Eagle On the Hill by Maggie Shannon

Author:Maggie Shannon [Maggie Shannon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780730444114
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

CHAPTER 45

Morning dawned hot and still, with a distant growl of thunder and black clouds pursuing each other like cavalry across the sky. The town was as quiet as a stone, with no movement in the shuttered streets but a puff of dust that rose and fled between the houses on a skirt of wind, and died again.

Charlie, with Sarah and Alex beside him, stared at the empty wharf and at the river, where Brenda was the only vessel. The silence was ominous, as though all life had been scraped from the surface of the land.

‘We’ll get steam up.’ Charlie turned away from the rail. He went into the saloon, the others following him. ‘Sooner we’re outta here the better. But first a good cuppa coffee, to set the morning right.’

Alex asked. ‘Are we going to run away and leave Uncle Will behind?’

Charlie gave her a look that would have blistered paint. ‘Who asked your opinion, miss? This business is nothing to do with us.’

‘Then why did we go to the meeting? That policeman…I didn’t like him. Does it mean we’re on his side?’

‘We’re on no-one’s side.’ Charlie spoke without anger, but with a weight dragging at his words.

‘Not even Uncle Will’s?’

‘Not in this.’

Alex opened her mouth to speak again, but Sarah rested her hand on her daughter’s shoulder to warn her, and she said nothing.

They stood in awkward silence until Elsie brought them all coffee from the galley.

Charlie took his cup to the bow and stood there, looking at the water and thinking his own thoughts. Sarah joined him, her own cup in her hand, but Charlie did not acknowledge her presence.

A gull appeared. Far from the sea, it strutted on the deck, watching the two humans with predatory yellow eyes.

‘All I wanted was to keep this family out of harm’s way,’ Charlie muttered eventually. ‘I told Will it wasn’t our fight.’

But it was, and they both knew it. The shearers were battlers like themselves, exploited by families like the Grenvilles…

As Will had said, how could it not be their fight?

And now Rufus Grenville was shipping strikebreakers up the river. They didn’t need to look for trouble; it was coming to them. They couldn’t hope to avoid it; they had to take sides, simply by being here. There was only one question: which side would it be?

Shoulders touching, Charlie and Sarah stared out at the water, which contained no answers. The air was heavy, with rain coming and thunder to the east, but the river ran with a freshness they could feel on their faces. They could smell the scent of wet earth, of trees and reeds, the fish and birds that lived there. The wind gusted and died. A spatter of rain drew circles as big as pennies on the surface of the stream.

They stood and waited for rain or clearing skies, for the day to bring them what it would.

‘The squatters are too greedy,’ Charlie said at last. He didn’t look at Sarah; he might have been talking to the river.

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