by Darry Fraser
The ugly bruise was over her left eye. When she’d last checked early this morning, it had looked darker. Her eye still felt puffy. And, because she hadn’t been able to hide it completely this morning—there’d been no time as they’d fled the township—she’d fully expected a tirade. But expecting it never prepared her for it.
‘… proof to anyone that you are wilful and unruly, and that I am forced to take swift action.’
Her fingers touched the little sprig of yellow wattle she’d pinned on her hat earlier to remind her of courage. Its leaves had drooped, she was sure, as much from the heat already in the day as from her mood. That would not do. She needed all her strength of mind and body to protect herself from her husband. She straightened as she adjusted her bonnet.
‘And so you should cover it up. It is not a badge of honour. I will not tolerate your insolence in my household …’
Andrew Amberton was a cruel man who’d escaped transportation from England—his family had packed him off to the colony to be with his widowed sister, Enid Wilshire, and her son, before the law could do it for them. His crimes back there could only be imagined.
Last night, angry, bellowed words between Andrew and his nephew Lewis had echoed back and forth from the parlour to Nell’s room as she’d lain in the marital bed. Wanting sleep desperately, she’d covered her ears with the pillow and finally dropped off. Then in the early hours of this morning, she’d been harshly roused and ordered to dress, to make haste, and then hurriedly propelled into the coach. There’d been no violence visited on her this morning; she’d only had to listen to Andrew rant and rave about having to pay for the coach ride in advance, and in gold. Two heavy bags had been shoved under the seat behind her skirt.
He was still blustering. ‘But at last we finally have this conception …’
Oh God, no.
Andrew’s earlier attempts had all resulted in him spilling on her as he’d held her down, before he was able to complete his assault. She’d paid for his failings on those days. Then she’d paid again when, with the arrival of her monthly course, she’d been pressed to announce that she had not been with child—how could she possibly have been? He must have known that much. Or perhaps in his madness he didn’t want to remember he had failed.
Nell shut down the memory of the only real coupling—rough, short and painful—weeks ago. It was his one successful attempt in a scant three months of marriage. But any possibility of conception had again been dashed when last week her course had come early. She’d hidden it from him, not wanting to endure—
‘I should have left you to fend for yourself in the camps at Ballarat, but you submitted to your duty …’
Never willingly.
He’d assumed that she had conceived because he’d managed to penetrate. Believing he would cease the beatings, she hadn’t corrected him. He’d blared to his sister that he would soon have an heir.
He was still shouting. ‘… otherwise cast you off as useless, sent you back to your lying cur of a father. A good thing my sister is now informed of the forthcoming issue. She will see to you in your confinement.’
Nell couldn’t remember if she’d heard Enid’s whining voice during the altercation last night, but if Enid was to see to her in her confinement, why were they bolting away from their home now?
‘She agrees with me, however,’ he continued, loudly, bouncing about the seat they shared, his hip squashing hers. ‘You’re just like your predecessor, a weak baggage.’
His first wife, Susan, poor girl, was blessedly free of him, and of this earth. She hadn’t been able to endure his beatings, and both she and the babe had died in premature childbirth. Had Susan’s father betrayed her too, like Nell’s father had betrayed her? He’d taken her by the arm in a punishing grip to Susan’s funeral. There, they’d witnessed the dead woman’s only relative, a brother, just back from some war in Europe, shaking uncontrollably, distraught with grief. And afterwards, finally threatened with abandonment by her father, Nell’s hand had been forced. She’d grudgingly consented, accepted her fate and mere weeks after the funeral, Nell was married to Amberton. Too late she’d learned from Andrew that he’d paid her father to entice him into handing her over like some prize sow. If there was any consolation in this humiliation, it was that Andrew would have despised paying.
Her lip curled now. All this because her father, Alfred Thomas, had a new wife to support. Dora had firmly urged him to move along his hard-to-handle spinster daughter. Never mind that Nell worked the family laundry business alone.
