Alice was bathed in sweat, terror threatening to freeze her limbs.
Below her was eighty feet of darkness. If she fell, death was certain. Above her the shaft seemed on the edge of collapse. That too would mean certain death.
At that moment the thought of making a fortune from the gold they had found seemed unimportant. Life was the only thing that mattered.
She forced her hands away from their death grip and reached for the next rung. And the rung after that. She was weeping in terror, eyes blind, an insect burrowing in the dark. She could hear her own plaintive cries.
Another rung. Another.
Limbs shaking, sweat flooding.
Another step. Her foot slipped off the greasy rung. She hung, weeping. Save me, God!
She regained her footing and took a series of deep breaths. Her hand ventured, closing on the next rung. She dragged herself higher. And higher.
She dared not look up but knew she must be nearing the top because now she could see the shuttering that was still holding the sides of the shaft in place. Where the fall of earth had come from she did not know but was reasonably sure she was above it now.
Below her feet the darkness opened its jaws, determined to drag her back, but Alice was more determined still. She reached up and climbed. Reached up and climbed. The light and waiting faces welcomed her.
She stepped away from the shaft, breath shuddering, body shaking. She collapsed on the ground and lay full length. The smell of the sun-warmed earth, the noise of voices, of machines, of dogs… She was safe now.
How beautiful was life!
That night was celebration time. The Eureka Hotel had been burnt down back in October so instead they went to the John o’ Groats, a wooden building across the road from the Gold Office among a scattering of the first permanent buildings in Ballarat.
The old Eureka had had a bad name, being home – or so it was said – to Vandemonians.
‘What are Vandemonians?’ Rascal Jones had wondered.
‘People like us,’ Alice had said. ‘People from Van Diemen’s Land.’
‘What’s the problem with them?’
‘Most of the ones here are ex-cons,’ Alice said.
‘Like me, you mean?’
‘Who’d want to eat in the same hotel as people like us?’ said Richard. He was ebullient at the thought of the gold they’d found. ‘Fifteen hundred quid,’ he marvelled.
‘And plenty more where that came from,’ Alice said.
Although it would be a cold day in hell before she ventured down that shaft again.
Fifteen hundred quid. It was a figure to conjure dreams. Why stop there? Why not fifty thousand? A hundred? The world was wide and they, incredibly, were rich.
Never mind the riots, the looming threat of trouble, the fact that soldiers of the 12th Regiment had been stoned passing the Eureka Lead, that diggers were rumoured to be burning their licences – now they would celebrate.
The John o’ Groats seemed if anything rougher than the old Eureka but they didn’t care; they could look after themselves.
Chops and steak and tumblers of a drink called Blow Your Skull Off. They’d asked the waitress about it before ordering.
‘What’s in it?’
‘Rum, opium, spirits of wine and cayenne pepper.’
‘Kill many, does it?’ Richard said.
The waitress, well endowed around the chest but with not too much between the ears, gaped. ‘Eh?’
‘Never mind. I’ll give it a go.’
‘Me too,’ said Rascal.
Alice decided she’d had enough danger for one day.
‘I’ll stick to water.’
‘The water’s horrible,’ Richard said.
Even so…
They were halfway through the meal when Alice saw a face she recognised on the far side of the crowded room. She put her hand on Richard’s arm.
‘Look over there. It’s William.’
‘What’s he doing here? I wouldn’t have thought it was his sort of place at all. I’d have said silk sheets and a silver service were more his style.’
‘I doubt there’s one silver service in the whole of Ballarat,’ Alice said.
Richard studied William with a mixture of contempt and dislike – having money in his pocket made that easier – but he wasn’t really interested and soon went back to sawing at his saddle-tough steak.
Alice continued to watch and wonder. Richard was right; the John o’ Groats wasn’t William’s style. Neither was the whole goldfields scene. But there he was, large as life and twice as ugly, as her mum would have said. And there was something else that was interesting: William was not alone.
They’d heard that William had married Cynthia Mason shortly after their own wedding – needless to say, they hadn’t been invited – yet there he was in Ballarat with a woman who clearly was not his wife. Paying her a fair bit of attention too.
Alice continued to watch. The woman was about the same age as she was, with black eyes and black hair, thick black brows in a face as white as bone. She had a strong rather than lush figure but was still showing most of what she had above the deep cut of her dress, and there was an air about her that said watch out.
A whore? Alice doubted that; she had more the tight mouth of someone who’d cut a man’s throat before she’d sleep with him, and not think twice about it.
A chance acquaintance? Not likely, Alice thought, the way she was clinging to William’s arm.
It was no business of hers but what had happened between her and William in the woodland at the back of Barnsley’s house – never mind what might have happened – seemed somehow to make it so. It gave her the strangest fellow-feeling with the sabre-sharp woman, which was nonsense, of course.
So she continued to watch. She couldn’t hear what they were saying over the hubbub, but everything William did made his feelings for the strange woman clear. He can hardly keep his hands off her, Alice thought. And the way she was lapping it up showed she had no problem with that, either. Brother Willy had best look out for himself, Alice thought.
At that moment William looked her way. She held her gaze and saw shock smooth his face as he recognised her. Then his expression cleared. He said something to the woman. She turned and stared at Alice across the rowdy, smoke-hazed room, a stiletto stab of the black eyes and Alice saw that this woman would regard the whole world as competition.
William got to his feet and strolled across the room towards them.
‘He’s coming over,’ Alice said to Richard.
‘We are honoured,’ Richard said.
He leant back in his chair. He took a few sovereigns out of his pocket and turned them casually but obviously as William reached their table. He took note of what Richard was doing.
‘You must be doing all right. Well done.’ Smiling, patronising.
‘Not bad. And you?’ Smiling between equals.
William laughed lightly. ‘I’m not here to dig holes in the ground. I leave that to tough men like you, people used to manual labour. The family owns a lot of the land. Uncle bought it when he was over in fifty-one. Pays to keep an eye on it, don’t you know? And to keep in with the powers that be.’
‘How’s your wife?’ Alice said.
William smiled easily. ‘Very well, the last I heard.’
‘Aren’t you going to introduce us to your friend?’ Alice asked.
‘I’m afraid Maria’s over-particular of the company she keeps,’ William said.
‘What’s she doing with you, then?’ Rascal Jones said.
William turned with exaggerated slowness. ‘And you are?’
‘Rascal Jones.’
‘Appropriate, I’m sure.’
‘You’d better believe it,’ Rascal said.
‘Your friend’s coming over,’ Alice said.
Close up Maria looked even more dangerous than she had at a distance. She had a scar on her left cheek and her voice was harsh enough to break glass. She stared at Alice and the two men as though taking possession of them.
‘Richard and Alice are old friends of mine,’ William said. ‘The gentleman with them tells me his name is Jones.’
‘I heard of you lot,’ Maria said. ‘Struck it rich, people are sayin’.’
‘People say all sorts of things,’ Alice said.
Maria smiled. Her teeth were sharp and Alice knew she had seen the coins in Richard’s hand.
‘Sometimes they’re right, an’ all.’ She flicked a glance at Alice but spoke to Richard. ‘You with this one?’
‘Alice is my wife,’ Richard said.
While Alice’s eyes would have killed the dangerous woman where she stood.
