She heard a cough from round the corner, a hock and a spit; noticed a plume of tobacco smoke drifting on the air. Slowly she walked along the front of the house and around to the side verandah, where she found Billy leaning on the railing, watching the fading sunset, the dim outline of the ranges in the faraway west. His head hung when he saw her. Another drag on his cigarette. He was smoking in that old style John had taught him: hand cupped, thumb and forefinger pinching the end. She stood alongside him, said, “So, what did he want?”
“Who?”
“I saw the carriage, Billy.”
He sniffed, drew on the cigarette. “He reckons I should go to Bewley more often. Apparently they’re starting to turn on mein town.”
“Why?”
“I’m too up myself for their liking, Spencer says.”
“Maybe he has a point.” She’d said it lightly, teasing; Billy glared at her side-on. Katherine said, “And? What else?”
“There was nothing else.”
She looked at him doubtfully. Billy only shrugged. On the railing beside him was a full tumbler of whiskey; he drank thenoffered it over, and Katherine took two sips: one that set her mouth on fire then another to put out the flames. But God,it was good whiskey. She felt the flush rising, handed back the glass.
“I thought it might have been about the stableboy. He’s still not come back.”
“He can please himself what he does, he ain’t welcome here.”
“He’d be perfectly entitled to report you,” she said haughtily, and Billy laughed like this was a joke. She didn’t push it.They’d already had this argument, and Billy still couldn’t see what he’d done wrong. He was protecting their son, he’d insisted;wouldn’t she have done the same thing? Katherine lowered her voice and told him, “William’s sleeping, anyway. Let’s hope hehas a better night.”
“Boy has a fall and you treat him like he’s lost a bloody leg.”
“He’s still terrified, Billy. Not that you would know. Nightmares, fever—he’s hardly stopped shivering since.”
“He’s soft as horseshit that one. Needs a good shake.” She turned away and Billy protested, “Look, one day this whole placewill be his to run, and those men n’all. He can’t afford to stand there crying when he falls off his horse.”
“He’s not even seven years old. A child. None of that’s his concern.”
“Well it should be. The boy has it too easy. When I was his age—”
“When you were his age you could barely spell your own name, I’d bet. He’s a gifted learner, Billy. Mr. Daniels told me sohimself.”
“Aye, and that teacher’s another one could do with knowing his place.”
“At least he encourages him. You humiliated William the other day. He’s so desperate to please you and look what you did.You’re too hard on him by far.”
“And you’re too soft. Filling his head with dreams.”
“What dreams?”
“That learning’ll get him anywhere. That books can teach him about the world. That he doesn’t have to work for nothing becausethe work’s already been done . . . that playing the bloody piano is more important than riding a horse.”
“I never told him any of those things. I’m just trying to give him the kind of opportunities the two of us never had.”
“The two of us? Grow up poor now, did you?”
“Billy, don’t.”
“What? How many nights have you gone to bed hungry in your life?”
“And how many nights were you forced to lie under a man who repulsed you? A man twice your age, grunting in your face, betweenyour legs, and all with your own father’s blessing, because since when does the woman get a say? We’ve both suffered, it’snot a competition to see who’s had it worse. All I’m saying is that William shouldn’t have to—don’t you agree?”
Billy was quiet a moment. He sipped his drink, mumbled, “The boy needs to learn how to become a man.”
“A man like you, you mean?”
“Of course like me. You got someone else in mind?”
“You could just let him be himself.”
“He’s an embarrassment, a joke among the men. All of them laughing at him, even the bloody stableboy was joining in!”
She scoffed and shook her head. “Has it honestly never occurred to you that it wasn’t William they were laughing at, Billy,but you?”
He turned on her so sharply that Katherine flinched, shying from a blow that never came. He hadn’t hit her yet, but he could have, they were both well aware of that. God knows, the other day had proved it. There was violence in Billy, Katherine had seen it, burning right there in his eyes. She’d always believed it was a virtue, a strength. The men she had grown up around were cowards compared to him. But the way it flared up in him these days, the way he looked at her sometimes . . .
“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean that how it sounded. Look, will you at least talk to William? Make things right?”
Billy finished his cigarette, ground it roughly on the rail. “I’ve more important things to be worrying about.”
“More important . . . ? Such as?”
He paused and looked directly at her for the first time since she arrived, like he was only now properly seeing her, weighingsomething in his mind. “There’s to be an inquest,” he said quietly. “That’s why Spencer came. He’s been told to look intothe killings, what went on at the house. And then afterward, when we rode out with John and them, raking over their fuckinggraves. He says I’ll have to testify. Noone’s a part of it too.”
His name hung between them like a taboo. Neither had spoken of the man in years. Katherine said, “Has something happened?”
“Apparently there’s some witness, I don’t bloody know.”
“A witness to what, though?”
The question briefly stalled him. He
