Mosquito Creek

by Robert Engwerda

  The Victory was near fifteen feet long and if not the two yards wide the commissioner had envisaged then close enough to it. If a passer-by cared to look up from the muddy depression the miners had dug, its well-sawn and smoothly planed timbers were a proud sight. The drawings Stanfield had made lay wet and crumpled in the bottom of the boat.

  ‘Main planks are thin enough. And lighter wood around the sides, too,’ carpenter Lennie Winstone said, addressing some of the onlookers. ‘Strong enough to carry you along, but not so heavy as the whole thing will sink. Remember, you don’t know what they might be running into out there.’ He waved as he touched away a last overlapping edge inside the vessel.

  Like a creature grown up enough to peep over its pen, the top timbers of the boat were now visible above the excavated rise in the land. There was an impatience about the vessel, the slightly elevated bow coming out to a neat point aimed in the direction of the river, as though it was ready and eager to break free of its tethers and take its natural place on the water.

  ‘What do you think?’ Lennie asked the gathering. ‘Will we pull down this canvas and let the Victory see a bit more of the sky?’

  Without any further encouragement four bystanders shinned up the four posts squared around the boat, releasing the canvas nailed atop the posts, some making lighter work of it than others. The fourth corner proved obstinate and the short, wiry Welshman scaling it was reduced to hanging on monkey-like with his legs wrapped around the pole while he tugged frenetically at the canvas with his hands. In the way that many things go, the canvas came free when the Welshman was least expecting it – at the end of a great, frustrated jerk, which sent him toppling backwards to the ground.

  Everyone laughed. The Welshman recovered his wind, dusted himself off and in a minute was sheepishly able to see the joke in it himself.

  Niall took it all in as he eased his way around to stand beside the commissioner, who acknowledged him with a nod.

  ‘How long before she takes to the water?’ Niall asked.

  The commissioner kept his eyes on the boat.

  ‘In the morning. You’ll be there?’

  ‘I’ll be there. Let’s hope those men over on the other side can just hang on a bit longer.’

  Two troopers arrived on a dray bearing a load of two massive cast-iron pots. A second dray pulled up shortly afterwards with a cargo of wet clay streaked with grainy seams of dark blue. Several children at the scene immediately rushed to it, pushing their squelching fingers deep into the clay before being shooed away by the troopers.

  ‘We found a body this morning,’ Niall informed the commissioner matter-of-factly, his eyes fixed on the iron pots. ‘Out on the track to the west, tossed into the scrub. Not completely sure who it is, but I think it’s that miner who went missing.’

  Niall turned to see what reaction there might be to his words but the commissioner said nothing. Stanfield’s eyes flicked back and forth from the boat to the men lifting the pots down from the dray.

  ‘I wanted to ask you something,’ Niall ventured again, still watching Stanfield, whose brown eyes returned his attention only briefly.

  ‘And what would that be?’

  ‘The miner,’ Niall began. ‘The miner we found dead in the scrub. I reckon his name is Phillip Oriente.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Do you know a Phillip Oriente?’

  This time the commissioner met his gaze more directly.

  ‘You have asked me this before.’

  ‘And I will ask you again. He came to Victoria around the start of the year. On the Whitby.’

  Winstone and others began forcing thick, lumpy clay between the creaks and gaps of the boat’s timbers.

  ‘Do you have a point, Sergeant?’

  ‘You came to Australia round about the same time. That was your ship too, wasn’t it?’

  Stanfield took half a pace forward as if about to give a direction to the men busy on the boat before settling back on his heels.

  ‘That it was. But I still don’t see your point.’

  ‘This Oriente, he came out on the same ship as you.’

  The commissioner picked at the bottom of his moustache.

  ‘I suppose it is possible. But there may have been a hundred aboard that ship. I cannot claim to have known him myself so I am not much help to you there.’

  ‘So you never knew him?’

