HAMILTON
XIV
Bathurst Free Press and Mining Journal
Wednesday 28th January 1857
Derived from the Hobart Town Gazette, 1824
‘Constant moisture from heavy rains renders travelling unpleasant in such a region under any circumstances. If, with a good commissariat and all available comforts, Sir John Franklin’s overland expedition to the harbour from the capital proved so laborious and trying that several men never recovered from the hardships and sufferings they then endured, we may readily imagine the wretched prospect before the eight wanderers in the pine woods.’
In the morning she wouldn’t look at him. She kept her eyes down, as though he was a wild animal she didn’t want to provoke.
They were up with the blue dawn. The winter night had seemed endless as Dalton lay shivering at her side. With the first hint of light, he’d unbuttoned the coat wrapped around them. Grace was on her feet first. Eager to get moving or eager to get away from him?
East, they walked, into the rising sun. Dalton hacked a path through the trees, sending twigs and leaves flying. He looked over his shoulder. Grace was cradling the gun. Yesterday she wouldn’t touch the thing. With her other hand she held her skirts bunched above her knees. The tears of yesterday had dried and hardened inside her. A stripe of dried blood along one cheek.
The ground rose in a chain of mossy mountains. Dalton had been this way before. He had traipsed west from the Fat Doe River with all his worldly goods on his back, over the mountain range to disappear into memory. The last time, the days had been long and warm. Now there was ice in the air and their breath made clouds.
Settlements to the northeast. He hoped the map in his head was accurate. They had bread and smoked meat for a week at most. There were few animals in these mountains. And many days in this cold would kill them.
Clatter, clatter of the pots on his back. The rhythmic crunch of their footsteps. And the invisible presence of dead men.
Dalton hated this new silence. He reached into the pack and handed Grace a sliver of smoked meat, hoping for thank you. She glanced at his hand; still stained with the blood of the marines. Waited for him to eat his share before swallowing hers.
When she finally spoke, what she said was: “Did you kill Violet?”
Dalton didn’t answer. He wanted her to trust him, though he knew he’d given her little reason. What would she have done had he said: yes, Grace, I killed her? What choice did she have but to keep walking beside him?
When the ground became too steep, they crawled on hands and knees. Mud squelched between their fingers. Dalton’s ears and nose stung with cold, but his back was damp with sweat.
She didn’t speak of Violet again. Made up her own mind, he supposed.
The earth rose and fell. Dalton tossed the pack and axe onto a rocky ledge and hauled himself up. He reached a hand towards Grace.
“Pass me the gun. Let me help you.”
She stood beneath the ledge, hesitating. He understood. That rifle was a little security for her. Reluctantly, she passed it to him. He took her hand and helped her up the cliff, her boots scrabbling against the slippery rock. She pulled away quickly.
Dalton said: “Your tea, Grace. I put poison mushrooms in it.” He said: “I didn’t want you to try and get back to Hobart Town alone. You would’ve died. That’s why I did such a thing.”
She started to laugh, a sound like threads of ice. “The tea. Believe me, Alexander, I ain’t thinking about the bloody tea no more.”
She didn’t look at him. Just step, step, step, like she was trying to walk everything away.
On the third night, the air dropped below freezing. Leaves hardened with ice. With each breath of wind, the trees tinkled like bells. Before the sun had disappeared, Dalton had looked back at where they’d come from. He could still see the fat brown trail of the Derwent River.
He scratched together some bark and fern fronds to cover them against the cold. Built a fire that hissed and spat before succumbing to the wind. He shuffled across the rock and pulled Grace into him, feeling her shiver hard against his chest.
They woke to clouds closing in around the mountains. Banks of mist blew towards them from above and below, leaving them suspended in a great sea of white. Beads of rain exploded against Dalton’s cheeks. He began to walk in the direction he hoped was east. The fog made flecks of gold and black dance in front of his eyes.
The rain grew heavier. Tiny rivers rushed through the crevices in the rock. The trees thinned and the ground became slippery like sheets of black marble.
