Flight of the Eagle (62 page)

She nodded. It was not an unreasonable request. ‘I will get one of the men to do that for you,’ she said gently as she continued to mop his brow while the doctor stitched his leg.

The sharp pricks of the needle seemed so insignificant in their pain compared to what he had just experienced with the amputation. The two Aboriginal troopers stood away from the blood soaked table and glanced nervously at each other. Such a request to have the leg buried near Peter Duffy …

‘You should take in some fresh air, Missus Cameron,’ the doctor prescribed. ‘I have just about finished here.’

‘I will go and see Matilda, and the young lad,’ she replied. ‘I will organise one of the house girls to make us tea and Mister James can be moved to the room Mister White has vacated.’

‘That would be good,’ the doctor commented as he washed his saw in an enamel basin. ‘The next couple of days are critical for the Inspector. If the wound is clean he will live. I will see to the other young man before I return to Balaclava. If I stay in this country any longer I shall be able to come out of retirement. The number of patients seems to grow by the minute around here.’

Mary found Matilda sitting in a chair at Willie's bedside. The curtains had been drawn and the room lay in a twilight of gloom. Mary could plainly see that Matilda's job as a nurse was at an end; the doctor would not be needed to look in on his patient.

‘His spirit is not at rest,’ Matilda said quietly glancing up at Mary standing beside her. ‘His spirit roams searching for a man. A bad man.’

Then she told Mary all that Willie had told her before he gasped his last breath. Mary was stunned as the story unfolded.

Granville watched the stock and station agent's buggy drawing close to the house. The man waved to him cheerily and Granville was extremely pleased to see him. Now he could leave this infernal place!

He rose to his feet from the chair on the wide verandah and knew that within minutes he would be on the track to Rockhampton and thence by sea to Sydney. He doubted that he would ever have a need to visit Queensland again in his lifetime. The place was far too damnably hot for his liking anyway! The door to the homestead opened and Missus Cameron appeared on the verandah with a strange expression on her face.

‘There is no need to see me off, Missus Cameron,’ Granville said stiffly. He was fully aware of her animosity towards him. ‘I fear such a display of concern by you would only prove a burden to us both.’

‘I did not come out here to farewell you, Mister White,’ she replied enigmatically. ‘I came out here to see whether before you leave Glen View you would like to pay your respects to the young man you killed.’

‘I think that won't be necessary,’ Granville sneered. ‘The man is dead and I hardly think his past criminal activities warrant any respect.’

‘Matilda thinks his spirit will roam until he meets a certain man,’ Mary said softly as she fixed the man she despised with a calculating look. ‘And as such I would like to ask you just one question before you depart Glen View, Mister White.’

‘You may ask,’ Granville answered. ‘Then I shall leave.’

Mary continued to stare directly into Granville's eyes. ‘Did you ever know a young girl in your past called Jenny Harris?’ She noticed nothing for a second and then she saw the flicker of fearful realisation cloud the man's eyes.

‘I may have,’ he replied in a tone that told Mary that indeed he did know Jenny Harris. ‘How did you come by that name?’

‘The boy. Before he died he told Matilda that the woman was his mother and that his only regret before he died was that he had not found his father in Sydney. He said his father's name was Granville White and I felt that, although the coincidence was extraordinary, that man just might be you. I suppose if it were, you may have just killed your own son. I dare say that under those circumstances you might wish to pay your respects to the boy.’

The woman's words filled the space between them with an army of ghosts. Ghosts of his past that reached out as one to touch his heart with their deathly grasps. He felt the pain grip his chest.

‘Mister White!’

He heard Mary Cameron's alarmed call reach out to him as he crumpled to his knees. The vice-like pain squeezing his chest spread rapidly to his arms, throat and back.

‘Doctor Blayney,’ she called back into the house. ‘Please come quickly.’

Granville tried to rise to his knees but pitched forward onto the wooden planking of the verandah where he lay in a cold clammy sweat.

First came the unconsciousness that led him back in time to meet once again with those whom he had destroyed. He saw David Macintosh, bloody and battered, where the islanders' arrows had pierced his body and their stone axes cut his skin; and a tall, broad-shouldered young man stood over him with a smile of grim satisfaction. Was it Michael Duffy? Or was it his son? Finally in his journey he met Willie Harris holding the hand of a little girl who Granville recognised as Jenny, the boy's mother. But they all quickly faded into a deep and eternal darkness.

‘I am afraid Mister White is dead,’ Doctor Blayney said as he bent over the body. ‘From what I can see he appears to have had a massive heart attack.’

‘Lightning striking,’ Mary said softly in an awed voice.

‘I am sorry, Missus Cameron, but I did not hear what you said.’

‘Oh, I was just remembering a discussion I had with Mister White last evening. It was just something he said.’

‘We should get Mister White's body off the verandah,’ Blayney said as he rose from beside the body. ‘You, sir,’ he directed to the stock and station agent who stood with his mouth agape and his feet rooted to the earth of the front yard.
One minute Mister White had been waving to him and then he was dead!
‘Help me get Mister White inside the house.’

The man came out of his frozen state to assist the doctor and grabbed the arms while the doctor grasped the legs. They carried the body to the room where Willie lay dead and Granville was placed on the floor beside his son.

The stock and station agent gaped at the body of the young man on the bed. ‘God almighty,’ he uttered. ‘What's been going on around here?’

‘I don't really know,’ the doctor replied, equally bewildered. ‘But if I was not a scientific man I would have said some kind of native curse.’

The stock and station agent cast the doctor a questioning look. He had heard rumours of a curse on the property but had dismissed the stories as bush yarns to frighten city people. Now he was not so sure.

But Mary Cameron was sure.

