Ironbark (11 page)

She tried to mask her anger.
The child is to be removed from me sight unseen after its birth. He's treating me like a dog with an unwanted litter of pups.

John Morgan dipped the pen in the inkwell and offered it to her. She did not take it.

‘This plan will make you quite the wealthy woman, Keziah Stanley. No doubt in the heat of his ardour Caleb made rash promises to whisk you off to North America but the truth is he's totally dependent on me for every penny he gambles. You'll find Caleb soon tires of his toys. In a matter of months when this little matter has run its course he'll be ready to marry a suitable heiress. While you'll be free to begin life as a wealthy woman in New South Wales.'

He cast her a knowing look. ‘Your Gypsy horse thief need never know how you came by your windfall. Isn't our plan a clever one?'

Our plan.
Keziah struggled between rage, humiliation and shock as she realised the extent of Caleb's betrayal. Only Caleb knew about Gem. So this was what he had meant by his big plans for her. He was in league with his father!

The thought of abandoning her child raised the unwanted image of the
gaujo
mother who had so easily abandoned
her
.

Keziah stalled for time. ‘Your wife would not be unhappy to raise a Gypsy child, Sir?'

He smiled paternally. ‘It was her very idea to gain a child. Be assured my grandchild will be well educated and bear our family name. Our own Morgan blood, do you see?'

Keziah gritted her teeth.
You arrogant bastard. You Morgans are only a generation away from peasant stock. I trace my blood back centuries to Romani kings in Egypt and India.

Her heart raced with suppressed rage. His manner was so kind, so reasonable that she wanted to stab him in the heart with the paper
knife that lay only inches from her hand. Instead she forced herself to appear cooperative as she drew on generations of Romani guile.

‘You're most generous, Sir, to help a Gypsy girl better her station in life. Your plan is fair to all concerned but first I must discuss the details with your son.'

She instantly realised her mistake. The master dismissed that intention as irrelevant.

‘Not possible. He's gallivanting around the county at some race meeting or other. Don't worry your pretty head about details. We are not villains, m'dear. You'll want for nothing.'

John Morgan rubbed his thumb against his fingers as if to remind her how much filthy lucre she stood to gain.

Keziah silently questioned whether to demand the wages due to her but decided that would warn him of her flight. That money was now lost to her. Instead she pointed to one line on the document.

‘When do I receive this first payment?' she asked coolly.

In answer he withdrew from his desk a sovereign purse and placed it before her.

Keziah read his expression. To him she was simply a money-hungry Gypsy who would sell her babe for thirty pieces of silver.

Her eyes locked with his as she deliberately weighed the purse in her hand then took the pen and signed her name on the dotted line.

• • •

The house was silent when Keziah made her way in the darkness up the back stairs to the attic. She rummaged through the cupboard for her few possessions, throwing things into a battered carpet bag she had rescued from a pile of discarded goods in readiness for her escape.

She tore off her maid's uniform and hurriedly dressed in her own clothes. She froze at the sight of the little velvet coin bag Caleb had given her, remembering the promise she had made to wait for his return. Now that she knew the true reason she could not divorce
Caleb's features from those of John Morgan. Father and son were forever melded into one hated image of power.

Carrying her carpet bag Keziah stumbled across the lawns of Morgan Park towards the tradesman's gate. Her dress was drenched wet like a second skin, her vision blurred by the sweat dripping into her eyes. Her body gave out the scent of fear.

At the roadside she paused to weigh up her options. She leant against a tree to draw strength from the sap flowing beneath the skin of its trunk.

What choice did she have? At all cost she must escape the Morgans' plan to use her like a brood mare for Sophie Morgan. Yet the revelation of her disgrace would make her an outcast in Romani eyes. Gem would never forgive her.

There was only one possible solution. Determined to prevent the advent of the babe, she had total faith in the Romani cure. If she stood at the grave of a child and allowed the shadow of its tombstone to fall across her, her ‘trouble' would drain from her body.

Keziah wiped her face with the hem of her skirt and hurried down the deserted road.

