Mrs. M

by Luke Slattery

  ‘Who did this?’ I cry, rising to face her. ‘Was it …?’ I point slowly, deliberately, as if taking aim with a pistol. ‘You … One of your …’

  ‘He has been flogged at the Cove,’ whispers Brody, cupping his mouth and pressing it towards my ear.

  ‘Not my people,’ the native woman says shaking her head vigorously. The teeth of various kinds strung around her neck chime as they sway. ‘Very sick. Lucky too. Bungaree and his mob find him — your place, the Cove. This here,’ she bends to pick up a hollow shell filled with the thick brown poultice, ‘blood medicine. Cool him. And we have stuff’ — she points to a near empty bowl — ‘make ’im sleep good. When’m sleep I take spirit out. Make better. Put it back. Let’m dream now.’

  I am quite overwhelmed by the scene at the camp: the prone body of the Architect, the smoke, the smell, and the sound of a high-pitched chant laid over a sweet, sharp beat of ceremonial sticks.

  It takes considerable strength not to succumb to a swoon.

  ‘Elizabeth,’ I say, holding out my hand. ‘Governor Macquarie’s wife.’

  She takes it in her own. ‘Yes, I know. Cora Gooseberry. Bungaree Queen.’

  She is, at that moment, quite majestic.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Brody gallops back to sound the alarm and to summon help; I follow at a steadier clip.

  The Architect is transported by the swiftest possible route to the Cove, in a stringy-bark canoe paddled by a man especially chosen by Gooseberry. Thanks to God that he has drained her sleeping potion; if he had woken with a start and struggled, I fear the slender craft would have overturned.

  Once at the town Brody makes for the home of Mary Reibey, close by the waterfront, to raise the alarm. She comes down in fading light to the Government wharf with her determined tread, surrounded by a gaggle of servants. That prosperous and kindly widow, who works with great vigour since the death of her husband Thomas, arranges transport for the victim to the new Rum Hospital in a cart laid with a bed of hay beneath a sheet of clean muslin. The Governor sleeps easily at the old Government House in Parramatta without any knowledge of these terrible events.

  ‘Is it possible, ma’am, that he has incurred a gambling debt?’ Brody asks later that night. ‘I was told that the Architect had been flogged and was in the care of the natives. But I can’t for the life of me imagine what might have provoked it. Some in the settlement say he has fallen into old habits — used his talents to forge a contract or an order. Others, that he has enemies in the building trade. A provocation of that sort, it is supposed.’

  I shake my head, exhausted.

  On the frontier the natives and Europeans are skirmishing continuously. The free settlers complain that the natives have butchered their sheep, goats and cows and would take the horses if they could run them down. Why, they scarcely trust their own servants, who can all too easily vanish with the household silverware and exchange it at the docks for grog, tea and sugar. In my time at the Cove I have heard of untold crimes and their punishments, but until the injury to the Architect I have never known a man to be punished severely for no crime at all.

  When the Architect regains complete consciousness a day later, his recollections are enough to plausibly identify a culprit who disports himself amongst us in plain sight. There is no need for further investigation.

  Captain Edward Sanderson is a declared enemy of the Governor’s. A good year ago he perpetrated some minor slander of Macquarie’s reputation: a satire distributed to members of the regiment. For this he endured an old-fashioned dressing-down by the Governor himself at the Military Barrack on the Cove’s western side. From that moment a clique of the Governor’s opponents — their identities suspected though never proven to our satisfaction — formed around Sanderson in a violent alliance. Howe, with his ear to the Sydney shale, speculated in his Gazette about the cause of their resentment: the favourable treatment of convicts, as the rebels saw it, and the Architect the most favoured of all.

  I can picture the rum-fuelled rantings of this indignant little group. Sanderson’s hostility tips over into cold, hard calculation. He devises a cunning stratagem. This is how he came to instruct the Architect to design and build a frivolous Gothic addition to his regimental quarters; and when the Architect refused, as he was entitled to — explaining that he was employed on several building projects of some official importance — the Captain demanded that he at least pay a courtesy call to the Military Barrack. The Architect could hardly refuse this, and so he was trapped, alone, with a man who was an avowed and dangerous enemy.

