Dark Torment Read online

  “Mr. Percival,” she prompted with an edge to her voice as he continued his perusal. His eyes jerked up to her face, and he had the grace to flush slightly. Sarah returned his look with a level one, and his flush deepened. “You were going to tell me why my father went aboard a convict ship?”

  “There was a problem with the convicts.” The words were said reluctantly.

  “What kind of problem?” Sarah made no effort to hide her irritation. Percival’s attempts to keep her in what he considered her proper, female place were maddening. She supposed that if she married him, he would expect her to confine her activities to the running of the house, and to leave to him everything that had to do with the sheep station. Which, she guessed, was why he wanted to marry her in the first place. As Edward Markham’s only child, she could reasonably be expected to inherit Lowella in preference to her stepmother and stepsister. Which, Sarah thought with a wry inward smile, only showed how little he really knew her father. Edward was always inclined to take the easy way out of messy situations, and the future disposition of Lowella was potentially a very messy situation indeed. Her father was fond of her, she thought, but no more than that. Certainly he was not so besotted with her as to leave her the station in preference to Lydia, who periodically questioned him with transparent guilelessness about his will. Sarah suspected that she also questioned her father’s lawyer, with some success—Lydia was a very attractive woman. And if Lydia were to find out that she had been denied ownership of a vast, profitable sheep station . . . ! Sarah couldn’t blame her father; she wouldn’t want to be around on that day, either.

  “We contracted for six, and paid for them too, in cash, not kind. When we got here, they had six waiting for us, all right. But the bos’n, who’s a chum of mine, tipped me off that we were being cheated, in spirit if not in fact. He said one of the men was a rogue, a real troublemaker, and they couldn’t get anyone else to take him so they were trying to palm him off on us. But I passed the word along to your da, and he flatly refused to take him. As Mr. Markham said, and I agree, we don’t need no troublemakers on Lowella. Not with the way things have been going lately.”

  Sarah nodded agreement. With the convicts whose labor was Australia’s lifeblood far outnumbering the landowners who worked them, the situation on the cattle and sheep stations on New South Wales was extremely volatile. Lowella had always been peaceful—their convicts were well treated—but their neighbors had not always been so fortunate. There was no sense in bringing in a rogue convict to stir up trouble on Lowella.

  “Didn’t Pa just tell them we don’t want that kind at Lowella?”

  Percival grimaced. “Sure he did. But the mate said a deal’s a deal. And your da said, the hell—begging your pardon, Miss Sarah—it is. The mate backed down and agreed to take the convict back, but he didn’t have the authority to give your da back his money. And you know how Mr. Markham has been lately about money.”

  “I do indeed,” Sarah said with wry amusement. Edward, whose lineage included a canny Scots grandmother, could be formidable in the pursuit of money he felt was owed him. She had no doubt that whoever was in charge of the ship would return it to him double-quick. “So Pa went aboard the ship to get his money back. Do you think he’ll be long?”

  Percival pursed his lips, cocking his head as he considered. “He’s been gone quite a while already.”

  “Sarah, where’s Pa? If I don’t get out of this heat soon, I’ll just die!” Liza’s plaintive cry brought Sarah’s attention back to her. The younger girl was perspiring, her cheeks now more red than rose. She had taken off her hat and was feebly waving it in front of her face. As Sarah looked at her, Liza dropped the hat into her lap, as if fanning herself had suddenly become too much work. Sarah frowned. For all her dark hair and olive skin, Liza did tend to feel the heat. Much more than Sarah herself did. Despite Sarah’s fair coloring and deceptive slenderness, she was blessed, or cursed, depending on one’s point of view, with the constitution of an ox. While Liza, who appeared to be the sturdier of the two, was far more prone to illness and upsets.

  “You won’t die, Liza,” Sarah said firmly. Catering to Liza’s love of the melodramatic was always a mistake. Usually it led to a scene complete with tears.

