This Golden Land (57 page)

     Neal was speechless at the sight of her. The memory of last evening flashed in his mind, what a vision Hannah had been! Her neck and shoulders had been bare, and the top of her bosom, her skin so pale and smooth, it had been difficult to tell where skin ended and white satin began. He remembered the last time he had glimpsed her bosom, that afternoon in front of the Australia Hotel, and it had rocked him to see his handkerchief tucked in such an intimate place. "Hannah, my God, Hannah," he whispered. He filled his mouth with her name, filled his eyes with every detail of her, from the shiny black wings of hair swept over her ears into a chignon in the back, to a single fleck of black in the gray iris of her right eye.

     "Hannah, please sit down," he finally said in a tight voice.

     When she was seated on the garden bench, looking up at him perplexity, breathlessly giddy and still stunned by the revelation that there was no fiancée after all, Neal said, "I've rehearsed this moment so many times, and now all words escape me." Lowering himself to one knee and taking her hands into his, he said, "Hannah Conroy, I have never loved a woman as I love you. You stole my heart six years ago, on the
Caprica.
I knew then, when we parted company at Perth, that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you." Releasing her hands, he reached into his trouser pocket and brought out a small box. Lifting the lid, he exposed a diamond ring to the sunlight that streamed through the glass ceiling. "Will you marry me, Hannah? I promise to care for you and love you and respect you for all my days. Without you I am but a shadow of a man. You and I are two volumes of one
book. You complete me, Hannah Conroy. Please say you will be my wife."

     She could barely find breath to say, "Yes."

     With a cry of joy, Neal swept Hannah up into his arms and, with his lips on hers, carried her to the stairs.

     The carriage came to a halt beneath the glow of a street lamp, and the lone passenger alighted without the usual assistance from his coachman. Dr. Iverson was both annoyed and in a hurry. His young colleague, Dr. Soames, had sent an urgent summons to the hospital without saying why. Sir Marcus had been enjoying a dinner party with the Lieutenant Governor and other colonial officials, and so it was with a great show of impatience that he swept into the deserted lobby of Victoria Hospital and, without removing his cape or top hat, hurried up the stairs to the women's ward.

     Lanterns and candles created pools of light along the length of the room where women slept or moaned or breathed with difficulty. At once, the pungent smell of the chlorine-soaked sheets met his nostrils, a sign that the air was being properly disinfected. When he reached the far end, he found Dr. Soames bent over a bed, taking a patient's pulse.

     Edward Soames was a careful and methodical physician, Oxford educated, St. Bart's trained. Tending toward plumpness, he had a round, boyish face with frizzy red-gold hair and spectacles that pinched his nose. A soft-spoken man who expressed genuine concern for his patients, but possessing, Iverson thought, the tendency toward alarmism that was often seen in young doctors.

     "What is the emergency?" Iverson asked, looking around and seeing nothing that had warranted being called from an important dinner. The woman Soames was seeing to was not even Dr. Iverson's patient.

     They had divided the ward, with each doctor overseeing one row of twenty beds. Maternity patients and gynecological patients were under Iverson's care, all other injuries and ailments were Soames's purview.

     "It's another case of childbed fever, sir," the younger doctor said quietly.

     Sir Marcus's sharp eyes went up and down the row of beds where his
own patients slept. "When did we admit another maternity case? I gave strict orders we were to admit no more until the fever was contained."

     "That's just it, sir," Soames said, laying the patient's arm on the sheet and giving her hand a reassuring pat. "This is Molly Higgins," he said of the sleeping patient. "A fifty-year-old washer woman who presented yesterday with a dislocated shoulder."

     "And?"

     Dr. Soames' hazel eyes widened. "She has childbed fever."

     "That's not possible," Iverson said dismissively.

     "I thought so, too, sir, but I have been watching her closely. She was fine yesterday, but began to exhibit the signs around noon. Now, there is no doubt."

     Dr. Iverson removed his gloves and went to the patient's side. He counted her pulse, felt her forehead, and bent to listen to her chest. "Rapid pulse," he murmured, "fever and congested lungs." When he gently pressed her abdomen, she moaned in her sleep. "Could be something else," he said, but with doubt in his tone.

     "Check under her nightgown, sir. The discharge is unmistakable."

     Sir Marcus did, and his face went white. "How is it possible?" he said, stepping away from the bed and beckoning to the female ward attendant. "Childbed fever only afflicts postpartum women."

     "Apparently not."

     "Dear God," Sir Marcus whispered. There were forty women in this ward. Were they
all
going to come down with the fatal fever? The answer had to be in the bad air. If, as Miss Conroy asserted, the infection was carried on the doctor's hands, how had that happened in this particular instance? Dr. Soames had never touched the maternity cases, nor had Dr. Iverson touched the patients on the side of the ward, and he had certainly never been near Molly Higgins. "Clearly the miasma has spread somehow from one side of the ward to the other. We must maintain vigilance in keeping the infected air away from these patients." To the attendant he gave orders that chlorine sheets were to be placed around Molly Higgins' bed and to see that all windows remained closed and locked.

     "Pray that this is just a fluke, Soames," he added with a mouth that had suddenly run dry.

