The Widow of Ballarat

by Darry Fraser

  She leaned back in the chair, touched her fingertips to the puffy flesh of her eye. Lord knows, she’d look a lot like many others would today, wounded by events out of their control. For some, the wounds would heal. She would be one of them. She would have no scars from the few months in Andrew’s grip. It was a promise to herself.

  Coals still glowed low in the oven. It would be sensible to light a candle or two, a lantern perhaps. Standing, steadying, she reached for a candle stub on the shelf, took it to the stove and pointed the wick to the flickering coals. Guarding the little flame, she set the candle in a holder on the table.

  Enid. She’d have to get that battle over and done with, and she’d survive it better than any battle she’d had with Andrew; Enid wouldn’t take a fist to her.

  Then Nell would have to find her own way, or perish. The goldfields were full of enterprising women who worked as their own bosses. Enterprising, but still not thought of so highly. Even if widowed, women were suspect if they had no supporting family. And she would never return to her father’s tents, even if the new stepmother would have her. Relieved of Andrew’s yoke, she would never take a step backwards and swap it for her father’s.

  No matter. She was not so despairing. She’d fought despair before. Sometimes it had felt like her mind was going, and she’d fought with the last of her strength. When Andrew had treated her worse than garbage, she’d fought on. Fought to keep her mind on the straight and narrow and not to retreat into feebleness, or detour into wrong-minded thinking. She had done it, she had stayed strong. She would never go backwards. Never despair.

  Her life wouldn’t crumble now.

  A little excitement grew. He was right, that bushranger. Whatever your situation now, it is a better one. She would remember it.

  Her face flamed with the memory of her proposition to him, then flamed again at the light in his eyes. At the light in her heart when he’d looked at her, studied her, when he politely rejected her desperate advances. She laughed at herself. Imagine that, a bushranger with manners. But her laughter stopped. That’s how low she’d become, reduced to begging a stranger to put a child in her womb so that she could survive—begging a man who’d been intent on murder. What had possessed her over these few weeks, the last days, to have given thought to such a thing? He would think her a terrible woman, that bushranger.

  Oh, what did it matter? He was a man outside the law, and their paths would never cross again. That thought caused a mixed reaction. He had been kind. She’d seen it in the way he looked at her, those green eyes watching, studying. She’d had a little hope.

  What rubbish, Nell. Your thoughts are skewed.

  He would think her loose, and wanton, dismiss her as being the ranting, wretched woman she’d sounded like. Even the bushranger had higher morals than she had.

  That was the state of her mind, skewed with a madness borne of Andrew’s mistreatment. And all to survive. Taking in a deep, steadying breath, she looked around the kitchen again. It was just a kitchen. The parlour was just a parlour. The bedroom was just a bedroom. Would his menacing presence be forever here? Shuddering, she thought she’d burn the bed.

  She eyed the bags of gold. What hope would a lone woman have, out on the street, trying to flee, and carrying a bag of gold tucked under each arm? As if she could carry it, besides. She could barely manage to drag one bag at a time.

  Mr Steele had said that no one could get in or out of Ballarat, that the murderous troopers would still likely go on a frenzied rampage if they thought they could get away with it. He’d told her that the military had put the whole place under martial law, and that eight hundred more militia were arriving. Thirteen miners had been arrested for their part in the uprising, and the authorities were clamping down. There was a curfew already. If any one was seen out after eight o’clock in the evening, or with lights on in the tents at camp, it meant swift arrest. Did that mean no lights in the few houses as well? Nell didn’t know and wouldn’t go venturing to find out. If someone came for her because of her candles, she’d plead terrified ignorance. Though from what she’d heard, innocent women would not be spared, either.

  She needed a better plan. She needed time. But how much time before she’d have to find Enid and Lewis and report Andrew’s death?

