This Golden Land (16 page)

     The central post office was the nexus of the city's important news, with one wall devoted to government announcements and front page news. Here one could read about the latest ordinances, recent elections, new laws, rules and edicts. There were also police broadsheets—posters advertising rewards for wanted outlaws.

     Hannah perused the police broadsheets in idle curiosity.

     A fugitive named Jeremy Palmer of Warrington, Lancashire, "Did on the 18th Day of March in 1842, stab and kill his employer, Mr. McMasters of Billiluna Station. Palmer is aged twenty-three, average height, brown hair, is crippled with a clubfoot."

     Another broadsheet advertised a reward of fifty pounds for the capture of a prisoner who had absconded from the Female House of Corrections in Hobart Town on the 19th of January: "Mary Jones alias Middleton. Sentenced to three years Penal Servitude. Age 38 years, height 5ft 2in, complexion swarthy, stout build, hair dark auburn, a scar on first finger on left hand."

     When Hannah came to the next poster, one recently added, she stopped short and stared.

£50
REWARD

F
OR THE CAPTURE OF ONE

JAMIE O'BRIEN

W
ANTED FOR CRIMES COMMITTED IN THE
C
OLONIES AND
T
ERRITORIES, WHICH INCLUDE THEFT THROUGH FRAUD, TRICKS AND
CONFIDENCE GAMES
.

H
E IS ALSO WANTED IN
N
EW
S
OUTH
W
ALES FOR IMPERSONATING
PERSONS OF AUTHORITY, FORGING GOVERNMENT DOCMENTS AND EVASION
OF THE
L
AW
.

     D
ESCRIPTION
: O'B
RIEN IS FIVE FEET TEN INCHES, SLIM BUILD, AGED THIRTY WITH DARK BLOND HAIR AND PALE BLUE EYES
. O'B
RIEN HAS SCARS ON HIS WRISTS AND ANKLES FROM IRON SHACKLES
. O'B
RIEN IS A CUNNING RACKETEER KNOWN LOCALLY AS A "SHARP" AND A "GYP ARTIST
."

     Hannah blinked. Jamie O'Brien. Wasn't that the name of the stranger who had saved her from the dingo in Lulu's garden? She remembered the scars on his wrists, as his shirt sleeves had been rolled up. And now she understood the reason for the expectant look on his face when he had told her his name.

     Hannah had wondered if she would see the mysterious stranger again.
Every time she was called to Lulu Forchette's house, she had thought of the enchanted encounter in the rose garden. She had difficulty analyzing her curious attraction to O'Brien. It wasn't the same as her feelings for Neal. Jamie O'Brien was more like one of the strange wonders of Australia, like the kangaroos and kookaburras, the vast skies and breathtaking vistas. Hannah was becoming captivated by this land, and perhaps that was what it had been with O'Brien. He was born here. He was simply another unique aspect of this fascinating continent.

     As she started to move away, Hannah recognized Ida Gilhooley, pushing through the crowd. "Miss Conroy! There you are! Your landlady said we'd find you here, miss. Can you come to the house? Alice is hurt bad."

     "Alice! How?" Hannah followed Mrs. Gilhooley out the main entrance and down the steps toward the waiting wagon.

     "She fell and hit her head. Miss Forchette didn't want to send for you, she said it was nothing and that we shouldn't bother you about such a small thing. But, miss, Alice is groaning and says she feels sick. So I told Her Nibs we got weevils in the flour. It was the only way me and Walt could come into town.
She
don't know we're fetching you for Alice. She'll raise hell when she finds out, but Alice is in a bad way and we just couldn't stand by any longer."

     As Hannah climbed into the wagon, she looked at Ida and said, "What do you mean 'any longer'?"

     Ida climbed in next to her, so that the three sat snugly on the bench while Walt snapped the reins. "It's terrible what that woman does to those girls," Ida said. "Keeps them as slaves, and mistreats them something awful."

     Hannah looked at her in surprise. "I thought the girls were happy there."

     "They're not," Ida said as her husband maneuvered the wagon into the busy traffic on King William Street. "Lulu goes out in her carriage and goes up and down the streets, looking for girls begging. She gets them as young as she can so she's sure they're virgins and don't have the French disease. Lulu seems kind at first, offering them a room and meals. And after a few days asks them to entertain a 'friend.' You know the rest."

