Band of Gold (22 page)

Kitty, though, sat very near to him. He hadn’t wanted to do this, she knew that, but she had been on at him for days now.

‘Does any of this tomfoolery really work?’ Mick asked, as far away as he could get without disappearing into the evening’s darkness altogether.

‘Mick,’ Hawk warned. ‘Have some respect.’

‘You must think so,’ Simon remarked, amused. ‘I’m surprised you can see anything from way over there.’

Pierre ignored them all. From a worn velvet bag he decanted a small collection of items: a two-inch-tall statue of a monkey and a rooster carved from pale marble, a string of brightly coloured beads, a handful of highly polished dark red stones, and what appeared to be a dried chicken’s foot. He arranged the items in a square then opened a smaller bag, green in colour and tightly closed at the neck with a purple silk cord. From this he poured a heap of small bones, about the size you would expect to find in a human hand.

Finally, from his jacket pocket, he produced a crude doll and placed it in the centre of the square. It was five inches tall and clothed in simply constructed moleskin trousers and a shirt held together with the tidy, firm stitches of a lifelong sailor, and wore a miniature hat
made from a folded and tucked piece of eucalyptus bark.

Kitty leaned forward to touch it, but Pierre stilled her hand.

‘Is it Rian?’ she asked wonderingly.

‘
Non,
but it represent him.’

Mick, who in spite of himself had moved a little closer, said, ‘I thought you were after needin’ a snake for all this?’

‘
Oui,
’ Pierre said, and upended a flour bag at his side, liberating a slender brown snake about a foot long.

There was a collective exclamation of alarm, but Pierre picked up the snake by its tail and waggled it. ‘See, he is not poisonous.’ Then he dropped the snake and casually put his boot on it so it couldn’t get away.

He bowed his head and was quiet for so long that Kitty wondered if he’d gone to sleep, then she realised he was praying and, as his voice rose steadily in volume, she recognised the peculiar version of French which was his native tongue.

When he finally finished, he quickly swept up the bones, dropped them back into the green bag, breathed into it, then tipped them out again at the feet of the Rian doll.

Then he grasped the snake behind its head, stuffed it into the bag the bones had been in, and placed the wriggling bag on the cloth.

The bag became motionless.

Kitty held her breath, although she had no idea why.

The snake did nothing for a long, tense minute, then its head emerged from the bag, tiny tongue flickering, and it slithered towards the bones where it hesitated, then wriggled into the little heap and became still again.

Was it thinking? Kitty glanced up and saw that everyone was watching it raptly.

It began to move again, smoothly, like a fine rope of brown silk, until several of the delicate bones had been nudged to one side of the pile. Then it turned, knocked aside two more, then another. It
lay inert for almost a minute, then slithered rapidly across the cloth and disappeared. All the Catholics in the circle of onlookers crossed themselves, as did Simon, even though he was Anglican.

‘It’s getting away!’ Kitty cried.

‘
Non,
he has finished,’ Pierre said, gathering up the bones the snake had isolated.

He set them out in a straight line and studied them for what, to Kitty, felt like an inordinately long time.

Finally, he sighed and said, ‘I am sorry.’

All the bones were from different fingers, and one was from the thumb, but he was just not skilled enough as a practitioner to decipher the message the snake had delivered. The finger bones meant that Rian was no longer here, but the inclusion of the thumb bone meant something else altogether, and he didn’t know what that was.

‘I am sorry, Kitty,’ he said again. ‘I can only tell you he is gone.’

Pierre had a lot of faith in his charms, dolls and
gris-gris
bags, which he somehow managed to fit neatly alongside his Catholicism, and Kitty had a lot of faith in Pierre, so she was bitterly disappointed that Pierre’s spirits or whatever they were couldn’t tell him that Rian was alive somewhere, perhaps wounded but safe, or even on his way back to them. She stood and wiped her hands on her skirts. ‘Come with me, Amber, it’s time you went to sleep.’

Amber stayed where she was, sitting next to Leena. ‘No, I’m staying with Will and Molly. I don’t want to sleep in the house tonight.’

‘Amber, I’ll thank you to do as you’re told!’

