Blood Bond Read online

  Michael Green is a successful computer consultant and professional speaker. Author of the humorous book ‘Big Aggie’ Sails the Gulf and of Successful Speechmaking, he has also won many speechmaking competitions. Spending some of his time in the UK, some in New Zealand and some on the water on his yacht, he is currently working on the third book in the trilogy that started with Blood Line, to which this book is the sequel.

  Previous books by Michael Green

  Blood Line (The Crucial Gene)

  ‘Big Aggie’ Sails the Gulf

  Successful Speechmaking

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  AN ARROW BOOK published by Random House New Zealand,

  18 Poland Road, Glenfield, Auckland, New Zealand

  For more information about our titles go to www.randomhouse.co.nz

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of New Zealand

  Random House New Zealand is part of the Random House Group

  New York London Sydney Auckland Delhi Johannesburg

  First published 2009

  © 2009 Michael Green

  The moral rights of the author have been asserted

  ISBN 978 1 86979 179 7

  This book is copyright. Except for the purposes of fair reviewing no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Cover design: Matthew Trbuhovic, Third Eye Design

  Cover images: Gettyimages

  Dedicated to my wife Hazel,

  with much love — recognising her support

  in all things (including my writing).

  My thanks to Shirley Henwood for helping to

  edit the manuscript, and to Dr Graeme Whittaker

  for his advice on medical matters.

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Michael Green

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  The Chatfield Dynasty

  Part 1

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  Part 2

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  The Chatfield Dynasty

  Part 1

  1

  ‘Where are we going?’ Lee asked Mark Chatfield. The small boy had climbed on deck to join his great-uncle at the wheel of the yacht Archangel. He was bracing himself as the yacht bounced over the waves, the sea spraying into their faces.

  Poor lad, Mark thought. He’d been hurried onto the yacht and away from probably the only home he could remember, without anyone having a chance to explain to him what was going on.

  ‘We’re sailing right across the world,’ Mark explained, ‘to New Zealand. Where my son Steven and I came from.’

  ‘Did everyone in New Zealand die in the pandemic?’ the five-year-old asked, his brow furrowing. ‘Like they did in England?’

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid the disease spread all over the world and seems to have killed everyone, except for members of our family. That’s why Steven and I came all the way to England — to find out if anyone else from the Chatfield clan had survived. And sure enough, there you were and your mummy and great-great-aunt Margaret and all our other relatives, all at Haver House.’

  ‘And there’re more of us in New Zealand?’ Lee asked.

  ‘Yes, there’s my brother Christopher and his two daughters, Sarah and Katie, and their children. And there’s my daughter Jane, she’s Steven’s sister, and her three children. They’re all waiting for us to come back. You’ll have lots of new friends among your cousins.’

  ‘But will we be beaten and made to work all the time like at Haver?’ Lee whispered anxiously.

  ‘No, no, not at all,’ Mark reassured him. ‘That’s why so many of you are coming back with us — to escape Nigel and his sons and their tyrannical rule. No one acts like that at our settlement at Gulf Harbour. There are not as many of us there, but we’ll all make one big family together. You’ll be happy there, Lee, you’ll see.’ Mark couldn’t really explain to the boy that he had been desperate to bring back male relatives to balance out the predominantly female group in New Zealand and ensure the family’s future survival.

  Lee was still looking concerned. ‘What will happen to the people we left behind at Haver?’ he asked, staring out to the empty horizon.

  ‘They’ll be all right, don’t worry about them. You have a new life ahead of you, with Steven as your new daddy, new relatives waiting for you to arrive and a beautiful new country.’

  ‘But will Nigel punish them because of us?’ Lee was obviously not going to be distracted.

  ‘Well, Nigel will be furious and really upset that Miles was killed when we escaped. But maybe Nigel and his remaining sons will now realise they can’t go on treating their relatives so badly. I left a note warning Nigel that I’d be coming back to make sure he had changed his ways. We can only hope he does.’

  2

  Through the archway beneath Cromwell’s Tower at the centre of Haver House, Nigel Chatfield could see his relatives standing around his aunt’s freshly dug grave, singing hymns. He was enraged. The execution of Aunt Margaret was supposed to bring the rest of the community back in line after Mark and his followers had escaped. But not only had his subjects disobeyed two of his decrees — banning religion and walking on the grass in Lawn Court — they had dug the grave in the middle of his precious bowling green. And Mark had left him that impertinent note warning him that he would return one day, and hold Nigel accountable for his dictatorship.

  He hated these relatives of his, but as the Chatfield blood line seemed the only one to have survived the pandemic that had swept the globe three and a half years previously, he had no choice but to make the most of them. As long as he kept them scared, they made good enough servants.

