‘That would be none,’ Friday replied helpfully.
‘You will all listen to me and you will all do as I say,’ Aria commanded, and it was a command. ‘This is what we will do.’
Before the missionaries had come to Aotearoa with their new religion and set about interfering with the natural order of things, Aria had taken part in a number of raiding parties and, with other womenfolk of her family, had also successfully defended her home against attack when the men had been away. She knew how to fight, she knew how to strategise and, being the progeny of arrogant and privileged Mahuika Aramakutu and the great warrior Tumanawapohatu Te Kainga-mataa, she harboured a streak of ruthlessness a mile wide. She knew she could get the child back. Someone might die — the Leary man, and possibly his woman — but that wouldn’t matter, as long as Harrie was happy again. Because if Harrie was happy, then Friday would be, too.
They would have to enter the house quickly, using the element of surprise they currently possessed, which they would not possess for much longer if they continued to march around the streets of this unattractive town in a conspicuous group. Yes, it was nighttime, but they had been into possibly every drinking establishment asking after Leary, and word did spread.
Fortunately the town was small, with only three longer streets parallel to the shoreline, dissected by shorter streets running up a steep hill overlooking what was presumably the Hunter River. Aria thought the open ocean probably lay on the other side of the hill, as she could hear waves breaking onshore. They had started at the wharf end of the town, hunting down street names on buildings, and now here they were on Newcomen Street, searching for a house with a picket fence and a lavender path.
‘Is lavender in flower at this time of year?’ Friday asked in a loud whisper.
‘Shush!’ Sarah warned.
Unnecessarily, Aria thought. It was not that silent out. There were the waves on the river’s edge and the ocean shore, the wind in some nearby but invisible trees, and the racket of night birds.
‘It doesn’t flower till early summer,’ Harrie said.
‘Well, that’s no bloody use, is it? It’s only September.’
‘Nearly October. Some might be out.’
‘Shut up,’ Aria said. She would smell the lavender. The wife of Reverend Four-Eyes Williams, Missus Marianne, grew lavender in her garden at Paihia, and it always made Aria sneeze whether it was in flower or not. It was common knowledge among her people that Pakeha noses did not work properly, perhaps because they had had to smell so many bad stinks in England. Friday was getting bad-tempered. She must be badly wanting her gin by now. She needed a distraction. ‘Come with me: we will find the house.’
She and Friday set off, their boots slipping in sand, Aria noting that Newcomen Street didn’t actually appear to have very many buildings on it at all — less than a dozen positioned in the middle of good-sized plots of land, including a public house, what might be a commissariat store, and a handful of cottages. In two of the cottages, light flickered.
Outside the first, which did have a short length of picket fence along its street frontage and lavender somewhere in the yard — she knew because her nose was tickling — she said to Friday in a low voice, ‘You go around this side, I will go around the other. Perhaps we will see something through the windows. Do not let yourself be seen.’
‘As if,’ Friday said, sounding insulted.
Aria suppressed a grin. Friday was not bad at sneaking around, but she did have a tendency to thump, clatter and barge when she was over-excited. Not like Sarah, who could disappear at will when she wanted to. Friday was strong, though, and very handy with her fists, qualities Aria found both useful and appealing.
As Aria approached the lone window in the northern wall of the cottage, she became aware of male voices inside. She flattened herself against the rough brick and peeked around the window frame. At a table sat four men playing cards, the military jackets hanging on the wall behind them the colour of old dried blood in the lamplight. Soldiers, obviously. A mosquito fastened itself to her hand: she ignored it. Three of the men smoked pipes, the air above them heavy and blue, and they shared a bottle of something the colour of amber. It would not do to disturb them.
Finally she moved away. At the front of the cottage she waited for Friday, who appeared out of the darkness, scowling.
‘Fucking soldiers,’ she whispered as she squatted next to Aria. ‘They must be policing the town.’
‘Was it Sarah who said there is a big gaol here?’
‘That’s what Leo reckons.’