Kitty heard her words through what felt like someone’s else’s ears, and winced inwardly. She sounded exactly like her own mother, Emily Carlisle, whenever she had reprimanded Kitty for some petty misdemeanour as a child. She’d sworn she would never allow that to happen. Without Rian she felt utterly adrift, like a tiny vessel afloat on the Pacific Ocean without sail or rudder or oar, and now she was
pushing her own daughter away from her. It hurt like a knife in her belly.

And then she made it worse. She took hold of Amber’s hand and tried to pull her up off the ground.

But Amber jerked out of her grasp and shouted, ‘No, Ma! Leave me alone, I don’t
want
to!’ She started to cry. ‘I
hate
the cottage now. I wish Pa was here. And we can’t even have a funeral because
you
won’t let us!’ Then she leapt to her feet and disappeared into Leena and Ropata’s tent, leaving a shocked silence in her wake.

Kitty stood with her eyes closed, feeling dismay surge through her veins with such force she thought she might be sick. When she opened them again, she saw that no one would meet her gaze. She turned and walked away.

Kitty gave Amber’s chemise a good shake in case a spider had crawled into it while it had been on the washing line, then folded it loosely and dropped it into the laundry basket. As she bent to pick up the basket, she noticed that the crew were returning early.

But the cart didn’t stop at the tents, and neither did the horses. She waited until they were almost upon her, and it was then that a thread of dread began to unravel inside her.

Haunui and Simon climbed off the cart and walked towards her.

She took a step back, feeling dizzy, a rush of blood beginning to echo in her ears.

Haunui reached for her and took hold of her upper arm. She saw from his reddened eyes that he had been weeping.

‘E hine,’ he said in a voice rough with emotion, ‘we have found him.’

Black spots danced across Kitty’s vision. A monstrous roaring noise filled her head, to her left the washing line swept upwards in a graceful arc and a second later her face was pressed against the hard
ground, dry brown grass tickling her cheek.

Dimly she heard a voice saying something about air.

Distractedly, a tiny part of her mind wondered why she wasn’t delighted now that he’d been found, then the much larger bit she’d so determinedly been battling since Rian had disappeared sixteen days ago finally gained ascendency, and she understood that it had been evidence of his
death
that had been discovered, not him. A horrible ragged chink opened in her heart and the shock caused her to drag in such a great choking breath that a mechanism in her chest jammed.

More snippets of voices came to her. Someone said, ‘She can’t breathe!’ and she was pushed up into a sitting position. Another voice, panicked, suggested, ‘Bang her on the back!’ while someone else said wretchedly, ‘Ah, shite.’

She jerked forward as someone did indeed bang her on the back, and it enabled her to draw in enough breath to let out a wail that raised hairs on the arms of all who heard it. Then she began to cry. She sobbed and sobbed and almost choked herself again as it roared out of her—all the fear and the horrible worry and the nightmare imaginings and now the realisation that Rian really was dead. She was vaguely aware that Maureen had arrived, and that she was shooing the men away but they wouldn’t go. She didn’t care. Snot ran down her upper lip in rivulets and her face felt horribly swollen and her head hurt, and then someone was lifting her to her feet and pressing her face against their chest. It was Hawk, and he was weeping—and he never cried. Then Maureen had one of her arms and Haunui had the other and then she was in the cottage, lying on the daybed.

She rolled onto her side, pulled her knees up and covered her head with her arms and wept. And then it occurred to her.

She stopped crying.

She sat up. ‘I want to see him.’

Haunui blew his nose into a large kerchief, shoved it into his trouser pocket and cleared his throat.

‘We didn’t find a body.’ Seeing hope inevitably flare in Kitty’s swollen, red eyes, he shook his head sadly. ‘There is no doubt. We found these.’

He gestured to Hawk, who was sitting awkwardly in the rocking chair. At Hawk’s feet lay a sack.

‘Is this wise?’ Simon asked.

‘Ae, I think it’s necessary,’ Haunui said sadly.