  With the canvas above the boat removed, light was drawing out the seeping rich red of the timbers where black sap crystallised in bloodied jewels before Lennie Winstone’s pale hands painted clay over them.

  ‘No, I never knew him.’

  ‘I thought you might.’

  ‘You’ve a fertile imagination, Sergeant. One that could be put to better use.’

  While they watched, the two troopers who had arrived with the first dray settled the cast-iron pots in a position they were happy with and lit fires under them, twigs popping as the flames took hold and the black viscous pitch in the pots was made liquid again.

  ‘You don’t know anyone on board the Whitby who might’ve taken an interest in drawing, then?’ Niall pressed. ‘Pictures of people and the like?’

  ‘No.’

  Drifts of smoke and the smell of pitch blew across the boat. By late afternoon when the clay had dried the carpenters would be brushing the hot pitch over and under the boat, everywhere they could reach, layer over layer to make the Victory watertight.

  ‘I was going through his things,’ Niall continued. ‘I found a book of drawings and a picture … that looked like it was you.’

  The commissioner stared ahead.

  ‘I was visible enough on the ship. No one skulks in their cabin the whole time if they have any sense.’ He turned to address Niall. ‘But then I would say my accommodation was quite different to what you had on your voyage out.’

  ‘Still, there must have been a good reason for him to have drawn you like that.’

  ‘There must be a good reason for everything, mustn’t there?’

  They stood close, both rooted to the spot, both checking that no one could overhear their exchange.

  ‘Phillip Oriente was at the circus last night,’ Niall said. ‘I saw him with my own eyes. He was seated near you and don’t tell me it was just chance that he was.’

  ‘Doubtless that is exactly what it was.’

  ‘Except that before he shaved his beard off to meet you last night he came to see me. Twice. He bailed me up to tell me it was you I was to watch out for.’

  ‘Fanciful.’

  ‘No it wasn’t. The ship out here, all the other things, the fact he came to see you about something last night. There’s too much coincidence.’

  ‘There might be fifty people on this goldfield I have met in one or other situation over the last months. It means nothing.’

  ‘When a person is murdered it does.’

  ‘Are you accusing me of someone’s death?’ the commissioner demanded.

  ‘Perhaps not directly … perhaps through your words or instructions.’

  ‘And on what basis would I wish someone’s death?’

  Niall held his ground.

  ‘I don’t know. I can’t see into another man’s conscience. But I can see corruption when it’s before my eyes. There’s too much rottenness.’

  ‘That I will not dispute,’ the commissioner said drily.

  ‘This place here, weren’t you expecting something more than this?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Why did you leave England? What did you think you would find out here?’

  ‘What business is that of yours?’

  ‘None, but someone from a family such as yours, it strikes me as unusual that you wouldn’t take a position closer to home. There must have been some good reason.’

  ‘You may have come here as a convict, Sergeant, but I am not tarred by that particular brush.’

  ‘Not on the outside anyway.’

  ‘Or on the inside.’

  ‘I can see a
s well as any man.’

  ‘Good luck to you and your percipience, then.’

  The commissioner turned abruptly, pushing his way through onlookers behind him and setting off suddenly, before Niall had an opportunity to think what to do next or stop him.

  That’s not the end of it, Niall said to himself as he followed splashes of Stanfield’s red uniform through the crowd. That’s not anywhere near the end of it.

  33

  Before long Stanfield was free of Sergeant Kennedy and the rabble crowding his vessel – which felt somehow tainted now – and he hoped the tight feeling in his chest and arms might slowly drain from him the quicker he walked.

  All he knew was that his feet were taking him away from this place and he was lost in his thoughts, already imagining a ship that would take him home to England where his family would be waiting for their missing son to return.

  A rough tug on his shoulder jerked him back into the present.

  ‘Why so fast, Charles? What’s the rush?’

  It was Alfred Row. He was dressed once more in the dark suit with the silvery piping at his cuffs and lapels but his suit was creased and shabbier now, as though he’d slept in it.

