Matilda's Freedom

by Téa Cooper

  He could hardly wait to count the golden freckles on her upturned nose, he’d been promising himself that treat for many days now. He’d hold her in his arms and tell her what a fool he had been.

  As the house came into view, he searched the veranda, hoping to see her perhaps waiting for him to return—but how would she know? She believed him to be on his way to Sydney, on his way to claim his bride.

  Well, he would claim his bride.

  ‘Christopher. Christopher, darling!’ His mother’s call reverberated from the shadows of the veranda. He lifted his hand to wave, knowing she would turn back to the house and announce his arrival.

  Kit waited with bated breath for Matilda and his sisters to appear.

  He couldn’t wait. Throwing caution to the wind, he urged his horse onwards and cantered up the remaining stretch to the garden. His mother’s hands waved frantically. He lifted his hat and brandished it at her, and then slithered to a halt. Leaping from his horse and taking the shortest route, he ran through the sodden rose garden and jumped onto the veranda—ignoring the steps.

  ‘Oh, Christopher. Thank God you’ve come back.’ Ignoring his wet and smelly cape, his mother threw her arms around his waist and buried her face in his chest.

  He patted her back and looked over her head into the shadows of the house as he searched for a glimpse of Matilda. Disappointed, he turned his attention back to his mother. Her shoulders were shaking, her whole body heaving as she sobbed violently against his chest.

  Kit patted her delicate back and made soothing noises, waiting for her to calm sufficiently enough to speak.

  ‘The girls, the girls! They’re missing and didn’t come home last night. I have been all alone for hours and hours through the darkness and the rain. It’s Barclay. It’s just like Barclay all over again. I know they have come to grief.’

  ‘Hush, Mother. Hush.’ He calmed her as he would a child and lead her into the house, lowering her carefully into the ladder-back chair in the hallway. ‘Sit down here. Tell me what has happened.’

  Once she was settled, he dropped to his haunches in front of her, his hands resting lightly on her shaking knees. ‘Where did they go and what happened?’

  Only a long exaggerated sniff broke the silence, but he waited patiently. He only wanted to ask where Matilda was but knew he would find out soon enough.

  ‘Matilda …’ His mother sniffed again, and Kit’s heart lurched in his chest. ‘Matilda left to help Bonnie move her stock and fodder to higher ground because Will is away, and when she came back—’ Kit’s shoulders dropped. He let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. Matilda was safe, ‘—the girls weren’t with her.’

  ‘Mother, you’re not making any sense. Matilda left and came back alone?’

  She nodded, her head hanging low. ‘The girls went after her, but then they must have missed her because when Matilda came back she was alone.’

  ‘And then?’ He asked, trying to ignore the aching in his gut. ‘And then?’

  ‘Then Matilda set off with Jem to look for them but that was at dusk last night, and I haven’t seen them since. They’re lost, they’ve drowned, they’ve fallen and hit their heads, been bitten by snakes …’

  She raised her tear-stained eyes, and a flash of anger crossed her face. ‘This is all Matilda’s fault. If she hadn’t instilled in them the ridiculous notion that they were free and independent spirits, they would be here, safe with me, and not dead like their father.’

  Her wail reached a crescendo. Kit pushed himself to his feet, knowing there was little he could do or say until she’d managed to control herself.

  He tried vainly to make sense of his mother’s story. Matilda had returned but the girls hadn’t, and so she had gone back in search of them last night at twilight. He closed his eyes, mouthing the swear words that were filling his mind. And all the while he had been stubbornly making his way along Morpeth Road in the pouring rain, in some misguided attempt to convince himself he wanted to be married to a woman he neither liked or even knew. He kicked the panelling on the wall and paced to the door, searching the driveway for any sign of Matilda and the girls.

  ‘Did you say she took Jem with her?’ he asked.

  His mother nodded. ‘Yes. Jem went with her.’

  Sighing deeply, he said, ‘That’s one good thing.’

  If Matilda and Jem had gone back, they would have followed the girls’ path and found them on the road returning from Bonnie’s. If so, then why in God’s name weren’t they back here safe and sound? It was only a matter of fifteen or twenty minutes each way, but it had already been as many hours since.