Hawk passed over the sack; Haunui opened it and pulled out several items. Maureen gasped and clapped a hand over her mouth. One was a brown leather belt, and the other a blue flannel work-shirt. The shirt had ragged rents in one sleeve and on the back and the buttons had been torn off, and the belt looked chewed. Both were liberally smeared with blood.

‘Are these Rian’s?’ Haunui asked gently, even though he knew they were.

Kitty took the shirt from him and tried not to see the little darned patch where she had reattached the pocket a month ago. Harder to barricade from her mind was Rian’s scent. It was very faint but it was still there, and it sent a lance of anguish straight into her heart.

‘What happened?’ she asked dully.

At the last second Haunui hesitated. ‘This is not going to be nice to hear, e hine.’

Kitty waited. None of this was nice. It hadn’t been nice since the afternoon of the flood.

‘We think it might have been dingos, eh?’

Stunned, Kitty stared at him. ‘That killed him?
Dingos
killed him?’

‘No, not killed him,’ Simon interjected quickly, ‘We think he was already, well, that he had already passed away by then. We think the dingos…took his remains.’

Haunui glanced at Hawk, and the lie they had all agreed upon earlier was cemented. It was a much less upsetting way of explaining
it to her, but it didn’t really account for the blood on Rian’s shirt; if he had already been dead, he wouldn’t have bled when the dingos attacked him.

Kitty smoothed the shirt across her knees, seeming not to notice the dried blood all over it. She reached for the belt and laid it across the shirt. ‘Where did you find them?’

‘On the far side of the river, about three miles downstream,’ Hawk replied. ‘Daniel and Tahi did.’

Kitty frowned, and wiped her nose on the back of her hand. ‘But we looked there, every day.’

‘This was nearly two miles farther west than we’ve been before.’

Kitty was quiet for a long time. ‘And you think he might have been washed up and then the dogs found him? But why was he so far west of the river?’

‘Kitty, we’re only guessing,’ Simon said despairingly. ‘We’ll probably never know.’

‘But where are his boots?’

‘In a dingo’s den somewhere,’ Haunui said as bluntly as he could, hating himself for it. But she was going to start questioning the story, he knew it, and then she would realise that Rian might have been alive when the dingos had found him.

Kitty jerked backwards, her eyes full of pain.

‘I say, Haunui!’ Simon was appalled at his friend’s cruelty.

Haunui silenced him with a quelling look and Simon belatedly realised what Haunui’s intention had been.

But it was too much for Maureen. Hands on hips, she shook an outraged finger at Haunui. ‘That’s enough from you now, so it is! The poor woman’s had a terrible shock and you’re only after makin’ it worse. Dens, I ask you! Have you no idea how to behave in times of bereavement? Now be off, all of you, and leave the poor soul to get some rest.’

Kitty, though, had other ideas. She pushed herself shakily to her
feet. ‘No. Thank you, Maureen, but there are things I have to do. I need to tell Amber.’ Her voice cracked, but she said it anyway: ‘And I need to organise a funeral.’

Rian had been a Catholic, but Simon took the service because Kitty knew it was what Rian would have wanted. Around a hundred people gathered in the open air on pews borrowed from the Catholic chapel, and there was food afterwards and plenty of alcohol, as befitted an Irish wake. Kitty refused to wear either black or a mourning veil, but she did concede to wear a dark-blue dress she already owned, with the forget-me-not brooch Rian had given her pinned to her breast. Throughout the proceedings she sat holding Amber’s hand, her back straight and her head up, willing herself not to reveal the gut-twisting grief that consumed her. She accepted the condolences of the mourners graciously and, as soon as was polite, escaped to Lilac Cottage and closed the door behind her. Inside, where there were no prying eyes, she lay down on her empty bed and cried and cried until, finally, she slipped into merciful sleep.

A
mber woke her at dusk and lay beside her on the bed, and together they dozed in each other’s arms, the angry words between them forgotten, until Pierre tapped on the door with two plates of food. Sitting at the table, they ate little and discovered that, for now at least, there wasn’t much they needed to say to each other.

Kitty noted the dark, puffy shadows beneath her daughter’s eyes and the pallid cast to her normally lustrous skin, and the knowledge that she could do nothing to alleviate it felt like yet another vicious kick to her stomach.

