Mosquito Creek

by Robert Engwerda

  On receiving the first note he had sent troopers to search the goldfield but no sign of the thief or his possession was to be found. And shortly thereafter had arrived another note, this one scrawled more hastily.

  Lest you try anything untoward I have deposited papers in a secure place, making it clear that you had stolen your father’s goods and also information about your behaviour that were it made public you well know will have you sent home in disgrace. I have kept notes you wrote me so there could be no misunderstanding by any other party. All will be plain. I have also recorded your father’s address – from the voyage out – and will have no hesitation in alerting him to your comings and goings. You know I am no fool and I am not the only person with access to this information, insurance as it were should anything happen to me. So be warned. Neither should you try to have me held. Do as I have instructed and nothing further will bother you but the shame of your treatment of me and the payment of the aforementioned sum.

  The second note was left unsigned and the commissioner numbly tore both letters into many pieces and fed them into his fire. There should be nothing issuing from that man that would ever find its way to his father.

  He found his hands shaking, disconcertingly so, and was suddenly startled by a knock at the door. He closed his eyes and took a breath before answering.

  It was Sergeant Kennedy, pale and breathing heavily from a hard ride, explaining what he had seen at Mosquito Creek, what he thought might be cholera or typhoid.

  ‘And you are certain that is what it is?’ the commissioner quizzed him tartly. The man could appear on his step at the most inopportune times.

  ‘I’d think so,’ his sergeant replied.

  ‘Typhoid!’ Stanfield almost spat.

  ‘Yes, sir. I think.’

  ‘From the Chinese?’

  ‘I don’t know it comes from any particular kind of person.’

  ‘How many are dead, do you think?’

  ‘It could be nearly a dozen, maybe more by now.’

  ‘Well.’

  ‘And it will get worse, much worse if we don’t do something quickly.’

  The commissioner kept pacing while Niall remained stock-still, listening but at the same time keeping an eye on the window and the rain which had returned outside.

  ‘And at this time of the year?’ the commissioner resumed. ‘I’ve never heard of it. It’s too cold, surely?’

  ‘I don’t know if cold has anything to do with it. The signs of it are the same I’ve seen before. The sickness. And if we’re not careful it’ll take over the diggings in the blink of an eye. That’s how quick it travels.’

  ‘So, as a precaution, we should move quickly then. What do you suggest? Quarantine that whole camp?’

  ‘There’s too many there to do that. We’d be killing as many as we’d save.’

  ‘Perhaps a station removed from everyone then.’

  ‘I think that’d be best. We don’t have any time to waste now. Getting the sick ones away from the others now is the only thing. No one will like it. But I think it’s the only thing.’

  ‘Yes.’ The commissioner tapped his foot repeatedly on the floor. He knew what havoc disease caused in confined quarters, especially on board ships. All those corpses stitched in canvas and slopped over the side. ‘Do what you have to, and with as many men as we need. We do not want a situation worse than we already have.’

  ‘Where do you think we should shift them to? The house at the top of the escarpment?’

  ‘No,’ the commissioner said. ‘No, we don’t know when that fellow might come back. And that house is too good for the likes of our sick miners, and awkward, besides, for us to get to.’

  ‘Perhaps I’ll look along that track to the west, then. There are places out there, settlers that have been there since well before this diggings started. Half a dozen farms if you ride out far enough. We’ll have to round up the sick ones as soon as we find somewhere. Everything will have to happen almost at once.’

  ‘We must move quickly, then.’

  ‘You’ll want to see what’s there at Mosquito Creek too.’

  Stanfield glanced away. ‘I do not intend to. There are too many other things …’

  The sergeant began to say something in reply but held his tongue instead and left to make his preparations.

  Relieved to be left alone again, the commissioner sat down and pushed his hands into his cheeks. This accursed place, he thought.

  He would continue to efficiently discharge his administrative duties, persist in the service he was brought out here to perform. But nothing would distract him from the task of retrieving the relic, and he would use any and all resources at his disposal. The special police he had called for would allow him the discretion he needed and Alfred Row and his men would now be ready for their first performance in two days time. What his adversary would see was that he had made a severe misjudgement in thinking he could dictate the circumstances of the relic’s return.

  Everything would vindicate him in the end. In due course he would return home and be welcomed. He’d arrive in England with an unblemished record of service and there would be no choice but for everyone to laud what he had achieved. They would see they had been wrong.

  He unbuttoned the top of his vest and lay down a while, glancing to his creatures in stone on the dresser beside him.

  He thought of his family in his childhood years. When it was winter and days were short he and his brother occupied themselves indoors listening to the wind menace window frames while their father stamped the corridors finding fault with some or other of the house staff. After his dismissal from the admiralty, for reasons no one was willing to broach, their father gave himself over to personally running their estate. In the evenings he’d retire to his study, which no one else was allowed to enter, where he’d painstakingly resume building his replica of the Victory based on copperplate engravings he slid from time to time from a large leather satchel.

  And there could be simmering, festering rage. One particular morning his father found fault with a toy wooden boat Charles had left lying about. Unhappy with his son’s tardiness in clearing the floor he delivered a vicious kick that succeeded only in glancing Charles’s hip. ‘His admiralty moods,’ his mother whispered.

