‘Your face.’
‘Let’s get out of here.’
‘Are you hurt?’
Friday said, ‘I’ve had worse. The ginger-haired bastard was a bit free with his fists, but the lad just wanted a cuddle and the other two only took a couple of minutes.’ She hoicked and spat, then waggled her head from side to side until her neck made a loud cracking noise. ‘Where were we before all that?’
Aria was shocked. Surely she didn’t mean to carry on as though she had not just been abused and assaulted by three men? How could she so effortlessly brush off such an affront to her dignity and mana?
Friday answered her own question. ‘That’s right, looking for houses with fences and lavender. Come on,’ she said and set off up the hill.
Aria stared after her for a moment, then hurried to catch up. ‘How can you pretend nothing has happened?’
‘I’m not pretending anything. I know what happened.’
‘But are you not —?’
‘Am I not what, Aria?’ Friday snapped. ‘Look, if you had slit those bastards’ throats like you wanted to, would you be swooning around needing a lie-down and a cup of tea? I doubt it. We didn’t do it your way, we did it mine, and I don’t need a cup of tea either. I’m used to it, remember? I might not like it but I’m used to it. So let’s just get on with finding Charlotte and getting her back. I don’t want to talk about it any more.’
‘Good, neither do I. And do not get shitty at me.’
‘You’re the one being shitty. What about this place? That’s lavender, isn’t it?’
The house before them was even smaller than the soldiers’ cottage, and beyond the low fence rows of lavender — not yet in flower but still pungent on the night air — flanked a pebble path leading to the door.
Aria stifled a sneeze.
‘This must be it,’ Friday whispered.
They stepped over the fence and crept around the house but the thin curtains had been drawn, letting out no more than a muted glow. Finally, in the window that faced down the hill towards the river, they found a gap where the curtains did not fully meet, though the view inside was only of one wall. Also, the bottom pane of glass in the window was missing. Just as Aria was contemplating very carefully moving aside the curtain to see better, Friday did exactly that, and not exactly discreetly.
‘Why not stick your whole head in?’ Aria mouthed.
‘Eh?’
Aria bent and peered through the enlarged gap. A man and a woman were seated at a table in the centre of the room. The woman was holding Charlotte, who was wrapped in a blanket and appeared to be dozing. Aria felt Friday next to her.
‘That’s Leary, isn’t it?’ she whispered. Although she’d chased him down the street not so long ago, she hadn’t managed a proper look at his face.
A nod. ‘That must be Iris Kellogg.’
‘Good,’ Aria said. ‘We will get the others.’
Aria had sent Robbie and Walter back to the river to collect the Katipo’s rowboats and land them closer to the wharf. They would not want to be stumbling along the river’s edge looking for them, in the dark, carrying Charlotte, while perhaps being pursued by an irate Leary.
So Robbie and Walter went down to the Ship Inn near the bottom of Watt Street, turned right and walked along the riverbank towards the little beach where they thought they’d left the boats. And walked, and walked, and walked.
‘I’m bloody sure it wasn’t this far,’ Robbie said eventually.
Walter said, ‘There was some other boats pulled up near ours, remember? Well, I think we might have passed them a while ago.’
Robbie looked at him. The clouds were back, blotting out the moonlight like pounce. He could barely see his mate’s face. ‘Why didn’t you say?’
‘Thought I must’ve got it wrong and they was the wrong boats.’
They stared at each other in the darkness.
‘So . . . where the fuck are ours?’ Robbie said.
But they both knew the answer. Someone had taken them.
They were stranded.
‘We’ve found them,’ Friday said.
Sarah snapped, ‘Where the hell have you two been? We’ve been waiting for you for ages.’
‘Do not criticise,’ Aria growled. ‘We were held up.’
‘Held up doing what?’
Friday flapped her hand. ‘Tell you later. It’s not important right now.’
‘Did you see Charlotte?’ Harrie asked. ‘Is she all right?’
She’d been leaning against a wall, arms folded across her chest because it wasn’t exactly warm, but now she was just about hopping from foot to foot with anticipation.
‘She was asleep,’ Aria said. ‘The woman was holding her.’
