‘What do we do?’
He spoke contemptuously out of the sneer that was his mouth. ‘Maybe you’d care to pray, Miss Haggard. Not much else we can do.’
She knew he wanted her to go below but she would not. She needed to know what was going on. She wished Mungo were there. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Robinson’s seamanship but as a man she didn’t trust him at all. She didn’t even like being near him but still she would not go below. An hour later Hercules had closed and so had the storm, squalls of icy rain mixed with sleet coming more and more frequently. There was hail too, that stung Cat’s face and sent pellets of ice dancing along the deck.
Hercules was still out of gun range. The sky was an unbroken mass of darkness. It was a question of which caught them first: the frigate or the storm.
The storm won. It struck in the late afternoon as the winter’s day closed in. The seas were tremendous, the waves as high as the main yards and visibility down to a hundred feet. The sleet came horizontally, the wind so strong that Cat could barely stand. The bare masts inscribed wild circles against a black sky; the seas broke green over the bows and roared in torrents along the deck. It was no longer a question of remaining where she was but whether she could gain shelter before she ended in the sea.
She had to crawl to get there. Below deck the ship was a chorus of complaining timbers and the gimballed oil lamps flung uneasy shadows across the bulkheads. Every so often Antares stopped, shuddering, as though she had run into a wall. Each time Cat held her breath but always the barque shrugged off the wind and rejoined the battle.
The night was almost over by the time the storm passed. Dawn came at length with grey skies and pounding seas but the worst of the danger was past. Hercules had disappeared.
Later that day the skies cleared, the wind had veered and now held steady from the south-east. There was still no sign of the frigate. With all sails set Antares cleared Bass Strait and headed up the coast. The arrangement was that they would go north for a week before putting about and heading south once more. It was strange to think that soon she might not only have received an unconditional pardon but be rich beyond her dreams, yet Mungo had been confident about it and Cat had every faith that by the time she got back he would have sorted out whatever needed to be done.
The days passed; they saw few ships and none approached them. Cat was bored. She tried to make friends with the crew but they were a surly bunch and Robinson was no better. Mungo’s men were friendly enough, even respectful, but they were inhibited by her closeness to Mungo and had little to say for themselves.
Three days after the storm Dirk Giles, one of Mungo’s men, asked Cat if he might try and talk to the two silk-clad passengers.
‘You think you can?’
‘I reckon they be people they call Malays. They come from the islands way up north in the tropics. I shipped there once and picked up a bit of the lingo. I can try, if you like.’
The two men puzzled her. She couldn’t imagine what they were doing on board or where they thought they were going. Robinson had told her that through sign language he had offered to put them ashore with the crew and they had refused.
‘Shouting and shaking their heads they was,’ Robinson had said.
They never left their cabin, either, although no one tried to stop them. Cat thought it was very strange.
‘If you can find out who they are and what they’re doing I would like it very much,’ she said.
She didn’t think much of his chances but the next day Dirk reported that he’d spoken to the two men and they had understood each other. Only a bit, he said, but enough.
‘The young one’s some kind of prince,’ Dirk said.
‘A prince? What kind of prince?’
‘I dunno but that’s what he said. I reckon the older one’s a sort of guard, though whether to protect him or keep him from running off I couldn’t say.’
‘Why should he want to run off?’
That Dirk couldn’t say either.
‘What’s a prince doing in Tasmania?’
‘The younger one said something about having something repaired. The older one kept trying to shut him up so what he was talking about I never found out.’
‘Maybe I should speak to them,’ Cat said. ‘If you could translate for me.’
‘I can try,’ Dirk said.
But when they went to the cabin she found that the prince, if that was what he was, was not forthcoming. Courteous enough but when it came to specific questions Cat got nowhere.
‘I think maybe the older one’s told him to keep his trap shut,’ Dirk said.
‘Or maybe he doesn’t like being questioned by a woman,’ Cat said. ‘Try to make friends with them. See what you can find out.’