  The fifteen adults and twelve children gathered around the grave were lost in their own grief. Their faces were strained and white. Most of the women and children were crying. The four adult males — the brothers Duncan and Cameron Steed, and their cousins Paul Grey and Warren Dalton — were fighting to hold back their own tears. An hour earlier, their anger at the execution of their aunt had fortified them. They had ignored Nigel’s demands to stop singing hymns and he had hurried from the courtyard with his sons Jasper and Damian at his heels. They had also ignored the threat of his other surviving son, Greg, standing machine gun at the ready on the parapet above. They had continued singing their hymns as they pushed the cart containing Aunt Margaret’s decapitated body through the archway beneath Cromwell’s Tower to Lawn Court, where they had dug a grave and lowered her body into the earth with due reverence.

  The singing petered out as the mourners saw Nigel and his sons approaching.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ yelled Nigel, his bald head thrust aggressively forward on his bull-like n
eck, his thumbs stuck in the belt strapping his corpulent belly.

  No one answered. Nigel’s three sons stood menacingly beside him, their long blond hair swirling about their shoulders. The eldest, Jasper, had a neat moustache and an athletic figure, most closely justifying the title of knight and the address of ‘Sir’ that Nigel insisted his relatives use when speaking to his sons. The less impressive Damian tugged at his goatee beard, and the youngest — the overweight Greg — scratched the straggly clumps of hair dotting his chin.

  ‘I said, what do you think you’re doing?’ Nigel yelled again.

  The bravest, the former barrister Diana Morgan, opened her mouth to speak. But she was also the most astute. She appeared to change her mind and remained silent.

  Everyone looked at red-haired Duncan Steed. But Duncan looked frightened, though not as frightened as Paul Grey. The nervous facial tic Paul had developed since living at Haver was so severe that it seemed he would be unable to speak coherently even if he had found the courage to do so.

  ‘We are celebrating the life of my mother.’ Warren Dalton spoke up, but softly. Nigel was surprised. Warren had always been an insignificant figure in the community, a man living in the shadow of his cousins, content to remain in the background and keep himself out of trouble. Somewhere he had found the strength to speak, as if some of his mother’s spirit had been transferred to him with her death.

  Warren’s bravery encouraged his cousin, the bespectacled Cameron Steed, to speak also. ‘Who you murdered,’ he accused Nigel.

  ‘Who Damian murdered,’ corrected Warren.

  Damian withdrew his pistol from his holster and pointed it wildly at Warren’s head.

  ‘Who you murdered,’ Warren repeated.

  His courage seemed to be infectious. ‘Sir Damian murdered Great-Aunt Margaret,’ shouted the tiny figure of his great-niece Mary-Claire Grey from the back of the crowd. The seven-year-old girl, a stocky little thing with dark, close-cropped hair and a cheeky face, had also been blessed with the old lady’s strength of mind.

  Buoyed up by his granddaughter’s outburst, Paul tried to nod his head in agreement, but with his head jerking so vigorously, Nigel and his sons failed to notice.

  ‘All of you — get back to your quarters,’ Nigel said firmly.

  Duncan was the first to move off.

  ‘No,’ Warren said resolutely. ‘This is my mother’s funeral.’

  ‘That’s right,’ agreed Cameron.

  There was a muted murmur of agreement from Cameron’s adult daughters Rebecca and Kimberley, who were standing immediately behind him. Fearing their father was losing control, Jasper and Greg drew their pistols.

  ‘Do as you’re told — go back to your quarters!’ yelled Damian.

  The captive members of the Chatfield family knew Damian was unpredictable. They all despised him. They all feared him. With the exception of Warren, Cameron and little Mary-Claire, they began to shuffle away.

  ‘Things can’t go back to the way they were,’ Warren said defiantly. ‘It’s time for a new beginning. Like Mark said before he and the others escaped, we deserve democracy.’

  The remainder of the community turned and began to edge back.

  ‘Deserve? You deserve?’ ranted Nigel.

  ‘That’s right,’ Cameron insisted. ‘We want a say in how our own lives are run. We will not be controlled by you or your sons any longer.’

  His words were followed by a chorus of agreement.

  Two shots rang out almost simultaneously. Warren, shot through the chest by Jasper, slumped to his knees. Cameron’s brains and spectacles, both shattered by the near point-blank shot from Greg’s pistol, splattered onto his daughters, their own spectacles saving their eyes from the flying glass.

  Damian continued to fire as the remaining members of the community ran off, screaming. His final shot was directed at Mary-Claire. He missed, and by the time he reloaded she had disappeared from view.

  Before the fleeing men, women and children could reach the safety of their quarters around Lawn Court, Warren’s niece Charlene and Diana’s daughter Melanie had also been killed. Paul’s daughter Bridget lay writhing on the grass, crying pitifully. Paul tried desperately to reach her, but was forced back by a volley of shots from Damian.

