“A miner never came back for his laundry order once, and she found a pouch of gold dust in it. The next day, she heard he’d been killed. No one knew his real name and when there was no claim on his washing, his shirts were given away. But, she held onto the pouch. I thought the brooch must’ve been in there too.”
“But Molly says it was always in the linen napkin.” She held her hand out for Molly’s. “Wasn’t it?”
The girl nodded and came closer. “When my head hurt, Mum would let me hold the spider. But only for a minute.”
“Do you remember where it came from? It’s really important we know. Did your mother ever say?” Finella tightened her grip.
“Not Mum. But Dad did. He said it was a present. From England. I heard him whisper to her one afternoon when he came back from running away. He wanted her to have something fancy to remember our Daniel who died.”
“England?” Aunt Sarah exclaimed.
“Your father was in England?” Finella twisted back to Shadrach.
“He was gone four years.” He frowned. “He could’ve been anywhere. I never spoke about it with him. I guess some of the time he could’ve been in England.”
“When was he away? What were the years?” A wild frenzy worked in her head and Finella counted back while she waited for his answer.
“He disappeared when I was fourteen and came back, four years later. Early…1870.”
Cold ran through Finella’s veins and she let go of the snug hold of Molly’s hand to rub her forehead. “My mother was killed the week after Christmas, 1869. The thieves fled and were never seen again. Neither was her brooch, nor the basket she carried that day, lined with this Christmas napkin. Until today.”
She hoped some heavenly miracle would stop the shiver in her bones. Dear God, could it be this unfathomable? She collected a slim measure of strength and willed her words into sensible order, unlike her wild thoughts.
“My guess is the brooch and napkin made it back to your home. As gifts to your poor mother, while we laid flowers on my mother’s grave each week and limped through life without her.”
“Hang on.” Shadrach scrambled to his feet. “There’s little about my father I remember that’s good, but he could have won the brooch in a card game. Or stolen it from some blind drunk.” His voice pleaded with her to look up. To connect and slip in alongside him where she’d been all day.
Finella tripped out of his skillion with Aunt Sarah close behind. Goliah and Agatha parted and made way for her exit, but there was not enough space under God’s darkening sky for what she craved. She needed air. Deep gulps, if she were to keep from falling in a broken heap.
She looked to the dusky sky for answers. Had she been living with the family of her mother’s attacker all this time? Cared for them, for him, with affection she should have reserved for only one man in her life.
The shell path at her feet swam in a swirl of colors.
“Finella. Please…” Shadrach pulled her back. “Listen to me.”
She twisted around. “No, you listen to me.” She pressed her hand to his chest. “My mother had blood on her fingers and under her nails. I never saw it, because she’d been washed when they let me in her room. But I heard the whispers. She’d fought her attacker. Probably knocked his nose they said, when he ripped at that brooch. And the napkin Molly found still has bloodstains on it. Didn’t you tell me your father returned with a broken nose?” She pointed to the skillion where the madness of the afternoon lay strewn in linens at the foot of his bed. “That stain is your father’s blood, on my mother’s Christmas napkin.”
She retched at the thought of that villain’s blood on her mother’s lace collar. On her beautiful face. On her carefully stitched napkin, now a filthy rag. The gag reached her throat. God help me, I have to ask.
Had George followed through with his promise? Had he placed her right where she’d find what she needed all along?
Molly tumbled outside and pressed her shoulder into Shadrach’s open arms. The last of the summer evening sun picked up the blue in her eyes, still swollen. Still confused.
“Your father,” Finella’s words tumbled in uneven breaths, “stole from my mother, while she lay dying in a mud hole. If you think about it carefully, you won’t deny it. And he left behind a page of the newspaper from Ballarat where you all lived.”
He tried to speak but she ignored him.
They all called to her; Aunt Sarah, Agatha Ashe, but their words drowned in the booming memory of the ship’s surgeon and his parting words reaching for her like a gnarled knuckle from the grave.
