“You told me you didn’t remember much.”
She touched her forehead, frowning. “I do…now. Healing you brought it back. Brought it all back.”
A rustle in the nearby bushes made her swivel, her heart pounding. A barrel-chested white-and-gray bird peered at them from a branch with sharp black eyes. It fluffed itself up like a cat then took to the air, its tiger-striped tail spreading into a fan. The cackle that came from its throat sounded evil. Like an alarm. Just a bird, but enough to warn her they wouldn’t be alone for long.
“We have to get out of here,” she said.
“No. You have things you need to tell me. A story. Your story.”
That she did, but she was jumpy and nervous about being discovered or captured or who knew what else before she could ever voice it.
“Tell me.” He took her arms. The smell of his blood was still pungent. The connection between them pulled taut.
“I will. I promise. But she’ll find me if we don’t find a place to hide. Now.”
He frowned. “She?”
“Elizabeth. The crazy woman from town. She may have shot you, but she was aiming for me. She knew this cuff, too. I don’t know how or why, but she recognized it. And she wants it. She wants me.” Sera nodded toward Parramatta. “A blind man could follow your trail of blood. Your shirt is still dripping. Take if off. Leave it here.”
As she started for the horse, he stepped in front of her. “That woman was insane. So are a great many female convicts. She saw gold, she wanted it, there happened to be a gun nearby. If Samuel Oliver took the cuff from Egypt and gave it to a family member, how would she know about it?”
She directed a pointed look at the pucker of healed flesh below his ribs. “I don’t think either one of us is in the position to claim what is sane and what isn’t.” She waved the cuff in front of his face. “That look in your eyes when you recognized this thing? I saw it on her face, too. Somehow she knows it. More importantly, she knows what it is and she will do anything to get it. I felt it. I can’t explain that any more, but I know that she’ll hunt me.”
Grabbing her hand, he turned her wrist to stare at the Isis knot. Running a thumb over the symbol, he murmured, “So this is more than a piece of ancient jewelry?”
She stared at the hard line of his mouth, the severe furrow of his brow. “Yeah. I guess it is.”
“Hell and damn.” He released her hand, dragging his fingers through hers and leaving tremors in their wake. “I have an idea where we can go.”
She looked into his blood-streaked face and knew that yes, there definitely was a “we.” There was freedom in that kind of acceptance, however far-fetched it might be. “Where?”
“Back to Sydney. There’s a man there, a lieutenant. He’s meant a lot to me over the years and he offered to help me once I got here. I hope I can convince him to offer again.”
She glanced at Viv’s bag where it lay on the ground. One of the bottles had broken sometime during their flight from Parramatta and had leaked through the canvas. She realized she not only reeked of blood and fear, but of rum. “I still have to go back to Viv first.”
“I’ll come with you, but it’s got to be a short stop if that chemist with the gun knew you.” He grabbed a hunk of hair at his temple and blew out a breath. “Ah, fucking hell.”
“What?”
“Jem. The other someone I mentioned. I have to go back for him, make sure he’s all right. I left him on the other side of Parramatta.”
Another imminent separation. Now that all this had transpired—the healing, the threat from Elizabeth, the remembering—it was even more important she and William not lose each other. She swallowed hard, her thirst even more apparent. “All right. You take the horse. It scares me. I recognize those landmarks in the distance. I can find my way.”
He considered her, then moved to the animal. He spun it back around, slapped it on the rump, and it trotted off, riderless, back toward Parramatta. “It’s easier to cover tracks on foot.”
She bent for the bag of rum bottles, broken glass crunching inside. Viv’s hat had been lost somewhere between Parramatta and here, and it made her terribly sorry.
“Remember.” Her voice cracked. “The hill with the twisted tree.”
Eyes firmly on hers, William dipped his chin. Then he stripped off his shirt and left it on the ground. His suspenders made dark loops around his hips and thighs.
They stood ten feet apart, silent as the world around them. Then Sera turned around and jogged away, before either of them allowed themselves to question the future. Or the past.
CHAPTER 12
Viv sat on the edge of his cot, clutching his mug of rum like a child with a new toy. He grinned at Sera between sips. It might have been funny if it weren’t so sad. An old man trapped in this life, in this place, attached to nothing but sheep and drink.
“God bless,” he muttered. “God bless you, girl.”
He never mentioned God unless he had a cup at his lips.
It’d been a long time since anyone had called her a girl. Even longer since she’d felt like one. Viv seemed to consider it, too, and squinted.
“How old are you, wife?”
Negative two hundred-ish. “Twenty-eight.”
Viv clucked his tongue. “And no one’s claimed you before? Shame. Well, you’re mine now.”
She knew he didn’t say it to be possessive, to actually claim her. He was chuckling at the irony of it, while the sadness in his eyes said he wished that Sera were Mary. She imagined him back in England before his sentence, the kind of man who enjoyed his pub stool and a good tale. She hoped he and his Mary used to laugh a lot.
Sera would give him his illusions today, let him see her however he wished. Because she was about to leave him.
