Fortune's Son

by Jennifer Scoullar

  Strange, beehive-shaped domes were clustered at the edge of the sandstone escarpment. ‘This was once part of an ancient inland lake,’ said Daniel. ‘Its bed gouged from the wilderness by long-vanished glaciers. Weather eroded the soft sandstone, revealing these wind-carved towers of iron.’

  Despite Daniel’s explanation, Luke couldn’t shake the feeling that the odd terraced towers were sculpted by an invisible human hand.

  They set up camp in a cave a mile further west, at the bottom of the waterfall, beside its deep, reflective pool. It provided an ideal base for the youngsters to be reintroduced into the wild. Their plan was to keep Bear and the cubs hungry, thereby encouraging them to seek their own food.

  On the first night, the animals stayed close by. Morning found them sound asleep in the ferny nest Luke had made for them at the rear of the cave. They slept the day away, while Luke explored with Bear, familiarising the dog with his new surroundings.

  As afternoon wore into evening, the hungry cubs awoke. They hung around the camp for a while, unsuccessfully begging for food. Then King trotted off into the forest, followed by his sisters. Bear whined, watching them go, then gave his customary sharp bark and took off after the cubs. Luke grinned at Daniel. Now all they could do was wait and hope that Bear would bring them safely home by morning.

  At first light the animals emerged from the mist, bellies distended, and snuggled down in their bed to sleep. Bear sat companionably with Luke for a few minutes. Fresh blood spattered his chest. Before long, he too curled up and slept.

  This became the pattern of their days. The animals hunting nightly. Daniel and Luke exploring, collecting specimens and sketching rock paintings. Late winter sun shining in a cloudless sky. The cliffs reflected its warmth so it almost felt like spring. Luke’s worries faded into the background: grief over Angus’s death, guilt over his forbidden love affair with Belle – how could one worry in such a paradise? He could stay like this forever.

  After an idyllic fortnight, Daniel announced it was time for him to return to Binburra. ‘I’ll be back in a few weeks. Once the tigers are settled, we’ll dynamite the cave entrance up at Tiger Pass to seal off the valley. I want you to search for signs of other thylacines. My hope is that our cubs might mate with wild tigers to form a safe breeding stock.’

  Luke nodded, thrilled to be appointed to such an important task. The prospect of living rough with the animals as his sole companions didn’t daunt him. Bear was no longer the only one torn between two worlds.

  CHAPTER 27

  One morning, shortly after Luke left for Tiger Pass, Belle didn’t get up.

  Her mother looked in on her before leaving to teach at the little mine school. ‘Be lazy if you like,’ she said. ‘I’ve no time for your moods.’

  But this was no mood. Belle feared she was with child.

  She waited for her mother to leave, went to the library, and took a large volume off the shelf: Advice to Mothers on the Management of their Offspring, a popular book on women’s health. Then she hurried back to her room. As a curious child, Belle had often sneaked this book from the shelf. Now she turned to the section on pregnancy.

  The first sign of pregnancy was ‘ceasing to become unwell’, which she guessed meant ceasing her periods. Horrified, Belle realised she had the second and third signs too – nausea, and painful, swollen breasts. The symptoms had bothered her for weeks now, and could no longer be dismissed as figments of the imagination. She slipped the book under her bed and hugged Sasha tightly, more certain than ever that she was in trouble.

  In the coming days, anxiety ruled Belle. She couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep. Her mane of auburn hair went uncombed and unwashed. She stopped bathing. The truth was, she couldn’t bear to undress and reveal the body that had so betrayed her. If only she could talk to someone, but who? Sasha listened sympathetically, but offered no advice. Millie was the world’s biggest gossip. Luke and her father had vanished into the ranges with Bear and the tigers. Telling Grace or Edward would cause a scandal, and it would be too humiliating to confide in her mother.

  So Belle spent her days alone. Galloping Whisky at punishing speeds up the waterfall track was her only plan. She hoped it might bring on her period or that she’d discover Luke and Bear waiting for her at their special place by the falls. She was always disappointed. Sitting for hours in the mossy nest she’d shared with Luke, listening to the constant murmur of falling water. Crushingly alone. She may as well have been the last person on earth. Only that little stream, weeping beside her, brought any comfort.

