The Lace Balcony (6 page)

‘Is something wrong, Sir? Does Madame need me?' she stammered.

‘Not at all. Your mistress is dead to the world. I am the one in need.'

His smile was disarming, his palms open in a gesture that implied, ‘What's a man to do?'

But as he moved towards her she read the expression in his eyes.

‘I'm bored,' he said. ‘Pray stay and entertain me.'

‘You mistake me, Sir. I take orders from none but my mistress.'

‘And my mistress takes orders from
me.'

He drew her into the shadows, pressing her against the wall, his tongue, his hands swiftly gaining their objective.

Fanny struggled violently as one of his hands freed her breasts, the other thrust between her thighs. Biting his tongue, she realised her mistake. The danger and her resistance clearly excited him. He gasped with pleasure and pain – then froze.

A vision in a flowing Grecian robe, Madame Amora stood framed in the doorway, her unnaturally white face devoid of all expression.

Fanny broke free, clutching at her torn bodice. ‘Madame, believe me, I –'

‘I have no further need of you, Fanny. Go to your room.'

Shaken, Fanny fled to her attic chamber. From the window she watched Kit cross the snow-covered street to hail a hansom cab. So Madame had sent him packing. But where did that leave her?

Retribution had been swift. Too proud to reveal her humiliation at what she saw as a double betrayal, Madame Amora had given instructions for Fanny to be shown the door. Denied both a month's back wages and a written character reference, Fanny knew she had precious little chance of gaining future employment.

When the house was in total darkness, she climbed up the fire escape and made her way to Madame's jewel box – taking a sapphire ring seldom worn and unlikely to be missed.

Following her stepmother's funeral, she and Daisy sailed on the City of Edinburgh to the underbelly of the world – New South Wales
 . . .

•  •  •

Now, as she clung to the seawall, Fanny recalled Kit's face and the cold, alien feeling of hard flesh between her thighs.
He knew he was hurting me – and it gave him pleasure.
In theory, she knew all the tricks of the courtesan's trade. In practice Madame Amora had been so demanding of her time that Fanny had experienced little beyond clumsy attempts by men that ended in failure, like Kit, and were far from the world of romance and excitement in the novels that Cook had read to her.

Fanny felt a sudden wave of comfort at the knowledge that the little bottle in her possession might yet prove her greatest protection. At Madame's insistence, all female servants in her employ took the physic that prevented unwanted babes.

It's my right to prevent myself falling with child – but not to leave Daisy destitute. I've nothing left to sell or pawn. So I
must
find the answer tomorrow.

Fanny scanned the night sky, searching for answers in the Milky Way. As she did anywhere in the world, Venus shone brightest of all – but offered no solution.

•  •  •

The breeze dislodged her bonnet and as she ran to fetch it her hair tumbled around her shoulders.

It was then she heard the music, like a gift from the gods – a street fiddler playing the haunting Irish ballad, ‘The Black Velvet Band'. On impulse she began to sing the words. By the end of the song a small crowd had gathered around them and a respectable pile of coins was added to the Irishman's cap.

‘I thank ye, young lady.' He smiled. ‘Would ye care to be joining me at the Lord Nelson for a drink?'

Fanny thanked him but declined his invitation.
No shame in busking, but I won't hook up with a man to keep him in drink.

She eyed the vessels in the harbour, their masts and sails dressed with flags and nautical colours from every corner of the globe. The
City of Edinburgh
lay at anchor.
If only we could stow away on the return voyage – no sailor on earth would refuse to see Daisy well fed.

•  •  •

Suddenly conscious she was being observed, she turned. On the opposite side of the road stood the elegant carriage she had seen at Hangman's Hill. The gentleman inside beckoned her with an imperious gesture.

Close to tears of weariness, Fanny felt a sudden spark of annoyance.
Who does he think he is? I'm not a common street walker! Not yet, anyway.

Raising her chin, she turned her back on him. Moments later she found him beside her, leaning against the wall and staring at the harbour.