She’d arrived back at the homestead in early afternoon to find him able and walking around, but still a little shaky. She’d started to concoct a long, apologetic story about being delayed by the storm and losing his hat, but he’d waved her off, eyes intent on the brown-bottled prize. He didn’t even ask why she was covered in dried blood.
Now, with the stars glinting in the puddles outside, she shuffled around in front of the intimidating stove, throwing whatever she could into a pot for soup. She’d spent the afternoon waiting nervously for William and scrubbing the blood-stained clothes she’d borrowed from Viv. For a moment she considered throwing on her old clothes, the ones from the twenty-first century, but ended up burning them instead. She had no idea what the future held and was scared to carry them with her. She also wanted no evidence of her presence here. It felt safer that way.
She opened the doors and windows of the shack under pretense of letting in the cool peace of the moonlit night, when really her eyes couldn’t stop straying to the barnyard. Waiting. Anxious. Worrying.
As Viv sat drinking bland soup and mashing gooey vegetables between his gums, she told him, “There was a little trouble in town.”
He grunted. “There usually is.”
“I mean with me. There’s a chance someone might come looking for me, and not for a good reason.”
That made him pause. She wasn’t sure how much more to say, but she knew he imagined the worst.
Just then, the faint sound of splashing, mud-sucking footsteps came from outside next to the barn. She jumped to her feet, her heart thudding in anticipation.
Through the open door, she could see two silhouettes just beyond the fence. One was unmistakably William. The light wind blew his wild hair around his head, and his lean, shirtless body moved through the patchy grass with grace. The other person stood at least five inches taller, a walking tree with bone-thin legs and arms, and poor posture. While William ducked between the fence slats to enter Viv’s farmyard, the other threw his long legs over the top.
“Bolters? Rain always brings ’em out. Like worms.” Viv picked at a piece of stringy meat between his teeth. He took her silence as a yes. “Let ’em take a sheep, then they’ll be on their way. Not wort
h the trouble.”
Because of course Viv would never wish hardship on another criminal. Of course the large-hearted man would want to see them fed rather than send for the soldiers.
Sera went to the door and stepped out onto the porch.
Viv scrambled to his feet, his bowl tipping soup over the lip. “No, no, girl. I didn’t say to trust them. Get back in here before they see you.”
She raised a hand. “It’s all right. I know one of them.”
Confusion flickered across his face, beads of rum shining in his beard. “Is that the trouble you spoke of?”
She nodded and turned to see William standing in the middle of the farmyard, bathed in moonlight. The warm, liquid hum inside her returned, and she sighed under its pressure.
William’s lanky companion stood far back, hands shoved into his armpits. She couldn’t see his face.
“Sera.” William’s voice was a caress on the wind.
She stepped to the porch edge. “Any problems? Were you followed?”
“No. But we shouldn’t stay here long.”
She warily eyed the tall man behind him, wondering how this stranger would fit into their strange puzzle. Wondering if he should. Why had William brought him?
William scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Jem. Come forward.” The tall one slowly came to William’s side. “Jem, this is Sera.”
Jem was barely a man, young and innocent in the face. There was bitterness and sadness in the twist of his mouth, and though he gave her a slight bow, he wouldn’t meet her eye.
Slowly she descended the stairs and crossed the yard to the men.
“Don’t touch my wife!” Viv’s heavy footsteps stumbled out of the house, clomped across the porch, and tottered down the stairs.
She turned to him. “No, it’s okay—”
Viv waved his hands and screeched drunkenly, “Be gone, bolters! Pay your penance and leave us in peace! My wife is not yours to take!”
She inserted herself between Viv and William, but Viv just kept shouting around her.
“Easy, old man.” William showed his palms. “We mean neither you nor Sera harm.”
“How do I know that?” Viv demanded.
William answered quietly, “Because I don’t fight those who don’t want to feel a fist. And I’d die before I hurt her.”
The immediate silence weighed something mighty, the sincerity of the words filling the yard.
She faced Viv. The stink of liquor leaked from his mouth and the rims of his eyes burned red. “I’m going to speak to William. Alone. You heard him. He won’t hurt me.”
Viv considered the two of them for many long moments, then started to back away. His legs struck the porch and he collapsed backward into an off-kilter sit.
“He’s drunk,” she said to William and Jem. “Forgive him.”
William put his hands on his narrow hips. “You’re his wife?”
“No. He just says that.”
William exhaled. He looked a little cleaner than earlier, and she wondered if he’d doused himself in the river. The new scar was bright against the rest of his skin.
“When it got dark I started to worry.” She lifted her eyes to his face. “But you’re here.”
And the path to answers stretched long and dark ahead of them.
“What’re we doing here, Will?” Jem asked, eyes narrowed on Sera. “You said we were leaving. Escaping.”
She looked to William, curious and apprehensive about what he might say.
“We are,” he told Jem. “We’re going back to Sydney. Do you remember Alastair—er, Lieutenant Chatham—from the John Barry?”
“Yes. He was one of the kind ones.”
“Well, we were mates once. Father and son, nearly. Served for many years together at sea. When we landed here he offered to smuggle me back to England, saying other officers and midshipmen had done it for other convicts before. It’s our only chance.”
