The Isis Knot

by Hanna Martine

  Jem didn’t let her in, answering her in clipped phrases—“London.” “Master Wren.”—and sidling even closer to William. The name “Wren” made William slightly curious, but he was still so distracted by Sera’s story from last night that he only gave it a second’s thought.

  At sunset, after they’d eaten what was left of the lamb they’d managed to carry, and the rum bottle and water skin were empty, the first lights of Sydney glimmered in the distance. The sound of trotting horses came up behind them. William glanced over his shoulder to see three riders dressed in the dark uniforms of colony constables angling toward the town, which would soon put them across his path.

  He shoved Jem behind a wide, squat tree with a smooth trunk and large, exposed, snakelike roots, and pulled Sera with him into a mass of tight shrubbery. Instantly his body called to her, as though there had been no space or time since he’d last had his mouth on hers and his cock nearly buried inside her.

  “Oh God,” she whispered, weakly prying herself out of his grasp. He let her go, though with the riders getting closer, she didn’t leave the bushes. Her proximity was still enough to scramble his senses.

  Even in the shadows, he could see the thousands of questions swimming in her eyes.

  “Who were they?” he murmured. “Amonteh and Ramsesh.” The names felt both odd and comfortable on his tongue.

  “I was hoping you would know. From Samuel Oliver or from the explorers who were in Egypt at the time.”

  He shook his head. The riders were passing now, and they quieted. Jem, thankfully, didn’t make a sound from behind his tree.

  When the riders were gone, William turned to her. “They want us to be together.”

  A pained look pinched her face. “They want us to fuck. I’m not sure they want anything more complicated than that.”

  That mouth… He let his faint amusement show in the tick of a smile. “That’s what I meant.”

  “Listen”—she passed a hand over her hair—“I’m not a virgin. I’m far from a delicate flower. In my time that’s not a big deal or anything. But this…this will take some time for me to process. I can feel her desire for you, and I think she might be a little heartbroken, too, and it’s all so confusing I don’t know where she begins and I end. Or the other way around.”

  “Your time…” He risked a touch, a gentle graze of his fingers down her cheek. She surprised him by leaning into him slightly. “I’ve had eighteen years to get used to what’s inside me, but I understand what you mean because I struggle with that, too. For me, the larger piece is coming to accept what you told me last night—”

  “Will!” Jem’s nearly shouted whisper, followed by a crash of branches. “They’re gone!”

  Sera ducked out of the shrubbery. As William followed closely behind, Jem noticed that he hadn’t shoved Sera behind a tree. He looked hurt and betrayed, something William found odd and annoying.

  “Let’s keep moving,” William said. “I’d like to get to Sydney before it gets too late.”

  An hour later, after the sun had disappeared, the three of them stood on a small rise looking out at Sydney. In the dark the town made a sparkling crescent moon, the torches and cooking fires and the warm yellow windows of homes huddled around the watery curve of Sydney Cove.

  A ship was still anchored offshore, lit lanterns swinging from the decks. They were too far away to read its name and it was too dark to make out its shape. William prayed it was the John Barry.

  As they drew closer to Sydney, the smells of the town wafted through the night—animal waste and rotting fish and unwashed human bodies mingled with the aroma of cooking food. The harbor, however, gifted him with the scent of brine and the promise of open water, and it was on that he focused. When he was young, he’d needed it as strongly as he’d needed air.

  “I have our papers,” Jem said at his elbow. “But I have none for her.”

  The way he said her made William cringe.

  “Word about us may have reached Sydney by now. They could have our names, our descriptions.” He plucked at his pants. “Convict issued. Yours too. They’re cause enough to stop us, to ask for our papers. We can’t use what you made before; our names are on them. Can you make new ones? And add one for Sera?”

  Jem shook his head at the dirt. “The ink spilled back by the river.”

  “Bloody hell.” Of all the things…

  Sera stepped in front of him, her face grave. “I’ll be right back. Stay here.”