‘Just askin’,’ Maria said. She turned to William. ‘We gunna eat or what?’
Friday 1 December 1854 was notable for two things: a marked increase in the aggression of the goldfields police and a visit to Wheal Alice by William Tregellas and Maria Hack.
Very picky with her boots was Maria Hack as she winced her way through the mud left by the late spring rain yet Alice would have been prepared to bet she’d waded through a lot worse, her looks saying she’d packed more into her years than most people did in a dozen lifetimes. Not much of it good, either.
Maria wore a magenta and orange dress – enough to poke your eyes out, Alice thought – but expensively styled, discreetly bustled and more modest about the throat than she’d been in the John o’ Groats. She carried a silk parasol. She was the epitome of smart although Alice thought how putting a gold collar on a viper did nothing to milk its venom.
Maria gave a delicate shudder as she eyed the gaping mouth of the shaft.
‘Is it very deep?’
‘Hundred and eighty feet, give or take,’ Alice said.
‘Blimey…’
Alice saw Maria was trying to play the part of Lady Muck on a visit to the peasantry but making a hard job of it. She suspected Maria’s voice would smash rock if she ever decided to raise it.
‘And your two mates go down there?’
‘I been down myself.’
‘To the bottom?’
Alice nodded. ‘Nothing to it.’ Not for quids would she admit how terrified she’d been.
‘So you’ve seen the gold?’
‘More or less. It doesn’t look like much. It’s not just lying there; it’s in rocks. You got to crush the rocks to get it out.’
‘We’re getting by.’
Maria flashed an avaricious gleam. ‘People I’ve spoken to say you’ve made one of the best strikes in Ballarat.’
‘Better than some, I suppose.’
‘By luck.’
‘Luck and hard work,’ Alice said.
‘What you do with it?’
‘With the gold? Stick it in the bank,’ Alice said.
She was lying. She’d banked some but not most of it. It was a bone of contention between her and Richard, but Richard didn’t trust banks and said they’d be better off looking after it themselves. The unbanked portion was locked away in a steel box under the bed they’d bought now they could afford some of the comforts they’d had to do without for so long. Alice had been all in favour of the bed, which was a lot kinder to her back than the hard ground had been whenever Richard had felt in a loving mood, but she was certainly not going to tell Maria Hack there was the best part of three thousand quid hidden not ten feet from where they were standing.
‘You gotta keep some of it back, though? For living expenses, that sort of thing?’
‘Some.’
‘Ain’t you afraid someone will steal it?’
‘We keep our eyes on it,’ Alice said.
‘Just as well, I’d say.’
Maria walked away, her knowing smile like a trophy.
Alice watched her back and did not think she had much to smile about because she had seen something in the other woman she had not expected.
‘Has William been here long?’ she asked Richard.
‘He said about two weeks. But he told me he’s been coming over regularly for about six months. Not just here. Bendigo too, seems like. Uncle Barnsley has been buying land all over.’
‘Why would he do that?’
‘Because he’s smart. Everywhere gold’s been discovered the price of land has gone through the roof. Five times, ten times the price they paid. Sometimes more.’
‘And without having to work for it,’ Alice said.
‘That’s right. William was saying Uncle sends him over every few weeks to keep an eye on things.’
‘Not all he’s been doing, either,’ Alice said.
Richard looked questioningly at her. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘That woman’s pregnant,’ Alice said.
‘Are you saying…?’
‘Who else?’
Not that it was Alice’s problem; there were more important things to worry about than Maria Hack.
Everyone knew the district was on the edge of trouble. Tempers were raw since the commissioner had raised the licence fees yet again – and the authorities seemed to think the situation serious enough to order more troops into the area. The word was that General Nickle was on his way from Melbourne with eight hundred men.
Talk, more talk and black looks by the bushel.
After the business of the stoning, the soldiers kept out of the way but everyone knew they were there and their presence, seen or unseen, ripped holes in what little remained of the diggers’ patience. Everywhere there was talk of resistance, even of rebellion, and the nagging presence of the bully-boy police did nothing to cool people down.
‘The police haf always behaved like the bastards they are,’ said Karl Leipzig, ‘but recently they’ve become even worse. As I said they would. Now it’s every day or two, sometime more than once a day. Is it any wonder diggers are burning their licences? These are free men; they vill not be treated like slaves.’
For once Willy McNab had nothing to say.
‘You know Father Smyth is telling us to lay down our weapons and pray for peace?’ Karl said. ‘I ask you: pray for peace? Vith the authorities trying to take avay our freedom?’
Later that day Wheal Alice had a visitor.
Alice had been washing clothes and her arms were suds to the elbow when she saw Police Corporal Jenkins with a couple of troopers and the load of trouble that always seemed to travel with them.
Jenkins had greased-back hair and blue eyes so pale they were almost white. He had a bad reputation: a bully who people said enjoyed causing as much trouble as he could. He was carrying a pistol holstered on his belt, an iron-bound baton in his fist, and his heels bruised the ground.
‘Jenkins,’ the man said. ‘Goldfields police.’
‘Again,’ Alice said.
‘Again,’ he agreed. ‘So you know what I want, ducky.’
Alice couldn’t abide being called ducky. ‘What’s that then?’
Tap, tap went the baton.
‘Looker like you, you shouldn’t be askin’ a red-blooded man that sorta question. Might take it as an invite: know what I mean? Now, show me your licence. An’ quick about it, ducky, if you don’t want me to run you in.’
‘Pardon me for breathing,’ said Alice, but knew she had no choice. She showed him her licence.
‘There you go! That wasn’t so hard, was it? Now: where’s the rest of your mob?’
‘My husband’s sleeping.’
‘Then you better wake him up.’
‘He’s been working all hours,’ Alice said. ‘He needs his sleep.’
‘You do it or I will,’ Jenkins said. ‘Your choice.’
Alice went into the tent and shook Richard’s shoulder. ‘Those police bastards want to see your licence.’
‘Easy with the language, missus.’ Jenkins had followed her into the tent. ‘Wouldn’t want me to run you in for non-cooperation, would we now?’
‘In my pants pocket,’ Richard said.
Alice turned to pick them up from where an exhausted Richard had dropped them but Jenkins beat her to it. He picked up the pants, held them upside down and shook them. The licence fell and a couple of coins.
‘Doin’ well, are we?’ he said. He looked around him. ‘Ain’t there supposed to be another bloke with you?’
‘He’s down the shaft,’ Alice said.
‘Tell him to get up here,’ Jenkins said.
‘No way of getting hold of him down there,’ Alice said. ‘You want a squint at his licence, best you climb down and ask him yourself.’
‘Sassy little bitch, ain’t you?’ Jenkins said. ‘No worries; we’ll be back later. You can bet the farm on that.’
‘You’re worse than the plague, you lot,’ Alice said.
‘Best you don’ forget it, neither,’ Jenkins said.
He went out of the tent with Alice following him.
‘You planning on keeping that coin?’ she said.
‘Coin?’
‘The one you took from my husband’s pants.’
‘Dunno what you’re on about,’ Jenkins said.
A well-dressed man was walking towards the tent. Jenkins straightened at once and threw a smart salute.
‘Morning, sir!’
