The Secret Rose

by Laura Parker

  They stood on the far side of the campfire, as still as statues. At first she thought they were some new form of wildlife. A second look told her they were human. The scant firelight picked up the gleam of their dark faces, chests, arms, and legs. Aborigines. She had seen a few of them on the streets of Sydney and Bathurst but never in their native habitat of the bush.

  Her heart thumped high in her throat. She was outnumbered six to one. She reached for the pistol she kept tucked in her waistband. The movement drew the attention of one of the men, and he jumped across the fire and jabbed a sharpened stick at her middle.

  Aisleen fell back before the onslaught, the pistol untouched. As she watched, a second man, short and so thin his arms and legs looked like shrunken leather strips, walked around the fire and bent over Thomas.

  “Don’t touch him!” she cried in anger as he nudged Thomas with a bare foot. Her guard raised his stick threateningly, but she did not care. “Don’t touch him! He’s hurt!”

  The man looked at her sharply, his black eyes wide with interest. “Him wurry bad hurt?”

  The question posed in English surprised her so much she smiled. “Do you speak English? Oh, thank heaven! This is my husband.” She gestured to Thomas. “He was hurt by some very bad men. We need help. Can you lead us to the nearest settlement?”

  The man’s face split in a broad grin. “Him wurry bad hurt,” he repeated and nodded.

  Aisleen stared at the man with only a scrap of cloth covering his privates. “Do you speak English?”

  He looked at her in puzzlement, and then he spied the billy over the fire. “You drink ’em tea?”

  “No, that’s rice and peas,” Aisleen answered and went to lift the billy with its charred contents. The man looked in the pot and then sniffed it and shook his head. “You drink ’em tea?” he repeated.

  “Tea. You want tea?” she asked. “I have a little left.” She reached into the saddlebag and withdrew the packet of tea and handed it to the man. “Will you help us now?”

  The man sniffed the tea and then nodded, smiling. He made a movement with his hand and a small young woman came forward bearing a fur rug, which she dropped at Aisleen’s feet.

  The man, apparently the leader, now looked across the grass, and though she could not see it, she knew that he had seen the horse. “Brumby?”

  She did not know the word, but she understood the suggestion in his tone, and she would not give, sell, or trade him the horse. “No!” she said emphatically. “No horse!”

  The man lifted his spear, but she was not frightened this time. The loss of the horse would mean certain death. Backing quickly away, she pulled the pistol from her belt and fired it above her head.

  The sharp point of a spear poked her in the small of her back. She reacted out of instinct, swinging about and pointing her gun at her attacker. The loud report sent her backward a step as the man cried out in pain. She saw him grab his neck in surprise and then look at the blood that smeared his hand. Baring his teeth, he raised his weapon a second time, but a guttural grunt from the leader made him pause.

  Aisleen backed farther away from the man brandishing the spear. “Go!” she shouted. “Go! Now!”

  She did not expect to be obeyed. There were more grunts and clicking of tongues behind her, and at any moment she expected a lance to be driven into her back; but she did not turn away from the man she had wounded or lower her weapon.

  A strange bird called deep in the forest. Suddenly there was absolute silence behind her. The man before her swiveled his head sharply in the direction of the sound as the call was repeated. Instantly he set off, racing across the grass and out of sight.

  Aisleen turned toward the campfire slowly, not knowing what to expect. What she saw utterly amazed her. She was alone with Thomas. The others had disappeared as swiftly and silently as they had appeared. Had the birdcall been a signal that someone else, a white man, was approaching? Perhaps her fire had drawn the attention of a settler or swagman.

  For a moment, she allowed that irrational hope to bolster her spirits. She stood waiting as still as a statue for several minutes. Should she fire the revolver again, just to make certain they could not mistake her direction? She lifted her arm to do so but then changed her mind. What if the natives were only temporarily frightened? If they came back she would need every bullet.

  One minute became five. Five minutes stretched out to ten. Still no one came. New thoughts nagged her. If the aborigines had not been frightened away by other men, what would have made them leave? Were there beasts in the forest that even they feared? If so, how would she, an ignorant Irish lass, know how to cope?

