The world around her was dark when Keziah regained consciousness in the depths of the gully. Her first instinct was to check her belly and feel for bleeding between her thighs. Miraculously her babe was alive and gave her a few resounding kicks to reassure her. Gingerly she moved her bruised limbs and felt a flash of pain but she thanked The Del that the babe had survived. Only a few months earlier she had wanted to be rid of that little life but now its fluttering movements comforted her.
Half hidden by the canopy of trees, jagged glimpses of the moon shed little light on the scene but Keziah could see the battered hulk of the coach, its wheels tossed aside like abandoned toys. The heartbreaking sounds of dying horses could be heard in the darkness.
Dr O’Flaherty looked dazed. His shattered spectacles hung from one ear, his grey beard was streaked with dried blood, but he did not appear to be seriously hurt. That was a blessing, but Keziah was reminded of the cynical belief that the gaujo god protected drunks and babies.
Kneeling beside Saranna’s body Keziah anxiously watched the doctor fumble for her pulse. She was chilled by the awful changes in the girl. Clots of blood matted her hair. Keziah shuddered at the thought that Saranna’s pale face now resembled the carved stone angels found in cemeteries. Was this an omen? The doctor battled to keep some semblance of a professional bedside manner.
‘Poor lass won’t live through the night with that head injury.’
Keziah searched around for Jake and finally heard the laboured sound of his breathing. She called out to the doctor to come quickly and knelt beside Jake’s body as O’Flaherty examined him.
‘Mr Andersen is going to live, isn’t he?’ she demanded.
His forearm was bruised and swollen to twice its normal size and his temple was grazed from the bushranger’s bullet. Far worse, though, was the sight of his broken leg lying at an unnatural angle. When Keziah tried to help the doctor to move him, Jake regained consciousness long enough to swear at them, rattling off a string of colourful oaths she had never heard before.
Keziah smiled wryly. ‘Well, that’s a good sign. Jake Andersen’s certainly alive!’
Between hiccoughs Dr O’Flaherty stated the obvious. ‘We must be waiting for dawn to seek help, Mrs Smith. None will pass along that road tonight. There is not enough light to be setting his leg.’
Jake grabbed hold of Keziah, his fingernails biting into the palm of her hand.
‘Never mind me! Help the poor bloody horses!’
The team had taken the full brunt of the fall. Keziah freed the terrified chestnut – miraculously he was unhurt. Two horses lay dead, a third was in its death throes.
‘Shoot the poor bastard!’ Jake ordered, ‘Get my shotgun.’ Keziah had seen where he kept it stowed in the coach and fumbled around in the darkness until she found it. She knelt beside the stricken animal. At the sight of his mangled legs she did not hesitate. His blood splattered her shawl as the shot rang out. She gave a choked cry at the sound.
Dr O’Flaherty was doing what little he could for Saranna. On his instructions Keziah removed the girl’s outer clothing then loosened her petticoat and bodice to aid her breathing. She used her own Romani shawl to cover Saranna and added the oilskins from the coach in an attempt to warm her.
‘We need a fire,’ she told herself. Remembering Jake’s use of tobacco, she carefully felt through his waistcoat pockets for his wax matches and soon had a campfire blazing.
Dr O’Flaherty’s medical bag had disappeared but when Keziah found her carpet bag with its treasured box of medicinal herbs, the doctor grunted his disapproval.
‘We’ll be having none of that mumbo jumbo, thank you!’
Leaving the doctor alone to drink his whisky, Keziah brewed an infusion of her St John’s wort in the dented billycan. She blew on it to cool it then held the pannikin to Jake’s lips.
‘Drink this. To ease your pain, lad. It will help you sleep.’
‘Jesus wept!’ he cried out when a fresh wave of agony swept through him, but he seemed to trust her because he drank as he was told. Within minutes the pattern of his breathing assured her he had slipped into a deep sleep.
In the dead of night the bush was bitterly cold beyond the perimeter of the campfire. Jake’s body trembled with shock but sleep seemed to release him from his pain.
A few yards away Saranna was dying, alone and helpless. Keziah fought to control her fear, mindful of her grandmother’s teachings. A healer must never turn her back on those in need.
‘I’ll stand watch by her, Doctor,’ she offered, realising she could expect no further help from him. No doubt the poor man was suffering from concussion but when he slumped against a tree she saw the glint of his silver flask in the firelight as he kept raising it to his lips. His whisky would be put to far better use easing Jake’s pain but Keziah knew there was no hope the doctor would relinquish it.
