threatened all morning had blossomed into pain.
Major Scott’s invitation to tea could not have come at a better time. His note said that he would introduce her to the families of his fellow officers. She cast a doubtful glance at her gown. It was lighter in weight than any of the others she owned, but she was not certain she should wear it.
The gown was lavender taffeta, the bodice made of white lace with a sash of deep pink. It was a present from her mother, a wild extravagance sewn in secret. She had been embarrassed by the gown and suspicious that the expensive material was a gift from Kirwan Mills. Weeks of fruitless effort had worn down her reluctance to solicit Major Scott’s aid in her search for employment. Even with the support of the Immigrant Fund, she was nearly penniless. But what would the major think if she came dressed in silk and lace? It was a fashionable gown—everyone would recognize it as such—and far too nice for a maiden lady who was without a post or independent means.
Regretfully she decided against the gown and reached for her serviceable green wool gown with the black velvet banding on skirt and sleeves. When she had affixed the last button, she looked at herself in the mirror. What she saw did not please her. Her cheeks were flushed and shiny, and her hair had lifted from her brow to form a foam of coppery curls above her forehead. With a murmur of annoyance, she turned a
nd searched through her trunk until she found a small white lace collar. Beside it lay the rock-crystal brooch her mother had given her.
She picked up the stone framed in lacy filigree, pleased by the facets of rainbow light it drew to its center. Reds and greens, blues and golds, they danced before her bemused gaze. It was as if the stone held within its depths a tiny treasure in topazes, rubies, and sapphires. Once it had been a minor gem in the collection of ancient Gaelic jewels that had adorned the hilt of the treasured O’Neill skean. One by one, they had been sold or bartered for the sake of Liscarrol until only this inconsequential stone was left. Now it was all that there was of the Fitzgerald legacy.
A sharp pain jabbed her temples, and Aisleen dropped the stone back into her belongings and covered it. When she had pinned her collar in place she smoothed her hair and put on her bonnet. She tied the ribbons and looked at herself once more. The deep black brim of her bonnet seemed to enfold her like the ominous wings of some bird of prey. Her head felt woolly, dull, and achy.
“’E’s here, miss!” a young girl called from the barracks door. “’E’s come in a carriage!”
Aisleen started at the sudden voice but bit off the rebuke that came to her lips. It was not the girl’s fault her head ached. “Thank you. I’ll be along in a moment,” she answered and heard the tremble in her voice. Major Scott was her last hope. If he could not help her, what would she do next? Where would she go? Where could she turn?
It came from nowhere, a sudden careless breeze upon her cheek, a sweet morning breath of anticipation that was at odds with her own mood. She glanced about sharply. From where had the sensation come?
“Are ye all right, miss?” the girl asked.