  She sat for a while longer, and her hand rested on her belly. She was so glad there was no child of Andrew’s growing there. But would she want another man’s? Her thoughts strayed once again to that bushranger, a man with kind green eyes, and a low, well-spoken voice. A man who’d told her he would see her safe. Was that a man with no scruples? When she’d offered herself so brazenly to him, wouldn’t an unscrupulous man have taken her there and then?

  The flame bloomed in her face again. The man at the hold-up had been a gentleman. She knew it, but how could she trust it in the light of what she knew of men?

  Finn Seymour tapped a long sprig of yellow wattle against his leg. He turned for only a moment to watch the last of the setting sun drop over the horizon.

  Fool.

  Although the light would be reasonable for a little time yet, he risked being hauled off by the troopers if he was caught idling in the street. In any street. Ben had warned him of a curfew and Finn was in no mood to be swept up in the repercussions of the ‘riots’, as the government men were calling the Eureka debacle. Guessing he’d have about fifteen minutes before he needed to be under cover somewhere, he knew he’d have to make haste.

  Staring at the unassuming timber house on the opposite side of the street, he watched a glow appear in a window as a candle was lit. She would be in the back of the house. It appeared there was no one else with her, and likely not going to be by now. Would she be sitting in the peaceful night trying to recuperate after her ordeal?

  She might have been desperate and out of her mind on the roadside. But here, at her house, no doubt she would be resting, attempting to make sense of what had happened, like he was trying to do. It wouldn’t be in his best interest—or hers—if he marched up the path and hammered on her door.

  But the need to extend the tenuous connection with her gnawed at him. He had to do something. Anything. Hurry. He loped across the road and sidled around the back of her house. The door was open, and for a moment he froze, undecided.

  He stared down at the wattle in his hand.

  This was certainly not the act of the gentleman she thought you to be, Seymour.

  Walk away.

  The evening was slipping into night, and the silence outside was eerie. Nell had taken the candle to wander through the rest of the house, and, mindful that it was wearing down, she headed back towards the kitchen room outside.

  She needed a purpose, needed to be busy. Didn’t need to feel this awful terror, anticipating the troopers pounding on her door.

  The first thing she’d do, now, tonight, was stuff those bloodied and torn clothes into the oven and hope the room didn’t choke with the smoke. One piece at a time should be all right.

  As she passed the doorway of the bedroom, she checked it, held the candle high. Perhaps later, if burning her clothes was successful, she’d burn the remaining bed linens, too.

  Resting against the doorjamb, she inhaled deeply, relieved not to feel sick with tension, and not to have a thunderous headache. Expecting it still might come, she closed her eyes a moment and drew a long breath in and let it slowly out.

  At the hold-up, Mr Steele—

  Her eyes snapped open.

  At the hold-up. The bushranger had two horses with him, one of which Mr Steele had jumped on before riding off. Her mind worked. Why would a lone bushranger have two saddled horses with him? He’d certainly given no indication of wanting to kidnap Andrew, or her for that matter, so why two horses? Very convenient for Mr Steele to ride off on one.

  Mr Steele. Did he have something to do with the hold-up?

  Reaching across, she pulled the door shut to the bedroom and stood for a moment in the hallway. She knew where Mr Steele’s business was situated. Kn
ew he owned the coach that Andrew had hired. She would pay him a visit. Had Mr Steele been in collaboration with the bushranger? If so, to what end? The gold? That couldn’t be right. There were many opportunities for him to—

  No, no, no—too many thoughts flinging about in her overwrought mind. Why should she venture to seek out Mr Steele? Did she really even want to? Vexed at herself, she headed for the kitchen room. The back door of the main house was open and in the lingering light she saw moths and mites attracted by the candle. She snuffed it out, and hurried, keen to close the house and sit in the kitchen room that was outside the main dwelling. She’d light another candle there as she used the oven.

  Perhaps tomorrow or the next day she would venture a walk to Mr Steele’s. Her heart sank. First, she would have to go to Wilshire House and inform Enid and Lewis of Andrew’s death. Her mood dropped further. She’d have to wait until after that to see Mr Steele.

