Shadow of the Osprey (15 page)

She rose from the table and with a mysterious smile took Michael’s hand in hers. With the cigar and the goblet of burgundy in hand he followed her upstairs to her bedroom. Penelope closed the door. ‘Take off your shirt and lie on the bed,’ she commanded in a throaty voice.

Michael placed his goblet on a bedside table and crushed the burning end of the cigar between his fingers. Something in her eyes worried him as he lay back on her big bed with its silk sheets. She had the expression of someone detached from their own body.

Penelope began to slowly shed her clothes, all the time fixing Michael with an enigmatic smile. The candlelit room cast strange shadows that made him uneasy. He could sense something dangerous around him but could not describe it in logical terms. ‘Did you play games when you were a little boy?’ Penelope asked as she stood naked before him except for a pair of long silk pantaloons split at the crotch. Her hands were behind her back and she stood with her legs apart.

‘Of course I did,’ Michael replied with a slight frown. The feeling of danger was increasing in the room. He had always had a sense for dangerous situations and in the past the instinct had given him an edge to survive. Now all his instincts told him to walk away. His fears were confirmed when Penelope’s hands came from behind her back and he saw the light flicker along the edge of a thin-bladed dagger. He felt his body tense as it prepared to fight or flee of its own accord. Penelope was smiling as she advanced slowly towards him.

‘This is a beautiful knife,’ she said softly. ‘I was given it by an Italian Count when I was in Italy some years ago. He told me that it is called a stiletto, a favoured weapon of the assassin.’

‘I have seen them before,’ Michael said, attempting to sound calmer than he actually felt. ‘A woman’s weapon,’ he added scornfully.

Penelope now stood at the end of the bed with a dreamy expression of complete detachment on her face. ‘We are going to play a game Michael,’ she said, as if from afar. She climbed onto the bed. ‘A game where you will experience the ultimate pleasures of life. Exquisite pleasures that you will take to the grave with screams of rapturous joy.’

She is going to kill me, Michael thought in alarm. She has planned this for a long time as her way of revenge. But revenge for what? She had him at a disadvantage and he knew he must remain calm. He must play down the situation until he could strike and disarm her. ‘What game are we about to play?’ he asked with a confident smile. His seemingly fearless expression seemed to satisfy Penelope.

‘A game of absolute trust,’ she replied, as she knelt facing him with her legs apart. He could see that she was highly aroused and despite the continuing fear felt his own arousal. ‘But involving some physical pain. I am sure you will be able to bear it. I know you are a man well acquainted with pain.’

Their eyes locked across the short distance between them as he attempted to explore her soul. He searched for malice but, oddly, he saw none. Just a smouldering lust for pleasure.

‘I may be the world’s greatest fool or a man who gives you his complete trust,’ Michael said softly. ‘We both know that you hold in your hand an instrument of death.’

‘I will not kill you Michael,’ Penelope said. ‘That I promise you. But I will promise you pain.’

‘Then what is your game?’

‘I will show you.’

She turned and edged her way up to his head where she straddled his face. He could smell the strong perfume of her arousal and taste the wetness of her desire. Suddenly he felt a stinging pain as the needle-sharp point of the stiletto raked his chest. His body arched and he muffled a cry of pain. ‘Taste my sweetness,’ Penelope ordered as she leaned forward. Her long blonde hair brushed his chest as her tongue sought out the tiny river of blood spilling down to his stomach. ‘As I will taste you.’

With maddening and deliberately frustrating slowness his tongue probed her body above him. The damned man was deliberately showing his power over her rising desire, she thought, as the blood from the wound covered her face, matting the ends of her hair. He was tormenting her in a way that made her want to have him fill her. His exquisite torture was an eternity of pleasure. She was hardly aware that he had turned her on her back and was entering her from above.

The ecstasy continued through the night, into the early hours of the morning. When sleep at last came to them Michael once again walked the terrible corridors of his recent life. There was a young man screaming as he held his bowels in his hands. He was staring at Michael with the despair of a man who knows he is dying. Fourteen, fifteen. Did age matter on the battlefield where every man was locked in the absolute terror from the unseen? Which battle had it been when he had lost all hope for his soul? In the forests of New Zealand? Or was it in the blood-soaked cornfields of the American South? Red was the paint of his life, not the brilliant blues of the paintings he had once dreamed of exhibiting to the world. And sleep was not always a welcome guest.

This night was such a night and Penelope wondered at the world Michael had entered as he twitched and moaned beside her. But it was not something that was new to her. Her own husband occasionally slept as fitfully as Michael did now. She had come to accept that it was just something that soldiers who had seen combat suffered from.

