The Lace Balcony (3 page)

As a youth, studying alongside him, Mungo had christened the walkway that linked the two houses ‘The Bridge of Sighs', in mocking tribute to Lord Byron's poetic fantasy about the sighs of condemned prisoners who crossed the famous bridge en route to their execution.

How strange that Mungo grew up to be a condemned man himself. Thanks to a merciful God our fate was hidden from us as children. Yet I always sensed our lives were entwined like two strands of a woman's braid – the third strand remaining a mystery.

Felix had always accepted that as Kentigern L'Estrange's sole heir he was born to play three discomforting roles as the family go-between. Although he disliked public appearances, he put his shyness aside and dutifully played the role of ambassador, liaising between his father and prominent colonists. At home he was called on to mediate in the tensions between his mother and their flock of assigned servants. He had finally become resigned to acting as the conduit of communications between his warring parents. From childhood Felix had tried to understand their rigid marital arrangement – and failed. He knew something of their history.

They must have loved each other once. Father could not have married Mother for her money – her blue-blood Prussian ancestry was her only dowry.

As the fourth son of the ancient and honourable English L'Estrange family, Kentigern had no prospects of inheriting land and, spurning the idea of a career in the army or church, had come to New South Wales to seek his fortune. Given a substantial land grant by Governor Macquarie, his success as a landholder enabled him to bring his beautiful Prussian cousin, Albruna, to the Colony as his bride.

Mother looks so young and trusting in her bridal portrait. And Father built this house for her. But they have been at war for as long as I can remember. If my parents are a prime example of married life – I'm in no hurry to embark on it.

Downstairs in the breakfast room Felix found himself seated alone at the round table that as a child he had imagined seating King Arthur's knights. From across the corridor the halting sounds of a
pianoforte
indicated that his mother was giving a music lesson to one of the children of her assigned servants.

As usual the silver salvers on the sideboard held an array of breakfast dishes large enough to feed the 57th Regiment. Felix lifted each lid to breathe in the tantalising aroma of baked sausages, poached and scrambled eggs, rashers of bacon, tomato rings and blood pudding, but before he had time to serve himself his father entered the room under full sail.

His large, dominating figure, as always like a ball of energy straining at the seams, strode across the room, garbed in funereal black. His patrician features and close-cut white hair reminded Felix of a Roman senator. His usual suppressed rage remained beneath the surface of an expression Felix recognised today was a mask to hide his anguish.

Rising from his chair to greet him, Felix felt a twinge of jealousy and was immediately ashamed of such a base reaction.

‘Good morning, Father. I am of course entirely at your service today. How best may I help you?'

Kentigern handed him a document, dismissively waved aside the idea of breakfast, and instead poured himself a cup of coffee and broke apart a bread roll.

‘Read that. It's enough to make a saint take up arms.'

At first confused by the contents, Felix soon broke out in a cold sweat at the graphic details of the report before him, aware that his father, his face grey with tension, was watching his every reaction with hawk-like intensity.

Felix recognised that in his hands was a copy of a diary smuggled out of Moreton Bay, no doubt after considerable L'Estrange money had exchanged hands. A tally kept by a clerk at Moreton Bay, copied from an official journal, neatly recorded the dates and sentences of
prisoners flogged by order of Captain Patrick Logan in his dual role as Moreton Bay's Commandant and Magistrate. Within the space of eight months, Logan had sentenced 197 prisoners to be flogged even for minor misdemeanours. Their sentences ranged from seventy-two who had received twenty-five lashes, up to the highest. Seventeen had received one hundred, ten had two hundred and one three hundred lashes – despite the maximum fifty lashes said to be ordered by the Governor and Sydney authorities. The informant advised that his list did not take into account those sentenced to the treadmill without trial, bolters who escaped into the bush or the high death rate from flogging, malnutrition and disease.

Felix was stunned by the sum total of floggings – 11,100 lashes in only eight months. He searched for words of consolation and found none. ‘This makes appalling reading, Father – if it is the truth.'

