Wild Lands

by Nicole Alexander

  ‘Bidjia cannot forget such a thing,’ Jardi said curtly.

  Adam looked back at mother and child. One dark-skinned, the colour of polished ebony, the other neither white nor black, but somewhere in between. ‘Whose is it?’ asked Adam, although even as he asked the question he knew Winston was responsible. Who else could it be?

  ‘There is nothing you can do.’ Jardi placed a hand on his shoulder.

  Bidjia had been wronged. There would be retribution.

  ‘So he knows who the father is?’ Adam asked hesitantly.

  ‘I not tell, but …’ The girl’s voice faded. It was clear that Bidjia had thrashed the truth from her. She leant forward in the dirt. ‘Help him, Bronzewing, he’s your friend,’ she sobbed.

  ‘Damn.’

  ‘Now you are back you can come with me.’ Jardi snatched the baby from Merindah’s arms. The girl screamed.

  ‘I can’t be part of this,’ Adam argued. ‘It’s not right. It’s not the child’s fault.’ He ran his fingers roughly through his hair. ‘Give the baby back, Jardi. Do it now.’

  ‘No.’ He pressed the tiny bundle to his shoulder. ‘It is the mother’s place to rid the child, but as she will not,’ Jardi turned angrily to the weeping young woman, ‘then it falls to another.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’ Even if Jardi did leave the baby alone, one of the other clan members would return to abandon the half-caste child in the bush. ‘I have to go after the others,’ Adam decided.

  ‘You can’t follow Bidjia. You must leave my father alone. Retribution is his by right. Come.’

  ‘I’ve got to stop him. If he hurts Winston …’

  ‘And what if Bidjia is wounded? Colby or Darel?’ Jardi retaliated. ‘Or do you place your bond with the white above that of the tribe?’

  ‘If a white is killed, Jardi, the police will come after the whole clan,’ Adam stated. ‘Is that what you want, to be hunted down like a dog? All for the sake of a woman?’

  ‘My father’s woman.’ Jardi turned on his heel and vanished into the scrub with the baby.

  Merindah’s screams haunted Adam as, musket in hand, he ran off in the direction of the Lycett farm. From afar came the dull but unmistakeable thud of a shot being fired.

  The sun was at its lowest point on the horizon by the time Adam reached the creek and the lightning-struck tree. There’d been rain somewhere in the mountains for the small bubbles that raced along the water’s surface spoke of it rising, enough to freshen the waterway. He drank thirstily, leaning over to cup the cool liquid with one hand. At the base of the woody plant, he examined the area for any signs of blood. Winston’s sketch pad and charcoal lay discarded in the dirt. There were footprints, mixed with the marks made by his friend’s boots, but no blood. By the impressions on the ground and the direction the prints went it appeared that Winston had run off towards the homestead on Bidjia’s approach, and that Colby and Darel had followed the men some time later.

  A second shot sounded.

  Adam got to his feet and ran like the wind. Leaping over stubby bushes and weaving through the trees, his heart pounded within a tightening chest. There was no birdsong, no kangaroos or emus scattering at his approach. There was nothing. When the high-pitched woman’s scream began and went on and on, eventually fading into the silent void that the surrounding bush had become, Adam knew it was all over. His knuckles grasping the musket turned white. He was too late.

  He approached the house cautiously. The bench beneath the schooling tree was empty, the contents of Mrs Lycett’s needlework basket strewn across the ground. The parrot still hung in its cage on the verandah and squawked agitatedly, the chatty bird fluttering at the cane sides of its enclosure, desperate to get out. The desk and chair were overturned. Movement in the doorway of the house caught Adam’s attention. He dropped to his knees and waited.

  Georgina Lycett walked out onto the verandah. Lifting her hands she looked intently at them before wiping them together, slowly at first then faster and more roughly as if she would never remove what was on them. Just as abruptly, she stopped, lowered her hands to her sides and looked out across the spring grasses that extended in a half circle to the sparse timber where Adam waited.