     Hannah felt her stomach tighten. Surely what Ida said wasn't true. "But the girls can leave any time they want."

     "Lulu charges the girls for room and board. She keeps a ledger. They
have to pay off their debt and Lulu sees to it that they can never save enough money to pay it off. Walt and I owe her, too. D'you think we'd work there willingly? Lulu tricked us like she tricks everybody. Our little farm suffered a drought and the bank was threatening to take it from us. Lulu offered us a loan, which we jumped at. A few months later, she called in the note. We couldn't pay so she took our farm and then made us work for her to pay it back. That's how she does it. She preys on people in trouble, pretends to be their rescuer and ends up getting free labor."

     "And Alice?"

     Walt suddenly said, "I'm not sure about this, Ida, going behind Lulu's back. There's no telling what that woman will do when she lets her temper loose."

     "Keep going, Walt," Ida said firmly. "I've got a fond spot for Alice. She sings like an angel and I draw the line at—"

     When Ida didn't finish her sentence, Hannah looked at her. "Draw the line at what, Mrs. Gilhooley?"

     But Ida pressed her lips together and kept her eyes on the traffic ahead.

     Feeling apprehensive, Hannah tried to settle into her place between Walt and Ida, as it would be at least a thirty minute ride out of town. She held firmly to her blue carpetbag, cradled in her lap. Molly Baker, a fellow resident at Mrs. Throckmorton's, had suggested Hannah trade the bag in for something more stylish, but Hannah would not part with it, even after she had treated herself to a new outfit. As it was May and winter was around the corner, Hannah had purchased the newest style of dress, one that came with a jacket bodice worn over a high-necked blouse and unbuttoned to reveal a waistcoat (which was false, because it was unthinkable for a lady to wear a real waistcoat). The sleeves were very wide with white lacy undersleeves, and the hem swept the wooden sidewalk in a festoon of scalloped ruffles. From her bonnet to her boots, Hannah's outfit was an array of autumn colors—russet, pecan, and bronze.

     King William Street was wide but not macadamized, so that mud was kicked up by dense traffic that consisted of wagons and carts, drays and buggies, open carriages and closed carriages, men on horseback, and even a sixteen-passenger omnibus drawn by four horses. But the wooden sidewalks
made it possible for pedestrians to stroll comfortably past businesses and look in the windows of fish and chip shops, bakeries, banks, haberdashers, dry goods shops, tea houses, pubs, chemists, and dressmakers' salons. Up and down Adelaide's main north-south thoroughfare ranged a hodgepodge of architecture and design, with four-story red brick commercial buildings interspersed with small weatherboard cottages and even shacks.

     When Hannah first arrived, she had been fascinated by the fact that Adelaide had been a
planned
city. She had assumed that all cities were like London, having sprouted long ago and then grown willy-nilly in every direction. But men had come to these plains with an actual plan, and had set about to creating a grid of wide, straight streets, with the city blocks marked off into lots, and a large square in the center, named for Queen Victoria, and four smaller planned parks planted with grass and trees. The nearby plains and foothills had since become a patchwork of wheat farms, vineyards and sheep runs. Nearer to the town were two flour mills, factories processing raw materials, a brewery, several distilleries, a candle manufacturer, and slaughter houses that emptied their refuse into the river.

     The newness of Adelaide also amazed her. In Bayfield, the tavern was four centuries old. Here, the oldest pub had been built only twelve years ago. People had occupied Bayfield's region continuously back to prehistoric times. But Hannah had learned that when the first white settlers arrived in South Australia, the only inhabitants were handful of Aborigines who had since been re-settled elsewhere.

     Finally Hannah and the Gilhooleys were out of the congestion and following a pleasant country lane, but the mood of the three in the wagon was far from joyful. Hannah noticed that Walt's face was set grimly, and Ida now clasped her gloved hands tightly. Neither had spoken a word in the half hour ride. And Hannah herself was anxious. In the past three months, she had become very fond of Lulu's chambermaid.

     Whenever Hannah visited the house, she made a point of seeking Alice out, to exchange a few words with her and then ask her to sing a song—just in the kitchen for the cooking staff, because she knew how cripplingly shy Alice was, and knew that she never sang for anyone else, or in any other part
of the house. Hannah saw how beautifully Alice blossomed when she sang for her small audience, how she closed her eyes that were the color of cornflowers, lifted her chin, and sent golden tones over the heads of her silent admirers. Hannah herself was moved each time by bittersweet emotion, as Alice's ballads reminded her of Bayfield and her father, their little cottage, and even her mother, who had died when Hannah was thirteen.

