Dream Time (historical): Book I

by Parris Afton Bonds

  She left to prepare hot water for cleansing the gaping leg wound. Francis was pacing the floor. “I was going to check on the sheep in the back pasture, but I never got a chance,” she told him. “You’d better see what you can do.”

  He glowered at her. “I don’t have to be told like a child.”

  She was too tired to apologize. Wearily, she returned to the other bedroom and the wounded man. When she entered, his eyes brightened. The gash had been soaked in the dirty river water for so long that red streaks radiated upward from it. She felt the man’s forehead. It was feverish all right.

  She finished cleansing the wound and wrapped it in clean cotton strips. “You need something in your stomach,” she told him and felt foolish since he probably didn’t speak English. He gazed at her uncomprehendingly, but that might be credited to his condition. God knew how long he might have been perched in that tree.

  She prepared an herbal tea and a bowl of corn mush, but either he was so weak he couldn’t eat or he detested the white man’s food. With the advent of evening, darkness turned the room as dark as the Styx. By the light of her candle, the aborigine’s eyes appeared quite glazed, and he was making a low, raspy moaning sound.

  Within the hour, she would need to decide whether to stitch the gash or take off the leg. Medication was nil in the outback. Should she chance only stitching . . .

  She was worried, too, about Francis. He should have been back by now. When the door opened, she spun around, arms outstretched in a relieved welcome—only to fling herself into Sin’s arms. He was as startled as she. In automatic response, he held her against him. Only a second, but an eternal second.

  Confused, she stepped back, out of his embrace.

  He removed his bush hat and slapped it against his thigh, showering water droplets everywhere. His forelocks were plastered against his temples. His gaze, usually forceful and direct, was troubled, preoccupied.

  “What is it?” she asked. “Francis? Is it Francis? Something’s happened to him?”

  His puzzled expression told her she should have realized that he would not have known Francis was late returning home. “No. It’s Celeste. She’s . . . bleeding . . . too much, too soon.”

  “Miscarrying?!” Amaris hadn’t known Celeste was with child. Only last month, Amaris had seen Celeste, and the girl had looked as slender as ever.

  The occasion had been a dinner at the Tremayne house in honor of Sin’s birthday. The major and Elizabeth had traveled even farther than she and Francis, almost twenty miles, for the party. Sykes and his new wife Betty, a middle-aged woman who had come to Australia as a governess, had been late, having ridden more than twenty-five. Distance didn’t matter when the opportunities to get together were all too rare in the outback.

  Tom, who was courting Eileen, especially welcomed these opportunities. So did Molly and Jimmy, who had spent a great deal of the evening in each other’s company. Amaris and Francis had gotten home at four that next morning.

  “How far along is Celeste?”

  He tunneled his fingers through his thick, damp hair. “Four, maybe five months. Can you come help?”

  Strange, how self-sufficient, how competent, the Irishman was—until it came to something like this. She rubbed her temples. “Oh, Sin, you know I will. Meanwhile, though, everything around here is going to hell in a handbasket. In the next room, I have an aborigine whose leg is badly hurt. I don’t know where Francis is. He was going to the back pasture, and he should have been back before now.”

  “Let me take a quick look at the aborigine. Then, I’ll search for Francis.”

  His decisiveness took some of the weight of worry from her shoulders. “Thank you. I’ll ride on over to your—”

  “You’re not going alone.”

  She stared at him. She stood so close she could see the silver matrix of his blue irises. “Well, pray tell, whom would I ride with? If you stay here—”

  “We’ll take care of the problem here, then I’ll escort you – ”

  “Sin! You’re not thinking. Celeste could bleed to – ”

  “You listen to me, Amaris. I don’t need two women to anguish over.”

  She stared at him, wondering if he realized what he had just said. Or was she putting more emphasis on the word anguish than he had meant?

  “Let me see this guest of yours,” he was saying. “One problem at a time, me girl.”

  The aborigine didn’t seem surprised to see Sin enter with her. Sin hunkered on one knee beside the little man. Outside, the whistling wind and monsoon-like rain were so strong that the rafters overhead seemed to vibrate.

