Lyrebird Hill

by Anna Romer

  18 June 1899

  My darling little James,

  By the time you are old enough to read this, you will have forgotten our few precious days together. You were such a tiny thing when we parted, your eyes unfocused, your little hands like starfish, your hair a dark fuzz on your head.

  I want you to know that you once had a mother who loved you with all her heart, and that if fate had been kinder, she would never, ever have let you go. Sadly, I did let you go, but not by choice. I hope that one day, with your aunt’s help, you will understand and forgive the events that caused our separation.

  Your Aunty Adele is my dearest friend. Be good for her, and listen hard. I know she loves you as much as I do, because she has promised to look after you and raise you as her own. One day, she will tell you my story, and the story of your father – and how proud he would have been of his little man, had he lived to know you.

  My dearest boy, you will always be in my heart. Never be afraid, my darling, for I shall watch over you from heaven, and my love will keep you safe always and forever.

  Your loving Mama

  I sat back heavily. Aunty Adele? My grandfather’s mother had been Adele Whitby – but if she wasn’t truly my great-grandmother, then why hadn’t Mum ever told me?

  I shuffled through the other envelopes. About half were addressed to Miss A. Whitby at Brayer House, while the others simply bore the name B. Whitby, and a number, care of Launceston Gaol. I opened one of the numbered envelopes, and scanned the rumpled page within.

  9 July 1899

  My dearest Brenna,

  You will be comforted to know I have arranged to visit you in the next several days. My only regret with this arrangement is that I cannot bring James with me. He grows sweeter every day, a picture of his beautiful mama in miniature. However, I have resolved to bring an item of his clothing for you to cherish in your lonely days.

  Brenna, my heart goes out to you, but it also sings that we were blessed by friendship. My life would have been grim indeed had I not known you. I can only pray that I have in some small way enriched yours, too.

  All our love is with you now, mine and your son’s.

  Do not give up hope. There will be no void for you, my Brenna – only everlasting peace.

  Always yours, Adele

  For a long time I sat staring across the verandah, letting the tangled knot of my thoughts unravel. Brenna Whitby – and not Adele – had been my great-grandmother. A stranger, a woman whose name I had never heard before. Meanwhile the kindly woman my mother had called Nanna Adele was merely a great aunt, and possibly only related by marriage.

  A strange hollowness settled over me. Mum had once shown me a photograph of Nanna Adele. She had dark eyes and pure white hair, and her weather-beaten face was a maze of wrinkles. Most striking of all was the sense of deep sadness that radiated from her. I couldn’t help wondering if her sorrow had stemmed from the loss of her friend, Brenna . . . or perhaps from the scar left on her conscience by Brenna’s crimes.

  Adele’s other letters were all in a similar vein: gentle, and full of reassurance for her friend. I sorted through the other letters, determined to find out more about Brenna and why she was in prison.

  Her tone was dark and full of despair, and as I read my way through her correspondence, I grew increasingly chilled.

  18 November 1898

  Every night I wake in a cold sweat, crying out. This cell is like a tomb, the stone walls are dank, wintry to the touch. I have learned that a child grows in me. Once it is born, they will take it away – that is, the chaplain assures me, the only Christian thing to do. I feel nothing for this new life, how can I? For a creature born in the shadow of a murderer, I have nothing but pity.

  10 February 1899

  It is summertime, yet the walls of my cell are like ice. There is no window. Sometimes I hold my hand an inch from my face and stare at it, but I may as well be blind. I am an eyeless creature underground, no different to the little one growing inside me. What will become of my baby, Adele? I know you have promised to step into my shoes as mother, but I fear that my child’s soul will now be tainted by the same darkness that taints my own.

  3 May 1899

  Oh Adele, my baby is a healthy boy. I have named him James, which was my father’s middle name. The labour was twenty hours, and mercifully a woman came from the town to oversee it. I had been dreading the arrival of a child into such a dreary, forsaken place . . . but now that he is in my arms, he has brought the light back into my heart. I long for you to meet him, Adele. How soon can you visit?