Evil is carried by the next generation, Miss Finella, as surely as the moon drags the tides. The emancipated convict’s blood is just as potent today as when he yanked the chain. Only now, his children carry the brand. Mark my words, the blemish of the convict era hasn’t faded and won’t anytime soon.
Finella breathed hard. She leaned a hand onto the skillion wall but nothing held up what crumbled inside.
Shadrach shook his head at her in slow disbelieving shakes.
“You can shake your head as much as you like, Shadrach, I don’t care. All that’s left now is his name.” She pounded on his chest as if it were right there for her to reach in and grab. “The least you can do is give it to me in return for everything he stole. So I know how to name the sinner.”
She didn’t care how bitter her words sounded. How hurtful or numb.
She didn’t care about Aunt Sarah’s discordant whisper for her to calm down. Even Goliah and Agatha’s silent retreat into the shadows didn’t stem her boiling anger. All she cared for was the name George had promised they’d find.
“You’re right. Our father was a despicable man. He lusted for riches which only made our lives worse. Never better.” Shadrach’s voice wavered and his eyes flooded with tears.
“Worst of all, he cherished an illusion he’d find us a house where the sun would shine through the windows all the day long and keep us healthy. Fortify our strength. Unlike poor Daniel who died in our reality, my dad retreated to a sun filled fantasy. You’re right.” He nodded, and his lip trembled. “It has to be him. He hid that newspaper report in his breast pocket and unfolded it whenever the mood took him. Read every word out loud to us as if we’d never heard it before.”
“My father did the same,” Finella whispered, more to herself that anyone else. Even from outside the skillion, she could see Father’s trunks against the wall where they collected dust and awaited someone to break them open. “Father read that newspaper scrap over and over as if it held the answer to our grief. ‘Someone from Ballarat,’ he’d guess. ‘Someone who read the Ballarat Star.’ But that’s all we knew. But you…” she backed away a step. “You did know. You knew when I told you how my mother died. Didn’t you?”
“I didn’t want to think it could be him,” Shadrach pleaded. “God knows how many others could have read the Ballarat Star and there’s a million reasons a scrap of paper might have tumbled from person to person, country to country.”
“There may be a million reasons an old newspaper is still lodged between my father’s books. But there’s only one reason my mother’s napkin is here in your skillion.” She spat the words and shrugged off Aunt Sarah who tried to draw her away.
“And all those reasons wrap into one. Your father. The nameless man. The man George saw run off with his younger accomplice. That was your father.”
“And you’re asking for his name?” Shadrach’s voiced remained as low as Finella’s had grown in pitch. “What difference does it make, now? If any of this is true, it happened so long ago. So far from where you and I are now. Can’t you let the past stay where it is? Can’t you forgive?”
“Forgive?” She stepped back before the scream was fully out of her mouth. “Something inside me would have to die for that to happen. And I’ve seen enough death for one lifetime.”
She wiped at her tears. “You don’t want me to look back, Shadrach, but my mother asked. Aunt Sarah will tell yo
u. That was her dying wish. And my father stewed over it until he died. How can I not want to know what they were robbed of at the grave?”
“And when you do? What then, Finella? Will you be free? Will you and I return to how we were before Goliah’s buggy rolled into our yard?”
She looked away and let fresh sobs take over.
Shadrach wrapped his hands around her cheeks and made her look up. “You already know his name,” he whispered like a man defeated. “You’ve known his name since the day you and I met on that pier. The day I let your brown eyes chip at my heart for the very first time.”
Finella peeled his hands away but he wrestled her by the elbows.
“I carry his name, Finella. In full. My father’s name was Shadrach Jones.”
“No.” She dared him to take it back. Anything but that. Not…
Shadrach Jones.
Shadrach Jones, Shadrach, Shadrach, Shadrach Jones. Words swarmed around her like an upended wasp nest. As if a dozen fractured Mollys sang the discordant song over their breakfast table.
