Dark Torment (4 page)

Edward Markham stared at her for a moment, then turned his eyes to
the convict, now sprawled face down on the deck. His expression registered
doubt, then disgust. But still he didn’t release his hold on
Sarah’s arm. He turned to look at Captain Farley, who stood several paces
away, his arms folded across his chest, disapproval plain in his face as he
stared at the convict.

“Farley, give him a dose of the rough-and-ready. My
girl’s right, we can’t take him like this. He’s bleeding like
a stuck pig.”

Farley glanced over his shoulder at them, scowling.

“Going to mollycoddle him, are you?” he said with a
snort. “Well, he’s your problem now, and if he lives it’s
your lookout. I won’t be giving you your money back a second time,
that’s certain.”

Edward’s mouth tightened in response. Farley shrugged, then
turned back to the sailors who hovered over the convict.

“Give him a dose of the rough-and-ready, Vickers.”

“Aye, Cap’n.”

The man called Vickers, a tall, husky, fair-haired fellow who
didn’t look as if he was yet out of his teens, saluted. Then, turning, he
bent to grasp the edge of a bucket that had been placed nearby. With one hand
on the bucket’s bottom and the other grasping its rim, he flung its
contents over the convict’s raw back. As the clear liquid splashed over
him, the convict stiffened convulsively, and a hoarse cry rose from his throat.
He tried to lever himself up off the deck, straightening his arms beneath him
so that his head and black-furred chest were clear of the wood by perhaps two
feet. His head jerked around; as he stared in their direction, features
contorted with pain, Sarah had her first glimpse of his face.

Beneath the coating of grime, and whiskers, she saw that he was
fairly young, certainly no older than his mid-thirties. And once he was cleaned
up, she thought, he might be passably attractive. His features seemed regular
enough. His eyes met hers, and despite their glazing of pain she saw that they
were of a blue that was as clear and bright as the endless sky overhead. They
seemed far too beautiful to belong to a convicted criminal. Even as Sarah was
absorbing their impact, they closed. The sudden burst of pain-induced strength
seemed to vanish as quickly as it had come. Shuddering, he collapsed. Sarah
stared at that sprawled figure, and winced as Vickers emptied another bucket of
clear liquid over the convict’s back. This time the convict didn’t
even move.

“What was in the bucket?” Sarah’s lips felt
stiff as she asked the question of her father. Now that she had seen his face,
and those beautiful eyes, the convict seemed almost as vulnerable as she was
herself. Which was ridiculous, she told herself sternly. He was only a convict,
after all. Everyone knew that if convicts had feelings, they were only of the
coarsest, roughest kind.

“Brine water, ma’am,” Vickers answered.

“Brine water!” Sarah could not restrain a shudder. No
wonder the poor creature had cried out. It must have burned his back like
liquid fire; the salt, seeping into the open wounds, must be burning still.

“It’s standard treatment after a flogging,” her
father said in her ear. Sarah said nothing more, but she felt ill. She would
not use a wounded animal so, and she was fairly certain that her father would
not, either.

“Captain, I would thank you to have a couple of your crew
carry the man down to my dray. He doesn’t look capable of making it on
his own.”

Farley scowled, and for a moment Sarah thought he was going to
refuse. Then he shrugged. Sarah guessed that he was remembering the roll of
pound notes he had just pocketed. The same two sailors who had freed the
convict from the mast lifted him to his feet as Farley gave the order.

“Come, Sarah.” Her father’s hand on her arm
tightened.

“But his back—shouldn’t it be bandaged, at the
very least? The flies—and the dray will kick up dust. . . .”

“We’ve no more time to waste on the likes of him.
Besides, open air is the best treatment for a wound like that. A bandage would
just stick to it.”

There was truth to that, Sarah knew. But watching the flies swarm
around the convict’s torn flesh made her feel ill. If the wounds were
left open to every swarming insect and swirling particle of dust between here
and Lowella, there was every chance that they would putrefy. And that mode of
dying would be even more hideous than being beaten to death. But her father
clearly was impatient to be on his way. Nothing would be gained by making
another scene, Sarah realized. Besides, she didn’t have any bandages with
her.