Before sunrise she awoke. Michael was still sleeping and Penelope gazed down at his sleeping face. Terrible, uninvited thoughts came to her and a frown clouded her face. This wonderful and intelligent lover – sensitive to a woman’s deepest desires – could be dead within a couple of months, she thought sadly. Such were the missions her husband was prone to embark upon. She might miss Michael for a short time, she grudgingly admitted to herself, but his death would be in the best interests of those he once knew. For Penelope realised that the man who lay beside her was as dangerous to women as he was to men. Should he ever meet again with Fiona . . . Penelope felt a chill in her soul and shuddered. The consequences were too terrible to even consider.

Gently she stroked his chest until he awoke. At least for now she could use his body for her own pleasure in love while her husband used his body in war.

‘Where did you learn to play your games Baroness?’ Michael asked sleepily as he stirred beside her.

‘From a man not unlike yourself,’ she answered, as she remembered that memorable night when Morrison Mort had stroked her with his sword. ‘A man just as dangerous as you Michael.’

P
eter Duffy followed his best friend Gordon James up the hill along the winding narrow track overhung with rainforest giants. The two boys were stripped to their trousers and their chests streaked with scratches from the sharp vegetation that plucked at them as they climbed with great effort after the black warrior leading them upwards into the hidden places of the jungle.

‘Hey Gordon, slow down,’ Peter called irritably, as he puffed with exertion. ‘You’re going too fast.’

Gordon turned his head to flash him a triumphant smile. Where the climb turned in on itself in places hardly recognisable as a path he continued making his way up the track hand over foot. Although they were friends and as close as true brothers the competition between the two boys had always been the same. Around town they were an inseparable pair – and a duo the other town boys had come to respect for their ability to fight when forced to. Like his father who would not tolerate the sneering references to young Peter being a half-caste, Gordon would not tolerate jibes at his friend’s mixed race parentage.

The Aboriginal ahead of them paused and turned to ascertain the two young boys were still following. He stood watching the white boy clamber ahead of the Darambal blood boy with a sense of uneasiness. He knew who the white boy was, as his identity had been revealed in a dream. This was not a good sign, he thought, as Gordon reached him sweating but obviously still with the reserves of strength to go on, while Peter lagged badly as he struggled to keep up.

‘Peter Duffy, son of Tom and Mondo, you must beat the white boy,’ Wallarie said.

Peter did not understand the strange language and yet the sound was familiar to his ears as if he had been born to hear the words spoken in the Nerambura dialect. ‘If you do not beat him now he will kill you one day.’

Peter glanced up at Wallarie standing up the hill from him. Yes! He knew the words and now remembered the man who spoke them. ‘Wallarie!’ he called wide-eyed up the hill.

The big warrior grinned down at him. ‘Baal you forget Wallarie,’ he replied in English, grinning with pleasure at the boy’s distant memory of another time and place. ‘Wallarie not forget you.’

Gordon watched the exchange with boyish curiosity. He had originally wondered why Peter had insisted on following the Aboriginal who had stepped out from the ranks of the Kyowarra tribesmen they had befriended on the outskirts of Cooktown and gestured for them to follow him away from where the tribe was camped a safe distance from the towns-people and miners. Now there was a hint of an answer in the apparent connection it seemed that the Aboriginal had with his friend Peter.

The boys had stumbled on the Kyowarra campsite in one of their many far-ranging explorations of the surrounding thick bushland. As they were merely boys, the normally wary tribesmen recognised that they were not a threat to their safety and accepted their presence without fuss. It was obvious to the tribe that one of the boys had Aboriginal blood from some other tribe. And the Darambal man amongst their number confirmed that the Kyowarra were right when he identified the one he called Peter as having Darambal blood.

Peter reached Wallarie who turned his back and continued to climb the hill. This time Peter called on all the strength he had to get ahead of Gordon. A tacit agreement was reached between the two boys that they were in a race to the top.

Grunting, sweating and ignoring the sharp sticks that lashed their bodies the two boys vied with each other and called on their respective spirits to win the race. Neither had understood Wallarie’s actual words of warning. But still they had understood his meaning.

~

Gordon was first to the top of the hill. He had conveniently tripped, causing Peter to stumble and roll back just far enough for Gordon to take the lead.

