‘Can I stay here in the meantime?’
‘He’p yourself.’ He laughed. ‘Gets chilly of an evening and there’s mosquitoes, too, so most nights we lights a fire. There’s no room in the hut but you’re welcome to kip down in front of that, if you’re willing.’
‘I’m willing,’ Cat said.
‘Not what a lady might be used to,’ the man said.
‘I didn’t start off as a lady,’ Cat said.
‘That right?’
They looked at each other, sharing the knowledge of what they had been, but neither said any more. It wasn’t something you talked about.
‘What about the whaler?’
‘I’ll think about it.’
‘You’ll never get there otherwise.’
Maybe that was true but dared she risk it? She had just escaped from Antares, the only woman in a company of rough men, and look what had happened. Helplessness was not a garment she wanted to wear.
Twenty yards from the hut a massive piece of smooth rock jutted out from the cliff face. She went and sat on it and the sun-heated stone was fire beneath her bare thighs. Cat stared at the sea with its islands like a necklace of emeralds against the blue and did not see it. The weight of the sun pressed upon her, crushing her into the stone, and she did not feel it.
Dirk Giles was dead. The two Malays were dead. It was a miracle that she was not. She was alone, far from everything she knew, and all the things that had happened to her in the last twenty-four hours were a weight dragging her into a lonely place without light or hope.
As far as she knew the Malay prince, if that was what he had been, had done no harm to anyone, yet Larssen had killed him and thought nothing of it. Dirk had guarded her with his life, as Mungo had instructed him, and Larssen had killed him too. Dirk had been faithful; now she was alive and he was dead. That was reality. It was not her fault but the knowledge filled her with pain. A man not much older than she, strong, confident and vital. Now, within one second and the next, nothing. Because of her. Life should not be like that and she knew she would carry the guilt forever. And what of Mungo? Would she ever see him again? This man who had taken the horizons of her life and by strength and courage and love – that above all – shaped them into something new? She could not bear to think that he was lost to her. She was as she was because of him. Her image in the mirror was the image Mungo had made.
Lost…? She leapt to her feet. She took the lie and flung it into the sapphire waves. How could Mungo be lost? He was with her now, reciting Christopher Marlowe in the darkness before love.
Come live with me and be my love…
Was he waiting for her now? Would she ever see him again in the flesh as she saw him now in mind and heart? Come live with me and be my love…
How could he be lost to her?
She was sobbing, hands covering her face.
She walked inland from the sea, heading she knew not where, her face stained and purified with tears, and Mungo Jackson went with her, the man who she knew would forever own the greater portion of her soul.
A freshet of water flowed out between emerald beds of reeds. Cat followed it amid a clinking chorus of frogs, the jewelled thrust of dragonflies.
She came to a pool overshadowed by trees, half a mile from the sea. On its far bank a heron stood, statue-still, its outline graven on the air.
She sat and watched while the tranquil scene restored calmness to her bruised spirit. The pain of her early years was gone. The horror of what had happened aboard Antares was gone. She was at peace. But her determination was stronger than ever. She would accept what the man had said about the whalers. She would confront the danger. She would head south aboard one of them. She would be reunited with her love.
After an hour she walked back to the hut.
Later that evening the Aboriginal woman took her back to the creek but further upstream where there was a deep pool, the water dark and clear and cool. They shared not one word but words did not matter. There was warmth between them beyond words, a time of smiling and sharing, and somehow Cat knew that the woman had seen something of the pain that had consumed her earlier and knew that in some measure it had now been lifted from her. They stripped off their clothes, the black woman and the white, and they were as one with each other. They laughed and played together like children and here too the children came and all of them swam and laughed and were comfortable together. And together, with the shadows gathering, they returned to the hut where the man had lit the fire so that the orange flames dispelled the darkness and enhanced the unity that had sprung up between them. It was strange. This would never be Cat’s home yet for the moment it was the only home she had: the leaping flames, the darkness pressing close about her, the laughing faces and shining teeth of the woman and her children, the surge and rumble of the sea.
Cat stayed there ten days. Communication remained a problem but it did not matter. All of them – the children and the women – were company for one another. The man pursued his own interests and had little to say but was not unfriendly.
It was ten days before the Rachel Soames came by. The convict, who had told Cat his name was Harold Lamb, spoke to the captain when he came ashore and he agreed to take Cat south. The little family had been kind and had fed her and asked no questions, for which Cat was grateful. She knew if she hadn’t stumbled on them she would have died in the wilderness and went out of her way to thank each of them before she left.
‘What is this place called?’
‘I calls it Lamb’s Point,’ the man said. ‘It never ’ad no name afore, far as I know.’
‘Maybe we’ll see each other again one day.’ Knowing they never would.
She went aboard. She waved to them one final time. The Rachel Soames headed south down the coast.
FORTY-FIVE
Joanne
Next morning I couldn’t wait to pack Colin off to work. Every inch of me tingled when I looked at him. I could have eaten him up where he stood but he had a job to go to and I a crown to find.