  Ye’ve nae done so badly, for an ignorant Irish lass!

  Aisleen did not even look for him. She was too tired to cheerfully indulge the apparitions of her half-mad mind.

  So it’s to be that way, is it? Then ye’ll not be wanting to know me news.

  Aisleen closed her eyes. Dreams and mad schemes—she had inherited her father’s madness.

  Ye cannae stay here any longer, lass, and well ye know it. Ye may be certain of nothing else, but this ye know—there’s bushrangers nearby. Now isn’t that so?

  Aisleen straightened up. She had forgotten. Of course! Bushrangers. She did not know how many had been killed by Jack before they…killed him.

  “Oh, Jack!” She gave up a shuddery sigh. He was dead. She had known it all along but had been too afraid to admit it. She was afraid of so much. It had been too great a burden to think that she was absolutely alone. But it was true.

  She looked back over her shoulder. There was nothing she could do before morning. If she put out the fire, they would not find her before dawn. By then, she would have devised a plan.

  “Aisleen?”

  The thick, coarse whisper brought her head snapping back. Thomas was lying with his eyes open. “Tom!”

  *

  “Better? Is that better, darling?” she whispered, afraid even the sound of her voice might cause him further pain.

  Thomas gazed at her in mute joy. His head rested in the curve of her left arm, her left breast the softest of pillows for his sore cheek. She had been spooning a nasty concoction of scorched rice and pea porridge into him, and though he had been able to swallow it, his teeth were still too sore for him to chew. Her hair hung down in straggly tangles on either side of her dirty face. The bruise on her chin had turned a greenish yellow. Her usually bright eyes were sunk deep in worry-bruised sockets.

  He wanted to comfort her, to hold her close and tell her that she need not worry about him any longer, but his assurances would scarcely have been worth the effort. She had talked to him while she fed him, told him everything that had happened from the moment of his capture until he awakened a short while ago. The tale amazed him. He would not have believed it had he heard it after the fact.

  No, there was nothing to be gained by empty words. He was completely useless to her as a source of protection. He was a burden to her. Careful examination of his body with her help had confirmed his suspicion that several of his ribs were broken. He suspected that his nose was also. His crippled leg had been kicked. As for his groin, well, he would never aim a kick at a man’s privates again, unless they were Sean’s.

  He did not need the look in her eyes to tell him how badly his face was damaged She did not seem to realize that a tear slipped unimpeded down her cheek once in a while. “It will heal,” he had said as another tear appeared.

  “Of course it will!” she answered in the crisp, no-nonsense tone he had not heard in weeks. “You attracted quite too many women before. Although in your case a few decorative scars might only season the appeal.”

  He smiled at her—at least he hoped it was a smile and not the grimace of pain that it felt like. “I love you,” he murmured between stiff lips.

  Aisleen blinked at him. What had he said?

  “Aye, love,” he said, seeing the disbelief in her face. “Didn’t ye know it, lass?”

  Her reaction was
n’t what he hoped for. She burst into tears that scalded his tender skin as they dripped into his face. Women, he thought, closing his eyes. He would never understand them.

  His eyes opened as he heard the jingle of a bridle. “A horse?”

  “We’ve Jack’s horse,” Aisleen answered.

  Thomas sighed and closed his eyes again. Jack was dead, had died saving his life. Perhaps Jack believed, as he had told Aisleen, that they were even at last. He would not have had the debt repaid in this way.

  “Tom, we must leave here,” Aisleen said when she thought he was falling asleep again. “Firing the gun as I did, I think it might have alerted someone to our presence.”

  Thomas regarded her in wonder. He, too, had thought of that but did not know how to broach the subject without frightening her more than she already was. He need not have worried. His wife had the makings of a bushwoman equal to any colonial-born miss.

  “At dawn,” he muttered.

  “Yes, my thought,” she replied in relief “Can you ride?”

  Thomas merely nodded. The thought of straddling a horse was best not contemplated just yet.

