The Lace Balcony Page 4

  ‘Be sure to give Daisy plenty of water, won’t you? It’s as hot as Hades in this Colony and she ain’t used to it.’

  The woman answered with a straight face. ‘I’ve raised seven. How many have you had?’

  ‘None yet, I’ve been careful – or dead lucky,’ Fanny responded flippantly and was rewarded by the woman’s rueful grin.

  From the end of the alley Fanny felt an odd sinking sensation as the child called her name. Returning her wave, Fanny called back, ‘Be a good girl, Daisy. I’ll bring you back a treat, promise!’

  The breeze off the harbour was a merciful antidote to the rank smell of the sewage running free in the gutters as Fanny picked her way through the narrow alleyways of The Rocks. The faces in the crowd were variously cheerful, angry, or very drunk – sometimes all three at once.

  Me with offers of work! What a heap of old cobblers I gave that woman. Like I can pick and choose my masters? But I must remember one of the tricks I learned in service. Madame Amora made men believe, even a Royal Duke, she was the most fascinating courtesan in London. Aristocrats and politicians queued up for the privilege of heaping her with jewels, money, carriages, servants in livery. And trips to Paris to buy gorgeous gowns and wicked lingerie – even highborn ladies copied Madame Amora’s fashions . . .

  Fanny sighed. ‘Half her luck. All I’ve got is a couple of her cast-off dresses, a pawn ticket, a kiddie to care for – and an invitation to a hanging.’

  She was sobered by a memory. Last night, before she fell asleep exhausted beside Daisy, she had sent up a rare prayer to God asking for Will Eden to receive a quick, merciful death at the hands of the hangman – unlike her father’s bungled execution.

  Now, as she hurried along George Street, she assured herself there was nothing she could do to help Will, except to keep her promise to be in the crowd to the very last. She absently touched her mouth, recalling the touch of his lips – the kiss unlike that of any other man.

  On reaching Hangman’s Hill she found the spectators were already densely packed around three sides of the scaffold, so it came as a relief to Fanny that she could stand no closer than fifty yards away, at the rear. It was a motley crowd except for one flash carriage that halted to enable a gentleman to watch the proceedings in comfort.

  Aware of the likelihood of pickpockets, Fanny attached her money purse securely to her belt. Men, women and children jostled for a closer view of the gallows. With one voice they booed the arrival of the hangman, Green the Finisher, a huge man dressed in a seedy black tailcoat and top hat, like a lumbering circus ape whose rolling gait suggested he had been heavily on the grog – or was never off it.

  I don’t wonder that prostitutes won’t have a bar of him – the ugliest creature God ever made. His face looks barely held together by that scar running from forehead to chin – thanks to a prisoner who attacked him on the scaffold, so they say.

  From the outer rim of the crowd she craned her neck above their heads, trying to scan the faces of the prisoners lined up ready to ascend the scaffold. At that distance they looked like a procession of figures cast from the same mould. A priest and the prison chaplain she had met yesterday were giving final absolution to members of their own flock.

  Unable to identify Will Eden, Fanny tried to distract herself. Catholics to the left of the gallows, Protestants to the right. Or is it the other way around? I wonder which side they place Hebrews, Romani gypsies, Pagans and the like. Anyway, what’s the point in separating them? If Stepmother got it right, in a few minutes they’ll all end up face to face with the same God.

  Fanny closed her eyes each time the noose was placed around a condemned man’s neck, his face covered by a white hood. But there was no escaping the vivid pictures in her mind, the occasional voices crying out words of sympathy and farewell, the catcalls each time The Finisher pulled the lever. One prisoner recited the Lord’s Prayer before he was hanged. Another gave a heart-rending cry to his mother in Ireland. Several women in the crowd genuflected.

  Fanny froze when at last she caught a glimpse of Will, but from her vantage point at the rear of the crowd, she needed to jump up and down in an attempt to follow his progress. She was moved to see that it was her scarf jauntily tied around Will Eden’s neck as he was frog-marched between two red-coated soldiers, his hands bound behind his back. Sunlight outlined his body, giving the strange impression of a halo shining above his shaven head. Even from this distance his face appeared bruised and swollen as if beaten in a fight. As he mounted the steps to the scaffold, Fanny noted in surprise that although his legs were ironed, he wore shiny leather boots as if in a final act of defiance to launch him on his ultimate adventure.

