Jack suffers the collar to be fastened round his neck with no more outward sign than a gulp and a twitch of his shoulders. Inside though, the weight of the iron feels like the settling of guilt. ...but I  never...

As soon as Wilkens is at the door, he snatches up his tot of rum, raises the glass in a toast to the private, and drains it off.

Out in the baking heat, Jack gives Murphy a nod of thanks. He squares his hat on his head and walks with measured steps to Brass, who shies not at all as his rider swings aboard.

Aware that he's creating his own legend--what Irish man isn't?-- he leans down in his saddle to smile at Peggy. "Gi' us a token then, lass," he says with a grin, taking the scarf she's twisting about her hands. He'd kiss her, too, but the bastard sergeant gives the chain a yank that pulls him up short.

"So long, lads, I'll be back in a week's time!" He turns his eyes to the horizon as he tucks Peggy's scarf under the already-despised collar and waits to ride off.

Well this day had not gone as she had thought, well at least the heat was constant. She gave out a series of quick orders and got together a few things before she made her way to her horse. She mounts and continues to give off a series of edicts to her staff as she tries not to watch as Jack is secured.

She looked around her saddle, did she have everything ? Who knew and probably not...

Brigitte would stay close to the Murphy riding just behind his mount as they set off.



-

Hooves lift from the ground, the sun looming up towards noon as though seeking an absoloute apex from which to strike. The heat is a taste and a smell as much as a sensation, though sensation it is as well, crawling into clothes and sliding along skin with swathes of sweat.

"Jack!" Peggy calls, of a sudden galvanised to action as they're headed out of the yard. Brass stands square with a grunt: Jack feels the maid heave up against the saddle to reach him a moment, sees her quickly kiss her fingers...and then those same slim fingers trail over his lips as she sinks back, something in her eyes a moment there that's more than play. The scarf smells like her, kitchen embers, flour and a little lavender.

Todd catches her for steadying as she returns to earth, wedging his back between her and the private who thought to help; he nods to Duggan as Brass walks onward, obedient to the general motion and tension on the rope.

Brigitte casts a glance over her things and finds the wider sun hat hanging ready for her, and that her water's been refilled. Something's odd, though. Murphy notices Brigitte staying close by and makes sure he can keep her more or less in his peripheral vision should she want to talk to him, his stance easy in the saddle, one freckled hand drifting idly through the dust on his coat. The sergeant ignores her, staring straight as though he might outstare the horizon heat-shimmering in the sun.

They cross the sward beside the river, dry and almost crisp-barren after years of drought. The horses sweat, too hot to remember the morning's spooks or keep up much pace, though the riders do pick up speed at times, snapping the journey shorter between trotting hooves. Kangaroos watch them from the shade of trees, lying flat to wait out the late morning and noontide straight-down spearing of the sun.

Cleary's border fence appears and drops behind, and the stands of tall eucalyptus left to shelter cattle bless them with shade along the way, if never quite dense enough. A few years ago a dense knot of trees might hide too many spearmen and quiet women armed with bladed sticks and heavy stones, ash-dappled for raiding and shadow-coloured in the dusk. The intricate snarl of tiny wars up on the Hawkesbury had barely stretched their reach this far but there was tension. Those dark eyes that had known an eon's age of stone did not see cattle and farms as the settlers did.

It is in fact Cleary they first meet, down in the dapples of what was once a tributary to the creek. Now he was letting his horse suck up what it could from a damp trickle across shaded rock. Wary at the sight of uniform, he tipped his hat to the newcomers, addressing Brigitte first:

"G'day to you all and Madame d'Anjou, would you happen to have seen our 'natural' on your travels? The girl's run off again, with clothes or no we're not sure."

Sergeant Wilkins is a quiet roil of tension. The landowner can only go so long without acknowledging the situation, though he tries to do so lightly.

"Ah, Duggan, are you in more trouble than usual?"

In reply to The Keeper (msg # 87):

Brigitte asks Mr Murphy to accompany her to Sgt. Wilkins "Excuse me Sgt. Wilkins, but it appears a mistake has been made as we mounted our horses and you appear to have my fathers sabre and I yours ?" she holds the sword and scabbard up for the sergeant and anyone else taking an interest to see."


