This Golden Land (63 page)

     Sir Marcus exchanged a glance with Fintan, and then surveyed the crowd which he saw now had grown tighter, with everyone drawing near to hear what the two newcomers were upset about. "Really, sir," he said in a low voice. "It's best if we talk inside."

     Turner wrenched his arm free. "I don't want to talk, I want to see Nellie!" His voice broke, and the pain of it seemed to roll out over the heads of those at the bottom of the steps.

     "They won't let me see
my
wife either!" came a shrill cry from the crowd, and it was joined an instant later by another: "I've been waiting since noon to see my sister and they won't let me in."

     Everyone turned to an older woman with a paisley shawl over her head. "She came in with a broken ankle and now they say I can't see her! What if she's dead? What are they hiding from us?"

     Shouts and yells rose to the sky, as everyone demanded to know what was going on inside the hospital, why were the Aborigines here, were they all going to come down with the plague?

     "I say we just go on in!" shouted a man in front, who was very large with arms as thick as fireplace logs. "They can't stop us!"

     "I cannot allow you to do this," Sir Marcus said in a calm, authoritative voice that disguised his own fear. If this mob were to decide to storm the hospital. . .

     Joe Turner suddenly bolted for the double doors, his brother on his heels, and men began to surge up the steps.

     "Stop him," Sir Marcus said, and Fintan reached the doors first, barring the way. On the other side of the glass, he heard someone hastily turn the keys in the locks.

     "I just want to see my Nellie," Turner said with imploring eyes. "I just want to know she's all right. Our baby is so small—he is so tiny—he needs his Mum—"

     Turner broke down again, sobbing into his hands.

     "I want to take my sister out of the hospital!" cried another man.

     Everson recognized who had spoken. A chimney sweep who came daily to visit. "My good sir, your sister needs to remain in traction. If she is moved, her hip will break anew and she will never walk again."

     "Better than dying of the plague!"

     Shouts of agreement and fear joined him, and those in front surged toward the steps again, shouting about the deaths of loved ones, sisters and mothers who had gone into the hospital for a broken foot or dislocated shoulder, now lying in pine boxes.

     "We'll break the bloody doors down!"

     Sir Marcus and Fintan looked on in horror as a sea of enraged men began to sweep up the steps like an unstoppable tidal wave.

     "Hold on there!" came a shout. Those inside the hospital, watching through the glass panes of the main doors, saw Neal Scott on horseback appear at the far edge of the throng. Jumping down from his horse, he sprinted around and pushed his way through to the steps. "What's going on, doctor?" he asked breathlessly when he reached the top.

     Someone shouted, "There's plague in the hospital and we've come to take our loved ones out before they die."

     "Mr. Scott, we cannot let any patients leave," Iverson said quietly, "the fever will spread to the city."

     Neal turned to the men who were advancing up the steps, hands curled into fists. "Listen to me. There's no need for violence. Remember, this is a hospital. There are sick people inside."

     "You stay out of this," growled the man with thick arms. "Have you lost anyone in this hospital? Has someone you loved died?"

     "No," Neal said cautiously, his eye on the men as they edged closer, "but
my bride-to-be is in there and I wouldn't let her stay in there if I didn't think it was safe."

     "Bride-to-be ain't the same as a wife," another man grumbled.

     Neal surveyed the scene, felt the tension in the air, saw the angry looks of those nearest and who seemed intent on storming the hospital. He glanced at the natives and realized that the stranger on the road outside of Brookdale Farm had exaggerated. These Aborigines weren't a mob of a hundred, and they did not have the place surrounded. They also did not seem intent upon burning the hospital down. A curious bunch, Neal thought. Not all of them were tribal. The younger ones wore girls' dresses or boys' trousers and shirts. From a mission, he supposed.

     "We got a right to protect our families!" the thick-set man shouted, and the crowd shouted their agreement.

     Another yelled, "Come on, let's break the bloody doors down!"

     Iverson murmured to Neal, "We haven't the manpower to stop them."