Aria pinched her nose: this close to the lavender, its sharp scent felt like forks being inserted into her nostrils. ‘Perhaps they work in the gaol,’ she murmured nasally.
‘Probably,’ Friday agreed, ‘but they’ll be —’
Aria exploded in a mighty sneeze, then another and another. Racked with spasms, she felt Friday hauling her to her feet, then everything flipped sideways as she stood on her own hem and crashed to the ground again.
From inside the cottage came voices, the clatter of chair legs on a hardwood floor, then the front door was wrenched open, spilling a fan of light out onto the yard.
‘Get up!’ Friday cried. ‘Get up!’
Suppressing a final sneeze that blew snot over her top lip, Aria scrambled to her feet, but too late as a hand tangled in her hair and jerked her backwards.
‘What have we here?’ the soldier demanded in a Scottish burr.
‘Get your filthy hands off her,’ Friday spat.
Aria knew Friday could have run — she’d had time — but she hadn’t.
‘Answer me,’ the soldier said. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Nothing,’ Friday replied. ‘Standing in your yard. We got lost.’
‘This yard is off limits to civilians. It belongs to the Crown. Did you not see the notice?’
‘What do you mean “off limits”? It’s just a shitty bit of dirt.’
Friday, shut up, Aria thought desperately.
‘Trespassing on government property is a criminal offence,’ the soldier warned. ‘I could take you both into custody.’
‘Think so, do you?’ Friday parked her hands on her hips. ‘You just try it, you pig-faced, shit-breathed, cocksucking bastard.’
Aria winced, and not because the hand in her hair had tightened into an angry fist. The look on the man’s face, she could see, had turned thunderous.
‘Right, you’re under arrest by warrant of the Crown, the pair of you.’
The soldiers had all come outside now. Four men against two women. Regardless of the soldier’s grip on her head, Aria lifted her chin and stared imperiously down her nose at them, knowing she would have to fight hard to get Friday and herself safely out of this one.
But she could. And she would.
‘Why are soldiers always such arseholes?’ Friday remarked. It was true — in her experience she’d met very few decent ones. Give her a tar any day.
She and Aria were sitting at the table, facing their four captors. The door had been locked and the flimsy curtains drawn — both ominous signs. She’d tried to get to her watch to check the time but her hand had been slapped away from her pocket. Surely when she and Aria didn’t arrive at the agreed rendezvous point at the intersection of Newcomen and King streets, the others would come looking for them?
‘Why are whores so mouthy?’ the sergeant countered, for that’s what he was.
He was of average height, fit-looking, possibly in his thirties, bristle-faced at this late hour, and had a mean glint in his eye. His men were younger, one a boy of perhaps only sixteen or seventeen. The sergeant was thick, though: he hadn’t checked them for weapons and she knew Aria was carrying at least one knife. She hoped to God she didn’t decide to use it. They’d be in far worse trouble if she did.
‘I am not a whore,’ Aria said icily.
‘What are you then?’ the sergeant asked, his booted feet up on the table.
‘I think she’s one of
them Maoris,’ another soldier suggested. ‘From across the Tasman.’
‘What about you?’ the sergeant said, addressing Friday. ‘Are you a whore? You look like one to me and that trap of yours is straight out of the gutter.’
‘None of your bloody business.’
‘Or are you runaways from the Female Factory?’
Friday stared at him, her apprehension ratcheting up several notches until it turned into crawling, prickling fear. What the hell did he mean? ‘The Factory at Parramatta?’ she blurted.
Watching her, his eyes narrowed thoughtfully. ‘No, the Female Factory here, over at the gaol. Turner, have we had any reports of an escape?’
Turner shook his head. ‘Not today, Sergeant Weir.’
Aria snorted. ‘If we were escapees from the gaol, we would not be loitering around outside a filthy little hovel filled with the king’s soldiers, would we?’
His eye still firmly on Friday, the sergeant ignored her. ‘You know, you do look bloody guilty. I’d put money on you being a couple of runaway lags. If there’d been a breakout at Parramatta, we’d’ve been advised, but we haven’t, so maybe you’re assignees. Is that it? A couple of bonded convicts? Where are you from? Port Macquarie? Sydney?’
