Dalton had heard Pearce had tried to hang himself while wandering alone in these woods. Now where’s the sense in that?, Dalton had thought. After he’d gotten through the rest of the group. After taking the axe to Greenhill before Greenhill had taken the axe to him. For Pearce to take his own life after using so many men to ensure his survival, it hardly seemed a fair thing.
Dalton saw it now, fleetingly, the attraction of ending it all. Ending the pain in his legs, his chest, his heart. But he was the last man standing. His will to survive had always been stronger than his will to die, even when he had felt there’d been little left to live for.
He swallowed the end of the bread. The last of the food, but he knew this land now. Knew its secrets. He tucked the coins into the pouch and shoved it into his pocket. He grabbed the axe.
How are you going to hunt with that?
The voice in his head was Greenhill’s.
There’s only one kind of animal you can hunt with an axe.
“Go to hell,” Dalton said aloud. He looked about him. The highest mountains were capped with snow. The Derwent glittered in the pink light. He knew the voice in his head was right. A man couldn’t hunt with an axe. Cross the peaks and he would find his hut, his traps. An easier life, surely, than rummaging for berries and digging tubers with his bare hands. Dare he go back? It had been weeks since he’d killed the marines.
He began to walk, silencing Greenhill’s voice with his own rhythmic footsteps.
He stood in the clearing, shards of his woodpile beneath his feet. The roof of the hut lay on the ground to his left, the splintered table to his right. The walls hacked at, the door torn off. His boots crunched over the dried ferns of the sleeping pallets. Flour was scattered everywhere. The locker upturned and empty. Cannikins gone. Shelf torn from the wall. The life he had spent eleven years building from nothing had been obliterated. Axed and pissed on. All that was left standing were the two stools.
He sat on one, because he could think of nothing better to do. He nudged a pile of dried ferns with his toe. Beneath it, a sprig of black hair— his beard.
Wooden faces peered up at him from beneath the fallen shelf. Frozen expressions, still eyes. None of them seemed surprised to see him. Grace’s was the only one he had carved from life. He slid it into his pocket. He longed for her then like he’d longed for nothing else. Longed to hear her lullabies and see her skirts hung about the hut and hell, how he longed to speak to another living person. He couldn’t go back to silence. He’d wandered through the bush, Gaelic rolling off his tongue. Sometimes to himself, sometimes to the invisible men.
He needed her there to answer back. To say: you’re being a right fool, Alexander, there ain’t no one there but your own shadow.
He hacked at the broken table until it was kindling, then lay it in the clearing where his fire pit had once been. Green shoots were pushing through the blackened earth. He lit the fire and stared, mesmerised at the flames.
The forest crackled and he glanced over his shoulder in a vain burst of hope. The phantom men had appeared from nowhere, so why not Grace? This was a forest full of mystery, after all.
He ran his fingers over the carving in his pocket. Then, one by one, he gathered the wooden men from the ruins of his hut. Tossed them into the flames.
Bodenham, the first to die.
Kennerly and Brown, whose last view of Earth was the grey shroud of Macquarie Harbour.
Mather, Travers, sacrificed in vain.
Pearce, hanged for his crimes in Hobart Town.
Greenhill. Burn in hell.
He watched the figures until they were ash. If only he could burn Alexander Dalton away like this too. See the man he used to be disappear in a puff of smoke. He’d tried hard, but the past had found him. The past would always find him.
He couldn’t bear for Grace to live the same way. He wanted her to have London. She’d never leave with him, of course. Not now. But he’d stolen the money from Howell so she might see home again. He pulled the pouch from his pocket. After all he’d done, perhaps this might go some way to helping him sleep at night.
Where to find her? She’d go for the girl; of this he was certain. Would return to Hobart Town, fleetingly at least. Perhaps he’d find her there, perhaps not. Perhaps he’d threaten that bastard Harris into giving him some clue.
Yes. He felt determined. A strange sensation after existing in a void for so many years.