“Why were you at Macquarie Harbour?” asked Grace.
He told her every bit so the silence might not return. The tale of Matthew Brown and Flannagan and how he’d tried to frame the Englishman for robbery. Told tall stories with his hand upon the bible.
“Oh,” said Grace. “So you’re a liar then too.”
Dalton felt the rock give way to sodden earth. He waded through the sludge without speaking. Mud clung to his ankles, his shins, his knees. Behind him, he could hear Grace’s heavy breathing, her murmurs of exertion.
When the earth grew solid again, he sat and watched Grace edge her way out of the mud. “Would you rather I’d let them take you back to the madhouse?”
She sat a distance away and hugged her knees. “I just never seen a man act so vicious before.”
“I did it for you.”
She met his eyes for the first time in days. A cautious, sideways glance.
“Do you want me to leave you?” he asked finally.
She squinted through the rain to the carpet of treetops, unbroken but for the copper threads where the rivers pushed into each other.
She shivered. “It’s like you said, ain’t it. Got to stay together or we’ll die.”
*
There were always parts of a man a woman tried to ignore. With Harris, it was the way he chewed his meat so damn loud. The way he’d change the subject when Grace tried to talk about her life in Stepney. To make any relationship function, there had to be a certain amount of ignorance.
And so it was with Alexander. With each step, she pushed those murdered marines further and further from her mind. Pushed out the dead bolters and the nightmares of Macquarie Harbour until they were nothing but the stuff of legends.
The land itself made it hard to block out the horror. Grace stood upon on a ridge and breathed air that smelled of mint and honey. Looked out over her toes at a beautiful green and purple land, haunting in its isolation.
But beneath the ridge was the darkness. Trees swallowed the sunlight in one mouthful, and those brutal settlements came to life. Down there, where branches blocked out the light and the tiger dogs tore at their prey, was where the crack of the whip still echoed. Where the men with bloodied backs had vanished into the bush. Where the last cries of the dying hung on the wind. It took every inch of Grace’s willpower to keep those stories silent.
But that man who had given her shelter, that had saved her from drowning, well he wasn’t capable of killing his seven comrades, now was he? And he sure as hell wasn’t capable of killing a little girl. Ah yes, there was a great simplicity to ignorance. A great comfort. A great skill to choose to forget.
On the fourth night, she dared to ask: “Are we lost?” They lay on the rock, wrapped in their damp coats. After a day and night, the rain had stopped, leaving a vast, wet forest. Alexander had crouched over the kindling for an hour, whittling waterlogged bark and attacking the flint. The sparks had refused to take.
“Lost? No, we’re not lost. The stars, they show me the way.”
Grace curled into a ball, her clothing stiff with mud and ice. Her shivering was violent, uncontrollable. She rolled onto her back and stared at the glittering sky. She could see colours behind the blackness, whirlpools of purple and blue. Its beauty was breathtaking. “How?” she asked.
Alexander pointed upwards. “The five bright ones, they call it the Southern Cross. You see? Now draw a line th
rough that cross in your mind. Imagine it extending out four times the length of those stars. Drop that line down to the horizon. There’s south.”
“You making this up?”
He gave a short chuckle. “No, I’m not making it up.” He paused. “Greenhill said that’s the way they do it here. There’s no polestar, so they use the cross.”
Grace hugged herself. “I don’t think this Greenhill were the best of navigators, Alexander.”
She gazed up at the cross until she saw that line pointing to the south. Until the sky wasn’t so damn foreign. Until the stars began to light the way.
And that moon, she thought, that’s the moon that makes the Thames rise and fall. We might be sitting on the edge of the Antarctic, but that’s the moon that shone through my window in the blue house.
She watched the sky until the clouds blew in. Until she could see no stars, just a shower of white crystals that fluttered down and blanketed the earth. She slid her arms beneath Alexander’s coat, searching for body heat. Her stiff fingers clutched at his chest, clung to the sparse curls of hair. He unbuttoned the coat and pulled it over their heads.