  A priest’s sonorous voice asked, ‘William Eden, have you any last words you wish to say to God?’

  In answer he seemed to search for a face in the crowd, but his voice sounded weary as he responded to a woman who called out something in Gaelic.

  ‘Save your pity for my partner in crime, ma’am. Better be hanged than sent to Moreton Bay under that bloody tyrant Logan!’

  The crowd’s rumble of assent was broken by a few cheers of sympathy.

  If that young lad can be brave in the face of death, so can I.

  ‘I’m here, William!’ Fanny called out but knew her voice was lost in the babble of voices. Determined to show herself, she pushed through the crowd, intent on clambering up onto the low stone wall at the rear.

  A tall young gentleman dressed in black doffed his hat to her.

  ‘Allow me, Miss,’ he said and placing his hands around her waist, lifted her up onto the wall. Waving her arms above her head, she repeatedly called out, ‘I’m here, William! I kept my promise.’ Then cried out, ‘I’ll never forget you, Will Eden!’

  Startled, he turned in the direction of her words, his voice stripped of emotion, resigned to death. ‘I give you my promise, Fanny. No man lies in the face of eternity. As God is my witness, wherever you go, I, William Eden, will watch over thee!’

  As one the crowd seemed to suck in its breath in sympathy.

  A moment later the white hood was placed over Will’s head to cut off the world from his sight. This time Fanny kept her eyes wide open, feeling bound to stay with him to the very end. Green pulled the lever. The angry crowd harangued him as the hanged body of William Eden struggled in its death throes. The shiny new boots glinted in the sunlight. Fanny cried out in anger but knew it was a waste of breath – each corpse must remain suspended for three minutes before it was cut down. At last the jerking, puppet-like corpse ran out of life. It swung gently in the breeze. All was silent. Three minutes stretched to eternity. Then the Finisher cut down the corpse, tipped it into the waiting raw pine coffin and nailed down the lid.

  Fanny pushed blindly through the crowd, covering her ears in an attempt to block out the voices that called out to Green, ‘Go hang yourself, you rotten bastard!’

  Fanny vented her own anger at God. All I asked of you was a quick, merciful death for the lad. You couldn’t even manage that!

  As she passed the fine carriage where the gentleman sat drinking a glass of wine, for an instant their eyes locked. She blinked back her tears, surprised when he inclined his head as if out of respect for her relationship to the dead youth.

  It was then that Fanny clasped her belt and gasped in horror. Her money purse had been stolen.

  That kind young gent who lifted me onto the wall! Don’t tell me he was the mongrel thief! Now I have nothing – not even my pawn ticket!

  The full impact of the theft shocked her. Now penniless and alone with no written character to gain her employment, and the threat of the law on her tail, Fanny felt overwhelmed by fatigue and hunger. What options were left to her?

  She walked the three quarters of a mile to the end of George Street, asking directions to the Sydney Benevolent Asylym, where she assumed a sad but brave face when seated before the matron, a thin middle-aged woman in Quaker grey.

  ‘The prison Chaplain said to use his name
as a reference. I am in urgent need of a cot for my stepsister. She’s barely two. As good as gold. No trouble at all. I won’t keep her here long, only until I secure a position. I’ve been offered two places, so I’ll gladly pay for her keep as soon as I’m paid myself.’

  The matron’s voice was weary but not unkind. ‘Thou had best take the first work that comes thy way, girl. I regret I cannot help thee. We have destitute women about to give birth, children sleeping three to a bed and in the corridors. And there’s a waiting list for many more abandoned on the streets.’ The matron reached across and touched her arm. ‘Do not think me unmindful of thy need, girl. But there are scores of little ones homeless in The Rocks, girls and boys who are forced to sell – themselves. Or they do not eat.’

  Child prostitutes – here, as in London.

  There was no overt emotion in the Quaker’s voice, but Fanny shared her pain at the horror of the fate of abandoned children.

  ‘I understand, Matron. At least Daisy has me.’

