To Chase the Storm: The Frontier Series 4 (5 page)

‘Don’t you think you should come with me, Father?’ Jonathan asked gently.

‘No. I have things to do before I leave and it is good that Saul goes ahead to find us a place until we get work. I will be all right. Terituba will be with me. Now we will break bread together and be happy for Becky’s coming happiness. I know your mother would have wanted us to. And then we finish the bottle.’

The three men ate that night and talked of all things except the coming foreclosure on Jerusalem. They drank outside under the magnificent, slowly swirling canopy of southern stars until their heads swam and the stars blurred, arcing streaks across the black velvet sky. Then they slept where they fell in the red dust of the land. Only Ben awoke in the early hours of the morning when he heard the distant mournful sounds and felt the pain grip his chest with its familiar vice-like fingers.

On unsteady legs he tottered towards the silhouette of the big pepper tree and smelt its pungent scent on the cool, early morning air. He crumpled to his knees beside the carefully tended mound that marked his beloved wife’s grave, here at the foot of the tree she had once so lovingly nurtured as a struggling sapling, far from its South American home. A dark shape suddenly appeared at his side out of the night’s shadow.

‘Terituba? I hope that’s you.’

‘Yes, boss.’

‘I’m dying, aren’t I?’

‘Yes, boss. Not long to go.’

‘Good. I swore to Jennifer a long time ago that I would never leave her alone out here.’

‘No, old friend of mine. Not good to leave your woman. Her spirit wanders alone waiting for you,’ the old Kalkadoon man answered softly in his language.

It did not matter that the white man did not understand his words. What was important was that his friend would not be alone when he died. He had sensed death very close and knew whose dying it would be. Terituba squatted in the powdery dust a short distance from Ben. He was aware that the old man had a need to be alone with the spirit of his dead wife. Many times over the years, the white man would sit beside the mound and talk to her spirit. Her soul was now the spirit of the spreading tree, with its cooling shade in a land of sparse comfort.

‘My darling Jennifer, I promised that I would never leave you,’ Ben said with tears brimming in his eyes. The gentle tears were not for himself but for the memory of a young girl standing forlorn amongst the tents of the Palmer River gold miners after the terrible floods of ’74. He had been a young man then with the veneer of an independent tough bushman, working alongside Kate Tracy hauling in the desperately needed supplies for the starving miners and their families. The stolid bullocks had crossed rivers swollen by flood, climbed bone-breaking mountains and faced the spears of the fierce Merkin warriors along the way. But his tough veneer had been shattered forever when this frightened and half-starved young woman had come into his life, never to leave his side until the fateful day when a snake had struck, protecting its own young.

He wiped ineffectively at his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt and sniffed. ‘I have missed you for so long, your laughter and the way you smiled. I have missed you more than you could have ever known.’

He paused and stared up at the silent sky above. The constellation of the Southern Cross was low on the horizon and across the dusty yard he could see the outline of their hut where Jennifer had once baked bread and waited anxiously for his return from the dangerous places where the Kalkadoon stalked the unwary. Turning to look down at the mound, he could make out the now desiccated posy of wild-flowers he had left a week earlier. As he reached down to touch them, the pain came to his body in a way that he knew it would never again.

Terituba saw Ben slump forward with a low groan. The old Kalkadoon warrior rose from the earth. He padded to the body and squatted beside his old friend, crooning a song softly so that he did not disturb the spirits of the night. He sang until the Southern Cross was gone from the dark sky then rose to his feet and walked away. No-one would ever again see the last true warrior of the Kalkadoon.

In the morning Ben’s two sons found their father slumped over their mother’s grave, clutching a dry posy of flowers as if taking them into the next world to greet her. Jonathan’s was the greater grief, the guilty sorrow of a man who had long been away.

‘He died alone and without the prayers,’ Jonathan cried quietly. ‘Someone should have been with him to say the prayer for the dead.’

‘He did not die alone,’ his brother said. His keen
eyes had read the footprints in the red dust beside his father’s body. ‘He had a friend with him.’

Jonathan glanced at his brother with a questioning look but Saul only shrugged and walked back to the hut to fetch a shovel. Jonathan would never understand the spirituality of the Kalkadoon, Saul thought as he walked towards the bark hut that had been his home.

