The Isis Knot (5 page)

William edged closer to Jem, knowing deep down that it was futile. In a few minutes, everything could change. The Spectre ruled him, and if it meant for William to abandon Jem in favor of finding the woman, that was what he would have to do, no matter how much he wanted the opposite.

“Some of you will be placed in private assignment with colonists—those who have chosen to come to New South Wales—or emancipists—men who were once like yourselves but have served their sentences and are now free,” Macquarie continued. “But most of you will go to government service, to help strengthen the colony and grow it into a sustainable, powerful arm of our mother country, in King George’s name. We have even recently completed construction on new barracks for your comfort.” He clapped his hands once. “Know that your efforts—your sweat and your labor and your heart—will better your lives and the lives of future generations. Again, welcome.”

Macquarie fell back as soldiers prodded the convicts into a line.

“You’ll now be sorted,” called out an unseen speaker whose voice had a harsh, raspy quality.

A hand on William’s arm pulled him to the side. Alastair’s low voice in his ear. “Regret your decision yet?”

The woman’s face—which he was now beginning to hate—flashed in his mind. “No.”

Alastair sighed. “Then stay by my side. I’ll get you into private service. You don’t want to work for the government, no matter what fine words were just spoken. Trust me. Macquarie takes the skilled labor for himself and works them harder than anyone in private assignment.”

On a rise to the west, a large plot of land had been stripped of trees and topsoil, its innards bared as convicts mined sandstone. The sounds of picks on rock reached the harbor on a delay, sharp pings that transcended the murmur of the crowd. William would not spend the next seven years trapped shuffling between the barracks and a quarry. If he were in private service, he might have a greater range of movement. A better chance for escape.

He nodded to Alastair. “That I’ll agree to.”

A furtive glance at Jem made William’s heart twist. This was it. This would have to be good-bye. He hated it. He could have done more. He could have been more like Alastair was, even now.

“Be strong, Jem,” he whispered, “no matter what happens.”

Before Jem could respond, Alastair pulled William forward. The hacking-voiced soldier asked, “What’s your trade?”

Sailor. Fighter. Beggar. Thief. Madman.

“Send him to the colonists,” Alastair said. “He’s an illiterate drunk. Picked fights the whole voyage here. Smashed a crate over the quartermaster’s head.” He toed William’s ankle restraint and spat into the dirt. “He’s no use to us.”

The words hurt, but not because of what the officer said, but because this was a good-bye, too. The last time William would see the man who’d changed his life more than once. When Alastair melted back into the harbor mob, William looked to the ground, unable to breathe for the weight on his chest.

“Get ’im off then,” rasped the soldier in charge.

A new man, severely sunburned on his face and neck, crouched and touched William’s ankle restraint. He slipped a key into the lock and the iron fell away. William bit his tongue against the moan of relief that nearly escaped his lips.

Free. Free to run.

Gazing between the buildings, into the desolate, never-ending wilderness beyond Sydney, he feared that it just might come to that.

The sunburned soldier yanked William out of line and shoved him toward the wagons and colonists.

Ever forward, he told himself. He could not retreat. He would not look back. Until…

“What’s your trade?” the ravaged voice garbled again.

“I…I used to work for an architect…”

Jem
.

William whirled. The lad hadn’t heard Alastair’s quiet truth about skill and labor placement. He didn’t know to lie, to hide any education.

Jem was easily the tallest person in the harbor, well over six feet, and his skeletal shoulders rounded so far forward they formed a cage over his heart. He wore insecurity like a sign around his neck. He would never survive among the general convict population.

“An architect, you say?” The soldier rubbed at his throat, where a lump protruded from under his skin. “You can read?”

Jem met the question with a white face. “Yes, sir.”

Without preamble, the sorting soldier jerked his chin to the right, toward the barracks, and Jem was whisked away. As Jem stumbled, pulled by the hands of a icy-eyed uniform, the panic on his face betrayed everything. William felt only a hotly burning disappointment in himself for not having spoken up sooner.

“Will!” Jem’s voice cracked like a little boy’s—or a woman’s.

A chorus of guffaws broke out among the convicts, Riley’s booming the loudest. Sure enough, not ten seconds later, the bearded Irishman was also sent to the right. He turned around, walking backward, and winked. “Whose is he now, Everard?”

William had to do
something
. It wasn’t too late. It couldn’t be. He desperately searched for Alastair but the pepper-haired officer was gone, along with his friendship and favors.

The carved token Jem had given him thumped against his chest like a heartbeat. He ripped it from his breast pocket and hobbled toward a soldier standing off to the side, alone. He shoved the token underneath the soldier’s nose.

The soldier glared at William, but he still seemed interested in the money. “What’s this?”

“It’s yours if you bring that tall young man over here, make sure he gets into private service.”

The soldier blinked. Blinked again. He glanced at the lumpy-necked sorting soldier, who was moving methodically through the remaining convicts. “What am I supposed to say?”

“I don’t know. I don’t care. Say he lied, that you knew him from back in England. That he’s an illiterate beggar. Or don’t tell anyone a fucking thing and bring him over here anyway.”

He pressed the coin into the soldier’s palm. The king’s man looked down at it, then at Jem, whose retreating shoulders could still be seen over the crowd. Then he slid away.

Only too late did William think that the soldier could just walk off with the token and never return.

Long, tense moments passed as William danced on his toes, trying to see what was transpiring. All he could tell was that Jem was still inching toward the barracks. Then, suddenly, his greasy head stopped moving. He turned around, his beaked face visible once again, and William froze as hope battled the dread. When Jem started skirting around the harbor crowd, heading toward the colonists under guidance of a tuppence-richer soldier, William exhaled.