‘She looked all right to me,’ Friday confirmed, doing her best to calm Harrie’s nerves. ‘She was all bundled up in a rug. And Iris Kellogg looked quite kind. And pretty. I thought she’d be a scrag-end.’
‘And Leary?’ Sarah asked.
‘Drinking.’
‘Shit. That won’t help.’
Friday said, ‘It will if he’s completely swattled.’
‘Did he look it?’
‘Not really.’
‘Bugger. What’s the plan?’ Sarah asked, deferring to Aria.
‘Simple. There is only one door in the house. We will knock and when it is opened we will go in.’
‘What if Leary stops us?’ Harrie asked.
‘He won’t,’ Aria said.
‘Why not?’
Bluntly, Aria replied, ‘We are armed.’ Lifting her skirt, she revealed the two knives tucked into her boots. ‘And so is Sarah.’
Sarah stuck out a leg, flashing the blade strapped to her ankle.
‘What about you?’ Friday asked Harrie.
‘Me? I never go about with anything like that.’
‘Well, three knives is plenty. And it’s hard for you, after Keegan and everything.’
‘It’s not that,’ Harrie said slowly and very deliberately. ‘I thought if I really had to, I’d just use my bare hands. I mean, this is Charlotte. This is my daughter.’
They all stared at her, Sarah and Friday a little alarmed, and Aria with a new respect. So much for trying to calm her, Friday thought; she’s so cool and determined she sounds like she’s had a big pile of snow for supper.
Then Aria said, ‘When we are inside the house, we do whatever we need to do to take the child —’
‘Do you mean we kill Leary and the woman?’ Sarah asked. ‘Because I don’t think that’s a good idea, not with those soldiers just down the street. And where there’s four soldiers there’s always a dozen more.’
‘No, we do not kill them,’ Aria agreed reluctantly. ‘In Aotearoa I would, but this is not Aotearoa. It would be a good thing to make sure that they cannot follow us, however. When we have Charlotte, we will go straight to the wharf, get in the boats, row out to the Katipo and tell Captain Farrell to take us back to Sydney.’ She glanced around. ‘Where are those two boys?’
‘Not back yet,’ Sarah said, ‘and they bloody well should be.’
‘What if Leary does follow us?’ Friday asked. ‘’Cos I bet he will.’
‘Then we will have to stop him,’ Aria said. ‘But quietly and discreetly, because of the soldiers.’
She and Friday exchanged a glance: if there were to be any serious trouble and the soldiers became involved, they would surely be at the top of their suspect list. They were strangers in town, Sergeant Weir was convinced that they were runaway convicts, and he knew what they looked like.
‘Bloody tall order,’ Sarah muttered.
‘I laugh in the face of tall orders,’ Aria declared.
Snorting, Sarah said, ‘You know, Aria, sometimes you are so full of shit.’
‘I do not think so. You do not know me well yet, that is all. Are we ready?’
Yes, they were ready. Up Newcomen Street they went again, Aria in the lead. Standing in the sand outside Iris Kellogg’s house, she sudden
ly hissed, ‘Shut up!’
They all froze.
‘Who goes there!’ a male voice demanded.
A shape stepped out of the shadows, a soldier with his musket at the ready.
At close to six feet he was uncommonly tall, as skinny as the handle on a yard broom and not one of Weir’s men, but still Friday felt her buttocks clench with fear. What do we do? What do we do? Quickly, she purred in her best picking-up-a-customer voice, ‘Evening, sir. We’re strangers here, looking for a friend. Er . . .’
‘Elizabeth Hislop,’ Sarah said.
‘Yes, Elizabeth Hislop. Do you know her?’
The soldier lowered the muzzle of his musket a few inches. Oh, good, Friday thought, now he’ll only shoot our knees. She took several casual steps in an attempt to move the soldier down the street. What a disaster if Leary heard them.
‘Never heard of her. How long’ve you been in town?’
‘We arrived on the paddlesteamer this evening. We’re on our way upriver and thought we’d stop overnight and visit our friend.’ Two more steps.
‘I been stationed here for months and I’ve never heard of no Elizabeth Hislop.’
‘Oh, no,’ Harrie said, sounding dismayed and sidling down the street. ‘Don’t tell me she’s moved on. Oh dear, that’s really disappointing. And we’ve come all this way.’