  William grabbed her arm as she spun away. Just that simple touch, and the connection between them flared. “Where are you going?”

  She nodded toward the sprinkling of lights. “You told me you got caught the first time you ever stole something. Those boots? Why don’t you let a professional handle this?”

  But her face was terribly sad, tight with hurt, and he remembered what she’d told him last night. How she’d been forced to steal when she was young, how much she hated it. How hard she’d worked to leave that all behind. If he could save her from doing that again, he would.

  “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”

  She shrugged, but it was clearly to hide the pain. “It’s a colony of criminals, isn’t it? I’ll fit right in.”

  Jem said, “Let her go.” Maybe he just wanted to be rid of her, or maybe he saw the same promise in her that William did. That strength and confidence that seemed so foreign to him. That wherewithal and bravado that perhaps could be a gift to women of her time.

  Her time.

  It didn’t matter that he’d claimed to believe her last night, the whole truth of it was still a cloak of iron clamped around his shoulders. His chin dropped, his eyes falling to the ground, and by the time he looked back up, her silhouette was already moving like a silent black snake from shadow to shadow. Away from him. Then she was gone.

  Back pressed against a tree, he slid down to a crouch, taking long strips of white bark with him. He snapped a wildflower from its stem and toyed with the petals until he felt Jem loom over him.

  “Who is she?”

  The question was not posed with anger, and it was for that very reason that William looked up. The jealousy he saw, plain as day, on Jem’s face took him by surprise.

  “Who is she?” Jem repeated.

  She is mystery. She is an answer. She is the future. She is my present.

  He threw the flower aside. This he could answer truthfully. “I don’t really know. We’re all strangers here, don’t you suppose?”

  Jem flopped to the ground and picked up a stick, rolling it between his hands. “You look at each other as though you’ve known each other your whole lives.”

  Yes, it was jealousy. Because William had been so singularly focused on protecting Jem on board the John Barry, and now his purpose had shifted.

  He exhaled. “She is…someone who needs me. Just as I need her. Just as you needed me.” Hopefully Jem would sympathize with that.

  “She’s not English.”

  He tried not to shift, tried not to give anything away. “No. No, she’s not.”

  Jem dropped the stick and started in on a leaf. His fingers nibbled slowly at the edges, then gradually took to ripping it to pieces. “You’re keeping things from me. So is she. Why? Do you think I won’t understand?”

  I know you won’t understand. I don’t even understand half of it myself.

  He leaned forward, elbows perched on his crossed legs. “I want to protect you, Jem. I want you to be a strong man. Hell, you’re already nineteen years old. Which means I can’t stand in front of you, fists raised, forever.” That seemed to hurt Jem most of all. He softened his voice. “What are you afraid of? That she’ll make me forget about you? That I’ll leave you?”

  “No.” But the clench in Jem’s jaw said yes.

  “I do want to see you safe. I do want to see you have a life worth living. But I also want that for her, and I believe she wants that for me.”

  “It’s just that…no one has ever stood up
for me before.”

  Not even his parents? He’d never asked Jem about his family or his past, and Jem had never offered the information. Now he saw everything in Jem’s eyes: the betrayal, the abandonment, the loneliness. And he was scared William would do the same. That was why he’d followed him from Brown’s.

  “I forget sometimes,” Jem said, “when I’m with you. I forget what happened to me, what Riley did. You make me feel safe.”

  That made William proud, for that had been his goal all those months ago. But it also demonstrated how Jem had to learn to stand on his own, in order for William and Sera to…do whatever it was Amonteh wanted them to do. And William was starting to hope that it would be more than just fucking. “You know, Sera is not your family or Richard Riley or anyone else who has ever wronged you or stood in the way of your happiness.”

  Jem said nothing, though his expression protested.

  William scrubbed his face with a hand. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for the mystery. But if you want to stay with us—and Sera is coming with us, there’s nothing you can do or say to change that—you must trust in me, despite our silence, and know that I have our best interests at heart.”

