by Peter Watt
As the Chinese captain related in his broken English the story behind the French interest in the Cochinese girl, Mort was already formulating a plan towards his own ends. There was a deal to be struck with the pirate captain – but definitely not in the presence of the Baron. The pirate captain and the girl were the key to his future plans to destroy all those aboard who plotted to have him hanged.
‘She has no value to us,’ von Fellmann commented when the pirate captain finished talking. ‘Better we let the French have her and avoid any embarrassing questions in Cooktown.’
‘As captain of the Osprey I must remind you sir,’ Mort replied stiffly, ‘that I have final say in what happens to people aboard my ship.’
Von Fellmann was surprised at Mort’s sudden and seemingly humane reaction. After all, he had not even wanted to have the junk survivors aboard in the first place. ‘I will not argue with you Captain Mort,’ he said, conceding to the captain’s rights. ‘This ship is under your command and I have always respected that. But I cannot see any purpose in keeping the girl.’
Mort did not have a plausible excuse for keeping the girl, but he would have to convince the Baron. ‘I think we should take the survivors back to Cooktown,’ he said. ‘I feel the matter is best handled by the proper authorities there.’ The Baron was puzzled but merely nodded.
Michael stared with some awe at the slight figure of the girl.
‘It’s hard to believe,’ Luke grinned.
‘From the actions of the Frenchies,’ Michael replied, ‘I think we have to believe her story. So that means you and I are addressing royalty, in a manner of speaking. None less than the daughter of a mandarin. And if what she promises is true, worth a mandarin’s ransom. That’s got to be the same as a king’s ransom.’
‘The trouble is I can’t understand everything she is telling me,’ Luke frowned. ‘My French isn’t as good as hers. It also seems she’s not exactly Chinese.’
Michael was surprised at his statement. She looked Chinese enough to him and he glanced warily at the crew and his bushmen who gave no sign of having understood her French either. But the pirate captain was talking to Mort, and Michael was in no doubt that Mort was learning what they on the deck already knew.
The girl pleaded for sanctuary with the British government but Luke’s French was not good enough to understand why she was in the village where she said she had been captured by the pirates. He did, however, get the impression that she was involved in some kind of resistance to the French.
Michael extrapolated from what Luke had learned that the French possibly wanted her as some kind of political prisoner, and that she must be more than just any kind of resistance fighter for the French to send a gun boat after her! The politics of far-off Cochin China were as remote to him as his knowledge of the moon. He was not exactly sure what the girl meant to his future plans. Horace Brown would know what to do, he thought, as he stared at the distant, monotonous grey scrub-line of the Cape. ‘Tell the princess or whatever she is called in Cochin China that we will ensure she gets handed over to the British authorities as soon as we land,’ he finally said.
Luke translated as best as he could and the girl seemed to understand. Tears of gratitude welled in her eyes. She spoke passionately, in her own language. Michael guessed she was thanking him and shrugged off her gratitude. The Chinese pirates huddled on the deck exchanged surly looks with each other. They also guessed what she had been saying to the barbarians.
Hue told Luke that they would be well rewarded for helping her return to her family. She could see honesty in the face of the big man with the eye patch. Surely this man was a leader of warriors!
Mort and the pirate captain returned to the deck. Woo addressed his crew huddled on the deck and their faces lit up with broad smiles of relief. But the girl was not smiling. She cast a desperate glance in Michael’s direction before being segregated from the men on Mort’s orders and hustled below decks by the first mate.
Michael guessed that she was being taken to Mort’s cabin. There was little he could do for the moment for the girl. His priority still remained settling with Mort when they returned to Cooktown. The reward for the return of the Cochinese girl was another matter.
The Osprey sailed her way slowly south, at all times shadowed by the French warship. But Mort did not intend to return to Cooktown. He had struck a deal with the pirate captain, and had at his fingertips an unexpected but welcome present. The bomb that Michael had brought aboard had been found by the first mate whilst he had been carrying out a routine check of the stores below deck. The wooden crate containing it had split during the storm, exposing a large tin the size of a small suitcase.
Sims was puzzled at first when he had found the device. Then he noticed the uncoiled fuse trailing away and quickly realised what he was looking at. But how had it come to be on board – and why? Maybe the captain would know.
Mort discreetly followed Sims below, paling considerably when he saw the bomb. He immediately assumed it had been planted on the Prussian Baron’s orders. So, Lady Macintosh was capable of killing him if all else failed. If he had remained calm enough to consider the logical possibilities of the bomb being planted by the Baron however, he would have also rationalised that such an idea would have been counterproductive to the German’s plans.
The acutely paranoid captain was not in any state of mind to make rational decisions. All he knew was that the Baron was under an obligation to Lady Macintosh. No doubt he planned to blow up the ship when they reached Cooktown. Lady Macintosh’s hate was so great that she preferred his death rather than risk the vagaries of a jury. Ah, but the Baron was going to get a taste of his own medicine, Mort thought savagely. And so would the rest of the men who worked for him.
