Gracie asked him something.
“What?”
“What you reckon happens to all them dead fellas in the war and that?”
Quinn made a helpless gesture with his hands. This wasn’t the moment for a theosophical discussion.
“That Smail says they in heaven but I don’t reckon heaven can be that big.”
The man had a point. So many dead. What with the war and the epidemic, the recently dead must outnumber those still living. No doubt they move among us, Quinn thought.
Gracie snatched his mug away and put it back on the table, clearly wishing to draw their little conversation to a close. He lit a pair of candles, their light meagre. “You want to be careful walking about in them hills. There are old mine shafts. It’s risky. Fall down one of them and you’re done for.” With that he turned away to fiddle in the gloom.
Quinn remained in the doorway. “I need to talk to you about a girl.”
The tracker stopped what he was doing, murmured and swung around. Quinn now saw it was a rifle he had been tinkering with, a battered Lee-Enfield, by the look of it. Gracie shuffled back to Quinn on his bare feet. His eyes glittered. “A girl, you say. What sort of girl?”
“My sister. She’s been living up in the hills.”
Gracie stared at him as if he had uttered something preposterous. “Your sister?”
“Yes. She’s been up there since our mother died from the influenza.”
“I been told about her.”
“What have you heard?”
The fellow ducked his head, muttered.
“What was that?”
“I know the constable is worried about her. Said she needs saving. I thought you was him. I thought he’d come around as soon as he could. He wants me to … to help him find her. To take care of her, mind.”
Quinn slapped at a mosquito feasting on his neck. “No. There is no need anymore. I am her brother, Thomas. I’ll look after her now. This is why I came here, to tell you this.”
“You’re Thomas? You’re different than I recall.”
“I was injured in the war.”
Gracie considered him. “You need to tell Mr. Dalton, not me, he’s the one who decides. He makes me help him. Anyway, her brother is dead in the war. That’s what Mr. Dalton told me ages ago, even before I went to Bathurst. We’ll find her. The dogs’ll sniff her out.” He raised the tips of his fingers to his nose. “Girls that age have a particular smell about them. My boys can find anyone, anywhere.”
Quinn had begun to feel unsteady. The room blurred. Gracie was peering at him and speaking in a language he could no longer understand. The flickering candles bathed the room in an unearthly light.
The tracker pressed the tin cup again into Quinn’s hand and wrapped his fingers around it. Quinn drank. Something hot and bitter seared his throat. Alcohol. The liquid prompted him to cough. He gagged but drank more. Gracie dragged a chair across and sat Quinn on it.
It was several minutes before he could focus or make sense of anything. The empty cup was in his hand, and Gracie was sitting on an upturned metal bucket, staring up at him. Quinn placed the cup on the table. The alcohol had stopped burning quite so fiercely and instead a benign warmth seeped through his innards. “What do you call that stuff?” he asked.
Gracie’s face lit up in a smile. “No name. Just grog. Bloke out near Gray’s Creek cooks it up. Good, isn’t it? Now, you sure about your sister?”
“Of course.”
“She’s a young thing, maybe twelve or thirteen years old?”
Quinn adjusted himself on the wooden chair. “Sadie? Yes.”
“She’s the one, alright.” He became thoughtful. “Sadie, eh? Poor girl. That Mr. Smail at church says the disease is our own doing. The Lord smite people with a great plague until we all be destroyed. We been bad and we’re going to pay. He’s probably right.” He clicked his tongue. “So, you’re going to look after her? Good.”
“Yes.”
“Where you taking her?”
He said the first destination that entered his head. “London.”
“Ah, good. Long way from here. That where your missus is at?”
“I’m not married.”
Gracie held up his left hand and waggled his fingers. “What about your ring?”
Quinn had forgotten the ring. It gleamed dully. It occurred to him that he was already drunk from the little amount of grog he’d imbibed. “Yes,” he said. “I mean yes. I am married. But she died a long time ago.”
Gracie nodded and made a sympathetic noise in his throat.
“She was murdered.”
The tracker’s eyes widened. He sat up straighter and wiped his hands on his belly. The two dogs lurched into activity and were circling about Quinn’s calves, faster and faster, like the tigers in that story that whirled themselves into butter.