She allowed her father to lead her through the crowd of men,
already parted to permit the two sailors to pass with their burden. The
convict’s arms were around their shoulders; each sailor gripped him with
one hand fastened around his wrist and the other clenched on the seat of his
breeches. Sarah quickly averted her eyes from that mutilated back, but not
before she saw that the convict was at least partially aware of what was
happening. He was trying to walk, his knees wavering as his bare feet shuffled
weakly across the deck. The sailors had no patience with his puny efforts. They
dragged him along between them. Even sagging at the knees as he was, he was
taller than either of them. Sarah could see that it was a struggle for the
convict even to hold his head upright; he tried, but instants later his head
slumped forward in defeat.

In her outrage, Sarah had completely forgotten her reason for
going aboard the
Septimus
in the first place. But as soon as their
little group approached the dray, her eyes widened with remembrance. Liza! Liza
hated the sight of blood at any time, claiming it made her nauseated. And with
her already feeling ill . . . Sarah broke away from her father to hurry
forward, meaning to warn her sister to turn away from the distressing sight.
But she was too late; even as she approached the trap where Liza sat, the
sailors were lifting the convict into the dray. His back was presented to Liza.
With her sister, Sarah again absorbed the full impact of blood welling from
more than two dozen open wounds, of bared tendons and drying crusts of blood
and swarming flies. . . . She turned back to her sister just in time to see
Liza’s eyes roll back into her head; she was barely able to catch the
younger girl before, with a little moan, she slumped over in a dead faint.

From Lowella to Melbourne and back usually took three days. This
time the trip home seemed twice as long. Liza was ill and had to lie with her
head in Sarah’s lap as Sarah drove the trap. The heat was suffocating,
even with a fringed parasol set in a holder to ward off the glare of the sun.
Clare’s hooves kicked up whirlwinds of dust that seemed to seek out every
tiny opening in Sarah’s clothes and settle grittily against her
sweat-soaked skin. Behind them, the bullocks drawing the dray raised even worse
clouds of dust; Sarah shuddered to think of what must be settling into the
convict’s open wounds as he lay sprawled flat on the wagon bed. It was
useless to hope that any of the other convicts sitting scrunched together in
what was left of the space would try to keep the worst of the dirt and flies
out of those wounds. They were likely cursing their mate for crowding them in
such heat. Percival, driving the dray, must be even more hot and miserable than
she was herself. Only Edward, riding astride at the head of the procession, had
any hope of escaping the miseries of the dust; he could outride it.

For a while their route took them along the banks of the Yarra
Yarra River. There was little more than a trickle of water left to wend its way
through steeply sloped banks of sun-dried mud. Huge eucalyptus trees towering
overhead usually provided plentiful shade, but not this day: the sun had left
them with only a few small, dry leaves. The red stringybarks, ashes, and
slender beech trees had suffered the same fate. Their denuded branches
stretched pitifully toward the sky. The ghost gums with their thick gray trunks
were just as dry, but their lack of water caused alarm rather than pity: if the
heat became too intense, they were likely to explode. Many a brush fire had
been started by the spontaneous combustion of a ghost gum in the dry season.

It was nearly dark by the time their little procession pulled into
the yard of the inn where they would pass the night. The Markhams were well
known at Yancy’s place. They nearly always passed the night there on
their way to and from Melbourne. In fact, they had spent the previous night
there before riding on to Melbourne that morning.

After being shown to the room they would share, Sarah helped Liza
to bathe and eat and saw her into bed. By then she wanted nothing so much as a
bath and bed herself. The bath she would have, she decided; bed would have to
wait a little longer. She would never sleep if she did not do what she could
for the injured convict.

With the day’s grime washed from her skin, she felt a little
better. Winding her hair into its customary knot, she glanced longingly at her
nightrail before resolutely donning the clothes that she had packed for the
morrow. Not for anything would she wear the filthy garments she had just
discarded, but she certainly couldn’t parade through a public inn in her
night clothes, much as she might long for their soft comfort against her sun-
and dust-abraided skin. Liza was soundly asleep in the one large bed; Sarah
listened intently to her light breathing for a moment, then bent and blew out
the candle. Although she would need a light, she was too much of a
grazier’s daughter to take a lit candle into a stable. And the stable was
where the convicts were bedded down for the night.