She pushed her plate away. ‘Would you like to go and play with Will and Molly?’ she suggested gently, knowing that the children always brought a smile to Amber’s face.

Amber half-heartedly shunted a piece of meat around with her fork. ‘What will you do?’

‘Stay here. Tidy up a bit.’

‘And think about Pa?’ Amber asked perceptively.

Kitty’s eyes filled with tears yet again. ‘Yes, love, and think about Pa.’

So Amber went off to visit, but Kitty didn’t tidy up. She left the supper things to the flies, and instead took all of Rian’s clothes out of his trunk and from the rail across one corner of the bedroom, and sat on the bed, holding each piece to her face and sniffing it, trying desperately to extract the last little bit of his essence and fix it in her mind and in her heart.

When Leena appeared an hour later to tell her that Amber had fallen asleep with the children, Kitty was sitting in the dark.

‘Shall I wake her and bring her over?’ Leena asked, ignoring the fact that her friend was surrounded by a jumble of clothing.

‘No, don’t. She must be exhausted. Can she stay with you?’

‘Of course. Shall I take these plates away?’

‘Please.’

When Leena had gone, Kitty carefully folded and rehung Rian’s things, then poured herself a brandy and sat down in the rocking chair, its familiar creak for once a comfort rather than an annoyance. After a while, she refreshed her drink and lit a lamp, its flickering yellow light and oily smell permeating the small room, deliberately allowing it to smoke a little to deter mosquitoes.

As the brandy loosened the tension in her body, she dozed, and when she woke someone was tapping at the door. She sighed, but called out, ‘Come in.’

Nothing happened, so she got up and opened the door.

It was Daniel, standing in the darkness with his hat in his hand. ‘I’m very sorry, Kitty. I hope I didn’t wake you.’

‘No, you didn’t.’

‘It’s just that I need to talk to you.’

He looked so desperate and ill at ease that Kitty stood aside and let him in, indicating a chair at the table. Hesitantly, he sat down.

‘Brandy?’

‘Yes, please.’

She fetched a glass and poured him a drink, then sat across from him. In the lamplight his blue eyes appeared almost black and his dark hair gleamed. He needed a haircut and hadn’t shaved for a day or two, and looked as though he could sleep for a week. But now he seemed unable to say whatever it was he had come to impart. Instead, he half-emptied his glass in one draught and stared at her.

Kitty stared back. Finally, she prompted, ‘You said you needed to talk to me?’

Daniel cleared his throat. Then he took a big breath and said in a rush, ‘I know that Rian was the only man for you, but if there’s ever anything I can do for you, you only need to ask. It doesn’t matter what it is, I’ll do it. It would mean a hell of a lot to me, because I—’

Oh God, Kitty thought, don’t say it, not now.

‘—owe him so much. You realise that, don’t you?’

Kitty blinked in surprise.

‘I mean, he took me on as a crewman when he knew I’d murdered someone, even if it was only Walter Kinghazel, and he took me on when he was aware of my feelings for you. And he kept me on all these years, Kitty, knowing that that’s never changed. What other man would do that? So I owe him my life, and I intend to honour that debt even though he’s gone.’

To Kitty’s horror Daniel’s voice wobbled as he fought to retain control of his emotions, and she felt her eyes sting with sympathy and fresh grief.

He put his hands over his face and made a noise that was half-grunt, half-sob, then raised his head and stared at the cobwebby ceiling for a few moments, calming himself. He gulped the rest of his brandy and stood. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve made a mess of this. You know how I feel about you, Kitty, and that will never change, but it’s Rian I’m thinking of at the moment.’

He stepped towards the door, but Kitty moved in front of him, tears trickling down her face.

‘Oh, and me, Daniel, and me, and I can’t stop it! I can’t get the thought of him dying alone out of my mind! It’s as if those dogs are in my heart and tearing at me and, oh
God
, it hurts!’

And then his arms were around her and her face was pressed against his chest, the tangy scent of his sweat in her nostrils. He was taller than Rian, and leaner, not quite as compactly muscled, and she felt his chest hitch as he tried hard to wrestle his own tears into submission.