“She was very beautiful,” Quinn said above the noise. “Everyone thought so, not only me. Like an angel, they used to say. She loved to play games. You know that game where you have to get rid of all your cards before the other person? Once we played it for six hours. She wouldn’t let me go even though I had things to do for my father and he gave me a hiding when he found out.”
Gracie shook his head. Of course he had no idea what Quinn was talking about.
It was stuffy in the cottage and the myriad cuts over Quinn’s body had begun to itch and burn. He removed his jacket and scratched at them. “Two men,” he continued, “took her away one day and … raped and killed her.”
Gracie looked terrified. One of the dogs whined. “By God. What happened to them fellas that did that?”
Quinn thought of what his mother had said about the murderer and replied, “God will have his vengeance.”
“You really think that? You think God is watching us, taking notice of what we do?”
Quinn stared into his empty cup and belched stickily. “Of course.”
“Is that what you pray for then? This vengeance?”
“I suppose so. Among other things.”
They sat in silence for several minutes before Quinn managed to speak again. “Could I perhaps have something more to drink, Mr. Gracie? Some more grog?”
Gracie poured him another cupful and squatted on the floor, arse low, elbows on his bony knees. He was nodding. “You’re not Thomas, but I know who you are.”
From deep within his melancholy reverie, Quinn registered a faint pulse of fear but he pressed on nonetheless. He fumbled around in his trouser pocket until he located the thick roll of money. He pulled it out, along with the shell he had picked up at Sarah’s grave and the red button from her dress that he’d taken from Sadie. The tracker stared at the items in Quinn’s dirty palm.
Quinn gulped more alcohol. “This is for you,” he went on, indicating the money. “A token for you. In order that you don’t find Sadie and me. Will you do that, sir? Please? We need to get away. We only need a few days.”
“Yes! Don’t worry. I’ll lead Dalton astray. He don’t know a thing about the bush. But he’s a suspicious bastard. After a few days, he’ll question me.”
The fellow’s enthusiasm was puzzling, even taking into account the sum of money on offer for his cooperation. “But can I trust you, sir? Constable Dalton is a terrible man—”
“I know that! He’s made me do things. He tempts me, the bastard. Like the Devil.” He gestured around at his hovel. “I got nothing. I been waiting for you, you know. I know who you are. Mr. Smail says we all get judged sometimes for the bad things we done. Our sins will seek us out. I been praying a lot, you know, because I helped Mr. Dalton do things …”
Not really listening, Quinn nodded and drank again from the tin cup. He waited for the revulsion to pass and for the more agreeable chemical warmth to settle in him. When he spoke again it was only with much concentration and he was pleased to notice a clumsiness in his voice. “But who is it, who is it you think I am, Mr. Gracie?”
Jim Gracie pursed his lips and shrugged as if what
he prepared to say was apparent to anyone. “You’re the Angel of Death.”
They stared at each other in the flickering light. A moth blundered into the candle’s flame. Quinn was drunk and overwhelmed by an absurd desire to sleep. He felt as if all parts of his body were suffused with an irresistible exhaustion.
He drank the rest of his grog. Some of it sloshed down his chin. With difficulty, and only after several fumbling attempts, he placed the money on the table, along with the button and the shell. Against his better instincts, he closed his eyes. He heard Gracie talking on and on in his rusty voice.
Quinn dreamed he was walking in a monstrous field of black, button-sized flowers that covered his boots as he trudged. The flowers had a strange perfume, like old rags. The field enlarged as he went on, but when it seemed he had reached its middle, the flowers took wing and revealed themselves to be, in fact, thousands of tiny crows that flapped about his face, obscuring the horizon. It was at that moment, moored in his silent nightmare, that Quinn realised where he had seen Jim Gracie before: he’d held Sarah down all those years ago.
26
When Quinn came to, he was sprawled on a filthy wooden floor. His head felt filled with something heavy and pulsating. It was dark, but he could hear birds calling outside. Chickens clucked and fussed in the yard. Where was he? After a minute he remembered. Jim Gracie’s cabin. He cursed and sat up, which only made the pain lodged in the back of his head worse.
