Forgotten Places

by Johanna Craven

  “Don’t, Alexander. Please.” Her voice was husky.

  He squeezed the trigger. His warning shot flew over Howell’s shoulder.

  Howell glared, then laughed coldly. Ran back along the creek and disappeared.

  XXII

  Confession of Alexander Pearce

  As recounted to Lieutenant John Cutherbertson, commandant of Macquarie Harbour

  1824

  ‘“I´ll warrant you," said Greenhill, “I will eat the first part myself, but you must all lend a hand that we may be equally guilty of the crime.”’

  Alexander lowered the gun. “We need to leave.” He handed Grace the axe.

  “Where are we going?”

  He began to walk. His silence told her everything. Back to the forest. To the mountains, the rivers. Back to his world.

  They trudged past cattle, past rickety fences, out into the open plains. Grace felt a great weight pressing down on her. She couldn’t do this again. Couldn’t climb mountains or sleep beneath snow and stars. A pink sky stretched endlessly above her, the plains beneath her feet vast and open. What was she but a speck amongst this desolation? If she were to part ways with Alexander, the emptiness could swallow her and who on this earth would ever know? Her heart thumped at her vulnerability. And so she kept up with his steady footsteps, inching their way towards the foothills.

  She said nothing. To speak would mean facing questions she couldn’t bear to ask, facing truths she couldn’t accept.

  They crossed the river, communicating in sparse, wordless gestures: go, stop, this way. Grace stumbled out of the water and stood with her arms across her chest, her wet shift tangled around her legs. She crouched, feeling horribly exposed. Alexander tossed her the pack and she hurriedly pulled out her dress and petticoats.

  Her clothes clinging to her wet skin, she stood on the bank and felt her bare feet sink into the mud. Alexander’s back was to her as he buttoned his trousers. Giving her the privacy she craved or needing to hide from her scrutiny?

  The foothills rose, then dipped into a slight valley. Night was approaching, the shrieking of the birds fading into stillness. Grace could hear her heart thumping in her ears. She sucked in her breath. There had to be an end to this uncertainty. Suddenly not knowing seemed the most frightening thing of all.

  She stopped walking. “Tell me what happened out here. Tell me the truth.”

  Alexander paused several paces in front of her. She watched his shoulders sink, his head droop. He’d been fighting these questions too, she realised. Fighting to keep the answers inside. He threw down the pack and sat with his knees drawn up. He stared at the earth and shook his head slowly.

  Grace stood over him. “Yes,” she said.

  He hung his head with resignation. His words were low and slow; speaking to the ground as if hoping the earth might swallow his confession. “We’d not eaten in more than a week. There was nothing out there. No animals, no berries, not even a fly. We were at the end of the earth.” He covered his eyes. “Greenhill, he’d heard this story of some sailors who had gotten lost at sea. Sacrificed one of their own so the others could survive.”

  Grace’s stomach tightened. Stop, I can’t hear this. But she couldn’t form the words.

  “Greenhill wanted it to be me, but in the end they chose Tom Bodenham. Greenhill took to him with the axe we’d been using to cut the pines. Hung his body from a tree and let the blood run out of him. We cut off his head and hacked him up like he was a pig. Put his liver to the fire and shared it among ourselves. Greenhill said it was the only way we’d survive.”

  Grace bit down on her lip until she tasted blood. She wanted the story she’d concocted the night the marines were killed. Wanted Alexander to have killed those seven men. A simple murder; it was easier to conceive. Easier to give a self-righteous sigh and push away. And the murder of a government man? Weren’t they all sent to Macquarie Harbour in the hope they’d die off anyway? But this, this pushed against the boundaries of what it meant to be human.

  She stared into the purple sky, trying to cling to the last threads of light. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Yes you do. You don’t want to, but you do.”

  For a long time, neither of them spoke.

  “I ran,” Alexander said finally. “Before anyone else was killed.”

  “Stop,” Grace mumbled. But his confession seemed to have opened something up inside him. Something he couldn’t close down. A need to tell the whole story.