When night fell over the Coral Sea Mort changed course, skilfully navigating his ship dangerously close to the Queensland coast. The French captain was puzzled by the actions of his counterpart on the Osprey. To sail during a cloudy night inside the treacherous reefs were the actions of a madman. Was the captain attempting to shake him off? Well, it would not work.
He issued orders and the French gun boat altered course to dog the blackbirding barque. Both ships came so close to the shore that the sailors on the gun boat could smell the sulphur-smelling gases of the mangrove swamps, and sometimes hear the splashes of the big saltwater crocodiles taking to the water, disturbed by the presence of the two ships.
Captain Dumas decided to remain on his bridge during the night. On more than a few occasions he had questioned the sanity of steaming so close to this perilous shore and had seriously considered breaking off the escort. The crazy captain of the Osprey could sink his own ship! At least he would take the Cochinese girl down with him, and release him from his mission of neutralising her subversive activities against French interests in Cochin China.
He was about to give the order to steer a course away from the shore when the inky darkness of the tropical night was lit by a brilliant sheet of flame. Like a subject illuminated by the magnesium flash of a photographer’s camera the Osprey and a nearby stretch of white beach stood in stark relief for just a second. Then the blast wave hit the French ship, like a giant door slamming, as the stern of the blackbirding barque disintegrated. The French sailors did not need to be ordered to action stations.
They tumbled from their hammocks, and were hardly on deck when they witnessed the once proud Macintosh ship roll over and sink. The feared predator of the South Seas had died a violent death befitting her infamous role.
When daylight came Captain Dumas and his crew were only able to find three exhausted survivors clinging to pieces of the ship’s wreckage. The three men were hauled aboard the gun boat where they lay on the deck more dead than alive.
THIRTY-THREE
The toughest situation Daniel Duffy ever had to face did not involve the defence of acquitting some hopeless case facing the threat of the gallows. It involved his own nephew when he told him the truth concerning his parentage.
Daniel felt a sense of unease. It was as if the boy were bottling up a volcanic explosion of emotion. Patrick was very much like his father in so many ways.
‘Is that all?’ Patrick finally said when Daniel came to the end of his narrative on the Macintosh and Duffy family lineages.
‘Only if you do not have any questions Patrick,’ Daniel said gently. ‘And as far as we are concerned, the situation does not change how Colleen and I feel about you as our son.’
‘Should I call you Uncle Daniel?’ Patrick asked with a coldness that was clearly discernible in his voice.
Daniel felt his unease growing. ‘If you wish,’ he replied. ‘If that will make you feel comfortable.’
‘It will,’ Patrick said, in a voice of a man much older than his years.
He is tough, Daniel thought, as he gazed at his nephew. He was standing defiantly alone against the world and its intrigues. Too tough for a boy his age.
‘If that is all, Uncle Daniel,’ Patrick said with finality, ‘I would like to go outside on my own for a while.’
Daniel nodded and sensed that the boy had left his childhood behind. He was now a young man whether he liked it or not.
Max found Patrick sitting on a crate in the backyard of the hotel. He was staring with unseeing eyes at the rickety wooden fence. The big German sought a sturdy crate and sat down beside Patrick.
‘Your father fought with your aunt Kate’s husband right here in this backyard,’ he said quietly in German. ‘Your father beat Kevin O’Keefe in a fight that many men would have paid a lot of money to see.’
Patrick’s knowledge of the language was good enough for him to understand what Max had said. But he did not reply, and continued to stare straight ahead with his chin in his hands, as if contemplating the structure of the wooden fence.
‘Your uncle Kevin O’Keefe was always tipped as the better fighter, still your father beat him. But you are already a fighter as good as your father. Now you have to fight a different kind of fight. You have to fight with the pain of learning Martin is not your brother, Charmaine is not your sister, and your aunt Colleen is not your mother. Amongst you Irish I don’t think that matters anyway. You are all Duffys and that counts for everything.’
Patrick turned to stare at Max. He struggled for the words. ‘Why did my mother leave me?’ he asked, the first crack in his resolute defence not to display unmanly emotion. Max saw the tears well in the corners of the boy’s emerald-green eyes.
‘I don’t know,’ he shrugged. ‘Maybe she had her reasons.’ He hesitated, then reached out impulsively to hold the boy in his bear-like arms. ‘They would have to be damned good reasons,’ he added, as he crushed the boy to his chest and felt his silent, racking sobs. He held Patrick until the sobbing ceased.
The boy sat silently, recovering from his unintended display of feelings. He felt foolish at revealing his weakness in front of the man he loved and admired. A tension crept between the two. ‘What was my father like?’ Patrick finally asked, and Max felt the tension dissipate. This was a question he could easily answer.
‘Your father was a real man,’ he said. ‘All men respected him and he was kind to everyone. He would stand up for the family and his friends. And would have been a great painter if . . . ’ Max trailed away as he remembered another young man, and another time when he had sat in the evenings, discussing the world, women and everything else.
For a moment Max felt overwhelmed by the realisation of his importance to the lives of Michael and now Patrick. The tough former sailor sniffed and turned away. He was embarrassed that Patrick might see his tears, the first in a long, long time.
