Mi-duvel! Thank God I’m on the open road again.
As the coach rolled its way past the Toll Gate at the head of the Parramatta Road Keziah touched the silver amulet hidden under her blouse, grateful that her ancestors had protected her from being discovered by that Cockney spy the Morgans had hired to hunt her down. Had Jake Andersen sensed her terror and covered up for her? She sent a mental blessing of thanks to him anyway.
She felt exhilarated to be travelling for the very first time in a coach lead by a team of horses. Every mile took her closer towards Gem. Of course no coach could be as comfortable as her vardo. Every bump in the road caused Dr O’Flaherty to roll into her and the wind occasionally blew the rain her way through the open window. Glass panes wouldn’t have lasted five minutes on roads as rough as these, but Keziah didn’t want to roll down the canvas blind. Better to be a bit damp than miss any of the extraordinary scenery they passed.
She tried to ignore Saranna Plews’s silent disapproval as she eyed the red petticoats peeping beneath Keziah’s black mourning skirt. Drawing her shawl across her bosom to conceal her red blouse, Keziah gave her a tentative smile but the other girl turned her head and stared resolutely out the window.
Keziah was not surprised by the rejection, but Dr O’Flaherty, who was sitting beside her, gave her a friendly wink. ‘If I should be falling asleep on your shoulder, just push me back in my corner.’ He took a swig from his flask, pulled his hat over his eyes and promptly fell asleep.
Keziah made mental notes about her fellow passengers in the same way she did when reading fortunes for gaujos.
The doctor’s a drinking man but a harmless old codger. Saranna Plews’s Chester accent is educated. Good quality travelling outfit. Expensive leather boots but the heels are worn down. That and the hole in her mittens show she’s sliding into genteel poverty. Why does she keep patting that cameo brooch? Keziah had a sudden flash of insight. It’s a link with her dead mother.
As the coach travelled further into open country Keziah was reassured by the vast size of this land – and her good chances of keeping out of the grasp of the Morgans’ spies. Nobody here knew her real name or the secret baggage she was carrying. She was now Mrs Smith. A widow on her way towards the southern county where Gem was last known to be. At the thought of Gem she stroked the filigree gold ring he’d given her on their wedding day.
She was intrigued by the strange beauty of the landscape. The occasional whitewashed villages they passed might have been transported from a corner of England. Isolated bush huts with timbers bleached by sun, wind and rain shot up like hardy weeds in this alien soil. The bush seemed to flash past the coach in an endless blur of strange trees that bore no relationship to all the English trees and plants she knew by name.
Whenever their coach rocked past a lone traveller on horseback, Jake Andersen called out a greeting. The sight of a barefoot black family with a child clinging to its mother’s back drew a wave of empathy from Keziah. Were black women treated as inferior beings by the gaujos as her own Romani tribe were at home?
She again pressed her hand over her grandmother’s precious amulet hidden beneath her bodice. One day she would be free to reclaim openly her pride in being a Romani woman.
• • •
For days they had driven along roads so new they might have been hacked out of the bush at breakfast. When the coach drew to a halt on the crest of a steep hill their driver yelled out.
‘Hey, you lot. Eyes right! You ain’t never seen nothing like this in the Old Dart.’
The coach ground to a halt. Jake Andersen’s boast was no exaggeration. Framed by giant eucalypts, a vast panorama spread out below them.
Keziah climbed down from the coach and ran to the edge of the cliff, feeling like an eagle looking down at the world from its eyrie. Folds of distant mountain ranges of purple, burnt orange and olive green seemed woven together in a giant tapestry. Below lay a vast plain dotted with miniature figures of animals with long curved tails like sabres. They sprang across the valley as if on coiled springs and disappeared into the dense shadows of the bush. Keziah threw her arms wide, wanting to hold the scene in an open embrace.
‘The gods have blessed this land!’
She was suddenly aware Jake Andersen was looking at her curiously. What was wrong with him? Didn’t he ever smile? She shrugged off her grandmother’s prediction that if she made a bad choice her life would become entangled with three men, one of them a man with red-gold hair. Well I certainly made a terrible mistake with Caleb Morgan. And Jake Andersen has red-gold hair. But from what I’ve seen so far, the colony is alive with men with the same Celtic colouring.