  “Hold the candle closer, Amaris.” He prodded the reddened area around the wound, apparently observing the reaction of both the surrounding flesh and the little man as well. The aborigine never winced.

  “Well?” she asked kneeling beside Sin. Her gaze lingered on his left hand. Strong and brown, its mutilation of the last two fingers was almost unnoticeable, at least to her anyway. Maybe it was because she rarely looked at hands, since her own were so large. “Will he be able to keep the leg?”

  Though Sin looked tired and worried, he managed a grin. “I’d wager my last two fingers on it. A few dozen stitches ought to do it.”

  Her concern for the man ebbed with her sigh. “Good.” There were still Francis and Celeste to worry about.

  “I’ll ride back, after I know Celeste is all right, and show you how to rig a traction for his leg until it mends.”

  “I’ll manage on my own.”

  Sin rose to his feet beside her. “Ever the stubborn, independent woman. Which way did Francis head out?”

  “Toward the back—”

  The front door blew open with a bang. She hurried from the bedroom to close the door before the rain soaked the carpet. Francis stood just inside, trying to remove his rain-drenched slicker. “Where have you been?” she asked. “I was so worried."

  A silly smile curled his lips. “Decided to wait out the downpour at the shepherd’s hut.” He peeled the slicker’s sleeve from his arm. “’Cept the downpour never stopped. When I was as wet inside that leaky hut as I would have been outside, I started on back.”

  Her fingers rubbed against her thumbs while she tried to control her agitation. Francis had been drinking again. She supposed he felt drink alleviated his boredom. “I’m nothing but a bloody shepherd,” he often complained.

  She couldn’t blame him for despising the daily routine of taking the flock to an area to graze, making sure it didn’t wander off, plodding along behind the sheep as they grazed at their own leisurely pace, then herding them back to the outstation by a different route in the evening. The work was repetitive and, aye, boring.

  Yet she derived a certain pleasure from riding the land, observing nature—the animals, the plants, and the weather. There was so much to absorb and conclude from nature’s activities.

  The day before she had seen a pair of white-breasted eagles at their nest on a ledge thirty feet up a riverbed’s limestone wall, a huge crocodile catching fish in a billabong, flocks of hundreds of thousands of geese feeding in a marsh, and flying foxes squabbling noisily in their daytime roost.

  “Sin’s here. Celeste is miscarrying.”

  Francis didn’t evidence any surprise that Celeste was with child. But his mind wasn’t that sharp at the moment.

  “I’m going to ride back with him. I shouldn’t be gone more than a couple of days or so. Will you have Molly check on the aborigine while I’m away? See that he has food and water and doesn’t try to move that leg.”

  “Most certainly,” Francis said, making an exaggerated bow.

  His slicker fell onto the floor. She collected it and hung it on a peg. “Go on to bed, Francis, and get some sleep. I know you must be tired.”

  She turned back to the spare bedroom. Sin stood in the doorway, watching. So now he knew. He had a comrade with whom he could share his drinking bouts.

  Except that Sin didn’t seem to drink that much anymore. A
t his birthday bash, he had drunk only moderately.

  His eyes studied her so intently that she felt compelled to shrug off the incident with Francis. A defensive gesture, she realized, but it was necessary. Sin must never guess her worries, which were also her weaknesses. She couldn’t afford to be vulnerable. Not out here. If she wanted to be taken seriously as a station owner, she couldn’t be weak. In fact, she knew she had to be stronger than any of the men. Stronger even than Sin. “Ready to help me sew the leg?”

  He nodded.

  “Sin!” Francis said, only just taking note of the Irishman’s presence.

  “Mind if Amaris accompanies me back to me station after we finish tending the aborigine?”

  Francis’s hand waved in a generous gesture. “Not at all, my friend.”

  She watched her husband weave his way toward their bedroom. She recalled a time when he had donned his fox-hunting costume and then had proceeded to get quite drunk as he rode Frivolity in circles around the yard.

  She didn’t even want to look in Sin’s direction, to see whatever expression mirrored his thoughts—pity, contempt, condemnation.