  When he opened his eyes again it was to suggest that she put out the fire. He turned his head slowly to the left and smiled when he saw that the fire was out. She was a smart lass. He turned his head back to the right and leaned his head against hers. She was curled tightly against him under the cover of the cloak of opossum skins she had traded for their tea.

  He had been alone in the world for so long he had forgotten the wonderful, heady feeling that came with loving and being loved. He would begin again. When they were out of danger they would build an empire to equal any. They would have children, lots of them, and grandchildren, and maybe, just maybe, he’d live to see great-grands. They would populate New South Wales.

  He squeezed the hand she had slipped into his. First they had to reach safety.

  *

  Aisleen tried to quell her impatience as their horse picked a listless path under the high canopy of the bush. It had taken almost all Thomas’s strength to hoist himself into the saddle. The horse had been skittish and well aware that it had been mistreated by these strangers. Feckless and contemptuous of their clumsiness, the animal had made a difficult task even harder by its uncooperative antics.

  In the distance, the craggy red peaks of the Three Sisters tantalized them. The Great Western Road passed directly by the formation, yet she and Thomas had not been able to find a method to cross to them. Thomas’s remark that it had taken the colonialists nearly thirty years to find the first path through the mountains was not comforting.

  As they came out of the trees along a narrow mountain ridge they were confronted once more by a physical barrier. A steep precipice fell sharply away before them, dropping hundreds of feet to the bottom of a deep gorge. Immense rocks had tumbled down from the cliffs behind them and lay strewn at random all about.

  Thomas sighed and Aisleen was quick to answer it with, “Are you in much pain?”

  Thomas shook his head. He ached in so many places there was no sense in cataloging them. “We’ll try up there,” he said when he could speak without groaning.

  For hours, they followed the mountain ridge northward. Despite the discomfort and her constant concern for Thomas, Aisleen could not help admiring the wild beauty of the country through which they rode. Orchids and wild flowers unlike any she had ever seen dotted every shady hollow.

  And birds. She did not believe that any other place on earth produced birds of such variety and splendid plumage. She discovered parrots more gorgeous than the red-rumped ones who had visited her the first night alone in the bush. Like a flower garden taken flight, they would swoop down across their path and then arch away. Jewel tones of ruby, sapphire, and emerald, gemstones of topaz and jade, sky pinks, mauves, and blues—all the colors of the spectrum had wings in the Australian bush.

  When the sun had crossed its zenith and begun its slide westward, she could no longer support Thomas in the saddle. He had dozed off or fainted; it was impossible to tell. Her arms felt as though they would tear from their sockets. Searing pain raced up their length each time the horse misstepped.

  The sound of running water was slow to penetrate her beleaguered mind; yet when she recognized it, she knew the horse had been drawn to it long before she heard it. Somewhere deep in the forest a small mountain stream ran. They would camp nearby for the night.

  The sound of hoofbeats coming up quickly behind them brought her up sharply. “Tom!” she hissed close to his ear.

  Thomas opened his eyes and at once knew why she had awakened him. He turned his head, but the overhanging bushes obscured his view.

  “It could be help,” Aisleen ventured softly.

  “Maybe,” he answered and took the reins from her hands. There was no need to elaborate further.

  He turned the horse off the path into a dense portion of the forest. Less than a minute later hoofbeats came even with the place on the path where they had been. Suddenly the horse was reined in. The hair lifted on his neck as he quickly reined in his own mount. They were being followed. Only two people would have reason to track them: Jack or Sean.

  He caught Aisleen by the arm and whispered quickly, “Slide off!”

  Aisleen did as he directed. “Hide!” he ordered, motioning her toward a wall of ferns. Only then did she realize what he intended to do. “You can’t! You’re not fit to ride! Let me!”

  But Thomas urged the horse up the path.

  Aisleen pulled the pistol from her waistband and waved it after him, hissing, “The gun!”

  He turned, winced, and waved her a cocky salute before kicking his horse into a gallop that took them quickly out of sight.

  The muffled thudding of a horse’s hooves sounded from the thick bush behind her, and Aisleen swung round. Above the top of a fern tree she saw a cabbage hat. Jack did not wear one. This was a stranger. Walking backward, her eyes on the hat moving in time to the horse’s walk, she slipped behind the wall of waist-high ferns and crouched down.

