Dream Time (historical): Book I

by Parris Afton Bonds

  When Sin carried it upstairs to Celeste, her face lit with joy. “The supplier couldn’t have picked a more perfect crib.”

  Amaris watched her hands, the soft color of porcelain, stroke the smooth wood, painted white with light blue morning glories stenciled around the scrolled edges. In admiration of the touching scene, Amaris forgot her envy.

  Later that evening, just before dinner, when she wandered out onto the veranda to watch the children playing in the lingering sunlight, Sin joined her. Handing her a glass of brandy, he sat down opposite her. “Sometimes, when I watch the children, I find meself silently praying that they will never know hunger or harm. I tell meself that their lives don’t have to be the way their parents’ lives were as children.”

  “Like yours?” she asked softly. There was an intimacy to the evening’s quiet, to their solitude.

  “Me life wasn’t that bad. Aye, we went hungry sometimes. And there were the British to fear. But I was loved. And I was educated. As you were loved and educated. Despite having been given away as an infant. That left its scar, didn’t it?”

  The compassion in his eyes was nearly her undoing. Her fingers curled around the chair’s arms. Her voice was low, strangled. “I always wondered what was wrong with me. Was I such an unlovable, unlovely baby? Other convict women kept their babies. Why was I not worth keeping?”

  “You are beautiful—and worth keeping. You deserve love. Speaking of which, ’tis been too long for you to stay in mourning.”

  She felt the heat of her blush coloring her cheeks. “How do I know a man courting me is not just after Dream Time? Regardless, the men are not standing in line at my door. I think I intimidate them.”

  “You be needing someone to complement your strength of will.”

  “That sounds like condemnation. Am I not woman enough, Sin? Feminine enough?”

  From out of the dark came his deep and smooth brogue. “That and more.” He tapped out his pipe. “Mrs. Delaney should be taking dinner up to Celeste. Shall we go on up?”

  “Ohh, God!” Celeste gasped. “Oh, God, Amaris, I hurt.”

  “Take a deep breath. It can’t be much longer.” Celeste’s lips stretched in a ghastly parody of a smile. “That’s . . . what you said three hours ago.”

  “I know, I know.” She pushed Celeste’s damp hair back from her forehead. Dipping the washcloth in the basin of water once more, she sponged Celeste’s temples and cracked lips. Who would have thought it could take so long to birth a child, more than twenty hours. Something was wrong.

  She dropped the washcloth in the basin. “I’m going for fresh water. I’ll be back in only a moment.” Celeste’s hand gripped hers. “Hurry, please.” Amaris watched her friend fight back a scream. “I’ll wait. Breathe deeply. Push, Celeste. Breathe deeply and push.”

  Pain racked Celeste’s body so that she shuddered. Eyes closed, one hand knotted into a fist, the other digging into Amaris’s, she bit her bottom lip until it bled.

  When the contraction passed, Amaris relinquished Celeste’s hand and hurried from the bedroom. She found Sin sitting in the parlor. A glass was in his hand, the whiskey untouched. His eyes were red. He looked from her back to his glass. “I’m going to lose her, aren’t I?” he asked in a monotone voice.

  “Sin, we’re going to have to take the baby.”

  He shot up from the settee and hurled the glass against the wall. The sound of the shards tinkling against the floor was evocative of a crystal chandelier chiming in a breeze-filled room. “The only good thing in me life and I am going to lose it! I’m going to lose her!”

  “You don’t know that.” She grabbed his arm. “I need your help. You’ve taken a colt before when the mare couldn’t birth it normally. Help me now.”

  He whirled on her. “God, do you know what you’re asking of me?”

  Her stance was unyielding, her voice harsh. “I’m asking you to save the one good thing in your life.”

  With a groan, he tunneled his hands through his hair. “Aye, I’ll do it.”

  She went to the sideboard, where Celeste kept the station’s medicine chest. In it was an assortment of bandages, splints, pins, and other necessities, together with a selection of drugs: quinine, castor oil, chlorodyne, and laudanum.

  The administration of the laudanum was of a highly experimental nature. How much was safe to give to Celeste?

