Do you perhaps ride, Miss Haggard?
Big as a tower…
Do you perhaps ride, Miss Haggard?
In the darkness the dark eyes watched.
Sleep came. The riding moon, the evening’s challenges, the touch of the doctor’s dry lips on her cheek, were gone.
* * *
Two weeks later Dr Morgan was getting ready to ride into town to open his clinic.
‘I sometimes wonder why I do it,’ he said to Catherine.
‘Gives you an interest,’ she told him. ‘Keeps you out of mischief too.’
After the dinner party’s success she felt safe to tease him.
‘Small chance of mischief at my age,’ he said. ‘I’m an old man, Catherine.’
‘Only yesterday you helped Andrews with that tree stump. An old man couldn’t have done that.’
It was true. Andrews gave a hand around the place and yesterday the two men had dragged the old stump clear out of the ground.
‘I’m not young either,’ Dr Morgan said.
Which was also true.
She watched him getting ready to leave. She’d had several more riding lessons since the party and was making great progress. ‘Do you mind if I go out for a ride?’ she said. She had not planned it but there the words were.
‘I see no reason why not,’ he said. ‘You started late and you need all the practice you can get. Still got that note I gave you?’
The note authorised her to ride out unescorted, a necessary precaution since she was still a convict.
‘How much longer do we have to put up with this nonsense?’
‘They gave me fourteen years,’ she said. ‘I’ll have done nine come September. Five to go.’
‘Such stupidity.’
‘If you’d given me my ticket of leave like I wanted back in fifty-three we wouldn’t be having to bother with it now,’ she said.
Which was true. But he chose not to hear, or maybe didn’t. He put on his hat, picked up his crop and walked to the door. ‘Have a care. Remember there are bushrangers about. I wish I could tell Moffatt or Andrews to escort you but neither of them rides.’
‘I shall do very well,’ she said.
It was early afternoon when she rode out. The sun was bright, the river still and shining. She had decided to follow the track across the mountain rather than go through the town. It was more peaceful, the occasional kangaroo or echidna likely to be all she would meet. Today she saw neither but watched a hawk flying and was once again walking barefoot on Exmoor in an explosion of skylarks. She sat with Mother’s hand cooling in hers. She remembered, with tears, as sorrow consumed her, yet was excited too. For the first time she dared hope she might have found a path out of the loveless land.
South of the city the forest grew thick. She had not ridden so far before. Here was silence. The unknown past watched the traveller, the only sounds the occasional snort of the horse Sheridan, the creak and clink of harness. So Catherine rode cautiously beneath the watchful trees but the wildness that was Cat revelled in the sense of adventure, the excitement quickening her blood.
Adventure meant entering deliberately into a world of challenge and danger. She wanted to challenge people like the Byfields and Arthur Dunstable who used their money and position to crush those whom Mungo Jackson had called the lost peoples of the earth, but to do so would be dangerous for a convict still with time to serve. Maybe that is my Holy Grail, she thought, to give help to those in need. Of course wanting to help and knowing how were two different matters.
After riding for half an hour she saw a glint of water; she had returned to the river up which the St Vincent had brought her eight years before. How well she remembered that day and the determination she had felt when the hatches were opened. She was a different Cat now in a different world but where she was headed, through this forest or in her life, she still did not know. If she rode on she might find out. She did so and ten minutes later the trees opened up. She reined in on the edge of an expanse of open country with well-fenced paddocks containing many cattle. A fine house with many outbuildings overlooked a creek. She had arrived at Jackson’s Landing.
A group of men came from the outbuildings. They had horses with them and she watched as they climbed into the saddle. She saw they were armed and knew, all at once, what she was seeing. This must be the gang the ladies had been talking about after dinner. But what were they doing there?
Mungo Jackson emerged from the house. He wore a broad-brimmed hat and carried a rifle. He crossed the clearing to a large horse, black as jet, which one of the men was holding for him. He thrust the rifle into a saddle holster and made ready to mount.