William flipped a finger to his hat brim. ‘Morning, Corporal.’
Jenkins mounted his horse and rode away, the two troopers clattering behind, all three of them figures of upright and honourable men.
‘How come that bastard treats me like dirt but hands you a salute?’ Alice said.
‘Friends in high places,’ William said. ‘You should try it sometime.’
‘Since when are people in high places gunna take a spit of notice of me?’
‘Introductions, that’s what you need.’ He gave her his best remember-what-good-times-we-might-have-had-together smile. ‘I can arrange it, if you’d like.’
Another sassy article, Alice thought. Not one who would ever learn, either. She looked at him scornfully. ‘Wearin’ clothes like I got and stinking of sweat? You’re dreaming.’
‘Never hurts to dream. But I’m sorry to disappoint you, dear, I came to have a word with your husband.’
‘We’d best not disturb him, then.’ He gave her a warm smile and Alice didn’t trust him an inch. ‘As you know, there are strong feelings all over the goldfields,’ he said. ‘People are getting really worked up. And now there’s talk of another increase in the licence fee.’
‘A lot of the miners are battling to survive as it is,’ Alice said.
‘I know.’ William shook his head, Mr Sympathy himself. ‘There’ll be trouble any day now. Serious trouble.’
‘When?’
‘Today? Tomorrow? Nobody knows. All it needs is a spark. The only thing we know for sure is that when it comes it’ll be ugly. You won’t want to get involved in that.’
‘We can’t do anything about it.’
‘I think perhaps you can. You know they’ve been building a stockade to keep the troops out? I hear they’re even making their own flag. Might be best if you went there. It’d be safer.’
‘Why should you care?’ Alice said. ‘You’re not a miner. It doesn’t affect you.’
William opened his eyes wide. ‘Of course I care. You’re family, aren’t you? I came to warn you.’
‘Warn us of what?’
‘The dangers of staying put. Can you see the soldiers firing on their own people? I can’t. But the police are a different story. You know what they did to that priest’s assistant? There’s been talk of rape too. You’re so vulnerable here. You want to get out while you can.’
‘And go where?’
‘The stockade. Where else? There will be a lot of people there and you know what they say about safety in numbers. Besides, the more people we have there, the more likely the authorities will be to listen to what we’re telling them. Think about it: licence fees cut, that’d be a start. And maybe – who knows? – we might even be able to get the police off our backs. But I am sure of one thing: when the shooting starts you’ll be a lot safer there than you are here.’
‘You told us you didn’t have no interest in the miners or the gold. It was the land that interested you. That’s what you said.’
William waved a vague hand. ‘Somehow one gets sucked in.’
Alice looked at him uncertainly. He was a nasty bit of work – she knew that better than anybody – but he was nobody’s fool and she thought his words made sense.
‘Mind you, there’ll be some rough characters there too. If you do decide to go it might be wise to take a weapon with you, so you can protect yourself if you need to.’
‘We don’t know nothing about weapons,’ Alice said.
‘I brought a gun for you,’ William said. He spoke softly, glancing this way and that, and took a pistol from under his coat. ‘Here. Take it.’
She looked at it as though it might bite her. ‘Will you be there? In the stockade?’
The warm smile returned. ‘In the front line. You can count on it. It’ll be good if you’re there to support me. Darks and Tregellases shoulder to shoulder? That’ll be something to tell your grandchildren! And if you need to find shelter – not that you will! – the John o’ Groats will be the place.’
Still she didn’t trust him but where else could they turn for help? Police violence was an established fact and if there was trouble there was no way to know what people like Corporal Jenkins might do. And even William – surely? –couldn’t control what went on in the stockade.
‘He said it’s called a Navy Colt revolver,’ Alice said. ‘Fires six shots, he told me.’
‘Why would we want it?’
‘He said if there’s trouble we’ll be safer if we have a gun.’
She’d told William that guns and the Darks were strangers and she’d prefer to keep it that way. But things were coming to a boil fast and she no longer knew what to do for the best.
‘We’ve known him since we were children,’ Richard said. ‘In his whole life he’s never lifted a finger to help anyone but himself. Why should he want to help us now? I don’t trust him.’
Neither did Alice but it made no difference. The stench of trouble was everywhere. She was scared what the police might do and knew that having a gun would make her feel safer than she did now.
Richard looked at her. ‘Do you really think you’ll feel more comfortable inside the stockade if there’s trouble?’
‘Rather than stuck here? I reckon I would,’ Alice said. ‘I’m like you – I’d sooner stay out of it altogether but what if we can’t? You know what these goldfield wallopers are like. I’ve a nasty feeling the soldiers might be even worse.’
‘Then we’ll go the first sign of trouble,’ Richard said.
That night the rumours came flocking like crows.
The soldiers were coming; the soldiers weren’t coming. There’d been fighting with people dead; there’d been no fighting and all was calm.
It was impossible to know what to believe. From the day they arrived in Ballarat there’d been gunfire every night and they’d grown used to it. Not now.
The next day, Saturday 2 December 1854, they told Karl Leipzig they were going to move into the stockade.
‘Don’t be fools,’ Karl said. ‘That is the first place the verdammt Soldaten will attack.’
They did not believe him.
‘I’m staying put,’ Rascal Jones said. ‘If things get too hot I’ll hide down the shaft. I’ll be safe there.’
‘Can we trust you?’ Alice said.
‘I reckon you’ve seen enough of me to know the answer to that.’
He’d always seemed a decent cove so she thought he was right. ‘Then if you do go down make sure you take the money with you. And mind,’ she said, ‘we’ll want our share when we come back.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Rascal said. ‘It’ll be there.’
They went to the stockade, where they were made welcome.
‘Where is William Tregellas?’
Who knew?
The night was still, the tension thick enough to cut. Across the goldfields there was the usual nightly hullaballoo. Sleep was out of the question.
Whispers. Rumours.
‘Syd says he saw soldiers formin’ up by the Eureka Lead.’
‘They say the governor’s comin’ to talk to us. Comin’ himself…’
The hours passed.
Dawn came like a thunderbolt. Alice would have said sleep was impossible yet she must have dozed because she woke to screams and yells and bullets, a world gone mad.
The first thing she saw as she sprang to her feet was the dim light of morning shining coldly on a forest of bayonets as a skirmish line of red-coated soldiers came surging through the wall of the stockade, too fragile to prevent the attack.
Bayonets and screams, yells of defiance, outrage and despair, and the bellow of guns as Alice stood trying to gather her wits, still her racing heart and decide what they must do, must do now, in the few seconds of grace while decision remained possible.
We must get out of here.
No doubt about that. But where? And how?
She turned to Richard. Like her, he had confusion written all over his face but she needed a decision and when he snatched her hand and began to turn away from the advancing mayhem of the soldiers’ attack she went with him.
Her whole body was urging her to run when Richard staggered, cried out and fell.
Terror seized Alice’s heart. She saw him on the ground, his face contorted with pain. She fell to her knees beside him, her helplessness a wound.
‘Where did they get you?’
‘My leg…’ Speaking through gritted teeth.