  Taking a step or two more in the hallway, she stopped in her tracks. A shadow was thrown across the lingering light at the back door, and something fluttered to the ground.

  She stiffened, heart thudding. She wanted to get to the kitchen room to light another candle, but if someone was out there waiting to pounce … Nothing moved. Nothing shifted. She heard nothing. No footsteps.

  The light was failing quickly. Panicked, she burst out of the house and dashed to the kitchen room, slammed the door, shoved home the bolt. Heading straight for the candles stored on the mantle, she found a taper and with shaking hands pushed it into the oven, hoping there was enough heat left in the coals to give a spark. She smelled a little smoke then saw a tiny flame. The wick caught, and light glowed around her. She tried to be calm, tried to breathe steadily. Tried. Tried. Safe. Barricaded behind a sturdy door. Hot, stuffy, no air. She reached out and grabbed the fire poker.

  But—what if it was someone injured, someone looking for safety? Her heart thudded again. She put her ear to the door and heard nothing. Tried to peek through a gap in the timbers but the light outside was no good.

  She retreated, sank to her knees and slumped on the floor, and the poker clattered by her side. The candle flickered. She couldn’t spend the night in fear, not after everything else that had happened. This would not be her life from now on, full of fright and anxiety.

  Breath hitched in her throat and, her mouth dry, she rested the poker by the door, got to her feet, and with the candle in the other hand, slid the bolt open. Bending to close her free hand around the poker, she nudged the door open with her foot. If there was someone out there meaning to hurt her, she’d give them a good run for their trouble.

  Nothing. Nothing but warm air, a faint scent of burned timbers on it.

  As she stepped onto the dirt outside her door, her foot fell across something. The candle glowed as she bent and picked up a sturdy twig of yellow wattle.

  Five

  Reaching for the cloudy, corked bottle on the small bedside table, Lewis Wilshire groaned aloud as his damned shoulder ached. The bruise of the rifle butt had surprised him. He’d practised shooting of late, so he should have been prepared for it.

  Everything seemed to ache. His damned shoulder, his damned side. His damned head.

  On the edge of his bed, facing away from the small window overlooking the street, he carefully unwrapped the rag from around his middle. It had been a shirt only yesterday.

  He pulled the cork with his teeth and splashed a little of the bottle’s contents onto his side. Crude alcohol was better than nothing. Stretching his mouth as the still raw spots of the wound stung and burned, he believed he was past the worst of it. The newly healed skin had only been a little chafed by the hard ride earlier today, and he assessed no permanent damage.

  He’d have to sacrifice another shirt if he was to keep a firm bandage around his middle. After the miners’ conflict, bandages were in short supply, so a shirt it would have to be.

  Bloody bastard trooper. The bayonet had sliced him in the left side, just below his ribs.

  And how to keep that from his ever-suffering mother? Not that losing a few shirts bothered him at all. However, he did not intend to explain to her that he’d sided with the rebels—in fact, been almost under the Australian flag, the Southern Cross, when the Canadian, Captain Henry Ross, had hoisted it weeks ago. Or that he was by the captain’s side again in the early hours this morning when the government troops had struck. Poor bastard, Ross. He’d taken a musket ball, bad. Lewis knew he’d been mortally wounded.

  How to keep all that from her, along with the fact that, at the first notion of trouble, her mad bloody brother Andrew had run like the stuck-pig coward he was.

  After seeing Lalor shot and dragged to safety, Lewis had scarpered to escape the trampling hooves, the blazing tents, and the brutal bayonet stabbing of defenceless men and women. He’d been picked up by strangers in the melee and slung into the bottom of a cart. It had charged madly beyond the reach of the mounted troopers, who’d been crazed by bloodlust and had spied easy victims in the other direction. He’d been dumped for safety, with others, well away from Eureka Lead.