Judging by the cool breeze, the door was open. He fumbled about and located his revolver and jacket on the floor beside him. There was no sign of Gracie, but on the table were the items Quinn had placed there the night before—the roll of money, the shell and the button. He pocketed them all. From outside came a dog’s long, low moan.
He slipped into his jacket and, clutching his revolver, stepped onto the veranda. The top of the distant Blue Mountains was edged with a smouldering hem of light as the sun rose beyond them. He called out Gracie’s name, but the only response was a slight increase in the pitch and urgency of the dogs’ whining. He couldn’t make them out in the near-dark, but sensed their angry, shining gaze.
A breeze drifted over the hill. The gum tree creaked. He shouted again, but Gracie must have fled. Perhaps he would return with Robert Dalton? At least the dogs were still here, which meant he wasn’t out searching for Sadie yet. What could he tell Sadie? He thought of her face drenched in terror as she realised what was about to happen; the way she managed a breathless No before a hand was clamped over her mouth; the way she fought and bit, fought and bit; the scrape of her shoe, his uncle’s wheezing laughter.
The night started to give way to the brittle chill of morning. Quinn stepped into the yard and walked around the cottage. Its bulk was by now visible against the blueing sky. His breath came in shallow clumps. His tongue was so thick and clumsy it might have been made of wool. Soon he was able to make out smaller shapes in the darkness. The line of a fence, a tin bucket. He tripped over a length of wood.
By the time he reached the gum tree, he saw that one of the dogs had assumed a spiky crouch, head low, teeth bared, eyes aglow. The beast growled a deep warning. The other dog followed suit and they prepared to attack. Quinn raised his revolver in a shaking hand. He stepped back until the gum-tree limbs glowed stark against the sky, as if the tree were a fork of milky lightning caught fast in the earth.
Then he saw him: Jim Gracie, hovering in the air with his toes high above the ground, his bare chest glistening, eyes bulging. His head lolled, tongue swollen and empurpled. His trousers were slack on his boyish hips and there was a dark stain down one leg. The rich stink of human shit. The rope creaked as it swung lazily with its human cargo. Quinn stumbled backwards, unable to tear his eyes from the hanged man. He watched him for some time. He felt relieved, rather than avenged, not at all as if he had gained anything.
Finally, he turned and fled. He scrambled over the fence, panicked at the thought of those hounds pursuing him. He listened for their slobbering snap at his heels but heard only the saw of his own breath and the pummelling of his heart.
Several minutes later, he was overcome by a coughing fit and slumped to his knees. He vomited onto the ground. Birds whistled and whooped around him. The ground under his knees was moist with dew and carpeted with bark. It was satisfying to dig his hands into the surface to the damp loam beneath.
He was startled by a voice.
“That was a right bastard, wasn’t it?”
About ten feet away, lying on his side, was a soldier around Quinn’s age. His boots and puttees were blotched with mud and he was nodding, as if desperate for Quinn’s agreement.
Quinn scrambled to his feet. “Who are you?”
The soldier motioned for him to sit down. “Careful, mate. What are you, barmy?”
Quinn did as he was told.
The soldier stared at him. His exhalations were visible in the cold morning air. “Are you alright?”
Quinn nodded, and indicated with a jerk of his thumb the way he had come.
“Terrible, wasn’t it?” the soldier said.
“You saw that?”
“I was there, alright. But we survived another one, eh?” A bird trilled a brief, elegant song in the trees overhead. “You sure you’re alright, though? Your arm is shaking pretty bad there.”
Only now did Quinn realise that his left arm was twitching as if attempting to detach itself from his shoulder. He clamped it between his thighs. “Not injured. Nerves, that’s all. The shells, you know, it’s the shells.”
