The Isis Knot Read online

  Only nine men remained in the harbor. The sun was setting at her back, throwing light against the buildings that were set in stepped layers up the rocks. A soldier prodded Elizabeth up onto the crate. She looked out at the bidders’ upturned faces, refusing to wink or smile, like some of the other women had. No man raised his hand to bid. Several swiped at the backs of their necks. Someone coughed.

  “If no one takes her,” the soldier at her side announced, “it’s off to the Factory.”

  Elizabeth scraped together what little was left of her pride and raised her chin. It did not matter that none of these horrible creatures wanted her. The most worthy of men had wanted her once—and he would again, if her life had any purpose—and that was all that mattered.

  At that moment she could have sworn she saw Moore’s face in a plume of distant chimney smoke. Porcelain skin, square jaw, that lock of brown hair tinged with faint silver persistently falling across his brow. He smiled at her, from wherever he was, and told her that he’d been wrong to dismiss her. Told her to continue her search, and they’d be together once again. Someday.

  “I’ll take her.”

  A man with rounded shoulders, concave belly, and legs the width of twigs ambled to the front of the crate. At first glance she guessed him around fifty years of age, but closer scrutiny revealed a smooth face behind the uneven beard. He wasn’t much older than five and twenty. She was taller than him by a head.

  The soldier gave her a little push and she toppled from the crate, into the arms of the man who’d claimed her. She tried to recoil but he had a firm grip on her hand. Where would she go even if she could escape?

  The man grinned up at her. At least he had a full set of teeth. He pulled her out of the harbor and into the town proper. They wove in and out of stone buildings that looked like they had just been cut from the nearby cliffs, and leaning wooden structures that must have been around since Captain Cook. The entire place smelled of poverty—an odor she remembered well.

  “Where are you taking me?” she finally demanded.

  “Over there.” His accent sounded northern. Yorkshire, maybe?

  Under a tree stood a small church, the complete opposite of the grand stone-and-glass structures in England. Made of wood and devoid of any decoration save an unpainted cross above the door, the church looked as plain and crude as the rest of this dreadful place. They had to queue up to enter. She recognized the other people in line as her shipmates and the men who’d claimed them. No one looked anyone else in the eye. No one spoke. Unease stole all her words.

  There, in the little church that smelled of newly chopped wood and wax candles, and barely an hour after stepping foot on New South Wales, Elizabeth was married. She remembered nothing about the ceremony except her husband’s name: Thomas Kingsford.

  They exited the church into a scene like something out of one of the brothels in London’s Seven Dials. Newly married couples sprinkled the area. Elizabeth could see the hem of one woman’s skirt sticking out from behind a wagon wheel, another’s half hidden by a bush. Grunting men rocked between their legs. Elizabeth looked away, heat rising in her face.

  Moore had never done that to her, even though she’d begged and once offered herself to him naked. But he’d always just smiled that beautiful smile and kissed her cheek and told her he would never dream of sullying her before they were properly married. He’d promised to propose as soon as they located what they’d been searching for ever since he’d saved her from the London streets many years ago. He’d promised.

  But then he’d sent her away, before his quarry could be found. So she was still a maid.

  She’d told that story to another convicted pickpocket in Newgate, and the other woman had sneered and spat and said that Moore had only been using Elizabeth all these years. But Elizabeth refused to believe that. Refused.

  Thomas eyed the couples. Then her. His lips hung open and he breathed heavily, but he did not approach her. He kept his hands shoved in his pockets, though if his eyes were fingers her dress would’ve already been in a heap on the ground.

  “What did you do?” he asked as they slid next to each other on the slanted bench of his wagon. She sucked on her lips and said nothing.

  “Was a convict myself.” His voice shook. “Stole lead from my neighbor’s roof and sold it. Finished my sentence two years ago and decided to stay.”

  She noticed his salacious gaze slide up her legs, and she tucked the yellow dress tighter around her body. What he was looking at, she didn’t know, for she had little to fill out the bodice of the dress and no other curves elsewhere. He was a man living among so few women, and she dared not imagine any further.

  “I picked a pocket on the wrong street. Among other things.”

  She closed her eyes briefly, but it brought too-strong memories of the twisty London streets that she knew so well, and she had to open her eyes again, lest she get lost in her own regret. She would adapt and survive her time here, and then she would return. Husband or no.

  Thomas laughed, though it was without humor. “You and about a thousand others here.”

  He slapped the reins attached to the lone horse and the wagon lurched.

  Everything was different here. The people, the birds, the vegetation, the very smell of the air.

  Sometimes Moore told her stories of his past travels—of exotic lands on the other side of oceans, of sandy deserts and unscalable mountain ranges. He was so vibrant and charming and oh so wealthy, and he’d seen so much. She longed to see all the places he spoke of, if only to look upon what his eyes had.

  But Moore had never been to the colony of New South Wales.

  She cleared her throat. “And where do you live, Thomas?”

  He lifted his patchy-haired chin to the south. “I have a few hundred sheep up this road. It’s not much, but it’s more than I had when I arrived here.”