  When she returned to the bedroom, Sin was drying his freshly washed hands. He glanced at her, then turned back to Celeste. “If we’re to save the wee one, me luv, this is necessary. With the laudanum,” he added, stroking her perspiration-drenched hair back from her neck, “you won’t feel any pain.”

  Celeste’s hand clasped the back of his. “I’m not afraid. Never, when you’re with me.”

  He swallowed hard. “I’m with you always.”

  Then he nodded at Amaris, and she moved to the bedside. Smiling with a reassuring falsity, she took Celeste’s fingers and squeezed tenderly. Her friend was far braver than she could ever be.

  “You’re here, too,” Celeste murmured. “I’m with the ones I love.”

  Those were her last words before Amaris gave her a couple of tablespoons of laudanum until a drugged stupor claimed her conscious thoughts and her lids drifted closed.

  Amaris listened for her soft breathing and watched her chest, praying that the imperceptible rise and fall of sleep continued for a while longer. “I think we’ve done everything we can do to prepare her,” she told Sin.

  Sweat glistened on his forehead. He stared at her across the span of the bed and his drugged wife. “You know few women survive something like this, not in the outback, not under conditions like this!” It was a cry from the pit of his stomach, a cry of fear.

  “No woman survives when the baby is lodged within her belly.”

  He closed his eyes and nodded. “So be it.” He reached for the knife he had stropped to a razor-sharp edge and sterilized. In the candlelight, the blade glinted like thirty pieces of silver.

  She steadied herself. She did not let herself think about what she was watching. She merely followed Sin’s instructions, placing her hands at either side of the thin red line and gently separating the tissues after each incision of the razor-sharp blade.

  At some point during die arduous process, something went wrong. Amaris didn’t know what, only that hemorrhaging had started.

  “No!” Sin cried. His eyes flared. He glanced up at her. She saw the wild animal cornered in their depths. “No!” he screamed.

  It was useless. All his frenzied, frantic efforts could not stop the outpouring of blood.

  In Amaris’s mind ran Celeste’s last words: “I’m with the ones I love.”

  Within the month, the bush drum told of all sorts of rumors. That Sin was gradually going wild with grief, condemning himself for succumbing to lust; that he had turned to drink and had burned down the house; that he wouldn’t leave his wife's graveside, that he had gone tropo, sitting there day after day in the hot sun.

  Once more leaving her sheep station in Baluway’s care, Amaris set out for Never-Never. Even as she approached, she could see signs of deterioration in the one-month lapse in supervision of his sheep station: railings were down, an outbuilding door was off its hinge, the corralled horses looked ungroomed.

  She stopped at the cemetery. The flowers bedecking Celeste and the baby’s grave were wilted. Anger spread through Amaris. The graves should have been as lovingly tended as Celeste had lovingly tended to Never-Never. Only sunflowers bloomed at that time of year, but Amaris took long enough to gather a posey and spread the flowers like a yellow blanket over her sleeping sister.

  Spurs clinking, she stalked through the house, which was as dark and stuffy as a tomb, until she came upon the housekeeper. “Where is Mr. Tremayne, Mrs. Delaney?”

  The triple-chin lost a fold as the old woman nodded her head upward. “Been closeted in the bedroom for three days now. ’Fore that he rode all day, from sunup to long after midnight.”

/>   Amaris climbed the steps. With something akin to dread, she opened the bedroom door. Sin sat in Celeste’s rocking chair. He looked unkempt, his hair rumpled, the beginnings of a beard on his face. He raised his gaze from the remade bed to her. “You’re back.” It was a statement, not a question.

  She folded her arms. “And none too soon, it appears. Come on, we’re getting you to bed. And not this one, either.”

  She expected a hassle. He pushed himself erect, but she could tell he was extremely tired. Taking his arms, she said, “You’ll feel better after a deep sleep. I’ll prepare an herbal.”

  Like a child, he let her lead him to the bedroom he had been using during the last months Celeste carried their child. Once Amaris had pulled off his boots and tugged off his shirt, she tucked him into the four-poster bed and went below to prepare the potion.