Together the brothers buried their father beside their beloved mother. Despite Ben’s apparent return to the religion of his ancestors he was also at one with the spirits of the red earth, lagoons, rocks and trees.

The old bull stood under the shade of the scrub trees, eyeing the young man who was afoot. He watched with suspicion as the man raised a stick-like thing to his shoulder and pointed it at him. Annoying flies buzzed around his thick and powerful head and he snorted irritably.

Saul trained the foresight of the Snider rifle squarely below the thick neck and over the scrawny bull’s heart. It was better to kill the stock than leave them to the mercy of the savage land of drought and flood. It was an easy shot, and the old bull would finally be freed from its harsh life in the scrub, Saul thought.

But the shot was never fired. The rifle was lowered and the young bushman smiled. ‘You have sired a family that has learned to live in this land, you old bastard,’ he said softly. ‘Maybe your progeny will be
around when we are all gone from these lands. You have earned the right to live.’

He hefted the rifle over his shoulder and strode back to where his horse grazed contentedly on the wild grasses of the vast inland plain. With easy grace he swung himself into the saddle and pointed his rifle at the sky. The shot rolled its echo through the scrub, causing the old bull to turn and trot away. The sound was like that of the stockwhip and the old bull knew its stinging bite.

FOUR

F
or as long as men have gone to war, barking voices have harried civilian recruits into untidy squads, platoons, companies and eventually battalions. The voices that abused their motley assemblies as poor excuses for fighting men belonged to the senior non-commissioned officers of the army: corporals, sergeants and, above all, sergeant majors. And mere hours after the news that Britain had declared war on the Boer Republics in South Africa, the barking voices were mustering their unruly flocks at military depots across the length and breadth of the colonies of Australia.

Major Patrick Duffy stood by the brigadier’s window and gazed out onto the parade ground of Sydney’s Victoria Barracks. Although a major with a colonial regiment, Patrick was not in his military uniform but wore a suit, the more familiar uniform
of his daily working life. He watched with a certain amount of nostalgia as straight-backed sergeants with quivering moustaches waxed to pencil points bawled incomprehensible orders at the civilians. Soon they would be soldiers in the mounted infantry, facing new terrors in the coming battles against the Dutch farmers across the sea. These recruits could ride and shoot with all the skills of their soon-to-be adversaries, tough men from the colony’s Outback where they had worked under the southern skies like the Boer. The sights and sounds were all so familiar to Patrick and he was momentarily transported back to the British army campaigning in Egypt and the Sudan.

‘Patrick, old chap, so good to see you again after all these years.’ The man who had entered the office offering his hand and a genuinely warm smile stood almost as tall as Patrick. He wore the uniform of a Scottish Highlands regiment and the rank of colonel.

‘Good to see you, John,’ Patrick replied as he grasped the hand of Colonel Hughes. ‘Must be at least fifteen years since we last met in Suakin.’

‘Must be, old chap,’ the colonel replied. ‘I remember then I was trying to talk you out of resigning your commission with us.’

‘You still have me, in a manner of speaking. If you can call command of a colonial militia regiment being part of the British army.’

‘My opinion is that your Tommy Cornstalks will well and truly be a part of Her Majesty’s imperial army in South Africa. This is not going to be like it was back in the Sudan in ’85 when all we faced were spear-wielding fuzzy wuzzies. I have spent time in
the Boer Republics and our experience at Majuba a few years back has shown us the Boer is a tough customer. My views – not necessarily shared by my colleagues in London – is that our colonial troops are just the right material we need to fight fire with fire. But that is an opinion I fear puts me off side with the War Office, old chap.’

‘So that’s how you ended up here,’ Patrick grinned. ‘They shuffled you off to the colonies as your punishment.’

‘Sort of,’ Colonel Hughes said with a frown. ‘That and a posting to damned intelligence.’

‘At your rank it must be a command posting of staff? Sounds rather mysterious.’

The colonel gestured for Patrick to take a seat on the other side of the dark timber desk clearly meant to be functional rather than decorative. He felt comfortable around Patrick, with whom he had soldiered in two North African campaigns. Despite the difference in rank and the resulting formalities between soldiers, in private they related as old friends who had shared much together in a way that only seasoned soldiers could understand: desert, dust, flies and violent death.

‘It is a command well enough,’ Hughes replied bitterly, ‘but not one that I sought. I wanted to command a brigade – not a bloody desk.’