Wallarie squatted in a small sun-dappled clearing shadowed by the rainforest giants. He stared at the two boys gasping for breath as they kneeled in the rich compost-like earth, regaining their breath once they had reached the summit. So the white boy had beaten the son of his white brother Tom Duffy, Wallarie thought sadly. And so it would always be. Peter’s eyes, glazed from the exertion of the climb, came to settle on Wallarie’s dark eyes watching him speculatively.

‘I have come for you Peter Duffy,’ Wallarie intoned in the Nerambura dialect. ‘I have come to teach you the spirit ways of your ancestors who once sat under the bumbil tree and told the stories. But now I must also teach the ways to the son of the man who killed our people in the shadow of the sacred hill of the Nerambura people,’ he said. And his eyes shifted to Gordon who he knew did not understand what he was saying. Gordon frowned in his puzzlement and glanced at Peter who listened with an expression of rapt attention to the words he was once again beginning to recognise. Wallarie continued to intone the message from the ancestor spirits.

‘What’s the myall saying?’ Gordon whispered.

‘He’s saying things you wouldn’t understand,’ Peter replied in an awed voice.

‘You understand his lingo?’ Gordon asked switching his attention back to Wallarie whose body glistened with sweat and was marked by many scars as he continued to drone his message in a lilting voice that was the sound of the bush creatures.

‘I think I do. It’s like things in my head are starting to make sense,’ Peter said slowly. ‘Things I remember when I was a little kid when the troopers killed my ma and da. Wallarie is telling me things I have to do. He says you and I have to go with him when the Kyowarra go north on walkabout.’

‘My dad will give us a hidin’ if we go with him,’ Gordon whined. ‘And Kate will give you a hidin’ too.’

‘We have to go with Wallarie,’ Peter scowled. ‘Because he is going to teach us things I have to know.’

‘You can bloody well go,’ Gordon swore. ‘But I don’t want my dad givin’ me a hidin’ down at the wood pile. And he will give you one too because your aunt Kate will tell him to.’

‘I don’t care,’ Peter retorted. But his resolve was beginning to crumble at the thought of Henry James’s heavy leather belt around his backside and legs. ‘I am going without you. You can run back to your dad like a girl if you like but I’m going with the Kyowarra and Wallarie.’

Gordon took a couple of paces in the direction of the track. ‘See you back at the store then,’ he quipped over his shoulder. He hesitated when he noticed that Peter had not budged from the clearing, turned and walked slowly back to his friend. ‘Well, I’m bloody well going with you,’ he said with a resigned shrug of his shoulders. ‘I beat you up the hill and you bloody myalls aren’t as smart as me anyway.’

‘I always beat you at counting and spelling,’ Peter bridled. ‘I’m smarter than you at school.’

Gordon scowled. It was true that he was smarter than him by a long shot when it came to school work and that didn’t seem right when Peter was a half-caste.

‘Yeah, but I’m better in the bush than you,’ Gordon retorted angrily. ‘You might get lost.’

Wallarie smiled. He had observed the interaction between the white boy and the half-Nerambura boy with interest. In the end it had been Peter’s will that had won out. The white boy would follow and the signs were good for the time ahead.

He rose from the earth and turned to Peter. ‘You and the white boy will follow me now,’ he said. ‘We will leave for the hunting and fishing lands of the Kyowarra in the morning. You will be safe and in time return to the white man’s town. But for now you will learn many things and one day use what you have learned. And you Peter Duffy,’ he said, fixing the young boy with his smouldering dark eyes, ‘will have to learn more because one day the son of Henry James will kill you if you don’t.’

Peter shuddered with a terrible fear and glanced at Gordon standing beside him. It was obvious that his friend had no comprehension of the words that Wallarie had uttered.

With mixed thoughts the boys followed Wallarie wearily back down the narrow, winding bush track to the camp of the Kyowarra. They were aware that in accepting the invitation to go north with the last of the Nerambura clan they would be defying people who loved them. But they were both excited by the mysterious quest that lay ahead.

Four days passed and the boys still had not returned home.

Neither Kate nor the Jameses had felt any real concern for the boys’ welfare when they had not returned in three days. They had long accepted that the two boys were just as much at home camping in the bush as they were sleeping in their own beds. Once before they had disappeared into the bush and had returned after three days only a little worse for their experience. Hungry and covered in insect bites, they had received hugs and kisses from the women – and a visit to the wood heap with Henry. Needless to say, they had promised not to stray at any time in the future for more than three days. But four days had now passed and both Kate and Emma were growing more anxious with each passing hour.