Gordon James had visited the sacred hills of the long dispersed Nerambura people and Granville White had also gone to the Nerambura hills. From those hills a strange and unexplainable power had reached out to wreak devastation on the lives of all who had defied the ancient spirits with their uninvited visits. And even the poor young man Willie Harris, who had inhabited the sacred cave, now lay dead in the house.

Mary shuddered and Matilda caught her eye with a knowing look.

On Balaclava Station Adele Rankin sat in the living room of the homestead, darning her husband's socks. She was alone but glanced up to see who had entered the room. But there was no-one. Just an eerie feeling of a presence.

She stood and walked to the window to gaze out across the brigalow scrub plains at the beautiful sunny day. The stockmen struggled with cattle branding in the stockyards. The bellows of the beasts being scorched with the red hot branding irons was a sound she had grown used to, like so many others: the rifle-like cracking of the stock-whips as the men herded the cattle; the warble of the black and white magpies in the morning; the shrill chatter of apostle birds that flocked fearlessly to the homestead for discarded scraps from the kitchen.

And there were more: the sounds made by the white man that filled the vast spaces of the bush and had driven out the gentler sounds of the first people to roam the land; the laughter of children around the campfires; the melodic voices of the young men and women engaged in flirting; the old people gossiping in the shade of the trees by the creeks.

But the white man had not completely driven out the people, she reflected. Their spirit still existed in the shiny black faces of the Aboriginal stockmen and their families living and working on Balaclava Station. The unseen spiritual forces of the land still existed alongside the white man's houses, sheds and stockyards.

And so it was that Adele Rankin was not surprised to see Sarah Duffy standing, drawn and haggard, in the doorway to the living room in her sweat-stained nightdress. Adele Rankin dropped her sewing and hurried across the room.

‘My brother has been here.’ Sarah's first words came as a hoarse whisper. ‘But he has gone.’

‘I know,’ Adele Rankin said gently as she led Sarah back to her room and put her back to bed to rest. She could see that Sarah would recover.

SIXTY-SEVEN

O
n the desk of the library, between the two women, was a pile of letters neatly tied with a red ribbon.

‘These are the letters that you did not receive from my grandson,’ Enid said. ‘And I wonder if you deserve them now.’

Catherine Fitzgerald was not about to be cowered by the formidable Lady Enid Macintosh and returned her steely gaze. ‘Had I received those letters whilst Patrick was campaigning in the Sudan I might not have had to wait so long to be with him, Lady Macintosh,’ she replied in a cool, calm tone. ‘But as it is, Patrick and I have been fated to be together and your intervention is part of that fate.’

Enid raised an eyebrow at the young woman sitting across the library from her. She was certainly a stunningly beautiful young woman with her long red tresses and milky pale skin. But it was the eyes that Enid noticed most. They were emerald green and very much like those of her own family. In Catherine's eyes she could see a highly intelligent yet mysterious woman. She is strong, Enid thought. It was no wonder her grandson was completely taken with her.

‘The intervention had more to do with Patrick's father,’ she replied as she kept the young woman's gaze. ‘It was a letter he sent from Greece last year that decided my intervention on your behalf, Miss Fitzgerald, not fate.’ Her reference to Michael Duffy almost caused Catherine to lose her composure. So she had a weakness, Enid mused. And that was good, as the game between them was being played for stakes beyond even Catherine's imagination. ‘I dare say that if the contents of Michael Duffy's letter should ever reach my grandson, then he might view his love for you in a different light.’

Catherine had regained her composure. Michael had been right about Lady Macintosh's absolute ruthlessness in pursuit of maintaining the family's name and fortune. But would Michael have ever mentioned their brief but passionate affair? It was not likely; he was not that kind of man. Lady Macintosh was bluffing and Catherine suddenly realised that she was in a game where the prize was yet to be decided. ‘Would I be permitted to read Mister Duffy's letter?’ she asked, although she already knew the inevitable answer.

‘I am afraid the contents of Mister Duffy's letter are private,’ Enid confirmed. ‘I would rather destroy the letter than have any chance of it ever being viewed by Patrick.’

‘In that case,’ Catherine countered, ‘I see that I have no other choice than to confess to Patrick my affair with his father and pray that he finds it in his heart to forgive me.’

For a brief moment Enid looked shocked but quickly gathered herself to parry the cleverly delivered thrust. The young woman was much wiser than she had given her credit for and this in its own right was a good sign. ‘I doubt that will be necessary, Miss Fitzgerald,’ she responded. ‘I have no intentions of informing my grandson of your infidelity.’

‘I do not wish to appear rude, Lady Macintosh, but infidelity can only occur in a marriage,’ Catherine interrupted, with just the hint of a winning smile. ‘Patrick and I are yet to be wed, but hopefully we will be upon his return from Africa.’

The damned girl was good. She reminded Enid of herself at the same age. Yes, she might prove to be Patrick's strong and guiding light in the future. All that was required was a tacit agreement between them that any future grand-daughter-in-law ally herself with her grand vision for the twentieth century. This woman could be the one, she thought, and she regretted less and less following the advice in Michael Duffy's letter to contact Catherine and invite her to stay in Sydney. It had been more of a pleading to help right old wrongs and allow two young people to find a life-time of happiness together. There had been no hint of an affair between the two of them in the letter.

As such, Enid's invitation had arrived in Greece, and the telegram read by a completely puzzled Catherine. Somehow she had known that it had a connection with the sudden disappearance of Michael from her life. Only now the truth that Patrick had written to her in Ireland was evident. She had also learned that her grandfather had intercepted all Patrick's correspondence. Now it was time to seal the fate that had always intended that the Morrigan marry her Cuchulainn. It was time to win the formidable woman over.