  Finally she stepped from the verandah. Her brown dress had wet patches on the skirt and bodice and as she moved closer Adam recognised the glistening stains as blood. He stood slowly, hoping not to frighten her, extended a hand towards her, but it was as if he were not there for the woman gave no sign of recognition, said not a word. Dull of eye, Mrs Lycett walked straight past him, veered to the left and began to walk towards the hills in the east.

  ‘Mrs Lycett?’ He spoke quietly. ‘Mrs Lycett?’ Winston’s mother kept on walking into the scrub.

  Running carefully towards the house, Adam stopped where a pool of blood was congealing in the dirt. Swarming flies rose into the air as he squatted and touched the sticky puddle. The dark mass foretold of a fatal wounding. There were footprints and the imprint of leather-soled boots. The boot marks led back to the house. The footprints stopped where the blood had gathered. By the scuff marks, the injured man, one of the tribe, had fallen face down and then been lifted and carried away. The man’s borne weight showed in the deeper depressions that led away from the killing site around the side of the Lycett home. A member of the clan had returned for the wounded man. Adam’s stomach tightened. Regardless of whether one of the Lycett men were dead or injured, which he dearly hoped was not the case, with the death of one of Bidjia’s own, there would only be more bloodshed. Payback was fundamental to the native way of life, and to white law.

  The vegetable garden on the eastern side of the house was partially trampled. Beyond the flapping bird in the cage, the lack of noise was unsettling. Then he heard it – the unmistakeable buzz of flies. Moving cautiously towards the verandah, the sound of insects grew louder. There was another pool of dark blood near the open door and the insects, hundreds of them, rose and settled in a dark wave. Mrs Lycett’s small footprints were traced in the sticky darkness. Someone had been dragged down the hall towards a bedroom. A musket had been dropped and left in the narrow space. There was no sign of Bidjia or the others.

  Inside the house, Adam ducked his head beneath the low ceiling of the narrow hall and listened. There was no wind. The house was cold. The passageway, plastered with old newspapers and coated with a thin layer of mud, led down to the kitchen at the rear of the house, the sound of the crackling fire almost drowning out the flies. On the left there was a tiny room, a parlour of sorts where the family read and ate their evening meals. The room next to it stored extra supplies and held a narrow cot for visitors. It had been here that Adam slept on a handful of occasions years earlier. On the opposite side of the hallway were the two bedchambers, one belonging to Winston and the other, his parents. It was into this room that someone had been dragged, the passage of the body marked by a sweep of blood. The doorknob was sticky to the touch.

  Winston was sitting on his parents’ bed, cradling his father. There was a messy wound on the older man’s chest. Blood had seeped from the injury along the sleeve of his cream shirt and dripped steadily from his fingertips onto the timber floor. Winston looked up, clearly dazed. He appeared uninjured, but his cheeks were wet with tears.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Adam?’ He sounded confused.

  ‘Winston, what on God’s earth happened?’ The boards creaked as he moved closer. Winston’s father was a waxy grey. There was a hole in Archibald’s chest and the blood splatter suggested death had been instantaneous. Such an injury was not made by a spear and neither Bidjia, Colby nor Darel owned a musket. He laid a hand on the man’s brow and gently closed Archibald Lycett’s eyelids. ‘Who did this?’

  Winston looked vacantly around the room, at the dressing table with its ivory hair combs and cut glass scent bottle, the sturdy chest of drawers and a curved backed chair. On the wall was a framed oval painting of a man and a woman. Three young girls were standing dutifully around thei
r parents. One girl with cherub cheeks and a radiant smile was clearly Georgina Lycett.

  ‘Mother tried to stop the blood, but –’

  Bidjia had trained him from his earliest years in the art of tracking man and beast but there was no sign of an intruder inside the house. No sign of a fight. No footprints save those of the immediate family in their leather-soled shoes. ‘Winston, what happened? You must tell me for the law must be called and your mother found.’

  His friend gradually refocused, his usually placid features darkening. ‘They came for me,’ his voice was low, ‘like you knew they would when you told those blacks about Merindah.’

  ‘I said nothing.’

  ‘Don’t lie. You know it’s true. You told them about us.’

  ‘I swear I said nothing.’ Adam thought of the baby abandoned in the bush to die. ‘I didn’t have to.’