But perhaps her doing so reminded her father that he’d failed as a land owner, failed as a provider for his family, and the once-comfortable life that afforded his daughter her education was now gone, thanks to his drinking and gambling. That his daughter’s own manual labour had to support him prior to her marriage.
The money Amberton paid for her must have given her father and his new wife reprieve from having to work the laundry themselves and they’d closed it down. Typical of her father. It would be a short-lived financial reprieve—the recently wed Dora was a spending force to be reckoned with, a rival to his own.
Andrew hadn’t paid for Susan; he’d somehow, by thuggery or otherwise, acquired a loan from Susan’s father instead. Nell had spied a paper to that effect, witnessed by Andrew’s nephew, Lewis Wilshire.
The coach jolted, and a grunt escaped her, turning her thoughts. I will not be beaten down. I will not have the same fate as Susan. I will do anything to survive.
Nell’s ire thrummed. Andrew Amberton’s fists might well be intolerable, but she would not break under his aggression. She’d fought back at first, physically, but it wasn’t worth the punishment, which was part of the game for him. There had to be another way—if she could just stay strong. He might kill her, but until that time, she’d be staunch and endure at all costs. If she stayed alive and bore him a son, she might have a life she could manage—if she could escape his killing her afterwards.
‘It would have to be a boy, mind, and not a female child,’ he said, and the smirk appeared. ‘It’s declared in my legal papers.’ Would he ever stop repeating it? ‘Even a stipend for you depends on your delivering a male child and only if I were to meet an early death. Which of course I have no intention of meeting. So much more fun to have.’ His voice jumped and quaked again as the wheels cracked over the corrugations of the road. Then he grabbed her hand and thrust it over his groin. Her gut surged in revulsion. She snatched her hand away, trying to hold back the rising gorge.
At least if she vomited, he’d continue to believe that she was with child. Then he’d berate her for such a lack of control.
Too late she saw it coming. His fist cracked into her chin, but its power was lost in the shudders of the carriage. He cursed, and turned his attention to hanging on to his seat.
What ill spirit pervaded his soul? What kind of man …
And yet, if Andrew were to die today somehow—if it pleased the god she barely had faith in any longer—would she be safe from the destitution and life on the streets that her father had threatened? The law would protect her, a wife—a widow—wouldn’t it? She didn’t know. She didn’t know!
Nell’s thoughts were a tangle of trails and tracks and footsteps that took her nowhere but back over the same old ground. Since her wedding, she’d feared for the health of her mind. Her rationality had struggled under his constant beating.
Think straight. Think straight … but she couldn’t think beyond surviving. I must surely be mad, believing I should stay and not run fast and hard and take whatever fate befalls me. Perhaps my mind is already lost that I stay and stay and stay … Would death be better than this?
No. She had to stay to survive. Touching fingers to her forehead, as if that would stop the rattle of words in her head, she knew there was a chance—if she stayed alive. That’s all she had to do. He’d beaten her when she’d admitted there was no pregnancy. More horror would later await if again there was bloodied proof that no child was
quickening in her womb. There was still time to conceive if he could manage … Oh, dear God, she couldn’t bear to have him touch her again. Despite her roiling gut, a voice whispered, ‘Survive. Survive.’
A gunshot boomed in her ears, so close she thought a bullet had roared through the window. Perhaps the murderous troopers had caught them.
Breath was flung out of her. The coach skewed to one side and for one terrifying moment, it swayed precariously on its axle. Fright clutched at her throat. Gripping the windowsill, she gaped as the baked earth seemed to rise. Andrew’s bulk slammed against her, surely forcing the coach to crash onto its side. It swung back dangerously. Her head cracked on the timber doorframe and bounced off.
Sparks shot before her eyes.
Perhaps nothing mattered now. It would all be over.
ISBN: 9781489272157
TITLE: ELSA GOODY, BUSHRANGER
First Australian Publication 2020
Copyright © 2020 by Darry Fraser
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