He stood. The light was beginning to fade and the fire had burned itself out. His stomach groaned loudly. Tonight he would eat, rest. In the morning he would go and find London for Grace.
He trudged towards the traps. Flattened ferns. Were they human footprints in the mud? He froze.
Voices. The slosh of shovels.
He took a step backwards, seeking out the patches of moss so he might not make a sound. Another step. Another. He brushed past a tree fern and the leaves sighed noisily. The voices fell silent. The digging stopped. Dalton began to run. He heard footsteps after him. A rifle exploded into the sky. He kept running. And then from in front of him, the sly bastards, two police officers burst from the bush, thrusting their rifles at his chest.
XXIV
Dalton stood on the edge of the grave, hands tied in front of him. He watched two officers dig, searching for the dead by lantern light. Their sergeant stood at Dalton’s side, a rifle swinging against his hip.
No-one spoke. Above their heads, an owl cooed rhythmically. The river sighed beneath the hiss of the shovels. An acrid stench rose suddenly from the wet soil and the officers recoiled. They hauled the mud-caked bodies from the earth. Their features were sunken and twisted. One of the men reached into the grave and pulled out a dirty bundle. Grace’s shawl.
The sergeant pressed a hand to his nose. “Where’s the girl?”
Dalton said nothing.
“Tell us where she is.”
“And make your job easier? Why would I do that?”
“So we can bloody well get out of here.”
“And you can have me on the scaffold?”
The sergeant sighed. “What did you do with her?”
“Nothing.”
The constables hauled themselves from the hole. Their legs were caked in mud.
“You told Grace Ashwell you buried the girl by the marines’ grave.”
“Aye, well. Now I’m telling you I didn’t.” He smiled at the sergeant. “You can choose to believe me or not. But the night will only get darker. I’m sure none of us want to be out here on the graves of murdered men.”
The police sat around the fire they had built a few yards from the grave. Close, they huddled; the orange glow of the flames flickering on their cheeks. Clinging to the light. The exhumed bodies lay on the grave’s edge, covered in old grey blankets. Dalton sat a foot away, hands bound. He felt the thickness of the dark. The bush seemed restless.
The police passed around a loaf and canteen of water. One of the constables handed Dalton a scrap of bread.
“Ought to let you starve,” spat the sergeant. “Save the hangman the trouble.”
Dalton brought his bound hands to his lips. “You’re hoping I’ll tell you where the girl is.” He chewed slowly. A throaty screech rose from the bushes and the constable flinched.
“Let’s go, sir,” he said. “This bog-jumping scab ain’t going to tell us a thing.”
“Can’t go anywhere in this darkness,” said the sergeant. “We’ll stay here the night.”
The constable glanced over his shoulder at the bodies by the water’s edge.
Dalton caught his eye and smiled slightly. “The Styx River. The boundary between the living and the dead.”
“I don't believe in ghost stories,” the constable said edgily.
“Nor do I. But this forest; it makes you see things that aren’t there.”
“Shut your mouth.” The constable shuffled closer to the fire. After a moment, he looked back at Dalton. “What do you mean, things that ain’t there?”
Da
lton rolled onto his side and closed his eyes. “Dead men,” he said. “Little girls.”
At dawn, the sergeant roused them, yanking Dalton to his feet. Fine rain was falling and the mountains lay hidden behind a thick bank of cloud.
“You need to untie me,” said Dalton. “I can’t climb without my hands.”
“You can and you will.”
“Where will I go? I got two men behind me with guns up my arse. If you don’t untie me, it’ll take us far longer to get over the mountains.”
The sergeant scratched his beard. “Do it. Keep the guns on him at all times.”
Up they went, into the foothills, into the mountains. The black rock was streaked with snow. Clouds hung in silver threads. At the top of the ridge, the wind howled and stung Dalton’s ears. The ground twisted and dropped away into a dramatic downward slope. Peaks Dalton had navigated in the past. Terrain he knew. The marines were forced to lower their guns and climb with their hands.
