Eagle on the Hill Read online

  About Eagle on the Hill

  It is the 1880s, and the paddle steamers are all that keeps the tiny communities of the Murray River together.

  Charlie Armstrong is master of the paddle steamer Brenda. George Grenville is the powerful owner of the wine estate Eagle on the Hill. A broken promise and a stolen horse are the beginnings of a lifelong feud, and when hostility spills over into violence, there are consequences for all who live along the Murray.

  Then Charlie’s daughter Alex saves George’s grandson Martin from drowning and the two become close friends. But can their relationship survive the enmity between their families?

  Eagle on the Hill is an epic story of passion, warmth and courage, as enduring as the great Murray itself.

  Contents

  About Eagle on the Hill

  Dedication

  FAMILY TREES

  MAPS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  CHAPTER 57

  CHAPTER 58

  CHAPTER 59

  CHAPTER 60

  CHAPTER 61

  CHAPTER 62

  CHAPTER 63

  CHAPTER 64

  CHAPTER 65

  CHAPTER 66

  CHAPTER 67

  CHAPTER 68

  CHAPTER 69

  CHAPTER 70

  CHAPTER 71

  CHAPTER 72

  CHAPTER 73

  CHAPTER 74

  CHAPTER 75

  CHAPTER 76

  CHAPTER 77

  CHAPTER 78

  CHAPTER 79

  CHAPTER 80

  CHAPTER 81

  CHAPTER 82

  CHAPTER 83

  CHAPTER 84

  CHAPTER 85

  CHAPTER 86

  CHAPTER 87

  CHAPTER 88

  CHAPTER 89

  CHAPTER 90

  CHAPTER 91

  CHAPTER 92

  CHAPTER 93

  CHAPTER 94

  CHAPTER 95

  CHAPTER 96

  CHAPTER 97

  EPILOGUE

  About JH Fletcher

  Also by JH Fletcher

  Copyright

  In the Dreamtime the great river was created by the giant cod Ponde, who carved out the river’s course while trying to escape from the hunter Ngerunderi.

  — Aboriginal myth

  FAMILY TREES

  2006

  PROLOGUE

  Living in two worlds is a strange business.

  I stand at the window of my writing room. Below the terrace the land slopes downhill between the ordered ranks of vines. Their spring foliage is fresh and green in the warm November sunlight. At the bottom of the slope the mighty river flows silently beyond the red gums that line its banks.

  Some holidaymakers have parked their cars on the far bank. Their children are playing in the shallows. There is no wind, and in the still air I hear their excited screams. They need to be careful. The placid-seeming river has drowned many in its time.

  A tourist boat churns upstream against the current. A guide’s voice echoes through the loudspeakers. Cameras point at my house. Every trip it happens, and these days there are many trips and many tourists. Good for the economy, or so the politicians tell us. Good for international relations. Well, perhaps. I, who live here, find myself resenting the intrusive voice, the cameras flashing like a battery of howitzers as they pass.

  There is no help for it, of course. Eagle on the Hill has always been a popular subject for visitors seeking mementos of their trip along the Murray to take home to Sydney or London or Tokyo.

  Mind you, I have the last laugh. Neither they nor their cameras are able to capture the memories that both house and river hold.

  It is in the soft light of dawn and dusk that I see them, the ghosts of the paddle steamers that used to ply up and down the river. Their paddles churn the olive surface; their triple-decked hulls have the sepia tint of old photographs. The voices of the past — of those who lived and worked along the great river — spread across the water like the wake of the tourist boat that has now disappeared from view.

  Their voices, like the gum trees and river, like Eagle on the Hill itself, speak to me. I sense the echo of their presence, those ancestors of mine whose loves, hatreds and adventures moulded not only their lives but my own.

  I sense how my eight-year-old grandmother, full of the juices and excitement of childhood, must have felt, one hundred and seventeen years ago this month, when she looked up at the fairytale shape of this great house from the deck of her parents’ paddle steamer as it thrashed its slow way upstream.

  1889

  CHAPTER 1

  It was late afternoon on 10 November 1889, a warm, windless Sunday. Eight-year-old Alex Armstrong came bursting out of the cabin onto the riverboat’s deck. Beneath her feet the wooden hull trembled with the power of Brenda’s paddlewheels as they lashed the river’s green water to foam. Smoke from the funnel blew back over her head and the spring sunshine kindled fire among the branches of the red gum trees that lined the banks.

  Alex ran to the side of the deck and stared along the stretch of waterway that was opening up ahead of them.

  Brenda belonged to her parents. Charlie and Sarah Armstrong’s steamer was one of a fleet of similar vessels that traded up and down the Murray and Darling Rivers, selling supplies to the settlers and bringing out their harvest of wool and grain. Four days earlier, with Alex’s family and the new nanny on board, Brenda had set out from the river port of Goolwa on her latest trading trip. Now they were coming to the section of the river that Alex loved best. Any minute now she would see it.