-

Distracted, the sergeant looks at the sword Brigitte's holding out and shows her with a wary movement of his hand on the hilt that his hasn't left his side. "Mine's right 'ere. That looks to be an English officer's sword right enough."

He shrugs, suspicion in his flushed face as to what she's playing at. "If it ain't your father's, I can't help you."
Murphy addresses Cleary, though keeping an eye on the situation. "I'm afraid we've not seen Miss Janey, sir," he answers, and looks to Wilkins to ask the question they're there for.
This message was last edited by the player at 00:03, Wed 11 Mar 2020.

Jack plods along on Brass, or trots when the sergeant decides to pick up the pace. He lets his mind wander over Peggy, though they chase back to his predicament often enough, seeking a way clear of it.


Jack looks Cleary straight in the eyes and stiffens his spine that had been wilting in the heat.

"'Tis none a my doin, Mr. Duggan, an' that I take me oath to afore God and afore you, th' most honest man I know. Wilkins here has no evidence t'lay 'gainst me, save that I'm an Irish man and he needs t'bring in somebody t'save his stripes."

Even more confused then she had thought possible Brigitte placed the sword back in the saddle and said no more until they came across Cleary. She rested somewhat in her saddle before replying that she to had seen no one.

Completely out of sorts she adjusts her hat to better shade her face from the sun.



-

The sergeant twitches his head a little but doesn't really glance back at Duggan, his voice taking on the same kind of growl of any veteran pitbull testing out which of the pack of curs he'd been thrown in to fight with would be first to flinch. He's outnumbered, but the confidence in the loose set of his shoulders is not to be trifled with.

"No evidence save we 'ave the surviving witness that would put you at the scene of the murders, ain't sure about the one that got 'er save 'e was your height and dark and didn't say a word in the attack neither, like maybe 'e thought she'd recognise the voice - you want me to count on my fingers 'ere, son? - that the only word we 'ave for the existence of another suspect so far is yours, and then you come 'ere to me with suspicious weapons on your person and an explanation of doing God-knows-what to dead sheep. Such as is apparently your normal run of buisness in France, since Madame finds it a reasonable excuse." He breathes in through his teeth, discomforted by the taste of his dried mouth but unwilling to waste the moisture in spitting.

Tom Cleary has become very still and very serious, attention on the sergeant. "It's murder, then?"

Sgt. Wilkins frowns. "It is, that Ryan the squatter and 'is two kids, little younger'n mine, poor mites. It's your man Gill might untangle it for us, since Duggan 'ere ain't so talkative with me, says he's had a lapse of memory."

"Gill's out looking for Janey," Cleary says, looking at Jack now, but only with level perplexity, seemingly still trying to absorb his neighbours' deaths. Brigitte's anxious movements bring him concern, increasingly aware of a world not at rights. "You're welcome up to the house to wait for him - Margaret's there if you'll go on ahead of me a way, for I have to check up the ridge there. For what it's worth I wouldn't believe Duggan could go so mad as to do anything the like of that. Break someone's jaw, perhaps, but not with the knives."

Murphy shifts in his saddle and asks before the sergeant cuts in or Cleary can turn his horse's head away: "A moment, Mister Cleary - what date would you call t'day?"

Cleary's brows twitch as he works an answer out a moment. "December third, a Friday and th' expedition surely back tomorrow," he replies, and looks from the hunter to the redcoat with concern at the latter's stiffened back. "Why, what of it?"

Brigitte said nothing more as the exchange between the sergeant, Cleary and Murphy went on. She looked to the sergeant when Cleary said the date in reply to Murphy's prompting but she did not add anything to it, just watching the man and his expression.


-

"Aha! That's what I say, too, an' th' Countess," Jack cannot keep the triumph out of his voice, "But Murphy an' th' sergeant say 'tis th' fourteenth an' a Tuesday," he faces Wilkins, his tone turning plaintive, "'Tis not a lapse o' mem'ry we have, Sergeant, 'tis a lapse o' time!

"There's somethin' wrong here in th' natural order o' things."

He stops talking, a bewildered look settling on his features.

Cleary looks as confused as Brigitte feels. "What are you all talkin about?" he asks, then as though he hadn't really heard the first time: "What?"

