Scatterheart

by Lili Wilkinson

  Dr Redfern was there, sitting alone reading a newspaper and drinking tea with lemon.

  ‘Mrs Belforte,’ he said, smiling. His eyes flickered over the rising bruise on Hannah’s cheek, but he made no comment. ‘What can I do for you?’

  Hannah swallowed, nervously. ‘Doctor,’ she said. ‘Have you heard … do you know anything about a man named Thomas Behr?’

  Dr Redfern looked startled. ‘Ensign Behr?’ he shook his head. ‘Mrs Belforte, you’d best not worry yourself about him. It was a bad business. Very bad.’

  ‘But you know of him!’ Hannah felt tears begin to spill over her cheeks. ‘Please, I must know what happened. Is he really dead?’

  Dr Redfern sighed. ‘This place can break the spirits of even the very best of men,’ he said, standing up and folding his newspaper. ‘You should forget about Behr.’

  twenty-eight

  As Scatterheart walked through the strange lands, she felt her spirits lift. She would find the white bear.

  ***

  After the visit to Sydney, James spent even less time at the house. He would barely exchange more than a sentence with Hannah for days on end. That suited Hannah fine, although her boredom didn’t dissipate. She took to spending her days in a half-conscious doze, lying draped across the chaise longue, a handkerchief draped over her eyes to shield them from the sun.

  On one such morning, she was having a daydream about swimming with Thomas. The sun would soak into her skin like honey, filling her with warmth. The ocean would swirl around them, wrapping them in a cocoon of sparkling blue.

  Hannah was jerked from her dream by a rustling sound from outside. Someone was approaching the house. Hannah frowned, pulling the handkerchief from her face. James was in Sydney again, not due to return for at least another day. The convict farm-workers were all off erecting a new fence in the southern field, and besides, they never came to the house. The house-servants were all accounted for – Hannah had sent most of them away for the day, and her maid was upstairs lying down with a headache.

  She thought of the savage she had seen before with his white eyes and teeth, and reached out to grab the poker.

  The shuffling grew nearer. Hannah’s heart beat loud in her chest. Whoever it was, was right outside the sitting room window.

  When the knocking came, Hannah let out a little scream, and retreated to the other side of the room. She held her breath.

  ‘Hannah?’ said a voice.

  Hannah let out the breath sharply. ‘Molly?’ she said.

  ‘Hannah, let me in!’

  Molly looked exhausted, and even thinner than she had done on the Derby Ram. She wore a new dress of brown flannel and sturdy leather boots, but her face and hands were dirty and smudged.

  ‘Molly, what are you doing here?’ asked Hannah, sinking into one of the armchairs as Molly investigated the remains of Hannah’s breakfast.

  Molly attacked a piece of cold toast. ‘I ’scaped,’ she said proudly with her mouth full. ‘I didn’t like being a orphing.’

  ‘But didn’t you get to go to a new home?’

  Molly snorted, reaching for the jam. ‘Orphings like me don’t get a new home. We just gets made hungry and sad and cold. An listenin’ to the old man read from the big book about hell and sin. Bah!’ She sprayed breadcrumbs across the room. ‘I isn’t no orphing.’

  ‘But you can’t stay here,’ said Hannah. ‘James will send you back.’

  Molly frowned at her. ‘No he won’t, because we won’t be here.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Molly rolled her eye. ‘We have to go and rescue Mr Bear, silly! Have you forgot? He’s trapped in the castle!’

  Hannah bit her lip. ‘That’s just a story.’

  ‘Mr Bear isn’t no story. He’s real. He needs bein’ rescued.’ She reached over the table and grabbed Hannah’s sleeve. ‘Thomas needs bein’ rescued.’

  Hannah looked down at the table. ‘Thomas is dead,’ she said. It was easier to say than she had thought it would be. She thought about what Mrs Gorman had said in Sydney about the wild man. They say he fell in love with a convict woman, and murdered a superior officer who caught them … you know. Even if he wasn’t dead, he didn’t love her any more.

  ‘No he ain’t.’

  Hannah stood up. ‘He is,’ she said woodenly. ‘He’s dead. He fell in love with a convict woman and murdered an officer. They hanged him.’

  ‘No,’ said Molly.