  “No wonder you’re an old maid, Sarah! You don’t have the least sensibility!” Liza burst out. Sarah could not control a sudden, quick flush of embarrassment as she realized that Percival, who stood no more than a pace from her side, must have heard, although he gave no sign. It was one thing to acknowledge privately that at twenty-two she was well past the common age for marriage; it was another to have Liza announce it to the world. Not that Sarah particularly minded being a spinster. Better an old maid than an unhappy wife, she had decided long ago, when Percival had first made her an offer. The laws of the day made a wife her husband’s chattel, completely subject to him in all things; Sarah shuddered at the thought of being so much in any man’s control. At least she was content as she was. She knew that she would be desperately unhappy as Percival’s wife.

  “Sarah, my head aches!” Liza’s moan brought Sarah out of her musings. She eyed her sister severely, not yet having forgiven her for that humiliating remark in front of Percival. But Liza’s white face and the perspiration dotting her forehead convinced Sarah that the younger girl really was in some distress. Sarah moved quickly around the trap to touch Liza’s hand. As she had suspected, her skin felt cold and clammy.

  “I feel dreadful, Sarah!”

  “I know you do, love.” Sarah’s sympathy was genuine. Liza could not be allowed to remain any longer in the sun, and there was no shade in sight. Something had to be done, and from long experience Sarah knew that she was the one who would have to do it. She sighed. “I’ll go fetch Pa, Liza, and then we can be on our way. You’ll feel better once we get away from the wharf.”

  “Please hurry, Sarah!”

  “Miss Sarah, you can’t!”

  Liza and Percival spoke at the same time, Liza in an anguished undertone and Percival with disapproval. Percival continued, “You can’t have thought—you can’t go aboard a convict ship! It’s not proper for a lady!”

  Sarah took a deep breath, and turned away from Liza to meet Percival’s eyes with a calm that was beginning to fray. What an awful, awful day this had been from the start! She didn’t know how much more aggravation she could take without losing her temper, which was something she rarely did. Living with Lydia and Liza, one rapidly learned control.

  “I am well aware of that, Mr. Percival. But I see no alternative—unless you’re suggesting that we simply wait here until Liza faints with the heat. She will, you know. I’ve seen her do it.”

  “But, Miss Sarah . . .”

  “I’m going to go fetch my father, Mr. Percival. There’s nothing more to be said.”

  Despite the finality of her words, he refused to give up. “If you’ll permit me, I’ll fetch Mr. Markham.”

  “And leave me here to watch over the convicts?” Sarah shook her head. “I’ll go. I won’t be long. Liza, did you hear? I’ll be back directly. And for goodness’ sake, put on your hat!”

  Liza moaned again and closed her eyes. She made no move to obey about the hat. Sarah shut her own eyes for a moment in a silent appeal to heaven—why did Liza have to choose this day to be difficult?—then set off briskly for the Septimus. The men on the quay eyed her, some curiously, others with emotions she preferred not to recognize. But she passed among them without difficulty, aided, no doubt, she thought with amusement, by her plain appearance. Or maybe they left her alone simply because they were just too tired and dispirited to pursue her. Despite the fact that they were convicts, and backbreaking work under near-intolerable conditions was part of the punishment for their crimes, she could not help pitying them as they were forced to labor without pause under the menacing eyes of overseers armed with whips and rifles, while the sun blazed down mercilessly on their uncovered heads. Then Sarah silently chided herself, wondering what her father would
say if he knew of her embryonic emancipist feelings. In Melbourne, as in the rest of Australia, there were basically two classes of residents: the emancipists, who felt that convicts, former convicts, and the offspring of convicts were as good as any other member of Australian society and should be treated as such; and the exclusionists, who considered past and present convicts and their descendants a lower form of life, not to be spoken of in the same breath as decent folk. The emancipists, for obvious reasons, tended to be convicts, former convicts, or the children of convicts, and consequently had difficulty getting the authorities to listen to their pleas for equal treatment. Like most landowners, Edward was staunchly exclusionist, and Sarah had been brought up to consider convicts very much beneath her.