  She went on in back to the bedroom where the wounded black man lay. By now she had collected an assortment of rudimentary medical supplies. Sin helped hold the gashed flesh closed while she deftly wielded her needle and thread. Never once did the aborigine wince with pain.

  She smiled across at Sin. “All of my mother’s lessons in needlework were worth the tedious hours I suppose.”

  Beneath the angled brows, the blue eyes held hers. “You wield a needle as well as you do a stockman’s whip. You are an accomplished person, Amaris.”

  The task took only twenty minutes. When they finished, she collected her slicker and hat. Outside, the rain had slackened. Trying to ignore his footsteps behind her, she strode to the shed and began saddling Renegade once more. The gelding was certainly putting in duty-time this day. “I know, I know, old boy. I’m as tired as you are.”

  Sin, having already mounted, rode alongside her. “Thank you for coming, Amaris.”

  “There’s no reason to thank me,” she said crossly. “Celeste is my friend. But even if she weren’t, I’d come. The loneliness is tough enough on a white woman without even taking into consideration the bearing of children.”

  Without a moon, the two horses had to pick their way carefully over land rivuleted with gullies, which slowed the journey. A misstep in one of the profusion of wombat holes would bring a horse to the ground.

  Amaris could sense Sin’s impatience. His mouth was set in a tense line. Compassion stirred her. Seeking to distract him, she asked, “How do you avoid the trap of boredom while you’re working the sheep?” She was specifically thinking of Francis’s complaint about station life.

  “I play four-handed whist.”

  She could hear the humor in his voice. “By yourself?”

  “Certainly, me girl. I deal four hands facedown. As I play each hand, I am most careful never to expose the cards. It makes for a challenging game, I assure you.”

  She chuckled. “I can imagine. However, I would think that the game would be disappointing since three of the four aspects of your player-self always lose.”

  He chuckled this time. From there the conversation drifted into the usual subject of sheep: his new woolshed, the lambing season, her concern about the dingoes that were decimating the flocks, his horse business.

  “You are still determined to ride back alone?” he asked in that deep brogue that against her will she found attractive.

  She shrugged. “I have a pistol."

  “'Tis a particular brand of obstinate courage you have."

  She considered what he had said. She didn’t mind riding alone in the dark and drizzle. Nevertheless, she discovered a certain solace in Sin’s company. He was an articulate man with courage of the toughest fiber. And yet—thinking of his conduct with women and children and animals—he could behave, paradoxically, as a gentle man.

  The wind died down and the rain abated. The four-hour ride went quickly for her, with the conversation dominated by the political direction the Australian colonies were taking. Sin totally rejected anything English.

  Soon, a speck of light signaled they were drawing near the Tremayne house. Lantern glow spread through a front window to illuminate a portion of the yard. Jimmy was outside on the veranda steps, waiting to take hers and Sin’s reins. “The missus, Sin, she h’aint doing so well.”

  “Wait here,” Amaris told the two men and strode inside, her spurred boots clinking a dirge on the puncheon floor.

  Yellow candlelight splashed a sallow pool over a woman’s small frame. Amaris stared in open-mouthed shock at her friend. Celeste’s sweet rounded figure was gone, replaced by a drawn, thin look. The pure alabaster skin was weathered and brown. Miscarrying a child couldn’t be totally responsible for the condition Amaris beheld.

  Clearly, Celeste was withering in the harsh clime. When she was her usual vibrant, chattering self, one didn’t notice the subtle physical changes taking place, not until illness stilled the vivacious woman, although Celeste could hardly be termed still at that moment. She was making little mewing sounds. Curled up in a fetal position, she hugged her stomach and trembled with each passing contraction.

  Amaris felt her forehead. The fever alarmed her. “Celeste, it’s Amaris.”

  The young woman opened her eyes. They were dulled and reddened from weeping. “Amaris,” she whispered. “An angel. Thank God. I hurt, Amaris. You always come to help me.”

  “You’ll be all right.” She tried to think of what the old women and Pulykara did for the pregnant women at the home. “I’ll need to check your progress with the baby, Celeste.”