     "Look!" Fintan said, pointing. Marcus and Neal turned to see several men running around the side of the building. In the next instant, Joe Turner and his brother flew down the steps after them.

     "Is there a back way in, Doctor?" Neal asked, imagining the mayhem should those men get inside.

     "Yes, and it's unlocked. The keys are in my office. Mr. Scott, we should send for the police."

     "I'm afraid there isn't time."

     Their eyes met. "You go, doctor," Neal said. "Fintan, you take off after that bunch. See if you can find help. Hospital attendants, visitors,
anybody.
I'll hold these men off."

     Neal turned to the crowd and held up his hands. "Listen to me! There isn't room inside for all of you. And you will only end up frightening the patients.

     "We have a right to go inside!"

     "Very well," Neal said, squaring off with the angry chimney sweep. "You want to check on loved ones, reassure yourselves they don't have the fever? Is that right?"

     "Damn right, mate!"

     "So you really believe there is contagion in this building."

     "Plague!" shouted several at once.

     "And you're willing to infect yourselves? On purpose?" He flung out his right arm and pointed at the entrance where bluestone columns stood majestically on either side of the doors. "You will deliberately walk through there and expose yourselves to whatever lethal sickness lies on the other side?" He then pointed to one of the men nearest him. "You, sir! How many children do you have?"

     The man made a face. "What does that matter?"

     "Because that's how many mouths will go hungry if you cross that threshold and become infected."

     Neal leveled his gaze at those nearest him, and then he shouted over their heads, his voice carrying above the crowd so that those gathered under a glowing street light could hear: "How many of you men are willing to make widows of your wives? How many of you women are ready to leave orphans behind? How many of you don't want to live to see Christmas?"

     This gave them pause, as they looked at one another, exchanging uncertain glances, murmuring sudden doubts and indecision.

     "Does this make sense to you?" Neal pressed. "The doctors in this hospital know what they are doing."

     "No they don't!"

     "Doctors don't know a bloody thing!"

     "All right," Neal said. "Yes, there is fever here, but it is being contained and the other patients are being protected from it."

     "Then why can't we go in?"

     "Because you will spread the contagion."

     But then someone on the steps remembered overhearing what the American had said about a bride-to-be. "You have a lady in there!" he shouted. "A woman you're going to marry. And you said you weren't worried that she was inside. And there's lady volunteers, you said. What about
them?
Ain't they spreading it?"

     "Yeah," echoed another man. "And ain't
they
got husbands and kids?"

     "You can't have it both ways, mate," the chimney sweep snarled. "Either it's safe in there or it's not."

     "You know what I think?" shouted a burly man with the red nose and blood shot eyes of a heavy drinker. "I think they don't know what's going on in there. I think their lyin' to us, and as for me I'm taking my brother out. He just has a broken leg. I can take care of him at home, which I shoulda done in the first place."

     They surged up the steps and Neal braced himself for a fight.

     At that moment, the front doors opened and Dr. Iverson emerged, to much jeering and hissing from the crowd. "I got to the back door just in time," he said to Neal. "I don't know how long it will be before they seize a piece of lumber and use it as a battering ram. We have to find a way to control this mob."

     Fintan returned from the back of the building, Joe and Graham Turner with him.

     The main door opened again and Hannah came out into the night. "Neal! I didn't know you were here. Someone told me that—" And then she saw the Turner brothers. "You must be Joe Turner," she said, going to the younger of the bearded men. "Someone told me you were here. I am Hannah Conroy, I knew your wife."

     "You're the midwife," he said, running his sleeve under his nose. "Nellie wrote to me about you. She said you were very kind to her. Is she all right? May I see her now?"

     "I am so sorry," Hannah said softly, laying a hand on his shoulder. "Nellie did not survive."

     Turner started to sob anew. Hannah's heart went out to him. Despite the manly beard, Hannah saw that Joe Turner was very young, barely more than a baby himself, she thought. "Mr. Turner," she said gently, "Nellie didn't suffer. She went peacefully." Hannah hated to lie, but sometimes it was necessary for another person's peace of mind. Even her father, a steadfast Quaker who believed in truth above all, occasionally spun a small fiction for grieving family members.

