Pearl glanced at the chests. ‘There must be hundreds.’
‘More than five thousand, if we include animal ingredients and minerals. Herbology is an art applied to a body of knowledge extending back to the Han Dynasty. There are some five hundred common classical prescriptions with which to begin. However, since each patient’s body is unique, these must then be adjusted to the individual.’
‘It’s a life’s study.’
‘It is so.’
~*~
One day Pearl asked the Doctor for a mirror. He paused for a long moment before replying, ‘The face you have now is altered, but not the being behind the mask. You have seen what was done to your body and you have accepted. It is time to learn whether you can accept another change.’
Pearl, knowing the Bowie knife had been used on her face, was as prepared as she would ever be. She held out her hand for the mirror.
The almond eyes had not been touched. Her button nose retained its shape. But from the corner of her delicate mouth the knife-tip had drawn a line across her cheek up to the temple, splitting the skin like overripe fruit and distorting the curve of her upper lip into a permanent lopsided smile. Livid and raw, with the stitches showing like jagged teeth, it was utter defacement, which might improve with time but could never be restored.
Pearl stared impassively at her reflection, as if at a stranger, the anger and distress she had expected to feel surprisingly absent, as though this thing had been done to someone else.
‘It could have been worse,’ she remarked, giving back the mirror. She fingered the hole in her upper arm where once the brand of a slave had shown. She thought about the damage done to the rest of her body. ‘I don’t have to hide myself from others, like a leper.’
Doctor Hsien Lo looked grave. ‘Later you will feel grief. Remember this time when you are grateful to be alive and able to function. Your face is scarred, but not hideously, and your mind is resilient. You were ready to know The Way.’
‘I was taught to be a Christian, and to use Western medicine. How can I reconcile these with the Tao teachings and the methods you use to heal?’
He spread his thin hands. ‘I am a Buddhist. The Way is open to all who are willing to listen. It is not a religion but a philosophy of living, a pathway of subtle truth which allows us to perceive the gentle operation of the universe.
‘As for the medicine, perhaps there is room for both eastern and western streams. However, I cannot see a way of bringing them into confluence. The western healer views the human body as a machine, governed by mechanical laws, a working system of separate components which can be treated in isolation from the whole, even removed. A doctor of the east views the human being as a microcosm of Nature, a smaller universe in which a damaged part must necessarily throw out the balance of the whole. He is more interested in preventing disease than in treating it. In all my years of study I have acquired only a portion of the knowledge encompassed by this profession. I see the pattern, yet can follow only part.’
Pearl acknowledged the truth of this humble declaration with its unspoken implication that skill in the use of Chinese medicine was beyond her. What doctor would teach a woman such mysteries? Yet she longed to know more of them. Wasn’t she living proof of their efficacy?
However, to her surprise, the Doctor apparently deemed her a suitable pupil, and she soaked up his teaching week after week, healing mentally and physically while absorbing the intricacies and seeming contradictions of the Taoist philosophy as he interpreted it. She was content, and not anxious to disturb the even passage of time.
Then one evening after the last patient had left and Pearl was packing away the herb chest, without warning, the Doctor announced, ‘I have made enquiries. Your brother, Li Po, has been found at a place named Chinaman’s Gully, on the western slopes of White Horse Range, but he has not been told of your search.’
Pearl sat down suddenly. ‘How did you know about him?’
‘You revealed many things when your mind wandered. Will you go to him?’
Suddenly faced with re-entering the world, unprotected, Pearl quailed inwardly. She felt like a turtle that had lost its shell. She felt naked. Still, she must go some time. It might as well be now. ‘Tomorrow,’ she said. ‘I’ve hidden in your shadow long enough, venerable Doctor.’
A smile cracked the smooth surface of his face, crazing it into a thousand wrinkles. His lips parted to show pointed, yellow teeth, and he made a hissing sound of pleasure. ‘You should have been a son. Your father would have taken pride in you.’
