Lyrebird Hill (21 page)

A pair of snakes, entwined together, their slender bodies writhing as though in ecstasy; then a rifle blast, and blood and deathly stillness
—

Carsten moaned and fell against me, pinning me to the desk. He lay panting, the heat of his limbs burning my back, his sweat sticky on my skin.

Finally he released me.

I sank to the floor, dragging my nightgown over my nakedness. I watched him dress, watched him retrieve his locket from the tangle of bedcovers. He seemed to take an eternity to hook the watch chain to his waistcoat.

‘I hate you,’ I whispered hotly.

He crouched before me. I flinched as he reached out his hand, but he touched the side of my face lightly, almost tenderly, as he thumbed away my tears.

‘That will change,’ he said gently. ‘You will come to enjoy our games.’

He leaned closer and kissed me – sweetly soft, the way I had once daydreamed a kiss should be. His mouth moved on mine with all the tenderness of a man in love, but when he pulled away, there was no cosy glow of satisfaction, no thrill of nearness – just the warm salty taste of my blood.

The following morning, I stood at the parlour window looking into the front garden. My eyes stung and my face felt bruised out of shape. I wore a high-necked black dress with mutton sleeves lengthy enough to hide the bruises on my wrists. I had only just emerged from my room; the clock struck the hour and I counted nine chimes. Breakfast had been and gone; with Adele away, there would have just been Carsten and me at the table. How could I face him after last night?

Outside, the carriage waited on the gravel drive. Lucien was securing my husband’s leather portmanteau. I heard the front door open and slam shut, and Carsten’s black-clad figure emerged from the house. He greeted Lucien with a slap on the back, then climbed into the carriage. Lucien sprang up to the driver’s bench and snapped the reins. The horses lurched forward and the carriage jostled down the driveway, through the ornate gates and out onto the road.

At dawn, I had tried to pen a hasty note for my father, but my fingers had trembled so violently that the ink splashed from my pen and ruined the paper.

In the end, I had given up.

I stared along the driveway, down to the gate through which the carriage had disappeared. It was only March, but already some of the trees were beginning to turn. A confetti of yellow and crimson leaves swirled through the air. At the perimeter of the garden was a line of birches, and many of the branches were already bare; their naked limbs appeared vulnerable, like skeletal hands reaching into the cobalt dome of the sky.

After Carsten’s departure, I spent the following two days in my room with the curtains drawn, feigning ill health. I sat on my bed, trailing my fingertips over my body, seeking my bruises, touching the sore spot on my lip where Carsten’s rough kisses had torn the skin.

Jindera’s warning echoed continually in my mind.

No cross water to other land, Bunna. Danger there. Bad spirits.

Closing my eyes, I imagined the valley at home, and followed the river northwest towards the encampment. Jindera and the other women would be rebuilding their fire, gathering their coolamons and dillybags and bark dishes in preparation for the morning’s food gathering expedition.

At that moment, my heart was filled with such longing I thought it would burst.

Beyond the dark drapes that kept my room in twilight, the sun burned high in the sky. Birds whistled and warbled and chirped right outside my window, but their bright songs seemed a million miles away.

By the third day my spirit seemed restored, and I decided to fortify it further with an afternoon of sketching. In the kitchen, I solicited some bread and cheese and a wedge of fruitcake from Mrs Quinn, who wrapped it all in a cloth with a garnish of warning.

‘You’ll fade away to nothing, Mrs W. You’re already a stick of a thing. Come the first winter wind, you’ll be picked up like a scrap of chaff and blown out to sea.’

Despite my melancholy, her dramatic fancy made me smile. After reassuring her I would do no such thing, I returned to my room and collected my paint tin, my brushes, block of sketching paper, and a small wooden folding seat that I’d transported in my luggage from home. Hooking my dillybag across my shoulder and dragging on my sun hat, I hurried outside.

The day was warm, the sunshine intense.

I followed the path around the house, pausing when I came to a fork. Veering right, I walked for a while, and soon emerged on the other side of the garden. From there I meandered down the hill until I came to a gate. It was rusty and whined noisily
as I pushed through. I skirted a low conifer hedge, and was surprised to find myself in a tiny graveyard.

There was only a handful of graves, each weatherworn granite headstone engraved simply with a name and a date. The newest addition was also the smallest, and its headstone bore a more elaborate inscription.

Thomas Whitby, 1889–1893

Mama’s little angel, safe from harm,

Resting at peace in his father’s arms.

A four-year-old boy, I marvelled, buried in this desolate spot. Thomas Whitby; I hadn’t heard anyone mention his name. Kneeling by the grave, I tugged out the few scrawny weeds. There were white camellias in a vase, their petals starting to brown at the edges.

I recalled Adele’s inclination to steer our conversations away from babies or children. I knew her fiancé had died, it seemed common knowledge; but no one had breathed a word about a child.

‘Oh, Adele.’

I brushed away a few fallen camellia leaves, my heart aching for the sweet, compassionate woman who had become my friend. I sensed that the various mysteries that circulated about Adele – her days in Launceston, her midnight forays in the garden, and now the little boy buried in a secret graveyard – were somehow connected.