‘You are wasting your time with fruitless guessing,’ Aria said. ‘We are not runaways.’
Sergeant Weir’s boots came down. ‘Well, just to make sure, tomorrow I’ll be sending word to the Superintendent of Convicts in Sydney Town, and the pair of you can cool your heels in the gaol here until I’ve had confirmation back you’re not on any muster lists. Should only take a week or two.’
‘You can’t,’ Friday said. ‘You don’t know our names.’
‘The muster lists have physical descriptions on them, don’t they? You’re, what, five feet six, big build and all that copper hair. There can’t be too many like you around.’ The sergeant nodded at Aria. ‘And even less like her.’
Friday struggled to keep her expression neutral. Aria’s description wouldn’t appear on any lists but hers would, along with the fact that she wasn’t permitted to leave Sydney. She’d be sent back to the Parramatta Female Factory for this. And without her and Aria, the others might not be able to rescue Charlotte. Oh, why hadn’t she kept her gob shut? The bastard might have let them go if she had. She glanced at Aria and saw in her dark eyes not the accusation or censure she expected, but certainly weary regret.
There was still a chance, though; they could try to run as they were taken to the gaol tonight.
‘How far away’s the nick?’ she asked.
‘A mile or so,’ the sergeant replied.
‘Will we go by cart?’
‘You will not. The track’s too sandy. You’ll go by shank’s pony.’
Friday stood. ‘Take us now, then.’
‘Shut up and sit down. You don’t give the orders, I do. You’ll go in the morning, shackled and escorted by Privates Durham, Turner and Bassenthwaite.’
Friday’s heart plummeted. Fuck it. ‘You can go to hell if you think we’re spending the night here with you lot.’
Then again . . . she bit her lip. She’d been doing it for years for returns far more inconsequential than this.
Sergeant Weir said, ‘You’ll take the storeroom. We can spare you a blanket each and a bucket. Durham?’
Private Durham, a man with ginger hair and pale, papery skin, took Friday’s arm, hauled her none too gently off her chair and led her to a narrow door, which he unlocked with a key hanging from his belt. Easing it open with his foot he shoved her inside hard enough to send her into the opposite wall six feet away. Aria soon joined her, a pair of smelly blankets was tossed in followed by a tin bucket, then the door was slammed shut and locked.
‘Shit,’ Friday said in the darkness.
While the door had been open she’d seen that the tiny room possessed no window, that the shelves lining two sides held nothing but a bag of flour, one of potatoes, a tin each of boot and metal polish and a pile of mouldering, empty sacks — making it a very poor storeroom — and that there was no source of light.
‘Yes,’ Aria agreed. ‘But they are fools. They did not search me for weapons. I have two knives. I can easily slit their throats.’
Friday’s belly did a slow, bilious flip. ‘Oh God, Aria, don’t. What if we got found out? We’d hang.’
‘How would we be found out? No one else knows we are here. All there will be when the sun rises is four dead soldiers.’
‘Someone might see us. And folk do know we’re here, we’ve been in the pubs. They’d know it was us, Aria.’
‘I do not see how. Nobody likes the soldiers.’
‘They will know. I think I’ve got a better idea.’
A pause. ‘What?’
‘I’ll fuck the sergeant if he agrees to let us go.’
A long silence this time. Then, very tersely, ‘That is not a better idea.’
In the little dark room Friday couldn’t see Aria’s face but she could hear clearly in her voice how angry she was. And hurt. She fumbled for Aria’s hand, but she snatched it away.
Friday gave a sigh that was part frustration, and part sorrow for herself. ‘You know it doesn’t mean anything to me. You know I can’t stand it. But I’ll do it. For us.’
‘Do not say that. You are mine. I will not share you.’
Oh God. ‘Aria, sweetheart, listen. I am yours, I really am. But we have to get out of here and you can’t kill them. You can’t. We’d never get away with it. It’d just be this one time and I’ll never do it again, I promise.’
‘No.’
