‘“Residents of our great Colony will be appalled to learn of the scandal surrounding one of its foremost citizens, a man whose advantages of birth and wealth have been grossly misused in the torture and degradation of his fellow creatures. It has been revealed that the owner of a model property in Camden, The Hon. D.... C........., a man renowned for his intelligent and modern attitude towards farming and husbandry, whose horse-breeding facilities are second to none, whose animals enjoy a princely existence, is no more than a callous monster in his dealings with his own kind...”‘
Elly allowed her thoughts to drift, unwilling to listen once again to the tale of cruelty and violence which had so shocked her when she first heard it. The evidence had been supplied by Cornwallis’ overseer in a long-overdue rebellion against the brutality, especially when applied to a member of his own family. It had been stupid of Cornwallis to antagonise his companion in crime. Or had he finally over-stepped the line of rationality? He had to be mad to have organised such orgies of torture involving the men assigned to him. Their sufferings didn’t bear contemplation.
Instead, she forced her mind to the speeches she had made, and the interest she’d begun to arouse in the community. Several women already involved in charitable enterprises had offered their services. As Jo-Beth had said, the campaign grew stronger daily. Still, she needed to reach more people. Aware of sudden silence, she looked up at the appalled faces of the two women.
Pearl asked, ‘Is it true?’
When Paul nodded, Jo-Beth said in some awe, ‘How do you dare expose him? He’ll be murderous.’
‘No doubt. But it finishes him.’
His gaze was remote, a part of him not with them in the room. He was remembering his father, Elly thought. Well he had his revenge. How did he like it? J.G. had been correct to liken Cornwallis to a reptile, the worst kind, as vicious as the unprovoked tiger snake. They had stirred him to a wild rage and now, with his own life in ruins, anything could happen.
~*~
Elly’s decision to speak publicly in the Domain had not been lightly made. She knew she would be exposing herself as no lady should, risking being dubbed a light woman seeking personal publicity at the expense of her reputation.
She also knew it was the way to reach people of all classes and backgrounds. If she could capture the interest of the masses, the factory girls, clerks, house-maids and labourers, as well as the masters and mistresses, all of whom used the pleasant parkland for recreation, if she could carry her message into the humblest homes and the mansions, she would spread hope for the future amongst those without hope. A groundswell was needed to bring about change. Paul had been right. It had to come through the process of law, pushed for by the great majority. So she must risk anything to gain their support.
On a bright July day, with the flags on Government House snapping away from the poles and just an edge of frost to the air, Elly climbed onto a specially erected platform in the Public Domain. The unusual sight of an obvious lady clutching her hat in the breeze while addressing passers-by soon drew a crowd, although before long a coarser element began to drown her out with their jeers. She persisted, knowing she was losing the battle, and that people who might have listened had begun to drift away.
Paul, beside her, wanted to take her place, to drag the crowd in with his well-known face. They were always happy to listen to politics. But Elly would not let him. It was her cause. It was up to her to capture her audience.
Her voice had begun to crack under the strain of shouting above the interjections when in the distance she heard martial music. Then over the rise marched the red-coated bandsmen of the 11th Foot led by J.G. twirling his knob-topped cane, and followed by a party of women stepping out with precision. Jo-Beth and Pearl, demure as ever, headed the procession of nurses and ex-patients spearing through the thickening crowd to stand before Elly’s improvised rostrum. The uniformed nurses, so smart and proud, the women with babies in their arms, dressed in the best they could find and all beaming at Elly, brought a lump to her throat. So many of them, all here to encourage and sustain her.
The music rose to a final crescendo of blaring brass then ceased. J.G. stepped up and bowed to Elly, then turned to the rapidly growing audience. People descended from carriages to hasten across the grass, while others skirmished on the edge of the group, seeking a way in.
J.G. opened his lungs and bellowed, ‘Citizens of Sydney, you are greatly privileged today to hear a speech by one of our foremost Ladies, the former Matron of Sydney Hospital, to whom so many of you owe gratitude, if not your lives. She has something to say which you will wish to hear. I know you will do her the courtesy of listening.’