  21 June 1899

  I am not sorry for what I have done, Adele. If given the choice, I would pull that trigger again, a thousand times, if I had to. I worry only that my crime will ripple outwards to engulf you and baby James. He is so precious, my friend, such a brave little soul, deserving of a good life. Which is why you must take him far away, go to Lyrebird Hill, start afresh. The air there is clear and dry, and you will both benefit. It is a good place, a healing place. I beg you, find a measure of happiness, and do your best to forget me.

  6 July 1899

  Shadows are crawling across the cell walls as I write. They have moved me to a new cell; this one has a window with a view down into the courtyard. I don’t dare look. They have begun to build something, and although I know it cannot be a scaffold, my imagination seems untenable. The clang of hammers sends tremors through my heart. My mind is full of death. The wardens shuffle along the corridors, and I constantly fear they are coming to drag me to the gallows. If that time ever came, I would pray for the courage to step across the threshold of this life and into the next, but how could I ever say goodbye with a brave heart, knowing I will plunge into a cold void for my sins and be lost?

  Goodbye, sweet Adele. Pray for me once in a while, and remember me to James with love.

  Folding the letters carefully, I placed them back in their envelopes. Then I looked down the hill at the walnut tree, taking one deep breath after another until finally my trembling ceased.

  My great-grandmother Brenna Whitby had committed murder, and been imprisoned for her crime. In light of that, Mum’s long-ago interrogation of me in the kitchen that day seemed full of foreboding. I had always sensed that she held me responsible for my sister’s death; after all, I’d been with Jamie that day, and apparently witnessed her accident – no one could blame my mother for wondering why I hadn’t raised the alarm sooner.

  Only, it hadn’t been an accident, and Mum had known this all along. Someone had killed my sister, and according to the forensic report, I had been the only other person present. It seemed crazy to entertain the idea that I might have inherited some kind of violent tendency from my great-grandmother – but that was clearly the connection Mum had made.

  My child’s soul will now be tainted by the same darkness that taints my own . . .

  I looked down at the river, letting my gaze travel westward. The outcrop of rocks where my sister died was not visible from here, but I could see it clearly in my mind’s eye: an outcrop of boulders jutting over the water, shadowed between by deep crevices, dotted with lichens that grew slippery in the wet. A dangerous place, my mother had always warned; yet it had been our secret place, a place filled with fascination and excitement for a pair of adventurous sisters.

  Hugging my knees to my chest, I shut my eyes. Until now, my fear of what I might have done that day had been nebulous, a shadowy thing that lurked ghostlike in the furthest reaches of my mind.

  All of a sudden, it was very, very real.

  10

  Brenna, May 1898

  The cold woke me. The wind that blew from the strait seemed to find its way into my bedroom through gaps in the window frames and walls. I felt it first on my face, then its icy tentacles infiltrated my bed covers, creeping the length of me and drawing goosebumps from my sleep-warmed skin.

  I reached for my shawl and dragged it around my shoulders. Sliding from the bed, cramming my feet into my felt slippers, I da
shed to the window. The outside world was grey, the sun not yet up. In the garden below my window, wet footprints cut along the brick pathway. I studied the tracks, trying to distinguish if one set might belong to Adele’s slippered feet, and the other to Lucien’s rough work boots.

  Ever since my meeting with Lucien in the glade the week before, a feeling of urgency had possessed me. Each morning I rose early and plunged into my work. The wolfsbane study he had so admired was complete, but immediately I had deemed it imperfect and begun again, this time from memory. I was not used to working from memory, and my first attempts were awkward and stiff. Then, just yesterday, I had managed to capture the nodding blue flower heads to my satisfaction . . . and, I secretly hoped, to Lucien’s, too.

  Hauling my trunk from under the bed, I took out my paintbox and brushes and few remaining leaves of paper. The touch of my painting tools thrilled me. I breathed them in – the familiar odours of bitter pigment and oily guar gum and rabbit-skin glue were delicious to me. First I arranged the tiny blocks of paint on their ceramic tray, then unwrapped my brushes from their cotton cloth and laid them in a row. Tucking my favourite drafting sable behind my ear, I uncorked the water jar and got up to fetch the ewer, only to find it empty.