For what seemed like a period divorced from time, Keziah kept her anxious vigil, trying to warm the unconscious girl’s icy hands between her own. She whispered to herself in an attempt to hold her fear of death at bay.
‘I’m so sorry it took time for us to be friends, Saranna. You are a good person – for a gaujo.’ To her surprise the girl’s eyelids flickered open and the blue eyes focused on her.
‘My fault. You have a kind heart, Mrs Smith.’ Saranna gave a deep sigh and looked anxious. ‘Is it much further to Ironbark? They’re expecting me. I really need that work.’
Keziah was quick to reassure her. ‘Not far at all. It will soon be daylight. Then we’ll get you safely to Ironbark. I promise you!’
Saranna’s eyes seemed to be searching for another dimension.
‘I promised … my beloved I would join him.’ In a moment of lucidity she grasped Keziah’s hand with surprising strength.
‘If only I could foresee the future. Will I marry my love? Have children, do you think?’
Keziah felt her throat tighten. ‘Yes! I have the gift of second sight. I can see you in a bush church on your wedding day – a beautiful bride wearing your mother’s cameo brooch. You will have a long, happy marriage. I can see your husband holding a little boy with blond hair.’ She spoke firmly, giving conviction to her lies. ‘Believe me, I’m never wrong about these things.’
‘Thank you.’ Saranna’s smile was serene. ‘Will you do something for me?’
‘Of course. Name it.’
‘Tell my beloved … my last thoughts were of him. Tell him he must always live for … his mistress.’
Keziah was startled by this strange request but was quick to promise her. ‘You can tell him yourself. What is his name?’
Saranna gave a long, peaceful sigh then closed her eyes. Keziah knew it was for the last time.
‘Doctor!’ she called.
Dr O’Flaherty staggered across. He again felt for the girl’s pulse and shook his head sadly. ‘The lass has gone,’ he said and stumbled off into the darkness.
Alone with Saranna’s body Keziah shook violently.
In her attempt to say the gaujo Lord’s Prayer for Saranna’s soul, Keziah mangled the English words and completed it in Romani. She removed two gold coins – Caleb Morgan’s money – from the hem of her skirt, placed them on Saranna’s eyelids then covered the face with her bloodstained shawl. Her ingrained Romani fear of the unnatural state of death was magnified by the alien sights and sounds of the Australian bush. Strange stars moved behind the giant trees blocking the sky. She heard the ominous hoot of an unseen owl – the Romani harbinger of death.
Keziah felt a wave of confusion as she stoked the dying fire. Why hadn’t she foreseen this? Saranna was too young to die. Her death would break her fiancé’s heart. Keziah’s eyes searched the shadows beyond the firelight, afraid that the dead girl’s mulo would return to haunt her.
She crossed to Jake’s side, lay down beside him and held him in her arms. Even though he was unconscious, he was a man and she felt his presence would protect her if Saranna’s ghost walked.
When Jake cried out in his sleep and began shivering again, Keziah knew she must find a way to warm him. It was unthinkable to steal the covers from Saranna’s body.
‘Don’t get the wrong idea, lad,’ she said as she pressed his head against her naked breast to give him her body heat. ‘Anyway, you won’t remember a thing.’
The firelight revealed a strange expression when he stirred, as if he looked right through Keziah to someone else. Words were torn from his throat.
‘Come back to me, Jenny. For God’s sake come home!’ He gripped hold of Keziah, who was overwhelmed by his sense of loss.
She whispered the words she thought he needed to hear from this lost love, Jenny. ‘I’m here, Jake. I’ll never leave you again.’
‘Thank Christ for that.’ He sighed and gave himself up to the blessing of sleep.
Keziah lay awake thinking how extraordinary it was that strangers had the power to comfort each other in the face of death. Here she was giving her body warmth to a man who cried out his love for another woman. While at the same time the babe she had conceived with Caleb, the man who had betrayed her, kicked in her womb to remind her of its presence. And all the while her heart beat for Gem, the love of her life.
• • •
At first light Keziah seized the opportunity she had thought about during the long cold night. The tragedy of Saranna Plews’s young life cut short had given Keziah an unexpected gift of destiny.
Dr O’Flaherty lay snoring, his empty whisky flask cradled against his chest. And Jake was mercifully still asleep.