‘Do you think she’s gone upriver already?’ Sarah asked Friday.
By now the soldier had been reduced to walking down the hill after them. ‘Stand still, the lot of you.’
They did.
‘What’s your business?’
Feeling a little more confident now, Friday said, ‘Like I said, we’re looking for our friend.’
‘No, I mean what are your professions?’
Bugger, Friday thought, I’ve overdone it, he thinks we’re whores. ‘Well, Dorcas here’s a sempstress, sews hankies and pillowslips and the like,’ she said, pulling names out of the air, ‘and Winnie’s a jet cutter, you know, for the mourning jewellery, and I’m a brewster. Yes, I know you don’t see many actual women brewers, but I’ve always been interested in ale, ever since I was a little girl.’
‘Is that so?’ the soldier said, sounding highly dubious. He turned to Aria. ‘And you? What do you do?’
‘In this country I do not do anything. But in my own, I go to war.’
The soldier squinted at her. ‘You’re not one of them natives from New Zealand, where they —?’
‘Yes, where we cook and eat our enemies.’
There was quite a long silence. Eventually, the soldier shouldered his musket. ‘I’ll bid you good night. There’s a steamer leaving from the wharf for Maitland tomorrow morning at nine.’ Then he turned and marched smartly off into the darkness.
‘Do you really?’ Harrie asked.
‘Only now and then.’
They waited a good fifteen minutes to make sure the soldier didn’t come back, then returned to the Kellogg woman’s house.
Hoisting their skirts, they stepped over the picket fence and crossed the short front yard to avoid walking on the path, whose loose gravel might give away their approach.
Friday peeked through the window, then reported back.
‘They’re still at the table.’
‘Why?’ Sarah said. ‘It must be after midnight by now.’
‘Maybe Charlotte’s kept them up.’
‘Can you see her?’ Harrie asked.
Friday nodded. ‘That woman’s still holding her. I think we should just barge in without even knocking.’
At the door they paused to gather themselves, then Aria rapped, ignoring Friday’s advice that they just charge in, which would be somewhat self-defeating if the door was locked.
Nothing for a few seconds, then they heard low muttering and the scrape of a chair across floorboards, followed by heavy footsteps. The door was locked, as they could hear whoever was on the other side sliding back a bolt. Then, slowly, it creaked open.
Aria went first, followed immediately by Friday, shoving back whoever was behind the door. It was Leary: he grunted and threw his weight against it, trying to close it again, but Aria and Friday pushed hard and burst through, knocking Leary flat on the floor. Friday actually stood on him as she barged into the little room and staggered into a table, knocking over a bottle and tumbler. The woman leapt off her chair and ran with Charlotte — now awake and crying — into another room and kicked the door shut.
Harrie, through the front door a second after Friday and Aria, ran over the top of Leary and headed straight for the closed door. Rattling the knob madly, she swore as she realised the woman had locked it.
Leary, up again, took a swing at Friday, who ducked and kicked out at his groin, missing and striking him in the thigh. ‘Tell her to bring Charlotte out!’ she demanded.
‘Not until that one tells me where me brother is!’ he said, gesturing wildly at Harrie.
‘Christ, you’re stupid.’ Friday crab-walked around him, one eye on Aria, who’d moved behind him, her knife in her hand. ‘She doesn’t fucking well know!’
‘She does!’
‘Think about it. If she did know, she would’ve just said. Why wouldn’t she? She doesn’t give a fuck about your brother!’
‘She gives a fuck about me treasure!’
What treasure? Friday risked a glance at the bedroom door, where Sarah was picking the lock with the point of her knife. She gave the knob a rattle, then the door a brisk kick, and it flew open, revealing Iris Kellogg holding a red-faced, bawling Charlotte. Harrie snatched the child off her, then punched Iris in the face as she tried to wrench her back.
‘You bitch!’ Iris barked. ‘How dare you? That’s Jonah’s child!’
‘She is not, she’s mine! I legally adopted her. Her name’s Charlotte Rachel Downey and that arsehole there,’ Harrie pointed at Leary, ‘stole her four days ago from my house in Sydney and we’re here to take her back.’