  Sheep. In her lifetime she’d gone from street child to adored detective to convict to a shepherd’s reluctant wife. She vowed that the last two would be mere pauses in her life.

  She stared straight ahead, memorizing the sage-and-gold landscape with its twisted bushes and white-barked trees. In the distance came an astoundingly loud cackle, making her jump. When no threat presented itself and Thomas looked nonplussed, she settled.

  Away from Sydney the air smelled wonderful. It tingled in her lungs and she breathed in huge gulps.

  “Eucalyptus.” His hand trembled as it wiped at his trousers. “You sure are pretty.”

  She most certainly was not, and the way he suddenly started to fidget made her want to jump from the wagon.

  Needing peace and reassurance, she reached into the collar of the yellow dress and pulled out Moore’s ring on its rope. I need you, my love. Help me survive this. Help me get back to you, like you promised. I will do whatever it takes.

  The ring did not sparkle in the sunlight like the jewelry of those posh women in London and Oxford from whom she’d stolen. It was little more than a large slab of gold stamped with an ugly figure of a man with a grotesque animal head and an arrow-tipped tail. She’d never understood its meaning. But then, she’d never had to. Moore had given it to her, told her that one day it would bring them together in a way that was even more powerful than the union between a man and wife, and that was all she cared about.

  “What do you got there?”

  She’d not thought. She’d been careless. She realized her mistake too late.

  Thomas pulled the wagon to a halt and grabbed for the ring. She tried to swing it away but he was too quick. His fingers closed around the hunk of metal and yanked. The rope snapped and the ring slid off, tumbling with a clunk to the wagon floor. Gasping, she dove as it disappeared through the slats.

  “Bastard!” She glared up at him, fist clenched at her side. But his hand found her face first.

  The force of his blow twisted her body away. Her hip jammed into the seat and she fell in a heap to the floorboards. Pain sliced across her cheek and made its way do
wn to her heart.

  “Don’t call me names, woman.” Air tickled her thighs as he grabbed at her skirt.

  Twisting, she grasped the wagon’s side. Splinters pierced her palms as she pulled herself away from her husband, yanking the skirt from his fingers. She scrambled over the side and tumbled to the ground.

  “Get back in here!”

  His growls did not scare her. Neither did his anger. Only the ring mattered.

  She crawled under the wagon, her sore hands patting the clumps of grass, searching. Thomas jumped off and landed heavily behind her. He grabbed her ankles just as her fingers grasped her prize. Relief burst inside her, pulling a welcome curtain of oblivion across her consciousness.

  He jerked her out from under the wagon, shoved an arm under her hips, and pulled her to her knees. All she saw was the ring.

  She heard him fumble with his trousers. All she felt was the ring’s strength.

  Eucalyptus air touched her thighs as he threw up her skirts. He spit on himself and shoved inside her. She was dry and a maid and it hurt more than any horrible story she’d ever heard about what the first time was like. Each thrust was a knife’s blade of pain and shame. Vaguely she heard her long, low moans of protest, but they were overshadowed by her husband’s violent, exuberant grunts.

  She clenched the circle of gold so tightly it gouged into her palm. The ring numbs the pain. The ring numbs the pain. The ring numbs the pain.

  He shuddered and howled like a wild dog. The sound sailed over the open land, shivering the trees. When he sagged against her, she reached behind and pushed him off, out of her. He left behind a stickiness between her legs, a burning ache, and a terrible emptiness.

  For a moment he looked apologetic and remorseful. Until he reached out and snatched the ring from her hand. “I’ll hold that, if you don’t mind.”

  She started to cry. Moore would’ve scolded her for showing tears if he were here, but she couldn’t stop the emotion. He seemed so very far away. “No. Thomas, please…”

  “Nothing will happen to it, ’long as you do what I say.”

  He might as well have clutched her body in his hand instead of the ring. He knew her weakness now, what she valued. The power was his.

  CHAPTER 6

  Of the five convicts living on Brown’s farm, William worked the hardest and with the most intense focus, but not because he was scared of the colonist’s lash, or because he cared about behaving well enough to earn a temporary ticket of leave. The harder he threw an axe at felled trees or the longer he dug rocks from a new planting field, the easier it was to block out the woman’s face. The moment he paused, however, she returned in beautiful fury.

  Nights were the worst, filled with restlessness and anxiety. And there had been five since he’d seen her.

  Brown, ever vigilant when it came to his “property,” had kept a careful eye on William ever since he’d tried to jump from the wagon. William would never get a ticket of leave. And freedom was seven years away.

  Which left him with the sole option of bolting. He considered it every day, weighing routes and excuses and ramifications. No, he obsessed over it.

  The colony was a dangerous, empty place filled with dangerous people. There was no escape, water at every possible exit. If he were caught as a bolter before he even found her, he’d be hanged.

  The risk was worth it. After eighteen years of being goaded by the visions—being moved from one stepping stone to another, all eventually leading here—he needed the fox chase to end. The Spectre’s wordless urging had changed since he’d stepped foot on New South Wales. The feel of it had shifted drastically, and when William had actually seen the woman in the wagon, he’d known. This was the end. He would soon be free.

