‘You’re an angel!’ cried Maeve.
Enveloped in her tearful hug and with his back thumped by a grateful Edwin, Marmaduke felt content.
Shining with happiness Maeve rushed off into the kitchen to bake an Australian cake of her own invention, a mixture of passionfruit, bush apples and berries.
Marmaduke was not sure how to broach the next subject.
‘Isabel understands I won’t risk fathering kids, but I reckon she needs a child to mother. I’ve reason to believe there’s a child called Rose Alba, about four years old. Maybe in the care of a relative. Born on the wrong side of the blanket. The de Rolland family doesn’t know she exists. So your lawyer mate in England needs to be dead careful making enquiries. I’d be glad to bring the kid out to New South Wales to live with us. A surprise for Isabel, understand?’
Edwin eyed him intently. ‘Consider it done. My London colleague is the soul of discretion.’
Marmaduke was itching to put his plans into action. ‘I’d better be off, mate. Until we meet again in your chambers. I need to make a Will leaving Isabel well provided for in case I come to some sticky end. You never know what’s lurking round the corner in this Colony.’
He tried to sound light of heart. ‘I haven’t the slightest doubt Silas de Rolland is going to lob on our shores. I’ve only got a short time to turn my whole life around. From being an idle wastrel and womaniser to being a respectable landholder, a man of substance.’
Marmaduke turned at the front door with a self-deprecating smile. ‘I know it sounds crazy, mate, even impossible. But I want to see myself reflected in Isabel’s eyes as the man who came to her rescue. Don’t laugh. I want to be Isabel’s hero.’
Before Edwin had time to answer Marmaduke bolted out the door, leapt into the saddle and rode off headlong into the face of the wind.
Book Two
The Mask
Love is always a stranger in the house of avarice
– Andreas Capellanus, late twelfth century
Chapter 33
Darkness at Bloodwood Hall had a deeper, darker dimension than Isabel had ever experienced, even in her nightmares. It wasn’t the darkness of the night sky, that vast, midnight blue cocoon around the bush in which a myriad of alien stars fought for space – God’s creation of darkness.
This other darkness was human and malevolent. Without Marmaduke’s presence to protect her, Isabel fought to keep a rein on her imagination, yet was drawn by an invisible undertow into a whirlpool of psychic blackness that seemed to permeate every room of Garnet’s mansion. No amount of lighting – oil lamps, candelabra or firelight – could dispel her feeling that unspeakable things had occurred here in the past and more were to come.
The lingering sense of evil was not confined solely to the stone walls of the house. Walking in the bush with Elise in the direction of Ghost Gum Valley, Isabel left Elise to rest her feet for a few minutes while she went on ahead down a track leading to a secluded water-hole. The sun was shining brightly, yet she became uneasy, feeling sure she was being observed.
It was then she saw them. A small group of tribal men stood watching her in silence some twenty feet away on the far side of the waterhole. Their half naked bodies were glistening with sweat and they carried hunting spears, but judging from their stance they did not appear threatening. She glanced over her shoulder in the hope that Elise had caught up with her. She was nowhere in sight. Isabel knew she must handle this encounter alone. Marmaduke had told her Aborigines considered it good manners for strangers to exchange names. And not to look directly into a person’s face.
She dropped a curtsey. ‘Good morning. My name is Isabel Gamble. You are most welcome.’
She tried to avoid direct eye contact but was aware that the oldest of the warriors was observing her. His deep-set eyes challenged her. He knelt on one knee and scooped up a handful of water to drink, but his eyes never left her face.
Isabel felt unnerved. At the sound of Elise calling her name she turned to answer her, ‘I’m here.’
She spun around, suddenly chilled to the bone. She was completely alone. There was no one else here – nothing except a lingering sense of death that made her flesh creep.
Elise drew level, fanning herself with a switch of gum leaves. ‘What’s the matter, Isabel, you’re as pale as a ghost?’
‘Elise! Something terrible happened here – can’t you feel it?’
Elise gave her an odd look. ‘Nothing important. It was years before Garnet gained title to the land. His convict shepherds ran flocks of his sheep here. Naturally they forbade wandering blacks to hunt kangaroos on Garnet’s land. So the blacks speared a sheep for their tucker. Shepherds were punished for losing sheep by having their Government rations cut. So they poisoned the waterhole. Killed off a whole tribe of the poachers.’