A lad in a cabbage-tree hat yelled a rude comment, but others cuffed him to silence. J.G. bowed to Elly once more then stood back, and before her nerves overcame her, she plunged into her speech. Its content was on the lines of the one given at the Royal Hotel, and she noted increased interest in the listening women. But at the end she had a special message for the men.
‘You all know what terrible reports we have had of the War in the Crimea. The despatches sent to London by newspaper journalists have revealed the shocking state of the hospitals and lack of care for our soldiers, who die, not on the battlefields, but in the hospitals, and not so much of their wounds as of disease and neglect.’
An angry roar greeted these words. She waited until it had died down.
‘I’d like to tell you that something is being done about it, by a woman dedicated to caring for the sick and wounded men, together with a band of nurses trained by her. These are all ordinary, decent women with compassionate hearts, plus a good deal of common-sense – just like the women I had begun to train in our own hospital here in Sydney. The old image of the nurse as illiterate, untrained, dirty, drunken – all the epithets which have, with some validity, been thrown at her – is now out of date. Nurses are people to be respected and valued. These nurses here before me are a vanguard of the army of qualified women who will forge into the future with a profession to be proud of. And you, the people of this Colony, will be the gainers.
‘Citizens of Sydney, we are at war with a far more dreadful enemy than the Russians. We are always at war with disease; there will always be accidents; people will still try to kill one another. Our hospitals should be places of refuge and healing, but this will only come about if you, the people of this city, take an interest in your own health. The responsibility can’t be pushed off onto bureaucrats or well-meaning charities having little understanding of health needs. We must make our will known to our leaders, by using public pressure to create the health system we want. Already we’ve gained the approval of several highly placed officials, of journalists, of district doctors whose experience supports all I’ve said about our city’s needs. Now you must do your part.’
From the moment she stepped down she was mobbed, and for days afterwards people continued to call at the Patterson house to discuss her ideas. She found she had plucked a nerve of the city and the women, in particular, were in the mood to fight for change. Committees were organised to lobby members of the Legislative Council, to raise fighting funds, to petition the Colonial Secretary, Deas Thomson, due to return from London shortly, for an investigation into the activities of the Hospital Board, with special reference to the dismissal of Matron Ballard.
J.G. kept the impetus going in The Empire; Paul spoke about health at his rallies; Jo-Beth and Pearl helped Elly organise further meetings and answer letters and queries. The movement began to swell, until Elly let herself hope there would be enough pressure generated for an explosion. It was not yet clear what form the explosion would take, or whether it would be sufficiently well-directed to achieve the radical changes she wanted.
But while she pondered this, a letter of a different kind arrived, which she’d have liked to burn and forget, but could not. It was a plea for help, from the former Nurse Jenkins, who had apparently fallen upon hard times after her dismissal. Typically, she couldn’t res
ist blaming Elly for her fall, as she begged for her help. Even so, while feeling no responsibility for Jenkins turning to whoring, Elly couldn’t reject a woman dying alone, and a fatherless baby to be cared for.
Pearl offered to go in her stead, but Elly, already familiar with Durand’s Alley, insisted she would be safer than an obvious foreigner, and anyway, the duty was hers.
‘I’ll be back before supper. Don’t worry about me.’ She packed a satchel with food and medicine before sending for a cab. ‘If matters are as bad as Jenkins says, I’ll most likely arrange her admission to the hospital. Can you and Jo-Beth manage alone?’ She referred to the funding committee about to meet in their parlour.
Pearl cast up her eyes, and Elly apologised, then hurried away.
As before, the cabbie refused to enter the malodorous warren of Durand’s Alley, so Elly set off on foot with her satchel on her back. Since it was still daylight she could see where to put her feet to avoid the worst of the refuse. When Barty shot past with a crowd of mischief-bent allies, she waved to him and asked after his Grannam. She found Jenkins’ shanty lodging without much difficulty, and at her knock was admitted at once into a room so gloomy she could scarcely discern the bundle in the corner.
‘Jenkins? Is that you?’
