Shadow of the Osprey

by Peter Watt

  Michael lay under the hot sun waiting for Mort to make his next move. At least he had a near-full water canteen and starvation was not going to be a problem, he thought with bitter irony. Before he had any chance of starving to death, he would be long dead from a bullet.

  Mort had a fleeting glimpse of the man who had fired on the pirate captain’s party. So it was Michael O’Flynn they were up against! He turned and indicated to the remaining Chinese that they were to recover the discarded Winchesters lying beside the dead Europeans on the forward slope.

  The Chinese slithered forward to retrieve the rifles and gather ammunition from the pockets of the dead men. No shot challenged them, and they dragged the rifles back up the slope where they quickly figured out the weapons’ mechanisms.

  Michael’s sniping battle could be heard from the river. It drifted on the air as a faint popping sound and seemed distant and unreal to Hue. She had asked John why the big barbarian with the eye patch had not come with them and he briefly explained the plan they had formulated back on the saddle. Hue wondered why the man should sacrifice himself for her. For whatever reason he had stayed behind, she knew she would never forget his sacrifice.

  The river flowed between the thick tangle of rainforest with a strong steady current. Luke calculated that it was about twenty yards wide. They had been unfortunate to have stumbled on a particularly wide stretch of the stream. But they did not have the luxury of time to search for a narrower stretch, and he sought timber that they could use in their crossing. All he could find were fallen pieces of timber long decayed to an earth-like consistency.

  Both men conferred and decided to dump their guns. They would keep only their knives as the weight of the guns could easily drag them down when they swam the river. The only consolation of leaving their guns behind was that Mort’s men too would be seriously hampered by attempting to cross the fast-flowing river with their weapons.

  Hue could not swim and shrank from the dreaded thought of having to plunge into the murky waters. The two men, however, were both strong swimmers and John promised the frightened girl that he would get her safely across.

  She trusted him and tentatively waded into the river. The water demons snatched at her legs and she clung desperately to John’s neck. He was forced to gently prise her vice-like grip from around his neck and he calmly explained to her how they would swim across. He would swim side-stroke and tow her with one arm. But she must remain calm and not resist him. If she did not panic she would not be a burden.

  John kicked out strongly with the terrified girl in tow. The powerful flow of the river immediately swirled them downstream. Slowly but strongly he swam towards the middle while behind him Luke fought the swirling current with all his strength. They were halfway across when the shots and shouts erupted in the jungle behind them.

  Luke had a sick feeling of despair. Caught in the water they could be easily picked off by marksmen on the shore. They were still a long way from the opposite bank which beckoned with a promise of safety and the shouting and musket fire from the jungle spurred him on.

  Then the noise of terrified men fighting for their lives confused them. Within a very short time, however, the desperate shouting ceased. By then they had reached the far river bank and scrambled ashore, waterlogged but alive.

  The brief skirmish was still a mystery. They knew it could not have been Michael Duffy who they had last heard firing his Snider half a mile or so away. He could not have reached the river in such a short space of time. But both John and Hue had recognised that the terrified voices were shouting in Chinese. Although neither could understand the other strange yells that blurred with the panicked Chinese voices, Luke could.

  They were the war cries of the fierce Merkin warriors. From what he could discern, they had caught the Chinese unawares. The tribesmen must have always been close by, he thought with a shudder. But why had they not attempted to strike at them when they had reached the river?

  Both Michael and Mort had also heard the distant sounds of the skirmish and the ominous sound of an armed clash caused Michael’s hopes to sink. Had the Chinese reached the three before they could cross the river and killed them?

  On the saddle above Mort smiled grimly. The distant sounds could only mean one thing: that Woo had been successful. He expected to see the pirate captain return with the girl before sunset. O’Flynn was now isolated from all immediate help, he thought with savage satisfaction, and it would only be a matter of deciding whether to leave him to his fate, or risk the lives of a few of the Chinks to finish him off.