  She was tall for her age and energy burned in her like a flame. Her dark curls stirred in the light breeze as she waited, hands clinging to the guard rail, blue-grey eyes intent as she watched the left bank sliding slowly past her.

  A family of kangaroos watched from the shadows as the steamer slid past. Soon the trees gave way to cultivated land. Fresh with a springtime covering of new leaves, rows of vines extended up a gentle slope to a stone wall. Beyond the wall was an expanse of mown lawn, and on the ridge beyond, the building Alex had come on deck to see.

  It was a stone-built house, large and elegant, its entrance partially concealed by a portico with four moulded columns at the summit of a flight of
wide steps. Beneath a roof of grey slate, the golden stone blazed in the setting sun, dominating the river and the countryside about it.

  It was a grand house, indeed, but to Alex it was much more than that. It was a source of wonder, giving body to dreams that she could not express. It was her fairytale house.

  A cloud of grey and rose galahs blew crying out of the trees and fled southwards across the river. These apart, there was no sound or movement, no sign of people or animals, only the house on its ridge overlooking the water and the vines gathered like a fresh green skirt about it.

  Brenda’s paddles beat the water, her engine throbbed. Soon the house and vines were gone and there was nothing to be seen but the trees crowding the water’s edge, the distant reaches of the river blurred by the soft, slow gathering of the dusk as evening came down across the land.

  Alex sighed, turned from the rail and ran down the flight of steps to the lower deck. The saloon and galley beyond were bathed in the light of the lantern that her mother had just lit. The smell of food cooking on the wood-burning stove competed with the odour of machinery, the persistent hint of damp.

  Alex was bursting to tell someone about the house she’d just seen. Her mother was on deck, taking washing off the line with Elsie, the nanny who’d started with them at the beginning of this trip, but Luke was there. Her brother, two years older than her, was frowning over a colouring book, his nose almost touching the paper.

  Luke would do.

  ‘I saw it,’ Alex offered.

  He ignored her. Surprise, surprise.

  Arms brimming with dried sheets, her mother bustled into the cabin with Elsie behind her.

  ‘Alex, get the table set.’

  ‘I saw it,’ Alex said to her mother.

  ‘Saw what?’

  ‘The house.’

  ‘That’s nice. Get a move on, there’s a dear.’

  They’d all seen the house lots of times on their journeys up and down the river. No-one else cared about it. But Alex cared. The image of the house, huge and shining in the afternoon sunlight, remained with her as Brenda continued on her way upriver. It wasn’t surprising; the house had all the grandeur and grace of the bird for which it had been named.

  A name as proud as the house itself. Eagle on the Hill.

  Martin Grenville stood in the drawing room of the big house. Through the window he stared down the vine-covered slope at the river flowing between the gum trees, and at the paddle steamer thrusting its way upstream against the current. The riverboat seemed to nine-year-old Martin to represent everything Eagle on the Hill did not: courage, freedom and adventure.

  A small girl stood on the steamer’s deck, staring up at the house. Martin watched her hungrily, wishing he too could live such an exciting life. He lifted his hand to wave to the unknown girl, then let it drop, knowing she could not see him.

  ‘Martin!’ Monsieur William’s voice summoned him from the doorway. ‘Time for your evening practice!’

  Martin turned obediently and followed his tutor to the music room, the grand piano and the world of music, which, like the river, offered the promise of adventure and discovery.

  He sat down before the keyboard. The keys welcomed him.

  ‘We shall begin with the Scarlatti,’ Monsieur William said.

  Martin opened the music to the required page, while harmonies representing the river and the steamer heading bravely into the unknown took form secretly within his head.

  He stretched his fingers to the keys.

  CHAPTER 2

  An hour after the big house had disappeared into the gum trees, Brenda drew into the bank for the night. They’d barely tied up when the stillness was broken by screams.

  ‘Mum! Oh, mum!’

  Sarah, tall and slim, with blue-black hair and a resolute mouth, stared as Elsie came hurtling out of her tiny cabin and ran screaming towards her along the deck.

  ‘What on earth’s the matter?’

  ‘Oh, oh, oh …’ Elsie flung herself sobbing into Sarah’s protective arms. ‘Oh, oh …’

  It took Sarah five minutes to get the story out of her.

  ‘A snake? Is that all?’

  The river and surrounding country teemed with snakes, tigers mostly, and from time to time one more adventurous than the rest would get aboard by weaving its way up through the slats in the paddlebox. From what Sarah could make out from the floods of tears and hysteria, Elsie hadopened the door of her tight squeeze of a cabin and found a snake curled up in the corner, its fanged head not a yard from her feet.

  ‘Snakes get everywhere,’ Sarah told her. ‘The jolly things arepoisonous, of course, but you’ll soon get used to ’em.’

  She had intended her words to comfort Elsie but they had the opposite effect. ‘Oh, oh …’

  Enough of this nonsense.

