The Isis Knot

by Hanna Martine

  William walked with purpose. He entered a small courtyard and climbed a set of stairs that reached all the way to the top of the Rocks. A door sat on the landing of the first switchback and he rapped on it, calling out, “Waldgrave?”

  The door’s loose hinges rattled. Everything in this country seemed ready to crumble and fall apart, and it was barely as old as she.

  After a few moments a man cracked open the door. “Who are you? What do you want?”

  William raised his hands to show he meant no harm, but his voice had an edge. “The barkeep at Captain Cook’s said you might have a room to let.”

  Waldgrave’s eyes narrowed as his gaze fell on Jem and then Sera. “He was mistaken.”

  William pulled the coin purse out from the safety of his pants and jangled it. “Perhaps not.”

  That got Waldgrave to open the door farther, revealing a clean but crude living space beyond. A cold fireplace stood to the right, a primitive table and chairs just ahead. At the back of the room, a woman wrung her hands on her apron. She peered curiously, cautiously, at the three strangers who stood just outside her home. Waldgrave waved her away. Without a greeting, she ducked her head and disappeared through a far doorway.

  Immediately Sera thought, I think she’s pregnant.

  There was no visual evidence of such, nothing from either husband or wife to indicate the same, and yet Sera felt it. Even the cuff seemed to warm at the realization. She scratched at it absently.

  Waldgrave watched the woman retreat, as though to make sure she was safe from the people who’d shown up at her door late at night. “My wife, Francine.”

  Though Waldgrave and Francine were young—no older than Sera herself—they had that harried, weathered appearance shared among most everyone in New South Wales. The one that aged them well beyond their years.

  “The room?” William prompted shortly, his curt tone catching Sera’s attention. What had happened in Captain Cook’s to put him so on edge?

  Waldgrave cleared his throat. “Three of you then? I only have two pallets.”

  “That’ll do,” William grunted. He reached into the money purse.

  He removed four similar coins with holes stamped in the middle, but only gave Waldgrave three. Anyone not of Sera’s background might not have noticed, but she’d been trained practically from birth to watch the path of money. William casually placed his hand on his hip, and she watched the extra coin slip down the inside of his pants to land, likely, in his boot. She was pretty sure he wasn’t aware she’d seen it.

  What the hell was going on? Why was he stealing from what she’d already stolen? Wasn’t her own crime enough?

  Waldgrave lit a lantern and beckoned back down the stone steps to the courtyard. “I’ll show you the room.” He unlocked a door at the bottom of the steps, just below his flat. Inside was a tiny closet with empty shelves, no pallets. Then he pulled aside the shelves and pushed on a hidden door beyond. He went inside, having to duck beneath the threshold, and lit another lantern.

  The three of them followed into a dank, musty-smelling, windowless hole of a room. Waldgrave’s definition of “pallets” meant scratchy blankets shoved into the corners. There was, however, a tiny table and two chairs. Jem sank into one.

  “My thanks,” William muttered. The edge to his voice had dulled, but only a bit.

  Waldgrave bowed his head at William’s acknowledgement and said quietly, “We’re all alike here, aren’t we? Our past lives erased. I don’t blame you for bolting, though others might. If we don’t band together, we’ll all die of disgrace.” He looked up suddenly, as if unaware he’d spoken. “If you require food and water, I’ll bring you some.”

  William handed the man another coin in agreement.

  “Very good.” Waldgrave handed William the key, then left the hidden room and bounded back up the steps.

  Sera watched him go, then closed the door.

  William paced like a caged animal, his shadow racing across the short walls. He was doing the fist thing again, balling and releasing, balling and releasing.

  She moved directly into his path, her hands on her hips. “All right. Tell us what happened.”

  He stopped, folding his arms. He took several deep breaths through his nose. “The John Barry has sailed.”

  “What?” Jem jumped to his feet, color draining from his skin. “There’s a ship in the harbor. I saw it with my own eyes.”