  The commissioner stalked forward, Row easily keeping up with him.

  ‘I said what’s the rush, hey?’

  Row again pulled at Stanfield’s shoulder, the latter angrily shrugging himself free.

  ‘Keep your hands to yourself!’ the commissioner snapped.

  ‘We need to talk.’

  ‘Not now.’

  ‘Keep walking as fast as you like but you’ll be tired before me. We both know that.’

  ‘I said not now.’

  The two strode side by side in imitation of each other.

  ‘You got your trinket back, then?’ Row sniped. ‘That thing so precious to you it has cost me everything I have?’

  The commissioner slowed. ‘No, I did not. And a man was killed last night.’

  ‘A thief, if that’s the one you mean.’

  ‘He was more than that.’

  ‘And what of that blessed ornament? Who has it then?’

  ‘It hasn’t been found. That fool Ramage was to hold Oriente until we could locate it. I should have known better than to entrust anything to a thug.’

  ‘A thug sent on a thug’s errand.’

  Stanfield stopped and Row stood close.

  ‘What did you expect would happen?’ Row asked. ‘And how do you know this Ramage hasn’t kept the thing for himself? Why would you trust anyone like that?’

  ‘There were others with him …’

  ‘… who mightn’t have any better idea of the truth than he has. If that trinket turns up I want it sold and a share of the sale to come to me.’

  ‘Trinket nothing! That was a piece of Lord Nelson himself! What will I say to my father? And what makes you believe you are entitled to any of it? Nothing will be sold, on that you have my word!’

  ‘What your father says is your issue. Words cost nothing. I have a circus tent to replace, hundreds of pounds worth.’

  ‘The whole night was a disaster, Alfred. A disaster for all concerned. Men died in your tent.’

  Stanfield resumed his flight, Row striding alongside him.

  ‘You are responsible for what happened, Charles!’

  ‘I have no responsibility for anything,’ the commissioner hissed, struggling to keep his voice down.

  ‘Not even the fire?’

  ‘No. I did no such thing.’

  ‘That fire was deliberately lit. Even your sergeant says so.’

  ‘Let me explain this one thing to you, Alfred.’ Stanfield stopped again, his face flushed. ‘You think I would be so foolish as to begin a fire that might have also baked me to a crisp?’

  ‘Who lit it, then?’

  ‘Perhaps Sergeant Kennedy will get to the bottom of that. He seems to have a talent for investigation.’

  ‘And what about me, then? What compensation will there be for me?’

  ‘Not now, I’ve no time to think of such things.’

  ‘I must be compensated! My living burnt down last night. Everything I owned was in that tent.’

  ‘You can start again,’ Stanfield said, heading off again, though with a shortened stride. Row kept at his side with ease.

  ‘And how long would that take? And how much money would it cost me?’

  ‘Do you think I have lost nothing? Do you have any idea what has disappeared forever, that which my family once owned and now will never be returned? I am sunk!’

  ‘You’d be making a mistake if you think you can just throw me off like this. I know a lot about you, Charles,’ Row threatened, allowing the spluttering commissioner to pull away. ‘Don’t you ever forget that. Your words can’t bully me. I can talk to people and do so quicker than you can say Jack Robinson.’

  A trooper came into view and Stanfield waved him over.

  ‘Before you can say Jack Robinson, Commissioner,’ Alfred Row called to him. ‘Don’t ever forget that!’

  At his desk, Stanfield stared ahead at the hard boards of the wall in front of him. He noticed planks fraying at their edges, furry splinters. Where one timber had been poorly sawn a bowed board allowed a glimpse of afternoon light in. With no appetite at all he had only poked and prodded at his lunch.

  He rubbed the dull ache at his temples, pressing his fingertips in to find the reason for it.

  I should have said something and I should have had the courage to do what was right. Grandfather didn’t deserve such wrongful treatment, the being pushed away from everything, the pressure on everyone to punish him to keep Father happy – if that is what kind of happiness it was.