  The Septimus was tied up close to where Percival waited with the dray. Like many of the convict ships plying the ocean between England and Australia, she looked as if one good-sized wave would capsize her. Her timbers had weathered to a uniformly dull gray, and if she had ever seen a coat of paint there was no longer any evidence of it. Her middle sagged like that of a swaybacked horse, and her bare masts and halfheartedly furled sails had a shabby look. Making her way up the rickety gangplank, Sarah’s attention was briefly caught by the scene before her. Half a dozen tall ships were anchored farther out in the bay, their bare, black masts stretching into the cloudless azure sky. Another ship, her sails useless because there was no wind, was being towed across the water to the dock by a small flotilla of rowboats. The bay itself was beautiful, with the sun glinting like diamonds off water that ranged from palest sea green to emerald to sapphire to near purple.

  Sarah was still absorbing the view when she became aware that, while she was alone on the gangplank, there was much activity on the Septimus’s deck. Squinting against the glare, and trying to ignore the headache that was beginning to throb at her temples, Sarah tried to make out what was happening. A shifting, muttering crowd of men was gathered near the center of the ship, their attention focused on something that was taking place in their midst. Their bared, sweat-streaked, muscular backs prevented her from seeing exactly what that something was. Sarah toyed with the idea of returning to the dock and waiting in the safety of the little group from Lowella for her father to join them, but then the thought of Liza’s probable reaction to her retreat spurred her on. Much as she disliked the idea of getting too near that masculine mob, she preferred it to dealing with Liza in hysterics. Swallowing her reservations, Sarah resumed her walk up the swaying ramp. As she drew closer, she became aware of a sharp cracking noise repeated at regular intervals. It slashed with unexpected violence through the other sounds of the dock—the gentle lapping of the sea, the fluttering of sails, the voices of the men before and behind her. Sarah frowned as she set foot on the lightly rocking deck of the Septimus, trying to fathom what that sound could be—and what could be happening at the center of the mob to cause the men to focus so much sullen yet fascinated attention toward one spot. Then came a faint whistling sound, inaudible from farther away, followed by another harsh crack. Then—she was almost sure—she heard a man’s guttural moan. Sarah’s eyes widened with slowly dawning horror.

  She moved cautiously around the gathered men toward the far rail of the ship, where the crowd was thinner. No one paid any attention to her, for which she was thankful. Every eye was focused on what was happening at the center of the crowd. The whistling sound that preceded each jolting crack was clearly audible now, and the cracks themselves were so loud that they made her want to flinch. And the moans that followed—Sarah no longer had any doubt that they were made by a man: a man in agony.

  Picking her way through coils of rope and dropped tools, Sarah finally reached the rail. From there she could see a little way through the crowd. There was still one man, a tall, thin fellow with bushy fair hair, whose back blocked her view. As if sensing her need, he chose that moment to shift sideways, and she saw past him. Horrified, Sarah wished he had not.

  A tall, black-haired man, clad only in tattered breeches, forcibly embraced the base of the mizzen, his hands stretched high over his head and around the wooden pole, where the shackles linking his wrists were tied to an iron hook set deep into the wood. He hung suspended from this restraint; only his bare toes touched the deck. The tendons and veins in his arms bulged from supporting his weight. Blood trickled down his arms from the iron cuffs encircling his wrists, but those few streaks of crimson were as nothing compared to the river that ran from the two dozen or so bloody lacerations that marred his broad, muscular back. The skin surrounding the gashes appeared to have been peeled from its underlying layer of muscle; strips of flesh hung from the edges of the wounds like bits of tattered fringe amid a sea of welling blood. The bubbling crimson gashes crisscrossed one another, underlined here and there with the stark white of bared tendons; blood ran freely from the gashes to soak into the man’s dingy breeches. His black hair, overlong and soaked with sweat, was matted with blood, probably from his back. He looked to be brutishly strong, and yet, in his current straits, pathetic. As Sarah stared, appalled, a many-thonged leather whip with bits of metal knotted into the ends sang through the air to land with another spine-chilling crack against his oozing back. The victim flinched, shuddering, his head reflexively jerking back in agony as he gave another low, guttural groan. With each lash of the whip, blood and bits of flesh were sprayed onto the men standing closest to the scene of the carnage: the man wielding the whip, another man, who was probably, judging from his uniform, the captain—and her own father. Sarah felt her stomach churn as she saw the drops of blood flecking her father’s breeches and coat and even the white of his shirt front. She could hardly believe that this man with his arms crossed implacably over his chest, his eyes intent as they watched the suffering of a helpless human being, was really her father.