Pearl responded with a grimace. ‘My father addressed me only as Second Girl, and sold me when he could. I give my loyalty and respect to one who earns it. You, venerable Doctor, I can never repay. You may ask of me what you will.’
‘Ah. Then you will attempt to follow The Way, in virtue and self-mastery?’
‘I will try.’
‘And you will remember that one of natural, integral virtue helps all people impartially. Thus, no one is abandoned. This is called “embodying the light of the subtle truth.”‘
‘You’re saying, “forgive your enemies” and “turn the other cheek”.’
‘Only by cultivating the virtue of wholeness and by returning injury with kindness can there be true harmony.’
‘I killed a man.’
‘Who died trying to kill you. There is no law against self-preservation.’
Pearl sighed. ‘I have such a long way to go.’
‘Despair is unwarranted. The path of subtle truth of the universe always supports those who are wholly virtuous, and even those who simply “will try”. Come. Take this pack of the herbs whose properties you have learned. Use them as I have shown you, with care and with kindness towards all those in need.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The Reverend John Barton’s cottage proved to be close by the Bathurst coaching inn, but as far from its cosy welcoming aura as an ice house on the moon. Elly and Paul were not invited in beyond the hall with its bare scrubbed boards and smell of boiling sheets, while the minister himself, tight-mouthed and rigidly erect, greeted them with more relief than warmth.
‘The young woman you have come to collect will require the strictest supervision. She appears not to have been taught the most basic principles of behaviour.’
Startled, Elly glanced at Paul, whose brows rose half-comically.
‘Is she a naughty lass?’ he asked. ‘I expect my cousin spoiled her.’
Barton snorted. ‘If you call smearing the inside of my wife’s best teapot with soap and cutting off the brim of my Sunday beaver “naughty”. I call it malice aforethought. She needs to feel a birch broom about her legs.’
‘Surely not!’ Paul and Elly found themselves in chorus, with Elly adding, ‘She’s seventeen years old, Mr Barton. This sounds like quite childish behaviour. Have you treated her as a child, instead of a young woman?’
The door at the end of the hall opened and a figure erupted through it in a flurry of skirts.
‘Oh, Cousin Paul, how wonderful! You’ve come to save me. Take me away from this horrid place. Do you know they locked me in my room on bread and water and threatened to whip me?’ Lucy Whatmough threw herself into Paul’s arms.
A pocket Venus, Elly thought, with the face of a flower and quite the most improbably long lashes she’d ever seen.
Extricating himself from an embrace that brought colour to his cheeks, Paul set Lucy on her feet and held her off like an over-welcoming puppy. ‘Lucy, you must not say such things. It was kind of the Reverend Barton and his good lady to take you in when you had nowhere to go.’
The girl’s face set mutinously, yet Elly’s flower simile was only strengthened – a dewy, opening bud, fresh and enchanting.
Glossy brown curls danced as Lucy shook her head. ‘They were mean and hateful...’
Elly moved past the two, holding out her hand to the indignant minister. ‘I see you have had your difficulties, sir, and on behalf of Mr Gascoigne I thank you
for your Christian charity towards an orphan. I expect you made allowance for her grief, which might give the appearance of wilfulness.’
‘I don’t believe –’
‘You do realise that she recently lost her mother, overnight stepping from the role of daughter to housekeeper/companion to a stricken man, and forced literally from child to adult. Now she’s been made a child again, a negligible piece of property to be quickly disposed of. No wonder she’s angry and confused.’
Barton paused, his expression irresolute. Before he could reply Paul had picked up the bag standing at the door and pushed it and Lucy outside. He re-joined the others to add his thanks and farewells, and bustled Elly out again.
‘This is your bag, Lucy? Good. Now let’s depart this mausoleum before the owner decides to air more grievances.’ He grinned at Lucy. ‘You really have been tiresome, haven’t you? The Reverend Barton has my sympathy.’ He trotted the two women up the street to the inn, not giving Elly a chance to remonstrate.