Jake Andersen really intrigued her. He was the first Currency Lad she’d spoken to. He didn’t talk or look like any Englishman she’d ever met. A man of few words, he made every word count. His eyes sent the clear message that he didn’t acknowledge any class of men were his betters – or beneath him. He’s not exactly arrogant, but he doesn’t take too kindly to English criticism of his country.
She was suddenly conscious that he was looking her way.
‘Righto!’ he ordered. ‘You’ve got to walk downhill for safety’s sake. It’s a steep grade, a drop of one foot in every three.’
Keziah shadowed him. ‘Why are you chaining that huge log behind the coach?’
‘To slow her down or she’ll crash. Then you’d have to travel all the way by shanks’s pony.’
He beckoned to his passengers. ‘Off you trot. Take it easy. No broken bones mind. Ain’t no decent doctor within cooee.’ He realised his mistake. ‘No offence meant, Doc.’
Dr O’Flaherty laughed outright. ‘None taken, lad.’
Keziah picked up her skirts and gingerly led the way. She hid a smile at the sight of Saranna clinging to Dr O’Flaherty’s arm. He was now as full as a boot. Who was guiding who?
Keziah watched in admiration as Jake expertly navigated his team down the rugged escarpment.
At the bottom, he shrugged off her compliment. ‘Ain’t nothing to it.’
Saranna Plews chose to sit alone on a log so Keziah crossed to sit with the doctor.
‘We’re lucky to have an expert bushman like Jake Andersen. I don’t know about you, Doctor, but I’m parched. I suspect there is nothing half so refreshing as tea in the bush.’
O’Flaherty nodded but at this reminder of his constant thirst he swigged his whisky.
As usual Jake effortlessly got a fire going, the water in the tin quart-pot soon boiling for tea.
‘I’ll cook you a real treat. Johnnycakes. Can’t beat ’em.’
‘May I watch?’ Unbidden Keziah squatted on her haunches beside him. Jake cast her a wary look but at least he didn’t say no.
‘Here, make yourself useful. Chuck in the raisins when I tell you.’
The johnnycakes were a success and the passengers’ silence was only broken by the appreciative slurping of tea and the sounds of birds. Keziah noticed how Jake stood apart from the group, as if mindful of Saranna Plews’s attitude to Currency Lads not ‘knowing their place’.
‘Next stop there’s a general store that handles mail. So if you want to grab the chance to pen a few words …’
Obediently the girl withdrew. It was clear to Keziah she was writing a love letter as Saranna’s heart was in her eyes. Was the girl’s fiancé a farmer? A clerk? Or a convict?
Minutes later Saranna nervously handed Jake her letter. ‘What will it cost to send this so far away?’
Jake looked at the letter. ‘Gideon Park ain’t far in colonial miles, Miss. Just a hundred or so south of here.’
Gideon Park. Keziah felt her heart beat faster at the words. Gem could be close by.
‘Won’t cost you nothing,’ Jake continued. ‘Whoever gets letters pays the postmaster.’
‘Oh dear. Then he may never receive it.’
Saranna’s blush convinced Keziah her lover was most probably a convict. Maybe we have more in common than she knows but she’d die rather than lose face by admitting that. How awful it must be to be a middle-class lady.
• • •
During the next stage of the journey the heat and flies caused tempers to flare to flashpoint. Keziah was relieved when Jake stuck his head through the window, scratching his ragged whiskers.
‘Time to stretch your … nether limbs,’ he added carefully. ‘We won’t make the next inn much before nightfall. I’ll make you a cuppa to keep you going.’
Keziah noticed how both her fellow passengers chose to sit by themselves, no doubt to grab a precious moment of privacy after being cooped up in the coach. It would give them all time to cool their tempers while Jake Andersen cooked damper in the ashes of the fire.
After serving tea to her and Saranna, Jake Andersen sidled over to chat with O’Flaherty but Keziah noticed how he kept glancing back at her as she hungrily devoured her share of the damper.
O’Flaherty poured a generous slurp of ‘medicine’ into his own pannikin. ‘Tell me, lad. How many Irish would there be in the colony?’
‘How many stars in heaven?’ asked Jake. ‘One in three assigned men are Irish. Settlers of like background herd together. In Tagalong there’s more Paddies than gum trees. Kelso and Bathurst have a heap of Scots. One stretch of the Bathurst Plains is called Little Cornwall. And of course the Sterling are everywhere!’