  The whip whistled through the air again, finding its captive target with another sickening crack. The prisoner shuddered and groaned as before. Sarah watched, horrified, as blood from this new set of gashes splattered against her father’s buff-colored lapel. He didn’t turn a hair; his attention remained fixed on the whip’s victim. A nerve twitching at the corner of his mouth was the only evidence of emotion her father betrayed. The convict was writhing now, pulling futilely at his bonds. His head was thrown back in agony. From the corner of her eye, Sarah saw the shirtless, barrel-chested man who wielded the whip begin to shake the leather thongs out once again. The prisoner must have heard the sound. A series of shudders shook his long muscles.

  “Stop it!” Before the intention had even crystallized in her mind, Sarah was running forward. That it was not her place to intervene barely occurred to her. She could not, would not, be a silent witness to such brutality. She pushed through the crowd, uncaring that every eye was suddenly riveted on her. Every eye, that is, except those belonging to the man with the whip. Either he had not heard her cry or intended to ignore it. He lifted the whip high over his head.

  “I said stop it!” Sarah’s voice was shrill with outrage as she thrust herself between the whip and its victim. “Stop it this instant! Do you hear me?”

  II

  “Sarah!” Her father sounded shocked as he turned to her. Sarah threw him a brief, burning look before her eyes locked with those of the man with the whip. The man’s eyes were small, and of so pale a blue as to be almost colorless. They shone with menace as he glared at her. After the brief hesitation caused by her intervention, he was once again beginning to raise the whip.

  “Get out of the way, lady,” he warned softly.

  “I will not!”

  “Sarah!” Shaking off the instant of paralysis that had held him frozen in place, her father rushed to her. His fingers dug into her soft flesh as he caught her by the upper arm.

  “Rogers!” the captain warned at nearly the same moment, shaking his head in a curt negative at the man with the whip. Those colorless eyes gleamed evilly at Sarah for a moment longer. Then the man looked at his captain and slowly lowered the whip.
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br />   “Sarah, what in the name of heaven do you think you’re doing? You’re interfering with this man’s just punishment—as well as Captain Farley’s very proper running of his ship!” Edward Markham’s mutter, meant for her ears alone, was angry and embarrassed at the same time. Sarah looked at him mutinously. He was not a tall man—he and she were almost of a height—but he was built like a bull terrier, broad and muscular. Even his face with its deeply carved lines reminded her of a bull terrier’s. Anger emphasized his florid complexion so that his skin was almost the color of his thinning red hair; his embarrassment at her action made him seem to swell. Sarah met his bulging gray eyes calmly: she was not afraid of her father.

  “Pa, how can you be party to such a thing?” she demanded, her voice as low as his—and as angry. “It is barbarous! It must be stopped!”

  Her father scowled at her; his bristling, ginger-colored eyebrows almost met over the bridge of his nose. “Of course it seems barbarous to you—it was never meant for your eyes! What are you doing here, anyway? You have no business on a convict ship—and you cannot go about interfering in things that are none of your concern!”

  “If you mean this—this atrocity—it is my concern! It is the concern of anyone with the smallest spark of human decency! They will kill him!”

  “Very likely.” Her father did not seem troubled by the prospect.

  “Pa!”

  “Sarah, he deserves it: he nearly killed a man this morning, trying to escape. And on the voyage out he did his best to incite the other convicts to mutiny. He’s a bad one, daughter, and no mistake. He deserves every lick. He’ll cause trouble wherever he goes.”