‘It
is!
God damn Patrick Logan's hide.'

‘But why are you so involved in Moreton Bay, Father? So little time remains to gain a stay of execution for Mungo and Will.'

His father gave a deep sigh. ‘I can never forget that these two lads showed our family extreme loyalty at their trial – to their own detriment. I still hope to save Will Eden's life with a desperate last minute reprieve.' He paused as if the words were difficult to voice. ‘A courier from Government House just delivered notification that Mungo's death sentence has been commuted to a term of imprisonment.'

‘Thank God! Congratulations, Father. That's wonderful news.'

‘Is it? Or have I condemned the lad to a fate as lethal? You've read that report. You tell
me
. Mungo is to serve four years in the hell of Moreton Bay – under Logan! The lad may not live long enough to serve out his sentence! I may well have condemned him to a long, torturous death.'

He buried his head in his hands. ‘God help me, what have I done to these lads? Should I have taken the stand myself? Lied on oath and assumed responsibility for the failure of their grand scheme? Mungo only assumed his Sean O'Connor alias to avoid any public link to my family name – and the disgrace of our being involved in trade.'

Felix rose and moved to his father's side, wanting to touch him but feeling awkward because it was not their custom.

‘None of that business was your doing, Father. Their failure branded Will and Mungo as criminals. Success would have made them heroes.'

‘They're sacrificial lambs to appease the damned Exclusives faction – who are happy enough to invest in an emancipist's dream, but outraged when it collapses. No man deserves to die for an unlucky business decision. Yet the law labels it Major Fraud! And what with William Eden being a second offender – God help him. I failed him!'

‘No, Father. You did everything possible, hired the best barristers in the Colony – even if they did fail to gain a stay of execution. All is not yet lost. His Excellency Governor Darling is a new broom. He may well prove himself with a show of clemency – and bring Logan's brutal methods into line.'

‘You really think so, do you?'

It was the first time in his life that Felix had heard his father in need of vindication. To see this powerful man shaken, questioning his own judgment, moved Felix to the point where his throat constricted and his words rasped.

‘God is on the side of justice, Father. When I visited Will in his cell yesterday it was clear he had made his peace with God. He's ready to die. As for ‘Sean O'Connor' – well, you know Mungo. When I took him a new pair of boots and a book, he acted cavalier. Said he wasn't dead yet and asked why I hadn't brought him some grog. If any man can survive four years at Moreton Bay, Father, it's Mungo!'

‘Right. Get cracking, son. Order Old Crawford to get the carriage ready. I've made copies of my memorial to the Governor. We'll deliver them to
The Gazette
and to Wentworth and Wardell at
The Australian,
as well as to Government House.
'

‘Is that wise, Father? Those newspaper editors are highly radical – hotheads,' Felix said nervously, immediately regretting the implied challenge to his father's judgment.

‘What bloody harm can it do?' Kentigern roared. ‘The law has scheduled to string up Will Eden on the gallows tomorrow morning. How much worse can it be?'

‘You're right of course, Father,' Felix said, pleased to see his father's energy recharged, even if he was required to be the target for his rage.

‘Meanwhile, make sure you handle these other letters promptly on my behalf – with your customary diplomacy, understand?'

‘I'll do my best, Father.'

Kentigern paused in the doorway. ‘Hadn't noticed how tall you've grown. Near enough to my size. There's a second set of mourning clothes – in the event we fail to gain Eden's reprieve. God willing we won't need to wear them, but if we do, tell Jane Quayle to dig it out of my closet for you.'

He was out the door before Felix had time to clarify his orders.

The breakfast dishes were now lukewarm and Felix had lost his appetite, so he settled for a cup of tea and a round of cold toast with marmalade. His eye was drawn back to the two envelopes, written on in his father's large, firm hand, each stamped with a red seal. The first was formally addressed to his mother, Mrs K L'Estrange, the second to Jane, the family servant, whom he knew to be only a markswoman – so it would fall to him to read it aloud to her.