  “It’s the Remembrance. The hulk that brought the female convicts. It’s not due to leave for another month. Apparently the John Barry departed just this morning. Word was Macquarie was anxious to communicate with the king and sent it back early.”

  Sera knew this news was bad for them, but the original escape plan had been formulated halfheartedly before knowledge of Ramsesh and Amonteh had come about. Before she’d even told William about her past. There had to be another way, another avenue available to them. Why would she have been sent to this particular time and place if there wasn’t?

  “What now?” Jem demanded. “What do we do? We can’t keep running. This is an island!”

  “I know that,” William spat. He kicked the chair, ripping off one of the legs and sending the rest of it to the floor.

  She’d never seen William like this, with no control. He was always so composed, so careful. Even in the face of impossible truths.

  She calmly approached him. “We can’t attempt the same escape with the Remembrance?”

  He shoved both hands into his newly shorn hair. “No. I don’t know any of the midshipmen or officers. And we risk being caught, attention drawn to us, just for asking anyone other than the people in the Rocks. Fucking hell!”

  She reached up and took his face in her hands, forcing him to look at her. When his eyes met hers, she knew without a doubt that the John Barry’s departure wasn’t all that was wrong. But given their situation, she wasn’t about to ask in front of Jem.

  A light knock on the door broke the scene. William stepped away from her to open it, and took the food Waldgrave offered without a “thank you” or a “good night.”

  After locking the door behind him, William dropped a tray of bread and cheese and stew on the table and muttered, “Eat.”

  It was the last any of the three of them said until morning, and when the words started again, they also came from William’s mouth.

  “I’ll return soon. Stay here.”

  Again, leaving her with Jem in small, dark spaces.

  “I’d like to go upstairs and talk with Francine,” she said as William snapped on his suspenders and stamped his feet into his boots.

  He stopped, swiveling to her. “Why?”

  With a pointed glance at Jem’s back, she answered carefully, “I would like to know about her. And about women. Here.” To know what it’s like to be a woman in the Rocks and in Sydney and in 1819 New South Wales.

  Dawning crossed William’s face, his eyes widening slightly, and he nodded. “Will you wait until I get back?”

  Since there was worry in his eyes over her going out into the Rocks by herself—even though it was just up the steps—and because she was the first to admit that she was completely out of her element here, she said, “All right.”

  But that meant sitting in silence with Jem again, with him eyeing her like she was going to stab him in the back as soon as he turned around. And her, rolling herself into the blankets that still smelled of William.

  He wasn’t gone long, and when he returned he carried another loaf of bread and a rolled-up piece of paper.

  “Waldgrave approached me outside,” William said as he set the bread on the table. “He’s looking for help in his tannery. He would pay.”

  Sera rose from where she’d been tangled up in the blankets. “Are you going to take it?”

  A job seemed so final, so very This is where I have to be and this is where I will stay. It meant that they weren’t going anywhere. Not on board a ship, not to England. And not back to twenty-first century America.

&nbs
p; She looked at the bread on the table, the hard, crumbly stuff she was so sick of, and suddenly couldn’t breathe. In all the things that had happened to her, William’s simple sentence, this basic concept, hammered home the very real possibility that she would never see Seattle again.

  “No,” William said, and her head snapped up. He was looking at Jem, though, not at her. “You’ll take it.” Jem started to protest but William held up a hand. “Think of how you were at Brown’s, how the work helped you. Sera won’t have to steal for us to eat. And Waldgrave will keep you hidden as much as he can.”

  “What about Sera?” Jem asked.

  William finally looked to her. “Mrs. Waldgrave would be happy to see you now.”

  “And you?” she asked.

  He held the rolled-up piece of paper out to Jem and cleared his throat awkwardly. “I’d like you to read this to me before I go back out into the Rocks and see what else I can learn. If that’s all right. Please.”

  Jem’s face lit up as he took the paper and unrolled it. A newspaper of some early colonial sort—the paper was thin enough for her to see through the back. William’s peace offering to Jem seemed to work, because as she moved toward the door to make her first meeting with Francine, the boy eagerly took a seat at the table.