The temperature had dropped overnight, leaving the road iron-hard where the wheel-ruts had frozen with ice as thick as a shilling, although it hadn’t yet snowed. Paul eyed the threatening clouds and chose to gamble on the weather holding until they were through the mountains.
‘I don’t want to be held here for a week or more. We’ll risk it,’ he said, and went to arrange their seats on the coach.
They left early, without seeing much of the town. Although disappointed, Elly had resigned herself. There would be no chance of intimacy with Paul now that Lucy had joined them, but she couldn’t dislike the girl, so bright, with a mischievous expression which reminded her of Peanut when up to his antics. Except that Lucy was far prettier, if just as curious. She had taken a liking to Elly, peppering her with a thousand questions about Sydney Town, which she had barely seen on her arrival from England before going upcountry.
‘It’s a lively place,’ Elly told her. ‘I think you’ll be happy there. Paul and I will introduce you to our friends and there will be the people where you work.’
Lucy’s face, framed in a fur-lined hood, bore a frown. ‘I don’t want to make hats for other women. I’d like to have pretty clothes and ride every day in a carriage.’ She fingered her plain woollen gown with distaste. Elly could almost see visions of silken furbelows dancing in Lucy’s head.
‘One day you shall. But most people have to earn these rewards. There’s a lot of satisfaction in working towards a solid future.’
‘Do you work? I thought you were a lady.’
So Elly explained about the hospital and time passed quickly, with Lucy entranced by stories of minor disasters and funny happenings. In some ways, Elly realised, she was younger than her seventeen years, a little spoilt, and eager to taste life to the full. However, in appearance she was fully a woman, with a body men would notice and blue eyes big enough to drown in. All in all, Elly thought, Paul would have a lively time caring for his young cousin.
While he sat in his corner seat and listened, looking positively patriarchal, Lucy made friendly overtures to a woman with a new baby and began to interrogate her. The woman’s husband, a government agent, plus an elderly man with gout and a temperament to match, made up the remainder of the inside passengers. Elly pictured those on the roof as rigid as frozen dolls, their hands permanently tightened on the sidebars. For their sake she hoped the snow would hold off.
They spent the night at the foot of the pass, next day beginning the steep climb early when the sun hid behind the crags and frost still lay in the shadows of the tablelands two thousand feet above sea level. Today the passengers huddled into shawls and under rugs and conversation remained sporadic, except with the volatile Lucy. Expired breath hung like a mist in the air and the crack of the driver’s whip rang like shattered crystal above the clatter of hooves.
Half-way up the pass they caught up with a bullock dray from the inland laden with wool gathered from the last clip and headed for English mills. The sixteen great beasts heaved and strained against the yokes, their strong necks stretched under the tremendous weight, their hooves slipping on the icy slope. The driver cracked his whip and bellowed, pulling his team against the cliff face so that the coach could edge by. Elly peered out over a dizzy drop to the valley floor and closed her eyes, refusing to open them until Lucy told her they had the road to themselves again.
‘Wasn’t it exciting, Miss Ballard?’ The girl bounced in her seat. ‘Do you think the poor beasts will make it to the top before nightfall? I’d hate to travel so slowly. Cousin Paul, how long do you think it will be before we reach Sydney Town?’
Answering these and other questions kept Elly and Paul occupied for the morning. The sun eventually appeared to drive away the mist and the forest echoed with the crazy call of the laughing jackass, who had frightened many a settler into reaching for his gun before he realised it was only a bird. The day dragged out, even for Lucy, and Elly looked forward to the morrow’s final lap, down the eastern slopes onto the plains, with a clear run through to Parramatta.
The public nature of their travels had scotched her plan to draw emotionally closer to Paul, although she believed he could have arranged it somehow. He hadn’t wanted to. He seemed happy to retreat into friendship; and clearly for him the incident at Botany Bay was not merely closed, but erased. Longing to confront him, to force some kind of reaction, she found she couldn’t do it. What if he were embarrassed? What if she made an utter fool of herself yet had to remain by his side, her thigh pressed against his with each lurch of the coach?