Cat’s mind flittered this way and that but couldn’t take hold of what she was seeing. Mungo Jackson? Squatter and earl’s son? A gentleman? Was it possible that he…? It couldn’t be. Then she remembered Mrs Arbuckle’s words. Their leader is a big man who wears a mask and rides a black stallion.
My dear life, she thought. There he was, black horse and all. There could be no doubt about it. This had to be the gang that had been terrorising the district and Mungo Jackson was its leader. Bushrangers were dangerous; everyone knew that, yet she did not feel afraid. Without conscious decision she touched Sheridan’s flanks with her heels and moved forward into the open. She heard the click as a gun was cocked behind her. A harsh voice spoke. ‘Stay where you are.’
TWENTY-EIGHT
Joanne
The journey south from Ross had been interesting. Heavy rain had created stretches of floodwater that might have snared a less courageous driver. As it was I circumvented each potential disaster with customary aplomb, arriving in the uni car park one hundred and twenty kilometres and one hour fifteen minutes after pulling out from the hotel.
Taut as wire in the passenger seat, Colin sat with blanched cheeks, staring sightlessly through the windscreen. I was worried about Colin. The decline in his wellbeing had occurred some ten minutes into our trip. Some people are badly affected by climatic changes at altitude and I wondered whether he might have caught the flu. I offered to drive him to the nearest clinic.
‘Have someone take a look at you, hmm?’
He reacted with unexpected vehemence. ‘No, please… I am fine. Really fine.’
‘If you say so. I’ll check in with Dick. Catch you in the canteen later, okay?’
I shook my head as I entered the lift. I was entertaining ever more kindly thoughts about Colin McNeil. I was even beginning to hope my heartache over Tim Luttrell would hold me as lightly as I had in the end held him. I hoped Colin and I might see more of each other and was at a loss to account for his distraught behaviour. It wasn’t he who’d been kidnapped, after all. It was only as I walked into the lobby of Dick Cottle’s office that the explanation struck me. I beamed at Wendy who acted as Dick’s watchdog in her downtime from painting her nails.
‘I know what it is,’ I told her. ‘He’s shy.’
She gaped at me. ‘Huh?’
The dumb are with us always.
Thunder roared down the mountain like an avalanche of boulders as Dick glared at me from behind the expanse of his executive desk – walnut veneer, as highly polished as Dick himself on a good day. It became apparent that today was not a good day.
He scowled. ‘I hadn’t expected you so soon.’
I plonked myself in a spare chair and beamed at him. ‘Amaryllis been at your wheaties again, has she?’ Again the thunder rattled the windows. ‘The Anemoi are not pleased with us today, are they?’
He looked if anything more tense than before.
‘Gods of the storm winds. Homer mentions them. Anemoi Thuellai. They were housed in the caverns of Aiolos and –’
He ground his teeth. For some reason my explanation seemed to annoy him excessively. ‘Never mind the storm winds. What I want to know is how you can possibly have given Solomon’s Throne a thorough search in so short a time?’
‘I couldn’t. There was a problem.’
I told him
the tale of Joanne the victim of unscrupulous men. I could see he didn’t want to believe me; this was not surprising: I didn’t want to believe me, either. Their first crack at me hadn’t worked but what was to stop them having another go? I could see myself locking my doors and windows for months to come and the prospect did not please me.
‘You expect me to believe you were kidnapped in the middle of the night, by some miracle managed to escape and never even reported it to the police?’
Put like that it didn’t sound very likely but the truth often didn’t. ‘That’s the sum of it,’ I said.
‘So what is your next plan?’
‘To find out how those two thugs knew I was going to be there.’
That shook him. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Someone must have tipped them off.’
‘Surely it is far more likely they had studied the texts and come to the same conclusion as we did.’
‘As you did,’ I said. ‘Personally I never believed a word of it.’
‘I was referring to Professor Poxon and myself. Solomon’s Throne is the obvious location. Your ancestor said so herself. What was the quotation in that journal of hers?’