  Her fingers on the door handle, she glanced back at William, who was staring at her. His head tilted, his eyes softening, and that familiar warmth flowed through her. That taut connection. That ethereal song that called out to him, and his silent answer.

  When she returned to their secret room later that afternoon, she knew several new things: how to pluck a chicken, how to chop wood, and that yes, Francine Waldgrave was pregnant.

  #

  Late in the evening, well after dark, she was sitting alone at the dumb table trying to sew the stitch Francine had taught her by the sorry lantern light. The mundane, repetitive task was good for steering her mind away from the fact that she was doing this at all, and that William had not returned all day.

  At night, after the convicts were done working for Macquarie, if they’d behaved, they were allowed to leave Hyde Park Barracks and carouse in the Rocks. William was out there now, among them.

  Her skin started to itch like an addict. She needed him. Wanted to see him. Wanted to talk with him. Touch him.

  Run away with him.

  The needle slipped, stabbing her thumb and bringing out a bubble of blood. As she sucked on her thumb, the door flew open. William burst in, and she jumped from the chair, the tug to go to him so strong she got two steps before she stopped herself. She wasn’t exactly sure why—whether it was her continued question over control of her body and mind, or the black, haunted look on his face.

  “Jem’s still gone,” she said, because all they were doing was standing there, staring at each other. “We need to talk.”

  His eyes squeezed shut for a long moment and he exhaled. “Not now.”

  He dove for the blankets in the corner and dug around for something. She caught a flash of metal before it disappeared into the top of his boot.

  The coin he’d held back from Waldgrave and had hid from her.

  “William—”

  Then he was before her. Filling her mind and stoking her desire. Blond and beautiful and wonderfully close. He smelled like the ocean. His eyes were incredible blue orbs of tight emotion.

  He had no doubts, she realized. He was perfectly comfortable knowing Amonteh’s name, knowing the dead man inside him wanted what Sera carried inside her. That he himself wanted to be inside her, too.

  “Stay here,” he whispered, grazing a fingertip across her lips. “Be safe. There’s…something I have to do.”

  She stepped out of his touch. “What’s happening? What is it?”

  He glanced away. “A lot of rum is being poured out there, and that means loose lips. I’m trying to find us a way out.”

  But as he tore away and ducked back out into the night, she wasn’t remotely fooled. The coiled rage she’d seen in his neck and shoulders had nothing to do with mining drunk criminals and emancipists for escape routes.

  She was as much a—if not a greater—part in this twisted story as he was. She was a product of the future, not a colonial woman like Francine resigned to the kitchen with no designs on life but what was created for her by her husband. She feared for what could happen to William, feared for what that might mean for herself and for them, as an “us.”

  And after all—she clamped a hand over the gold cuff—she owned both a weapon and a cure.

  She was most certainly not staying here.

  The damn skirt tangled in her ankles as she ran after him. It took great effort not to tear the awful, itchy, high-necked blouse to shreds. What she wouldn’t give to throw on Viv’s old smelly shirt and pants again. What she wouldn’t give for jeans and gym shoes.

  She slipped silently out of the courtyard and into the louder, more populated area of the Rocks. William’s mysterious purpose had quickened his footsteps, but it turned out he was not difficult to follow at all. Ahead, through the zigzag of narrow lanes, dark and filled with oily smoke, she could still see his blond head and telltale strong gait.

  He headed straight for Captain Cook’s.

  The walls of the public house bulged from the power of the noise within. The moment William stomped inside, shouts and cheers burst like bombs.

  Her stomach plummeted. Oh God, what had he got himself into?

  As men started to tumble from the pub’s door, she quickly pressed herself into the same nook she’d hidden in the night before, gathering the billowing skirt around her body and sealing herself into the shadows. The crowd of convicts and emancipists and colonists—all dressed similarly in bland shirts and pants, suspenders and ratty hats, looking like they’d bathed in mud and rum—filled the lane right in front of Cook’s. Then the crowd shifted, spreading out to create a rough, hollow circle.