  ‘Didn’t you go out and look?’ Kit stopped himself, realising the foolishness of his words. Of course she wouldn’t have gone looking for them. He doubted if she even owned a pair of shoes capable of withstanding the rain, never mind that she would not have the stamina for hiking.

  ‘Why didn’t you ask Bonnie?’ He drummed his foot on the floor as waves of agitation rolled through him.

  ‘Bonnie had gone home. I told you.’

  ‘Then, Jimmy?’

  ‘I don’t know where Jimmy is. I called and called, but he didn’t come. You know how he disappears whenever there is a problem.’ She let out another wail. ‘No one came.’

  Kit closed his eyes, hanging onto his temper by a thread. His mother had no business being here. She belonged in a town where the footpaths and lamplights turned night into day and where other people were never more than a discreet call away.

  ‘Right, Mother. You take yourself upstairs to bed. I will go out and see if I can find them.’

  ‘Oh, Kit, I would so love a cup of tea to help—’

  How he contained himself he wasn’t exactly sure, but he managed his next sentence with an amount of restraint that impressed even him. ‘Mother, there is no time for me to make you tea. You will have to make it yourself. You are quite capable.’

  With that, he strode back out to the veranda, pulled his soggy cape over his shoulders and crammed his hat back on his head.

  His horse eyed him with about as much enthusiasm as his mother had when he’d refused her to make her tea; he ignored it as well, swinging up into the saddle and this time taking the driveway at a canter. As he reached the swirling waters of the creek and the bridge’s shattered remains, he reined in his horse and stopped.

  If the bridge had gone under, then how had Matilda got back out? Kit scanned the creek and spied a stand of tea-trees. The penny dropped.

  Jem.

  Jem would have led her through the billabong where he had crossed earlier—that made sense, but then why hadn’t Jem brought the girls and Matilda back the same way?

  The cold hand of dread settled onto Kit’s shoulder. He slid off his horse and walked through the low-lying water at the edge of the creek, his footsteps sending out waves across to the other side. He was tempted to cross but knew better. He had to return to Jem’s trail at the billabong further upstream.

  Sighing in competition with his horse’s frustrated snorts, he climbed back into the saddle. So much for fulfilling one’s responsibilities. He’d done a fine job of that—his mother had been shattered, his stepsisters now lay dead in some flooded gully, and the woman he loved had been lost to him forever because of his own pigheaded foolishness.

  Chapter Twenty

  ‘Jem, are we going to be able to get across the creek?’ Matilda searched the expanse of water below them. The rain might have stopped, but the water level was still rising. The continual run-off from the surrounding hills was pouring down the gullies, emptying into the valley below.

  Jem shrugged his shoulders, his eyes constantly scanning the area. The water now lapped against their horses’ fetlocks, which made Matilda doubt they would ever see dry land again. One night in a cave on the hillside had been an adventure, but the prospect of a second, or even a third, did little to encourage her. Her stomach rumbled. If she was hungry, then the girls certainly would be, but there had been no compl
aint from either of them. They were handling the situation with an impressive calmness and rationality.

  ‘Jem,’ she called. He turned and slowed his horse, waiting for her to ride up alongside. ‘If we can’t get back to The Gate, what are our chances of getting to Bonnie’s house?’

  He nodded. All four of them stopped and reined in their horses.

  ‘That’s a good idea,’ Hannah said.

  ‘And Bonnie might have some breakfast. I’m starving.’ Beth’s pinched little face stared out from under her hat.

  Matilda pushed down her feelings of guilt. If it hadn’t been for her interference, these girls would be safely tucked up in their secure, sandstone house, high above the water. They’d be dry, well-fed and comfortable. But, no—in some misguided need to prove herself to Kit, and to prove that she and women in general did not have to be treasured society dolls, Matilda had instilled in the girls a belief in their own independence and capability. And where had that led them? To spending a damp and soggy night in a cave halfway up a rain-soaked mountain.

  ‘Let’s make for Bonnie’s place. The road will be easier to follow, and with any luck, her house won’t be cut off.’