He looked over his shoulder in Keziah’s direction and hastily added, ‘No offence. Forgot you was English.’
She smiled at him. ‘Welsh. In a manner of speaking.’
O’Flaherty pressed him. ‘I trust I’ll be having no trouble buying whisky in the colony?’
‘Water runs dry before whisky does!’ Jake assured him. ‘On the Windsor Road in Irishtown, there’s a public house called The Wheelbarrow because the publican wheels the drunks out of sight to avoid shocking respectable folk on the Parramatta Royal Mail coach.’
Keziah gave a little chortle of amusement that caused Jake Andersen to glance her way.
When he ambled off to smoke his pipe a polite distance away from the ladies, Keziah studied him openly. His beard and long hair left little of his face exposed except for steely grey eyes and a generous curve of mouth. She was curious. What would he look like if he shaved? Suddenly she was conscious of his lithe but powerful frame, the broad line of his shoulders. These Currency Lads were a breed apart. Jake Andersen walked like a man who owned the earth.
And yet he stiffened when she picked up her skirts and headed for him. He held up a warning hand. ‘Don’t sit on that hollow log! I saw a snake’s head sticking out of it a minute ago.’
Mi-duvel! Keziah retreated a few steps. ‘Poisonous?’ she asked.
‘Deadly.’ He added casually, ‘But only if they bite you.’
Keziah stifled a nervous laugh. ‘There is so much to learn in this land. Do my questions bother you?’
Jake seemed to avoid looking at her eyes. ‘I reckon that’s the only way you learn.’
Keziah took him at his word and followed him around, eager for answers to her burning questions. ‘What is that strange animal we saw this morning? How many kinds of gum trees are there? How do kangaroos give birth to their young? You call them Joey? What a sweet name. That’s the name we give circus clowns at Home. What is an opossum?’
Jake gave her an odd look. Keziah wondered if she had gone too far. He seemed a bit irritated by her barrage of questions. But when a flock of rainbow lorikeets flew across their path and a rainbow-coloured feather fell from the sky, he was quick to fetch it for her.
Keziah laughed in delight and placed it beside the ostrich feather in her hat.
Jake kept averting his eyes from her so Keziah tried a different tack. ‘What is the most important thing a new settler needs to know, Mr Andersen?’
Jake looked a bit stumped. ‘I reckon you can’t survive here unless you understand our strange sense of humour.’
She leaned forward, intent on the answer. ‘Why? What makes you different to us?’
He thought for a bit. ‘Let’s see how you react to this. Back in 1830 the traps rounded up a gang of escaped convicts turned bushrangers known as the Ribbon Gang because they wore ribbons in their hats. Heroes or villains, depending on how you look at it. A scaffold was built in the street in Bathurst to string up ten of them at once, but the priest’s last rites failed to put the fear of God into one of the condemned. This lad yelled out to the crowd, “Me old mother said I’d die like a brave soldier with me boots on but I’ll be making a liar of her!”’
‘What happened next?’ Keziah asked, holding her breath.
Jake paused for effect. ‘He kicked off his shoes and went barefoot to eternity!’
Keziah stared at him. ‘You mean he died laughing at death and the system!’
Jake grinned. ‘You got it! I reckon you’ll get along just fine down here, Mrs Smith. Now hop back in the coach. I aim to get us on the road in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.’
• • •
The following day the sun was shining one minute, the next the sky turned black and rain descended like a waterfall. Wind whipped the coach with such force it seemed intent on pushing it off the road. Huddled beneath oilskin covers, Keziah watched the wind attack the trees. Branches seemed to cry out in pain as if torn from their mother’s trunk as they crashed into the bush. She was excited by the power of the gale but Saranna’s eyes were wide with terror. She managed to give Keziah a nervous half-smile.
Keziah’s answering smile was genuine. All the time they’d spent cooped up in the coach seemed to have peeled away the barriers of class like onion skins to reveal who they really were. She and Saranna had both crossed the world to join the men they loved. Both were short of money, battling alone for survival.
When they drew up at a staging inn, Keziah nudged Saranna toward a trestle table protected by a net from the swarming army of flies. Sensing her poverty, Keziah whispered in encouragement, ‘Jake Andersen said the food here is free.’