  It was a decision that could wait for the moment. There was still a chance that the Chinese he had deployed on the slope might get into a position to flush O’Flynn out before nightfall, when the damned Irishman could escape under cover of darkness. He glanced at the sun hovering low over a mountainous horizon and knew that the night’s cloaking darkness was only a few brief hours away.

  Running, stumbling and beating their way through the dense undergrowth, Luke, John and Hue put as much distance between themselves and the river as they could. Finally Luke gave the order to rest, and they slumped to the ground where the fecund scent of the forest floor rose up to tell them that they were still alive.

  ‘Hear anything?’ Luke gasped. John shook his head, too exhausted to provide a verbal reply. ‘I think we are safe,’ Luke added, with the semblance of a weak and tortured grin. ‘I think whoever was after us has met with foul play back at the river.’

  ‘Sounded like myalls,’ John finally said as he lay back against the roots of a forest giant. ‘Think they got the better of my relatives.’

  ‘Think yer right,’ Luke said, plucking at a thin leech preparing to attach itself to his arm. ‘So I don’t think it’s wise to hang around here too long.’

  John nodded and glanced at Hue who sat with her eyes closed and her head back. The decaying forest floor litter had stuck to the bloody soles of her feet like a pair of Chinese slippers, and the exquisite paleness of her skin was accentuated by the mottled shadows. He felt a surge of pride for her courage. In the gut-wrenching retreat from the river crossing she had kept up without complaint, despite the obvious pain her badly cut feet had caused her. She turned her head in John’s direction and her obsidian eyes gazed directly into his. No, it was more than pride he felt. It was love. The enigmatic young woman was the most beautiful creature ever created on earth. Or in heaven for that matter. ‘Do you think you can go just a little further?’ he asked her.

  ‘I can with you beside me John Wong,’ she replied softly and John felt the wave of emotion crash down around him, pummelling him with its violence. The woman fully trusted him, he thought bitterly.

  Hue saw the agony in his expression as he glanced away and wondered at its meaning. ‘Is something wrong?’ she asked.

  John shook his head savagely and lurched from the ground. ‘Nothing is wrong,’ he said. ‘We have to get going.’

  Puzzled at the sudden change in his expression, she took his outstretched hand as he roughly helped her to her feet. Then he turned his back on her and stepped out as if attempting to leave her behind. Hue followed. How was it that he could be so gentle one moment and then so cruel the next? She whimpered like a kitten when a sharp stick bit into her feet and John heard her pain, slowing his pace. He dared not turn to face her lest she see the agony in his face. She trusted him and he loved her. Yet he was leading her to certain death, on the strength of a blood oath more binding than the love a man could feel for a woman. Loyalty to the tong was not something he expected her to understand.

  As he strode through the forest he tried to walk away from his torment. But she grimly hobbled behind him like a child frightened of being left alone. He knew his duty and Soo Yin would get his prize. But soon the night would fall, and he would be alone in his thoughts of who he was in his confused world, a world somewhere between Asia and Europe. John was hardly aware of the bitter, salty tears streaming down his face.

  FORTY-EIGHT

>   Four items lay side by side on the desktop: a letter, a half-empty glass of gin, a loaded revolver, and its cleaning kit of rods and oily rags.

  Fiona sat behind the desk in her husband’s library and stared at the gun. It was her father’s Tranter which, after his death at the end of a Darambal spear, had been returned to the family in Sydney by the new station manager.

  It was a deadly weapon in the hands of an enraged person and it was the letter from a woman who now lay in a morgue that had fired Fiona’s deadly rage. Gertrude Pitcher had described the events that had occurred in the very library where Fiona now sat waiting for her husband to return from his club. The letter had concluded with a heart-rending plea for forgiveness for the terrible betrayal of trust. She could forgive the former nanny but the same could not be said for her husband’s abominable crimes against their daughter.