‘Please. I don’t want to go back to the Factory. I might never see you again.’
‘You are a fool, Friday. He could . . . what is the word with the cross?’
‘Play the crooked cross and tell the superintendent anyway? He might, but he might not. Let me at least try. We’ve nothing to lose.’
‘Nothing to lose? There is your dignity.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Aria, I lost that a long time ago.’
There was another silence so long that Friday thought Aria might be sulking, but she never sulked. It was beneath her.
Finally, she said, ‘I do not want you to do this, Friday.’
I bloody well don’t want to do it either, Friday thought, and swallowed as bile rose in her throat at the very thought. She hadn’t been with a man for two months — longer even than the time she’d had the clap — and had hoped not to ever again. But this was an emergency, this concerned Aria, and her ability to be with Aria in the future. She had to do it.
‘Well, I’m sorry, I’m going to.’
She felt her way along the shelves until she found the door, and hammered on it.
After a minute Private Bassenthwaite, the youngest of the soldiers and the one who had made the comment about Aria being Maori, opened it, looking vaguely frightened and standing well back.
‘I want to talk to the sergeant,’ Friday said.
‘Sergeant, she says she wants —’
Sergeant Weir, who was peeling an apple with a pocket knife, said, ‘I heard what she said. Well?’
‘In private, if you don’t mind.’
‘In private?’ The sergeant laughed unpleasantly. ‘There is no private here.’
There was so — Friday could see at least one more door leading off the main room.
‘It’s personal.’
‘Say your piece and be done with it.’
Friday, who had no shame, thought, oh well, suit yourself. ‘I’m prepared to do a deal with you. I am a whore, and a bloody expensive one. You book me and you’ll be paying five pounds an hour. If you let me and my friend walk out that door, Sergeant, I’ll shag you for free. Everything and anything you want. The lot. Now.’
Turner’s and Durham’s eyes lit up, poor little Bassenthwaite’s face turned scarlet, and Sergeant Weir kept on peeling his apple. ‘Do you really think a bribe like that’s likely to appeal to a man like me?’
‘I do.
’
A long, curly ribbon of apple skin fell on the table.
‘What do you think, lads?’ the sergeant asked.
Durham said, ‘We think you should share, Sergeant. We been working hard, we have.’
‘No, you haven’t. Not a bad idea, though.’ Weir looked at Friday. ‘What about your mate? Is she part of the deal?’
Fear stabbed Friday’s heart. ‘No. Just me.’
‘Mmm.’ Weir quartered his apple and sliced out the core. ‘All of us, then.’
Revulsion puckered the skin on Friday’s belly and buttocks. ‘If it’s all of you, it’s nothing extra, just a straight fuck, and not all at once. And my friend waits outside.’
Weir said, ‘Close enough, lads?’
‘Close enough,’ Durham replied.
Friday turned to Aria, waiting in the semi-darkness behind her. ‘Go! Go and find the others. I won’t be long.’
‘What if they do not release you?’
‘I don’t know. Just go, before he changes his mind.’
Aria pushed past Friday and strode across the room, on her way spearing Weir with a look of such ferocious vitriol that he twitched and shifted in his seat. Then she paused and glared at Durham, Turner and Bassenthwaite, as though committing their faces to memory, then went outside, closing the door behind her.
In the yard, as her eyes grew accustomed to the dark again and anger raged through her body, she walked around and around in small circles, the hem of her skirt pressed over her mouth and nose. Forever after, she knew, whenever she smelt lavender, she would think of this horrendous night. At one point she heard rough laughter in the cottage and vowed that if Friday were hurt, or Weir did not keep his side of the bargain, she would claim the worst sort of utu. Perhaps she would regardless.
She tried to read her watch and could not see the face properly. She thought that surely hours must be passing, but knew how fear could slow the passage of time. Finally she sat down near the door, her knees drawn up and her back pressed against the wall, to wait.
At last the door opened and Friday stepped out. In the spill of light Aria saw that her eye and lip were swollen and the collar of her dress had been torn. She leapt to her feet.
A Tattooed Heart Page 28