They remained that way for some minutes, their breathing finally quieting in unison, leaning on each other physically and emotionally, until Kitty became aware that Daniel was growing stiff against her belly.

‘Ah, Jesus, not now,’ he said very quietly over the top of her head, but he didn’t step away from her.

And nor did Kitty move.

He looked down, and his lips descended to hers and she tasted the salt of his tears as he kissed her, gently at first but then with rapidly rising passion. His hands closed over her breasts and briefly cupped their fullness, and she knew that this was not going to be an act of love or even finesse, but an urgent and greedy coupling to blunt the pain of a shared grief. And she also knew that, at this moment, she would accept it.

She raised her arms and settled them firmly around Daniel’s neck as their mouths hungrily tasted each other, his groans increasing in urgency and his erection jabbing at her. He slid his hands down to her buttocks where they squeezed her flesh almost hard enough to hurt, then she felt the warm night air on her calves as her skirts were lifted to the small of her back. One hand held them there while the other slid between her legs through the gap in her drawers, and into the silky wetness there.

Daniel gasped raggedly, let the skirts fall and hurriedly, clumsily undid his flies. He gathered up Kitty’s skirts again, this time from the front, shoved them out of the way, then bent his knees and picked her up. Guessing what he intended, she wrapped her legs around his waist and, her arms still clamped around his neck, slid herself onto him. He let out a strangled groan and, his knees close to buckling, pushed her against the wall and began to thrust powerfully into her. Almost immediately, the flimsy partition let forth an ominous splintering noise.

‘Oh God. In here?’ Daniel panted, indicating the bedroom.

Kitty murmured her assent against his shoulder and he carried her in and laid her on the bed.

As he drove in and out of her she closed her eyes, and soon his hair became dark gold with just a touch of grey at the temples, his eyes steel grey, his body a little more muscled and dusted with copper, and his touch the one she so desperately longed for. She felt the familiar sensation build deep within her, and when it had passed, she realised she was crying again.

So was Daniel. He rolled off her, tugged up his trousers and lay staring at the roof, tears trickling into his hair.

‘I’m so sorry.’

Kitty didn’t look at him. She was too, now. ‘I know.’

‘I didn’t mean…I mean, that wasn’t what I wanted. Not like this.’

‘I know. I really do. But perhaps you should go now.’

He got off the bed and made a half-hearted effort at tucking in his shirt. At the door he said, ‘Don’t hate me for this, please.’

‘I don’t.’ And she didn’t. ‘But it might be best if you didn’t…if you kept away for a while.’

He looked wounded, but she could see he saw the sense in it. She listened as he opened, then closed, the cottage door, and then he was gone.

She lay back and covered her eyes with her arm.

She could smell him on her. It wasn’t unpleasant, and Daniel hadn’t been unpleasant, but for the first time in her life she had the scent of a man on her who wasn’t Rian.

Oh God, what had she done?

Pierre wouldn’t let her return to the bakery the following day—Amber had gone in her stead—so she was at home when Flora and Eleanor Buckley called.

‘Thank you for coming to the service yesterday, Mrs Buckley,’ Kitty said as she stood aside to let them in, wishing that people would simply leave her alone.

‘You look awful, Kitty,’ Flora said, pulling off her black kid gloves and dropping them on the table. ‘Have you any brandy? You look like you could do with some.’

Kitty started guiltily, wondering if what she had done last night was somehow evident on her face. ‘Would you like a drink?’ she asked as she reached for the bottle at the back of the shelf.

‘It’s rather early but, now that you mention it, a tot would be agreeable,’ Flora said as she sat down.

‘Mrs Buckley?’ Kitty offered.

‘Perhaps just a drop. Thank you.’

When they were settled at the table, Flora said, ‘I know you’re wishing we would just go away, Kitty, but Eleanor has something to tell you that might prove to be very important. Eleanor?’

Eleanor, her eyes watering from the brandy, dabbed at her lips with a lace-edged handkerchief. ‘You may recall that the first time we met I told you that my husband Carl is a clerk at the Camp?’

Kitty nodded.