  ‘They came and attacked us,’ Winston began haltingly, as if slowly remembering. ‘I made it to the house. Mother and I, we locked ourselves in, but Father was outside. He fought with the black. I, I thought he was dead. I thought Mother was mistaken. I didn’t know …’ Winston faltered.

  ‘Didn’t know what?’

  ‘I had the gun. I didn’t know that Father was standing outside the door. It happened so quickly.’

  Adam couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘You shot him? You shot your father?’

  ‘I thought he was Bidjia.’ Winston drew the dead man to his chest. ‘So I opened the door and I shot him.’ He looked at the man in his arms. ‘He was better than all of us, better than you or me.’

  ‘It was an accident, Winston. You didn’t mean to do it.’

  ‘Get out. Get out!’ Winston yelled. ‘It’s your fault that this has happened. My father helped you, treated you as one of the family. Treated you as a son. The son he wanted,’ he choked. ‘The son he didn’t get. He told me he wanted you to be manager of the new holding at Bathurst. Father never even thought of me. But you turned him down.’

  ‘Winston, listen to me.’

  Winston hugged the dead man to his chest. ‘You couldn’t even let me have Merindah, could you? You had to tell them about us. You told them and because of you my father’s dead.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ Adam argued. ‘How could you even think that?’

  ‘I thought you were my friend, but you’ll never be friends with the likes of us, you’re one of them, a bloody black!’

  Adam backed out of the room. In the hall beside the fallen musket was a leather pouch of paper charges for the rifle. Digging his hand inside, he pulled out a quantity and topped up his supply.

  Winston’s sobbing followed him into the encroaching shadows of twilight. Outside, a convict, one of the Lycetts’ shepherds, was running in from the bush, a musket in hand.

  ‘I wounded one of them godless heathens. Thank the saints I was ready for ’em, but they clubbed Donaldson, they did, and the man fell dead to the ground.’ He took one look at Adam, noted the musket he held and drew up a few feet from the verandah, instantly suspicious. ‘Are you with us or them?’ His Irish words were thick and breathy.

  ‘Mr Lycett’s dead, his wife’s run off. Winston’s inside, unharmed.’

  ‘Mr Lycett? But how? I saw him. He shot the black, Mr Lycett did.’ His eyes flickered to the spot on the ground where blood had been spilt. ‘Saw the black I did, left him lying there …’ His eyes fell on Adam’s musket.

  ‘It was an accident,’ explained Adam. ‘Winston shot his father. He thought he was Bidjia.’

  But the look of suspicion on the convict’s face was obvious. Lifting the spear, the Irishman skirted around him. ‘Mr Lycett’s boy mistaking a black for his own father?’ Pointing the weapon, the man moved towards the doorway. ‘Best you get out of here, until I know what’s what. Go on,’ he made a thrusting move, ‘I can make a good enough hole in you to make your innards come out.’

  ‘The police need to be informed and Mrs Lycett –’

  ‘Mr Winston, sir, can you hear me?’ the convict called loudly. ‘It’s Chaffy Hall. That bush man is here.’

  ‘Get him off our land now!’ Winston yelled.

  ‘You heard ’im, get.’

  ‘I don’t want any trouble,’ Adam told him.

  ‘Then get,’ the convict grunted. ‘Get away with you.’ He went inside and slammed the door.

  The parrot was screeching in its cage. In a nearby tree a single rainbow lorikeet answered from a high branch. Adam listened as something heavy was dragged against the doorway, then he reached up and opened the cage. The bird scrambled to the door, squeezed its way out through the opening and flew off to join its mate.

  Adam hesitated. He wanted to go back indoors but the grief and fury etched on Winston’s face told him that it would be best to lay low until Winston’s sanity was restored. Overhead, the parrots flew from the tree, outstretched wings gliding on the air currents as they skimmed the tops of the distant trees.

  He too fled into the bush.

  Shadows gave way to a dense blackness as stars swathed the sky in a shimmering veil. The emptiness within Adam altered and grew, forming roots that he feared would be impossible to remove. What had been done could not be undone.