     Hannah lay in the crook of Neal's arm, tracing a fingertip over the lines of tattooed red dots on his chest. She listened in lazy joy as he talked softly. Hannah had never been so in love, had never felt so alive and so full of purpose.

     She had long dreamed of this moment, but had never imagined that physical lovemaking brought such pleasure, such delirium, and such desire for more. She lay naked beneath the sheets, and he lay next to her, the bedroom in a soft glow from a single oil lamp. Outside, voices drifted up from the street, the sound of horses' hooves filled the night. For Neal and Hannah, however, the outside world did not exist. They were deliciously tired from their intimate expression of love and desire. And now in a moment that Hannah thought of as soft and glowing, Neal was telling her a fantastical yarn about a girl named Jallara and her Aboriginal clan.

     "An amazing thing," he said as he stroked Hannah's long hair that had come undone and streamed down her back. "They are the healthiest, most robust people I've ever met. They have very little illness. I think it's because of their nomadic lifestyle. They are constantly on the move, going to fresh grounds and fresh water."

     Neal had decided not to mention Sir Reginald abandoning him after the sandstorm, that Oliphant had in fact been a fraud, his famous books based only on other men's books and hearsay, with a bit of fiction mixed in. No good could come of sullying a dead man's name, and Neal wanted to focus on the positive aspects of his experience.

     Throwing off the blanket, he got out of bed and crossed to the window, where moonlight streamed in, allowing Hannah to feast her eyes on Neal's muscular body. He watched horses and carriages go by on the street below, where even a few pedestrians were still abroad, moving in and out of the glow of street lights. "It's hard to believe," he said quietly, "that just seventeen years ago, there wasn't even a village here. Did you know, Hannah, that John Batman bought all this land from the Aborigines? He gave them blankets, clothes, tomahawks and fifty pounds of flour. I wonder if they were aware of what they were signing away. And now the original inhabitants are either living in Christian missions, or on a government reserve."

     "Wouldn't they prefer to live freely in the Outback?"

     "That isn't their ancestral territory. Melbourne is, and although they no longer have access to their sacred places, they are staying close by. I honestly think, Hannah, that some of them believe the white man will one day pick up and leave."

     He turned to look at her across the moonlit bedroom. "Hannah, during my time in the Nullarbor, I experienced what I believe was a spiritual revelation. It came to me that Josiah Scott is my real father. I don't know how I knew it, but there was no doubt in my heart that I had not been left on his doorstep."

     She sat up in bed. "But Neal, that's wonderful news! Have you written to him about this?"

     "I gave it a great deal of thought, and decided to respect his wishes. For whatever his reasons, my father chose not to tell me the truth about my mother and himself. When I left Boston for England eight years ago, when we said good-bye, that was his opportunity to tell me the secret he had kept all those years. But he chose to remain silent, and I will respect that."

     "What do you think happened inside the mountain?" Hannah asked as she marveled over the small round scars on his torso, straight and curved lines that created an astonishing pattern of red design on his white skin.

     "I don't know. All I can say is that the experience had a profound affect on me. I went into the Nullarbor expecting to measure and quantify and categorize everything I found. Instead, I came out thinking that there are some mysteries that can never be explained by science. The initiation did something to me, Hannah. It's hard to describe. I was made part of this land. My blood ran into the red earth while black men chanted prayers older than time. I went walkabout and found myself inside a red mountain. I belong here, Hannah. And perhaps that is another reason I am going to leave my current relationship with my father as it is. That was another life.
This
is my life now. But I need to know more about my new home. I need to go out and explore and capture Australia on glass. And there is more," he added softly. "I am no longer an atheist, but it is not something I fully understand and I need to explore that, too."

     Hannah said, "You left Adelaide as a worshiper of the future, but came back in love with the past."

     She slipped out of bed and joined him at the window where they were concealed by curtains. Hannah was unashamed of her nakedness, relishing the freedom from clothing, the feel of the night air on her skin, and then Neal's hands touching her in places that ignited flames of desire. She pressed herself to him and they kissed long and deep.

     She laid her head on his chest and said, "Your experience in the Outback was a lot like my own with Jamie O'Brien and his men. It is as though we went through it together."

     "We did. In spirit."

     He looked long and searchingly, filling his eyes with every detail of her face as his hands explored her back. "We have both changed, Hannah my darling. You are now a health practitioner with an office and patients. And you did it on your own. The Aborigines would say it was your Dreaming to be a healer. They would say that you are following your songline."

     He kissed her again, deeply, shuddering with desire but also with a new and overwhelming emotion. "I thought I knew what love was," he said as he kissed her cheeks, her neck, her shoulder. "But oh my dearest Hannah, words escape me." He traced the curve of her jaw with a fingertip as he said, "I never want to leave your side. I had planned to travel north tomorrow, to a place beyond Bendigo. During my trip overland from Sydney, I ran into an old fossicker who told me about a sacred Aboriginal site he had discovered last year. A curious formation of giant boulders in the forest north of Bendigo. He explored underground caves there and came across very old Aboriginal art. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of hand prints on the walls, painted centuries ago, and some so high up they are beyond the reach of a normal man. When I expressed interest in seeing it, he said I had better hurry as he had stumbled upon a quartz reef near the cave and he said that once word of it got out, the area would be invaded by gold hunters."