  *

  I pay my first visit to the patient a few days later in the company of the Government surgeon, William Redfern, a slight and bespectacled man with a full head of baby-fine grey hair and a considered, unimpassioned — quite dry and scholarly — manner. The Architect has a small lamplit refectory to himself at the end of a long corridor of polished flagstones. It is a measure of his indeterminate status that he recovers here, in the convict hospital, in a room set apart from the convicts. Leaning against the doorjamb of raw timber is a guard chosen by the Governor to ensure no harm comes this way from the barrack.

  At the unexpected sight of the surgeon and the Governor’s wife the guard stands rigidly to attention, eyes fixed straight ahead.

  Redfern pulls up a seat beside the patient. As he takes the Architect’s pulse the surgeon says, rather stating the obvious, ‘You are lucky to be alive, man. If not for Bungaree and whatever benign witchcraft was ministered by Gooseberry you would not be speaking to us now.’

  I stand a little to Redfern’s side, a few steps within the doorway, hands clasped before me. Redfern cocks his head to listen to the Architect’s chest, regarding me sharply in the process. ‘You will live,’ he says, returning to his seat.

  ‘The natives managed to rehydrate you — essential in cases of severe blood loss — and apply some disinfecting poultice of eucalyptus oil and God only knows what else. A somnolent potion, too, I would surmise. You have seen their men, and sometimes the women too, sporting ritual scarifications across their bodies. They have a deep knowledge of such things.’

  ‘And Sanderson,’ the patient asks. ‘It was his intention to …?’

  ‘I believe so, yes,’ he answers in a detached tone. ‘The first strokes of the lash were laid on so heavily, the force so severe, that they burst through a large area of skin and lifted it quite off. Your back, when I first inspected it, was the colour of liver.’ He asks the patient to turn over, inspects the state of the dressing, and clucks severely thrice.

  I gasp at the blood-caked bandages. The surgeon cuts me an admonishing look. He goes on. ‘You know there is some feeling among the soldiers about the punishments meted out to them in the barracks. Convicts receive a civilian lash, and it is as often as not laid on lightly. The soldiers receive the military cat, and it is a nasty thing. It looks to me as if this was the instrument. It was wielded ferociously. The ribs were exposed. Your enemies left you for dead and doubtless you would have bled to death if the natives and Mrs Macquarie here’ — a slow swivel of the head and another analytical look — ‘had not attended you in the first hours. Let us imagine you survived the initial trauma. Your wounds, if untreated that first evening, would have become infected. It would have been a painful death. Blood loss and trauma would have weakened your system. Suppuration and fever would in no time have finished you off.’

  Redfern shakes his head and leans back in his chair. ‘Macquarie, as your patron,’ he goes on in a warmer tone, ‘would have insisted on the most severe punishment of the Captain. If, I mean to say, you had died. His regiment would have resisted, protesting this as a misuse of power in support of one who had formerly transgressed the rule of English law. The colony would doubtless, once again, have been cast into a state of civil war.’

  A week later, on the last evening but one of the Architect’s lengthy convalescence in the Rum Hospital, I sweep aside a covey of nurses in their bleached pinafores. I take a sea
t beside the patient.

  ‘It seems you were almost lost to us,’ I whisper, reaching out to him. His hand is cold and limp. It frightens me. I return it to its owner, who says not a word. ‘A less sturdy man might have died. You are still so … pale.’

  ‘I have barely moved for a week.’

  On hearing hurried footsteps and alarmed voices, I swivel sharply. But the footsteps hurry on. The sudden movement has caused my unruly curls to cascade from my bonnet. I restore them to their proper place. And when I turn back again I notice how intently the Architect regards me.

  I sense, though perhaps not for the very first time, that he might have begun to fall in love. For myself, I am brimming with feelings to which I dare not give a name.

  I force a fragile laugh. ‘It has to be said … Captain Sanderson was not the wisest choice of enemy. I believe the blackguard has the Governor in his sights, too.’