Patrick nodded his head in sympathy. Soldiering was really about the comradeship of soldiers facing the enemy, not endless files and staff meetings. Hughes’ views on the tenacity of the Boers must have bordered on heresy to bring about such a posting.

‘But so much for my woes,’ the colonel sighed. ‘What I cannot understand is why one of Britain’s finest colonial officers would ever decline the command of a colonial regiment. It’s almost inconceivable, Patrick. Absolutely inconceivable.’

‘I can assure you that my decision now is no less painful than the one I made when I resigned from the regiment back in ’85,’ Patrick replied.

Colonel Hughes could tell from Patrick’s voice that the decision not to take his regiment to Africa was probably one of the most difficult he had ever made in his life.

‘Family matters?’ he asked gently.

Patrick nodded. ‘I have a duty to my family as much as I have a duty to my regiment. And under the rather difficult circumstances of managing the family concerns I have a particular duty to my grandmother.’

‘Lady Enid Macintosh,’ the colonel said. ‘A fine woman, I have heard.’

‘God almighty – I would give my life to be with the men when they sail,’ Patrick continued in an agonised tone. ‘I feel like a damned deserter.’

Although Patrick did not elaborate further, Hughes guessed that all was not well at home, but it was not his affair to make further inquiries in the matter. Upon reaching Sydney the colonel had been stunned to hear of his friend’s decision. And while Patrick’s men in the mounted infantry had been bitterly disappointed by their commanding officer’s decision, there was also some understanding of the heavy responsibility ‘the boss’ had in managing
the Macintosh companies. Hughes had hoped at this informal meeting to perhaps persuade him to retain his command, but he also had another agenda. A more distasteful matter in relation to his new appointment as the head of military intelligence for the War Office. A matter that directly involved his friend.

‘Despite the fact that you have decided not to go with the regiment to Africa, I would presume your loyalty to Her Majesty is in no doubt?’ Hughes asked, noticing the expression of disbelief on Patrick’s face.

‘That’s a rather insulting question,’ Patrick growled. ‘I will continue in Her Majesty’s uniform and seek a training command.’

‘I’m sorry, Patrick, but I had to be sure. And from your reaction I have not the slightest doubt of your loyalty. You see, I have to confess that I arranged this meeting for reasons other than just renewing our acquaintance. It happened that, before I sailed for Sydney from London, I received a file on someone close to you as part of my briefing.’

‘My father?’ Patrick asked hopefully. ‘He is alive?’

The colonel shook his head. ‘I’m sorry. Not your father. It’s your cousin, Father Duffy.’

‘Martin?’

‘Father Martin Duffy S. J. A rather colourful – and some would say dangerous – man.’

‘Martin dangerous!’ Patrick exclaimed. ‘Martin’s just a priest. How could that be dangerous?’

The intelligence officer rose and walked across to a wooden filing cabinet, opened it and rustled
through folders until he found what he was looking for. Returning to the desk he sat down, flipping open the manila folder and peering at the reports relating to a Jesuit priest trained in Rome, but originally from the Colony of New South Wales.

‘How much do you know about your cousin?’ he asked quietly.

Patrick frowned as he recalled the boy he grew up with. Martin was reserved to the point of timid. How could such a boy grow to be a man considered dangerous by the might of the British Empire?

‘I have not seen Martin in over twenty-five years. Unfortunately my choice to renounce my Catholic religion put me on the wrong side of the Duffys. Only my Aunt Kate in Townsville still corresponds with me. So there is little I know of Martin – I heard through Aunt Kate that he had gone to Rome to be ordained as a Jesuit priest. Then I heard that he was on missionary work in Africa . . . Africa! That’s the connection, isn’t it?’ Patrick exclaimed suddenly.

‘Yes,’ the colonel replied. ‘That, and his anti-British activities in Ireland. I think under the circumstances, old chap, I can tell you a certain amount, without compromising secrecy. Most of what I will tell you is common knowledge in Ireland and Africa. Father Duffy is currently in Ireland covertly recruiting young men to join an Irish Brigade to fight on the Boer side,’ Hughes said grimly. ‘He had a rather lot of success recruiting around the mines and goldfields in the Boer Republics when he was in Africa. We fear he may also have secret contact with the Kaiser’s people in Germany in his crusade against us. We have been
assured by the Vatican that his secular work is not condoned by the Catholic Church.’