A baby whimpered. Elly felt her way forward, stumbled over some object in her path, and was seized from behind. A heavy cloth came down over her head as she struggled and cried out. Then something hit her. Blinding pain burst through her skull, then nothingness.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
The darkness had an oddly thick quality, like wool brushing her face. Her head felt as if the wool had got in to wind itself around her brain, slowing it to a plod. Even her mouth tasted of flannel, with a furry coat on her tongue. I’m mildly concussed, she thought, aware of a singing in her ears and the dull ache that accompanied it. But where was she? And what had hit her?
Events prior to her waking in darkness were still hazy, but she vaguely remembered young Barty’s impish face somewhere in the recent past, and a door opening into a dimly lit room. What happened afterwards was still a mystery. Her muscles, too, ached, and she lay still while mentally probing the rest of her body, deciding that she rested on something hard and chilly, perhaps a straw-stuffed mattress. It smelled dank, and she shifted her head, then cried out as a sword blade of pain thrust through her skull, leaving her limp and nauseated. Whimpering, she tried to raise her hands but was brought up short as metal jabbed her wrists. It couldn’t be...! But it was true. Her hands were cuffed together and attached to a length of chain.
Horrified, she yanked at the chain, feeling the gyves bight deep into her skin, ignoring the hurt as she twisted and turned like a snared animal, the agony thundering in her head not enough to drown the sudden onset of terror.
She couldn’t guess how long she struggled to free herself before lying back exhausted, tears sliding down her cheeks into her hair. She was trapped. There was no way the chain could be torn from the stone wall that grazed her fingers – cold, gritty blocks with no gaps between. Time passed in periods of panic interspersed with moments of clarity when she fought to understand what had happened to her. She got as far as realising that her enemy, Cornwallis, was responsible, and hot waves of anger poured over her, only to recede, leaving her shivering with cold fear. What was planned for her? What revenge did he plot in his distorted mind?
Later, she considered when she might be missed. Pearl and Jo-Beth would be anxious if she hadn’t returned by suppertime. Midnight might have come and gone, for all she knew. The men would mount an immediate search. But where? Cornwallis had gone into hiding, and would use his wealth cover his trail. She wouldn’t be imprisoned in his city house or the farm at Camden. Both could be too easily searched. Yet Cornwallis might own any number of properties in any part of the Colony, not necessarily in his name.
What if she had been unconscious for days and carried into the Outback? No. Unlikely. People struggling for existence in the bush did not bother with stone cellars. Why did she think it was a cellar? Perhaps the smell, the faint aroma of spirits bringing back a memory of the hotel in The Settlement? That was it – a waft of spilt liquor underlying the thick, musty atmosphere. Which meant she had most likely been confined beneath an inn or a wealthy private home in a large town.
She was pleased at having arrived at a conclusion, even an unprovable one. She still had charge of her wits and had not been reduced to the status of paralysed prey. Yes, that was the way to stave off dread. Plan and plot to out-think the enemy. Be ready for him when he came.
That thought almost tipped the scale back into panic, but she hurriedly regained her balance. She must not meet him already demoralised by her own fears. He would be hoping for it. That was how he worked, letting his victims create their own frightening scenarios and suffer unnecessary torment. Well, she would not play the game. He would have to do his own bloodcurdling, and work hard at it to make her knees knock before him.
With renewed courage, she sat up, swinging her legs over the side of the cot she lay on. But the short chain would not allow her to sit forward. She drew up her legs and curled back against the wall. When he came, he wouldn’t find her prostrate and helpless.
A key turned in a lock and a glimmer of light appeared outlining a door opposite. Cornwallis entered, an oil lamp held high in one hand.
Elly waited until her eyes had adjusted to the light, then looked up to see him standing over her, smiling unpleasantly. She knew he was savouring her powerlessness and it helped her to focus on her anger. His smile became a sneer, an effort to degrade her with his deliberate surveillance, as if she were an object of dubious value. Raising her chin, she glared back at him.
‘Well, Miss Eleanor Ballard, who is now the victor?’
She allowed her own lip to curl. ‘Do you call it victory to be forced to skulk like a rat in a hole? I’d call it ignominy.’