Poachers? But it was their tribal land.
Isabel found her voice. ‘Did Garnet know of it?’
Elise shrugged. ‘Don’t look so shocked. It’s not like the blacks are human like us.’
Isabel picked up her skirts and turned back to the house, too angry to trust herself to speak. She remembered Marmaduke’s warning. All the evil that had occurred here had indeed left its mark.
That night Isabel lay curled up in bed in Marmaduke’s old nursery isolated from the rest of the household, reading by candlelight the loved books of his youth in an attempt to form a closer bond with him. Her first impressions of Marmaduke had passed through many stages from arrogant, hated adversary to comrade-at-arms, teacher, friend, protector – to the haunting image of the strangely shy, tender Adam. And he was also the hero who had saved her life.
As the shadows danced with the candlelight she held at bay her fears of the creaking sounds magnified by the darkness she had heard for several nights. Now in the absence of Marmaduke’s reassuring sleeping presence in the little dressing-room, Isabel gave in to a childlike impulse. She retrieved his pillow from his cot bed and took it back to her own. Cradling his pillow in her arms she smelt the lingering trace of the sandalwood soap he used to wash his hair. She blew out the last candle and fell asleep, her face on his pillow, knowing that if she woke, the smell of sandalwood would give her a comforting sense of his protection.
In the dark of night she awoke sweating with fear from a vivid dream of that moment in her childhood, the strange expression on Silas’s face when she confessed to him she had prayed to the Devil to save her from drowning. She heard his words echo in her mind. ‘You are now dead in the eyes of God, ma petite cousine. You have no one else to protect you. Pray only to me.’
Unable to define any outline in the pitch blackness, Isabel froze when she heard the familiar feathery sounds of footsteps muffled by the carpet runner in the corridor. The footsteps paused outside her door. She clutched the sandalwood pillow to her breast like a shield.
The Other! My God! Did I remember to turn the key in the lock?
She held her breath and waited. Then, just as those other nights, there was a sharp clicking sound before the footsteps faded away down the corridor. Was this the ghost that Queenie and the Irish servants had heard? Isabel was sure of only one thing.
Martha’s ghost would never frighten me. And I’d know if Silas was dead.
Isabel trembled at the indelible memory of his blasphemous words, ‘Pray only to me.’
She buried her face in the sandalwood pillow to draw strength from it.
I’m no longer a child. Silas has no power over me. I will pray to God if I want to. Maybe He hasn’t forsaken me. Please God bless everyone I love. Aunt Elisabeth, my little Rose Alba. And protect Marmaduke from all that is evil, especially bushrangers.
At last the sandalwood perfume worked its magic. Isabel fell into a deep sleep.
There were no letters from Marmaduke all that week. The motive behind his continued absence remained a mystery. Each passing day had brought no further word since the hasty note he’d penned on arrival in Sydney Town, telling her that Edwin and Maeve were to b
e married. Isabel felt pleased for them but strangely abandoned, as if she were shipwrecked on an island called Bloodwood, cut off from the world by an ocean of bushland.
This isolation was not entirely friendless. Queenie never came to the house except on request but passing Isabel in the rose garden the old nanny had gently touched her arm. ‘You know where to find me if you need me, girl.’
Isabel was lavished with attention by her flamboyant father-in-law, a situation Marmaduke warned she must play with care. Isabel prided herself that she had found the perfect solution. How to spend time alone with him, yet hold him at bay. Chess!
Their daily games were played out in the dappled light of the bougainvillea-shaded terrace. She took care to give Garnet the illusion he was teaching her the intricacies of the game that, unknown to him, she had mastered as a little girl alone in Uncle Godfrey’s library where she played both sides – the White Rose of York versus the Red Rose of Lancaster.
Living in Garnet Gamble’s world I feel like a pawn in a human chess game where there are no known rules. And yet I remember the Italian proverb: ‘Life is like a game of chess. At the end of the game the Pawn and the King go back in the same box.’