Only Henry remained unperturbed by their absence. They were after all both boys with a keen sense of adventure and a proven ability to look after themselves in the bush. But his complacency changed when, in a chance conversation with an old German prospector at the store, he had been reliably informed that both boys were last seen camping with the remnants of the Kyowarra tribe a mile or so from the town. Henry knew the old prospector had a good understanding of the differences between the tribesmen. He was a veteran of the north who had often camped with the tribes – and he had added that the Kyowarra had upped camp and gone walkabout two days earlier.

The Kyowarra – like the Daldewarra – were fiercely independent warriors who rarely came close to the white man’s civilisation. Their traditional hunting and fishing grounds were along the stretches of the Normanby River north west of Cooktown. The old German prospector’s news chilled Henry but he did not tell either Kate or Emma of his apprehension. Nor did he tell them about the boys being with the Kyowarra.

Kate, however, was suspicious of his feigned calm. She noticed that he had packed many days’ supply of rations – and extra ammunition – in his saddle bags before riding out of town with the transparent excuse that he was just going on a week’s hunting trip.

Emma also knew something was terribly wrong but both women had faith in the former police sergeant’s chances of finding the boys. Still, Emma prayed as she had never prayed before that God would make a special point of protecting her husband in his search for Gordon and Peter. The lives of the two boys were in God’s – and Henry’s – hands and there was nothing anyone else could do.

As Henry rode north west of Cooktown into the rugged rainforested hills he felt his unease increase by the minute. Not only for the fact that he was riding in hostile country, but for an unease that was very much spiritual. It was as if a voice was calling to him from the forests, speaking of a distant memory, of a horror he would rather forget.

Sweat ran in rivulets to sting his eyes and his leg throbbed from the unnatural angles it was forced to endure keeping his balance on the treacherous hills as he walked leading his horse. His shoulders ached from hauling down on the bridle to keep the big horse reluctantly moving forward, and many times he had been forced to stop and hack at the tangle of rainforest scrub with a machete.

It was slow and laborious work with only tiny tunnels to show for hours of back-breaking effort. But they were tunnels that allowed him to cut across the ridges and down onto the Normanby’s flatter floodplains, shortcuts to make up distance and time between himself and the Kyowarra. He knew they were somewhere ahead of him from the numerous signs he stumbled on of recently abandoned camps.

His gruelling trek through the jungle-covered hills finally proved successful. The previous evening he had watched the Kyowarras’ campfires from the ridge. He had seen the flickering figures celebrating a corroboree in the shadows of the night. The Kyowarra had been so close that he had smelt the delicious aroma of fat river fish cooking in the coals of the fires and heard the laughter of people with full stomachs.

The sound of the corroboree had been haunting. Only when the clack-clack of the hardwood song-sticks had ceased in the early hours of the morning did Henry snatch a few hours of sleep.

At the rising of the sun he was able to see the distant smoke of cooking fires. The vegetation had changed dramatically and he now looked over the sparser scrub lands of the Cape. He stood with his horse, gazing out at a broad valley where he could clearly see members of the nomadic tribe rising to meet the day. It was an impressive sight as hundreds of men, women and children chattered and laughed as they prepared to join once again with the diurnal spirits of the land in their never-ending quest for survival.

Gazing down on the Kyowarra Henry felt his stomach knot with fear. He knew that he was alone against the impressive numbers of heavily armed warriors. And he was a long way from the safety of civilisation, in territory that the tribesmen had not conceded to the white invaders of their traditional lands.

Leading his horse, Henry descended the steep slope to the river clearing below. When he reached the grassy plain he mounted his horse to ride towards the main camp to confront the tribe.

Startled by the appearance of the lone horseman, hundreds of brightly painted tribesmen rose from the grassy plain with spear, war club and wooden shield. They stared at the approaching white man with a mixture of curiosity and animosity.

Remembering the terrible times when the white men’s guns brought death to their warriors daring to stand against the miners’ guns, women and children stood wide-eyed and fearful, staring at Henry. Now one of those same white men was boldly approaching their camp astride his horse with a rifle resting across the saddle.

As Henry rode slowly across the plain he scanned the wall of armed warriors spreading menacingly in a defensive screen across the front of their camp. He could clearly see that he was not welcome. He was an intruder on the land they still tentatively controlled.

He was acutely aware of the predicament he had deliberately exposed himself to. Should they launch an attack he knew he had little hope of escape. He might take one or two with him into death before being overwhelmed by the sheer weight of numbers. But he also knew that he had no other option than confronting the hostile tribesmen if he was to ascertain if the two boys were with the tribe.