  “The soldiers caught Pearce,” he said. “He told them everything. After Bodenham, it was Mather. He was praying, Grace. They killed him while he was praying.”

  And Grace thought not of Mather, but of Alexander raising the rifle as she and Violet hunted for flowers.

  Alexander said: “Travers, he was next.”

  And she thought of poison mushrooms mixed with her tea. The thud of soldiers’ bodies as they rolled into their graves.

  “Greenhill and Pearce, they were the last. Both knew they had to kill the other to survive. Afraid to leave the other’s sight.” He leapt up suddenly and grabbed at her cloak. “Imagine it. Being too afraid to sleep in case you never woke up.”

  “Stop!” she cried. “I can’t hear no more! Not when I’m trapped with you in this cursed forest again!”

  He pressed his hot palms against her cheeks. “I’ve got the money. We’ll get out of the forest. We’ll get back to London.” He pushed back her hood and dug his hands into her hair. “It’s all right, my Grace. You’re safe here. It’s better this way. Just the two of us. Without the Porters or Howell or Maryann’s little girl.”

  “Just the two of us?” she repeated. “The two of us without Violet? Alexander?” Her voice grew louder. “The two of us without Violet?”

  He stood, breathing heavily, his hands still hard against her cheeks. “Yes,” he said finally.

  Grace heard a cry from deep in her throat. She stumbled, fighting off a wild sweep of dizziness.

  Only two sets of footprints.

  The proof had been there since the beginning. She imagined Alexander lifting Violet from her bed. Carrying her into the bush. And then…

  With day-to-day tasks, it had been easier to block everything out. Bake the bread and convince herself Violet had just gotten lost in the dark. Wash the clothes, tell herself she’d slipped and fallen. But she couldn’t hide from the truth any longer. Shy little Violet, who wouldn’t venture as far as the kitchen without her nurse by her side. Timid Violet who wouldn’t sleep in the dark unless she were pressed against Grace or Nora. Little Violet who would never, ever have left that hut on her own accord.

  Alexander held up a hand, backing away from her. “Let me speak.”

  “Let you speak?” Her voice was barely more than a whisper. “She was just a little girl.” Grace stared at him and saw the beast he had been when she had stumbled to his hut. She had fought with herself then. Trusting the wild man in the woods had seemed a gamble she had had no choice but to take. If only she had taken Violet and kept walking. If only. She felt all the compassion she had once felt for him washing away in a flood of hatred. And an odd sense of inevitability.

  She lurched for the weapons. Alexander grabbed the rifle before she could get a hand on it. Her wild swing of the axe clipped the side of his head. He stumbled, collapsed at her feet. She grabbed the gun.

  “Animal,” she spat.

  *

  He hovered on the edge of consciousness, waiting to die. Waiting for the shot. But nothing.

  Animal. And then silence. He tried to move, but felt a great weight on his chest. Darkness behind his eyes.

  An animal? Of course I am.

  Even dogs don’t eat their own kind.

  Imagine it.

  Imagine the smell of wood smoke. Eucalyptus. Boiling meat. Hear the pot bubbling, the fire crackling, devils snorting in dams of spilled blood.

  No man speaks. They all know that when this pot is done boiling they’ll stop being men. Become beasts.
r />   Imagine you are sitting around that fire, surrounded by men you have come to despise. Imagine hating these men so much you wish you had chosen the hell of Macquarie Harbour over their company. Can you hear the men breathe? There is one man less than the night before. You are watching when someone dips a stick into the pot and brings out the slab of meat. It is passed around. Grey. Tough. Each man pulls off a portion. Passes it on.

  Who is the first to put it on their tongue? The first to swallow it down? And where do these bolters go from here? They can never be normal men again now. Not after this.

  One day, my Grace, you’ll see it was better for you to be freed of your Violet. You’ll see everything I did was for you. How could I let anything come between us, mo shíorghra? How could I let anything take you away from me when you are the only thing that makes me human?