  “But—”

  “She has nothing to do with you. Nothing to do with our friendship. I promise.”

  It was meant to reassure him, to make him feel better. But before Jem looked away, hiding his face, William could have sworn he saw only greater distress.

  A lumpy satchel flew through the air and landed between them. Jem scrambled away like a frightened puppy. William popped up to his feet, alert, arms ready to swing at an attacker, when Sera stepped into the moonlight.

  “Just me.”

  Jem breathed hard and fast. “I didn’t hear you.”

  “You weren’t supposed to.” She bent down and tugged open the satchel’s rope to reveal the clothing stuffed inside. “I found a laundry with these hanging out back. Hopefully they’ll fit.”

  When she pulled out a small bag that jingled with the telltale sound of coins, William crouched next to her, laid a hand on her arm, and murmured, “Was that hanging on the line as well?”

  The regret in her eyes made his heart hurt in sympathy.

  “No,” she replied. “But if we want beds and food tonight, I wouldn’t ask much more.” She grabbed a pile of clothes, stood, and slipped back into the darkness.

  The white shirt and black trousers for Jem were far too short in the legs and arms, but he was so tall and oddly shaped that it would’ve been shocking to see him in anything else. He seemed used to it.

  William’s shirt was also white, paired with brown trousers. The clean cloth stung his sunburned skin. New braces kept the trousers from falling too far down his narrower hips, but it was a losing battle. He had lost too much weight since boarding the John Barry. This new body still felt odd. He missed the bulk, the healthy, muscular strength when he’d worked aboard a ship.

  Sera emerged from behind a thick tree wearing a high-necked blouse the color of clotted cream tucked into a full skirt of similar tone. Like Viv’s clothing, everything looked too big on her. The feminine cut and fabric seemed odd. Unnatural. He realized he missed how she looked in men’s trousers.

  “It’s hideous, I know. Don’t laugh.”

  Laughter was furthest from his mind. The clothing seemed perfectly normal to him and her comment puzzled him. She didn’t stand out as much anymore. She almost looked like she belonged here. But she didn’t, and that made his mind swirl even more.

  She used a piece of ripped cloth to tie back her short hair, and then looked William over with a critical eye. “I think we should cut yours.”

  “Cut what?”

  “Your hair.”

  He’d never worn his hair this long while on land. During long water voyages he’d always just let it go, and the trip on the John Barry had been no different. She was right. The pale blond mass of curls drew attention, and the constables and soldiers would likely be aware of his physical description. “Then do it.”

  She took Viv’s knife and had him sit in front of her. He watched hunks of his hair float away on the night wind to tangle with bushes and trees, and he concentrated on the gentle pressure of her fingers. The way they tilted his head or pressed lightly against his neck. Each touch was like a drop of water after drought and he lapped them up greedily.

  When she was done, he ran a hand over his newly shorn locks. Though much shorter, there was nothing to be done about the curl. It stood up all over the place. She watched him as he grew accustomed to it, running fingers through phantom hair.

  Then her assessment shifted. In the blink of an eye, it transformed into the look of unfettered longing. The moon glittered in her eyes. And then she really did blink, and the emotion was gone as she turned away.

  They waited until many of Sydney’s lights were extinguished as the colonists retired to bed. Only then did William lead them into town, steering them toward the raucous, smelly area carved out of the sandstone cliffs along the cove’s western edge. The docks reeked of gutted fish. Rats scurried underfoot. The sounds of drunkenness and debauchery spilled from practically every open doorway.

  No matter where he went in the world, that sound always remained the same.

  Jem dragged his feet. “Why here? Why not over there?” He nodded to the eastern shore of the cove, where the larger buildings were quiet and dark.

  “Because over there,” William replied grimly, “we won’t find anyone else like us.”

  The mud of the streets tried to suck his boots down to the bedrock as he wove around perfectly rectangular sandstone buildings.