     When Hannah had commented once to Alice how her voice moved others, Alice had shyly said, "I did not know before the fire that I had a voice. It was afterwards, when a neighbor was nursing me back to health. I was in such emotional and physical pain, that I would go for long walks in the countryside, away from people. One day I was listening to a songbird, and the sound so lifted my spirits that I opened my mouth and sent my own song up to the sky. I sang out my soul, and at once I felt the healing begin. Since then, I cannot stop singing. I think that if I were to be silenced, I would die."

     Hannah thought it a shame that Alice could never sing professionally, that her amazing voice would never be shared with the rest of the world. But there was no venue for her. Her facial scars saw to that.

     "Here we are," said Walt at last, as the familiar house came into view.

     Ida Gilhooley took Hannah to a small room off the kitchen where Alice lay moaning on a pallet.

     The girl was dressed only in undergarments—a white cotton shift over cotton drawers—and lay curled on her side, whimpering and shaking. Hannah saw a nasty gash in the scalp, the blood already blackening in Alice's yellow-blond hair. But there were also red welts all over her body, and small cuts. And one eye was purpling, an angry swelling of the lids.

     Hannah knelt at her side and when she gently laid her hand on Alice's shoulder, the girl started. "Shh, it is only me, Miss Conroy. Can you tell me what happened?"

     When Alice didn't reply, Hannah looked up at the others gathered around, but none would meet her eyes. "What happened here?"

     One of the kitchen girls coughed and said, "She fell."

     Noting the wound on her scalp, Hannah examined Alice's eyes, then asked if she still felt nauseated. But it appeared that the danger of concussion
had passed. She made a closer examination of Alice's other injuries, confirming for herself that they had not been caused by a fall. Alice had been beaten. And among the bright red welts, Hannah saw yellow and green bruises, indicating they were days old.

     Strangely shaped bruises, she noticed.

     Hannah realized that they were are all the same oval shape, and there was even a scar that had once been closed with stitches—it, too, was the same shape. Hannah realized in shock where she had seen that oval before—it matched the unusual gold handle of Lulu Forchette's walking cane.

     Hannah looked up at those around her. "Alice didn't fall, did she?"

     "Lulu wants her to sing for the men," Ida Gilhooley said.

     The light from the kitchen doorway was suddenly blocked. Hannah turned to see the mountainous Lulu standing there robed in a bright red ruffled dressing gown. She stood supported on her cane, with a stormy expression on her face. "What's going on here? Get away from that girl."

     Hannah rose to her feet. "You have been beating her."

     "The silly cow needs it."

     Hannah noticed that, despite her girth, Lulu had no trouble walking. The cane, Hannah suspected, was put to other uses. As the kitchen workers looked on in silence, Lulu and Hannah locked gazes. When Lulu took a step forward, Hannah stood her ground. But her heart pounded, and she was reminded of the wild dingo in the rose garden. There would be no Jamie O'Brien to rescue her now.

     As calmly as she could, Hannah turned her back on the three-hundred-pound madam and knelt next to Alice. "Would you like to come home with me, dear?"

     Alice's eyes widened in fear. She glanced past Hannah at Lulu, and swallowed painfully. Hannah moved so that she blocked Alice's view of Lulu, and said again, "Would you like to come home with me? You will be safe, I promise. No one will harm you."

     When the girl hesitated, Hannah said, "You have the right to be treated with respect and dignity like anybody else."

     Alice finally said in a tiny voice, "Then yes, miss, I should very much like to go with you."

     "The girl owes me," Lulu barked.

     But Hannah ignored her, helping Alice to her feet and wrapping the blanket around her. There would be no time to fetch what few possessions Alice had. With her arm protectively around the girl, Hannah faced her opponent. "You have received your fair payment, Miss Forchette. Alice will not be coming back here. Nor shall I."

     Lulu said nothing, and the air became charged with tension. Some of the "upstairs" girls had come to see what was happening, dressed in night clothes or undergarments, looking sleepy and tousled. Their work day would not begin until afternoon.