Retracing my steps to the garden, I bypassed the stables and slipped into the forest. The air was cool, smelling faintly of woodsmoke and pine sap. Tall hoop pines rubbed shoulders with trees that sprouted dense sprawling canopies. Green light speared through their branches, and soon I was in another world. The roar of the ocean grew dim, replaced by the chatter of birds and whirr of insect wings. I walked east, deeper into the forest until I came to a clearing.

At the base of a pine tree I found a clump of plants that at first I thought were delphiniums, but on closer inspection turned out to be a late-flowering aconitum, a herb sometimes known as wolfsbane or monkshood. Each plant had a base of dark green leaves, from which grew a tall slender shoot topped by an array of hood-like blue flowers. The flowers hung delicately from their stems, and their deep indigo hue glowed softly in the pine trees’ dank shade. It was a most attractive plant, but deadly. Even making skin contact with its leaves or flowers might make a person extremely ill; to imbibe any part of the plant could be fatal. Taking my sharpening knife from my bag, I cut half a dozen of the hooded purple flowers and folded them in my handkerchief; they would make a fine addition to my collection of pressed herbs.

Unfolding my wooden seat, I settled on it and took out my charcoal stick and sketching paper. The clearing was sheltered from the sun, and the air was still and warm. Birdsong surrounded me, accompanied by the whisper of leaves in the canopy overhead.

Bowing over my paper, I quickly fell under the spell of my work, savouring the scratch of my charcoal, delighting in the patterns of light and dark as my wolfsbane began to emerge on the paper. I took out the vial of water and swirled my brush in a smear of umber, blocking in the shadows.

As the sun climbed higher, the air grew warm. While I worked, the odour of the glue with which I treated my paper to strengthen it lifted around me.

From somewhere behind me drifted a noise. I ignored it, too immersed in my work to give it much mind. Washing off the umber, I collected a tint of cerulean and soon leaves and a tall flower stalk emerged. As I rinsed my brush, I heard a low growl.

I froze, my brush midway to the water vial. Then a drawn-out howl broke the stillness.

I leaped to my feet, scattering paper and brushes and paints as I whirled around. On the opposite edge of the clearing stood
a dog. His hide was white, speckled with brown and caramel markings, stretched tight over his bones; he had a black muzzle and large frightened chestnut-coloured eyes.

He howled again, a wretched haunting sound that teased up the hairs on the back of my neck. I had never heard my father’s wolfhound howl that way, but I knew instantly what it meant.

From my dillybag I retrieved Mrs Quinn’s bundle. Untying the cloth, I removed the lump of bread and tossed it to the dog. The animal whined and sniffed the morsel, then choked it down in an eye-blink. I threw the cheese, and then the cake, and both vanished as if by magic into the dog’s gullet.

A wave of pity went through me. I wondered if the creature had ventured here from a neighbouring farm, but then decided that it must be a domestic dog gone feral. It was no dingo; the wiry native dogs ran wild across the mountainsides that flanked Lyrebird Hill, but none I’d seen had such a look of desolation.

‘Poor old boy,’ I said softly.

The dog pricked its ears at my voice. It watched me warily, almost expectantly, but made no move to come closer. I had no more food to offer, and was wondering how to tempt it back to the house, when a man’s voice broke the stillness.

‘Mrs Whitby?’

The dog cocked its head as the thud of footsteps approached. It whined, then about-faced and fled into the trees.

Lucien appeared at the edge of the glade. His gaze roamed the clearing, taking in my strewn papers and spilled box of paints and fallen drawing implements.

He looked at me. ‘What happened?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Why are your things scattered about?’

‘I got a fright, that’s all. It was just a poor hungry dog, it must have been attracted by the smell of my paper.’

Lucien looked astonished. ‘Why would a dog be attracted to paper?’

‘It’s prepared with rabbit-skin glue. When I apply my watercolours on it, the glue softens a bit. The sun’s warmth lifts its scent.’

Lucien was staring at me, clearly baffled. He collected one of my fallen papers from the ground and brought it up to his nose, inhaling deeply.

‘What did you say it was, rabbit skin?’

‘Yes . . . well, no, not actual skin. It’s a glue, made by boiling down a rabbit hide. I paint it onto my paper so the pigments stay true.’

Lucien’s eyes grew wide. ‘You’re an artist?’ he finally said.

‘Yes.’

He collected a stick of charcoal from the ground and rolled it between his fingers. ‘That’s what you were doing just now, when you saw the dog?’

‘I was drawing that wolfsbane over there.’ I pointed to the plants, then went over and crouched beside them.

Lucien, kneeled beside me on the grass. ‘That’s no delphinium,’ he observed.

‘It’s aconite, but often called wolfsbane because through history it was used to poison wolves. In the right quantities the toxins can take effect almost instantaneously. Be careful,’ I said hastily as he reached out to touch one of the blue flowers. ‘They are quite deadly, and you can absorb the poison through your skin—’