At least it wasn’t his head or – heaven forbid! – his heart. She looked. There was some blood; not much. She looked over her shoulder. A melee was holding up most of the soldiers but it was obvious that resistance wouldn’t last long. Already some of the soldiers had broken through and were advancing across the level ground towards them. She saw bodies, some moaning, some still.
Alice’s head cleared, her panicked heart slowed. What she had to do was plain. She would save Richard and herself or die in the attempt.
‘How bad is it?’
‘Hurting like hell,’ Richard said. ‘But I’ll live.’
She thought the bullet might have clipped his thigh. A flesh wound, she told herself, willing it to be so.
‘Can you stand?’
Because my love my dear love we need to get out of here. Get out of here now. If you can stand. If you can walk.
‘I can try.’
Richard was halfway to his feet when Alice saw a soldier swerve towards them. His expression was maniacal, his rifle extended, the bayonet gleaming in the morning light.
Richard had dropped the revolver when he fell. She snatched it up. Holding it with both hands she pointed it at the soldier.
‘Keep away from us!’
Her voice was full of terror and determination.
The soldier came on.
‘Keep away!’
The soldier came on.
Now only a few yards separated them and he was not stopping. Was not stopping…
There was sickness in her throat. Alice shut her eyes and pulled the trigger. She staggered as the recoil flung her back.
She opened her eyes and saw the soldier on his back, coughing, blood running from a massive chest wound.
The redness of his blood… Horror engulfed her. If they caught her with the gun they would hang her. She flung it away. Her face was wet with tears but there was no time for sorrow. With Richard’s arm draped around her shoulders, hers around his waist, they hobbled away.
‘Where are we going?’
‘As far away from here as we can get.’
It wasn’t easy with chaos everywhere. The troops had gone rushing on while the bayonets continued their bloody work and now outside the stockade shots were being fired repeatedly through tents where dozens of people were cowering.
‘Most of the people out there had nothing to do with the protest,’ Alice said.
‘The soldiers don’t care,’ Richard said.
A covered wagon, mule-drawn, was heading into town, moving fast to beat the roadblocks that were bound to be set up once the killing was over. It gave them a lift.
‘Where you wanna go?’ the driver asked.
She remembered William’s advice. ‘Drop us off at the John o’ Groats. I was told they’d look after us there and my husband needs a doctor.’
‘Not dyin’, is he?’
‘No!’
Although he was close to fainting with loss of blood.
‘I killed a soldier.’ She felt a pressing need to confess what – surely? – must be a sin.
‘Good on yer. Time them bastards got a taste of their own medicine. I wouldn’t be boastin’ about it though. Never know who might be listening.’
Boast? It was the last thing she felt like doing.
Simon Cohen moaned but it was his wife Thora who was in charge at the John o’ Groats and she said they could stay.
‘Such trouble we are having!’ she said. ‘How can you think of refusing them? Of course they must stay.’
Still bellyaching, Simon hid them in a tiny loft under the thatch. It had a boarded floor but there was no room to stand. It was accessed by a rickety ladder.
The doctor came. He told Richard he would live – luckier than some, he said – sluiced iodine over the wound and warned he might have a permanent limp.
The first evening it rained and they discovered the thatch leaked: tap! tap! tap! Alice lay on the blanket in the dark and listened to small creatures rustling and scampering in the straw two feet above her head. It was hot and airless but she was too busy counting her blessings to worry about that. They were there; they were safe; the doctor had said Richard’s wound wasn’t too serious. For the moment the future could take care of itself. Hopefully, after all the drama had simmered down, they would be able to get on with their lives.
Two days later, between one minute and the next, things changed.
‘Utterly shameful,’ William Tregellas said.
‘You can say that again, sir,’ the major said. ‘One of my own men was gunned down in the performance of his duty. Reports say by a woman with a pistol. A woman, sir! Outrageous!’
‘What kind of people are they?’ William said.
‘I’ll tell you what they are, sir. They’re savages. Absolute savages.’
‘I fear you are right, major. One fears for the future of the colony. One really does. I heard some of them are trying to hide in town. The John o’ Groats was mentioned. A Jewish couple owns it, I understand.’
‘Jewish, eh? Hmm. Thanks for the tip. I’ll have it checked out.’
Shortly before dark Simon Cohen hauled his flab up the ladder to tell them that search parties were coming down the street.
Alice’s heart lurched. ‘What do we do?’
Simon was breathing like a furnace and it took him a minute to answer her. ‘Blow out that candle for a start. Then sit tight and keep your lip buttoned. Not a squeak, you hear me? They hear a squeak, we’re all done for.’ Apprehension made him angry.
‘Won’t they come up here?’
‘You better pray they don’t.’
He closed the trapdoor and they heard him cursing beneath his breath and a scraping sound as he dragged the awkward ladder away. Alice blew out the candle, as instructed. They waited. Seconds seemed like minutes, minutes like hours.
A hammering on the street door. Harsh voices in a suddenly profound silence. The sound of heavy footsteps on the hotel’s boarded floors. A crash as something fell. The footsteps came closer. A pause, then closer still. Another pause, then voices: clearly audible now.
‘Nothing here. We’re wasting our time.’
‘That bloke tole the officer they was ’ere. At the John o’ Groats. I heard ’im say it. An’ watch out, he said. They got a gun.’
They were in the room immediately below the loft. Strips of light showed through the cracks in the floorboards. Alice held her breath. In the errant light she saw Richard’s eyes shining. Neither moved. She was conscious only of the pounding of her heart, drumloud in the silence.
‘Can’t believe a word those bastards say. They hate us –’
Any minute they might look up. Any minute they might wonder what there was in the roof space above them.
Alice’s skin crawled.
‘Simkins died.’ The first voice spoke savagely. ‘Shot down in cold blood. Twenty-two years old.’
‘We dunno which one done it –’
‘I don’ care which one done it. Have my way we’d ’ang the lot of ’em.’
‘Well, there’s nothing ’ere.’
‘I’d like to burn the whole place down. That would flush ’em out.’
‘There’s sheds out the back. Maybe we should look there.’
Footsteps retreating. Silence flowed back.
Alice dared breathe. Softly, softly… Her heart was still racing, the sweat cold under her clothes. She didn’t dare hope the searchers were gone yet the silence grew stronger as the minutes passed. The walls of the hotel breathed.
It was a long time before sounds from the room below told them the ladder was being replaced. The trapdoor creaked open.
‘They’ve gone,’ Simon Cohen said.
Thank God.
William Tregellas was lying in bed with Maria Hack at his side. They were naked. They had made love earlier and now he was playing idly with one of her breasts.
She slapped his hand away. ‘If you want to do me again, get on with it, but don’t mess me about.’
‘You are how many months gone?’
‘Comin’ up to six.’
‘Then I think it might be a good time for us to make a move,’ William said.
‘Make a move where?’
‘My uncle has a property in Sydney. We can stay there until the kid’s born.’
‘Suits me,’ Maria said. ‘Sooner this business is over the better I’ll like it.’
‘Such touching affection,’ William said.
‘Don’t you get sarky with me. What happened about them two we met before the stockade business: that Richard Dark and his missus?’
‘Nothing. I told them to go to the John o’ Groats if there was trouble but the soldiers searched it and found nothing. It looks as though they must have got away.’
‘Takin’ their gold with them, more’s the pity. People said they had a fortune but when I checked there was nothing in that tent of theirs.’