She slept badly, waking to a silent, white-blanketed world compressed beneath a canopy of snow-laden cloud. The ostler and coachman cursed as they poled up the team, carefully checking all the equipment. Elly didn’t blame the coachman for downing a couple of rums against the cold before he heaved himself onto the box seat, but watched doubtfully as he pocketed a whole bottle. The government agent queried the chances of them getting through, although their driver was sanguine.
‘It’s downhill all the way, and Jack Tyler and his team have never been stopped yet.’ He wound his muffler around his chin and picked up the reins. The passengers scrambled aboard and they were off.
Paul fastened the leather window covers carefully, winking at Lucy. ‘I’d sooner not spend another night with the fleas. What do you think?’
She smiled at him sleepily and snuggled her head into her hood, prepared to join the rest of the passengers who were drifting off. By the time the carriage reverberated with snores, Elly knew by Paul’s manner that he had something particular to say to her. Her pulse beat faster, while she clasped her hands in her muff to hide their tremor.
Eventually he brought his head down near hers, saying softly, ‘I want to speak to you about D’Arcy Cornwallis.’
Stabbed with disappointment, she took time to control her voice. ‘Yes? I haven’t seen him since that regrettable incident, although he’s written to apologise, many times.’
‘How much do you know about him, Elly?’
She said ruefully, ‘Only that I’ll miss his support at the Hospital Board Meetings. He’s a powerful orator, able to sway the other members as he wills.’
‘I know a good deal about him, in his capacity as a landowner, a business entrepreneur, a lobbyist. He gives generously of time and money to charity, presenting an altogether admirable figure to the world.’
Elly waited, aware that he had not finished.
‘However, there’s another side to his character which is not so well known, and which you’ve seen.’
‘J.G. did hint as much to me. I refused to listen, to my regret.’
‘He’s dangerous, believe me. There are stories of what goes on in his town house and down on his Camden property, although he pays heavily to hide the truth. He also deals in fear. His business activities are questionable, at the least, while his character with women is appalling. A man has ways of knowing these things.’
‘That’s monstrous, Paul. Surely some of these tales are jea
lous gossip spread by his business opponents.’ Light and shade, she thought. Putting aside her own experience, how much of the originally courteous and intelligent Cornwallis was the real man, and how much the villain painted by report?
‘There’s always gossip about prominent men, I’ll admit. But this is something more. I have definite knowledge of this man, Elly, and I beg you not to have dealings with him, no matter how apologetic he is, no matter how many matters he may wish to discuss with you privately concerning the hospital. You have seen him humiliated. He won’t forgive that.’
Elly, disappointed at his choice of topic, yet pleased by his care for her safety, could only thank Paul while promising to be particularly watchful. She assured him that she had no wish to see Cornwallis again, and hoped that he’d take no further interest in her battles with the Board.
Yet after Paul leaned into the corner, composing himself for a doze, she found she couldn’t dismiss the subject. He had opened a closed box in her mind, recalling her last meeting with Cornwallis and his expression before he limped off into the night.
A shiver of more than apprehension ran through her. Something inhuman had looked out of his eyes, something she’d never seen in any other person, however angry or humiliated. It had challenged her with its promise of vengeance. She’d known she was marked for future pain and regret, and had been so frightened she’d buried the knowledge, closing it off while she went on with her busy life, coping with the drama and heartbreak of others. Now Paul had forced her to remember, bringing apprehension sweeping in like a dark wind to chill her from head to foot.
By mid-afternoon snow gusted past the windows in icy veils, bringing early night with it. The forest on either side of the track had formed impenetrable walls, hemming the coach in, enclosing the passengers in a silent deserted world. Where had all the other travellers gone? Surely the horses picked their way by instinct alone. Could they be trusted to bring them all safely home?
A HAZARD OF HEARTS Page 27