The fellow nodded. As the day lightened, Quinn realised they were surrounded by men lying on the ground smoking and sleeping. Some had heads or legs bandaged; some cradled their arms in makeshift slings; they stared about dumbstruck and picked at their skin. The air was ripe with the smells of mud and gas, and the mildewy odour of bloodied bandages. In the distance he made out a tumbrel cart piled high with bodies, scraps of uniform, pieces of men. A horse pawed at the earth as if displeased at its inability to dig itself a grave. There was a grumble of artillery. Someone nearby was weeping. A heartbreaking sound, a man weeping. There was a crackle of rifle fire. Quinn wiped his hands on his shirt. He needed to keep moving, to get away from here.
“You don’t know a bloke called Shawcross, do you?” the soldier called out. “Keith Shawcross?”
Quinn ignored him. His arm, at least, had stopped shaking. He stood and picked his way through the dead and sleeping men. The ground was lumpen, greasy with blood.
The soldier worried at a fingernail. “Thought not. He was a mate. I was wondering if he made it, that’s all. You never know, do you? But I think he’ll be alright. Lucky, too.”
“Lucky?”
“Lucky to be alive, like us. Be careful, mate. It’s still dangerous out there.”
It was light by the time Quinn managed to half run, half stumble back to the shack. He imagined Sadie’s grim satisfaction at the news of Gracie’s suicide. He called out to her as soon as he glimpsed their shack between the trees, but she must have been still hidden beneath the floorboards. She was a good girl, really. He stumbled through the stinking kitchen but was shocked to find the boards that covered her hiding place dislodged, her knife lying discarded on the floor. Panic started to take shape in him. He yelled out again, to reassure her.
He crouched on hands and knees to peer beneath the floor. “Sadie?” In the gauzy light he made out desiccated fruit peel, grubby blankets, and dozens of rocks and broken bricks, some of which were wrapped in strands of coloured wool. There was a disordered pile of shells, a hollow worn into the dirt by her sleeping form. But no Sadie.
Panicked now, Quinn returned outside and shouted, louder this time. Nothing. No sign of her. No sign of anyone. There was the wreckage of the fire over which they had cooked the remains of that lamb. Some of its bones were strewn about in the dirt. Crows cackled in the surrounding trees. A willy-wagtail hopped about on a branch. The birds alone might have seen what had happened, where Sadie had gone
, with whom. Again he screamed her name and listened. Then he spied her tobacco tin at his feet. It was open and scattered among the leaves were a playing card, several marbles and some of the knuckles. He picked up the tin: all that remained inside was a cigarette card with a colour reproduction of an elegant woman posting a letter into a London pillar box. Sweat poured down Quinn’s face. Where was she? Then he realised: Robert Dalton had managed to track her down. He had taken her to the cabin at Wilson’s Point.
He began running before he’d even considered the best way to go. It didn’t matter; his legs, acting independently of his mind or the rest of his body, took him down hills and across gullies he didn’t recall seeing before. He wished now he’d taken Jim Gracie’s rifle, but his revolver would have to suffice.
Dotted here and there were the rusted carcasses of mining equipment and the collapsed, mud-packed walls of ponds or houses. Lizards flickered underfoot, and a haughty mob of grey kangaroos bounded away as he passed. He spoke to Sadie under his breath as he ran, assuring her. Will soon be there. Not to worry. Don’t worry. He imagined the words streaming from his lips and settling in his wake like petals that would enable them to find their way back once he had saved her. A smile split his face under his beard. He felt alive in a way he had not felt since he was a boy, and the world around him was suffused with a reciprocal energy. Soon. I’ll be there soon. Just hang on. The trees crackled with excitement. They urged him onwards, their leaves vibrating. The bush opened before him and he surrendered to its current.
He arrived at Wilson’s Point fifteen minutes later. The level of the kidney-shaped reservoir was low. The cabin was three hundred yards from where he emerged from the dense bush. He checked his revolver before wading through the muddy shallows, careful to remain unseen. He was determined not to halt again, despite the heaving of his flayed lungs. Nearly there. He felt exhilarated at the prospect of capturing his uncle and of saving Sadie from his clutches. The future materialised before him clearer than anything from his past. Don’t worry. He would push his way through the reeds by the shore and clamber over the boulders. He would burn with courage. Almost there. He would approach the cabin as he should have done all those years ago. He would kick open the door that sagged from its hinge. He would take aim with his revolver.
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