  ‘Put thy name down on this list and if thy new master is unkind to thee or thy sister, come back next month and see me again.’

  Fanny felt too embarrassed to admit she could not write. ‘I’ll manage. Thank you for your trouble,’ she said and remembered to curtsey as she departed.

  That will teach me to lie. Two offers of work doesn’t sound desperate enough – not when kiddies are forced to sell their bodies. I’d sell mine before I let Daisy go hungry.

  The route down George Street seemed twice as long on the return journey. Her feet were swollen with the heat. Madame Amora’s fine heeled shoes were designed for dancing, not traipsing the earth-baked roads of Sydney Town looking for work. Without a written character to offer, respectable women didn’t want a bar of her. When she asked one publican if he needed a cook or serving maid, his answer was simple. ‘You can serve me customers anytime, darlin’, in the back bedroom upstairs. Know what I mean?’

  Now, no longer bothering to cover the décolletage of her gown, she tied her shawl around her hips, leaving her hands free to defend herself from any groping male as she pushed through the crowd that buffeted her towards the Harbour foreshore.

  The magic of the intense blue of the darkening night sky reflected in the vast expanse of Port Jackson’s harbour was like a double-edged sword, its beauty consoling her at the same time as it taunted her with the taste of sea salt on her lips that increased her raging thirst.

  Fanny was well aware a smile from her could easily win some man’s invitation to buy her wine and a meal in one of the shanties lining the wharves. But everything easy came at a price. Time was running out. She had no illusions about how easy it was to slide into prostitution. What other solution was there?

  I could throw myself into the harbour and make a quick end to it all. They say drowning is effortless, a not unpleasant way to die. But who knows anyone who has come back from the grave to confirm it?

  She recalled an old salt on the City of Edinburgh who had warned her against swimming in the harbour. ‘Port Jackson’s alive with sharks, lass. They don’t trouble them blacks, none. Sharks must prefer tasty white flesh – like thine!’

  Fanny shuddered at the memory of his tobacco-stained teeth as he laughed at her horror. Eyeing the harbour, she suddenly found the romantic idea of drowning distinctly less appealing. Her shame at her selfish suicidal fantasies was short-lived. She was overwhelmed by a wave of nausea worse even than the seasickness suffered during the voyage. Her head throbbed in confusion. Was it from heat, hunger or fever?

  She heard an echo of Madame Amora’s warning, ‘Be careful what you wish for, Fanny!’

  A minute ago I wanted to die! God help me, I want to live!

  The memory of that last night in her Mistress’s townhouse in St John’s Wood returned with the clarity of a scene in a play at Drury Lane . . .

  . . . the clock in the vestibule sounded a single chime. Fanny sat in the corridor outside Madame Amora’s bedchamber, overcome by weariness but unable to desert her post. A courtesan’s whims were unpredictable. Her current protector, the Duke, had leased this house for her, but during his absence, visiting his wife in the country, Madame had broken her own iron-clad rule – never to allow her heart to rule her head.

  Tonight Madame had taken a new lover to her bed. Kit had all the confidence of a handsome young stud who knows how to enchant older women. From behind closed doors Fanny recognised that Madame’s silvery laughter and cries of joy were not part of a courtesan’s counterfeit stock-in-trade.

  Fanny gave a sigh of resignation. Kit was the perfect antidote to Madame’s ennui. ‘Oh dear, no rest for me tonight.’

  She was startled awake by the sight of the figure in front of her. Kit was clearly naked beneath the brocade dressing robe that belonged to the Duke.

  ‘Is something wrong, Sir? Does Madame need me?’ she stammered.

  ‘Not at all. Your mistress is dead to the world. I am the one in need.’

  His smile was disarming, his palms open in a gesture that implied, ‘What’s a man to do?’

  But as he moved towards her she read the expression in his eyes.

  ‘I’m bored,’ he said. ‘Pray stay and entertain me.’

  ‘You mistake me, Sir. I take orders from none but my mistress.’

  ‘And my mistress takes orders from me.’

  He drew her into the shadows, pressing her against the wall, his tongue, his hands swiftly gaining their objective.