  I glanced at the door; Quinn would be pounding out her bread dough, stoking the oven and dusting her trays, probably eager for a nice long chat. But if I bypassed the kitchen, I could slip along the hall and through the double doors into the garden, fill my jar at the pump, then be back in my room without anyone being the wiser.

  Dressing hurriedly, I crept silently along the hall and down the stairs, but when I got to the landing I paused to look through the window. From here I had an unhindered view of the distant hills that jutted along the horizon like purple elbows, tinged with an aura of gold from the rising sun.

  The sight reminded me of my home. I wondered if Carsten had seen my father yet, and perhaps pocketed a note for me.

  I longed to see Fa Fa, to know how he was faring after losing, in quick succession, first, his dear sister Ida, and then me. I hadn’t realised, until my talk with him in his study that night, how deeply and desperately he struggled with his private sorrows. What must it have been like for him to love my mother Yungara with such great passion, only to lose her so tragically? Exposure of her killers might bring my father little comfort after two decades – but it would ease the pain in my own heart, and I prayed that Carsten had taken it upon himself to enquire.

  So lost was I in my thoughts that I did not hear the man bounding up the stairs towards me. In the dawn glow of the enclosed stairwell, Lucien loomed taller than he had in the open spaces of the glade. Though he stood on the step beneath me, which brought our faces eye-to-eye, he seemed expansive, as if the stuffy indoors were inadequate to contain him.

  ‘You’re about early, Mrs Whitby.’

  I was so astonished to see him in the house, I did not reply.

  ‘It’s a fine cold day outside,’ he went on, apparently unbothered by my silence. ‘Will you be going out sketching?’

  I collected my voice. ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘I have something for you, Mrs Whitby. A small gift. It’s nothing much,’ he added quickly, seeing my frown, ‘just a token.’ Drawing a flat parcel from his coat pocket, he held it out to me. ‘I was going to leave it by your door this morning, but I must say I’m glad we met in person.’

  I hesitated. Exchanging banter in the glade was one thing, but accepting a gift? It seemed too intimate, too personal, and I had to glance away.

  Beyond the window, the sun had capped the hills. The stockmen were emerging from their quarters, walking trails through the wet grass, their voices ringing sharply in the air.

  I looked back to find Lucien watching me. I lifted my hand, intending to smooth my unbrushed hair, but instead dislodged the paintbrush tucked behind my ear.

  It clattered onto the step at Lucien’s feet.

  He swooped to retrieve it, and as he passed it back he slid his parcel into my hands at the same time.

  ‘Please take it,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s such a small thing. I thought you might be glad of it.’

  As I accepted the package, his rough fingers grazed mine. I was surprised at the warmth of his skin despite the cold and the early hour of the day. Surprised too, by the thrill of nerves that shot through me at his touch.

  I looked down, and a breath of shock escaped.

  Covering his fingers and knuckles was a cross-hatching of scars that rendered the already pallid skin into a kind of lacework. Some of the scars gouged deep into the flesh, leaving shiny dips of pink tissue; others were raised and knotted like twists of fine silk. I felt suddenly ill, and my eyes went back to his face before I had time to conceal my horror and pity.

  He seemed to shrink into himself, pull away from me as though our proximity threatened him. Hastily he bowed, then turned on his heel and thudded back down the stairs, vanishing a moment later in the gloom.

  I looked down at the parcel. It was wrapped in brown paper and secured with string, which I hastily untied. Twenty sheets of fine, smooth rag paper lay inside the humble packaging. It might have cost him a week’s pay, and certainly a trip to Launceston – for where, in the tiny town of Wynyard, would he have found such a costly and unusual commodity?

  And why had he given me a gift, when I had imagined that it was Adele who occupied his secret affections? Was the parcel of paper merely a ploy, in case he was caught creeping to Adele’s room at this early hour? It seemed a lot of trouble and expense to go to for a distraction. Could it be that my husband’s groomsman had feelings for me?