  His father would be sharp with his own father too, especially as the latter grew more elderly. He would say that he never believed the tales the old man told of his times at sea. ‘Invention and sorry speculation’ were all his lies amounted to.

  Even now, though, the thought of his father striking him smarted worse than any actual blow he had been given. And worse still because he hadn’t understood why his father had done those things, if there was anything then to understand at all.

  In other parts of the house their mother and grandfather whiled away the hours following their own pursuits as he and his brother counted days for improved weather before they could roam the countryside again, carry on with their excavations or go boating on the Swale with their grandfather.

  It was as if winter brought everyone to a state of hibernation. Through the windows they’d watch a carpet of red and yellow leaves blanket the lawns around the approach to their house, the first flurries of snow blow in and ice crust over the ornamental lake, sparrows in denuded elms fluff their feathers against the cold. When he and Terence asked why they couldn’t go outside their mother told them children were terribly ill in the dwellings mired in their estate and beyond. It was better for them all to stay inside where they were safe.

  So he and his brother had to occupy themselves week after week until spring weather blew the illness and disease away.

  There was pestilence there, and there was pestilence abroad here.

  12

  As he made his way back to the troopers’ quarters Niall was preoccupied with his thoughts, barely noticing the rain. What stayed in his mind was the dead boy against the paperbark tree. The outbreak of disease meant further trouble on top of the flood and they were still days
away from getting the rescue boat into the water. The carpenters were following Stanfield’s instructions but what eventuated and how well it would fare in rough water was anyone’s guess. There was talk of food shortages around the diggings with some diggers already stocking up in panic. He could smell a bad time coming.

  At the main troopers’ hut he found six or seven men lolling about, a few puffing on clay pipes. A card game occupied a handful while the rest sat bored or sleepy. Niall found himself drifting off, thinking of when he’d first arrived in Van Diemen’s Land, how teams of guards and dogs were sent to track down escaped convicts, the dogs huge black and brown beasts slavering and howling with excitement – he had to shake himself free of it. He could feel eyes turning on him as if he were personally responsible for every moment of the troopers’ miserable existences.

  ‘Need a few fellows,’ he announced. ‘Got a bit of a special job I

  need done.’ He knew this was the only way he could kindle a spark of interest, even if they were taking care not to show it. ‘Need a few detectives, really. A group of you who can quickly size up what’s going on without letting on to others.’

  ‘What’s the payoff?’ one card player asked.

  There always had to be one with this lot, Niall thought.

  ‘For starters, you get to climb off your lazy backsides for at least ten minutes,’ he chided as a scattering of them laughed. ‘And there’s no charge for that.’

  They were all looking and listening now.

  ‘But what I need is a few of you to do some scouting for me. Find out if anyone else is sick besides the lot over at the Mosquito. Need a few people to come with me, too. Have a look at some places out to the west.’

  ‘What’s the fuss about a few sick diggers?’ someone asked.

  It was a fair question, others agreed. Diggers were always coming down with something.

  ‘A government thing,’ their sergeant answered, moving quickly. ‘They want to know how many people on the diggings – how many of us, how much gold, how many stores, how many sick. All those kind of things.’

  ‘And what’d be the point of that?’

  ‘This is government we’re talking about. What would be the point to anything they did?’

  Which the troopers also thought was a fair observation. And so a number of them raised their hands for the job, and Niall selected a pair he thought would be best equipped for keeping their mouths shut.

  ‘You go and have a look,’ he told them. ‘If you find anyone looks like they’re in a bad way make a note of where they are and how many, but say nothing and come back and talk to me. Then I can pass on what I have to.’

  The two men understood and within minutes were gone, empty places at the card game rapidly filled. From the door Niall watched the pair pull coats over their heads as they disappeared into rain setting like fog. A pea-souper, he thought. For a curious moment they seemed ghosts to him, wafting down a deserted wharf boiling over with roiling mists, one of the last things he’d seen from the Eleanor before it manoeuvred away from Portsmouth.

  He blinked to erase the picture from his mind.

  In time the rain eased and he walked over to where the boat was being hammered together. The carpenters had yet to return after the onset of rain and were nowhere to be seen. He knew they’d have to be coaxed out of some lair and sent Smales to look for them. When they rolled up, they were none too worse for wear, he was relieved to see.

  The boat was a brown skeleton in its muddy bed. Standing in the depression they’d dug, the carpenters began sizing up what timbers to nail next, what steps to take. A slush of mud anchored the bottom timbers of the boat, two wide planks, as the carpenters’ boots squelched in mud. Curving upright spars came off the bottom planks to form the ribs of the boat, smeared with grey where they’d been handled.

  ‘Doing a good job with that,’ Niall complimented them.

  One of the men looked to the sky, happy the rain was easing for a bit. He held his hand out to feel, to check he wasn’t fooling himself.

  ‘Do a good job with everything I do,’ the first man said. ‘Bit of an expert.’

  ‘Bullshit expert,’ Niall laughed.