From the crest of a hill she looked across at the tower of a Norman church. She prayed to
The Del
that the sun struggling to gain a foothold in the grey sky would be strong enough to cast the shadow she needed for her solution.

The stone church was built on a hill overlooking a hamlet that was deserted at this early hour except for a farmer's cart stationed beside the inn.

Checking that she was unobserved she followed the path to a neglected graveyard where old tombstones leaned out, half submerged in long grass.

An old sheep tethered to a stake was doing its best to mow the grass. She patted its woolly back as she passed by in search of a grave.

All graveyards held sad evidence of children who died at birth or
had their lives cut short during epidemics. Many lay in paupers' graves, but Keziah knew how loving parents often beggared themselves to provide a tombstone for a dead child.

It did not take her long to find one guarded by a winged stone angel. Slowly she read the inscription.
Here lies our Beloved Son Georgie Simmons, age 3. Safe in the Arms of Jesus. 21 March 1818.

Keziah said a prayer for Georgie's soul then checked the position of the sun and the Roman numerals on the clock tower. The shadow of his headstone would soon fall across her.

As she waited for the clock to chime she felt a prickling sensation at the nape of her neck. The silence was suddenly so total even the sound of birdsong had drained away. She felt powerless to move as the shadow crept closer.

It was then she saw it.
A mulo!
The ghost of the three-year-old boy emerged from behind his tombstone. Keziah stood transfixed by his fair curly hair, the strong blue eyes in his pale face. He was barefoot, dressed in thin summer clothing.

‘Mi-duvel!'
she whispered in horror. ‘Why have you sent this
mulo
to haunt me?'

Silently the little ghost extended his hand to offer her something small and red.
Oh God, no! He's moving towards me!

She backed away in terror and felt overwhelmed by a sickening nausea that signalled she was on the brink of losing consciousness.

• • •

When Keziah regained her senses she was alone and realised she had fallen outside the range of the shadow's arc. Near her outstretched hand lay a red ribbon – the traditional symbol a Rom places around the neck of his newborn son to acknowledge his paternity.

Fate had led her down a path she had not chosen to travel. This was not the dead boy's ghost, but the spirit of her unborn child delivering its silent plea.
Allow me to be born.

The spirit child had been the image of Caleb Morgan. The same fair
hair that curled in a wayward cowlick on the crown, the same high forehead, nose and chin. Except that this boy's eyes were the exact violet-blue Keziah had inherited from her mother. Only moments earlier she had been determined to rid herself of her unwanted babe but now that she had seen his little face she could not bring herself to end his life.

As she held the thin red ribbon, desperate ideas fermented in her mind. She heard her grandmother's warning.
‘Make one false move in the
gaujo
world and it will come back to haunt you.'

Keziah had drawn her unborn babe into a terrible web. Kneeling in the graveyard she divorced herself from the present and begged her ancestors for guidance. How could she hide this child's existence from Gem? Her ancestors were silent. A terrible thought struck her. Was she already
mahrime
, an outcast in their eyes?

She was jolted back to the dangers of the present. Time was running out. John Morgan would track her down if she didn't keep moving. Morgan arrogance would never allow a Gypsy thief to trick him.

• • •

The bustling port of Liverpool was alive with activity. The voices of seamen called out in a half-dozen foreign tongues as they rolled along from one public house to the next.

Within hours of scouring the docks in search of a ship bound for New South Wales, Keziah knew
baxt
favoured her when she secured a cancelled berth on the
Harlequin
, an immigrant ship scheduled to sail on the afternoon tide.

Relief flooded her body as she handed over the passage money. Asked to state her name for the passenger list she hesitated. Romani women kept their own family name after marriage but now she must replace Stanley with Gem's surname.

‘Mrs Smith, widow,' she said. She trusted this ploy would not only foil the Morgans' attempts to trace her in the few hours before the
Harlequin
set sail but also in the future. It was usual practice to record
only cabin passengers' names. As one of ninety immigrants travelling steerage, she hoped to escape official identification in the records.

Keziah hated herself for having to use part of John Morgan's money to cover her passage.