  Elizabeth woke one morning to find Belle had thrown up her meagre breakfast. She wasn’t the only one suspicious now. Belle’s ‘nervous condition’ was becoming the talk of the household. A knot formed in Elizabeth’s stomach. This could be put off no longer.

  She found Belle in her room, huddled on the edge of the bed, her once rosy complexion sallow and wan. Upon seeing her mother, Belle burst out crying. Elizabeth dreaded having to ask, but fear of the unthinkable hardened her heart. She had to know.

  A pregnancy would be the unthinkable. In proper society, a girl could have no sexual contact prior to marriage. A hand around the waist or a stolen kiss was all young couples could hope for. Men engaged in pre-marital sex only with servants or prostitutes. Girls were virgins on their wedding night, mostly entirely ignorant and often terrified. Whether this was right or wrong did not concern Elizabeth now. It was just the way it was. She sat beside her daughter, who turned her face to the wall.

  ‘Belle?’ No response. ‘Belle, what’s wrong?’ Elizabeth took her daughter’s wrists, pulling her to her feet and forcing eye contact. The shame she saw confirmed it. ‘Oh, my poor darling.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mama.’

  Elizabeth swept her daughter up in a fierce, protective embrace. For the longest time they held each other, reconnecting. When they finally fell together on the bed, Belle began to talk. Elizabeth still held her, stroking her hair, murmuring encouragement when racking sobs interrupted the flood of words. At last Belle was spent.

  ‘Ask Millie to run a bath and wash your hair. When she asks what is wrong, as the meddling girl is bound to do, you must complain that it’s your time of the month. Then put on a day dress, not trousers, and wait in your room.’

  For the first time in a long time, Belle meekly obeyed her mother.

  Elizabeth dispatched Davey to town for the doctor and lay down in her room to steady her racing heart. Grimly, she held onto the hope that this was nothing more than an adolescent fit of depression. Or too much exercise? Ada Mitchell often chastised her for allowing Belle to ride out at will. Ada subscribed to the popular belief that genteel girls must be protected from activity. Too much exercise was rumoured to cause them dizzy spells and nausea, perhaps even unbalancing them permanently. Until now Elizabeth had considered this idea outdated and foolish. She hoped she was wrong.

  Elizabeth reluctantly considered her options if Belle really was pregnant. There were plenty of potions on the market. Mothers of children attending her school often discussed the various efficacies of these medications – aloes, iron, cathartic powders – available from chemist shops, or by mail order though newspapers. The concoctions were advertised as female pills or ‘cures for abnormal interruptions to monthly cycles’. They were largely ineffective and sometimes dangerous, but she blanched at the prospect of her own dear daughter undergoing the horrific alternative – surgical abortion.

  There was another option, of course – the most common one for girls in this sort of trouble. A hasty marriage. But Belle could never marry Luke. Even Elizabeth, with her thoroughly modern views on society, could not countenance such a thing. A convicted felon. A fugitive without money or prospects was an impossible match for her daughter. Another possibility came to mind, but for now she cast it aside. First things first.

  Dr Lovejoy arrived promptly after lunch and took a glum and nervous-looking Belle off to her room for an examination. He emerged, stern-faced, some twenty minutes
later.

  ‘I believe your daughter is in the early stages of pregnancy. I’m sorry to be the bearer of such news.’

  Elizabeth nodded miserably, not really surprised. ‘Is she well otherwise?’

  ‘On that matter, I can reassure you. A little thin, perhaps, but on the whole Isabelle presents as a healthy young woman.’

  ‘Thank you, Doctor,’ said Elizabeth. ‘I trust I can rely on your absolute discretion?’

  ‘Of course, ma’am. I understand that you have some difficult decisions to make. Be assured you can rely on my help.’

  Elizabeth’s eyes moistened as she grasped his hand. ‘I pray to God it doesn’t come to that.’

  With a brief bow of his head, Dr Lovejoy excused himself.