  ‘Well there’s a place for them too,’ the man said. He was about thirty, the sergeant saw, with a strong face and jutting square jaw, the type you wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of when he was more or less full of grog. But it was a good-looking face too, with a sense of mischief. ‘Ain’t this rain just something too?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘It’s a wonder the whole place hasn’t gone under.’

  ‘I think we’ve all had enough of it by now. The boat … How long do you think it’ll be before she’s finished?’

  ‘Hard to say. A couple of days at least. It’s getting the timbers sawn right that takes the time. You’ve got to get them thin enough, but still strong. Depends a bit on the weather too, of course. But you’d have to say the waters won’t be down by then.’

  ‘Won’t be down for near a week, I’d say.’

  ‘Just this weather slowing everything down. You can’t get a plane onto wet timber. If we could keep this thing drier there might be a chance. But not like this.’ He glanced to the skies. ‘Can’t stay dry for more than ten minutes.’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Lennie. Lennie Winstone.’

  ‘Maybe we should try to put something up over the boat then, Lennie. Whack up some canvas to keep the rain off.’

  ‘Well, if nothing else it’ll make it easier for us to work.’

  In due course Niall took himself away, in his mind anticipating the track he’d follow after lunch to search for somewhere to quarantine the sick diggers. But as he made his way back to his hut his progress was interrupted by a digger marching across his path.

  ‘You the sergeant? Kennedy?’ the man wanted to know.

  ‘You see these stripes …’ Niall turned his shoulder towards the digger. ‘There’s three of them.’

  ‘I can count,’ the man said nervously, his accent from one of the southern counties.

  He was a restless, pale-looking type, his hands and arms tremulous. Probably a case of the d.t.’s, Niall thought. His trousers below the knees couldn’t be seen for mud. He wore a black velvet hat jauntily on his head and with his face disappearing behind a thick ginger beard he looked a peculiar sight.

  ‘You want to report something?’ Niall asked, because the way the man had propped in front of him made it clear he wasn’t here for a how-do-you-do.

  ‘I heard you were looking for that fellow with the foreign name. Oriental or something?’ The man’s mouth fell slack in waiting for an answer.

  ‘How do you know him?’

  ‘I don’t. But I’ve heard something.’

  He hovered there expectantly, refusing to budge from his line.

  ‘How much do you want?’ Niall demanded.

  ‘Five pound.’

  ‘Five pound?’

  The man’s arms suddenly shook more noticeably, as if his affliction was being stirred to life.

  ‘All right, four will do.’

  ‘One,’ Niall told him. ‘And then only one if the information is any good.’

  The man nodded. ‘One then.’

  ‘Tell me,’ Niall said. The digger was jiggling on his feet, searching around as if he was worried he might be found out. ‘Tell me,’ Niall ordered again.

  ‘This Oriental fellow. Someone has been sent after him.’

  ‘Do you know who?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘There’s only one quid if I have a name.’

  The man looked furtive again. ‘I’ve heard that one of your lot is involved.’

  ‘A trooper?’

  The man kept jiggling. ‘Higher than that.’

  ‘A sergeant?’

  ‘Higher.’

  Niall stared hard at him. ‘There’s a few of us sergeants but no one higher on this goldfield.’

  ‘Yes there is,’ the man counte
red. ‘Someone higher again. Someone right at the very top.’

  ‘Commissioner Stanfield?’

  The digger shivered as he nodded his answer.

  ‘Why would he be involved in any of this?’

  ‘That I don’t know. Only that he is.’

  ‘Who told you?’

  ‘Just what I’ve heard. You’ve got to keep a good eye out for him.’

  ‘You sure about this?’

  ‘Just watch him,’ the rattling digger said. ‘Don’t trust him.’

  Niall dug into his pocket and fished out a gold sovereign, but held it in his palm without handing it over.

  ‘I know what you look like now,’ he said. ‘If I need to find you, you can bet I will.’

  And the digger was torn between bolting and knowing the sergeant was memorising his features. He knew he was cornered, however bad the shakes were coming over him again.

  ‘I’ve got the drink bad.’

  ‘I don’t care about the grog,’ Niall told him. ‘What I want to know is where Oriente is. If you can take me to him one way or the other there’ll be two quid it in for you.’

  ‘I’ll help. If I can.’

  ‘You will now because you’ve got no choice.’

  The digger’s head wobbled in agreement but in fear too as the policeman held his hand steady to slip the gold sovereign into it.

  ‘This sovereign …’ Niall said, still grasping his hand firmly. ‘Unless I get the information I want you’ll be paying it back to me.’

  13

  By afternoon it was difficult for Alec Napier to ignore Jack Merriman’s growing restlessness. Since Ship’s disappearance his partner had wandered off into the scrub and traipsed in and out of the tent so many times it was irritating. Outside he kept standing on tiptoes peering at the sky as if that would give him a better view of the weather. They were both out of sorts and the river was pushing around them harder than ever. Merriman was still aggrieved about their gold lying buried under water.

  ‘Soon as the water’s down you show me where it is and I get to dig it up first,’ he rattled threateningly. ‘I trusted you before. I’m not trusting you any more.’