‘Perhaps they came back for it.’
‘Or maybe you got there first. Bastard like you, I wouldn’t put it past you.’
William smiled and again took hold of her breast. ‘You’ll never know, will you?’
‘Just so long as you pay me what we agreed when this blessed baby’s born.’
‘Easy money I call it but that’s what we agreed so that’s what you’ll get.’
‘Easy for you. You’re not the one ’avin’ it. When you plannin’ to give that wife of yours the good news?’
‘When we’re in Sydney.’
‘She better not make no fuss. Not with me. She try anythin’ like that I’ll cut her, so ’elp me.’
‘She won’t.’
‘You wanna play or doncher?’ Maria said. ‘Make up your mind.’ It was like picking over the ruins of a lost war.
The bodies had been taken away but many tents had been destroyed and the people they saw had the lost and wandering look of the dispossessed.
People they spoke to said there had been wholesale looting, in many cases by the soldiers.
Alice and Richard looked at each other, dread in their hearts, and set off as fast as they could to find their own tent.
They couldn’t find it, or old Karl Leipzig’s tent next door. Both had vanished, with everything that had been inside them, and a passer-by they knew as a face in the mob told them that old Karl had thrown in his hand and gone away.
Of Rascal Jones there was no sign either. So much had happened while they’d been hiding in the roof space of the John o’ Groats that it was hard to know where they were or what they should do.
The windlass rope was hanging slack. Richard went down but found nothing.
‘All of it?’ Alice said.
Every last penny, with the steel box in which it had been kept.
‘Who could have taken it?’
‘Anybody.’
There was no way to know; despair had become a feature of the landscape.
‘We’re back where we started,’ Richard said.
By his expression he could have wept.
‘Not quite,’ Alice said. ‘I know you aren’t keen on banks but I put some in anyway, just in case.’
‘How much?’
‘A thousand quid.’
Thank God for Alice.
A woman they knew saw them and stopped to jaw a minute.
‘Good to see you back. I thought they’d taken you in.’
‘Why should you have thought that?’ Alice said.
‘They’ve taken in plenty,’ the woman said. ‘And your names was on the list they stuck up. You’re wanted, you are.’
‘How could they have known our names?’ Alice said.
‘Search me,’ said the woman. ‘But I wouldn’t hang around here or they’ll have you for sure. I was you I’d clear off altogether.’
‘There’s gold down there,’ Richard said.
‘Gold ain’t much use if they top you.’
‘Why should they hang us?’ Richard said.
But Alice remembered shooting the soldier. Maybe he had been the one the searchers had mentioned, the man called Simkins who had died. She knew he would have killed them if he’d had the chance but that didn’t stop her feeling like a murderess. Not that feeling bad about it would stop them stringing her up if they caught her now.
‘I think she’s right. I think we should get out while we can.’
‘Not without the money in the bank,’ Richard said.
They knew they were taking a risk but they managed it without any problem, and three weeks later they were back on the island.
It rained all the way to Melbourne where they would stay a day or two before heading on to Sydney. William stared out of the coach window as it lurched its tedious way through the puddles of the rutted track.
‘Will it ever stop?’
Maria Hack was inclined to be more philosophical. ‘At least it should keep them bloody bushrangers to ’ome.’
‘You’d think the governor would want to do something to improve communications,’ William said. ‘Ballarat, after all, is a major source of revenue to the government. But I suppose we are foolish to expect efficiency from these people.’
Maria glanced sideways at him. ‘Someone got up the wrong side of the bed this morning. I’d’a thought you’d be glad to get outta that dump. I know I am.’
‘I am sorry those two slipped through the net,’ he said. ‘But I suppose there’s no help for it.’
He had certainly done all he could to get his own back for the way Alice and Richard had treated him, with Alice first encouraging him then turning against him, and Richard attacking him the way he had.
He had sworn to punish them for that. It was frustrating that somehow they had got away. It just showed what Uncle Barnsley had always told him: if you wanted a job done properly you did it yourself. At least he’d got their gold money, but he had hoped to see them hang as well. Well, maybe there’d be another opportunity in the future.
William turned his mind to other matters. ‘I’ll have to go down to see my uncle once I’ve got you to Sydney. But there are servants there who’ll look after you.’
‘And make sure I don’t nick nuthun,’ Maria said.
‘Something like that,’ William said.
Cynthia Tregellas stared at her husband.
‘You’ve done what?’
‘I need an heir,’ William said. ‘You’re not able to give me one so it has been necessary for me to make other arrangements. The woman in question is waiting for us in Sydney and we shall journey there together.’
‘Do you know how humiliated that makes me feel?’ she said.
His cold eyes, so like his uncle’s, stared her down. ‘About as humiliated as I felt when I discovered you were incapable of giving me the heir every man requires.’ He sipped from the glass he was holding. ‘Look at you. Useless, utterly useless.’
For once in her life Cynthia’s outrage overcame her timidity. ‘This child… You expect me to pretend to the world that it is mine. That is your plan, I take it? Well, I won’t do it. I won’t!’
William crossed the room in two swift steps.
She flinched as his strong fingers seized her chin and forced her eyes up to meet his.
‘You will do as you are told,’ William said.
‘I curse the day my father forced me to become a member of your vile family,’ she said.
He let her go. ‘Curse it as much as you like. You are a member and that’s the end of it. You will do as I say.’
She did not have the will to defy him any longer but at least she did not cry. It was poor comfort but better than nothing.
With the money they’d brought with them Richard and Alice bought a small farm.
‘Sheep and maybe a cow. Vegies. We’ll get by,’ said Alice. ‘I thought to plant a rosebush at the last place. This time I’ll do it.’
‘We won’t ever be millionaires,’ Richard said.
‘I don’t care,’ Alice said.
Two years later, on 20 June 1856, Alice gave birth to a daughter.
‘She’s got a voice on her,’ Richard said.
So she had but was fit too, which was what mattered. They called her Jane. Jane Eyre Dark, after the title of a book Alice had read.
Cynthia remembered her time in Sydney as the most humiliating episode in her life.
It had not entered her head she would be living under the same roof as the woman but that was how it worked out. Worse; not only was the Hack creature there, showing off her jutting belly, but William made it plain how much he preferred her to his wife.
From the moment of their arrival Cynthia saw she was there only so she could play her role in the deception upon which her husband planned to base his dynasty. A dynasty that – most appropriately – would be built on a fraud.
Alone in her room at night she stared at her reflection in the mirror. ‘I will have vengeance,’ she whispered.
How or when she did not know – she was only too well aware she was physically incapable of doing anything against either her husband or his vile paramour – but the day would come when she would be avenged; she was determined about that.
She had no idea what the arrangement was between her husband and Maria Hack but one day, three months after the baby’s birth, she was gone and Cynthia saw her no more.
Twelve months after arriving in Sydney Cynthia Tregellas returned to Van Diemen’s Land holding in her arms the child, large for its age, that the world was told was hers.