  But Fiona also experienced the same guilt and despair that had driven the nanny to suicide. Why had not she seen the signs? Why had not she been alert to her daughter’s suffering? She now realised why the nanny had submitted her completely unexpected notice to terminate her employment and understood Penelope’s insistence on placing the former employee in a new house. It was not that the woman had been bad – just another victim of her husband’s innate evil. Just another life sacrificed to satisfy his absolute disregard for human decency. Somehow Penelope must have learned of Dorothy’s plight and coerced the nanny into resigning. Penelope had not told her as a means of protecting her from her own dangerous rage. Well, her cousin’s good intentions had come to nought, Fiona thought bitterly. Not for her cousin’s need to protect her, but because as a mother she had failed to protect her own flesh and blood.

  Fiona’s rage was tinged with an icy-cold reasoning. Hers was not the despair of a guilt-driven woman pushed to the point of suicide. She had been born a Macintosh and the inner strength of her illustrious warrior ancestors came to the fore. She had turned her guilt and initial despair into a rage for vengeance.

  Fiona lifted the pistol from the desk and curled her fingers around the butt. Her older brother Angus had many years earlier shown her how to load and fire the gun. It was a cap and ball revolver where each of the chambers required loading with gunpowder, a wad and a lead ball. She could see the lead balls at the open ends of the chambers and knew it was ready to fire. All she had to do was point it at her target and pull the trigger.

  She placed the gun on the desktop and raised the half-empty tumbler of gin. It tasted bitter. She would kill her husband and tell the police that he had accidentally shot himself whilst cleaning the gun. Why should the police suspect her; they were the perfect couple when they appeared together in public.

  She realised, however, that the story of accidental death was fraught with danger; she must shoot him at close range. She had once read that powder burns were essential to prove the proximity of the shot and, coupled with the close range of discharge, understood that he must die from one shot only. Any more than one shot would destroy her feigned, grief-stricken story of finding him dead by his own hand. That she was alone in the house with the servants out on errands at least meant that no-one else would be involved to witness for the police. She would simply play the distraught wife and wear black.

  The lazy tick-tock of the big clock in the hallway outside the library came to her like the booming of ocean breakers; but the distant sounds of horse hooves on the street was a soft clop-clop that was strangely reassuring. It was as if the world was completely unaware of what was about to happen.

  Fiona heard the clattering noise of Granville’s coach on the gravel driveway. She reached for the pistol, surprised at how calm she was feeling considering that she was about to slay her husband. In her mind his claim to being her husband and his daughters’ father had been forfeited the moment he had abused Dorothy. She was resolved in her mission when she remembered the words in Gertrude Pitcher’s letter. They helped keep her nerve as she listened intently for the coach to rattle away, vaguely conscious of everything around her, including little things she had once taken for granted. Even the click of the front door being opened seemed to drift to her at the top of the stairs as something unique.

  There was a brief moment of silence when she could feel her heart pounding in her breast. The ominous silence was broken by the sound of Granville’s footsteps on the stairway. Her hand trembled as she levelled the gun at the doorway and she was forced to grip the revolver in both hands to steady it as the library door was opened and Granville stepped inside.

  His eyes took time to adjust to the dimly-lit interior of the library. ‘Fiona!’ he gasped when he became aware of his wife’s presence – and of the gun pointed at his chest. ‘What in damnation are you doing woman?’

  ‘I am going to kill you Granville,’ she hissed, watching as he blanched in terror. Their eyes locked and he saw the absolute determination in her eyes. He was struck speechless and stood frozen in the open doorway. ‘I am going to kill you for what you have done to my daughter and probably for all the death and misery I know you have caused throughout your evil life,’ she added in an icy tone, her hands no longer trembling.

  ‘Why? What have I done to deserve this?’ he finally croaked as Fiona stood up and walked around the edge of the big desk to plant herself before him. Not once had the barrel of the gun wavered.