‘I am sorry for your trouble – the loss of your young man. Hangings are a barbaric custom, are they not?' His voice was cultivated, low and strangely soothing.

‘Seems to me they hang all the wrong people,' she said sharply and despite herself noted the smile in his eyes.

‘Could not agree more. Some would say I should have been a candidate for the noose myself – instead I was transported here.' His sweeping gesture took in the expanse of the harbour. ‘To this beautiful, mysterious land.'

She was surprised by the gratuitous confession coming from a man of Quality.

‘I came free,' she said and lowering her guard, decided to be equally honest. ‘But I was only a hair's breadth away from being arrested myself.'

The gentleman nodded politely, showing no trace of surprise. ‘May I suggest that we both celebrate our good fortune by dining together?'

Fanny took a frank look at the tall figure, somewhere in his thirties, superbly tailored in grey with a rakishly tilted top hat and
a diamond horseshoe pinned in the stock at his throat. Like a thoroughbred, his features bore the unmistakable stamp of generations of aristocratic breeding – the eyes amused but watchful, the manner effortlessly charming, the touch of grey at his temples attractive rather than aging.

Should I admit my purse was stolen? No. That makes me look too vulnerable.

‘Well, I
am
rather hungry,' she admitted, then blushed at her lack of manners.

‘Splendid. But first allow me to introduce myself. The Honourable Montague Severin at your service. Severin to my friends.'

In response to his bow, Fanny curtseyed. ‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Severin.'

‘Severin will suffice.' He added politely, ‘May I know the name of my charming dinner companion?'

Fanny hesitated. She had revealed her name to the late Will Eden, but decided she needed a fresh identity to launch her new life and put the law off her tracks. A name sprang unbidden to her lips, that of an exquisite courtesan-actress who had died young of consumption. Fanny borrowed the surname from the kindly priest.

‘Vianna Francis,' she said.

‘An unusual name for an unusual beauty. I take it you are a singer by profession?'

‘Not me. I was femme de chambre – to a courtesan.'
Damn my big mouth, I didn't have to reveal that.

‘I see,' he said carefully, with one eyebrow slightly raised.

‘Don't misunderstand me, Severin,' she said quickly. ‘I learned all the tricks of the trade for dressing my lady's hair, tending her fashionable wardrobe, soothing her moods, banishing her headaches, travelling with her and delivering notes to gentlemen who fought duels to gain her favours. But that's
all
I did!'

‘A most loyal companion, I never doubted it. But with a voice of your quality you need never be in service again.' He rolled the name around his tongue. ‘Vianna Francis. Yes, a name, a face and a voice that I could make famous in the Colony in all the best circles. You remind me of a Botticelli maiden, yet with the voice of an angel. Shall we discuss your future over dinner?'

Who's Botticelli? An opera singer? And is this Severin really an emancipist
and
an Honourable? I wonder why he got transported. Whatever, he clearly mixes with the Quality. I'll bet he didn't find that flash carriage at a fire sale.

‘No harm in just talking,' she added carefully, ‘as long as you understand I must return home early to my sister.'

Severin did not hesitate. ‘Would your sister care to chaperone us?'

‘Daisy will be asleep by now. She's only two.'

Severin smiled understandingly. ‘In that case we will enjoy a
tête a tête.
'

Well,
that
could mean anything.
She gave him a cautious smile of assent.

Severin offered his arm. ‘Am staying at my friend Major Dalby's townhouse at Jack the Miller's Point, but first we shall drive past the grand mansion I have just leased as a gentlemen's club – Severin House. Shall build a private theatre for concert singers to entertain my guests. My future and yours – should the idea interest you . . .'

Vianna Francis held her head high as they crossed to his waiting carriage.

Severin's nothing if not charming, but aren't they all till they get what they want? Imagine me being paid to sing for the Quality. But even if push comes to shove, I'll have dinner tonight – and stash away a couple of bread rolls in my reticule, so Daisy won't go hungry tomorrow.