With only minutes to act, Keziah exchanged some of her clothing with those of the dead girl. She hesitated as her fingers brushed the cameo brooch. It had meant so much to the girl but if it was discovered on the corpse it would identify Saranna. Keziah had no choice but to wear the brooch herself. Having placed her own feathered hat and reticule beside the girl’s body, she forced herself to abandon her treasured Romani vest.
She needed to keep her black skirt because it had a drawstring waist to allow for the growth of her belly but she realised she must leave behind all her other clothing and possessions, including her beloved Tarot cards, to make Saranna’s corpse appear to be that of Keziah Smith.
Baxt had given her the chance to take a new name and keep her babe from the clutches of the Morgans.
She suddenly remembered that Mrs Smith was a widow and Saranna was unmarried. Keziah felt a stab of pain as she looked at the filigree gold ring on her left hand. The ring Gem had given her on their wedding day. She kissed the ring and gently removed it from her hand. Quaking in horror she placed it on the cold hand of the corpse.
Must she also leave her Puri Dai’s amulet? No! How could that protect a corpse?
On impulse she also decided to keep her box of herbs and the Australian natural history book that Caleb had given her from the Morgan library. The book contained details of plants in the colony that she might need to practise healing.
The dead girl’s own purse was pitifully short of money so Keziah quickly transferred Saranna’s few coins to add to the money in her own reticule, which she placed beside the body. To steal money from a corpse would indeed incite a mulo to haunt her.
She removed her last remaining gold coins from the hem of her black skirt and added them to the reticule. She owed Saranna for her new life so she must leave the dead girl enough money for a proper funeral.
All Keziah had left was Saranna’s empty purse, but inside the pocket of Saranna’s blue cloak she found a sealed envelope and slowly read the words. ‘To George Hobson Esquire, Ironbark Farm.’ This must be the girl’s future employer, Keziah thought. I’ll need that work now.
She tried to convince herself Saranna would be buried under the name of Keziah Smith. The two were alike enough in height, hair and eye colouring, although Saranna’s body was more slender than hers. But who would notice that, given the evidence of Keziah’s Romani clothing, wedding ring and Tarot cards? Jake Andersen would never have been fooled but he was in no condition to identify anyone – including himself.
There was a good chance that in the chaos of rescue the only person available to identify her, Dr O’Flaherty, would be so concussed and drunk that he would identify the corpse as the Widow Smith before travelling on to Melbourne Town.
When Caleb Morgan’s spies searched for her they would find the Gypsy Keziah Smith’s grave and look no further. Meanwhile she would be safely living as Saranna Plews in Ironbark.
But what of the babe? Keziah hastily dismissed this awkward thought. That was tomorrow’s problem.
Keziah quickly searched until she found the box containing Jake’s billy tea supplies. She placed a handful of sugar in her armpit to absorb the scent of her body. Then she fed the sugar to the chestnut stallion in the traditional way her father, Gabriel, had taught her to bind a horse to her.
She tied Saranna’s valises across the horse’s back, careful to keep her back turned on the girl’s corpse in case she sighted her mulo. O’Flaherty was still snoring. Jake Andersen remained unconscious, his red-gold hair falling across his forehead made him look like a sleeping child.
‘I’m sorry to have to leave you like this, Jake,’ she whispered under her breath. ‘Destiny has set us on separate paths.’ A backward glance confirmed that all in the camp was quiet before she led the chestnut stallion into the bush in search of a more accessible slope that would lead them up to the road.
As Keziah rode bareback along the empty road back towards the Shamrock and Thistle Inn she spoke soothingly to the horse to reassure him. ‘I know how badly you’re feeling but the accident was not your fault. And it wasn’t Jake Andersen’s either. If poor old Dr O’Flaherty hadn’t been drunk none of this would have happened. Think of it this way, boy. It’s a beautiful day and we’re both lucky to be alive. Now we must get urgent help for the others.’
She looked at the sky – it was obvious the beautiful day had changed its mind. The heavens unleashed a thunderstorm out of nowhere. Within seconds she was drenched to the skin. In sight of the inn she hurriedly dismounted and fished around in Saranna’s valise for the girl’s long blue cloak to throw around her shoulders. It was still raining when she used a sash as a halter to secure the horse to the railing at the front of the inn.
This was the test. Could she pull off her new identity? Their coach had visited this inn the previous day so it was imperative that she looked and sounded like Saranna Plews but also avoid close scrutiny by the publican, Fingal Mulley, who had met them both. She pulled the blue hood tightly around her face and burst into the saloon. Even at this early hour rough-looking drinkers were slumped over the bar.