  And the woman…well, the vision of her he’d been given on board the John Barry paled in comparison to her reality. Now that he’d seen her, he didn’t just muse over what she was supposed to mean to him, or why this had happened to him of all people. At night, tossing and turning, he started to imagine how she’d feel underneath him, around him. What her mouth and skin tasted like.

  The worst part was, he couldn’t tell if it was the Spectre’s desire seeping into his mind, or if it was all his own.

  On that fifth night, in the convicts’ quarters above the barn, William was lying down, thinking about the woman. When Jem slid silently under his own nearby blanket, William yanked his hand out of his trousers. Jem noticed—he paused slightly in his movements—but made no comment or joke. In the moonlight coming through a high window, William watched crimson seep up Jem’s neck. The lad looked away.

  William lay there, frustrated and unfulfilled. He distracted himself by listening to Jem settle in. The satisfied sounds of someone finally finding their way in the world eased from Jem’s lips. Mrs. Brown had him helping her in the main house, and the work agreed with him. Every day he walked a little straighter, a little more assured. William had even seen him smile once or twice.

  It was exactly what he’d wanted for the lad, and it had been given to him in an entirely unexpected place.

  As Jem recounted his day’s mundane events, William dozed. Then Jem whispered, “I heard Brown talking about some bolters.”

  William opened one eye. “What about them?”

  “Said a large group tried to make a run over the Blue Mountains. They thought there was some kind of ‘heaven’ on the other side. A whole new civilization of men like them.”

  “They didn’t make it, did they?”

  Jem sounded genuinely shocked. “How’d you guess?”

  William chuckled. “You wouldn’t have heard about them if they had.” Jem considered that in silence. “Go on.”

  “Oh. Right. Well, apparently they got lost and took to eating each other. When some tried to make it back to Sydney, they were hanged for stealing sheep.”

  The story, insane and disheartening as it was, only made William more determined to leave, which was insane in of itself. But how? How?

  The answer came the next day with the rain.

  The farm shut down early as the world darkened, the sky boiling with heavy clouds. The ground was so dry and hard the fat raindrops bounced off it like glass. The other convicts took shelter in their nook above the barn, but William stood outside under the eaves, thumbs hooked on his braces. Staring in the direction where the woman’s wagon had gone.

  Across the yard, a door opened. Jem exited the main house carrying a bucket of slop, which he tossed behind a tree. He straightened and found William hiding in the shadows. Their eyes met briefly, something heavy passing between them. Jem approached slowly, the rain soaking through his clothes, making him look thinner than he already was.

  “I’m leaving,” William told him. For emphasis, thunder rumbled.

  Jem’s shoulders collapsed. The pail sagged in his hands. “Why?”

  William had never mentioned his visions to Jem, even after all their time together. But then, he’d never told anyone. He’d always kept his madness to himself. “I just have to.”

  “But that doesn’t make any sense.” Water streamed down Jem’s face, flattening his greasy hair on either side of his beaked nose.

  “It doesn’t matter. I need to go now. While it’s dark and pouring and there’s lots of storm left. I’m trying to tell you good-bye. To tell you that I’m proud of you. That I’m glad I knew you. I’m not doing a very good job.”

  Jem threw a long, despairing look toward the house, where Mrs. Brown’s pregnant shadow moved behind the curtains. “Can I come with you?”

  William pulled away from the side of the barn, coming out from under the eave, the rain pelting his chest and arms. “What? Why?”

  Jem’s gaze fell to the wet ground. “You know why.”

  William sighed. “I can’t protect you the rest of your life. You’re a young man. And you’re safe here. Happy. The happiest I’ve ever seen you. In seven years you could have your own place like this. You could have a whole new life. Why would you want to jeopar
dize that?”

  Jem looked disappointed for a moment, as though William had said the wrong thing. Then incredulity made his eyes widen. “You’re my family, Will. You’re the first person who’s believed in me. Ever. And you want me to watch you walk away?”

  He shook his head. “You’re not coming with me. It’s too dangerous. If I get caught—if we get caught—they could send us to the government barracks in Sydney. With Riley. And then we’ll hang.” When Jem said nothing, he added, with considerable more force, “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  A glaze passed over Jem’s eyes. A great shame and even greater loss reflected in their hazel stare. The sight of it made William step back in surprise.

  Jem swallowed once, twice, and his Adam’s apple looked like it might slice through his throat. “What if I could protect you? At least for a time.”

  William blinked. “What do you mean?”

  But Jem was already striding toward the house and William wouldn’t call out for fear of giving them away. In the young man’s absence, he debated bolting right then and there. The storm was worsening, growing more perfect for cover by the second. He was just about to trudge into the open, to let his good-bye stand, when Jem reappeared at his side, patting a bulge underneath his shirt.

  “What food I could steal,” he said, “and ink and paper.”

  Despite himself, William was curious. “Whatever for?”

  Jem looked oddly sheepish. “To forge our tickets of leave. I saw Brown write one for another convict the other day. It’ll get us past any soldiers, should we be stopped. It has to have dates on it, to limit a convict’s time away from his homestead, but I can make more if we need them.”