There was a member of the crew whom Cat had heard the other men call Berserker. Berserker Larssen. An ugly name for an ugly man. She thought him the worst of a bad bunch; he had a strongly muscled body and a head like a wolf, and eyes that followed her when she walked about the deck.
The only one who was friendly was a Hollander called Piet. He had wide eyes, an innocent smile and carried a vicious-looking knife in a rope sling around his waist. She formed the habit of chatting with Piet when he was off duty. He told her that in Sydney he had used his knife to cut a man who had tried to rape a child. Cat would have done the same in his place but it had earned him seven years, all the same.
‘And now you’re free,’ Cat said.
‘And plan to stay that way,’ he said. ‘I’d cut my throat before I went through that again.’
‘And what do you intend to do now?’
He gave her his sweet smile. ‘Find myself a little wife. I’ve had my fill of excitement.’
It was good to hear because Cat was beginning to think along the same lines. The taking of Antares and everything that had happened afterwards – her hours in the well and the storm that had helped them give Hercules the slip – had quenched at least some of her thirst for adventure. Mungo had warned her it would happen. She had not believed him but was beginning to see that domesticity had its attractions. In a week she would be back with him. They would be rich and their future secure, with no more need to go bushranging or for piracy. We shall breed cattle and children, she thought. I shall be content.
That evening she gave Robinson his instructions.
‘We’ll head south in the morning,’ she said. ‘Then you can collect your money and Antares will be yours.’
She lay on her bunk while the night enfolded her gently. Homeward bound… She was restless with excitement and had lain down fully clothed. Everyone knew that men were as changeable as the wind but Mungo was not as other men. She allowed herself to dream of southern forests with snow-clad mountains rising against a sunset sky, of a book-strewn room overlooking a green and fertile valley. Mungo’s face smiled from the shadows.
‘I’m coming,’ she said softly. ‘All’s well and I’m coming.’
There was a clash and clatter from the corridor outside her cabin door. Shouts; cries; the cabin door was kicked open. An iron voice shouted out of the darkness.
‘Get up!’
FORTY-TWO
Joanne
I’d been afraid that time and exposure would have made the message illegible. It was not. The letters written on the page were as clear as the day they were written. Clear but incomprehensible, because that was exactly what they were: a sequence of letters that made no sense whatsoever. What confronted me now was no less than a code within a code. Whatever Cat Haggard had intended to conceal, she had certainly made a good job of it.
The paper on which the words had been written had been tightly rolled. To keep it from curling up I put it on the kitchen table with weights at each corner. I copied the letters onto a scribble pad and looked at them.
BANL AFEO BLAI NESA LUBK ILAK UNSA LSKY AMTU RENL YRES AHER YANK ALOK
Here we go again, I thought. I sat back, running my sadly abused fingers through my hair. Another code? Another book without a name? Was
there no end to it? All I knew, most unhelpfully, was that I was beginning to feel I’d had my ancestor in chunks. I’d risked my neck on that bloody cliff to end up with this? What had the old lady been playing at?
Then I remembered Cat Haggard as I had seen her yesterday. If she had gone to all this trouble, she’d had a reason.
The phone rang.
‘Yes?’
It was Colin. I hadn’t expected that.
‘I’m going to be late. They want me to have a medical.’
‘Why?’
‘Standard procedure. Nothing to worry about.’
‘They haven’t suggested you write a will?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Probably assume you can’t write.’
‘That’ll be it. How’s your day been?’
‘Interesting.’
‘You can tell me about it when I get home.’
‘Okay.’
He rang off. He had been in a hurry yet had still found time to let me know. It gave me a good feeling. There had been something else too. He had called Cat’s Kingdom home. Home. That made me feel better still. Smiling, I went back to my puzzle.
I looked at the word groups. Fourteen groups, each of four letters. They meant nothing to me. Yet something was nudging my mind. Something I thought I should know. Something someone had said? That I had said?
