CHAPTER 7

It was two days later when I slipped out the back gate of Craig’s Hotel with a satin waistcoat of Charlie’s in my basket, on my way to the haberdashery to buy new buttons. I had not exactly forgotten Dr Musgrave, but his mansion seemed like nothing but a fantastic dream, and there were much more solid prospects. I was wondering when I might share the piano stool again, and I almost felt like skipping through the puddles.

On the other side of the narrow street, two men were standing, watching me. Admirers of the little people, no doubt. These followers hung around the hotel at all hours, hoping to catch a glimpse of their heroes. But these two looked most particularly at me; one turned to the other, who nodded. Down-on-their-luck miners, to guess from their shabby red shirts, unkempt beards and trousers held up with string. Ballarat was full of them. Those who had enough money for grog shouted rude greetings at me, and a few came close enough in the crowded streets to brush their bodies against me. Yesterday one had grabbed at my breast, and Mrs Bleeker had bashed his arm with her umbrella until he ran away. How I had wished that Franz was with us, to fend off the alligators.

These men did not shout or lurch towards me; they just stared. Should I duck back inside the gate? No, impudent strangers should not frighten me. Holding tight to my basket, I turned left and walked towards Lydiard Street, towards the shops and crowds. I heard footfalls and felt in my trembling muscles that they were following me. I walked faster, began to run, splashing through the puddles. The corner of Lydiard Street was a few yards away: I caught the shout of a distant spruiker, the rattle and clack of a carriage.

A hand grabbed my left arm, yanked me back. I screamed, swung my basket, kicked at invisible shins. Surely someone would hear and come running? Something seized my right arm, and a hand, stinking of tobacco, clamped round my mouth. I dug my teeth into the thumb. A yell, an oath.

‘Bitch, you are scarce worth my hire.’

‘Keep down yer noise,’ said another voice. ‘Let’s go.’

With me pinioned between them, they frogmarched me back the way we had come. I began to shout and struggle, but something sharp pressed against my side.

‘Try that again, Missus Carroll, and I’ll cut you.’

Hearing my own name hissed at me was more frightening than feeling the tip of a knife. A boy carrying a sack over his shoulder ducked out of a doorway, and I turned to him in silent appeal, help me, help me, until the knife pricked the skin over my right hip. In a rush of panic I started forward until their arms dragged me back.

We walked on, not too brisk, two miners and their doxy taking the air. A force rose in my throat, choking me, suffocating me. I concentrated on my breathing — in, out, in, out — and kept up with their strides. Several twists down the network of alleys behind the hotel stood a covered hay wain with a horse in harness. Still holding my arm, the man with the knife let down the back of the wain and the other man stripped off the tarpaulin. He pushed a rag between my chattering teeth and tied the ends tightly behind my head, then took out a coil of rope and looped it round my wrists behind my back. I was nothing but jelly: at any moment the knife would slip between my ribs. Dear God, let it be quick, not too much pain. But they lifted me up and pushed me onto the floor of the wagon; and for a moment, too short, I felt nothing but wild relief. Then one of them held my head down, my face to the boards. Such a hand would not hesitate to press me to smothering. The boards trembled with the thump of hay bales piled around me. A sweet grassy tang, a whiff of horse dung, a shipboard smell of tar, a tobacco taste from my gag made me convulse in sneezes.

Rattling. Darker. The pressure on my head lifted, but I could not move, the bales were too close. More rattles and thumps, muffled; and then the wain lurched into movement. I lay sneezing and shivering, bracing myself against the heaves of the wagon. Now I could turn my head. Walls of hay in a dim green light. I rocked my body until the hay around me gave me space to sit up, and my head bumped canvas.

The worst thing was the slow speed of the wain. I wanted to make the horse fly, to get the ordeal over with, but what if they did more than ravish me? It was not money they wanted — they had ignored my basket and purse. Suppose they were keeping me alive only to put me through worse pain? And at the end, cut my throat?