  Sarah strode into the saloon. The children stared as she seized the shotgun from its brackets on the bulkhead, and a cartridge from the box on the top shelf of the cupboard. ‘Stay here!’ she ordered them. ‘Don’t move!’

  She went out again and marched to Elsie’s cabin, the nanny sidling apprehensively behind her. Sarah slipped the cartridge into the shotgun and closed the breech. ‘Now … open the door and get out of the way.’

  What fear! What trembling! Elsie put her hand on the doorknob. She shut her eyes, yanked open the door and leapt back.

  Sarah poked the muzzle of the gun through the open doorway and stood with finger taut upon the trigger, but of the snake there was no sign.

  ‘Oh, mum …’

  ‘Wait here.’

  Sarah closed the door again and climbed the flight of steps to the wheelhouse. While she took over the helm, Charlie came clattering down the steps, shotgun hanging loosely from his fist. He was a big man with a stubborn jaw, green eyes and a broken nose sustained in a boxing match years before. When he smiled, he did so quirkily, with half his mouth. The space in front of the cabin door seemed barely large enough to contain him.

  ‘Where’s this snake of yours?’ His massive teeth grinned, as though eager to bite it into bits.

  ‘In there.’ Elsie gestured weakly.

  ‘We’ll soon see about him.’

  Charlie threw open the door. He went in and found the snake trying to hide under the bunk. Quick as a blink he grabbed it behind the head and hauled it out, squirming and lashing. He carried it on deck and flung it into the slick swirl of the river.

  He turned to Elsie, who looked ready to faint with terror. ‘Never let a snake stop you,’ he advised her. ‘Do that and you’ll never get anything done.’

  He extracted the unused cartridge, went into the saloon and replaced the gun in its brackets. Lucky he hadn’t needed it; Lukey had tried that trick a month before and blown a hole in the bottom of the boat. He went out and climbed back up the ladder to the wheelhouse.

  Later that night, Sarah and Charlie sat in the saloon and talked about what had happened.

  ‘Elsie’s never lived on a boat before,’ Charlie said. ‘She’ll settle down.’

  ‘I hope so. We don’t want too many days like that. Her screechin’ fair wore me out.’

  ‘Remember what it was like before we got her?’

  Sarah knew Charlie was right. A riverboat was a dangerous place for small children. When Alex was a baby Sarah had kept her in a wooden crate for safety. Later, the crate outgrown, Sarah had tried tethering her to her sewing machine, but in no time Alex had grown strong enough to tow the machine behind her. On one occasion she had been saved only at the last second from going over the side, sewing machine and all. After that, she had been left to make her own way about the boat. Over the years she had fallen overboard — twice — and down the stokehold — once — and on their last trip, after Luke had tumbled into the main hold and gashed his head on an iron girder, their parents had agreed that something must be done. While Sarah mopped blood and wove bandages about Luke’s head, she and Charlie decided they would employ a nanny.

  Fifteen-year-old Elsie Klo
pp was the result. Her job was to keep the children quiet, clean, and above all safe. No doubt she was doing her best, but it was already clear that it was Elsie who needed protection rather than the children. The business of the snake was only the most recent example of this.

  ‘I’ll have to keep my eye on her,’ Sarah decided.

  As though she didn’t have enough to do already.

  Two hours later Sarah was in the cabin getting ready for bed when she heard the murmur of men’s voices, gruff as billy goats, and felt the faint swaying of the hull as feet moved across the deck and into the saloon. Her lips tightened; she knew only too well what it meant. But she made no other movement. An owl’s cry cautioned the night as she climbed into her bunk and lay, plank-stiff, until the visitors departed an hour later, as furtively as they had come.

  When Charlie came in soon afterwards she pretended she was asleep.

  CHAPTER 3

  The next morning, when they awoke, mist formed a grey scarf over the river. The decks and superstructure gleamed the colour of pewter in the light. Brenda lay cocooned amid the reeds that emerged silently from the drifting whiteness and were as silently swallowed again.

  Charlie came on deck, yawning and scratching, eyeing the mist assessingly.

  It’ll clear as soon as the sun comes up, he told himself, and went to light the boiler. It would take two hours to raise steam. While they were waiting there’d be time to fetch wood from the log pile that lay beyond the reeds.

  Down in the stokehold he arranged a pile of kindling in the firebox and set it alight. Soon the sticks were snapping and spitting in the heat. He added more wood and within minutes the fire was blazing, its voice a hollow roar in the funnel. Charlie slammed the iron gate upon the flames, climbed out of the hold and went to wake the children.

  ‘Come on, kids! Time to fetch the logs!’

  Groans and protests did them no good. Charlie waited until they had struggled shivering out of their bunks and, eyes half shut, had begun to clamber into their clothes, then went forward to knock on the door of Elsie’s cabin.

  ‘Fuel, Elsie! Git movin’!’