Sera frowned. Their only shot to get out of New South Wales? It sounded risky and awful.
“But we have to hurry,” William added. “I don’t know how much longer the John Barry will be in port.”
Jem looked stricken. “You never told me about that, about what the lieutenant offered.”
William eyed Jem carefully. “There are many things I haven’t told you. Just as you’ve kept secrets from me. It’s the way of the world.”
That didn’t seem to make Jem feel any better. In fact, he looked even more hurt. Like William had owed him this piece of information. Sera began to get a funny feeling in her gut.
William nodded toward Viv. “Will you go and keep him company, Jem?”
But Jem just stood there, glaring at Sera down his long, hawkish nose. “I know you. We saw you the day we arrived. Lying in the back of a wagon.” Then his round eyes bugged out. “Will tried to go after you and it almost got ’im shot.”
“That’s not—”
But Jem ignored William and continued to squint at Sera. “And now we left Brown’s and bolted because of you?”
“Now wait a minute—” she began.
“Jem,” William barked, finally snapping Jem’s hard attention away from her. “We didn’t leave Brown’s. I left Brown’s and you chose to follow.” His tone was low and careful, and it made her shiver. “You’d be good to remember that.”
The young man’s eyes narrowed to slits, and the message was clear. She was the reason for all his trouble, all the confusion. She was the reason William had hidden things from him and placed them both in danger. And forgiveness was a long way off.
In the end, though, Jem obeyed William and loped over to sit next to Viv, kicking rocks as he went.
William took her elbow and guided her closer to the barn.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” she whispered. “Do you trust him?”
He threw a glance across the barnyard, where Jem and Viv were sitting many feet apart, not talking. “As much as a man can trust another, I suppose.”
“Is that good enough?” She was so used to working alone. Being alone. Her whole life, even when she’d been surrounded by people, in the end she’d only ever relied on herself.
“It’s good enough for me. It has to be. I assumed responsibility for him on the voyage here. We’re family. Of sorts.”
“And you and I are something else. Something that needs to be figured out. I’m sorry, but I can’t help feeling like this will just make things more difficult.”
He sniffed and considered the starlit sky. “He forged papers for us. We were stopped yesterday morning and the papers allowed the soldiers to let us go. If it weren’t for him, I would be chained and headed for the gallows right now for bolting. I wouldn’t have found you.” A muscle in his jaw clenched. “I couldn’t live with myself if anything happened to him. He’s useful. He can help us move about New South Wales. And he’s a bolter now, too. I can’t just leave him behind.”
A large piece of her understood that last part very well. And if Jem could possibly help them in this land of criminals, who was she to turn him away?
On the porch, Viv swigged more rum. Jem was staring at her. Hard.
When she turned her head back to William, he was already watching her. It made her catch her breath. “So…Sydney?”
William dipped his chin once.
“Elizabeth—”
“Is either in the custody of the constables or released to the care of her husband.”
She slowly shook her head at the ground, that feel of unease only growing stronger. “It won’t stop her. She’ll still come for me.”
“And I’ll be in front of you again, if that happens.”
What was this man doing to her? To the presence inside her connected to the cuff? And how would she ever learn to separate the two?
She looked away. She had to. All that she hadn’t told him created a wall between them, and until they were alone and able to lay everything all out, that wall would have to remain. Otherwise this crazy desire would only get i
n the way.
Sitting on the porch, Viv swayed ever so slightly from side to side. When he lifted his rheumy eyes to her, she realized they weren’t filled with drink as much as with emotion.
Her impulse was to touch William, but that would breach the self-created wall. Instead she crossed her arms at the waist. “Wait here.”
She went back to Viv. There was no sense beating around the bush. “I’m leaving.”
He took another swig. He’d already gone through half a bottle since she’d returned hours earlier. “With the bolters?”
She nodded.
He set the bottle down. “Oh, wife. You’ll get caught and sent to the Factory—or worse—and there’s nothing to be done about it.”
The worry in his watery eyes broke her heart.
“You’re not really my wife. I can’t forbid you, though I don’t want to see you leave. I’ll be honest about that.”
“I’ve been very thankful for your honesty. Among everything else.”
“Where will you go?” His wrinkled face fell. “Not to the mountains, I hope. Please don’t say the mountains.”
How she wanted to tell him, if only to ease his fears.
“I don’t want to hear of you dying up there with all the other bolters, not when you could’ve survived by staying here, with me. You may not be my wife, my Mary, but you’ve filled a space here.”
“I’m glad I could’ve done that. Even for a short time.” She gave him a sad smile. The new Sera, the person she’d tried to become since fleeing Las Vegas, approved, and it made her heart swell.
“Take anything you need.” He waved a hand at the house and barn. “Clothes, food, rum if you want.”
The man with nothing, giving her all he had.
Had it been only yesterday morning when she’d placed her hands on him, first sensing what the magic could give back? She crouched before him.
“Viv.” She fingered the uneven glass of the bottle near his hip, considering whether she should ask this, then decided she had nothing to lose and he had everything to gain. “If you could not need the rum anymore, if you could wake up every day without headaches or work without shivering just like that”—she snapped her fingers—“would you give it up?”
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