Dalton took his chance. He hurled himself down the incline, his back scraping against the rocks. A shout from the police. Bullets whizzed above his head. He ran until sweat poured down his back. The foliage grew thicker. Vast banks of fern he could hide between. He lay on his back, breathing hard, hidden in a sea of glistening green.
*
Grace woke abruptly at a slam of the front door. She could see the faint glow of candlelight flickering in the kitchen.
“Jesus, Jack,” Annie said loudly. “What happened to your face?”
A chuckle. “Edward Porter thought to shoot his mouth off at me. He’ll not be trying that again.” His words were brassy with drink.
“Bloody fool.”
Grace heard heavy footsteps.
“So what? I’m just supposed to take it?”
“You can’t go round swinging your fists!” cried Annie. “The Porters are too powerful. They’ve got those crooked coppers on their side. They’ll have you strung up if you don’t bloody watch yourself.”
Grace sat suddenly at a flare of orange light. She pushed aside the curtain. Behind the house, a great wall of flame was tearing through the wheat field. She charged into the kitchen, tugging on her boots.
“They’re burning your crops,” she said breathlessly. Jack’s eyes flashed. He snatched the rifle and charged into the paddock, firing wildly into the flickering light.
“Water,” said Grace. “From the creek.”
Annie shook her head. “It’s too late.”
They watched in silence as the flames roared through the wheat and lit the night with plumes of orange smoke. The fire crackled and faded, leaving a field of glowing ash and the earthy smell of burning.
Annie marched inside and sat at the table. Her cheeks were flushed and smeared with soot.
Jack pressed a hand against the back of her neck. In the lamplight, Grace could see a faint swelling beneath his eye.
“We’ve got to leave, Annie,” he said. “I’m sorry. I know we’re giving them what they want, but our pride’s not worth risking our lives for.”
Grace hovered by the hearth, feeling an intruder.
“Our pride?” Annie repeated. “What about our farm? Our house?”
“Our farm that’s burnt to ash? Our house full of broken glass?”
Annie rubbed her eyes with resignation. “Where will we go?”
“Hobart Town,” Grace said suddenly.
They turned to her. “What?” said Jack.
“Take me to Hobart Town. I’ve got to get my Nora away from her father.” She grabbed Annie’s wrist as her thoughts began to take shape. “He’s a wealthy man. Keeps a hundred pounds in more in the house. He don’t trust the bank manager because he went to school with him in London and caught him cheating on his finals. So he always keeps a stash at home. Get me to Hobart Town and I’ll bring you that money. I’ll take what I need to get back to England and you can have the rest. Go somewhere you’ll be safe.”
“Fine plan,” said Jack. “But we’ve no horses. How are we to get to Hobart Town?”
Annie began to laugh. She popped the lid from the whisky bottle and filled three cannikins. “I’m sure the Porters have some damn fine horses.”
The river murmured and sighed. Grace knelt on the bank, the damp earth soaking through her skirts. The hush of the water calmed her a little. She needed Nora. And, yes, she needed to show Harris he wouldn’t get away with locking her up like an animal. But she also needed this stillness. Needed to accept that Violet was gone.
She knew it now, deep within herself. There was to be no more searching, or hoping. The time for miracles had passed.
Her fingers tightened around the stalks of the flowers in her fist. Pink powder-puffs of sunshine wattle that had erupted over the tree behind Annie’s vegetable garden. The first of the spring. Violet would have liked the pink. She would have twisted it into her hair, poked a stem behind Grace’s ear.
She tossed the rosy globes into the water, one-by-one. Hoped with all her heart Violet was in Heaven with her mother, not haunting the forest with a gang of dead convicts. Deep, breathtaking pain welled inside her. Violet’s body was out there. Hidden in the forest among those blood-covered soldiers. Grace felt a desperate need to see her, even for a second. To hold her and say I’m sorry. To beg forgiveness for her terrible judgement, her most costly of mistakes.
She let her tears fall. A release. It was almost a relief to stop hoping. A relief to take a step towards acceptance.