She had nothing but hatred and contempt for her husband, feelings enhanced by the displeasure he showed that the child was a girl and not the wanted son, but foresaw no problem in bringing up Bessie as though she really had given birth to her – the circumstances surrounding the birth were not the child’s fault, after all, and it was not unheard of for a married couple to adopt a child – but she discovered in herself something she had not expected: a deep and abiding resentment that she, who had lost her own child, was being forced to present to the world a baby who was not only not hers but who she discovered she did not like. She might have come to terms with the arrangement had William let her tell people the child had been adopted, but he had made it plain that was something he would never do. Bessie was not only another woman’s child but an imposter.
How was it possible to resent an innocent baby? But she did and could not help it; by her existence Bessie had deprived her of the little self-respect she had left.
She did her best; she was not cruel to Bessie, but love was out of the question.
Alice and Richard spent peaceful years on the farm they named Proud Acres. He had wanted to call it Wheal Alice after the mine but Alice had said once was enough.
Nothing happened. Everything happened. There were excitements in the world, an ongoing war with the Russkies in a place called Crimea where some woman called Florence Nightingale had made a name for herself, but it had nothing to do with their lives and made no impact.
The things that mattered were ordinary things but special in their ordinariness.
The child Jane grew, as healthy children do. They hoped for more and tried often enough. Things didn’t work out that way for all their efforts and in time they became reconciled to the situation. A cow calved. There was drought and once they were almost washed out.
They stood at the window of the house, staring at the swirling floodwaters, and asked God or themselves whether the rain would ever stop. It did, of course. It was just weather.
They saw nothing of Richard’s half-brother but couldn’t avoid hearing about him. William had become a big name in the district and probably beyond. From what they heard, he was cordially hated too, for his harsh ways. And perhaps because everything he did seemed to turn to gold, which made blokes envious, but the people who mattered would have forgiven him the bad things he did, had they even noticed them.
‘They’re rich too,’ Richard said. ‘They’re all the same, that mob.’
Richard had become cynical in a mild way. Not that he knew much about being rich, having experienced wealth only once in his life and then losing it. Almost before he’d had it, you could say.
He might have regretted that but didn’t, not really. Those days spent burrowing like moles in the dank earth were no longer real to him. At least they had escaped from Ballarat and its troubles with a whole skin, which was more than you could say for some.
‘I wondered what happened to old Karl,’ he said once. ‘That German bloke at the diggings? You remember him? What was his surname?’
‘Leipzig,’ Alice said. ‘His name was Leipzig.’
‘So it was. I wonder what happened to him.’
But they would never know, except perhaps by chance, and it didn’t matter.
‘That kid of William’s,’ Alice said. ‘That one landed on her hoofs all right.’
Richard had been reading stock sale figures. ‘What you on about?’
‘You know what they used to say about that wife of his? How after that accident the doctors told her she couldn’t have kids?’
‘The doctors got it wrong, then, didn’t they?’
‘I’m not so sure,’ Alice said. ‘I reckon Bessie isn’t hers at all.’
‘Why do you say that?’ He wasn’t particularly interested but said it to humour his wife, who had always tended to be the curious one.
‘You remember that woman who was with William in Ballarat? That Maria Hack?’
‘What about her?’
He wouldn’t admit to knowing her because Maria Hack might have been a bad lot but was one of those women who had the knack of pricking lust in any man.
‘She was pregnant. They skipped Ballarat together, didn’t they? Her and William? I reckon Bessie is Maria Hack’s kid, nothing to do with silly Cynthia.’
Which was the unkind nickname she’d been given by the locals.
Richard couldn’t see it mattered.
‘I’m sure of it,’ Alice said. And nodded, assembling in her mind all the inside information she didn’t have.
A man came by once, when Richard was away at the market with a load of spuds. Said he was looking for some place Alice had never heard of.
She gave him a cup of tea. He admired her rosebush, which had come on well.
Alice was happy; better than that, fulfilled, and had no plans but to live with her husband until she died, but the sneaky desire for adventure and challenge that had impelled her to the goldfields still flickered from time to time.
It flickered now and she knew that with the right words or even the right look something could come of it. She was tempted, no doubt about it – he was a personable man, with the type of luxuriant moustache she had always admired in a man – and her thighs yearned just for a minute for something new, but she did nothing about it and the moment passed.
Afterwards she looked up at the bone-bleak hill behind the farm (it was a dry year) and told herself she was glad, yet for weeks afterwards, under lamplight, she would touch her thighs and wonder.
Time passed.
Bessie Tregellas grew up aware that her father, although distant, loved her but that her mother did not. She did not know why that was so, only that it was.
Since her father was away a lot and busy even when he was at home, Bessie did not see much of him. On the rare occasions she did he was friendly in a preoccupied way, as though he didn’t know quite what to do with her. He talked to her awkwardly, with intervals between his words, while her mother, Mrs Tregellas, tended to smile at her without warmth and say nothing at all. So that Bessie, without knowing what the word meant, grew up lonely.
Home was a big house in the middle of the city and Mrs Briggs, the severe nanny, said she should be grateful.
‘You do not know how lucky you are,’ said Mrs Briggs, as though somehow it was all Bessie’s fault.
While Moxie, one of the maids, who was mean to her when no one else was about, told her she’d been found in a paper bag outside the kitchen door and had only been taken in out of kindness.
‘Mighta bin me instead of you,’ Moxie said. ‘Some folks has all the luck.’
Mama had told her that Moxie’s mother had been a convict and therefore allowances must be made but Bessie had heard her saying nasty things to Moxie, and Mrs Briggs said that Mrs Tregellas had a down on all convicts and the children of convicts.
Bessie was confused. ‘Was you a convict, Mrs Briggs?’
Mrs Briggs bristled like a hairbrush. ‘Certainly not!’
Bessie found a stray kitten and made friends with it but not for long. Mrs Briggs said it might have fleas and took it away. Bessie never saw it again.
When she was four she met an old man who she was told was her grandmother’s uncle. Mama told her she must be on her best behaviour because Grand-Uncle Barnsley was very rich and expected people to be polite to him.
Grand-Uncle Barnsley did not look rich. He didn’t look happy, either. He wore shabby clothes, walked supported on sticks and had a mean mouth. His hands shook and he made a hissing sound when he breathed. Bessie was scared of him. He stared at her with hooded eyes but never said a word, which made Bessie more scared than ever.
A month later Mrs Briggs dressed Bessie in a black dress. Mama’s dress was black too while Papa wore a tall hat and a stern face. They all went out of the front door of the house and down the steps and got into a closed carriage drawn by horses wearing black plumes on their heads. There was another carriage drawn by more horses also with black plumes. On the carriage was a kind of long box covered in flowers with huge heads and Mama said that Grand-Uncle Barnsley had gone to heaven.
They went to a place which Mama said was the cemetery. There were lots of people there whom Bessie didn’t know and a man Mama said was a clergyman who had a lot to say. There was a hole in the ground and men took the box off the carriage and used long ropes to lower it into the hole. Afterwards Bessie was given a flower which Mrs Briggs said she must throw into the hole which seemed a pity but she did what she was told and watched as people threw earth on top of the box.
‘Is my grand-uncle in that box?’
‘Be quiet,’ Mrs Briggs said.
Later Moxie told her yes, that her uncle had been in the box and they had covered him with earth so that no one need see his nasty face any more.
‘But how will he breathe?’
‘He can’t breathe, silly. He’s dead.’