  He had yet to take up his pen. The rim of his inkwell seemed abnormally thick and for a while he sat transfixed, fascinated by the watery green of the bottle.

  In the relic lay the very heart of England. Lost somewhere as Ramage and his henchmen did their very worst to Phillip in the forest. There was no one to be trusted, he knew now, no one at all. He was as much a pariah here as during the years before his coming to this country.

  ‘What age are you?’ they had asked at the Colonial Office.

  ‘Twenty-five, sir,’ he answered.

  ‘And what is your feeling about this position?’

  His father stood close, still wrapped in a heavy tweed coat he hadn’t thought to remove. Before they stepped into the office, his father simply said, ‘There is a position for you in Australia.’ There was to be no resistance.

  ‘I am interested, sir,’ he answered the officer meekly.

  He had spoken so timidly his father leant into him with an arm.

  ‘Only interested?’

  The officer’s eyebrows rose, he recalled, searching him, before crossing to his father.

  ‘This is an appointment I am keen to accept,’ he stumbled on. ‘I think I am most suited to the position, as it will be to me.’

  That relaxed his father a little.

  ‘I’m pleased to hear that. These are challenging times in the colonies. What you read in the newspapers here bears little resemblance to the actuality of life on the goldfields. They are remote places, brutal, uncivilised. A disciplined hand is required.’

  ‘My son is capable of all that is needed,’ Horatio Stanfield said.

  ‘I am only offering this commission through my influence because of who you are, Mr Stanfield, and because of who your father was.’

  The officer then adjudged them both again, pursing his lips as if mouthing his own name before he signed off on the papers. Charles duly followed with his pen and set it down on the blotter.

  He remembered his father quickly acknowledging the officer with little more than a cursory tip of his head before striding from the room and out into the wintry street.

  He took up the most recent sheet of his correspondence to read it over, feeling a breeze stirring outside. Without having been out of the hut since checking on the boat, he knew that grey, oppressive skies had o
nce again shut out the sun.

  As difficult as life is here I know it is only temporary. I know I will be returning home soon. The recent floodwaters I previously mentioned have driven away a good many people and the epidemic, brief as we hope it will be, has also frightened many. Falling income from mining will be the death knell of this goldfield so I expect we may be here only three or four months more depending on the population and the expectations of my superiors in Melbourne.

  My report is progressing well. Furthermore I expect to be able to deliver a surprising coda after we have successfully delivered the marooned miners from their island prison on the other side of the river. My vessel is nearing completion. The only remaining work to be done involves fashioning some oars and selecting able bodies to row us across the river. I look forward to leading the rescue and have written to both the authorities and newspapers in Beechworth and Bendigo alerting them to my plans. I fully expect to have a large contingent of onlookers viewing the whole episode, including our triumphant return with the trapped miners. I can imagine an extraordinary scene.

  I will take a position to the rear of the boat, which I have named for our greatest admiral’s ship. Ahead of me will be oarsmen and a view of the waters we have to navigate. It may require several trips, there being some conjecture about the actual number of miners stranded by their claims.

  He was distracted though by the room around him.

  He set the pen down and turned in his chair as if sensing someone standing silently behind him, watching him. There was noise outside, the usual rummaging of horses in the feed lot and the comings and goings of troopers taking up around the yards. But there was something else unsettling too, a stirring just beyond his senses.

  His father had said nothing on the trip back from London, his face pressed against the coach window. There was no inkling of his thoughts as he stared into abject winter. Their fellow passengers were a country gentleman settling his chin into the buttons of his coat with no interest in conversation and a banker with full whiskers who stared viciously at the walnut and windowed panels across from him, as if taking exception to the two passengers riding in front with the coachman. His brown eyes drilled past Charles with startling intensity as though willing the outside passengers off their perches to tumble down onto the snowy road.