  I shivered, suddenly cold. But the chill didn’t come from the icy air drifting into the stairwell from outside. It didn’t come from the draught leaking through the gaps around the windowpane to freeze my skin and redden my nose and bite my fingertips.

  The lonely, pervading chill I felt at that moment on the stairs came from deep inside me, blowing up from a dark, desolate place that until now I had not known existed.

  Later that morning, after breakfast and then rushing through my few household duties, I took my paints to the garden. In a secluded spot, I unfolded my seat and arranged my colour blocks, brushes and vial of water. Then I opened the package of paper Lucien had given me.

  After much thought about my predicament, I had decided to paint a portrait of my husband as a peace offering. A week had passed since Carsten’s departure. The bruises had faded from my skin, and the abrasions seemingly healed; but each tiny injury had settled inwards, scarring my soul, causing a festering resentment. Today, I decided, I would put that resentment behind me and try to see my marriage through more pragmatic eyes.

  I did not love Carsten, and the rough liberties he had taken with my body repulsed me. But we had made an agreement. And for the sake of my father, and for the land I loved, I would find a way to endure.

  I sketched quickly, finding my husband’s likeness in my memory. Features began to emerge on the paper, the charcoal lines almost too faint to see at first, like marks made by the random fluttering of dusty moth wings. As my thoughts drifted, the press of my charcoal stick gained force and a face began to emerge on the paper’s smooth surface.

  Lucien’s face.

  I shivered. His beauty might have been sublime had it not been for the whiplash mark carving his cheek. If he had been spared the defect, would he have been quite so intriguing to me? Didn’t imperfection lend a depth to beauty that took the gaze deeper? Suffering and humility, my father always said, were qualities that made the man. I hadn’t really known what he’d meant – until now.

  Alone with Lucien in the glade, I’d seen another side to him. Gone was the gruff servant who hid his face in shadows; he had spoken openly, revealing his private views, and showing interest in mine. I had never before conversed with anyone in that manner, not even my father. And as we returned to the house along the shady path, I had never before felt so alive.

  Warmth settled over me, banishing my
shivers. I had been dazzled by Carsten’s wealth and poise; blinded by his fine clothes and beguiling eyes, easily believing he was a man of honour. But strip away the outer, and what was exposed? A man who rarely smiled, who lacked sensitivity to other people’s feelings; a man with a brutal streak.

  Lucien’s outer might have been scarred and unkempt, strange to the eye of genteel society, but I sensed, after our few brief moments alone, that behind his rough facade was a gentle boy whose heart shone pure and strong.

  A heart that, I suspected, beat a little faster when I was near.

  Sitting back, I studied my drawing. The paper was now a dark mass of charcoal markings and smudges, and gazing back at me from those turbulent lines was a face that intrigued me.

  But it was not my husband’s face.

  I should destroy the drawing, smear my hand across the charcoal lines and blur the face out of recognition; perhaps even burn the paper so no prying eye might guess the subject I had rendered with such passion, but something stayed me.

  Reaching for my paintbox, I wet my brush and began to add colour to my sketch. I worked feverishly, with a resolve I’d never before experienced. Soon the familiar features came to life on the page – his pale skin, his straight nose, his stubborn jaw, his full lips and intense green eyes. And all about that striking face, in a halo of wild snakelike tangles, his hair gleamed deep alizarin red.

  Adele sat at her dressing table, watching me in the mirror. I had loosely braided her hair and was winding it up onto her crown, ready to secure with hairpins.

  I had been unsettled since Carsten’s departure, and our encounter was still fresh in my mind. You are nothing like her, he had said, confirming my suspicions that he harboured secret affections for another; the woman, I guessed, whose portrait he carried in his locket.

  I fumbled the pin container and dropped it on the floor. Hairpins sprayed over the carpet, and I kneeled to retrieve them. I had not intended to ask the question aloud, but found myself saying, ‘Why is it, Adele, that your brother has never married before now?’