  PART THREE

  HOBART TOWN

  XXIII

  Bathurst Free Press

  Wednesday 28th January 1857

  Derived from the Hobart Town Gazette, 1824

  ‘When the first horror was over, a consultation followed. Some would have died rather than live by cannibalism; but it was fiercely contended … that all might share the guilt.’

  Dalton felt a sharp kick in the shoulder. He opened his eyes. Grace was standing over him, gripping the rifle. His wrists and ankles were bound with his bootlaces. He squinted in the pale dawn. There was a coldness to her. Like she was made of stone.

  Dalton sat, his head pounding. He lifted his bound wrists and touched a swelling above his ear.

  “The gun is loaded,” said Grace.

  He nodded slowly.

  “Take me to Violet. Show me what you done with her.”

  He hesitated.

  “Of course. Silence. Silence is easy, ain’t it? Silence and lies.”

  Dalton glanced at the rifle. “You mean to kill me, Grace?”

  “Take me to Violet.”

  He nodded. “Let me stand.”

  Grace reached into the pack and pulled out his whittling knife. She sliced the laces at his wrists and ankles. Dalton stood slowly. A wave of nausea swept over him as he bent to thread the remains of the laces back through his boots.

  “Where is she?” Grace asked.

  “At the top of the escarpment. Near the police grave. Back over the mountains.”

  Tears escaped down her cheeks and she brushed them away furiously. “Take me.”

  Dalton reached for the axe. Grace cocked the trigger.

  “We need it to get through the bush,” he told her. “Cut ourselves a path. You know that.”

  She took a step back, allowing him to take the axe.

  “We’ll not get over the mountains without food,” he said. “We need to hunt.”

  “We’ll go back towards the settlements. There are kangaroos.” She shoved him in the shoulder with the gun. “Walk.”

  They paced up the gradual incline of the plains. The river lay ahead. Dalton stopped. A few hours earlier he had watched Grace climb from the water and pull on her dress. That blue dress of Annie’s, he was sure of it. Now her skirts were brown, her petticoats dry. Her hair, her skin, dry, like she’d been brought across in a boat.

  “Grace? Where have you been?”

  She dug the gun into his spine. “Move.”

  Dalton turned. She’d never trust him again. What did he care if she pulled the trigger?

  “I been to the police,” she said finally.

  Panic shot through him. “Police?” And he realised they were all around him. Men hidden in the dip of the earth, waiting for her to deliver him into their clutches. He looked into her eyes and ran.

  *

  Marines swooped like a flock of red birds. Grace crouched, pressed her eyes against her knees. Couldn’t bring herself to watch.

  The night before, she had walked into the Hamilton police station.

  Government man, she had said. And bolter. Eyes lit up and guns were loaded. And then, the worst of them.

  Cannibal.

  And that was it. The police had Alexander pegged for the murder of Grace’s girl, for those four words were all the evidence in the world.

  “My girl, Violet Harris,” she said. “And two British marines.”

  Soldiers were brought in from the surrounding settlements.

  “Miss Ashwell,” they said. “Where can we find the bodies?”

  Five days walk. By the Styx River. An unmarked grave at the water’s edge, beneath the pine tree covered with rings of moss.

  And: “Miss Ashwell, where can we find Alexander Dalton?”

  “I will lead you,” she said. “Follow me.”

  The police reported back. Disappeared into the bush like a ghost. Men sent after him, they said. Heading towards the river, looking for the graves.

  Grace sat at the constable’s desk. She felt hot and breathless. Surely any second she’d be discovered as a runaway. They’d throw her into the police wagon and back to New Norfolk she’d go. “Can I leave?”

  The constable peered over his glasses. “You may. We’ll let you know if we find anything. You’d best stay nearby. You work for Bill Porter, you said?”

  “Aye,” she lied. “For Bill Porter.”

  The sun was dull and low. Grace hooked closed her cloak and trudged down the middle of the road. She crossed the bridge to the farmland, traipsing through the wet grass to Annie and Jack’s cottage.