Keziah cast her eyes around the room, searching for some man who seemed responsible.
And then she saw him. A burly young man with a shaggy beard as wild as King Neptune nervously rose to his feet at the sight of her and removed his hat.
Keziah introduced herself as Miss Plews and urgently pressed him to rescue the survivors. She hoped her imitation of Saranna’s well-bred accent was convincing.
‘One passenger, Mrs Keziah Smith, is dead. An Irish doctor is suffering from shock but the most badly injured is our driver, Jake Andersen. His leg is broken and he’s in great pain.’
‘Jake Andersen? He’s me best mate! I’ll get them to safety, don’t you worry, Miss.’
The young man identified himself as Mac Mackie, another Rolly Brothers’s coachman.
He took charge of the situation, speaking in a drawled accent that reminded her of Jake. No doubt another Currency Lad. Mac Mackie looked as clumsy as a bear but he moved with speed and delivered his orders to Fingal Mulley and his assigned men with such rough authority that Keziah was confident Jake and O’Flaherty were in good hands.
Intent on avoiding recognition by the publican, Keziah hid herself in the background until Mac headed off at full pelt towards Blackman’s Leap.
After discreetly gaining directions to Ironbark from a servant girl, Keziah was about to leave when she was startled to overhear Fingal Mulley giving orders to a stable boy.
‘Wasn’t it a young lass who raised the alarm? She must need breakfast, medical attention and transport to wherever she’s going. Go and fetch the poor bairn!’
When the stable boy ran off in search of her, Keziah took the opposite direction to retrace her steps to the chestnut horse. It had been easy to identify herself as Saranna Plews to Mac Mackie who had never met her – she must not risk recognition by those who had.
She desperately needed that work at Ironbark. Now that she was the respectable Saranna Plews she could no longer earn money telling fortunes.
• • •
The servant girl’s alternative directions to Ironbark had sounded easy enough to follow. Keziah didn’t want to go back over the pass in case she encountered Mac Mackie’s rescue party and Dr O’Flaherty recognised her. The girl had assured her the track behind the inn was a short cut that led to a creek crossing, later to the signpost at the turn-off road and from there it was only a stone’s throw to Ironbark village.
The reality was a different matter. The narrow track led Keziah into dense bushland. She soon became anxious about the directions. Was any distance a short cut in this massive country? Where on earth was that Ironbark signpost?
The storm had ceased as swiftly as it had descended. The sun had passed the point of midday when Keziah dismounted at a creek. The crossing was lined with river stones that lay below the waterline. The creek gurgled joyously as it was sucked between the rocks before rushing downstream.
The babe in her belly reminded Keziah how hungry they both were but she had no idea how to live off the land as she had done along Romani routes. Perhaps the berries here were poisonous or could make you go blind. After drinking her fill of creek water, she remembered Saranna’s sealed letter.
Holding it in her hand she weighed up her dilemma. If she didn’t open the letter addressed to George Hobson Esquire, she would not know exactly what work Saranna had been engaged to do. Forewarned was forearmed. She read it slowly, phrase by phrase.
‘Mi-duvel!’ she wailed to her god. ‘Hobson hired Saranna to teach his children! Why didn’t you arrange for her to be a housekeeper or a cook? I could do that on my ear!’
After shedding hot tears of frustration she admonished herself not to panic.
‘If I fail to arrive they’ll send out a search party for their missing governess so I must turn up! This role could be to my advantage. If the Morgans’ spies come searching for an illiterate Gypsy, what’s the last place they’d think to look for me? A schoolroom!’
With renewed confidence Keziah used a scarf from Saranna’s valise to bandage her perfectly sound right hand in a sling. As she rode she dredged up every clue to the dead girl’s life that Saranna had confided that night they shared a bed at the inn.
The one thing I don’t know is her fiancé’s name. Bond or free? Probably a convict. I’ll keep quiet about him until I can track him down to deliver poor Saranna’s dying words!
• • •
At sunset a glorious blood-orange sun sank below the horizon. Keziah was almost hysterical with relief at the sight of the signpost. ‘Ironbark – One Mile.’
Riding bareback she was drooping with fatigue when she caught sight of the cluster of farm cottages lying on either side of the winding track. Reminding herself that no real lady would ride astride a horse, she dismounted and led the horse past timber huts. Light shone from the windows and smoke curled from stone chimneys against the darkening sky.
She stopped a young shepherd boy who was herding a flock of sheep along the road.
‘Could you please direct me to Ironbark Farm, lad?’