When he was sufficiently recovered Max sighed and turned to face the young man. ‘Michael Duffy,’ Max continued, ‘your father, would have been very proud of you, young Patrick. So you must remember always that you have his blood. You must never forget who you really are when Lady Macintosh takes you away to make you into a fine young English gentleman. Remember that you have the blood of your grandfather who fought at the Eureka Stockade, the man who saved my life when the redcoats tried to bayonet me.’
For a fleeting moment, Patrick remembered the shadow that had loomed out of the darkness in Fraser’s paddock to snap the neck of the man who he now knew had intended to kill him. Having Uncle Max beside him now, he knew that the shadow which had killed so easily could not belong to him. But to want his arms reassuringly around him was something that only women craved. Now he was an adult such feelings were unmanly. Patrick rose from the crate. ‘I think I should go inside now Uncle Max,’ he said. ‘Dinner is on the table.’
Max did not look at Patrick as he stood over him. ‘Ja, you should,’ he replied in English. ‘They vill be expecting you.’
Max remained sitting in the yard as the sun fell below the tops of the tenement houses surrounding the hotel. Once Patrick was gone to England, would he have anything left to live for? He shrugged, and rose stiffly from the crate. Maybe one day Patrick’s children . . .
The next day Patrick did not go to school – nor did he return home to the Erin. For two days he was missing. Daniel alerted the police to be on the lookout for him, whilst Bridget sat in her room wringing her hands and praying. When questioned young Martin mumbled that he did not know where Patrick was. Charmaine simply moped around the hotel. She missed the boy, who she still considered her brother, as no-one had explained Patrick’s actual relationship to her. Not that it would have mattered anyway to the little girl who idolised her ‘big brother’.
Having trouble coming to grips with all that he had learned about himself, Patrick had set out to walk across the city to seek answers from a woman he trusted. Red-eyed and grimy from sleeping in the streets, he stood before the gates of Lady Macintosh’s grand house, and now wondered why he had come seeking answers. Was it that he sensed that she cared for him in some special way? That she had sought him out when his mother had ignored his existence all these years? But the most important question lying so heavily upon his eleven-year-old shoulders was why his mother rid herself of him.
Betsy the maid noticed the boy standing so forlornly at the gate. She informed Lady Macintosh who issued orders for him to be fetched to the house. Patrick watched suspiciously as a smiling man strolled down the long driveway. During these turbulent days intrigue and suspicion seemed to be all around him.
‘Lady Enid is expecting you Master Duffy,’ the manservant said kindly, and Patrick cautiously followed him to the house.
Enid had buttermilk and cakes sent up to the sombre library. For herself she had tea. Patrick sat silently in one of the big leather chairs, while Enid poured him a glass of buttermilk. ‘I have been expecting you Patrick,’ she said, passing him the rich milk drink. ‘I suppose by now your uncle Daniel has told you the truth about who you are.’
Patrick did not answer but sipped at the milk. Except for a pie he had purchased he had eaten very little in the last forty-eight hours. Not that it mattered much. He had lost his normally healthy appetite in the past few days. Even so, he appreciated the milk.
‘I think I understand your reluctance to speak,’ Enid continued, sitting down beside him. ‘And I believe you have come here to ask me questions that are of great importance to you. So do not be afraid to ask.’
Patrick stared at her and noticed how green her eyes were. It was a strange, comforting realisation that he had the same eyes as the woman who sat beside him. In her eyes he thought he saw a genuine warmth. ‘Why did my mother . . . ?’ he blurted, without being able to stop the most important question of his young life. But he was unable to think of the appropriate word to describe the terrible betrayal h
e felt.
‘Why did your mother desert you?’ Enid sighed. ‘Because she did not want you,’ she answered. ‘I know that is a terrible thing for you to learn Patrick. But I must be honest with you if you are to learn to trust me. And I know this truth will cause you even greater pain.’
For just a brief moment, when she saw the agony in his face, she was tempted to tell the real story of his birth and subsequent adoption, albeit by Molly O’Rourke’s machinations, rather than her original desire to have him disposed of at one of the infamous baby farms. But to tell him the truth would mean alienating him from her forever, and so this thought was quickly dismissed. Enid lived in a world of no compromises, and there would be no compromise in her struggle to bring down the men who had killed her beloved son David. She waited every day of her life for the news that Captain Mort was in chains. She knew that this would be the first step to exposing her son-in-law’s complicity.
Even the boy who sat in the library with her was part of her grand plan to wrest power from Granville. But her determination was tempered by an unintentional and unforeseen element – she was genuinely learning to love Patrick. In accepting her feelings for the boy, she knew that it would tear her apart if he grew to hate her as the others of her family did. By accepting this, she knew the facts of eleven years earlier must be buried in a lie. ‘Before you were born your mother met a man . . . ’ Enid said.
‘My father,’ Patrick interjected quietly, and Enid realised by the tone of his voice that the young man must have strong feelings for him. Probably an admiration encouraged by the papist Irish Duffys, she thought, shrewdly realising that she should not appear to denigrate his memory.