  Elizabeth went to see Belle. Despite the embarrassing examination and awful confirmation that she was indeed with child, a vast weight seemed to have lifted from her daughter’s shoulders. Belle laid her head in her mother’s lap. ‘You’ll know what to do, won’t you, Mama? And Luke will be back soon.’

  Elizabeth shushed her, squeezing her hand. ‘They say a trouble shared is a trouble halved.’

  Sasha’s loud barking from the back verandah alerted the pair to someone’s approach. They both rushed to the window. Only one man, Daniel, trudged down the hill towards the house. Belle gave a cry of utter despair.

  This will simplify things, thought Elizabeth, grateful to Daniel for leaving Luke behind.

  CHAPTER 28

  A tremendous calm settled on Luke in his solitude. Bear disappeared each evening with the tigers, but, in this remote place, Luke didn’t fear for their safety. Men and his flocks were a world away.

  Each day, Luke and Bear explored the valley’s extensive limestone cave system. There were more hand stencils to be found on the rock walls. Daniel said this art was many thousands of years old. A recurring image of a pair of hands showed the outline of an elegant, long-fingered right hand, and only the stubs of fingers on the left. Luke amused himself by inventing theories to explain this. In other caves he discovered engraved symbols, lines of dots, carved domes, spirals and circles.

  Luke carefully recorded and mapped each find, as Daniel had asked him to. His favourite carvings were of animal tracks, particularly those of emus. He’d heard stories of this unusual flightless bird, hunted to extinction only fifty years earlier. Apparently it stood as high as a man’s shoulder. Daniel said its even-larger cousin still survived in numbers on the mainland. One day he’d take Belle to see them.

  It was an unseasonably warm winter. At night, the Southern Cross blazed, brightest of the countless stars in the sky. Each day dawned more brilliant than the last. Lorikeet, magpie and butcherbird song beaded the fragrant air. Emerald rosellas flashed like flying jewels through the trees, and, at twilight, lazy flights of black cockatoos came to roost in the sheltered valley. Days melded into each other. Luke scratched notches in the wall of his home cave to mark the time. He kept a daily journal, so he could share every detail of his trip with Belle when he went home.

  It became easy to imagine that he and Belle might have a future, easy to imagine that one day she’d be his wife. In this grand isolation, far from the constraints and conventions of civilisation, anything seemed possible. This wasn’t like those lonely days back at Clarry’s little hut. Things were different now. He belonged.

  Soon he’d return to Belle and the complications their love inevitably faced. But, for now, Luke was content to just exist – exist with the animals, exist free from guilt, exist outside of the rules. Some invisible pressure lifted, allowing an exquisite appreciation of the teeming life around him. Occasionally, at dawn, he hunted with the pack, feeling at one with all creation. Luke would dearly miss this place.

  Then at dusk one night, while he cooked a stew with the last night’s wallaby and some onions from his dwindling rations, he heard the distinct call of a tiger. Not one of his. Bear and the cubs still lounged in the cave, relaxing ahead of the night’s hunt. They pricked their ears, then stole off into the twilight. Luke’s skin tingled with excitement. This was what he and Daniel had hoped for – the cubs weren’t alone in the valley.

  Next morning, Luke scoured the nearby forest trails with a tracker’s practised eye. In mud, beside a shallow upstream pool, lay the distinct tracks of a thylacine, too large to belong to the cubs. He examined the prints, memorising their appearance and location, followed them for a while, then lost them on a rocky riverbank.

  ‘Well, mate,’ he said to Bear, who seemed keen to follow the trail. ‘It’s up to you now.’

  The dog gambolled round and round his master, pretending to pounce. Then off he went, nose to ground, Luke close behind. They travelled for almost an hour, following the dark, swift-running stream. As the day warmed up, they sometimes stopped to play in the water. Bear, with the odd, webbed feet of the Newfoundland, was a strong, enthusiastic swimmer. Luke enjoyed holding onto his collar and being towed around the deep pools that punctuated the stream’s course.

  After one such swim, Luke lay back lazily in the winter sun, on clean, white river sand. Something jabbed him in the back. He sat up. There, almost buried, was a rusty gold-panning dish. Luke picked it up in disbelief. Daniel was wrong; others knew about the valley. How long might the pan have lain there? No more than a couple of years, by the look of it.