  He’d lurched up a short rise and down into the sparse cover of some remaining scrub, only to come across the rape. Enraged, his frustration and horror had boiled over. He’d snatched up a short, thick rod of gum tree and had thrown himself bodily at the trooper. The screaming woman had been pinned underneath the bastard and Lewis’s momentum had shoved the man off her.

  The dirty grub might have had his pants open, but his gun, bayonet attached, had been within easy reach. He’d grabbed it and swung at Lewis, who’d felt the quick stinging slice in his side. Lewis swung back, his grip on the piece of wood.

  Thwack! A sickening, deadly crunch.

  Luckily there had been a natural hollow in the ground, and the shallow grave, with the body covered with leaf litter, would not be discovered for months, if at all. It had already been days past, and no one had sounded an alarm about it. Everyone was too busy looking after themselves to bother with a missing trooper—thugs and criminals the lot of them. Lewis wouldn’t waste curses on another dead man who was on his way to hell. This one to the special hell for men who rape. Bastard.

  If anyone talked, if anyone came forward to name him for being there, anyone who’d seen him, he’d be hanged. But there’d only been him, and the woman, and the dead trooper. He was sure neither of them would talk.

  She had simply stopped screaming as soon as the trooper dropped lifeless at her feet. She’d stared hard at Lewis, scrambled upright, adjusted her skirt, and pressing a hand low between her legs, had bobbed awkwardly to him—a nod her only thanks before she’d gazed in horror at the blood colouring his shirt. Then, crying, she’d clambered into the bushes and out of his sight.

  Now, at home, he winced as the cotton stuck in some scabby spots. He dabbed at it with a damp rag and eased it off the healing wound. He knew from a medic friend at the camp hospital that if wounds were not cleaned, he would get the sepsis. It was a new theory, still barely believed by the medical hierarchy, but Lewis had seen enough success after bad accidents at the diggings to trust it.

  Only nicked him … The long gash, which hadn’t needed stitching as he’d first thought, looked pink and was clean. No evidence of infection or the slime of pus oozing yet.

  The rebels, so-called, were saying to wait while the law decided what action it would take against them. It was said they would not be prosecuted; no one would dare prosecute in the face of the witnessed atrocities. All the same, Lewis would lay low and the death of the trooper would pass by.

  About the death of his uncle, he’d do what was necessary.

  He laid back on his bed. Every so often the flat, low voices of his mother and of his uncle’s widow reached him, drifting up the short hallway from the cheerless parlour room.

  Nell’s news two days ago had been met with a shrill cry, then his screaming mother had dropped to the floor. Nell had stood by as Lewis bent, carefully, to help Enid up and into a chair. He’
d tried to soothe her. Nell had remained standing, coolly delivering the details of his uncle’s fate as if she were relating a tale that belonged to someone else. Her features, dulled by the yellowing bruise covering half her face, hadn’t showed emotion.

  But his mother. Dear God, his mother. If she had any idea what he’d done … that he’d killed her brother. Well, that truth would never reach her ears from him, like all the other truths he’d hidden from her.

  It had certainly been fearful for him as a young boy when his uncle had first arrived. If his mother had ever known of her brother’s sudden temper and the thumping Lewis would get as a consequence, she’d never said.

  This house, Wilshire House—it sounded so damned grand, but wasn’t—was his uncle’s, as was the one Andrew had occupied with Nell. Did both houses now belong to Nell as Andrew’s widow? If it were so, there’d be nothing his mother could do about it, except for that medieval bollocks that was supposedly his uncle’s will. In the name of all things holy, what could have possessed the lunatic bugger to write such a thing?

  Nothing natural had appeared to help hasten Andrew’s departure from this world, not even his madness, which, of late, had seemed to fester and sicken his spirit even more. He’d flung himself into another doomed marriage to try and avail himself of an heir. Had not even given his family the courtesy of forewarning, only the sudden announcement, and with his first wife’s grave still fresh. The new bride Nell had looked dumbstruck at the nuptials, her father beaming like a cat with cream.