That was when Bessie learnt that to go to heaven you first had to be buried in the earth although she still did not understand the business of not needing to breathe.
She was very small when she first saw Derwent. Afterwards she did not remember much about the visit except that it took a long time to get there and when at last they reached the house on top of the hill she was not allowed to go out.
‘Why can’t I go out?’
‘Because the Abos might steal you.’
‘What are Abos?’
‘Never mind.’
Left to her own devices for so much of her life, Bessie grew up with the idea that doing things was important. In order to protect herself from the Mrs Briggs and Moxies of the world she taught herself to let no one tell her what she had to do. She had been bullied when she was tiny; as she grew older she learnt to bully others and discovered she was good at it.
She had grown no closer to Mama over the years – she thought of her more as an acquaintance than a friend – but had discovered she was a twitterer, scared of Papa, scared of life and increasingly scared of her daughter. Bessie was untroubled; where there had never been any real affection it was hard to feel respect for someone so ineffectual.
By contrast Papa was a strong man, hard and determined. By the time she was old enough to see these things Bessie understood most people were scared of Papa, who was even more of a bully than she was. A worthy heir to his uncle, he had expanded the Tregellas Bank and acquired businesses across the state and on the mainland. He was still a young man or at least not old. He had put on a lot of weight and grown more florid with the years but had been successful in everything he did. Bessie didn’t care about his weight but admired his strength and business skills; she made up her mind to do everything she could to model herself on him.
Mama was unhappy with a daughter who seemed determined to be a man. From Bessie’s earliest days she had told her again and again that it was a woman’s duty to defer to her husband. It was an opinion Bessie did not share; in her world respect had to be earned and there was no way she would defer to a man simply because he was a man or because she was married to him. A man like Papa would be different, of course, but how many men were like Papa?
Rather than engage in painting watercolours or embroidery, Bessie became interested in the family businesses. The bank was a key pillar of the family’s wealth yet banking struck no sparks in Bessie’s breast. Her interest lay in Derwent, the reality of Derwent, the power and influence that Derwent bestowed on its owner. Power and land, she thought. They were what mattered in this world. And the family, of course.
By the time she was sixteen she knew the estate as well as she knew herself. It was then that her world changed, when Papa took her into the room in Derwent that he called his study and told her there were people coming to dinner.
‘A Mr and Mrs Penrose and their son Phelan. They will be staying overnight. They are important people who own a lot of property in the district.’
‘How much?’ Bessie asked, very much man to man.
‘Twenty thousand acres.’
Father and daughter looked at each other.
‘Good land?’
‘I believe so,’ William said. ‘Depending how things work out, I suspect we may be seeing a lot more of them. I shall be discussing business with Mr Penrose and Mama will look after Mrs Penrose, so I thought it would be nice if you could take care of Phelan for me.’
‘What’s he like?’
‘A few years older than you – around twenty, I believe – but he’s just back from Europe so should have interesting stories to tell about his time there.’
‘What was he doing in Europe?’
‘He went to school but afterwards he spent a year or two travelling around before coming home.’
‘What’s he going to do now he’s back?’
‘Perhaps he’ll tell you, if you ask him.’
Phelan was amiable; you could say that for him. He had pretty eyes and was also handsome in a loose-jawed way. He smiled at her encouragingly.
Daywear had become more modest than in the past – a change that Bessie, secretly proud of her bosom, regretted – but somehow Phelan conveyed his awareness of her as a woman without stepping beyond the line of propriety. Bessie enjoyed that and the warmth it created beneath her high-necked gown.
Phelan showed no sign of being over-assertive: he wasn’t assertive at all. If there was a word to describe him Bessie thought it would be languid: a quality as unlike any she possessed as it was possible to be. On the other hand she had discovered in a book she was not supposed to have read that a languid man might also be passionate in his private life.
Phelan’s inviting eyes suggested that might be true.
She was fascinated by the thought that it might be possible to be dominant in daily life but accommodating in private. It would be a challenge but challenge, after all, was an important part of life. And to be willingly accommodating was itself another form of domination, was it not?
The idea excited her. There was also the question of the twenty thousand acres.
She thought he might do.
Her mind made up, Bessie saw no point wasting time. Most improperly she enticed Phelan to accompany her on an unchaperoned walk beside the river. Demurely, she permitted him to kiss her. The deed was done.
They made the announcement on their return to the house and were congratulated.
In the privacy of his study Papa told Bessie he was proud of her. Mama twittered. Mr and Mrs Penrose were agreeable and did not comment on the hasty nature of the courtship. Champagne was drunk while William’s later discussions with Albert Penrose took on an increased urgency.
Later William called in his lawyers. A prenuptial agreement was drawn up and a trust deed prepared.
Afterwards William told his daughter what he had decided.
‘I cannot leave the estate to you or any part of it.’
Bessie was indignant. ‘Why not?’
‘Because as a married woman any assets you possess automatically belong to your husband.’
‘That is outrageous!’
‘It is the law,’ William said. ‘But you needn’t worry. On my death everything I own will be transferred into a family trust.’
‘What does that mean? And how does it help me?’
‘The trustees become the legal owner of the property. In practice it won’t affect you at all. As beneficiary you will still receive all the income but it stops the estate being transferred into your husband’s name.’
‘He can’t touch it?’
‘Not a penny.’
‘But who would run things if anything were to happen to you?’
‘The trustees would appoint someone.’
Bessie gave him a sharp look. ‘Someone?’
‘That someone being you. And anyone you wanted to give you a hand: in running the bank, for example.’
‘And no one else could interfere?’
‘Absolutely not. The trustees will act on your instructions. The trust is simply a device to keep the estate in the family.’ William laughed. ‘In any case I am not dead yet.’
‘And hopefully not for many years,’ Bessie said.
‘That is my intention,’ William said.
Two days later William Tregellas collapsed during an afternoon stroll. He was carried to the house where he lay, semi-conscious and raving about shadow walkers watching him from the foot of his bed.
‘What is he talking about?’ Bessie said.
‘I fear it is the devil,’ Mama said. She had become notably religious over the past twelve months and spoke of God having struck her husband down. ‘For his misdeeds,’ she said.
‘What misdeeds?’
‘Our lives have been a lie,’ Cynthia Tregellas said. ‘It is not my fault, not at all. Your father is to blame.’
She was unwilling to be more specific so Bessie began to suspect Mama might also be afflicted.
The Penrose family arrived: father, mother and son. They looked grave as was appropriate but Bessie suspected there was more to Mr Penrose’s stern expression than concern for William’s health and prospects of recovery.
There was land involved and several businesses; inevitably questions had to be asked about who would be the right person to run them. Should William, unhappily, be taken from them.
‘Not that we are thinking of anything like that,’ Albert Penrose said.
That was nonsense, Bessie thought. Of course he was thinking about it; he’d be a fool not to. With Papa so ill and she so inexperienced, Albert Penrose would be pondering how he could get in his own people to run things. She had no worries on that score – the terms of the trust deed would prevent it – but there was another problem. If Albert found he couldn’t run the show himself he might decide to walk away from the relationship altogether: there were other heiresses, after all.
She had to make sure that didn’t happen; if it did she could kiss goodbye any prospect of getting hold of the Penroses’ twenty thousand acres.