  ‘At first I was only going to kill you for the shame that you brought on my daughter,’ she said calmly. ‘But I think I am doing this just as much for my beautiful brother David . . . and God knows how many other innocent people’s lives you have destroyed over the years.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Granville pleaded. ‘What do you mean about David?’

  ‘I know in my heart that you had him murdered,’ she replied with an edge of sadness. ‘I had always tried to tell myself that you were not involved despite my mother’s insistence that you gave orders to Captain Mort for my brother’s death. But my time with you has confirmed beyond any doubt in my mind that my mother was right.’

  ‘Your mother is a mad woman,’ Granville spat. ‘She is out to do you harm.’

  ‘Not I,’ Fiona answered. ‘I can see that now. My mother is a woman not unlike myself. And like my mother I know that I am capable of killing you here and now.’

  Granville had a fleeting thought of another time and place. Many years before he had wondered if his wife had any of the characteristics of her mother. He had always feared Enid and now knew that his fears were justified. Fiona indeed had all the characteristics of her ruthless mother. All these years he had been living with another Enid Macintosh. But his terror was rapidly being replaced with an animal cunning to survive. ‘If you kill me,’ he said licking his lips, ‘you will surely hang for murder and that will be a shame your daughters will have to live with. No, dear wife, you will not shoot me. Your sense of family honour is too strong.’

  ‘You will go to the desk and sit down,’ Fiona said, ignoring his attempt to appeal to her fears. ‘There is a letter on the desk I want you to read.’ If he was sitting at the desk when she shot him, her story of his accidental death would be more believable when the police arrived.

  Granville glanced suspiciously at the desk then back at his wife. ‘Reading a letter has little relevance to my life if you intend to kill me,’ he replied. For a brief moment he found his attention drawn to the revolver in her hand. He had not wanted to even look at the deadly weapon but something had clicked in his mind when his eyes roamed over the Tranter. ‘But I do not think you are going to do that.’

  The sudden change in his attitude alarmed Fiona. Here was a man who knew a secret unknown to her. A dangerous secret, one which would threaten her safety. ‘If you give me the gun of your own free will, I might not thrash you to within an inch of your life.’

  They faced each other a pace apart and Granville stepped towards her. Fiona raised the loaded revolver uncertainly and levelled it at his chest. She had not wanted to kill him in the doorway; that would be harder to explai
n later. But his sudden threatening movement forced her to pull the trigger.

  Just an empty click as the firing pin connected with the chamber!

  Fiona felt a stinging pain as the back of her husband’s hand caught her savagely across the face. The force of the blow sent her reeling across the room and she slammed against the wall displaying the Aboriginal weapons taken after the dispersal. With a clatter, the spears, shields and fighting sticks fell around her as she sat on the floor stunned by the blow. Her head was awash with red sparks, and she was vaguely aware that Granville was standing over her with the Tranter pointed at her head. ‘Before you can fire this pistol you require percussion caps over the chambers, dear wife,’ he said with a cold fury. ‘For a moment I could not believe that you would even dare pull the trigger. You were truly going to kill me.’

  Fiona could taste blood in her mouth and the red stars were fading. She realised that in his cold fury her husband was now capable of killing her. Her hand rested on something hard – a short spear with ornate barbs intended to rip its prey and lodge inside. It was now or never. If she did not kill him he would certainly kill her. With all the strength she could muster she gripped the spear and thrust it upwards at her husband. Startled, Granville yelped and leapt aside to avoid the point from taking him under the chin, the gun in his hand now as useless to him as it had been to Fiona.

  Fiona was on her feet but still too groggy to continue a determined assault. However, she did have the consolation of seeing the fear return to her husband’s eyes as he backed towards the door. ‘You will never see my daughters again,’ she spat between tears of frustration as she advanced on him with the spear. ‘I may not be able to kill you now but so long as I am alive I swear you will never go near Dorothy and Helen again. I am taking them with me to Germany to live near Penelope and Manfred while you will continue to provide us with the means to live in the style befitting the daughter and grand-daughters of Sir Donald Macintosh.’