It wasn’t until her own lungs curdled the air like a funeral dirge, that Aunt Sarah and Agatha dragged her away.
37
Shadrach watched them bundle Finella away from his house, his sister, and anything else he thought might have kept her there.
Goliah tapped Shadrach’s back. “It’s a sudden blow, Shad. Let’s wait and see what morning brings.”
Shadrach tore his eyes from Finella’s back to Molly, who slipped into the hut and no doubt found her bed. “Morning had better bring you and that buggy with Finella in it. Or so help me Goliah I will come right over myself.”
“Easy, now. No use forcing her. You want her to be here because she chooses to. She’s got a lot to sort out.”
Shadrach ran soot-stained fingers through his hair and pressed at the back of his scalp, as if to keep the madness from taking root in his head. “I asked her to marry me, today. She’d only just said yes. Now, that’s all undone in one conversation and her bags’ll be packed and out in deep seas before week’s end.” A fresh stab hit him in the chest. “My father, ruining another handful of lives, from the grave this time.”
“Best to let a night’s sleep calm us all.” Goliah sent him a parting look, half pity half courage, but the pity won out and framed his face with the misery they all fought.
Shadrach watched a cloud of dust rise from their departure. It filled his yard and crammed his mouth. He couldn’t tell how long he stood there, watching it float back to the ground through the splinters of the setting sun. None of the crazy thoughts he wrestled made any sense.
Finella had every reason to walk away, but he wanted her back, anyway. He wanted her back…
He wondered about bundling Molly into his wagon and chasing the buggy down, when a smaller puff of dust appeared.
Hope crammed his chest. Was Finella marching back toward him? Instead, Jimmy Callahan rode his horse into the yard.
“Got a note for ya from Mr. Ashe.” He jumped off and hunted around in his pocket. “Here ya go.”
Shadrach snatched the paper. “Next time, do as you’re told and don’t take the long way round.”
Jimmy’s face colored. “How’dya know?” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Peew…It stinks here.”
“Get going.” Shadrach didn’t care to point out the boy’s trouser bottoms dripped with seawater. Who cared now if he’d been fooling with the lads, fishing or poking around the rock pools?
When Jimmy left the way he’d come, Shadrach turned back into his house and sat on the end of Molly’s bed. She’d fallen asleep, fully dressed, fingers curled around her brick. He ripped the letter open with a blackened fingernail.
Brace yourself, Shad. Miss Sarah Mayfield’s blown in like a gale force wind. Agatha and I will bring her around later this evening.
You’d best polish your boots, lad.
Goliah.
Shadrach scrunched the paper into a tiny ball. He tossed it into the fire without even moving from the bed. The noiseless missile fuelled Shadrach even more.
He paced the room. Looked for something, anything to grab and slam against the slow burning log with a force to equal the rage within.
But there was nothing to burn. At least not in the fire.
*
“But I want Finella to come back.” Molly chewed on her breakfast damper.
Shadrach wouldn’t look Molly’s disappointment in the face. He leaned against the door and watched the road.
“Brother?”
He sipped his tea. “Finella needs to look after her aunt, now.”
“I don’t like it in here without Finella.” Molly touched her name in the brick. “It’s sad.”
Shadrach put his mug on the table. Molly was right. The emptiness carved a ditch in his chest. But he didn’t need his insides to prove something was wrong.
Unmade beds were only the start. The table still held the cold remnants of tea Finella had brewed the night before. Scalloped paper lined the shelf where the treacle and sugar tins lived, one corner lower than the other, crooked and begging attention. And Finella’s apron hung by a single nail in the wall. Its loose strings released of their duty.
But the worse reminder, heavier than the untended room and Molly’s wild hair, clung to him like a heady vapor. He couldn’t even escape it. For Shadrach Jones had slept in the bed beside Molly’s all night. The bed he’d given up for Finella. He’d lain there all night, blinking into the dark, wrapped in sorrow and shame and her sweet smelling quilt.