Dr O’Flaherty was in a loquacious mood. ‘Miss Plews, what do you think of the Australian bush?’
Saranna was politely disparaging. ‘It’s difficult to compare with England’s verdant green beauty. I’m afraid the colony’s trees all look the same to me.’
‘A case of seen one gum tree, seen ’em all, eh?’
Keziah could no longer contain her frustration. ‘Is that all you can see? Every day offers a new kind of beauty. Can’t you feel it in your blood? This land has fire in its belly!’
Saranna looked startled and ventured a more searching look around her.
Keziah saw Jake Andersen’s mouth twitch as if for once he was enjoying himself.
‘You New Chums will soon get the hang of things. Everything’s different. Trees, weather, animals – even the way we think and talk.’
O’Flaherty poured whisky into his tea and asked the question. ‘I’m told you Currency Lads consider Jack is as good as his master. I gather you’d not be having much time for those of us born at Home, eh lad?’
‘You’re half right. But we only cut the Sterling down to size when they deserve it. No need for you to worry, Doc.’
O’Flaherty chuckled in response. ‘So it does pay to be Irish sometimes.’
Keziah realised this was the first time she had ever seen Jake Andersen relaxed and laughing. Was the journey also leaving its mark on him too?
When Saranna timidly asked about the fate of prisoners whose sentence had expired, Keziah was equally alert for Jake’s answer.
‘Emancipists if they’re pardoned, otherwise expirees or old lags – free men all! They can serve on juries – even become police constables. Some former convicts have made huge fortunes and get to dine at the governor’s table. It mightn’t be your idea of British justice but we do things different down here – for better and worse.’
With that, Jake Andersen strode off. Keziah rushed after him to ask her own question.
‘I saw a newspaper inside the last inn but I can barely read. Is there any news of bushrangers?’ She was only interested in one bushranger – Gem. Not surprisingly, Jake Andersen misinterpreted her concern.
‘Don’t you worry, Mrs Smith. I always carry a shotgun at the ready.’
• • •
The inn was intended to be a small oasis of comfort but an overflow of passengers from a rival coach had created problems. When Jake Andersen went off to check the horses, Keziah overheard the publican’s wife apologising to Saranna Plews because she’d have to share a room with Mrs Smith.
‘My guess is that widow Mrs Smith ain’t what she claims to be. I’ve seen plenty of her kind at Home. A Gypsy, I’ll be bound. Take my advice. Sleep with your money under the mattress. You know what thieves them Gypsies are.’
Keziah stalked off in anger. She felt the babe’s fluttery kicks of sympathy in her belly as she passed by the Rolly Brothers coach.
Jake Andersen had bedded down under the wagon to sleep. He appeared disconcerted when she peered at him between the wheels.
‘Thank you for your patience. Before I arrived in this country I’d heard fearful tales about head-hunters and cannibals. Now I can see this land has a beauty all its own. I could live here for years and only scratch the surface of its magic. Goodnight, Mr Andersen.’
‘Jake,’ he corrected her. Then asked if her bed was all right.
Keziah nodded and moved off in the direction of the stables. She made up a bed in the hay covered by her shawl. There was no tap water. She was deciding whether the horse trough looked clean enough to wash her hands and face when she discovered Saranna Plews standing nervously at her elbow.
‘My goodness, what are you doing out here, Mrs Smith?’
‘I’ve chosen to sleep where I am welcome. A mare and her foal make fine bedfellows,’ Keziah said firmly.
Saranna flushed with embarrassment. ‘What the publican’s wife said was a mistake. I’d be happy to share my room with you, Mrs Smith.’ At Keziah’s hesitation she added, ‘Forgive me. I have not been friendly. We are both strangers in a strange land.’
When Saranna held out her hand, Keziah smiled and together they walked back hand in hand to the inn.
They stripped down to their petticoats to sponge themselves at the washbasin. Like children they could not stifle their giggles as they bounced on the lumpy double bed they were sharing. The mattress sank in the middle. Keziah checked the door. There was no lock.
‘I’d suggest we take the advice of the publican’s wife and hide our purses under the mattress. There was a man in the bar who looked ready to cut your throat for a penny.’
Saranna’s eyes widened in horror as Keziah wedged the chair under the door handle.