Felix felt distinctly discomforted by all that lay ahead. His likely attendance at the execution of a man well known to him – the first hanging he would witness, yet another confrontation with his mother and, most awkward of all, the need to read a letter that would no doubt increase poor Jane Quayle's suffering.

Why does Father always leave me to handle the most emotional situations? Problems that are none of my making.

•  •  •

From behind the double doors of Albruna L'Estrange's music room came the sound that Felix identified as
Der Mond ist Aufgegangen,
(The Moon is Risen), a traditional German folk song, hesitantly played by a child's hands.

He sighed, remembering the countless times he had played it as boy until he had reached his mother's standard of perfection.

In response to his knock his mother ordered him to enter. He slipped his head around the door and, as he expected, her back was turned to him as she bent over the small boy who sat elevated by two cushions on a stool to enable him to reach the keys of the pianoforte.

Felix recognised him, the son of a recently assigned servant. The lad stopped playing and looked up at his teacher, his eyes wide with anxiety.

Albruna's tone was firm but not unkind, delivering the same advice she had given him as a small boy. ‘From mistakes you become smart, boy. Now go back to the beginning.'

She looked across at Felix as he made a courteous bow, placing a finger to his lips in respect for the student. He silently waved the letter, then placed it on a tray inside the door.

Thankful that the child's presence allowed him to exit and avoid his mother's long held outrage that females were ineligible to sign petitions, he ordered the carriage for his father, then steeled himself to face another expected show of emotion, whether grief, anger or despair.

No avoiding the poor woman now. Despite Mother's ban on Jane Quayle entering
her
half of the house, she's always treated me fairly.

Hat in hand, Felix made his way through the garden to its far end, where the narrow walkway lay between the stables and the small whitewashed grace-and-favour cabin that formed the rear boundary of the Rockingham Estate. These small buildings were separated from the twin grand mansions by the lush expanse of garden broken by a central flagstone path.

Felix hesitated by the side door of the cottage, well known to him. It consisted of one room up and two down, a tiny attached skillion for cooking, plus a sliver of a building shaped like a sentry box, the kind of water closet that his mother always described with the quaint German euphemism, ‘The room to which the Emperor walks'.

Built by convict labour, as the entire estate was, the whitewashed cottage was built in a simple design that Felix suspected would not have looked out of place in past centuries on the Isle of Mann, Jane Quayle's native place. It had no private garden except for a minute courtyard filled with lovingly tended terracotta tubs containing a wide range of herbs. Window boxes held flowering herbs that trailed over the windowsill.

Jane Quayle was nowhere in sight. The open door gave forth the seductive smell of baking – arousing his memories as well as his tastebuds. Cregneish biscuits shaped like golden bars, he was sure of it. The aroma recalled a day when he was five years old – and his first fisticuffs fight with Mungo.

Bested by Mungo, who had knocked him to the ground, Felix
had sobbed as much from fear as pain. There were bloodstains on his mother's gift, the miniature military uniform he wore with pride.
Mutti
would be furious.

Jane Quayle, the family's assigned servant, had carried him inside her tiny cottage which smelled of baking and herbs, so unlike the grand ‘big house' where he lived with his parents at the far end of the garden.

While Mungo, in disgrace, had lurked in the doorway, Jane had fed Felix her delicious Manx biscuits, bathed his knee and bandaged the wound with fresh herbs. His tears and pain had disappeared under the spell of the story she told him of the mermaid found on the magical Isle of Mann.

As proud as a wounded soldier, Felix had returned to the big house, confused by his mother's angry response. She had ripped off Jane's bandage and snapped at his father, ‘I'll be having none of Quayle's witchcraft on
my
son, thank you!'

His father had left the room, tight-lipped, refusing to comment.

Replacing his bandage with her own ‘physician's ointment', Albruna had dismissed Felix's attempts to relate Jane's tale of the mermaid and instead told him a fascinating German legend of the Lorelei, the mysterious golden-haired mermaids whose siren call lured sailors to their death . . .