‘No,’ Iris wailed, dabbing at her bleeding nose, ‘her mother’s dying. That’s why Jonah brought her here. That’s why I’m looking after her.’
Sarah shook her head. ‘Sorry, love, you’ve been taken for a ride. Both of Charlotte’s parents are long dead. Jesus, what a prick you are, Leary.’
‘Shut up,’ Leary said.
Iris’s face was white. ‘Is this true, Jonah?’
‘Don’t listen to them. Mad fucking cows, the lot of them.’
‘Jonah?’ Iris Kellogg’s voice was suddenly little more than a whisper. ‘You made that up, didn’t you, about picking me?’
Leary suddenly lunged for Harrie, tore Charlotte out of her arms and made for the door. Aria was after him straight away, but Iris was even faster. She darted around the upended table, snatched a cast-iron frying pan from the hearth and took an almighty swing at the back of Leary’s head. It connected with a dull thud: Leary dropped like a sack of flour, spilling Charlotte onto the floor. She landed on her hands and knees and scampered towards Harrie like a startled wombat.
Harrie snatched her up.
Iris touched Harrie’s sleeve. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know.’
‘It’s all right. I know you didn’t.’
Peering down at Leary for signs of life, Friday said, ‘Come on, we have to go. Now.’
‘Is he dead?’ Sarah asked.
‘No. He is breathing. Sadly,’ Aria confirmed.
‘You’d better go,’ Iris said. ‘And quickly. He’ll be roaring when he wakes up. He’s got a filthy temper on him. And a pistol.’
‘Will you be all right?’ Friday asked. She had a fair idea what would happen to Iris Kellogg once they left.
Iris shrugged.
They went out one by one, stepping over Leary lying in the doorway, Aria in the rear. She didn’t even look down, so got a hell of a fright when his hand closed around her ankle.
Crying out, she kicked out and almost lost her balance when he tried to pull her down by her skirts. Friday darted back and stamped on his arm with the heel of her bo
ot, freeing her, then all five, Charlotte bouncing in Harrie’s arms, tore down Newcomen Street. Veering across an open plot, they crossed onto Watt Street and headed towards the wharf.
‘Is he coming?’ Harrie panted, trying to look back behind her.
‘Here, give me Charlotte,’ Friday said. ‘Fuck me!’
A horrible, imp-like figure had launched itself at them out of the dark.
It was Robbie. ‘Stop! You’re going the wrong way. The boats are over on the ocean side. Follow me.’
Sarah grabbed his arm. ‘Hang on. What?’
‘The boats, they’re on the ocean side. Come on.’
‘I have just seen Leary behind us,’ Aria warned. ‘We must go.’
Robbie said, ‘Is he after you? Fucking hell.’
They all took off after Robbie, who led them in a wide half-circle past shadowy buildings and across what felt like endless sand dunes. They slipped and slid, fell over outright and swore their way closer and closer to the ocean proper, all the while looking over their shoulders for Leary. They saw him twice, once ducking around the side of a building, and the second time silhouetted at the top of a dune.
‘Where’s Walter?’ Friday gasped.
‘Down on the beach with the others.’
‘What others?’
‘The captain and them.’
Friday was more than confused, but there wasn’t time to hear the full story now. Her lungs were burning, the muscles in her poor legs were cramping like mad, and Charlotte felt as though she were made of lead. But there wasn’t far to go now. They were nearly down onto the hard sand and she could see the pair of boats sitting just in the shallows.
And then it came — a pistol shot. The lunatic was shooting at them. They pounded along the sand towards the boats. The captain was there in one with the big black man, and the man called Hawk and the English tar and Walter were in the other.
As Sarah, Harrie and Robbie piled in with the captain, Friday handed Charlotte to Aria. ‘Get in, I’ll push us off.’
Aria flipped herself over the gunwale of Hawk’s boat, keeping her head down as another shot rang out. Hawk made to get out to push off but Friday waved him away. ‘Fuck off, no time. I’ll do it.’
She set her palms against the transom and gave an almighty shove with the last of her strength. The keel ground against the sand, moved a few inches, got some water under it, lifted and floated. At the bow, Sharkey put his back into the oars.
A Tattooed Heart Page 29