She hugged her knees. What was she becoming? We ain’t thieves, she’d told Alexander. And yet, when night fell, she would follow Annie and Jack up the hill and raid the Porters’ stables. Ride to Hobart Town and steal from the man she’d loved. Take his daughter to the other side of the world.
What dreadful things we are capable of, she thought. What lengths we will go to for survival.
“Grace!”
She turned to see Annie trudging towards the river. Grace wiped her eyes hurriedly.
“Get back to the house and pack your things. We’re to leave at dusk.”
Grace nodded. She stood and flung the last of the flowers into the river. They swirled in the current. Disappeared below the surface.
*
Dalton found the house by following Grace’s stories. Tales she’d told by the fire in the clearing.
A house on the edge of the settlement. Northwest. Stone fence. A tunnel of trees.
He’d tried four other farms and found nothing but old men and earth-stained convicts. But this one, this yellow monstrosity with the forest at its edges, this was it. He felt sure of it.
Two looming storeys, stables, shacks for his convict slaves. A patchwork of neat paddocks stretched out into the haze. Who did this toff think he was, claiming so much of this land for his own?
Dalton waited out the daylight behind the stables. Come the dark, he’d go looking. Put Howell’s money in Grace’s hands and send her home.
*
They rose from the valley and looked down on the river as it widened and poured into the sea. The lights of Hobart Town opened out before them.
Grace shifted in the saddle. “The northwest of the settlement,” she said. “You can reach Harris’s house without going through town.”
They turned onto a narrow dirt path that snaked through the farmland. Jack held a lamp out in front of them and the three stolen horses paced in its orange glow. Lamps flickered in the windows of the sparsely spread properties.
“Which house is it?” asked Jack.
Grace hesitated. The darkness was disorienting. The land felt strange and foreign. “Keep going,” she said. And the path disappeared into a sea of black scrub.
Jack halted his horse. “We must have passed it.”
Grace tried to sift through her memories. Had they made a wrong turn? No, this forest was familiar. It fringed Harris’s land. That thick bank of gums with their branches twisted around each other. A tunnel of trees. They’d kept away from it in those first weeks, wary of its alien shadows and tan
gled arms. Violet had been afraid of it. Monsters in there, Nora had said.
Grace pointed to a faint glimmer in the blackness. “It’s that one. That’s Harris’s house. Where the tunnel of trees comes out. That’s where Nora is.”
They paced down the narrow track and followed an off-shooting path to a low stone fence. The house rose square and symmetrical at the front of the property, lit by a flickering lamp above the front porch. A long, straight path led to the door. The house looked nothing like Grace remembered. But was that surprising? The last time she’d been here, she’d been dizzy with laudanum and had been frantic to get the girls out before Harris had come home. She climbed from the horse and stared up at the lightless windows. “I’ll bring you the money. Wait outside.”
Jack slid from his horse and handed the reins to Annie. “I’d best come with you. In case there’s trouble.”
Annie pulled a pistol from her belt and handed it to Grace. “Take this. Just in case.”
Hesitantly, Grace wrapped her hand around the gun. She slid it into the waistband of her skirt and led Jack around the enormous sandstone walls. Two storeys of black windows stared down at them. Grace trailed her fingers along the wall to keep her bearings in the dark. She rattled the kitchen door. Locked. She tried the windows. One was open a crack. She clambered through into the dark kitchen. Jack hauled himself over the windowsill.
Up the stairs. Grace held her breath. Her eyes adjusting to the dark, she opened the first door. An enormous curtained bed stood in the centre of the room, a washstand and dressing table against one wall. Grace crept towards the bed. Harris lay asleep on his side, his nightshirt open across his chest. A twist of fair hair lay across his forehead. Grace felt a startling urge to reach out and touch it. Nora was curled up against his stomach. Grace’s throat tightened. Frozen, she stared at them both; Harris’s breath making Nora’s hair flutter with each exhalation. She touched Nora’s cheek, then let her hand drift until it found Harris’s chin. His skin was warm. She could feel the beginnings of a beard. Her heart lurched with buried love.
Forgotten Places Page 19