  ‘The Mill Pond will be up.’

  ‘Let’s try.’

  Jem gave a curt nod of his head, wheeling his horse around as they set off. It had started to rain again. Not the heavy rain of yesterday, but a light, soft misting that seemed to crawl into her very bones. Matilda pulled up the collar of her cape and rammed her hat further down on her head. The muddy surface of the road was slippery, and in places water lapped right across it. It was passable but only at an excruciatingly slow pace.

  ‘Stay right behind me, girls, and follow my path. I’ll follow Jem.’ As an afterthought, she turned back and stared at Beth. ‘Beth, do you understand? Do not under any circumstances deviate from the path.’

  Beth nodded her head, throwing Matilda a bedraggled grin.

  Eventually, they rounded the bend in the road and the Mill Pond came into view. The formerly little pond had become a sea on which the flourmill sat, like a lighthouse afloat in an ocean of dirty water. The roof of Bonnie’s barn appeared to be drifting serenely on the water’s surface; the house on the hill that she and Bonnie had so laboriously climbed yesterday, however, stood high and dry, perched on the edge of the massive lake.

  Matilda’s heart sank as Jem led them off the road and away from the house.

  ‘Jem, what are you doing? Bonnie’s house is safe. Let’s go there.’

  ‘Road’s covered. Got to go up and around first.’

  She bowed to his superior knowledge, and against her better judgment, she followed him off the road to the left and up to higher ground. How foolish and frustrating to be travelling away from their goal when she could almost touch it.

  ‘Cooee!’ Bonnie stood on her veranda, fluttering a large white piece of material above her head.

  ‘Stop, Jem! There’s Bonnie.’ She snatched at her hat and waved it wildly around her head, the girls and Jem following suit. They were rewarded by the sight of Bonnie dropping her white flag and jumping up and down.

  ‘Let’s go!’ Jem clamped his hat back on his head and turned his back on the excitement, leading them along a track that ran parallel with the road and skirted the edge of the enormous expanse of water.

  As the path gradually curved back around the school and led in the direction of the house, Matilda’s impatience subsided. She could almost smell freshly baked bread and feel the warmth of a hot mug of tea in her cold blue hands. Turning, she grinned at the two girls and was rewarded with radiant smiles of their own.

  ‘Not long now,’ she called back.

  As much as Matilda enjoyed riding, the sheer pleasure of slipping out of the saddle and having both feet on the solid wooden veranda of Bonnie’s house was almost overwhelming. The girls were dry and safe, and she had fulfilled her obligations—Jem was to thank for that. Quite what would have happened if she had not been able to rely on the man, she did not know, but that was not a scenario she wished to dwell on.

  ‘Jem. I don’t know how to thank you. You’re amazing.’ Mindful of his taciturn nature, she resisted the urge to throw her arms around him and hug him. A slight flush of colour on his dark cheeks was reward enough.

  ‘Come inside, come inside,’ Bonnie said as she ushered them all into the little cottage. A fire burned brightly in the grate, and the kettle hissed on the hob. The smell of freshly baked bread made Matilda’s mouth water and her stomach rumble.

  Bonnie pressed mugs of steaming tea into their hands and sat them down at the large scrubbed table. ‘Jem, you come and sit down, too. You deserve coddling as much as anyone.’ He shrugged off his cape and removed his hat, carefully hanging it outside on the veranda before he came and sat at the table.

  Matilda watched with amusement as the girls’ eyes lit up at the sight of Bonnie cutting a newly-baked loaf of bread. She skewered the huge slices and passed them over—each in their turn—on the end of her knife. They spread freshly churned butter and Bonnie’s strawberry jam on top and started eating.

  ‘Now, tell me what happened. I imagined you would all be safe and sound at The Gate, not riding around in this mess.’ Bonnie waved her hand to the windows. The view reminded Matilda of her trip up the Hunter River with Kit, isolated by water. That seemed a lifetime ago, when her world was full of promise and before she had selfishly taken what she wanted with no thought to the repercussions or consequences.