  She saw his face as he rode clear of the trees and paused. It was the bushranger named Sean. Anger and fear collided in her stomach as she stood and lifted the pistol. This was the man who had beaten Thomas nearly to death. He and his friends had murdered Jack. A single shot was all it would take to kill him. He was armed, dangerous. Thomas was hurt too much to withstand a struggle. A squeeze of the trigger, that was all it would take.

  “G’day, miss.” He turned toward her, his hideous face stretched in a smile. “Well now, is that any way to greet an Irishman, I’m asking ye?”

  “Get out of here!” Aisleen shouted, her knees buckling in fear even though it was she who held the gun.

  “Faith! And me about to offer ye me protection to see ye safely back to civilization.” He looked about, smiling. “Or maybe ye already have a protector?”

  “I’m alone,” she said quickly.

  His smile deepened. “Where’s yer horse, then, lass?”

  “I—I hid it.” It was a poor lie. She swallowed. “I heard someone trailing me. I sent it ahead so that I could see who it was.” She managed a weak smile. “You weren’t as clever as you thought.”

  “Nor are ye, to be letting go yer horse in the bush.” He rubbed the whiskers on his chin. “So, will ye be coming along quietly, or will ye make me chase ye?”

  Aisleen steadied the gun, sighting along the barrel as Jack had showed her.

  “Oh, now, ye will nae be doing that! Ye’re too clever and good a lass to kill a man outright. Think of yer soul. What would ye be telling Saint Peter about the murdering of an innocent unarmed man?”

  It was not his taunting that stopped her. She could not have shot him in any case. Thomas was away. It was the thought uppermost in her mind. The longer she detained Sean, the farther away Thomas got. “Stand down!”

  Sean looked taken aback. “Ye’ve a thing or two to learn about a bushman if ye believe he’ll be giving up his horse, even to as fair
a colleen as ye, darling.”

  “If you do not stand down, I will shoot the horse,” Aisleen replied and wondered if she’d have any more courage to do that. She thought fleetingly of the dog Thomas had shot and why. Yes, perhaps she would, for Thomas’s sake. She took aim at the horse’s head.

  Sean threw a leg over his saddle and dismounted, still smiling. “I heard him running away. That’d be just like our Tommy, leaving a lass to face the crime he’s committed. I’m in nae hurry. I’ll be finding him again, never ye fear. He knows now how I’ll be wanting him to die, and so he’ll have that to think on between now and then.”

  As he talked he advanced on her. “Still, he should nae have left so pretty a thing behind him. Did he give ye that bruise? Och! Our Tommy’s that careless a lad.”

  “Stop! Stop right there!” Aisleen demanded. She felt liquid with terror. Her arms ached from holding Thomas. The weight of the gun dragged them downward.

  “I can see that ye’re afraid of me,” Sean said confidently. “There’s nae need for it. Me quarrel’s not with ye. Ye’ve only to show Sean O’Leary yer prettiest smile and he’ll be as gentle as a lamb. I’d never bruise yer face, nae like I done to Tommy Fitzgerald.”

  “Fitzgerald?”

  Sean’s brows lifted. “Did he lie to ye about that, too? He’s no Gibson, lass, though well I don’t wonder he changed his name. He’d have known one of us would be coming after him. Hell could nae have held me back!”

  “Thomas’s name is Fitzgerald?” Aisleen persisted.

  “Aye, Tom Fitzgerald of County Cork. Wrong side of the blanket, I’m told, but a bastard’s a bastard though he be gentry.”

  Aisleen saw his hand move to his waistband. “Don’t! I don’t want to shoot you, but I will! I swear it!”

  “And ruin his fine handsome face!” came a reply in Gaelic.

  The voice so startled her, Aisleen looked away from Sean.

  He stood in the shadow of a distant tree.

  “Tommy, lad, will that be ye?” Sean cried triumphantly and whipped his pistol from his trousers.

  “Top of the morning to you, Sean!” he said.

  “Bheirim don diabhal sibh!” Sean cursed and fired.