  A few of the men grabbed crates to stand on. Others climbed onto nearby wagons. Some dangled lit lanterns over the open circle in the center. The shouts were deafening, bouncing from building to building. She couldn’t find William.

  A convict with thick reddish-brown hair that stuck out at greasy angles exited Cook’s, cracking his knuckles. A patchy red beard covered his cheeks and crept down his neck to converge with the hair peeking out of the V of his shirt. The crowd parted, letting him pass through on his way into the center. His broad shoulders withstood many hearty claps, and he puffed out his chest with every blow.

  Then William appeared trailed by a much smaller group of men. They pushed him into the circle. As he broke into the cleared center, he and the red man prowled on opposite ends, sizing each other up.

  A clamor arose as the onlookers shouted wagers—coins and smokes and pairs of shoes. William was so much smaller than the red man, and the bets didn’t seem to favor him.

  A knot of dread coiled in Sera’s stomach.

  William circled around so his back faced her. He grabbed his shirt at the neck and pulled it forward over his head. His skin glowed almost crimson from the sun. Whatever hits he took would sting like a bitch. And yet, when he snapped his suspenders on his bared chest, he didn’t even flinch. He threw his head from side to side, loosening up. The dangling lanterns tossed hazy light over the tight muscles in his back. He kicked off his boots and turned one over, emptying the coin he’d palmed in Waldgrave’s into his hand. He flicked it into the mud and the red man matched it.

  The fighters began to dance around the edge of the circle. As William moved his face finally came into view, and his eyes positively glowed. All that sour energy he’d given off at Waldgrave’s last night and tonight was gone, channeled into raised arms and tight fists and…was that a grin?

  Supporters of both sides raised their voices, chanting for them to fucking fight already!

  The red man lunged first, a barrel rumbling downhill. William lifted on the balls of his feet. His arm flung out, precise and powerful, his fist slamming the red man in the
face. William’s modest group of followers cheered and waved their bets, but were quickly silenced by the larger contingent as the red man recovered with a snap and smashed his hand into William’s cheek.

  Sera hissed and winced away, her hands finding the corner of a building, her nails grinding into the sandstone. Then her eyes flipped up and her vision, to her surprise and very much against her will, narrowed to a tunnel. Bloodlust streamed down the tube, aimed at the red man who threatened William. Just like with Elizabeth. Just like when Malik had made her kill that driver.

  A black shadow unfurled and grew in her soul. If she wanted to, she could kill the man who was threatening her William. She could do it so, so easily…with only a look and a thought. All she had to do was let it go…

  No.

  Her heart clogged her throat. She refused to be a tool of death. This was William’s fight. If he got hurt, she’d heal him. But she wouldn’t take another life. Not after what Malik had made her do in Egypt. Not ever again.

  She forced the bloodlust away, stamping and shoving it beneath every good thing she’d ever felt. Watching Las Vegas disappear in her rearview mirror. Taking that first secretarial job. The sensation of William’s arm around her as she’d awakened in that woodshed. The hard, hot pressure of his mouth and the soaring emotion behind the stroke of his tongue.

  Gone. The death was gone. She breathed easier.

  In the fighting circle, the convicts ducked and jabbed, even throwing a few kicks and knees. Each sound of flesh striking flesh carried over the shouts of the crowd.

  William straightened after a barrage of attacks, dabbed at a streak of blood on his cheek, and laughed in the red man’s face. “Is that your best?”

  The red man growled and attacked again, but he was messy with drink. William was sober, focused, and channeling a huge amount of frustration over the John Barry’s premature departure. Even if he’d chugged a whole bottle of rum, Sera had the feeling this fight still wouldn’t be equal.

  William was letting the red man land his punches. To increase the energy. To keep the fight going. To feed himself life.

  He loved this.