I stood waving at the open door as he zoomed away, fishtailing around the bend and down the track – and he complained about my driving! – and was back indoors before he was out of sight.
I sat at the table and looked at the message I had recovered yesterday.
GO SOUTH HALF DAY PLACE WITH TWO HILLS TREASURE HIDDEN IN LEFT CAVE CLOSE TO CLOUDS
Hmmn…
In the course of my research I had read a paper about the conventions of thieves’ cant, which had been widely used in the convict communities of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Something to do with never saying exactly what they meant…
I phoned my assistant Helen at the university; she’d told me she’d be working over the weekend and sure enough she was.
‘That paper we had about thieves’ cant…’
‘The one by Fogarty?’ Sharp as a knife, our Helen, when it came to playing detective.
‘That’s the one. Something about the way they said things…’
‘I’ll get back to you.’
While I waited I grilled myself a sausage and scrambled two eggs, mixing in some chopped chives. Having my gonads in an uproar always made me hungry. I poured coffee and was still chomping when the phone rang.
‘What have you got?’
‘In his preamble Fogarty says that the purpose of cant language was to stop other people knowing what they were talking about.’
‘And so?’
‘So when they talked numbers they used to say half what they meant. Use six when they meant twelve, that sort of thing.’
‘Okay. And wasn’t there something about saying things back to front?’
‘Wait a minute…’
I sucked in a mouthful of coffee while I waited.
‘Here we are,’ Helen said. She quoted: ‘As an additional precaution, protagonists of the black art –’ I loved the way these experts were so much in love with themselves ‘– would sometimes use language expressing the opposite of
what they intended to convey –’
‘That’s it,’ I said. ‘Thanks, sweetie.’
I hung up and returned to my message. But how to be sure my ancestor had used the same formula in what was written here? What had Fogarty said? They would sometimes use language…
Hmmn…
Averil had thought the quotations were messages. I consulted the notebook. There it was: the second quotation, straight out of Macbeth.
Double, double, toil and trouble…
I grabbed my notepad and began writing.
GO NORTH ONE DAY PLACE WITH FOUR HILLS TREASURE HIDDEN IN RIGHT CAVE CLOSE TO CLOUDS
Was that the true message? I had a tingle in my spine, very like those I had felt in other parts of my anatomy when I waved Colin goodbye. I knew what it meant. My instincts were telling me I was on the right track. Joy…
But the problem remained. Go north… From where?
I went back to the journal and read the section where she described how Antares had vanished from the Derwent River on the night of 8 June 1858. All impersonal, a bystander’s view, but by now I was convinced she had known a lot more about that episode than she was saying. I had read a report submitted two weeks later by the captain of the frigate Hercules which had spoken of a three-masted barque believed to be Antares heading north before they had lost sight of her in a storm. Heading north… I had also read a report written six months later by the captain of a Dutch patrol boat in the Java Sea that spoke of capturing a three-masted pirate ship after a two-hour battle and hanging the survivors, whom he described as being English-speaking white men. Rough justice amid the clove-scented islands… No mention of women yet I doubted there would have been two vessels like Antares in those waters at the same time. Of course it might mean Cat Haggard had never been aboard Antares in the first place yet my instinct said she had. Why otherwise would her journal have described the cargo as being large quantities of silver coin and, as was later reported, other treasure too. Reported? Reported by whom?
The logic was inescapable. If she had been on board at the start of the voyage but not in the Java Sea, she must have left the ship somewhere in between.
I considered some of Cat’s other journal quotations.
A Tale of Two Cities, with Miss Pross scorning the idea that Providence might have cast her lot in an island.
The John Donne quotation, that no man is an island.
Islands…
Antares would have passed any number of islands on her journey.
I re-read Cat’s comments about the number of wicked men there were in the world. Supposing she had been forced to go north as a prisoner on Antares but had somehow escaped, taking the crown with her… Might she have hidden it somewhere on an island? An island with four peaks? One day’s journey north from where?
I turned the page of the notebook.
The man, his black wife and their three children treated me kindly. He said his name was Lamb.
I wondered where she had met the man called Lamb, his black wife and their three children. I dug out my map of Queensland. I looked closely at it, my eye travelling from south to north along the coast. Islands… Stradbrooke, Moreton, Bribie, Fraser… God, there were dozens of them. The further north I looked the worse it got. The Percy Isles, the Cumberlands, Hayman, Hook… Not dozens: hundreds. Many occupied; many not. Yet my nerves were pinging like a Geiger counter. I was sure I was on the right track but to search them all would be impossible.
Then I saw it.
Oh God.
Barely daring to breathe, I looked again at the entry in the notebook. He said his name was Lamb. I placed my finger on the map as though scared it might vanish off the page. I looked again. Lambs Point. On the mainland near a place called Conway Beach. Maybe five or six kilometres to the north of Conway and close inshore was an island called Hideaway. Was it possible…?
I googled it, read its description and sank back in my chair, uncertain whether to cry or dance.
Its distinctive feature, unique among the islands of the group, is the presence of four peaks that rise in its centre.