"'Tis the fourteenth, and I can account for every day 'twixt then and now," Murphy answers, looking out through the scatter of trees to the baked and shuddering landscape beyond rather than have Cleary search his face for answers.

Cleary looks to the others, taking in Jack, then Brigitte and the sergeant, who looks like something with its hackles up, no more able to comprehend the situation than the rest. "If that's true...I can't understand that at all. How can we all be livin the same eleven days over again, and no memory of it?"

The breeze clatters the dry leaves around them. Cicadas screech from nearby and Brigitte's horse tests whether her rider will let her step nearer the dribble of moisture across the rock, thirst tugging stronger than obedience.

"I don't like t' think on it," Murphy responds, tone soft and honest. "If it's sometin that's happened to time from here to somewhere on Mme. d'Anjou's land, and we've come into it...would it repeat again, and would we know if it did? Could we ever get out?" He stares out at the land, seeing no boundary and no visible cage. A kangaroo hops past on its own errand, unheeding under the rise of the hills and the vast blue sky.

The hunter of men looks back to Cleary. "I'd rather believe 'twas sometin in th' water," he finishes.

Cleary crosses himself, seemingly unconscious of the gesture. He looks at his horse, then the visitors again. "There's a ticket man, Thomas Daniels - a strange fellow, I let him sleep in the feed store for his nerves and that he has dreams sometimes that keep the others awake - he keeps a journal of notes by the day; he'd have dates on those. If you'd go along to the house, there's more we might get from them."

"Yeah, and I ought to talk to 'im, too," the sergeant says, finally finding he can get his mind's teeth into some part of the discussion. He glances back across at his prisoner. "Might turn you out of irons when we get there."

Murphy shoots a flash of a glance across that's a warning not to bolt in such circumstances, since the sabre isn't the sergeant's only form of armament. He looks with more leisure to Brigitte to see if she has anything to add or is set to move on following Cleary's suggestion.

Jack blinks and his face clears a bit. He shrugs the collar up around his jawline and lets it slide back onto his shoulders. It would be good to have it off for a bit.

At Murphy's unspoken warning, he nods his agreement.

Brigitte pulls her horse to the side before adding "Yes let us move to Cleary 's place for a rest from riding and the heat and we can see if anyone else may be able to add to our mystery."

She removed her canteen and took a drink before wetting the scarf around her neck and the following the others. She thought over Murphy's words on what was going on unable to grasp how or what would have caused the time to delay.


-

Since Cleary has a few more minutes of duty and search to attend to, it's Murphy that leads the way down to the freeholding. Cleary calls after them that they should "Break that news easy to Miss Maggie," though that's easier said than done with three known neighbours dead and only confusion in place of leads. Trapped or not, the sky stretches above them deep and punishingly cloudless blue from arc to arc.

A handful of drought-lean and unhappy cows amble out of the barn's shade as they ride up on the place to stand stupefied in the sun a few moments, tails flicking at flies. The horses take deep breaths for the moment of relief in each inhalation. Margaret Cleary looks out before coming into the yard to greet them, bobbing respectfully to Brigitte and the sergeant and looking concerned to see Duggan bound with unyielding metal.

Murphy goes and talks to her whilst the rest rub down and give their horses some relief from saddle and thirst, helped by a ticket-of-leave convict who'd drifted across from some duty among the far trees to attend to them. When the others catch up with Murphy in the kitchen Miss Maggie is busy setting out water and a plate piled with quarter-cut potato scones for the visitors, though the earthenware crockery rattles against the table with her trembling and she seems to be barely a hair's breadth from crying. Murphy looks helplessly to Brigitte in the hopes that another woman might know how to comfort the lass better than he.

As yet, the rope attached to Jack's collar remains around the sergeant's fist. "Sit," he gets told, the soldier distracted and a little riled by the situation, perhaps thinking Margaret Cleary was a daughter. Perhaps thinking of his own daughters, and perhaps of a stabbed corpse. "'ands in front of you, nice and careful-like."

Jack makes sure Brass has water and a measure of oats before he slaps the big bay's withers in a comrades fashion and goes into the cottage.

He sits when he's told and places his hands side by side and flat on the table.