  Annie was sitting in a chair beside her vegetable patch with a pipe in her hand. She wore black riding boots over a pair of mud-splattered drawers, her skirts hitched up above her knees. Her pale hair hung in pieces over her face. She puffed a cloud of smoke at Grace.

  “Heard you and your friend been causing a stir.”

  “He ain’t no friend of mine.” She felt the loss of Alexander as though he had died. In a way, he had. Of course, the Alexander she had known— the one who had helped her hunt for Violet and had pledged to take her back to London— had only ever been an illusion; cobbled together by her own desperation. Hatred bubbled inside her.

  “You’ll be wanting somewhere to stay, I suppose.”

  Grace sniffed. “I ain’t got nowhere else to go. I’m sorry. I don’t know what to do. I—”

  Annie breathed out a long line of smoke. “Well. There’s a bed here, though I can’t guarantee it’s a safe one.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “Nothing.” Annie stood and ushered her inside. “Come on, girl. You look as though you need a drink.” She kicked off her boots and poured two glasses of whisky. Handed one to Grace. “Drink up. Bed’s yours for as long as need it.”

  Grace tried for a smile of thanks but tears spilled down her cheeks.

  “Stop that," Annie said sharply. “What good did weeping ever do anyone?”

  Grace pushed away her tears. She ached for her mother. “I trusted him,” she coughed. “We’d made plans to get home.”

  Annie gripped Grace’s shoulders with surprising ferocity. “This new world is a tough place. A woman’s got to make her own life. Can’t be relying on no man if we’re to survive out here. ’Specially not a wild one like that Alexander.”

  Grace nodded and gulped her whisky. She knew Annie was right. This was no place for the woman in silk she’d once dreamt of being. And it was no place to trust men who kept secrets. Because the secrets woven into this land were horrifying. “He wasn’t the man I thought he was. He was a beast.”

  “He loved you,” said Annie. “Beast or no. I could tell. What’s he done that’s got you speaking of him like this?”

  “Love,” Grace spat. “A man like that don’t know love. Not anymore. I doubt he ever did.” She tried to continue, but her throat tightened and the tears threatened to return.

  Annie emptied her glass. “You’ll tell me in your own time, aye?”

  Jack opened the door, arms loaded with hoes and rakes. He dropped the tools beside the hearth. “Don’t want nothing left out there,” he said. “Those bastards’ll take whateve
r they can get their hands on.” He squeezed Annie’s shoulder. “Any trouble here?”

  She shook her head and smiled wryly at Grace. “Just her.”

  “What’s happened?” Grace asked again.

  “The Porters had some cattle killed,” Jack said darkly. “Bodies gutted in the paddock and the flesh cut out. Blaming us, of course. They’ve been trying to get their own back.” He nodded at the windows. The glass had been broken, Grace realised. Been patched with rags and nails.

  “Howell,” she said.

  “What?”

  “The cattle. It was Howell, Porter’s government man. I’m sure of it. He’s run away. Needed the food.”

  Annie refilled her glass. “Porter knows it weren’t us. We’ve got our own bloody cattle. He just wants someone to blame. Makes him feel powerful.” She snorted. “Helps him forget he’s nought but a lag.”

  “Why don’t you leave?” asked Grace. “Find somewhere new and start again.”

  “You know what this land is like.” Annie lifted her head to look through the window, but the murky rags blocked her view. “It’s no place to be roaming without nowhere to go.”

  *

  The path from the river to the traps had been taken over by ferns. A wallaby carcass dangled from the rope, besieged by flies. Had been there for weeks, Dalton assumed. He hacked at the rope and flung the meat into the bush. Reset the trap and paced slowly towards his hut.

  Was he mad to have returned?

  He had run west from Hamilton. Crossed rivers and climbed mountains until he was sure the marines hadn’t followed. On the fourth night he lay awake until light began to filter through the trees. He sat and untied the pouch containing Howell’s money, stacking the coins into silver columns. At the top of the pile he sat the shilling Grace had given him. The money would get him off this island and out of the haunted forest. But it would put oceans between he and Grace.