  ‘Yes,’ said Hannah. ‘He was hanged. Not wrestling a tiger, or exploring a volcano, or escaping from Davy Jones’s locker. He murdered someone.’

  Molly groaned. ‘You ain’t listenin’,’ she said. ‘He ain’t dead.’

  Hannah closed her eyes. ‘I think you should go.’

  ‘Listen!’ Molly banged her hand down on the table. ‘I met a boy who saw him. Something terrible happened, and Mr Bear runned away. He’s hiding. If he comes back, then they’ll kill him.’

  ‘What about the woman? The one he fell in love with?’

  ‘There ain’t no woman, and he’s not dead. But he needs rescuin’.’ Molly stood up. ‘Don’t you want to know how the story ends?’ she asked.

  Hannah finally raised her head and looked at Molly. Her melted face was paler than usual, her eye hard with determination. Her little hands were clenched into fists. Hannah thought about Scatterheart, walking through strange lands on her own. Scatterheart didn’t have someone fierce like Molly around to help her.

  ‘Well?’ said Molly. ‘Are you coming?’

  Hannah paused. ‘Where is he?’ she asked.

  Molly smiled triumphantly and turned. ‘There.’ She pointed out the window, towards the blue-green mountains. ‘The boy I met is working on the new road through the mountains. He saw Mr Bear head up there, four weeks ago.’

  Hannah looked up at the mountains that lurked just above the horizon. They looked like a good place for a white bear to hide. The fuzziness that had clouded her mind for weeks suddenly lifted. He was alive. Something seemed to catch on fire inside her, filling her with heat and energy.

  She grinned. ‘The cook will be back in a few hours,’ she said. ‘We’d better go and stock up on food now.’

  Molly crowed with delight.

  twenty-nine

  Soon Scatterheart came to a great lake, too wide to walk around. She cracked open the copper acorn, and found a pair of copper slippers. She put on the slippers, and walked across the water of the lake without sinking.

  ***

  They stayed off the main road, trudging through fields and scrambling over crude fences.

  Hannah carried a canvas bag containing a woollen blanket, three small loaves of bread, a hunk of cheese, some currant-cake and six apples.

  She had wished for a bit of cured ham or salt-pork, but the exclusives dined only on fresh meat – dried meat was convict-fare. Hannah had also filled an empty glass bottle with water for them to drink.

  In her dress pocket, Thomas’s glasses, wrapped in his handkerchief, snuggled next to a leather purse containing a handful of coins she had stolen from James’s bureau. The colony didn’t have its own currency, and the coins were a jumble of British pennies and shillings, four silver Dutch guilders, and some little copper coins that Hannah suspected were Portuguese.

  They trudged west towards the mountains, climbing over the rough fences that separated properties.

  There was no wilderness in this part of the country. Hannah was glad. The thick knots of bushes and twisted trees she had seen crowding the banks of the river seemed hostile and secretive.

  This countryside was mostly farmland, cleared of trees and scrub. Some fields were planted with neat rows of crops, while others had just a scratchy yellow grass that sheep and cows picked at.

  As the afternoon wore on, the gentle rise of Prospect Hill appeared before them. Hannah thought of the map. The mountains were still a long way away. They turned south to skirt around the hill, and as night fell, they crept up to a barn near Prospect Creek.
>
  The farmhouse was further south. Hannah could just make out a light burning in a far-off window. The barn was full of hay, warm and dry, smelling like summer. They snuggled down into it.

  The straw reminded Hannah of her mattress on the Derby Ram, and she thought of the long days and nights spent talking with Long Meg. She sighed.

  ‘Have you ever been in love?’ Hannah had asked her one night as they lay on their bunks.

  ‘Sure I has,’ said Long Meg. ‘I is in love almost every night.’

  ‘No,’ said Hannah. ‘ Really in love. With one person. A person who’s not a customer.’

  Long Meg had looked away. ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘Maybe once.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘His name was Jimmy. He was as bluff as bull beef. We was a team, I’d reel in the rich coves and he’d land ’em.’ She sighed. ‘But he was born under a threepenny halfpenny planet. So he was never worth a groat.’

  ‘What happened?’ asked Hannah. ‘Did you want to marry him?’

  ‘Shut your bone-box,’ said Long Meg. ‘I is telling this story.’