Wilkins puts one foot on the bench beside Duggan and pulls the collar about so that it can be unfastened from the back. Almost as soon as the hard and uncomfortably heated metal is taken from him, however, the sergeant pushes his hand over Jack's scalp, forcing him forward and dislodging his hat to the table.

He grips Jack's hair, not hard but just enough to demonstrate the strength in that one hand and his current state of control. Jack has no doubt his forehead would rapidly meet the scoured wood if he tried any clever remarks at this point. "I don't necessarily believe yer, but I don't necessarily disbelieve the 'ole of it. Unnerstand, 'owerver, that if I come to think you're a threat or you try to hie off into the bush, I will chain you, give you the 'iding of your life and be sure your name is Dog until I've dragged you back to Sydney."

He lets go and moves a cup of water closer to Duggan before moving fully away, watching the situation between Maggie and the rest.

Brigitte follows the others into the cottage once she has seen to her horse. Once inside she helps Margaret set out the various food items and cutlery having given her a quick hug when she had entered. Once everything was set Brigitte took up a cup of water and drained its contents.

She remains standing next to Margaret and watches as the collar is removed from Jack before the Sergeant yet again tries to prove his position.


-

Out of things to busy herself with and intimidated by the redcoat in the house, Maggie tries to fish out a handkerchief to bite before the urge to visibly grieve overwhelms her. "I-I'm sorry, I...it was me lost Janey this mornin and now...oh, she's out there, and someone who tried to kill all of the Ryans is out there, too, and poor Missus Ryan, I can't think how hard it is on her, and...you found them?"

The young woman looks to Brigitte, haunted. Cleary's approach can be heard outside.

In reply to Margaret Cleary (msg # 102):

"It is all right and nothing can be done about it now." Brigitte tries to give a reassuring smile though she was certain it did not have the desired effect. "I am sure that Janey will turn up when she is hungry. The Ryans well that is beyond comprehension and evil.. I, I've tried not to dwell on it and we were smart enough not to enter the house.... so there is that saving grace for our own minds, but let us hope that the people who did this are caught soon."



-

In reply to Sgt. Wilkins (msg # 100):

Jack slowly raises his head until he is sitting up again.

"Unnerstood, Sergeant," he says evenly, tamping down the anger he feels at being so treated, and in the Cleary's house, "An' thank ye, Sergeant."

With the hated weight of the collar lifted from his neck and shoulders, he feels as though he could fly. He picks up the cup and gratefully drains it, the coolness and moisture slaking his rough throat.

He pats his mouth dry with Peggy's scarf, then ties it loosely around his neck. A trifle of her scent still lingers in its folds.

"I hope she will, ma'am, only there's so many things are poisonous in this country if she decides to try a thing for fruit, and snakes in the trees, and if she gets upset and takes off what clothes she had...she'd be terribly obvious." Maggie nips a folded wedge of her handkerchief, eyes bright. "-and if you think it was bushrangers killed the Ryans, and they caught her..."

"There's none I've heard tell of coming up here," Murphy assures her on that point.

"You say 'people', Madame d'Anjou," Sgt. Wilkins cuts in, helping himself to water and setting the jug near Jack since he's out, albeit not without a narrow look of suspicion at the thanks. "Was it your impression there was more than one miscreant, then?"

"Do you think 'twas the Aboriginals?" Miss Cleary asks, her gaze drifing to the window and the broad landscape, any part of which might hide a mob of silent natives stealing nearer, patient crawl by patient crawl. "We've thought there might be a band out in the ranges for a while now..." she trails off, still trembling a little.

In reply to Margaret Cleary (msg # 105):

"I have no idea who many people that were involved Sergeant, as I said we did not enter the house and I have never had experience of such events to know if it was one or twenty. As for bush rangers I have not heard anything."

"Why do you think a band was up in the ranges Maggie ?"



-

"My uncle and the hands have seen tracks sometimes - James Gill said he caught a smell of smoke a few mornings ago," Maggie answers.

"Whatever that would mean," the sergeant mutters, then sees he's drawn the young woman's attention. "I 'ope it's not the local indigenous inabitants...whatever Macquarie says, you kill one of them black fellas, you better hurry up and kill 'is whole tribe, else you got a war on your hands. Nasty buisness, is a punitive expedition, I tell you."

"Or you could try talking to them if indeed they are even there ?" She drank some more water and took something to eat.


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