Her thrust had no noticeable effect. ‘You sing loud, my dear, but you are still a caged bird.’
‘The rat versus the bird. Do you plan to eat me for supper?’ Elly was pleased with her steady voice.
‘Something of the kind. I’ve not yet decided on your fate, but I assure you it will be as poetic and demeaning as I can contrive. That’s simple justice, considering what you and your assistants have done to me.’
‘We only had to pull the string. You unravelled your own fabrication of lies. It was hardly possible for us to smirch a life so tainted with cruelty and self-seeking.’
Cornwallis carefully set down the lamp then bent down to slap her cheeks, hard cracks with an open palm, almost splitting her skin open. Tears jetted from her eyes. She tasted blood.
‘Keep a hold on your bold tongue, mistress.’ He straightened up. ‘I’ll leave you to summon a little humility while I break my fast. Are you hungry? I regret that I cannot invite you to sit at table with me.’ He picked up the lamp.
Elly turned her burning face aside, waiting for him to leave. The light faded and she heard the door close heavily.
What now, she wondered? Starvation? Or was he toying with her, intending to return with some new form of torment? Her impotence, which left her open to any kind of attack, would be a stimulant to a man of his type. If he came to her in the mood for rape would he be excited more by resistance or by feeble capitulation? What a useless exercise, in any case. She could never bring herself to submit tamely. She’d fight him whatever the cost. What she needed was a weapon of some sort, to give her a small advantage.
Picturing the cellar as she’d briefly seen it, she could recall nothing beyond the iron cot and stone walls and floor. He had not even offered her water. The small added cruelty was typical. Oh, for a gun, or even a knife. She was sure she could bring herself to use one, if driven to it. But she’d never let him see her fear. It was a point of honour for a Ballard, instilled by her father and hedged with personal pride.
Yet midwinter cold had entered the cellar, and hunger and thirst added to he
r misery. By the time Cornwallis reappeared an hour later, Elly was racked by tremors, her jaw clamped tight, not to mislead her captor into thinking her craven.
But the man had changed tactics. In the hand not holding the lamp he carried a wine flask, while over his arm lay a thick padded quilt which he wrapped tenderly about her. She took the proffered flask, clutching it with icy hands, and drank it all. Her head began to spin and she huddled into the comforting folds of quilt, hazily trying to fathom Cornwallis’ new attitude.
Settling on the end of her cot, he smiled without a trace of a sneer. ‘I am not the monster you think me, Eleanor.’
She eyed him warily, waiting.
‘I want to talk with you. I’d like you to appreciate my motives. You are the most sympathetic of all the women I’ve known.’
She was incredulous. Why should she care what drove him to such lengths? Why did it matter to him that she should understand his depravities? But let him talk, if it was what he wanted. Talking did no harm.
In a voice growing more taut by the minute, Cornwallis began recounting his experiences as a young boy, caged in luxury deep in the countryside while his parents travelled or enjoyed the London Season, forgetting his existence. He rambled on about loneliness and the perversions taught by servants; the beatings by a cruel tutor; the encouragement of a streak in his nature which could take pleasure in the torment of hunted prey. Recounting instances, his face lit with excitement, and Elly shivered, not daring to interrupt but hoping he’d soon pass on to less disturbing reminiscences.
‘I grew to love pain, even my own,’ Cornwallis said. ‘Yet masochism, over-indulged, ends in self-destruction, and I wanted to live life to the full, to extract the maximum enjoyment in payment for what had been withheld from me.’ His face grew dark. ‘I knew I had been deprived of something immeasurably important, although I could never name it, and the knowledge filled me with rage. I wanted to smash other people’s pleasures, to ensure that they, too, were deprived. Then in maturity I learned the exquisite joy of subtlety, of luring men and women into a pit of their own digging. I disciplined myself in order to experience greater heights of extreme pleasure. I dealt in pain, but at a distance, watching it administered by another.’ He paused, and Elly could almost see him looking back, recapturing the thrill of the chase before the psychological kill.
A HAZARD OF HEARTS Page 40