‘But needs must,' she sighed. She sewed Caleb Morgan's coins into the hem of her sole purchase, the full black skirt necessary to establish her new identity as a widow and disguise her expanding belly during the voyage.

She felt a lump in her throat as she looked around at the world that would soon be lost to her forever. These could well be her last hours on English soil and, although she thought of herself first as a Romani and secondly as Welsh, she could not suppress the film of tears that blurred her vision.

As she looked across at the masthead of the
Harlequin
that would carry her to New South Wales she wondered how on earth she would find Gem in that god-forsaken land? And when she did, how would she find the words to seek absolution? History had repeated itself. Like her worthless mother, Keziah had done the unforgivable – betrayed her Rom while he was in prison.

No matter what I have to do to survive, I will find you, Gem, and lay in your arms again.

At the thought of his beloved face she tasted the salt of tears that had fallen onto her lips.

Laying her hands on her flat belly she spoke the truth out loud.

‘I don't want you, little boy. But I know you're in there. So just for now – you and me – we're bonded to each other.'

The rugged terrain looked so unfamiliar to Jake Andersen in his hazy, disordered state of mind that he felt he might as well have been on the moon. But he decided he was somewhere south of the Wollondilly River.

For days Jake had seen no traces of human life, but now the far-off sound of picks and sledgehammers echoed through the deep gorge. No doubt an iron gang was hacking a new road through the bush.

Jake was conscious of his empty belly. He had eaten no food and drunk nothing but grog. He longed for the taste of water.

The thought of grog triggered fragments of recent memories … rowing a ‘borrowed' boat across the Nepean River to his father's farm … charging in with an armload of grog to entice his pa to fall ‘off the wagon' … noisily toasting the birth of Jake's eighth brother in Norwegian
skol
style … his mam's Irish accent thick with rage at the discovery of their Demon Drink, ‘Go home to Jenny, you drunken, piss-weak eedjit!'

Jake couldn't bring himself to tell them Jenny had bolted. He had told his mam to cross his name out of her damned family bible. ‘Tell everyone Jake Andersen is dead.'

He now regretted his parting words but he knew his mam would never back down. Neither would he. So he might just as well be six feet under.
Dead men don't ask for help.

He dimly recalled being locked up later for being ‘Idle and Disorderly', a mild charge given the havoc he had created in some public house somewhere. On his release he had packed flasks of rum in his saddle bag, ridden off into the scrub and drunk himself into a state of bitter laughter as he argued with the stars in the Milky Way. This
morning he had woken up feeling disgusted with himself.

At the sound of a creek far below him, he leaned backwards in the saddle to stay upright as Horatio began the steep zigzag descent towards what Jake hoped was drinkable water.

Eureka.
Jake grinned with relief at the sight of a billabong beside the creek. He unsaddled Horatio to allow him to drink in comfort. When he bent to quench his own thirst a discomforting thought crossed his mind. In years past some Wiradjuri waterholes had been poisoned.
What if this one is too? Well, I'll soon find out.

After drinking his fill Jake topped up an empty rum flask with water. Tearing off his foul-smelling clothing he threw everything he owned, including his body, into the cold billabong, emerging clean and relatively sober. The mere idea of drinking the two remaining rum flasks made him nauseous.

As he travelled towards the distant sounds of road-making, Jake felt the rhythm of his body comfortably attuned to Horatio's gait. The day was already hot. Clearly it was going to be a scorcher of a summer. He had lost track of time but reckoned it must be around mid October because of the signs of spring, the wildflowers, the red tips on the leaves of eucalypts. For the first time in weeks he was fully aware of the land around him.

The vast expanse of Wiradjuri country was a man's world. It had many faces. Here craggy cliffs rose above deep gorges slashed with creeks that could be heard but seldom seen. The drab olive colour of gnarled gum trees was suddenly pierced by brilliant flashes of lorikeets and cockatoos in screeching flight. To Jake this country contained treasures more precious than gold, like the limestone caves full of stalagmite formations that few white men knew existed – and Jake was in no hurry to share these secrets.