  Fanny struggled violently as one of his hands freed her breasts, the other thrust between her thighs. Biting his tongue, she realised her mistake. The danger and her resistance clearly excited him. He gasped with pleasure and pain – then froze.

  A vision in a flowing Grecian robe, Madame Amora stood framed in the doorway, her unnaturally white face devoid of all expression.

  Fanny broke free, clutching at her torn bodice. ‘Madame, believe me, I –’

  ‘I have no further need of you, Fanny. Go to your room.’

  Shaken, Fanny fled to her attic chamber. From the window she watched Kit cross the snow-covered street to hail a hansom cab. So Madame had sent him packing. But where did that leave her?

  Retribution had been swift. Too proud to reveal her humiliation at what she saw as a double betrayal, Madame Amora had given instructions for Fanny to be shown the door. Denied both a month’s back wages and a written character reference, Fanny knew she had precious little chance of gaining future employment.

  When the house was in total darkness, she climbed up the fire escape and made her way to Madame’s jewel box – taking a sapphire ring seldom worn and unlikely to be missed.

  Following her stepmother’s funeral, she and Daisy sailed on the City of Edinburgh to the underbelly of the world – New South Wales . . .

  • • •

  Now, as she clung to the seawall, Fanny recalled Kit’s face and the cold, alien feeling of hard flesh between her thighs. He knew he was hurting me – and it gave him pleasure. In theory, she knew all the tricks of the courtesan’s trade. In practice Madame Amora had been so demanding of her time that Fanny had experienced little beyond clumsy attempts by men that ended in failure, like Kit, and were far from the world of romance and excitement in the novels that Cook had read to her.

  Fanny felt a sudden wave of comfort at the knowledge that the little bottle in her possession might yet prove her greatest protection. At Madame’s insistence, all female servants in her employ took the physic that prevented unwanted babes.

  It’s my right to prevent myself falling with child – but not to leave Daisy destitute. I’ve nothing left to sell or pawn. So I must find the answer tomorrow.

  Fanny scanned the night sky, searching for answers in the Milky Way. As she did anywhere in the world, Venus shone brightest of all – but offered no solution.

  • • •

  The breeze dislodged her bonnet and as she ran to fetch it her hair tumbled around her shoulders.

  It was then she heard the music, l
ike a gift from the gods – a street fiddler playing the haunting Irish ballad, ‘The Black Velvet Band’. On impulse she began to sing the words. By the end of the song a small crowd had gathered around them and a respectable pile of coins was added to the Irishman’s cap.

  ‘I thank ye, young lady.’ He smiled. ‘Would ye care to be joining me at the Lord Nelson for a drink?’

  Fanny thanked him but declined his invitation. No shame in busking, but I won’t hook up with a man to keep him in drink.

  She eyed the vessels in the harbour, their masts and sails dressed with flags and nautical colours from every corner of the globe. The City of Edinburgh lay at anchor. If only we could stow away on the return voyage – no sailor on earth would refuse to see Daisy well fed.

  • • •

  Suddenly conscious she was being observed, she turned. On the opposite side of the road stood the elegant carriage she had seen at Hangman’s Hill. The gentleman inside beckoned her with an imperious gesture.

  Close to tears of weariness, Fanny felt a sudden spark of annoyance. Who does he think he is? I’m not a common street walker! Not yet, anyway.

  Raising her chin, she turned her back on him. Moments later she found him beside her, leaning against the wall and staring at the harbour.

  ‘I am sorry for your trouble – the loss of your young man. Hangings are a barbaric custom, are they not?’ His voice was cultivated, low and strangely soothing.

  ‘Seems to me they hang all the wrong people,’ she said sharply and despite herself noted the smile in his eyes.

  ‘Could not agree more. Some would say I should have been a candidate for the noose myself – instead I was transported here.’ His sweeping gesture took in the expanse of the harbour. ‘To this beautiful, mysterious land.’

  She was surprised by the gratuitous confession coming from a man of Quality.

  ‘I came free,’ she said and lowering her guard, decided to be equally honest. ‘But I was only a hair’s breadth away from being arrested myself.’

  The gentleman nodded politely, showing no trace of surprise. ‘May I suggest that we both celebrate our good fortune by dining together?’