Mungo Quayle prided himself on his being a survivor come hell or high water. And at Moreton Bay Penal Settlement, he was soon confronted by the reality of both. The Brisbane River periodically flooded the penal settlement – and living in hell was a full-time occupation.

It had taken him no more than the first week of his four-year sentence to understand that he had entered a new time zone divorced from the world he had known.

Under his alias of Sean O'Connor, Mungo realised his every waking hour was governed by Moreton Bay Time, an endless procession of bleak, cruel, hungry days and nights chained together as irrevocably as the iron shackles binding his ankles. Time was rigidly marked by the sound of the triangle which demarcated every aspect of their day. Rising at dawn, they were assigned to back-breaking work until breakfast and the sketchy cleansing of their bodies. Relentless slogging work in the tropical sun followed until midday meal break. After working until sundown, they were locked up in darkness until sun up.

Only Sundays, with its forced attendance at religious services, brought any respite, except for those occasions when prisoners were called to witness the regular pattern of floggings ordered by Commandant Logan in his self-appointed dual role as Magistrate. Even misdemeanours such as insubordination or the inability to work could earn them twenty-five to three hundred cuts of ‘the cat' despite the legal maximum of fifty set by the Governor. Bolters who escaped into the bush had little choice – die of starvation, throw in their lot with some Aboriginal tribe or return to face a merciless flogging.

Mungo soon recognised that his five hundred-odd fellow prisoners were governed by three sets of laws. The first, British law, was the birth right (theoretically) of all British citizens. The second was British law as practised in New South Wales – open to interpretation and abuse according to the ‘special conditions' of a penal colony. The third was Logan's Law – enforced at Moreton Bay by a tyrant. The
Commandant had been given a firm set of rigid but humane guidelines limiting his powers of punishment, but in practice, the remote prison being five hundred miles north of Sydney Town, the Governor's residence and convict authorities, Logan's Law entailed the systematic flouting of British law and was a byword for extreme cruelty.

Yet Mungo's first impression of Moreton Bay, and the one he clung to in his darkest hours, was a vision of sheer majestic tropical beauty.

It's so damned breathtaking it's enough to make an atheist fall on his knees and believe in God the Creator.

The lush profusion of giant eucalypts, palms, acacias, and rare specimens just waiting to be named by botanists, the hot golds, oranges, reds and purples of tropical flowering shrubs, all seemed to beckon him as seductively as any woman. Mungo could almost hear the voice of the bush whispering . . .
Come to me, I'm here, waiting for you.

Since his arrival, Mungo had received more than one ‘red shirt'; in his case these were punishments for insubordination, daring to answer back to his overseer. These floggings of two hundred or more lashes were Logan's so-called deterrents, each cut of the cat delivered with relish by the scourger. Mungo had survived them without crying out in pain, though his lips were bloody with the effort.

Today was a merciful period of respite for Mungo's back, which was beginning to heal. Logan was away on one of his self-appointed explorations, exploring dense bushland, climbing impregnable cliff faces, charting and naming rivers and mountains. These daring journeys were said to be both Logan's bid for glory and avoidance of official correspondence with Governor Darling.

Aware only that he had been ordered to the muster for inspection, Mungo followed behind a stumbling, ironed procession of prisoners on the orders of an officer who despite the heat and his faded red coatee seemed unusually spruced up.

Mungo turned to Stimson, the prisoner next in line. ‘If we have to wash our hands and faces it must be some damned bigwig. Too much to hope there's a woman with them. I haven't seen a female face close up since I came here.'

‘Neither you will. Best live on your memories, lad.'

Mungo was distracted by the surprising sight of the coterie of smart new military uniforms worn by the officers surrounding a central figure who had power written on every inch of his pink, round face.

‘Mother of God,' gasped the emaciated old Irishman at Mungo's side, ‘it's being none but Himself – Governor Darling!'

Mungo gave it serious consideration. ‘Right decent of him to sail five hundred miles to pat us on the back for our hard work. If I had pen and paper on me I'd present him with a petition. Replace bloody Logan with a bloke who's more a man than a tyrant – if they can find one.'