Jem finally reached William, and looked down on him with tears in his eyes.

William muttered, “Quit that.”

Jem sniffled it back.

Through the shuffling crowd, William caught Riley’s eye and blew the red-faced man a kiss.

“On with both of ye,” said the sunburned soldier who’d accepted William’s bribe. With shoves to their shoulders, he pushed them toward a squat colonist wearing a wide-brimmed, sweat-stained hat. “These are yours,” the soldier announced, toneless. “Unless you wanted just one.”

The rotund colonist ambled around William and Jem, eyeing them like livestock. As he moved his jaw back and forth, his two chins followed. He nodded as he took in William head to foot, then shifted a disappointed eye toward Jem. “My wife could use the help around the house, I suppose.” To the red-faced soldier he said, “All right. Leave them be.”

The uniformed man turned, leaving William and Jem alone with their new jailer. Servitude in a raw colony, controlled by a man who’d likely had close to nothing back in Mother England. It was more demeaning than being chained belowdecks without sun.

“I’m Brown,” he grunted, then glanced at Macquarie, who stood watching the proceedings with an attentive eye and satisfied expression. “No matter what the governor says, I’m your master now. I’m no fucking emancipist. I’m a rightful owner of land, here of my own free will. I wasn’t handed a farm as a reward for my crimes. Understand this, if you criminals neglect your duties, you’ll get the lash. If you steal from me or any other colonist, you’ll be hanged. If you try to escape, I’ll kill you myself. No law against that.”

He spat on the ground between Jem and William, and gestured to his wagon. “Up you go now.”

To where
? William wanted to ask, but thought better of it. At least the sailors on board the
John Barry
had a responsibility to see their human cargo delivered safely. Brown wouldn’t claim the same. So William swallowed the desire to stare down Brown in the way he’d once done to convicts who crossed or challenged him, and silently climbed into the wagon.

The wagon bed was little more than slats of wood balancing precariously between uneven wheels. He turned to help Jem, but the lad had already pulled himself up. Brown slapped the reins attached to a sorry-looking horse and they lurched southwest out of Sydney. No one gave them a second glance. Not Macquarie. Not the soldiers who’d watched him so carefully ever since he’d gotten pinched. Truly, a prison without walls.

William drew deep breaths, stemming the rising panic. What if the woman was in Sydney right now and he was being drawn away?

“Thieves?” Brown tossed over his shoulder with a sneer.

It took a moment for William to realize the colonist was inquiring about their crimes. He gave Jem a long look.

The boy sat hunched as usual and said nothing. Perhaps he hadn’t heard Brown’s question. But no…horror lurked behind Jem’s downcast eyes. Horror and shame.

Five months at sea—six months anchored at port prior to that—and he’d never asked Jem about his crime or sentence. And because a convicted criminal must hold on to whatever scrap of dignity he could, he did not ask now.

“You fucking deaf?” Brown snapped.

“I hear just fine.” William enjoyed his new master’s reaction to his sharp tone of voice.

“Remember what I said.” Brown gave the horse another slap of leather.

The smell of cooking fires and animal excrement faded, and the cluster of Sydney’s buildings surrendered to the sunburned wildness of the land. Nearby, a flock of black parrot-like birds took to the sky with a flutter. William swept his eyes over the stands of trees and bushes, and peered into the open places between them. Stories had reached London of the fantastic creatures that called this place home, as well as the black-skinned savages. He was more than a little curious. More than a little terrified. But that had never stopped him before.

Ahead about thirty yards, another wagon appeared. Lumbering, it looked an even sorrier transport than Brown’s, the horse attached to one end of the reins as gaunt as the white-haired man holding the other.

“Fucking emancipist,” Brown grumbled.

The other wagon kept turning, its path crossing right in front of Brown. The white-haired man tipped his stained hat at Brown and bobbled in his seat. Brown snarled, and the older driver’s hesitant greeting died. Wariness passed over the old man’s face. Oddly, he turned around fully in his seat to look into the bed of his own wagon. As though he was worried about the contents.

William shivered. He sat up straighter, senses attuned in a familiar swirling dance.

Brown’s wagon kept going straight. The old man’s veered west, affording William a perfect view of the open back…and the cargo it held.

A person. The face hidden beneath a mass of long black hair. The body loose and sprawled in unconsciousness.

No, wait. Movement. Slow and labored, the person shifted. Rolled to one side. One palm pressed to the floorboard. The elbow bent, then straightened as the torso came up. The long hair swept away from a round, feminine face.

Her
.

The Spectre sang. Rejoiced. Cried out in inexplicable joy and relief. It had never done that before. Never, in all these eighteen years.

William felt great relief, too, only in a different sense. This woman was an end to his torment. Nothing more.

She wore strange men’s clothing—black trousers and a buttonless shirt the color of the sky—but he knew her face. By God, he’d know her face if he were blind.

Go. Go
, the Spectre urged.

He obeyed. He surged to his knees, hands gripping the wagon rails, as the woman was transported slowly, slowly in the opposite direction.

“Will?” A faint boyish whisper at his back. William ignored it.

The woman’s eyes—dark and wide and disconcertingly lovely—met his as though he’d called out to her. Maybe he had; the visions made him do strange things sometimes.

She tried to rise to her knees but seemed to have difficulty. Her brow furrowed. In fear? In pain? Was she injured? Was that what the Spectre wanted, for William to help her? And why
her
, here on this side of the world?

Brown and the old man drove their wagons farther and farther apart.

Fuck Brown. Eighteen years of torture and madness would end here and now. The Spectre would be silenced and William would be free.

He jumped to his feet, making the wagon lurch. William planted one foot on the rail, ready to propel himself over the side, to charge after the woman, when a pistol cocked at the back of his head.