Seated opposite him in the Indian planter’s chair on the terrace, Isabel glanced up from the chessboard, aware of the intense way he studied her. She knew she was also under scrutiny from Bridget each time the girl brought Garnet fresh jugs of cold water from the well. Isabel suspected these jugs, if not the well, were laced with gin.
Through the open French windows Isabel could feel Elise’s eyes boring into her back, her sighs audible as she stabbed her needle into her eternally unfinished tapestry. This was a scene in Empress Josephine’s garden at Malmaison, celebrated for the exotic flora and fauna French scientific teams brought back from their explorations in the Southern Hemisphere as tribute to Napoleon, including species from this mysterious continent known on maps for centuries as Terra Australis Incognito.
Isabel felt a flash of pity for Elise. She’s so desperate to appear a lady she apes the Quality and worships all things French. Who can blame her? No doubt the French were designing elegant fashions when we Britons were painting our bodies blue with woad.
As Isabel mentally toyed with the next chess piece she must move to ensure Garnet’s ultimate check mate, she was reminded of the relevance of the exquisitely carved and painted chess pieces. Each day they played chess Isabel chose the white side, miniature replicas of the Duke of Wellington and his army, victors of the 1815 Battle of Waterloo. She chose white being aware that despite his British heritage, Garnet preferred to use his chess strategy on the side of Napoleon, his Empress Josephine and the gallant French officers in their glorious uniforms. Garnet always led the Little Emperor to victory. Isabel suspected this was Garnet’s symbolic triumph over what he saw as the British system that had transported him.
No doubt Garnet admires Boney’s genius for appropriating whatever he wanted – crowning himself Emperor and spreading his family dynasty across the map of Europe. Given half a chance Garnet would control the entire eastern half of Australia from Cape York to Van Diemen’s Land – if he doesn’t already!
Garnet’s discreet cough prompted her. It was time to make her move. She felt unnerved by the sensuous way he was rolling the Duchess of Wellington between his thumb and finger while eyeing Isabel as if intent on penetrating her most intimate secrets.
Hastily she pushed her knight into the vacant square she knew would lead to her downfall and gave a mock sigh of defeat when Garnet declared, ‘Check mate, m’dear!’
‘You are most patient, Garnet. I fear you must find me a boring opponent.’
‘Utter nonsense. No one else around here has the wit to learn from their mistakes. I’ll turn you into my little chess mistress before the year is out!’
Not if I can help it.
Downing his final tumbler of ‘lime’ juice he proffered his arm.
‘Come, bride, let’s take tea in the garden. We can talk in private.’
The columns and roof of the summerhouse were entwined with flowering vines that blended two sensuous perfumes. While Garnet gave exacting orders to Bridget for afternoon tea, Isabel chatted to the young Irish ticket-of-leave gardener whose given name had long been lost in the dozens of ‘Paddys’ – as Garnet called all his Irish Government men.
‘I must compliment you on your rose garden, Paddy.’ Isabel lowered her voice. ‘Do you by chance have my favourite rose in cultivation, the white Rose Alba?’
Paddy grew confidential. ‘I do not. But sure it’s a strange thing. Your good husband asked me that same question. Himself wants Rose Alba cuttings to be planting at Mingaletta when it comes to him. I advised him to try Thomas Shepherd’s Darling Nursery in Sydney – he’s the man who sends us our fruit and grapevine cuttings.’ Paddy looked stricken. ‘By the saints, I trust I’ve not spoilt the young master’s surprise for ye, ma’am?’
Isabel smiled her assurance that she would pretend surprise when the Rose Albas arrived.
At the sight of Bridget and Black Mary heading towards the summer house bearing enough paraphernalia for a tea ceremony, Isabel crossed to Garnet’s side. After young Black Mary scuttled back to the kitchen, Bridget lingered to pour their tea. Garnet, on his best behaviour to impress Isabel, politely asked Bridget if she minded him calling her ‘Irish’?
Isabel noted that the quick flash of anger in the servant’s eyes did not fade after she assumed a coquettish smile. ‘Sure that’s what I’m proud to be, being a daughter of Dublin. Not that I’m likely to see home again or me old Granny before she goes to God. But I’ll not be minding for ye to call me Irish, sir, whenever ye have the need for me to serve ye.’