  A grimace — and the hand of the Architect gropes like a tortoise towards my own. This time it is decidedly warmer. ‘It was not,’ he says weakly, ‘my choice.’

  I lower my voice to a whisper. ‘Things are delicately poised in the colony,’ I begin. He signals with his eyes for me to go on.

  I tell him all I know. That there are some here — Sanderson is not alone — who would have the colony governed with a much harder hand. There are calls for Macquarie’s removal and a veritable reign of terror, though in the English not the French style. No guillotine in the square. No heads paraded in the streets on spikes. Instead it would be meanness and money and little else. Unless of course there was a protest from the poor — then it would be off to the gallows.

  ‘What does Shelley say?’ His gaze slides to the far wall as he searches. ‘“Leech-like” rulers.’

  I raise a finger to my lips. ‘Hush! Quiet now. You have had your “tempestuous day”.’

  I stroke the cool white sheet, careful not to touch the form within. ‘Under the regime proposed by the Governor’s enemies, convicts — even those with rare skills such as yours — would be little more than slaves for the clearing of the interior and shepherds to watch over the sheep. There would be no prompt emancipation such as you, my friend, enjoyed. No. None of that. The sentence of transportation would scar for life. Perhaps that is why he sought to scar you; if, indeed, he intended that you should live. The Governor in contrast wishes to liberate the convicts, once they have served their time or earned an indulgence. He dreams of a new world built by freed men and women and possessed — enjoyed! — by their sons and daughters. And you are … you are … the Architect of this dream.’

  ‘Is that why I am so despised? The soldiers …’

  ‘And why you were a target for this viciousness. Yes.’

  He props himself up.

  ‘Water!’ I call to the nurses. A girl comes with a pitcher. ‘And something for his pain?’ I inquire. ‘Something other than rum.’ The nurse lowers her eyes abruptly and scurries down the lamplit corridor.

  The Architect is flagging. His bruised eyelids seem to weigh heavily and eventually they close. With a gesture of exasperation at his prolonged confinement he throws out a bare arm. Winding around his forearm is the savage snakelike wound I first saw at the native camp.

  I reach out to touch but dare not. But then I permit myself. His eyes flutter and snap, brightly, open.

  ‘Like a serpent,’ I say, ‘soldered onto the skin.’

  ‘Just the one clean stroke of the tail,’ he says. ‘My hands … they were …’ And then he breaks off, raising the bare forearm weakly.

  I take a long pause. He is gripped by his pain, his humiliation. I am the stronger one at this moment and I must drive us both on from here. ‘There is little time and much to do,’ I say. ‘Together we shall draw up a list of necessary buildings, train even more masons, and deploy those resources that come to the Governor through the trade in spirits and taxes on shipping to ensure that a fine city rises from this shore. We will make good on Macquarie’s promise. We will realise what he has merely proclaimed. We will go further still. We will make a fight of it. And our weapons will be bricks and mortar and Sydney stone — and splendid timber from the forests.’

  He nods in silence. Beads form at the corners of his weary eyes. I turn away, wiping my own eyes. It is not from sadness that I am forced to beat back tears but from the very opposite: a wild and fearful happiness.

  A compact is formed at that moment.

  And nothing is ever the same again.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  On the afternoon of the trial I dress plainly and steal away from the residence while Macquarie and Piper are discussing ‘matters of commerce’ — at least this is how it is put to me — at Henrietta Villa, Piper’s splendid harbourside mansion. I have no wish to advertise my identity at the crowded courtroom; nor, for that matter, do I desire particularly to conceal it. I stand, dressed as I would for any other formal occasion, among common folk towards the rear.

  Chief Justice Barron Field and Judge Jeffrey Bent share names lending themselves to ridicule, although they may not know it. I have heard numberless jibes about the ‘barren field’ of justice in the colony, while Bent is a particularly unfortunate name for a man of the legal profession. Chief Justice Field, neat-featured beneath his wig, presides over the case; Jeffrey Bent, his head large and spherical, his lips tight and thin, acts for Sanderson on the Governor’s orders. The Architect has retained a portly Irish attorney whose famed eloquence is never put to the test as the facts, it soon emerges, are not in dispute. The questions are judicial: is it a crime for a serving officer to flog a former convict for the petty insult of insubordination? Does a former convict in this situation enjoy the same rights as a free man?