  When she returned, it frightened her the way those piercing blue eyes stared unseeingly at the ceiling. It was unnatural. She gave him three spoonsful of the medicine, talking all the while to ease the volcano of tension within him. “The medicine tastes like sheep dip, but it’ll make you rest easier. I’ll sit here until you go to sleep.”

  He closed his eyes, but it wasn’t until maybe an hour later she sensed he was truly asleep. She would have stayed longer, just so she could observe her beloved’s face undisturbed, but things needed to be taken in hand. Leaving Sin, she went down to the yard. With a tyrannical hand, she took over management from Jimmy, who actually seemed grateful for direction. He reminded her of a lost puppy. His eyes had that soulful look.

  “I want the gates and fences repaired and painted. What supplies you don’t have, send to Dream Time for. Fire the stable help. The horses haven’t been groomed.” Next she tackled Mrs. Delaney. “I want fresh vegetables at every meal. Lots of them. A savory roast or a leg o’mutton will do for the main entree this evening. Have someone pick flowers and put vases of them throughout the house. I want the banisters and furniture all polished with beeswax, and get rid of all the gutted candles. Replace them with fresh, scented ones.”

  She herself went through the house pulling open the curtains to flood each room with sunlight. While she was upstairs, there came from below a commotion. Going to the window, she peered out. In the late afternoon sun could be seen a buggy approaching. The people of Never-Never were turning out to see this latest mode of transportation. The rockaway was a light four-wheel carriage with open sides.

  Curious as to the visitor’s identity, she went downstairs and out onto the veranda. In shock, she observed Nan Livingston dismount. Despite the distance the old woman had traveled, she was dressed impeccably with nary a wrinkle or speck of dust to spoil her black crepe dress.

  Amaris’s first reaction was chagrin that, in comparison to Nan, her own clothing was dirty—and quite masculine. Her next reaction was more a physical one. The hair at her nape rose. Nan Livingston was here to make good her threat.

  Foolish, she thought. What could the woman take from her? Dream Time? Dream Time was solvent. That achievement had been a hard one for Amaris. Many times, she had been tempted to take up Sin’s offer of a loan, but her pride would never consider it.

  With the dignity of visiting royalty, Nan approached the veranda. In one hand she held a black parasol; in the other she carried the hem of her skirt, lifted out of the dust. Behind her, her bowlegged driver toted her bags.

  At the bottom of the steps, she stared up at Amaris. “Taking Francis from Celeste wasn’t enough, was it? Is it Sin you want now?”

  Amaris reeled from the scathing, loathing tone of Nan’s voice. Nan always suspicioned the worst in people. She stared down at the rouged, wizened little woman. Did Nan Livingston find it as difficult to accept her as her daughter as she found accepting Nan as her mother? “Sin and Never-Never need me right now.”

  Nan brushed past her. “Where’s Sin?”

  She caught up with the old woman at the door and barred her way. “Let him sleep. He’s on the brink of collapse.”

  Nan’s lips pressed flat. “I need a respite myself. I’ll see him at dinner.” She sailed past Amaris and on into the house. Her driver dutifully followed her inside.

  “Oh, Mrs. Marlborough?” Jimmy called out from the sheep shed. “Do you want us to go ahead and schedule the branding? We have been, er, waiting for Mr. Tremayne to give us the go ahead.”

  “Schedule it for first thing tomorrow.”

  By the time Amaris returned to the house, all the curtains had been drawn once more. Amaris stalked to the pantry, where Mrs. Delaney was inventorying the tinned foods. “Why did you draw the curtains again?”

  The hefty woman looked offended. “Mrs. Livingston did that, ma’am. Said she was taking charge.”

  The sun floated on waves of steam just above the western horizon. Even though evening was nigh, February’s heat was unbearable. Nan couldn’t under-stand why anyone, much less Celeste, who had led such a sheltered life, would want to move to the Never-Never.

  With quivering lips she could not still, she knelt beside Celeste’s grave. Fresh sunflowers were strewn atop. By whom? Sin certainly wasn’t in any condition to consider doing anything appropriate at this point.

  She picked up one of the sunflowers. Reluctantly, she acknowledged that Amaris had most likely made the thoughtful gesture. Amaris appalled her. Her daughter wanted to assume her half-sister’s place! Amaris knew nothing about propriety!