She woke to sunlight glowing red through the threadbare fabric. She sat and squinted in the white light. Not piss-stained, London slush, but brilliant sheets of clear ice that lit up the landscape. The whiteness changed everything. Which way had they come? Which way to the settlements? To think was too exhausting. All she wanted was to lie back down and sleep until the cold went away.
Alexander turned in a slow circle, taking in the glittering landscape. “We’re close to the settled districts.” His voice sounded far away. “I came this way before.” He reached into the snow-spattered pack and broke the smoked meat in two. Handed her the larger piece.
Grace sat with the food in her fist, unable to find the energy to lift it to her mouth. Melting ice dripped from her hair and ran down the back of her neck. She stared into the cloud-streaked valley. Everything she knew felt so far away, like she was trapped in a dream she couldn’t wake from.
“Grace? Why aren’t you eating?”
She looked up at Alexander. His face was blurred, unfocused. She blinked hard. He dropped to his knees and gripped her shoulder. Held the meat to her lips. “Eat. Come on now.” Panic in his voice.
“I got to rest some more.”
“No. No more resting. Get up.” He pulled her to her feet with sudden urgency. She stumbled into him. “We’re almost out of the mountains. Won’t be so cold.” He slid his arm around her waist. “Keep walking. Just got to keep walking.”
XV
At the foot of the mountains, the land opened out into a maze of rivers and creeks. When last here, eleven years ago, Dalton had managed to wade across them, the water barely at his hips. But now they were crawling through a long, wet winter. The roar of the rivers was ever present.
Grace’s steps were dizzy and crooked. He had to get her out of her wet clothes and into some warmth. Where he would find such a thing, he had no clue, but the thought of it kept him moving, one arm around her waist, the other clutching the weapons, pots clattering on his back. He felt an undercurrent of terror at the approaching settlements. Towns held police and soldiers and people who could put a rope around his neck. But the thought of losing Grace terrified him more than the gallows. And so he kept walking. Dry clothes and warmth.
The river lay before them, dappled with faint rain. Dalton paced with his hands behind his head. The water looked to be two hundred yards wide or more. His body ached with cold and exhaustion. He’d not swum in years. But what choice did he have?
He pulled off his coat and shirt. “Take off your cloak,” he told Grace. “And your dress.”
She squinted up at him from the bank. He unhooked her cloak, then fumbled with the buttons down her chest, his fingers frozen and ineffective. He rolled their clothing into a tight bundle and tied it to the pack. He grabbed Grace’s chin and she opened her eyes begrudgingly.
“The water’s deep,” he told her. “You got to hold tight to me, you understand?” He tugged her to her feet and stepped into the water. He pulled her onto his back with one hand, the other holding the pack above his head. Water swelled around his chest. “The settlements,” he said. “They’re on the other side of this river.”
“And then what?”
And then what?
He’d planned to wait on the edge of the village until night, sneak onto the farms and gather what they needed to build a new hut. But Grace wouldn’t survive another a night in the open. “We’ll make a fire,” he said. “Get ourselves warm.”
Another step and the ground dropped away, leaving his legs flailing. He kicked hard. Grace’s arms tightened around his neck.
He stumbled out of the water and carried her onto the grass beside the river. He pulled her out of her wet shift and slipped the damp dress over her head. Covered her with the cloak and greatcoat. He hurried into the bush, searching for anything that would burn. Hacked away at some branches until he’d managed a pile of kindling. He pulled the flint from the pack and poked and puffed at the fire until tiny flames began to lick the wood. Grace opened her eyes.
“That’s it,” he said. “Lie close now.” He held his hands to the fire and felt the heat bring life back to his fingers. He fumbled in the pack for the boiler and filled it from the river. Sat it on the flames until a thin thread of steam began to rise. Lifting Grace’s head, he poured the warm water into her mouth. A thin drizzle trickled down her throat, the rest pooling on the leaves beneath her cheek.