It was like having a name on the tip of your tongue and not being able to take hold of it. No matter. It would come back eventually if there was anything to remember. I thought if I got on with supper maybe something would click. And if it didn’t at least we’d have supper.
I rolled up Cat’s instructions, wrapped them carefully in the oilskin paper and put them away in my desk. Give it a break and think food. I thought fish curry would hit the spot. Fish curry and beer. Maybe I’d have a beer now to get me in the mood. A beer, fish curry and thou beside me, singing in the kitchen. Move over Omar Khayyam, the new girl’s in town. Colin would be coming home later, coming home to me. And that, to continue the Fitzgerald theme, would be paradise enow.
I zipped away, adding a bit of this, a bit of that, spices to make the heart grow glad. Or something like that. I had another beer. That went down well too. I went and put on some music. Kings College choir, no less. I turned up the volume as they let rip with Zadok the Priest. Joanne singing along, doing her von Karajan bit with a wooden ladle.
‘Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet…’
The evening in Melbourne when Colin and I had first met and Averil had got tetchy about my repeating myself? What had I said to her? We say millions when we mean dozens, dozens when we mean two or three. And the reverse, of course. What was the point of what I’d said?
I went back to my witch’s brew. Fenugreek, cardamom, turmeric… This would be a curry with character. Light blue touch-paper and it would take us into orbit.
I laughed, imagining Colin’s face when he took a first spoonful of Joanne’s magic mixture. I laughed…
A memory chimed. I remembered laying down the law to Colin and Averil. Something about the language of concealment? The convention of hiding the truth, of obfuscation…
I ran. Grabbed the notebook. Paged through it. Found what I was looking for. I sat back, conscious of my pounding heart, and read again my ancestor’s words.
If we are to assist those who need our help we have to learn the language used by the lost peoples of the earth. How else are we to discover the truth?
I had thought she had been passing on Mungo’s bleeding-heart message to posterity, explaining that to help the disadvantaged we had to speak to them in ways they understood. Perhaps it was that but what if it had another meaning too?
The smell of curry brought me back to the present. Oh God… I ran again and turned the stove down low. Just in time.
I let my mind play around that evening. I remembered how I had shown off. A convention based on the thieves’ cant they used in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Embarrassing, yes? But that wasn’t important. What mattered was that I had been right. Thieves’ cant.
I googled it. And there it was.
It took a bit of doing. Words had to be created from the letter clusters and then translated, but an hour after I had started I was looking at the answer.
GO SOUTH HALF DAY PLACE WITH TWO HILLS TREASURE HIDDEN IN LEFT CAVE CLOSE TO CLOUDS.
Go south from where?
I took a succession of deep breaths. My hands were trembling but I had learnt one thing about research. Whatever you were looking for, take your time. Rushing guaranteed disaster. Besides, curry was calling. I slopped in coconut milk, brought it to a simmer, added sliced potatoes to the mix.
‘Bubble bubble,’ sang the minstrel of Cat’s Kingdom. ‘This little fishy went to market…’
Triumph always inspired the infantile in me.
Colin came home as it was getting dark. We took our drinks and went outside to taste the isolation, the rolling splendour of the moon-shot sea.
‘No wonder your ancestor built her house here,’ Colin said.
‘One smart lady,’ I said.
I should know; I had talked with her only twenty-four hours before.
We went back indoors, freshened our drinks and tucked into the curry. We shared our days or – in my case – an expurgated version of my day. If I told him the full story of the cliff I had a hunch Colin would go ballistic. For both our sakes I did not want that. So bad for the digestion. The solution was simple and effective: I kept that bit of the day to myself. He did notice the wear and tear to my fingers.
‘What have you done there?’
‘Scraped them on a rock.’
It was the truth, after all. There was no need for him to know every detail, was there?
We showered together and went to bed together and were happy together. All in all it was a highly satisfactory evening to round off what had truly been an extraordinary day.