Papa came back to the world. No more talk of shadow walkers; no more haunted nightmares that had reduced the hardest man Bessie knew to screaming tears.
His voice was there but only in whispers. His lips were loose in his head, as though they might drift away. It was hard to make out what he was trying to say. He beckoned urgently; she bent her ear to his mouth.
‘You must marry him. Don’t wait. Don’t give his father an excuse to break the agreement.’
‘I won’t,’ Bessie said.
William, not a smiling man, managed one now. ‘I’ll be watching. Not sure where from but I’ll be watching.’
There was no point pretending there was any prospect of Papa’s recovery: death was painted on his features and would not be long denied. Even the effort of those few words had exhausted him. He panted for a while.
‘Better send your mother in,’ he said.
‘I’ll make sure of everything,’ Bessie said.
‘Erridge is a good man,’ William said. ‘You can trust him. He’ll help you.’
Erridge was the family lawyer, he and one of his junior partners the trustees of the family trust.
‘I shall be glad of his advice,’ Bessie said. ‘But we’ll manage. Do not worry.’
William’s head sank back on the pillow, yet an echo of his buccaneering past returned one more time. ‘I have watched your fiancé these last weeks. I have no doubt you will be able to handle him without too much difficulty.’
‘You may be certain of that,’ Bessie said.
‘Get your mother in here,’ he said. ‘And remember: marry Phelan as quickly as you can. Next week if you can manage it. Don’t let that slippery Albert Penrose sneak away. He probably doesn’t think you’re capable of running things without me so he might try it if he thinks he can get away with it.’
Later that night, after Papa had died, Bessie liked to think how their last words had been of Derwent, Albert Penrose and how to prevent him reneging on the deal they had made.
She had expected she would be distraught at Papa’s death but was not. She was William’s daughter and had businesses to run; she had no time for grief. Any tears she would shed in private; the public display of grief she would leave to Mama, so much more experienced in weeping than Bessie.
‘I’ll do what you wanted,’ she promised his memory, wondering whether he could hear her. ‘You rest easy. I’ll take care of everything.’
She would do it for him and for herself. She would keep the faith.
After the funeral they all went back to the house. Bessie made sure the staff had an abundant tea. Albert Penrose thought it was a waste of money bordering on disrespect for the departed, and said so. Bessie did not, and said so.
‘Continuity is important,’ she said. ‘They need to know their future is assured.’ She gave Mr Penrose a smile so sweet it almost cramped her lips. ‘Of course a man understands these things so much better than a woman. Why,’ she said, ‘I feel quite helpless. I am so thankful that Phelan will be there to support me. And you, of course. How grateful I am that I can rely on your assistance, dear Mr Penrose. I declare I would be quite lost without the pair of you.’
Albert was gratified. He had feared this pushy girl might present a problem but now was willing to believe he had misjudged her. Trust or no trust, it was obvious she would need mature advice in running her inheritance. It seemed to him there was every prospect of her being amenable to his suggestions. One of which would be to make him a trustee of the Tregellas trust, giving him effective control of all the Tregellas assets. He therefore favoured immediate action.
‘I know it is customary to wait in these circumstances,’ he said. ‘But I really wonder whether a delay is necessary. No disrespect to your late father would be intended and in my experience it is better that arrangements of this nature be implemented as soon as possible.’
‘It was my father’s dying wish,’ Bessie said. ‘The sooner the better: they were his last words.’
Mama was the only person to protest. ‘What will our friends say about it? My dear, they’ll think you’re pregnant.’
‘I hope I soon am,’ Bessie said. ‘And who cares what they think?’
Fortunately Mama’s protests could safely be ignored.
A special licence was obtained. Two and a half weeks after William Tregellas’s funeral Bessie and Phelan Penrose were married in the little church Emma had had built when Ephraim Dark first obtained title to the land. Mama might have thought it inappropriate to have the wedding so soon but at least, Bessie thought, it gave her the excuse to shed more tears.
She hadn’t known what to expect. Friends who claimed experience sang its praises behind their fans, raving about sensations beyond belief or description. On the other hand she had overheard a maid discussing her latest boyfriend, calling him a Johnny Come Quickly.
At the time Bessie had not known what she’d meant. Now she did.
She wondered whether it was Phelan’s fault or her own. She wondered whether it was a question of fault at all. She thought it was a disappointment that might come right in time even though there had so far been no sign of it.
Later still she decided it was a good thing. Sensations beyond belief were dangerous, hinting at enslavement. The way things were, Bessie was free.
Alice and Richard were astonished when they heard the news of William’s unexpected death.
‘Still in his thirties,’ Richard said. ‘Makes you think. I wonder what happened to him?’
‘Probably somebody shot him,’ said Alice, who might have a curious nature but was not the forgiving kind, and had not forgotten the Eureka Stockade and how she would always believe William had set them up.
‘Should we go to the funeral?’ Richard said.
‘If you go you’ll go alone,’ Alice said.
‘He was my half-brother.’
‘So he was. And never lifted a finger to help us, did he?’
‘We wouldn’t have taken it if he’d offered.’
‘That’s not the point.’
So they gave the funeral a miss. The next thing they knew, Bessie had married Phelan Penrose. The way the papers went on about it, the Tregellas and Penrose clans might have been royalty. Which by local standards Alice supposed they were.
‘William hardly cold in his grave and Bessie already married?’ Alice said. ‘What kind of people are they?’
‘Rich people,’ Richard said.
‘I’ll bet she’s pregnant too,’ Alice said.
But in that, to her private disappointment, she was wrong.
Mama’s reaction to Papa’s death tried Bessie severely. She had always been limp but now, after Papa’s death, she became more so than ever, as though without William’s ruthless strength she was a rudderless boat drifting on seas without horizon.
She spent more time in her room, sometimes not appearing for days at a time. Bessie was busy but made it her business to go and see her when she could. Most days she managed a few minutes with her, sometimes as much as half an hour.
‘You should get out more.’
‘I don’t feel like it, Bessie.’
‘I’ll get Wilkins to take you out in the carriage.’
‘I don’t feel like it, Bessie.’
‘I’ll get…’
But what was the use? Mama had put down anchors and was not to be moved.
Weeks passed. Bessie employed a woman to keep an eye on Mama. One morning the woman came to see Bessie in the room she used as an office.
‘I think you’d better come, madam.’
Mama looked as though her life were draining into a bottomless void. Her fingers clutched the sheet; her lips were drawn back. Yet the look she now directed at Bessie was something Bessie had never expected to see on her face: an expression not of apology but malice.
‘I am sorry I have not been a better mother to you. There was a reason but I should have tried harder.’
‘Don’t let it trouble you,’ Bessie said.
‘It troubles me very much. I agreed, you see. It was never your fault.’
Bessie had no idea what Mama was talking about.
‘I promised your father I would never tell you but I believe you have the right to know.’
‘To know what?’
Mama’s eyes closed, then opened again. She drew a deep breath. ‘To know you are not my child.’ She smiled as though the words gave her the greatest possible pleasure. ‘I had to tell you, you see. I hope he knows what I have done. I hope he does. It is the only chance I shall ever have to punish him for what he did to me.’