  I am too engrossed in proceedings to register any glancing looks from the courtroom, though most certainly my presence is noted, speculated upon and discussed that very evening. Some days later it is drawn to Macquarie’s attention. He says only that he wishes I would be more circumspect with my affections. I reply that it is not affection but curiosity that drew me to the spectacle. In this I speak the truth, although there is another truth that remains unspoken.

  Sanderson is a tall, angular man, with closely cropped receding hair, a long leathery neck, lean cheeks and a quite rapacious appearance. He sports a pencil-thin moustache, which he is most fond of caressing. Standing upright in the dock, in full uniform, he is the very model of untroubled arrogance.

  His gaze rakes purposefully across the crowded courtroom. In time it comes to rest on me. When I return it — this being a contest of wills from which I aim not to flinch — the pouch beneath one of those deep-set eyes appears to twitch excitedly. He is curious, sardonically amused. He pins me with his eyes. I am the first to blink. Evil, I tell myself, comes in many guises. This is surely one.

  The court records reveal the following: after a rebuke from the Captain in his quarters the Architect had been seized by his shirtfront and forced to kneel. Asked in court if he had said the words ‘You are here at my orders and to them you will submit. Fail in this matter and I shall shake the life out of you’, the Captain agreed that he had most certainly said them and would again if similar circumstances arose.

  The Architect had replied that he could not retaliate, and nor would he, as an employee of the Government, submit to the Captain’s unauthorised request for alterations to his quarters. ‘I may very well undertake them in good time,’ he added, ‘but on my own time — and for a fee.’ Sanderson roared that it was high time the Architect received a lesson in humility. He reached him with one stride, tore the shirt from his back, and tied his hands to a coat hook.

  And so the lashing began.

  Sanderson, by his own account, had not intended to be so forceful with the Architect. ‘I am afraid I allowed my contempt for the man to drive me on,’ he confesses to the cheers of his supporters. He freely admits to laying some thirty lashes onto the Architect. His subordinates, rushing to the Captain’s quarters when they heard the commotion, took
it in turns to inflict twenty more.

  Sometime in the following weeks I am reminded by Macquarie that Sanderson had come out on the Dromedary. I am usually quick to detect a wicked heart but the scoundrel had skillfully concealed his true nature from the Governor and me. Though not, I would later learn, from all.

  Prosecuting a captain of the 73rd was a courageous move on the Architect’s part. He was not yet in possession of an absolute pardon, so a failed prosecution would likely be deemed capricious. It would cast him back into the ranks of the common felonry. At best he might be clapped in chains and driven out to the forests to fell timber, at worse find himself working the mines at Coal River. This was a risk that he took and it is a measure of his audacity that he even entertained it. A humbler man would certainly not have.

  Sanderson lost the case on the lone and reluctant testimony of a fellow officer who confessed that the Captain had premeditated his assault, boasting in the officer’s mess that he would ‘cut down the scoundrel and teach the haughty Scot a lesson about his patronage of scum’. The other witnesses either lied without shame or evaded court altogether. Sanderson was found guilty and fined the paltry sum of two pounds. He returned to England on the next transport home and in time made his way to India. Or so it is said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  On the day of the verdict, I keep to myself. I refrain from venturing to town and avert my eyes from the settlement; no easy thing as we command the eastern rise. Instead I spend the afternoon gardening. I insist that I do the weeding, pruning, planting and potting myself. A garden may seem a mere ornament but I find consolation in the nurturing of things as they sprout and flourish and die. I am midwife to the seeds, nursemaid to the shoots, and guardian of those that thrive. My work in the garden reminds me that while I hear the music of the angels I, too, am part of Nature — just like the aged St Matthew in the picture that had bewitched me long ago in Rome.