Four peaks. Unique. Four peaks.
I had found it.
I screamed so loudly I startled myself.
If only life contained more moments like that.
The phone rang.
‘Yes?’
At that euphoric moment I would have been matey with Dracula, had he chanced to phone. It was not Dracula. It was worse.
FORTY-SIX
Cat
All the way south Cat grew more and more scared of what might be waiting at journey’s end. Mungo’s efforts to arrange a pardon might have failed; he might even have been arrested. That was what frightened her most: being returned to prison with a gallows waiting at the end of it. She woke at night sweating in terror, the hangman’s noose about her neck.
Obadiah Gregory’s voice whispered in the darkness. Dancin on air, Catherine, dancin on air…
The captain of the Rachel Soames made it plain that the interests of the ship came first. ‘Every day is gold to a whaler,’ he said, but when she told him about Jackson’s Creek he agreed to drop her off there.
It was early in the morning when the captain’s gig left her at the creek entrance. Overhead the sky was clear with the promise of a fine day but the horizon was shrouded in a purple mist through which the rising sun glowed with sombre fire. Catherine walked nervously up through the scrub. A fleeing wallaby startled her but nothing else stirred as she reached the house. The kitchen door was unlocked. Heart pounding, she stood inside the door and listened to the silence. Was Mungo there or had he been arrested? She did not know what to do. She walked quietly into the living room and stood staring out of the window at the creek, reliving all the things that had happened to her since she left. There had been so many miracles in her recent life. Was it reasonable to expect yet another one now, because that was surely what it would take for Mungo’s plan to work. A free pardon and half the stolen money? In the cool light of early morning it seemed a foolish dream. No, they would hunt her down and hang her. Why had she come back?
‘Catherine…’
She had not heard him. She turned. They faced each other across the room. This strong man, she thought. My strong man. Never mind the future. Now was all the world. In his arms.
‘You,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she said.
There was wonder as well as tenderness in his fingers as they traced her features one by one. So tender. Her throat was full and she could not speak.
‘I was afraid for you.’
She nodded. Now his face was blurring through her unshed tears.
His fingers discovered the scar on her neck where Larssen’s bullet had grazed her. He looked uncertainly at her. ‘Was it very terrible?’
She shook her head. She did not want to talk about it but there was something he had to know.
‘Your men… Dirk Giles and the other one…’
His face grew stern and still. ‘They killed them?’
‘Dirk, yes.’ She told him how Dirk had tried to free her after the mutiny and how Larssen had shot him.
‘He killed the Malay men, too.’
‘Why?’
‘Larssen wasn’t the sort who needed a reason.’
‘And Carter?’
‘I don’t know what happened to him.’
He went away from her then.
‘I blame myself,’ he said presently.
She put her hand on his arm. ‘There was always a risk. We all knew that. I am sorry, too. Dirk saved me and I shall always be grateful to him. But there is nothing you can do.’
‘You’re right.’ He was still silent for a while but finally looked uncertainly at her. ‘Shall we go and lie down?’ he said. ‘Would you like…?’
To give and to receive comfort… She could not speak even to tell him yes, she wanted that more than anything in the world, but her body must have spoken for her because he took her hand in his.
‘Come t
hen,’ he said.
It was home, her sweet haven. Peace. Catherine did not know where she was going, nor did she care. It was not necessary that she should be going anywhere. They lay enfolded, arms holding, eyes looking into eyes, and his, always dark, were darker and deeper than she had ever seen them. She could have drowned in his eyes. Whatever he had to tell her, she thought, nothing could take away this time. And again there were tears, a yielding of fear, release from the prospect of pain.
‘Tell me what happened.’
Her voice had come back and they both spoke at once. They laughed a little.
‘You first,’ she said.
So he told her.
Mungo knew a man at the Governor’s House who had a name for fixing things. Rupert Ridgway could oil many wheels but expected a reasonable reward for his services, his definition of reasonable depending on the service provided.
At the last minute Mungo hesitated. The favour he wanted was enormous, which meant the price would be enormous also and he saw no reason to pay more than he must. He therefore went to see Arthur Dunstable.
Arthur, with creditors hounding him every way he turned, was unwelcoming. ‘What do you want?’
‘A favour.’ As Arthur opened his mouth to reject any thought of granting a favour to anyone, Mungo added: ‘There’s money in it for you if you agree.’
Arthur looked at him suspiciously. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘I am talking about helping you remain solvent.’
‘Why should you care?’
‘I don’t. But I want you to do something for me and I am willing to pay for it.’
‘He did what?’ Catherine said.
‘He gave me a letter confirming you never stole his watch after all.’
It was too much for her to take in. ‘What are you saying?’
‘I am saying that Mr Arthur Dunstable has just discovered a letter written by his late uncle stating that the constable had confessed to taking the watch but that, fearful of his theft being discovered, had then blamed Miss Catherine Haggard, resident of Porlock Parish in the county of Somerset, for having stolen it.’
The Governor's House Page 28