  The wailing threaded through the murky landscape like a serpent. It traced each step he took, pulling Adam onwards to the source of the grief. It seemed as if the land suffered as well, for the bush was intensely silent, forced into submission by the terrible sound that only a human could make. In the gloom the trees grew thick and unwelcoming. The hairs on his arms bristled as he changed route, turning away from a well-known path towards the woman and her anguish. Other voices joined in, men’s voices with heavy hearts. It was pitch black, but the deep moaning drew him over the uneven ground, leading Adam towards a speck of brightness that grew in size and number. It was as if he were a moth heading for light. With the sight of red-gold flames leaping into the air, he increased his pace. Fiery sparks shot out from the burning fires, a cascade of sparkling brilliance quickly engulfed by darkness. He slowed as he drew near. The fires silhouetted a ring of trees, the thickness of their trunks signifying age beyond understanding. This was an ancient place. This area was not the tribe’s camp but a burial ground.

  Adam stepped carefully into the rim of light. There were children, men and women, interred here in the soft soil, kinfolk to Bidjia; those that had followed the Elder over the mountains when the settlers had finally driven them out. Adam recalled the little ones who’d died. He’d played with them, learnt to fish and hunt with them, had stood within the circle of life drawn in the dirt and been initiated with the other boys his age. The leaving of childhood and the throwing away of his old life for the new, the path towards understanding his spiritual identity, was marked by a series of scars on his chest that would remain with him until the earth claimed him.

  Bidjia, Colby and Jardi sat around a deep pit, their bodies coated with white ash. Darel sat upright within the damp earth, motionless, surrounded by his possessions: a kangaroo cloak, spear and throwing stick, his face pointed towards the east. They barely acknowledged Adam in their grief as he took up his place, sitting cross-legged beside Jardi. The younger man passed him a woven basket and, dipping his fingers within, he marked his forehead and cheeks with ash. Further away Annie’s keening never varied. It was constant, repetitive, comforting. Her sadness spoke for him as the men of the tribe sang in unison of the land, their mother. Adam joined the chorus of voices as they sang of their spiritual connection with Mother Earth and of the deceased’s spirit, who was born of their land and who would return to it in death.

  Colby placed green leaves on a small fire and as the plants began to smoulder the smoke drifted across the burial, filling the air with a pungent scent. A slight breeze twirled and fanned the smoke, enveloping them in the cleansing fumes while warding off bad spirits. Bidjia began to call out to the spirits of the dead to let them know that they were here as family and friends. The grief of the tribe would last many w
eeks, but out of respect Darel’s name would not be mentioned again.

  Adam thought of the square stone remembrances that stood so cold and lonely in the cemeteries of Sydney and its surrounds. He knew where he’d rather be. This resting place, ringed and guarded by ancient trees, would protect against summer’s hot breath. Frost would layer the earth’s membrane and tiny shoots would angle their way through the soil to daylight with the arrival of spring. The animals would follow to lay undisturbed in the shade of the tree’s canopies, to nibble lush herbage and raise their young. This was a place of beginnings, not endings. To be cradled in the bosom of Mother Earth away from the chiselled words and fenced-off portions of a regimented society was a fine end to a good life. He would wish for such an honour.

  Picking up an axe head, Bidjia made a series of cuts in an already scarred forearm. Colby and Jardi followed suit and then the stone was passed to Adam. He too cut himself, once, twice, wincing at the pain as blood welled from the jagged marks on his arm. With their grief made manifest, Annie began to sob.

  Chapter 9

  1837 August – the Kable farm

  Having been left to amuse herself since the breaking of the night’s fast, with bread and sugary black tea served to her room, Kate spent the morning walking around the farm. Her mind had been in a whirl since dawn with thoughts of distant lands, as well as money, marriage and the life she knew. It was better to think on these things than wonder at the Reverend’s spitefulness, for his deception was beyond imagining. Hatred was the word that came to mind when she thought of him. Kate held onto the flat-brimmed hat she’d made some years ago as the wind stirred the air. The breeze strengthened, winding up the slight rise towards her. She’d kept to the areas suggested by one of the maids, where shepherds and other assigned workers were in close proximity. The open country was interspersed with dense timber but through the trees convict shepherds could be seen tending sheep, and a windmill turned squeakily, busily driving the grain grinder.