  Nan ignored the niggling reminder that she used to yearn for just such an outward show of strength and had only been able to act from the principle that a proper woman stayed in the background, operating from behind the scene. She had been a victim of her times.

  Well, she thought, the time would come to deal with her wayward daughter. Nan’s veined and palsied hand crushed the sunflower’s petals.

  Sin was a different man, though Amaris couldn’t quite put her finger on it. He had shaven, of course, and his clothes were immaculate as ever, his stock an ivory white beneath his swarthy and brooding face. One of Sin’s assets had been his vital and forceful personality. Strong-willed and purposeful, he could climb from rock bottom to rocky heights.

  Surreptiously observing him from across the dining table, Amaris decided that it wasn’t so much that with Celeste’s death he had lost his will to live, but that his will no longer blazed in those blue eyes; it was an ember that only needed fanning.

  Amaris did know that in death Celeste stood between her and Sin more than she ever had in life.

  Celeste would always be young and beautiful. The harsh Australian outback would never wither or age her. Further, Celeste had never fought for her station, never had been bitchy or masculinely domineering. Sin had fought for her.

  At the other side of the table sat Nan. The candelabra cast eerie shadows beneath her gaunt cheeks and deepened every wrinkle that all the rouge and powder in Australia could not conceal. She had become a caricature of herself—but still a formidable woman and opponent. Amaris would not let herself underestimate this woman, her mother.

  She thought of the ivory-and-pearl brooch Nan had given her as a wedding gift. All these years it had lain untouched in a small box of gewgaws that Amaris found too feminine.

  With the elegance of an aristocrat, Nan cut a bite from her serving of lamb. “I would advise getting rid of your supervisor, Sin. Jimmy was a good employee at the company, but he grew lax and I had to let him go. You need someone more competent than Jimmy to oversee in your absence.”

  “Jimmy has been a loyal employee for years,” Amaris countered.

  “Not loyal enough to see that affairs at Never-Never continued to run smoothly while the master was . . . indisposed.”

  Amaris laid down her fork. “Jimmy, like every other hand on the run and every woman and every child worshiped Celeste. Her death affected all of them. Apparently, everyone suffered but you, Nan Livingston. You charge in here to try and dominate everyone, just as you have always done.”

  “And you,” Nan said with ice weig
hing her words, “charge in here to try and take Celeste’s place in the marriage bed."

  Sin set down his wineglass with a thud. His eyes blazed. “That is enough!"

  Nan’s eyes burned with their own wrath. Majestically, she rose from her chair. Her fingertips were planted at either side of her dinner plate. “Both of you conspired to take Celeste away—each for your own selfish ends. Bad begets bad. You two will yet rue the day you entered my domain.”

  By the next morning, Nan Livingston was packed and gone. Watching the dust her buggy kicked up, Amaris had to acknowledge that in a way, the dowager was right. Despite their being mother and daughter, Nan Livingston felt nothing for her. No, that wasn’t true. Nan Livingston loathed her only surviving daughter and planned to bring about her downfall.

  Tired and utterly weary, Amaris returned to Dream Time without telling Sin farewell. Work awaited her at Dream Time, and she needed to attend to it.

  She was thirty-seven and not quite so sure why she still struggled. Because of Robert, she thought. Because of Francis. Their memories were all she had, for Sin belonged to himself.

  Months slid into a year. A year without seeing Sin. Occasionally she would talk to the major or Sykes or Thomas and learn that Sin was immersed in a new project of some sort. Anything to keep himself from feeling, she thought. She understood this. They both were plowing their energies into keeping their stations running.

  She imagined that Sin, as she did, felt that there had been too much between them ever to make for a peaceful relationship. Combustion was spontaneous when they came together, and after all these years they both wanted only peace in their lives.

  Peace appeared to be a quality that was not imminent in her life or those of the other station owners. Then word reached them of the discovery of gold in the United States, in California.

  In an exodus for the golden land, thousands of laborers, sheep tenders and shearers and their families, set sail. It was all she and Baluway could do to keep her station running, because it was much larger and there were many more responsibilities than in the earlier days when only she and Francis and Baluway had had to contend.