  A woman with eyes as red as cherries and the stink of twenty horses pushed herself up from where she’d been decorating a stoop. Drink sent her careening into him. “You’re a handsome one. Come on, love. Ol’ Gertie’ll give you a poke for a pence.”

  He shoved her off, sending her reeling to the opposite side of the road. Tucking Sera against his side, he aimed for the burst of off-key song that came from a public house two doors up. He pointed to the tilted sign above the door. “What’s that say?”

  Jem squinted at the curling letters. “Captain Cook’s.”

  Perfect. He pointed to a dark alcove set between a shuttered metalsmith and a button-maker. “Both of you. In there. Stay hidden. I’m going to find us a place to stay.” Sera and Jem shared a look that perfectly displayed how much wariness they still had toward one another, but he couldn’t worry about that now. He held out an open hand to Sera. “Money?”

  She handed him the purse and he tied it to his braces, letting it hang just inside his trousers.

  To Jem he added, “Remember what I said about protection. About being a man.”

  After a pause, the lad straightened his shoulders. Even if the courage looked manufactured, at least he’d finally shown some.

  The interior of Captain Cook’s was as dour as the outside, its patrons loud but far from jubilant. Yellow-teethed men diced in one corner. Other groups played with tattered decks of cards. The place was so crowded William had to shove his way to the bar. Though he was illiterate he knew what each coin was worth, and he proffered a generous one to the man guarding the keg and mugs.

  “Rum?” The barkeep asked, then raised a bushy eyebrow at the coin. “Or maybe beer for that high a price?”

  “Information, actually. I’m looking for a room to let. From someone…discreet.”

  The barkeep considered the coin then took it from William’s fingers. “South end of the Rocks, at the top of the stone steps. Waldgrave’ll help you.”

  “The Rocks?”

  “Just arrived then, have you?” He smiled knowingly, all but calling William bolter. “It’s where you’re standing. This beautiful slice of heaven in Sydney.”

  A heavy hand clamped onto William’s shoulder and spun him around. The face that stared back at him made his lip curl.

  Richard Riley.

  CHAPTER 17

  Most of New South Wales shoc
ked Sera. The horses and wagons, the personal hygiene, the isolation and numbing silence of a pure, undeveloped land. But nothing affected her as jarringly as the poverty and lawlessness of this corner of Sydney. England’s worst had gouged a hole in the dirt of this new country and squatted, living among their shit. How could anyone survive here?

  As she hid with Jem in the alcove, she was grateful for the silence between them because it allowed her to focus on what was happening out on the street. To assess whether or not they were in danger of being discovered. Beside her, Jem’s breathing had gone ragged, and he jumped at every little sound, which were many: the call of prostitutes, the cursing of drunken men, the slap of harbor waves against the docks, the skitter of rat claws around their feet.

  How long they waited there, she didn’t know. It felt like hours, her muscles aching from the tension of holding herself still.

  Then a silhouette filled the alcove entrance. Jem stiffened but she immediately knew it was William by the shape of his body and the gentle, calming wave that rippled over her. Ramsesh calling to Amonteh.

  “Follow me,” he growled.

  They emerged from their hiding spot, and instantly she knew something wasn’t right. Shadows were bright daylight compared to William’s dark expression. He turned, making them trail his fast, deliberate footsteps.

  “What’s wrong?” Jem trotted at William’s heels. “What happened in there?”

  “When I have you both safe inside, I’ll tell you.” He didn’t turn around to say it. He kept clenching and releasing his fists.

  “Did you find a place to stay?” she asked.

  He nodded and gestured vaguely ahead, deeper into the black canyons and rotting stink. “Other side of the Rocks.”

  This area of Sydney—called the Rocks, apparently—tightly hugged the land that rose above the cove. Narrow stone staircases carved directly into the cliffs led up to layer upon layer of winding avenues and passageways, and pale stone buildings practically stacked upon each other.