Watcher on the Cobblestones

The heavy oak doors of the Colonial Bank of Tasmania swung shut behind William with a sound that seemed to seal something irrevocable. The winter afternoon received him with indifferent cold, the grey light of late day settling over Hobart Town like a shroud drawn across a face. The air bit at his cheeks and found its way beneath his greatcoat's collar, a sharp reminder that August in Van Diemen's Land showed no deference to wealth or station.

He paused at the top of the stone steps, allowing his eyes to adjust from the banking hall's muted interior to the broader theatre of the street. The leather satchel hung from his left hand, its weight both reassuring and terrible — reassuring because it represented options, terrible because its necessity spoke to how few options remained. Five days had passed since the crimson-sealed letter had arrived at Jeffries Manor, five days of calculation and contingency, of lists written and burned, of plans formed in the darkness of sleepless nights. The satchel was the physical manifestation of those plans, portable wealth that could purchase passage or silence or time, depending on which currency the coming days demanded.

Elizabeth Street stretched before him in both directions. To his left, the street descended toward Sullivan's Cove, where masts rose above the rooftops like a forest of stripped trees and the cries of gulls competed with the shouts of stevedores. To his right, the road climbed toward the newer districts where men of means had begun to build homes that aped the Georgian terraces of London, though the native bush pressed close against their garden walls as if waiting to reclaim what had been taken.

The usual traffic of the afternoon continued around him — a dray laden with wool bales creaking past, a woman in a worn shawl hurrying two children before her, a pair of soldiers in red coats that seemed garish against the grey and brown palette of the colonial winter. None of them spared William more than a glance, yet he felt observed nonetheless. It was a sensation he had learned to trust during his years in the labour gangs, when a prickling at the back of the neck could mean the difference between avoiding a blow and receiving one.

His gaze swept the street with the unhurried attention of a man admiring the view, though nothing could have been further from his purpose. The shopfronts presented their ordinary faces — a chandler's with tallow candles ranked in the window, a draper's displaying bolts of cloth that would have been rejected as inferior in any London establishment, a tavern from which the smell of beer and wood smoke drifted into the cold air. Ordinary commerce, ordinary colonial afternoon.

And yet.

The figure stood in the mouth of an alley some thirty yards distant, positioned where shadow met the fading daylight in a margin that obscured more than it revealed. A man, by the breadth of shoulder and the way he stood — feet planted, weight balanced, the posture of someone prepared to move quickly in any direction. He wore a wide-brimmed hat pulled low against the winter wind, its shadow falling across his features like a curtain drawn against scrutiny. His coat was dark, nondescript, the kind of garment that would attract no notice in any crowd.

William's hand tightened on the satchel's handle, a response so instinctive he barely registered making it. The watcher had not been there when he entered the bank — of that he was certain, having surveyed the street with the habitual caution that had kept him alive through circumstances far more dangerous than colonial commerce. Which meant the man had taken up his position during the hour William had spent within, had stationed himself where he could observe the bank's entrance while remaining inconspicuous to casual observation.

For a long moment, neither man moved. The street noise continued around them — the creak of cartwheels, the calls of vendors, the particular sounds of a frontier town conducting its business — but between William and the watcher, a silence seemed to open like a held breath. Then the figure shifted, and William caught the briefest gleam of eyes beneath the hat's brim, dark and watchful, fixed upon him with an intensity that confirmed his suspicions.

He was being observed. Marked. Followed, perhaps, or merely noted for future reference. The distinction mattered less than the fact itself.

William forced his shoulders to remain relaxed, his expression to betray nothing of the calculations now racing through his mind. Who had sent this man? Blackwood's associates, ensuring their investment remained under observation? Colonial authorities, alerted by rumours or anonymous correspondence to irregularities in William's affairs? A business rival seeking advantage through intelligence about his movements? Each possibility spawned others, branching like cracks in ice until the entire surface of his certainty threatened to give way.

The watcher moved. Not toward William, but backward, retreating into the alley's deeper shadow with a fluidity that spoke of practice. One moment he was there, a presence as solid as the buildings that flanked him; the next, he had melted into the gloom between structures, leaving only the empty mouth of the alley and the impression of dark eyes that had seen too much.

William descended the bank's steps with a control that cost him more than any observer could have known. His boots struck the cobblestones in an even rhythm, unhurried, projecting the confidence of a man whose affairs were entirely in order and whose conscience held no shadows. The satchel swung slightly at his side, its weight a constant reminder of what he carried and what that carrying implied. He did not look toward the alley as he passed it, though every instinct screamed at him to verify the watcher's departure. To look would be to acknowledge concern, and concern invited exploitation.

His carriage waited where he had left it, drawn up along the street's edge with the patience of a servant accustomed to uncertain hours. The vehicle itself was modest by the standards of English nobility but substantial for the colony — black-lacquered panels kept polished despite the mud that seemed to coat everything in Van Diemen's Land, brass fittings that caught the grey light, leather appointments worn soft by use. The matched bay horses stamped against the cold, their breath rising in twin plumes that drifted and dispersed in the still air.

The coachman — a weathered man named Carver who had driven for William since the manor's completion — straightened on his perch as his employer approached. His face, seamed by decades of colonial sun and wind, betrayed no curiosity about the satchel or the length of time the bank had required. Such discretion was why William retained him, paying wages that ensured loyalty and silence in equal measure.

"Mr Jeffries." Carver touched the brim of his hat, then climbed down to open the carriage door with movements that spoke of routine long established.