  ‘Breakfast will be at the usual time tomorrow morning,’ Nigel yelled to the frightened figures cowering beneath the windowsills in the buildings surrounding Lawn Court.

  ‘Don’t be late,’ Damian shouted.

  The revolt was over.

  3

  ‘I think we should head directly to Gulf Harbour,’ Steven Chatfield insisted. He was standing with his back to his father, staring out at the horizon, his broad-shouldered, muscular frame swaying with the swell.

  Like his cousin Nigel back in England, Mark Chatfield, helming the fifty-foot steel ketch Archangel as she butted her way across the Bay of Biscay, was facing a challenge to his authority.

  A day earlier, the small group of relatives who had chosen to leave Haver to return to New Zealand had learned two shocking facts about their family history. Firstly, Allison Dalton, Mark’s cousin who had become his lover during his time in England, had revealed that their mutual grandparents had married and had a family without knowing they were twin brother and sister. It may well have been this combination of their DNA that led to the crucial gene that enabled the Chatfield family to survive the pandemic.

  Secondly, Mark had told them about a ‘secret uncle’. Before his escape from Haver, Mark’s Aunt Margaret had told him that her mother — Mark’s grandmother — had given birth to another son the family had never been told about. William Chatfield had gone to sea when he was thirteen years old, but during one of his visits home he had made the girl next door pregnant and then jilted her, which had led to her suicide. William had been disowned by the family and his name was never mentioned again.

  Mark and his cousins never knew their Uncle William existed, but now, thanks to Aunt Margaret’s revelations, they also knew their secret uncle had fathered at least two children: one in Brisbane, Australia, and one in America — probably in San Francisco or San Diego. Anxious to widen the gene pool of the few survivors left on Earth, Mark had declared his intention to visit Brisbane on the way back to New Zealand to see if they could find anyone left alive.

  Unlike Nigel, Mark was prepared to debate the matter, keen to show his relatives that they would have a much happier life by leaving Haver for the community in New Zealand.

  ‘If we’re smart about our course, we will only add a few days to the journey,’ he said reasonably. Mark was still recovering from a wound he had received during the escape from Haver and, with his hair and close-cropped beard invaded by speckles of grey, was suddenly looking his sixty-one years of age.

  ‘It’s a big city — even if there’s anyone still alive, it could take weeks to find them,’ Steven returned.

  Other members of the escape party followed the debate with keen interest. Each had their own thoughts and agendas.

  Adam Dalton lounged on the cabintop, trying to relieve the aching of his gammy leg. The motion of the boat seemed to aggravate the pain. Barely 1.5 metres tall, Adam was a few years younger than his cousin Mark, but looked older. The constant pain from his leg, injured in a motorbike accident when he was a teenager, had taken its toll. His hair and beard were completely white. His teenage sons, the baby-faced Luke and the continually scowling Robert, sat beside him.

  ‘We can always light a bonfire. Any survivors seeing the smoke will come to us.’ The voice belonged to Mark’s nephew Fergus Steed. He was lying in the quarterberth beneath the cockpit with Allison’s daughter Jessica, his cousin and girlfriend, listening to the conversation drifting in through the open port.

  ‘We need to get back to Gulf Harbour as soon as possible. I just know we do,’ Steven insisted.

  ‘I think Steven’s right,’ Steven’s girlfriend Penny Morgan said, turning towards Mark. ‘Surely you want to get home to Jane and your grandch
ildren too?’ Penny had often been woken at night by Steven shouting in his sleep beside her. It was always the same nightmare — his sister Jane, who he had left behind in New Zealand, trapped in a whirlpool, holding out her hand, calling to him to save her. But he couldn’t reach her.

  Mark resented the reproach. Of course he was desperate to see Jane again, as he was to see his three grandchildren, his brother Christopher and his family. But he also felt it made sense to visit Brisbane on the way home. ‘Of course I want to see them, but it will be weeks before we get home either way. A few more days isn’t going to make any difference. If any of Uncle William’s descendents have survived we need to know. We need all the people we can muster if we’re going to survive.’

  ‘We can always sail back to Brisbane later,’ persisted Steven.

  ‘It means splitting our forces — additional risk.’

  ‘We should take a vote,’ Allison said softly. Mark looked down at her. Despite being dressed in one of Mark’s T-shirts and a pair of tattered shorts, she retained an air of elegance. Much as Mark loved her, he did not welcome her suggestion, however. He was confident that, given time, he could persuade Steven to share his view — he usually could.

  ‘Good idea,’ chipped in Fergus. ‘I’m voting for Brisbane.’ Mark was relieved. Fergus had declared the voyage his and Jessica’s ‘honeymoon’ now their relationship could be more public, and no doubt he envisaged a trip to Brisbane as involving walking on sandy beaches, hand in hand with Jessica, and making love at the water’s edge.