‘High on a throne of royal state. “Paradise Lost”,’ I said, eager to be helpful. ‘John Milton.’
‘Exactly. High on a throne. And royal state obviously refers to the crown. It could hardly be clearer, could it?’
I knew his problem. He had committed the university to paying Poxon a fat fee – fatter than fat, if I knew Pirate Pete – and desperately wanted him to be right.
‘Absolutely,’ I said. While behind my sunny smile I was remembering another quotation, from Schiller: Against stupidity the gods themselves labour in vain.
‘Obviously there are hundreds of gullies and crevices where you had to look,’ he said. ‘You would hardly expect her to leave it out in the open, would you? And now you turn your back with the job barely begun? I would have thought, Joanne, that even you could have understood the significance –’
There was little point continuing the conversation; he had an infinite capacity for ignoring inconvenient truths. Yet I thought I would give him a final jolt, for old times’ sake.
‘Seen anything of Dr Wiranto recently?’
‘He was in this office only four days ago,’ he said. ‘He enquired after you, I remember, and I said –’
He stopped abruptly.
‘And?’ How gentle my voice was.
His reply was little more than a whisper. ‘I said you were away.’
‘You didn’t happen to mention the Walls of Jerusalem, by any chance?’
Silence.
I said: ‘What do we know about Dr Wiranto?’
What did we know about Dr Wiranto? What, for that matter, did we know about Pete Poxon?
I had both fancied Wiranto and disliked him; I detested Poxon. Neither was a good reason for trusting or distrusting a man but I didn’t believe the kidnappers had been there by chance. Someone had told them. I ran over the possible candidates.
Dick had blabbed to Wiranto. Almost certainly he had also blabbed to Pete Poxon. Colin knew; I knew; Averil knew. Who else? I couldn’t think of anyone else.
I left the vice-chancellor looking suitably crestfallen. Another man might have looked embarrassed – those thugs could have killed me, for heaven’s sake! – but embarrassment did not loom large in the Cottle DNA.
I was waiting for the lift when I seemed to fall to pieces. Sweating, hands shaking, for a moment I thought I might fall over. What did they call it? Post traumatic stress. I guessed what had happened had hit me worse than I’d thought.
Luckily it soon passed but I was still feeling a tad fragile when I got into the lift. I went down to the ground floor and walked into the café where Colin was waiting. His back was to me. Sight of him made me feel a heap better. Like: Wow! Strong back, strong neck… Dick Cottle and kidnappers notwithstanding, I felt a glow.
Another thought struck me. It was plain that Dick had blabbed to Wiranto about Solomon’s Throne but that was only part of the problem. I had told no one but Averil about the notebook yet the kidnappers had asked me about it. I had known Averil for fourteen years and could not believe she had betrayed me yet the fact was they’d heard about it somehow. Who else could have tipped them off?
TWENTY-NINE
Cat
Cat’s shock was so great that she swayed in the saddle and might have fallen but Sheridan stood rock still and within seconds she had recovered. The men were staring at her. She was a woman alone and far from help but her life had been one of endless challenge and her spirits rose to the occasion. She laughed and called across to Mungo Jackson, still standing beside his stallion with one hand on the saddle.
‘Is this how you greet your visitors, Mr Jackson?’
For an instant he seemed not to recognise her. Then his expression cleared and his laugh met hers. ‘Miss Haggard…’
He strode across the clearing and stood at Sheridan’s side. He looked up at her admiringly and she felt warmth run through her.
‘Mr Jackson…’
He turned away and spoke briefly to his men. They were a hard-looking bunch but now were all smiles. They dismounted and began to lead their horses back to the stables.
‘Please,’ she said. ‘You mustn’t stop whatever you were planning to do.’
Again he smiled. ‘We were planning a social call on one of your near neighbours but an hour’s delay is of no consequence. Hospitality, however, cannot wait.’ He removed his hat with a theatrical flourish. ‘Welcome to my humble abode, Miss Haggard. I see you have not brought a chaperone but if you would care to dismount?’