Isabel looked away, stunned by the girl’s implied intimacy. Yet she also sensed Bridget’s sad memories of home were genuine.
Bridget thinks I’m the enemy – British nobility. If only she knew the truth. We were both in a sense forced ‘to leave our country for our country’s good’.
Garnet did not take offence at Bridget’s words. ‘You never can tell how the cards will fall in this Colony, Irish. Take me. Transported on a Hell-ship to the farthest corner of the British Empire, but I built an empire of my own!’
‘Indeed ye have, sir.’ As she departed Bridget cast him a final look. Isabel had seen that same expression on the faces of other assigned servants under Garnet’s dominance – cold resignation that was a hair’s breadth away from pure hatred.
Isabel was struck by the disparity between Garnet’s attitude to assigned females and Marmaduke’s remembered words: ‘I wouldn’t dream of taking an assigned woman to bed. Those poor wretches must do as ordered, not as they please. I do have some standards.’ How wrongly she had interpreted Marmaduke. She now knew these careless words meant he did not hold convicted women in contempt as his social inferiors. He had refused to exploit their vulnerability, their desperate desire to latch on to any man to be their protector.
The Gamble father and son were both womanisers but poles apart in their code of practice. Garnet, despite his claims of undying love for Miranda and his installation of Elise as resident mistress, behaved like a medieval lord claiming his right to deflower virgins.
I must admit the Droit de seigneur was abused by my own ancestors.
Isabel masked her amusement as Garnet made great inroads on the pastries. He ate with the same gusto with which she imagined the Tudor King Henry VIII tackled each meal.
He caught her eye. ‘What do you think of the Colony now you’ve had time to evaluate us?’
Isabel was pleased that he had asked her but would he be offended by her answer? ‘It’s a whole new world, Garnet. I adore the wildness of the landscape and I’m adjusting to the seasons. But the thing that really excites me is the revolution!’
Garnet looked startled so she pressed on.
‘I like the way the English class system here is being turned upside down, not only by the lower orders but by Governor Bourke, The Aus
tralian and Marmaduke’s friend Rupert Grantham. They have really gone out on a limb to champion the Emancipist cause against the Exclusives, demanding for all the same rights enjoyed by British citizens – trial by jury, Habeas Corpus, plus a Legislative Council to pass the Colony’s new laws, instead of automatic British laws.’
Oh God, have I gone too far? Garnet is both an Emancipist and powerful landowner. So which side of the battle is he on? The opposite camp to Marmaduke, no doubt!
‘What it is to have a woman who’s not afraid to take a stand. Just like my Miranda!’
Isabel stiffened when Garnet suddenly grabbed hold of her and ignored her instinctive attempt to withdraw her hand. She gasped in recognition at the emerald he slipped on her finger – a ring so magnificent it almost overpowered her gold wedding band.
‘Yes,’ said Garnet, ‘this is the Indian emerald in Miranda’s portrait. Always intended to be the betrothal ring for Marmaduke’s bride. At last it’s found its rightful home.’
‘I don’t know what to say,’ Isabel said, trying to mask her feelings.
That’s a bald-faced lie. I know exactly what I’d like to say to his face! How insensitive can a man be? Does he think I don’t know that Marmaduke gave this ring to the bride who jilted him? Elise has been wearing it for years! It is tainted with unhappiness.
‘Just wear it in good health, dear girl. One day you may care to pass it on to the bride of your first-born son.’
Oh dear, I can see what’s coming now. Garnet’s dynasty speech!
He folded his arms across his chest in patriarchal mode. ‘We are family so I have the right to ask. Marmaduke is kind to you? He’s attentive to...all your needs?’
Isabel felt herself stammering in anger but was determined to fight fire with fire. ‘If I take your meaning correctly, Garnet, you are either enquiring if I am already enceinte or if my husband is the virile man his father is. The answer to both questions is a private matter. But I can tell you that if every female, bond or free, had a husband as romantic and passionate as Marmaduke, there wouldn’t be an unhappy woman in this Colony!’ She rose to feet and added haughtily, ‘Now if you’ll excuse me!’
Ghost Gum Valley Page 34