  “I’m going to lose our baby,” Celeste said, eyes closed.

  “I’ll be the judge of that.” She pushed back the coverlets and raised the young woman’s blood-stained gown. The towel between her thighs was soaked. “When was this last changed?”

  “Sin ... just before he left.”

  Gingerly, she folded back the towel. She swallowed hard. The fetus was visible on the towel, although its sex was indeterminate to her. “There will be other babies, Celeste.”

  Tears seeped from the comers of the younger woman’s closed eyes. “Then I’ve already lost the baby.”

  “Aye,” she said softly. What worried her was the absence of the full afterbirth. Celeste’s fever signaled the possibility of infection from the retention of a portion of it. It would have to be removed. “Celeste, you must trust me.”

  “Go ahead ... I know something must be done ... if Sin and I hope to have other children.”

  Celeste laden Sin’s name with such passion that the image of her and Sin in the throes of lovemaking flashed in Amaris’s mind. In the next instant, she pursued the natural course of her thought: What would it be like to be made love to by Sin?

  The image exploded in an intense burst of sensations. Her hand latched on to the bedpost to keep her from sagging with sudden and intense desire. Never, in all her life, had anything happened like that.

  Its repercussion was a clamoring, demanding need to experience its realization with him. Right then!

  Why Sin? He wasn’t handsome; he was a former convict; an Irishman, a thoroughly irritating man.

  Ridiculous! Irrational! Yet now she would never be able to look at him without thinking . . . fantasizing . . . and worse, fearing he would see the speculation of passion in her eyes.

  She steadied herself, forcing herself to focus on Celeste and her needs. “Oh, you needn’t worry about having more children,” she said, keeping a steady stream of chatter to distract Celeste—and perhaps herself from the task at hand. “You will be known as the Old Lady in the Shoe, who had so many children she didn’t know what to do.”

  “Amaris.”

  At the soft yet insistent tone, she looked up at Celeste’s face. Her feverishly bright eyes were fastened on her. “Yes?”

  “Have I ever told you, Am
aris, what a dear, wonderful person you are? Sin and I are so lucky to have you living so near.”

  Guilt flushed her face. She looked down at her bloodied hands. “I think I’ve been able to remove the remainder of the afterbirth. I’ll prepare an herbal for your fever and get a fresh gown for you.”

  Too exhausted by the ordeal, Celeste only nodded. Her eyes were already closed. Amaris rummaged through a chest and found at last another gown, although it was threadbare.

  Her search for cider vinegar and honey took less time, and while the potion was brewing, she had Sin bring her a scraping of gum beads from its tree bark. She wasn’t certain that the beads actually helped that much, but it would give Sin something to do.

  Meanwhile she carefully removed Celeste’s old gown. The young woman protested weakly. “This won’t take long, and you’ll feel better.”

  She poured a pitcher of fresh water into the basin and washed the thin young woman, then just as carefully redressed her.

  When Amaris attempted to spoon the concoction into Celeste’s mouth, she whispered, “You’re so good to me, Amaris.”

  “Ssssh, go to sleep now.”

  She spent an inordinate amount of time straightening the disarrayed bedroom, emptying the dishpan of bloodied water, securely wrapping the fetus for disposal.

  She knew the reason for her delay. She was stalling facing Sin. The light rap at the door told her she could stall no longer.

  “Amaris,” he said, his voice muffled, “is Celeste all right?”

  Amaris went to the door and opened it. Sin’s face was in the shadows. With her back to the candle, she knew he couldn’t make out her expression either.

  She stepped into the shadowed hallway, closing the door behind her. Her voice lowered to a whisper. “Celeste will be all right. But losing the baby has taken its toll on her.” Against her will, Amaris blushed. She didn’t know how to express delicately the situation.

  “Go on,” he prompted. “We’ve discussed birthing before. Don’t go maiden-shy on me now.”

  She realized, with a smarting pain, that he considered her one of the boys. That made what she had to say easier. “You must not try to, ah, lie with Celeste for a while. She’s, ah, weak.” She could feel the heat suffusing her face. “In a couple of months . . .”