William nodded acknowledgment and stepped inside, settling onto the leather seat with a exhale he had been holding since the bank's doors closed behind him. The interior smelled of the pomade he used and the faint mustiness of upholstery that never quite dried in the colonial damp. He set the satchel beside him, its bulk pressing against his thigh with an insistence that seemed almost conscious.

Through the window, he watched the street scene that had so recently contained his watcher. The alley mouth remained empty, a dark gap between buildings that revealed nothing of what it might conceal. Elsewhere, Hobart Town continued its business without regard for the small drama that had unfolded on its cobblestones — vendors crying their wares, children darting between the legs of adults, a dog nosing at refuse in the gutter. The ordinary persistence of life, indifferent to the fears of any single participant.

The carriage lurched into motion as Carver's whip cracked above the horses' backs. The cobblestones transmitted their irregularities through the springs and wheels, a familiar rhythm that had once soothed William on journeys between his various enterprises. Now each jolt seemed to emphasise the precariousness of his position, the fragility of the empire he had constructed from nothing but will and the willingness to do what others would not.

The town began to fall away as the carriage climbed toward the road that wound through the hills toward Granton. The buildings thinned, giving way to paddocks where sheep huddled against the cold and stands of eucalyptus that the colonists had not yet cleared. The mountain loomed ahead, its bulk dominating the landscape with a permanence that mocked human endeavour. The settlers had begun calling it Wellington, after the duke whose victories had made England safe for the comfortable and the prosperous, but William sometimes wondered what the native people had called it before the ships came — what name they had given to this brooding presence that watched over the valley with ancient indifference.

He had climbed its lower slopes once, in his early days in the colony, seeking a vantage from which to survey the land he intended to conquer. The view from that height had shown him a world of possibility — the river winding toward the sea, the settlement clinging to the shore like a child to its mother's skirts, the vast interior stretching toward horizons no European had mapped. He had stood there in the wind that seemed to blow from the end of the earth and had made promises to himself about what he would become, what he would build, what he would never again allow himself to suffer.

Now, watching that same mountain through the carriage window, those promises seemed the naive boasting of a man who did not yet understand what the world could take from those who reached too high.

The satchel pressed against his leg, its contents a weight that seemed to increase with every mile. Within that leather container lay the accumulated fruits of years of careful acquisition — money extracted from ventures both legitimate and otherwise, profits from wool and shipping and arrangements that could never appear in any ledger. It represented perhaps a quarter of his liquid wealth, enough to establish a man comfortably in Sydney or even to purchase passage to somewhere more distant, somewhere the reach of Alastair Blackwood and his crimson-sealed letters might not extend.

The thought of flight had circled through his mind since the letter's arrival, a vulture waiting for the moment when resistance finally failed. He had rejected it repeatedly, unwilling to abandon what he had built, unable to accept that his carefully constructed life might prove as insubstantial as the gentleman's mask he wore. But the rejection grew harder with each passing day, each new indication that forces beyond his control were closing around him like the walls of a trap.

The watcher in the alley had confirmed what he had suspected since burning the letter in his study's fireplace. He was being observed. His movements were being noted, his patterns studied, his vulnerabilities assessed. Whether the observers served Blackwood or some other master hardly mattered — what mattered was that the comfortable anonymity of colonial prosperity had been stripped away, leaving him exposed to scrutiny he could not deflect.

Jeremiah Blaylock's face rose in his memory, pale with shock at accusations that had surprised both men in their severity. The confrontation five days ago had been a mistake, William now acknowledged — a misdirection of the fear and rage that the letter had kindled, aimed at a target who almost certainly did not deserve it. Blaylock had served him loyally for years, had helped to build the manor with his own hands, had asked no questions about aspects of William's business that demanded silence rather than curiosity. To accuse him of betrayal, of tampering with records, of being the source of the irregularities the letter described... it had been the act of a desperate man seeking someone to blame for circumstances beyond anyone's control.

Yet even as he acknowledged the injustice, William could not bring himself to regret it entirely. Trust was a luxury he could no longer afford, a weakness that his enemies — whoever they might be — would surely exploit. If Blaylock was innocent, the accusations had cost nothing but the foreman's goodwill. If he was guilty, the confrontation had at least put him on notice that his treachery was suspected. Either way, William had learned what he needed to learn: that even those closest to him might harbour intentions he could not predict.

The carriage crested a rise, and suddenly the river appeared below, its grey waters winding through the valley like a serpent seeking the sea. On the bank, still distant but growing closer with each turn of the wheels, Jeffries Manor rose from its grounds like a declaration of intent. The sandstone gleamed in the afternoon light, its windows reflecting the winter sky, its chimneys trailing smoke that spoke of fires burning within against the cold. The gardens, dormant now but carefully maintained even in their winter sleep, surrounded the house with the geometric order that William had specified to the last hedgerow and gravel path.

His home. His fortress. The physical proof of everything he had achieved since the day he had walked free from his convict obligations with nothing but the clothes on his back and the determination that had sustained him through years of degradation.

And somewhere within those walls, or perhaps in the offices of colonial authorities, or perhaps in the hands of a man in a London drawing room whose smile had promised so much and delivered such poison — somewhere, the threat remained. The letter was ash, but its words lived on in memory. The watcher had vanished into his alley, but his eyes had seen what they needed to see. The satchel pressed against William's leg with its burden of portable wealth, ready for flight that might yet become necessary.