‘Well, he’s not supposed to discuss his work with me, but he does, because like most people he’s not averse to a bit of gossip. And that’s all this is, Mrs Farrell, but I do so hope it has at least a grain of truth
to it. Anyway, this morning Carl told me that yesterday, just before he finished his duties for the day, he was in the records room and inadvertently overheard a conversation outside the door in which the name Rian Farrell was mentioned.’

Kitty went very still, her brandy glass halfway to her mouth.

‘Carl, of course, knows who your husband is,’ Eleanor went on, ‘because Captain Farrell had been up in front of d’Ewes twice before d’Ewes was moved on, and he also knows that I’m acquainted with you and attended your husband’s funeral, so his ears pricked up. He thought you would want to know. Not that he makes a habit of listening at doorways, you understand.’ Eleanor frowned. ‘Actually, he’s a civil servant, so he probably does.’

‘Eleanor, will you get on with it!’ Flora reprimanded.

‘What was being said about him?’ Kitty demanded. ‘About Rian?’

‘Well, please don’t get your hopes up, and I’ve no idea what this means, but, according to Carl, the person speaking said something about not being surprised that there wasn’t a coffin at Rian Farrell’s funeral, and that his band of merry men could have searched for a body until the cows came home and not found one, because Rian Farrell was nowhere near Ballarat.’

‘Were those the exact words?’ Kitty asked, her heart beginning to pound with something that was almost, but not quite, hope.

‘Those were Carl’s exact words to me,’ Eleanor replied.

‘Would your husband tell me what he heard, do you think?’

Eleanor shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Farrell, I don’t think he would, no. He’s happy for me to pass the information on to you, but I think he would regard talking to you as some sort of betrayal of his role as a government clerk. I could ask him, but I’m sure he won’t.’

Flora said, ‘Eleanor, tell Kitty who Carl believes he overheard.’

‘Oh, yes. He couldn’t be sure, but he thinks it was Sergeant Coombes.’

Kitty arrived at the Camp just before eleven in the morning, and told the guards on the gate she had urgent news for Sergeant Coombes about one of the rebels still in hiding after the Eureka uprising. When she asked to speak to Coombes at the office, however, she learned that he had departed first thing that morning for Bendigo and would not be back for a week. Swallowing her disappointment and frustration, she rode out of the gates again, but instead of heading back to Lilac Cottage, she went north through the Old Gravel Pits towards Black Hill.

Soon she came to Binda’s camp, where the three elderly Watha Wurrung men still sat around the fire as though they hadn’t moved since the last time she was there. This time, however, the women and children were also present, except for Binda, who was busy looking after Will and Molly. She dismounted inelegantly from her side-saddle and looped Finn’s reins over the branches of a wattle. Two of the old men were staring morosely into the flames, while Barega was painting a pair of sticks red and white while at the same time ignoring a small child attempting to climb onto his thin shoulders.

‘Good morning, Barega,’ Kitty said as she approached the fire.

He glanced up from his work and gave a perfunctory nod. ‘Mornin’, Missus.’

‘I’m looking for Warrun. Is he about?’

‘Hunting. Be back soon.’

Kitty stifled a sigh of frustration; ‘soon’, she knew, could be anything up to a week.

Barega grimaced as the child gave his wiry grey hair a particularly energetic yank, and barked something to the group of women sitting a short distance from the fire. A girl hurried across, giggling, and snatched up the infant. ‘Can wait if you want,’ he offered.

Kitty brightened: Warrun couldn’t be that far away, then. She
gathered her skirts around her legs and perched on a log, wrapping her arms around her knees and wishing she had the guts to go about in her chemise like these women did. The heat today was abominable.

Presently Barega said, ‘Binda say your man gone to the Dream-time.’

Kitty looked at him. ‘Perhaps not.’

Barega nodded, as though this sort of ambiguity concerning a man’s corporeal and spiritual status were perfectly normal.

‘I mean, I’m not sure if he really is dead,’ Kitty elucidated.

‘But maybe lost?’

‘Yes.’

Barega dabbed at a splodge of red paint in his beard. ‘And you want Warrun to track?’

‘If he will.’

‘You pay him, he will.’