Percival and her father would be in the inn’s taproom,
drinking and spinning yarns with the other men at Yancy’s place that
night. They would violently disapprove of what she was planning to do, so Sarah
had no intention of letting them find her out. Accordingly, she made her way
down the stairs past the taproom with extreme caution, her hands clutching the
small medical kit that accompanied every bush-wise Australian on journeys of
any length. The accidents that could occur in the bush were many and varied,
from snakebite to sunstroke to a broken limb. Only fools challenged the
unforgiving miles of sun-baked wilderness unprepared.

Sarah was thankful that the moon was up as she crossed the yard
toward the stable. Its silvery light made the night almost as light as day, but
far cooler. She shivered in her sleeveless dress of tan calico. The garment was
as unfashionable as the skirt and shirtwaist she had worn earlier, but it was
also as serviceable. Sarah, seeing no reason to emphasize her plainness with
fine feathers that could only make her appear ridiculous, chose colors that
rarely showed dirt.

The stable was dark with eerily shifting shadows. Sarah hesitated
for a moment in the wide, open doorway. The convicts would be securely chained,
so, if she was careful, they could do her no harm. But it was always possible
that some other, unfettered man lurked in the darkness. . . .

Chiding herself for an overactive imagination that was
uncharacteristic of her—she was usually practical to the point where it
drove Liza and Lydia to fits of screaming irritation—Sarah resolutely
stepped forward. She had come out tonight to do a job, and she would do it.

The first several stalls she passed housed horses. Then came the
bullocks. Companionable beasts, they were penned together, munching contentedly
at mangers of straw. In the last two stalls were the convicts. Three in one,
chained securely and sleeping, judging by their resonant snores. And in the
other, the man she sought: even in the gloom, his bloodied back turned
uppermost as he lay sprawled in the straw, his height and clearly defined
muscles were unmistakable. Another, smaller man was chained with him, huddled
in a ball in a far corner of the stall. From their steady breathing, she knew
both men were sound asleep.

Sarah hesitated again before entering the stall, her nerve nearly
failing her. The man was a convict, after all, and reputedly a dangerous one.
What business did she have even getting near him? Then he moved, and moaned, a
piteous sound that tugged at her conscience. He was a human being. And in pain.

Slowly, moving carefully so as not to drop the box she carried and
wake the sleeping men, Sarah entered the stall. She knew that the convict would
wake when she put the healing unguent on his raw back. But she wanted to delay
the moment as long as possible. Which was silly, she told herself. He was not
going to hurt her. She had come to help him.

Kneeling beside the convict, Sarah stretched out her hand to touch
his arm, meaning to wake him gently and warn him of what she planned to do. His
sheer size gave her pause. Despite the leanness that was the inevitable result
of his incarceration on the prison ship, he was broad-shouldered and
long-limbed. Standing, Sarah guessed that he would top her by nearly a foot.
But the beating and the resulting loss of blood would have left him severely
weakened. Even if he wished to harm her, she thought he could not. Still, she
peered through the darkness for the reassuring glint of iron chains before
waking him. Just to make sure.

The irons were there, stretched from ankle to ankle, linking his
spread legs, which lay black and heavy against the golden brown straw. Her eyes
slid up the length of his body to his hands. The wrist farthest from her was
enclosed in iron, she saw, but the chain led upward instead of across to his
other wrist. It was secured to a halter ring overhead. Which meant that he had
one hand free . . .

Sarah rocked back on her heels, ready to rise and leave the stall
just as silently as she had entered. The sudden movement of his hand as it
grasped her wrist caught her by surprise. She gasped, trying to jerk her wrist
free. His hand, warm and hard, held her fast. Eyes wide with fright, Sarah
stared from his large, hard-palmed hand, long-fingered enough to wrap twice
around her slender wrist and shades darker than her honey-gold skin despite his
months of imprisonment, to the shadowed face of the man whose captive she had
suddenly become. A shaft of moonlight touched his features, glinting off his
blue eyes. They were open. He was watching her.