FORTY-THREE
Cat
‘Who is it? What do you want?’
‘What do I want?’ A dark figure stood over the bunk. Eyes gleamed. ‘I want you to get up.’
Fury fought with fear. ‘How dare you?’
‘How dare I?’ said the voice. ‘I dare very well. Oh yes. There ain’t no end to what I dare. Now… get up!’
‘Are you mad?’
‘Mad?’ said the voice. ‘No, I’m not mad. I’m tellin you to get up and I am not mad.’
He took hold of the sheet. Cat tried to cling to it but he dragged it off her. She got up then, all right. She had a knife on a side table and she dived for it. She did not manage two steps. His fist drove deep into her belly. She folded, fighting for breath, and lay thrashing on the floor.
‘Get up,’ the voice said. ‘Get up now. And no tricks.’
Her breath had disappeared into an endless tunnel. There would be pain later but until she got her breath back the pain would have to wait. Getting her breath back was the only thing that mattered.
‘Get up!’ the voice repeated but she could not move.
He dragged her up by the hair. It was not only her breath that had gone. She was fighting to regain her scattered wits. At least she’d recognised the owner of the voice, and recovered her own.
‘Larssen,’ she said. ‘I’ll kill you for this.’
He laughed. Stars flared in Cat’s eyes as he backhanded her. She fell across the bed.
He hung the lantern from an overhead beam. Its light spread through the cabin.
She thought, if Piet finds out, Larssen’s dead.
As though her thought had conjured him Piet was in the doorway, knife in hand. Cat smiled triumphantly.
‘Kill him, Piet,’ she said.
He didn’t look at her. ‘Got her safe, have you?’
She said, ‘Piet…?’
She could not believe it. Piet had been kind. Trustworthy. She had thought him her friend. She had not known him at all. Fury erupted. ‘Mr Robinson will keelhaul you for this…�
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‘Mr Robinson will do what he’s told.’ Piet’s expression was as far as the moon from the sweet smiles of a few hours back. ‘Get it through your head: we are not heading back south. With that frigate waiting? We’d have to be crazy. From now on we’re in charge and your Mr Robinson,’ he said, sarcasm knife-sharp, ‘will stick to navigating if he knows what’s good for him.’
She fought panic, knowing she was helpless. ‘Then put me ashore, if you don’t want to take me back. I’ll find my own way.’
The two men laughed. ‘Hear that?’ Piet said to Larssen. ‘She’ll find her own way, will she?’ He looked back at her, baring vicious teeth. ‘I don’t think so, lady. I’ve spent time in the islands and I can tell you a fair skin like yours will fetch a pretty penny up there. Because that’s where we’re headed, get it?’ Once again he turned to Larssen. ‘Stop wasting time. Lock her up with them two Malays. Might as well get used to them,’ he said to Cat. ‘You’ll be seeing a lot more like them, by and by. Real close too.’
Cat’s fury fought with helplessness. She would have killed him where he stood but could not, and both of them knew it.
‘Maybe we could break her in ourselves,’ Larssen said. ‘Give her a taste of a real man.’ He grinned at her and put his hand on her breast. She lashed out at him and he laughed. ‘Spirited little bitch, ain’t you?’
‘Good idea,’ Piet said. ‘When she’s quietened down a bit.’
Larssen took her arm and dragged her out. Her stomach ached where he had hit her and she was too shocked to resist. He unlocked the next cabin door and thrust her in so hard that she stumbled and almost fell. He grinned at her like a wolf.
‘We’ll be seeing more of each other very soon. Something to look forward to.’
He laughed and slammed the door. She heard the key turn in the lock.
She stared at the two Malays. The sudden violence of her arrival had woken them. Eyes dazed and apprehensive, they stared at her but she saw that the older man had his hand on the short sword it appeared he wore even when asleep.
She did her best to smile. ‘We have a problem,’ she said, knowing they could not understand her, knowing that for the moment there was nothing they could do.
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