He gawked at her. Wordlessly he pointed to a wide gate beyond the short wooden bridge that crossed a sliver of creek.
In the distance a large sprawling homestead was set well back from the road. The barefoot boy ran to open the gate for her. He stared at her as if he’d seen a ghost, closed the gate behind her then shooed his sheep towards a rundown farmhouse.
‘Anyone would think he had the devil at his heels. Who does he think I am?’
By the time she reached Ironbark Farm it was already the dark of night. Her feet ached, her empty belly grumbled, the babe seemed to be nudging her for food, and she felt dirty and dishevelled.
As she led the horse to the water trough, a wedge of light sliced the darkness when the farmhouse door flew open. A bearded man in a nightshirt appeared like a biblical prophet crying out in a booming Cornish accent, ‘Miss Plews, is it?’
Keziah remembered to assume Saranna’s well-bred manner. ‘Yes. There’s been a terrible accident, Sir. Our coach plunged over Blackman’s Leap.’
She allowed herself to fall in a convincing half-faint at his feet.
‘Here, Polly! Help Miss Plews. Fetch her food and drink and anything else the lady requires.’
Polly jerked her head in the direction of a hut a short distance from the main house. ‘I fixed it up like you said, Sir. But maybe the back bedroom in your house—?’
‘Certainly not! That would be most improper, what with no mistress in residence. Make Miss Plews comfortable in the overseer’s hut. When Griggs returns I’ll tell him he’s to bunk down in the hayloft for the time being.’
Keziah noticed the girl’s cheeky grin when she muttered, ‘Lord, Griggs won’t half be shirty about that!’
Polly was short, freckle-faced and wore a mob-cap and pinafore. Keziah was genuinely grateful to lean on the girl’s shoulder.
The one-room hut’s exterior walls were built of horizontal rough-hewn logs but the interior, despite the packed earth floor, was clean and furnished with a wooden bunk bed, table, chest of drawers and mirror. The room smelled as if it had been scrubbed with kerosene and the only sign that the hut was usually a man’s domain was the razor strap hanging from a hook on the wall beside the washbasin.
Polly chattered away as she lit the hurricane lamp, turned back the covers of the bed and laid out towels and soap.
‘Can I give you a hand to get undressed, Miss?’
Keziah tried to disguise her alarm. She must conceal the shape of her belly.
‘Thank you, no. I can manage, but I am a trifle hungry …’
Before she had time to finish the sentence, Polly had bolted out the door. She returned within minutes bearing a tray with bread and butter, a wedge of red-rimmed cheese, a plate heaped with slices of cold mutton, two blushing pears and a large teapot, sugar and milk – all served on blue and white floral china.
Keziah thanked Polly, closed the door behind her then wolfed down the first real meal she had eaten in two days.
‘What bliss!’ She savoured every morsel, grunting with pleasure. The mutton was tender, the bread fresh, the cheese an echo of the best Cheshire cheese she’d ever tasted. The golden pears dripped so much juice she licked her fingers to capture every last drop.
‘Thank heavens I don’t need to practise Saranna’s ladylike manners when I’m alone! Tomorrow I’ll have to peck like a bird in public.’
When the teapot was empty she rolled on the bed to test how soft the mattress was. She buried her face in the fresh bed linen which gave off the faint, sweet scent of lavender. Two plump pillows. A patchwork quilt. Soap and plenty of water. What a windfall. She couldn’t stop smiling – until she was suddenly sobered by the thought of Saranna’s corpse waiting to be buried. By rights she should be here, not me.
Keziah prayed to The Del for the girl’s soul. Then thanked her god for the gift of her new life. She looked through the window at the moon as she prayed to Shon for Gem’s safety. The Romani proverb comforted her. ‘There’s a sweet sleep at the end of a long road.’
She kicked off her shoes, stripped down to her petticoat and sank across the bed. Tomorrow she faced a large amount of sewing to alter Saranna’s clothes to fit her growing belly.
Prompted by that vision in the English graveyard of the tiny barefoot boy wearing summer clothing, she spoke wearily to the child inside her. ‘I guess to be born in this strange land will make you different to me and Gem. You’ll be a Currency Lad like Jake Andersen.’
As she began to slip into the folds of a dream she thought of the way Jake had nuzzled his face into her naked breast, of the agony in his voice when he begged his Jenny to come home to him. The words of her prayer came softly.
‘May your gaujo god protect you, Jake. And may we both find our true loves.’