She looked at him with vague, glassy eyes. “Where’s Violet?”
Dalton stood. “Violet’s not here.”
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know.” He paced, shivering hard. She urgently needed dry clothes. Blankets. They both did. They couldn’t have been more than a mile or two from the first settlement. He sucked in his breath and crouched at Grace’s side. Her breathing was shallow, eyelids fluttering on the edge of consciousness. He pressed his fingers to her neck. A faint pulse. He tucked his coat tightly over her and left the rifle at her side.
The land was vivid green between patches of snow. From a distance, Dalton could make out tiny forms dotting the plains. Cattle, he realised as he drew closer. Kangaroos lolloped on the fringe of the pasture, drinking from the creek. At the back of the paddock was a farmhouse. Smoke poured from the chimney.
Civilisation.
Dalton felt suddenly lightheaded. He grabbed a fistful of the wire fence. Sickness rose in his throat. In the neighbouring paddock, two men were turning the earth with shovels. He fought the urge to leave. Logic told him he was well-hidden by time. If the cattle duffers were to be believed, the reports of Alexander Pearce had convinced the world Dalton was dead. But his fear was stronger than logic. He pictured men lined up on the edge of the settlement, rifles raised, awaiting his return. A scaffold in the town square. Bodenham himself, defaced and dead, yet somehow resurrected.
Look what he did to me.
Dalton doubled over and vomited at the corner of the fence. Then he kept walking.
“Can I have a blanket?” he practiced. “I need a blanket.”
Can I have a blanket? He repeated it under his breath, forcing his footsteps to keep pace with his rhythmic words. I need a blanket.
On the other side of the paddocks was a smaller cottage. Uneven wattle and daub walls with a thatched roof that reminded him of his hut. He stumbled through the long grass towards the house. A washing line stood in front of the cottage, yellowing underclothes fluttering like sailcloth. Dalton pulled off the wooden pegs and bundled the petticoats beneath his arm. He opened the door and stepped inside. A range stood against one wall, table in the centre. A simmering pot, spitting fire. Smells of cooking meat, pipe smoke and misplaced earth. A sideboard sat opposite the fire, cluttered with rusty cannikins, rolls of twine and a half-drunk bottle of whisky. At the back sat a woven Irish crios belt. Dalton had not seen one since his father was alive. Never seen one o
utside of Ireland.
He stepped close and ran his fingers across the red and blue weaving, over the delicate tassels on the ends. For a fleeting moment, the years fell away. He was a boy on his father’s lap, letting the tassels slide through pudgy fingers. Watching features emerge on the carving in his father’s hands.
“What the bloody hell do you want?” A woman appeared in the doorway, a shovel raised above her head, poised to strike. She looked about Dalton’s age, her wide shoulders jarring with a narrow, bird-like face. Pale strands of hair peeked out from beneath a mop cap. She looked up and down at Dalton’s mud-caked clothes.
“Blaincéad,” he said.
“You’ll not find any blankets in there.” The woman lowered the shovel and looked him up and down. “What d’you need a blanket for? And what in hell are you doing with my underclothes?”
His heart was racing. “My… A woman… She’s all cold and wet… Dying…”
“I see. Where is she?”
“I made a fire…”
“You left her out there?”
Dalton nodded.
“Christ. There’s no accounting for stupidity, is there. Bring her here.”
He paused. “I just need a blanket.”
“You’re not taking my blankets out there. They’ll get ruined. If there’s truly a woman needing help, you go and get her. Otherwise you bugger off out of my house and leave my things alone.”
Dalton nodded finally. “I’ll get her.”
The woman folded her arms. “Leave my petticoats on the table.”
He rocked Grace’s shoulder. “There’s a woman. Told me to bring you to her house. She’s got dry clothes for you.”
Grace lifted her head. “A house?”
“Aye. You got to get yourself warm and dry. Come on now.” He took her hand and helped her climb shakily to her feet.
“You went to a house?”
Dalton threw a handful of dirt on the burning embers.
Forgotten Places Page 11