My heart thundered in my ears and my breath came in gasps, but I forced myself to breathe in, out, in, out, deep and slow. Think, think. The rope that dug into my wrists was old, a little frayed: fronds tickled my palms. As I stared at the wain floor, the green light revealed a row of nails. One was not quite hammered in, it stuck out. I wriggled round until I had my back to it; my fingers felt for the metal, slipped the rope over, yanked. It was like trying to pull out a huge, tough thread from a canvas fabric, backwards, blindfolded. The rope kept slipping off the nail, my hands were slippery with sweat, but I looped the fronds back on, and slowly the tight twinings came apart. At last the rope gave far enough for me to slip one hand out, and soon I had the other hand free. I sat rubbing my wrists, then pushed at the heavy hay bales. They moved back a little, but the green light and the canvas over my head made me feel sunk in a sea where I could not break the surface. I began to gasp again through my gag. I pressed and punched at the canvas, slashed at it with my nails, but it would not give, and I sat back, heaving, wanting to claw my throat open. You won’t drown. Breathe through your nose. Think.

Then it came to me. The men had had no time to lash down their load: they must have hooked the taut canvas over the back of the wain; all I needed to do was loosen it. I fought through the bales and felt along the upright board at the back end of the wain, tugged at the canvas folded over the board like a tightly made bed. A sudden slackening in my roof and a small triangle of day peeped at me, a pink light, an after-image from the green. I hauled hard: the canvas flapped back and I tore off my gag and drew in huge gusts of air in the dazzling pink light.

I wanted to shout for help, but there was no one to hear. We were rolling along between bare hills with an occasional copse of native trees. Behind me on the horizon was a haze of smoke and a glimpse of the huddle of brown buildings and shacks that was Ballarat, and still further away the pale flash of the tents around the mullock heaps. Ahead were the bales: I kneeled up and peered over them, saw the hats of the men, sitting at the front of the wain, nodding drowsily. At any moment, one would hear the flap of canvas, turn and discover me. I rolled to the edge of the wain, pulled myself up onto the low wooden parapet and stared at the muddy road passing slowly beneath me. As the wain lumbered over a rutty stretch of highway, I let myself drop, praying the ruts would distract the men and the mud would disguise and soften my impact. It still jarred. I landed on my feet, swayed, kept my balance, but the shock rushed up through my soles. I did not dare look behind me, but made my way quickly and silently to hunker down beside the road, behind a bush that did not offer much cover. I waited for the wain to stop, for the men to dismount, cursing, and haul me back into captivity; but the rumbling of their passage grew fainter, until all I heard was the skark, skark of cockatoos roosting in a nearby tree. The roosting tree flew up and danced around me, foul tastes filled my throat, my insides rose in revolt and splashed on the grass.

My burden. All the time the men had me, I had never given it a thought. Now I had vomited again, it was almost reassuring. As was its way, the nausea faded as suddenly as it came. I wiped my clammy face with my sleeve, my throat burning for clean water, and thought of the man who had growled as he held me. I had never had a proper look at either of them; all I knew was they were strangers. The man’s words snarled in my head. Bitch, you are scarce worth my hire. Hire? Someone had hired him? And the way they had consulted each other, the nods, the naming of me: I was a bitch and I was also Missus Carroll. It was not that any young woman would do; someone must have described me most particularly to them.

Groaning, I staggered to my feet, still dizzy and weak, and all my left side ached, but I knew I must walk back to Ballarat while there was still light enough to see my way; and, because the men might still discover their loss and turn back, I would have to get off the road and cut across the hills. I imagined myself falling sobbing into Mrs Bleeker’s arms. But what story should I tell? Someone in the troupe must have told these men about me, might even have hired them to abduct me. How else would these strangers have known of me?

I searched in my pocket for Mrs Bleeker’s bottle of elixir, miraculously unbroken, and took a long swig. Then I brushed the worst of the mud from my clothes while the feather crests of the birds rose and the roosting tree shook with their screeches. It was all too hard to fathom. Maybe I was going back into the arms of an enemy. But there was nowhere else to go.

My legs worked well enough but, as I walked, my hands quivered and clenched, and my chest throbbed. At first I thought it fear. Then suddenly I knew what it was. How dare they. Somehow, I will defeat them. The storm in me all the more ferocious because it was not just for myself.