Inheritance Feud

Chapter 42

Chapter 42

"A daughter, a beautiful healthy child with fair hair." She had been born late, he added; had been so large they'd feared she and the mother would both die, and they'd had to use instruments. "It was so long a labour," Godfrey said, "poor Hermione, I watched... ." He himself, at his own request, had been placed behind a screen, to be near her; he had suffered torments every time she strained; there would never, the doctors already said, be another child, and he was glad her fragile body need not endure such agony again; but one couldn't tell it all to Theon.

He was about to speak further of it, though not everything, when the sight of Theon, which had shocked him with the thin pallor of the blind face, and the undamaged eyes staring at nothing, arrested him. Tears were pouring down the sick man's cheeks; they seemed to follow one another without volition, and the bleached hands, lying on the dirty palliasse the prison provided, made no effort to raise themselves and wipe these away.

"No heir for Baron," Theon wept; then remembered the

presence of his enemy. "Go now, for God's sake. Don't say to her you saw me in such a way as this. Is there news of Livia?"

But Godfrey had not heard of Livia's marriage to Abel; and at lack of any word Theon thought he would die of misery. After the chair had been carried away he turned and sobbed for a long time against the wall, inconsolably.

He had trained himself, even so early as the hell-ship where they chained him beside Tom Neilson between decks, to do without his eyes.

It had to be done, in any case; as well do it cleverly and precisely, and Theon set his wits to pit themselves against the tormenting eternal dark, both at sea-the slapping leagues of endless water, which he heard more clearly than most now, embracing the ship like a helpless fly, so that one more sink ing would hardly be of note except that the owner-company would be out of pocket to the extent of twenty-four poor devils' board, and some driftwood-the knowledge of that came either to drive him mad, or else anneal him; the latter happened, and by the end of the voyage he could endure most things; many men had died meantime of the bad food, and of fever. Theon was landed, and visited in time by the Governor, who was curious to see a blind prisoner, and asked him what he could usefully do.

"I need a man I can trust," he said at the end, and to Theon it seemed amusing that he, a convicted murderer, should be spoken to in such a context, as if anyone here could be trusted among the killers, thieves, horse-stealers and other expatriate scum that abounded and lodged, as he him self did initially, in small brick-built houses disposed about the growing port, with the Governor's residence among them like an elephant in a field of lambs; he'd heard Tom describe it so. But in fact not all the transported men were villains, and villainy in any case took on a different aspect here; the quartered army men, the dragoons, caused more trouble than the prisoners ever did, and the Governor waged his own war constantly and sent plaintive letters home, which were not listened to, of the hollow authority he enjoyed as the King's representative. Theon soon, as a civil-spoken clever fellow who could adapt easily, became much employed by the Governor and his deputy, on assignments; at first, he merely polished the silver and the door-knobs, and later was given the precise task of measuring out the Indian corn when scarcity one year threatened a famine, and the natives of the region would come by night and steal it, so that a man to whom dark was the same as day would be of more value here than rubies, and he could for the time be night-watchman . . .

That was how Theon had acquired Samson in the first instance. He tried to listen to the other's breathing now at the opposite side of the coach, to see whether or not he slept; he would not ask him, and the coach swayed on. In a matter of hours they would be, with the dawn, in Grattan Juxta, if nothing went amiss.

Samson was not asleep and, as it happened, his thoughts followed the same pattern as his master's; he was thinking back to his own first encounter with Theon Doon.

He had lived with the native tribe for four years since evading the Comte's intentions, and in many ways had become, himself, a bushman, and could trap, spear fish and speak their tongue. The tribe was friendly, and had he desired it would have initiated him, thus making him one of themselves by means of certain mysteries which included knocking out a front tooth and burying it beneath a tree, so that the great spirit Dalamulun would take care of the rest, and of him; but he had resisted this, preferring to remain an outsider among the tribe. He had grown used, however, to their low estimate of their women; these were treated like animals and subject to innumerable taboos which made their lives wretched. He saw little of them except when he slept in the clearing at night, and by day was away hunting for food with the young men and boys.

This grew scarce. The tribe lived mostly on yams in the hard season, and these grew, or had done, thickly nearby the river. Now the white man had come, and cleared away the yam-plants for his farming; increasingly as the convicts were were given, or could buy cheaply, a strip of land which, with released, or had come near the end of their served time, they diligence, could grow corn. But the hungry bushmen would raid the corn as it grew, leaving bare stalks in the morning. A watch was set at each man's land, and as soon as it could be done the harvested corn, amounts of which were very small, was locked in store; the guardian of the latter was Theon Doon.

He had received a supply from up-river one day, and had heard the great open crocks in which it was brought and stored rolled to their places; then he was left alone and the night settled down. He waited in his place, hearing in faint trickles the settling and running of the disturbed grains of corn; his thoughts were not pleasant, and for once did not concern himself and his fate. Word had come that the dra goons had made a raid on the thieving bushmen, and had hanged the men outright in chains, to be left on their gibbets as a warning. Theon had grown inured to cruelty in prison and on the voyage out, rather than since; but he knew these tribesmen had been spoken of as friendly to the whites, and that they were starving. As often, he felt awareness of the infinite unknown land behind the settlement, the limitless silent spaces; often the silence seemed to have a voice. He had heard of men who'd run mad in the outback, merely by reason of his very silence, from which there was no escape; it pressed in on one. He himself could be the prisoner of silence as well as dark.

He shivered; and at once heard a sound which was neither the movement of his body, nor the faint, persistent settling of the corn. It was a scrabbling, whimpering sound; too large for a rat or dog. Perhaps he was shut in with some strange animal here, brought in the crocks with the corn.