He held out his hand to assist her but she dismounted unaided. ‘If I thought I needed a chaperone, Mr Jackson, I might not have come at all.’
‘That would have been a grave loss.’
‘Do you doubt me?’
‘Not at all. A lady courageous enough to ride unescorted when there are bushrangers about is hardly likely to need a chaperone when she reaches her destination.’
Catherine lifted her chin. ‘My destination, Mr Jackson? Surely you are not suggesting this is anything but a chance meeting? That would be most improper of you.’
‘Indeed it would, and I apologise,’ he said. ‘But now that you are here…’
‘I accept your invitation gladly,’ she said.
It was a strange feeling: with her arrival Cat seemed to have usurped Catherine’s place.
Mungo turned to the man who had bailed her up. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to wait to try out your new Lacy.’
The man had uncocked his rifle and now grinned gap-toothed. ‘There’ll be other times, Cap’n.’
‘You can bet your life on that,’ Jackson said. ‘In the meantime, if you could take Miss Haggard’s horse for her?’
The man nodded. He took Sheridan’s reins and led him off towards the stables.
‘Raven has a new rifle,’ Mungo said. ‘A Lacy. He is longing to try it out.’
‘I’m glad he didn’t try it out on me,’ she said.
‘Small chance of that.’
He walked over to the stallion and removed the rifle from the saddle holster. Side by side, rifle loose in his hand, they went into the house.
Her first impression was of books. They were everywhere; more even than Dr Morgan had in his library. They were not confined to the shelves that lined two of the walls but stood in piles on tables, chairs, even the floor. In the facing wall a door led to a wide terrace but most of it was taken up by a window through which she could see a tree-lined slope running down to a creek. Between the branches of the furthest trees was the distant shine of the river and she thought they could not be far from the sea.
She turned as a woman came into the room. She was young, with an alert face and trim figure and Cat eyed her thoughtfully.
Mungo Jackson had slung his topcoat over the back of a chair. He smiled at the new arrival and Cat thought yes, she is his woma
n, or has been, because she knew with absolute certainty that this man had never been a one-woman man. The thought did not trouble her as she might have expected; habits, after all, could be changed.
Mungo transferred his smile from the young woman to Catherine. ‘May I offer you tea? A glass of wine?’
She was unsure where they were headed, if anywhere, but thought wine would fortify her more effectively than tea. ‘A glass of wine would be most palatable.’
The young woman nodded. She did not speak or curtsey but went out and returned a few minutes later with an opened bottle and two glasses on a silver tray.
‘And I think some biscuits and a morsel of cheese, if you please, Agnes,’ Mungo Jackson said.
Again the young woman went out. Mungo stood beside Catherine at the window.
‘It is a fine view,’ he said.
Indeed it was. A fold in the ground was bisected by the creek which from here looked deep and dark and swift-flowing. A jetty showed amid the trees and Catherine could see the single mast of the boat moored there.
‘Yours?’ she said.
‘Yes. It is a hoy. Single masted and gaff rigged.’ He looked questioningly at her. ‘You understand what I am saying?’
She smiled. ‘I am a fisherman’s daughter, Mr Jackson. Although in our part of the world the boats were mostly smacks and luggers.’
She wondered why he needed such a vessel but did not ask and he said no more.
The cheese arrived. They sat in easy chairs facing the window. The wine was cold and good, the cheese tart flavoured, and Mungo told her it was made on the property.
‘I like to be as self-sufficient as possible,’ he said. He replenished their glasses and sat back in his chair. As casually as though discussing the weather he asked: ‘Why were you sent out here?’
‘Theft,’ she said. ‘They were going to hang me for it but changed their minds at the last minute.’
The shadow of the rope. The clang of the cell door. The gaoler’s voice bringing life instead of death.
Catherine could hardly believe she could talk so easily about those terrible days. True, she had told Mrs Morgan about them but would never have expected to discuss them with a man. Yet with this man it seemed the natural thing to do.
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