  She picked at a piece of straw poking through her mattress. Hannah waited.

  ‘One day I found him lying bread-and-butter fashion with another lass.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Hannah. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘When he noticed me, he looked so feared.’ She snorted. ‘He certainly made a coffee house of Miss Brown.’

  ‘A coffee house?’

  He went in but spent nothing.’

  Hannah made a face.

  ‘He made some mighty pretty speeches then, but I don’ dally with men with fingers in more’n one pie.’

  She saw Hannah’s expression. ‘That’s different,’ she said. ‘That’s business.’

  ‘What happened to Jimmy?’ asked Hannah.

  Long Meg shrugged. ‘Got caught with his fingers in someone’s pockets. A week later, he danced on nothin’ and died of hempen fever.’

  Hannah rolled over in the straw and looked at Molly. She was asleep, her breathing slow and steady. Hannah wriggled a little against the scratchy straw. She wondered what Thomas was doing now – where he was, what he was thinking. Was he thinking of her, too? Had there really been another woman? Hannah thought of the way Thomas had looked at her when he had asked her to marry him, and decided that it was impossible.

  The smell of the straw was sweetly overpowering. Hannah closed her eyes, and wondered how the story would finish. What would she do, after she had found Thomas? Would they go back to Sydney? To London? The thought occurred to Hannah that if Thomas had killed someone, it would make things very difficult, but she pushed it from her mind. There was no room for niggling worries in Hannah’s happily-ever-after.

  When she awoke the next morning, Hannah found Molly sitting cross-legged in front of her, a steaming slice of apple and rhubarb pie in her hand.

  ‘Where on earth did you get that from?’ asked Hannah, looking around.

  Molly snickered. ‘King’s pictures, miss!’

  ‘You stole it?’

  Molly nodded, her mouth full. She held out a chunk to Hannah, who accepted it gratefully. It was so fresh that the apple burned Hannah’s tongue. The pastry was soft and crumbly. It was the best thing Hannah had ever eaten. The rhubarb was just tart enough, mixing perfectly with the sugary sweetness of the apple. Hannah thought about the long evenings at the dining table with James, and how the tasteless food had stuck in her throat. She licked crumbs off her fingers and smiled at Molly.

  ‘Time to go,’ she said.

  They splashed over Prospect Creek, Hannah’s boots filling with water. Spread out before them were brown fields. The clouds rumbled overhead. Everything looked grey and drab. A few scraggly sheep raised their heads as Hannah and Molly approached, but turned away, uninterested.

  They walked on and on, speaking rarely. They stopped to rest for a while by the bank of another stream, and Hannah shared out some bread and cheese. Then they forded the stream and continued on. As the light faded it began to rain steadily. They marched on, trying to find somewhere to shelter. Darkness closed in around them, and Hannah thought they might have to sleep out in the rain. She was afraid they would get turned around in the dark, and end up walking back to Parramatta. Molly’s teeth were chattering.

  Through the curtain of rain, Hannah could make out a dim glow. She made for it, praying that it wouldn’t be a constable come to send her back to James.

  The house where the light was burning was little more than a shack, barely a few feet square. It had no windows, and was made from a very crude wattle-and-daub. A thin light shone from the cracks in the walls, and from underneath the door. A drizzle of smoke came from the chimney.

  Hannah rapped on the door. There was no catch or handle, and the door swung inwards under her hands. She pushed it all the way open and peered in.

  The shack was smoky and dim. The only light came from the crude fireplace, which was just a pit dug in the dirt floor. In the corner, on a bundle of sacking, huddled a man, a woman and four small children, the smallest still a baby. They looked at Hannah and Molly with wide, untrusting eyes. The man held a knife, and was crouched protectively over his wife and children.

  He was filthy – they all were. Dirt caked everything, and Hannah could smell rotting meat and faeces. She was reminded of the orlop deck on the Derby Ram and shuddered.

  ‘I’m terribly sorry to barge in on you,’ she said. ‘But we were wondering if we could shelter here until the rain stops. My friend here is very cold.’

  She saw the man’s eyes flick to Molly, and widen as he saw her melted face and missing eye. The woman muttered something and made the sign of the cross.

  ‘Please,’ said Hannah. ‘I can pay you.’