  Swearing loudly, Kit wheeled his horse around for the fourth time and then made his way back to the dry land on the house-side of the creek.

  It was impossible. The path through the billabong had vanished. How could he have found it so easily an hour ago? He turned his back to the creek and scanned the hillside. His answer lay before him. Rivers of water were running down from the Broken Back Range and emptied into the already swollen creek. That, and the influx of water from Wollombi and Yango where they joined up with Congewai Creek, accounted for the extreme flooding. The rain may have stopped, but the water would continue to run for days.

  Kit dropped the reins of his horse and sank down onto the fallen branch of a tree. His horse was in no danger of taking off on him. It stood—dejected—under the tree, as wet and miserable as he was. The only path now led back to the house.

  He was hemmed in on an island in the middle of the brown muddy waters. Somewhere out there, in the vast ocean of swirling debris and untold dangers, Matilda and his sisters lay abandoned.

  Frustration boiled in his gut, made worse by the knowledge there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. He reluctantly dragged himself to his feet and made his way back to the house—back to his mother. The thought of having to explain his failure to her was almost as bad a prospect as tramping up and down the creek like a marooned sailor, hoping for a sign of life.

  ‘Christopher! You’re back!’

  His mother’s words were echoing through the bedraggled rose garden even before he’d had the chance to deposit his horse in the stable. Staving off the inevitable, he waved his hand and turned his back on the house. His track record with responsibility was wearing thin, and the least he could do was dry his poor horse down and give it a feed. It had covered as many miles as he had in the last two days, and he knew exactly what that felt like.

  The rhythmic motion of rubbing the horse down and the familiar, if damp, smells of the stable calmed him, but did little to soothe the ache in his chest. He could only hope and pray that the girls had found somewhere dry to shelter and that Matilda was with them. She had promised she would stay until he returned. He couldn’t imagine her ever being anything but truly honest.

  Finally, he would admit the truth to himself. He hadn’t offered Matilda the position just to be a companion to his sisters but because—from the first moment he had set eyes on her—he couldn’t imagine a life without her. He didn’t want Matilda as his mistress.

  He wanted her as his wife.

  Kit s
tomped back up to the house, steeling himself for the inevitable tirade from his mother. He would tell her that he could not marry Miss Eliza Ramsbottom and that he had no intention of entering politics. He would tell her that he intended to marry Matilda and develop his vineyard here in Wollombi. She may as well have all the bad news in one dose.

  ‘Christopher! Where have you been? I have been mad with worry.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mother. I had to settle the horse. Jimmy is nowhere to be found.’

  Mrs Barclay followed Kit into his stepfather’s study. He could feel her eyes boring into his back as he poured himself a generous slug of brandy from the crystal decanter, but for once she said nothing. When he turned, she was sitting relaxed in one of the crumpled leather armchairs, her feet on a footstool and waiting patiently for him to speak. Something was wrong.

  ‘I’m at the end of my tether, Mother, and I have absolutely no idea what to do next.’ He took a gulp of the brandy, enjoying the sensation as it burned down the back of his throat. It helped to remind him he was alive.

  ‘This wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that you have fallen in love with that girl, would it?’

  Kit tried to control the colour rising in his face. He spluttered and choked on his brandy, trying to regain some form of composure. This was made no easier by his mother’s raised eyebrows.

  ‘I beg—’ he started and then stopped.

  How did she know? How could she tell? He had hardly even admitted it to himself. Kit walked over to the veranda door and flung it open, sucking in a great lungful of damp air.

  ‘I haven’t,’ he finished lamely. Another lie, but he wasn’t ready to admit the truth to his mother before he’d had the chance to speak to Matilda.

  ‘Christopher, you seem to forget that I am your mother, and I have known you longer than any other person on earth.’

  ‘What has that got to do with it?’ He snapped. Typically, every topic she mentioned revolved around her.

  ‘Knowing you as I do, I would suggest you think long and hard about this turn of events, and be sure you make a decision you can live with. I must say, I hadn’t expected you to return quite so quickly. I thought perhaps you would make it as far as Sydney before you realised the error of your ways.’