He inhaled again. An intoxicating draught of rose water, lemons and her. Just her. And it was all he had.
*
“Which way did they go?” Molly pulled at the rope Shadrach fastened around her waist until the knot rested on her left hip. She wriggled for a comfortable position under the largest quince tree, at the edge of the yard.
“Only one way into the village. They followed Old Lou’s track.” Shadrach dragged the tin sheet of mortar closer. “Why?”
“I want to know where to look. For when she comes back.” She leaned on her elbow and faced the gate. Shadrach breathed in the sweet summer day, but nothing chased the sour taste from his mouth. He hated to keep her tethered to a tree. Even more now that Finella had scoffed at the choice and then used it herself. Everything reminded him of her. He couldn’t even lose himself in hard work. His mother always said honest labor was the best distraction, but oven building didn’t fit that. Not this oven.
Not when each brick heaped memory upon memory. When bricks split his skin with their rough edge, and sliced his heart in the process.
The sun overhead scorched like a furnace, and so did his longing for Finella.
Molly rested her cheek on her rag doll. “Jimmy Callahan comes by the beach.”
“Jimmy and those boys like to scramble over rocks. They’re not afraid to wade through Saltwater Creek. Probably use it as a short cut. It’s not the way Finella would come.”
“Why not?”
He tapped another brick with the trowel and eyed the row for straightness. “The beach might be the quickest road from here to Cowes, but Finella wouldn’t want to get her skirt wet. She’d prefer to sit in a wagon and no horse can take you over the beach and rocks the way Jimmy’s legs can.”
“Can yours?” She kicked off her shoes.
“I haven’t tried. I’m too busy being a farmer to wander all over the bush or the beach.” He smoothed a line of mortar with his finger. “And you know what a busy farmer likes doing least?”
“What?”
“Being a builder.” The trowel weighed almost nothing, but felt like an anvil in his fist. If only he’d married Finella before the aunt had arrived.
“Brother?” Molly squinted. “Will you tell me when she comes back? I don’t want to have my eyes closed when she does.”
“I will do that for you, Miss Molly.” The lane shimmered in the heat with no one either coming or going. “You take that nap, and if
anything happens while you rest, I promise to wake you. Quick sticks.”
She smiled. “She’ll come back. To bake our pies.”
38
Finella watched Goliah Ashe pace the floor. His feet cut a circle in his good carpet piece, and if his wife didn’t beckon him to sit, he may have left a rut clear to the wooden board beneath.
Lord knew, Finella’s heart held a similar rut. A going over of events and words which bled right into her soul. Shadrach’s father, the man who robbed her beloved mother. All those years ago. And now she held the jagged pieces of the tale like broken glass.
“Take some more chamomile tea, dear.” Aunt Sarah beckoned, and Agatha Ashe lifted the pot. But neither of these women knew what she wanted or needed. Perhaps Finella herself would never know now, either.
Beyond the window, a wink of sky against rustling blue gums and brilliant sun did nothing to take away the gloom. It wrapped around her heart like the skin of a cold stone.
Shadrach Jones. How could he expect her to be near him after such a revelation? How could she in good conscience and decent respect for her mother’s memory, engage with him in any way? She shifted in her chair and all eyes fell on her. But she had nothing to say. Nothing they hadn’t already discussed a hundred times in the last few days.
A loud rap at the front door drove both Goliah and Agatha to jump to their feet. When they returned, Jon Tripp followed them into the parlor, hat in hand and lathered in a sweat from brow to the end of his long hair.
“Just wanted you to know your things are all at the bunkhouse, Miss Mayfield. Shadrach and I carted it all there this morning.”
“Thank you, Mr. Tripp.” She hunted for the words needed to acknowledge him. “You’ve been kind to oversee that for me. It shouldn’t be too long and we shall empty your bunkhouse and make our way home.”
Weariness and heat hit her with a force she didn’t expect. Her spine would not hold up the way she’d been forcing it for too much longer.
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