     "Did ya hear that?" shouted one of the men on the steps, turning to face the crowd. "They killed his wife! Poor woman came in to have a baby and she perished of the plague! We won't let that happen to
our
wives!"

     Hannah stepped forward, raising her hands. "Please, everyone stay
calm! We have things under control." She moved into the light of a lantern, her white bodice glowing, her dark skirt like a cloud about her legs. The white lace cap on her dark hair was transformed into a soft halo. She stood tall, poised and confidant, and for an instant, all eyes were on her, voices quelled, the night filled with an uneasy silence.

     And then the men on the steps decided they had delayed the rescue of their sisters, mothers, fathers and children from the hospital long enough and they started for the doors.

     Just then, to everyone's surprise, the Aborigines rose to their feet, and the crowd fell back in fear.

     Neal frowned at the natives, saw their eyes, their unreadable faces, and then looked at Hannah. "That's strange," he murmured. "They are looking at
you."

     "Me!" she said. And then Hannah saw that that he was right. Twenty pairs of deep-set eyes, shadowed and piercing, were fixed on her. "But why?"

     "I don't know. You are the first person they have reacted to."

     Shouting erupted. The throng flowed and ebbed like a turbulent sea. "They're going to kill us!" "We'll all be slaughtered!"

     One of the men on the steps rushed up, but Neal caught him and wrestled him back. "Outa the way!" the man grunted. "They ain't satisfied with putting a curse on us and killing us with plague. Now they're going to send spears through us."

     Fintan ran to Neal's aid and together they restrained the man. Iverson raised his arms for silence, but he received only a dull roar. He spoke over it, as loudly as he could without revealing his own fear: "We have nothing to be afraid of from the natives! If they had wanted to kill us, they would have done so by now. Allow us to ask them what they want and then perhaps they will go away."

     "I say we kill 'em!" came a shout from the crowd, followed by a bonechilling chorus of agreement.

     Neal said, "Stay here, Hannah. I'm going to try talking to them."

     All eyes turned upon Neal as he cautiously approached the group. The natives had risen in unison, yet Neal had not heard any of them speak. Who had given the command? He drew near with conflicting feelings: fear, as he
remembered the massacre at Galagandra, but also admiration and respect, as he thought of Jallara and her people. He sized them up—the white-haired elders adorned with paint and necklaces and feathers—then asked in English, "Which of you is the leader?"

     Lamps and candles in the hospital windows shed light over the scene, and the white paint made the natives look like other-worldly specters. They were so like Jallara's people, Neal thought, and yet not.

     When he received no response, he decided to try a few words in Jallara's dialect, phrases taught to him by Thumimburee that were used only among men. To Neal's surprise, a white-haired elder turned to face him. The onlookers shifted and murmured among themselves, fists tightening, ready to defend their fellow white man.

     When Neal repeated the phrase, a girl stepped forward, wearing a plain dress and barefooted. Her black hair was long and silky, like Jallara's. "Hello, sir, I am Miriam. We do not speak your tongue."

     He looked into her round face and deep-set black eyes, and thought: But it did the trick. This old fellow knew I had spoken a dialect of native language.

     "I would like to speak to your chief, Miriam. Can you help me?"

     "My father's father is chief. I speak English. I say what father's father say."

     Neal respectfully addressed the elder as he spoke through the girl, "Why have your people come to this place?"

     Miriam spoke to her grandfather and translated his reply. "He say he cannot talk to white man about this. It is sacred. Taboo."

     Neal thought for a moment, taking the measure of the elder who stood before him with white hair and a long white beard, dark eyes peering out from a layer of thick white paint. "Why did you stand up when the white woman came out of the building?" He gestured toward Hannah but received only silence and an impassive expression.

     He decided on another tack. "What is the Dreaming of this place?"

     When Miriam translated, the chief gave Neal a look of curiosity. As he responded, and Miriam translated, the old man watched Neal carefully. "Crocodile Dreaming," she said, and Neal nodded in understanding.