‘Don’t worry. If this fails I’m sure Jake Andersen would come to our rescue in a flash. Dr O’Flaherty told me Jake is a bare-knuckle pugilist.’
‘Imagine that!’ Saranna’s tone suggested Jake was a prime specimen for a zoo.
• • •
Lying in bed the two girls watched the flickering candlelight throw shadows across the room. When Keziah blew it out, the darkness seemed to give Saranna permission to confide in her.
‘Isn’t this fun? I’ve never in my life shared a bed. I was an only child.’
Keziah realised that Saranna was making an effort to bridge the chasm between them, volunteering information about her life. How her mother had died in childbirth and she was raised by her father and elderly aunt. Her fiancé had been employed at her father’s art gallery but the family business failed, ‘forcing my fiancé to try his luck in the colony’.
Her hesitation suggested there was far more to the story.
‘Aunt Georgina never recovered from the shock of our house being sold. When she died I had barely enough money to pay for her funeral and my ship’s passage. On my arrival in Sydney Town I learned Father had died only months before. It was a terrible shock.’ Her lip trembled but she pressed on. ‘A clergyman arranged work for me in Ironbark until I can rejoin my beloved.’
Although Saranna did not mention her fiancé’s name her voice was filled with love when she spoke of him. Keziah felt guilty that she couldn’t share details of her own life because she needed to lay a false trail to escape Caleb Morgan.
‘Your fiancé is a lucky man to have won your heart,’ she said sincerely.
‘I would marry him tomorrow if it were possible.’
Keziah sensed the true reason for the delay. Like Gem, Saranna’s man had been transported in chains.
When Saranna fell asleep Keziah thought about the suspicious publican’s wife. Although until now Keziah had kept her Romani vest with its border of coins out of sight in her bag, the woman had sensed Keziah’s ‘Gypsy’ background. So might others. She decided it was high time to weave a fanciful Romani story. She had once read the palm of an actress performing in Manchester and began to weave details of that woman’s colourful life into a background for ‘Mrs Smith’.
• • •
At breakfast Jake Andersen smoked his pipe under the canopy of a gum tree. O’Flaherty was in a conversational mood, lacing his tea with the whisky he no longer bothered to disguise as medicine.
‘I’m destined for Melbourne Town, Miss Plews for Ironbark. What are your plans in the colony, Mrs Smith?’
Keziah took a deep breath and launched into her story. ‘I have come here to perform in a play.’
Saranna was agog. ‘Really! Do tell us, Mrs Smith. I just love the theatre.’
‘My dear late husband and I grew up in the theatre. We became actors in King William’s own company, the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. We starred in a new play which was the talk of London and Mr Barnett Levey contracted us to perform it here in Sydney Town at his new theatre. When my husband died suddenly I was grief-stricken. But I decided I must not let Mr Levey down. The show must go on, you see. So I have come to this new land to build a new life.’
‘How courageous of you. What is the play?’ Saranna asked in awe.
Saranna and Dr O’Flaherty had clearly accepted the ruse at face value but Keziah saw from Jake’s expression that he had not. No one’s fool, that one.
‘“The Gypsy’s Secret”,’ Keziah unfolded the coin-edged vest from her reticule. ‘I play the role of a Romani Gypsy. I am making my theatrical costume shabby for the sake of authenticity.’
O’Flaherty raised his flask in a respectful toast. ‘I have no doubt you will give a splendid performance.’
In response to his compliment Keziah graciously inclined her head to conceal a smile. If only they knew what a performance I am giving them right now.
She felt a twinge of guilt when Saranna leaned across with tears in her eyes.
‘You are a very brave lady. If we should never meet again, may I wish you every happiness in rebuilding your life in the colony, Mrs Smith.’
Keziah felt relieved when they continued their journey. She hated lying. Yet she had just packed more lies into one speech than she had told over the entire span of her first seventeen years. Protecting this unwanted babe has turned me into the ‘Gypsy liar’ I’ve avoided all my life.
The coach suddenly jerked to a halt. Again, Jake Andersen beckoned his passengers to the edge of a cliff and gestured with pride to the dramatic mountain pass ahead of them – Blackman’s Leap.
Despite the impressive beauty of the scene Keziah gave an involuntary shudder.
Jake’s eyes narrowed in concern. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing,’ Keziah lied. ‘A goose just walked over my grave.’