  She held out a shilling, and the man’s eyes gleamed in the firelight. He nodded slowly.

  ‘Ye can stay until dawn,’ he said.

  There was no room on the sacking, so Hannah and Molly crouched in the dirt, near to the fire. The smoke made Hannah’s eyes water. The children eyed them both curiously. They were very thin. Hannah could see their bones jutting out under their skin.

  ‘Where are ye headed?’ asked the man.

  Hannah paused. ‘The mountains,’ she said, finally. ‘We’re looking for someone.’

  The man looked uninterested. ‘Yer sweetheart’s workin’ on the road, I expect,’ he said.

  ‘The road?’

  He jerked his head to the west. ‘They’s buildin’ a road to cross the mountains.’

  Hannah stiffened. She hoped they would not run into too many people on their way to find Thomas. She swallowed. One of the children started to cough.

  ‘What’s on the other side?’ she asked. ‘Of the mountains?’

  The man shrugged. ‘Dunno,’ he said. ‘Some says that if you cross the mountains, you gets to China. Others says there’s an ocean. Or a desert.’

  Molly smiled. ‘I’d like to see China,’ she said.

  ‘I wouldn’t go too far into those mountains, if I was you,’ said the man. ‘Too many savages. Eat yer brains and stick yer head on a stick. Soon as look at ye.’

  The coughing child had woken the baby, who started to cry. The woman jiggled it half-heartedly. The baby looked pale and sickly. Hannah looked around the hut. There was no furniture, just a scuffed tea-chest and the pile of sacking.

  ‘Have you been here long?’

  The man spat into the fire, which hissed. ‘Stopped countin’ at ten years.’

  When at last dawn came, Hannah was relieved to leave the hut. She stood, stiff and cold, her clothes still damp from the rain. It was still drizzling outside.

  They trudged through wet fields that stank of rotting wheat. Occasionally they approached another dilapidated hut, but they skirted around, not wanting to meet any more of the hungry farmers barely scratching a living from the inhospitable land. The fields were separated by rough cairns of rock, and the occasional wood and wire fence to keep sheep penned in.

>   As they passed one such fence, Molly squeaked suddenly, and pinched herself. Hannah followed her gaze to where a large black-and-white bird sat perched on a fence-post.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Magpie, where’s your wife?’ muttered Molly, pinching herself again. The bird ignored her, hunching up its shoulders in the rain.

  ‘Why are you doing that?’ asked Hannah.

  ‘One magpie is bad luck,’ said Molly. ‘One for sorrow, two for mirth. Three for a wedding, four for a birth. Five for rich, six for poor. Seven for a witch, I can tell you no more.’

  Hannah laughed at her. ‘It’s just a bird,’ she said. ‘And a fairly ugly one at that. Look at its wicked beak!’

  The bird had black, glossy feathers, with a white collar just under its head. More white feathers showed under the bird’s folded wings. Its beak was white, its eyes like shiny black stones.

  Molly shook her head, not taking her eye off the magpie. ‘It carries a drop of the devil’s blood under its tongue,’ she said.

  Hannah shook her head. ‘Maybe that’s why this one’s so quiet. Usually magpies are such chattery things.’

  The magpie, as if it had heard her, opened his beak and let out a full-throated, melodic warble. It was like no birdsong Hannah had ever heard before. It was beautiful, yet full of longing. Hannah felt tears rise.

  Molly saluted the magpie respectfully. ‘This is no ordinary chatterpie,’ she said. ‘It must be a magic one.’ The magpie turned its glittering eye upon them, and Hannah had to agree.

  ‘What did one magpie mean again?’ she asked Molly.

  ‘One for sorrow,’ said Molly.

  Hannah looked around at the grey and brown landscape and shivered. The land stretched out as far as she could see all around her, brown spiky grass broken only occasionally by a crude fence or scraggled stand of trees. She felt very small.

  The magpie launched itself from the post, flapping up into the grey sky.

  The rain stopped mid-morning, and by midday the skies had cleared. The wet earth steamed in the sunlight, and strange, unfamiliar birds swooped and sang overhead. The mountains looked close enough to touch, and Hannah’s spirits rose. A thick tangle of trees and bushes lay before them – the only thing that lay between them and the mountains.