  Luke re-examined everything he knew of the caves in light of this find, wondering if he’d missed something – signs of a fire or a camp. This intrusion from the outside world shattered his perfect peace. He was suddenly mindful that he didn’t even have his rifle with him, so foolishly complacent had he become. Abandoning the tiger’s trail, he hurried back home, keenly aware the cubs slept there unprotected.

  Sleep would not come that night, although drowsy stars blinked in the sky and winds swirled in lazy play about the cliffs. The moon rose over timber-crested escarpments, coating everything in silver, and a terrible nostalgia overcame him. Thoughts of his mother and sister. Perhaps, right now, they gazed up at that same moon. Thoughts of his father, so hard-working and kind. Dead because of him. Their old rooster. Did he still crow on moonlit nights like this? But that was silly. That cock would be dead, too, the house and coop owned by strangers. His memories of home were trapped in time, frozen in childhood. Perhaps writing his journal might distract him from this terrible homesickness. Luke took it out by the falls. The bright sky was mirrored in the water’s polished surface, magnifying the moonshine, turning night to day.

  He tried to write, but couldn’t concentrate. That voice, the murmuring voice of the waterfall, sounded a different note this evening – one of melancholy sweetness. The song of the falls was always in his ears, day and night. He heard it when he ate, when he woke, when he slept, when he dreamed . . . and now it somehow became Belle’s voice, urging him home to Binburra.

  From far down the valley, Bear’s howl echoed, long and mournful, into the empty pit of the sky. Luke put down his journal and dived in the freezing water, swimming lengths of the glassy pool until his restless limbs trembled with fatigue. Then, his nervous energy spent, he returned to camp. Still restless, still uneasy.

  He resigned himself to a wakeful night, waiting for morning to outline the cave entrance against the brightening bush. It was only when Bear and the tigers returned safely from the hunt that Luke allowed himself to sleep, rifle cocked and ready at his side.

  CHAPTER 29

  Belle and Edward would marry and pass the child off as their own. This was Elizabeth’s plan. It was useless approaching Jane Abbott with the truth. She possessed far too great a regard for both propriety and her husband’s opinion. No, if Elizabeth was to save her daughter she must approach the young man himself, then, in circumstances of utmost privacy, confide her daughter’s condition and cast them all on his mercy.

  Elizabeth suspected he might be a willing conspirator, for she guessed he already loved Belle. In any case, deceitful and dangerous as this option was, the alternatives were worse. Elizabeth wa
s damned if she’d allow her daughter to bear an illegitimate child and live a life of disgrace and public shame. But she knew full well she must guard against her own misgivings. So, a shield rose around her heart, strengthening her resolve and shutting out the sentimentality that might bring them all undone.

  On the pretext of organising Belle’s seventeenth birthday party, Elizabeth invited herself to Canterbury Downs. She waited until Jane became distracted with a household matter and then made her move. ‘Edward, can I discuss birthday presents for Belle? You know her so well.’

  ‘Of course, Mrs Campbell.’

  ‘Shall we go down to the greenhouse? I can admire your mother’s gorgeous orchids while we talk.’

  ‘Why doesn’t Belle come around any more?’ Edward asked. ‘It’s rumoured that she’s ill.’

  ‘My dearest Edward. May I confide in you? In a sense my daughter’s life depends upon it.’

  Edward went white. She laid her hand on his arm, and there in the conservatory, surrounded by delicate hothouse flowers of the most exotic kind, Elizabeth confessed all. She left nothing out, not even his father’s brutal attack on Luke’s sister. They moved to a bench by the doorway, offering a clearer view should someone approach. Edward sat for the longest time.

  ‘Madam,’ he said at last, ‘I love your daughter with all my heart and have done since we were children. Nothing would please me more than to marry her, but why would she have me, if not for love? Belle is not one to obediently accept another’s counsel – I fear not even her mother’s.’

  ‘She will have no choice. Otherwise I will betray Luke to your father.’

  ‘She is to be blackmailed into marrying me?’

  ‘To protect her, yes. In time, Belle will thank me and come to adore you. She also has loved you since childhood, and confessed this to me more than once.’