The Soldier's Curse

by Meg Keneally

  So Monsarrat went to find Gonville. He came upon the surgeon and Donald engaged in their normal activities – a sawyer had been a little careless with the tool of his trade, and was biting down on a stick while Gonville stitched together a gash in his arm. Another man lay in a bed nearby, his foot a swollen, purple monstrosity. Monsarrat had seen the like before – probably the man had been unwise enough to have his foot in a place where a horse had wanted to step, or a wheel to run.

  Gonville looked up from his stitching. ‘Wait for me, Monsarrat, if you please,’ he said, in a tone which suggested he had been expecting the visit.

  When the sawyer’s arm had been stitched up with as much finesse as possible, the doctor gestured Monsarrat towards his desk behind its partition. ‘Well, a lot has come to pass since you and I last spoke, Monsarrat.’

  ‘You’ve heard about Slattery, I take it, doctor.’

  ‘Yes, and I dare say by now so has everyone else. How is Mrs Mulrooney taking it?’

  ‘It is a double loss for her, you know. And she had to suffer the ignominy, for a few days, of being thought responsible for the death of a woman she held in high esteem. In fact, it is on her behalf I have come. I fear she may soon work herself into a state of exhaustion, and I doubt she ate much during her stay in prison. I have asked the major for permission to request that you examine her – whether she will stand for it or not – just to ensure she is in full health, or as full as possible under the circumstances.’

  ‘Very well then. And you and I have some other business to discuss, Monsarrat. Let’s save it for the walk, though, shall we? A partition does not provide sufficient privacy.’

  As they set out, Gonville said, ‘We are making a habit of this, Monsarrat. Conferences on foot.’

  ‘Necessary, I suppose, while the captain’s around.’

  ‘Yes, the very man I wanted to discuss. Why has there been no discipline, no chastisement for his behaviour with Dory?’

  ‘It seems hard to believe in a place like this, where gossip flows like water, but nobody has told the major,’ said Monsarrat. ‘Certainly not Diamond – as you suspected, he removed the report on the event. I have been on the brink of it, several times, but have not wanted to broach it with someone so recently bereaved. I suppose, if I am honest, I also did not want to create problems when Mrs Mulrooney’s fate was so uncertain. But she is safe now, and the settlement appears to be returning to some variety of normal. That being said, I do believe it’s time that we acquaint the major with Diamond’s behaviour.’

  ‘Yes, I agree. I must confess, though, Monsarrat, I had been hoping that you would take care of it. Cowardly though that is.’

  ‘I don’t think you a coward, doctor. And I would have been delighted to deal with it. The problem is that I am tainted, I fear, by my friendship with, first, a suspected murderer, and now a confessed one. And I am myself a felon. I believe the major will hear me out. But I also believe it will be far easier for him to act if the information is backed by a voice of authority. Such as yours.’

  The doctor sighed. ‘Yes, you’re probably right. Don’t ascribe too much authority to my voice, though, Monsarrat. Diamond still has the major’s ear, and the captain has no love for me.’

  Monsarrat thought of Diamond’s letters to Mrs Shelborne, presumably now ash. He had told no one of them except Mrs Mulrooney. And a lot of his intellectual capacity had been spent, over the past few days, on wondering whether the major would thank him for the revelation.

  He was decided, pretty much, on keeping the letters and the contents to himself. Despite his stoicism, the major was no doubt devastated by his wife’s death. Monsarrat did not wish to add to his grief by forcing him to imagine her, in her last months, secretly fearful of the attentions of a man he himself had imposed on her.

  In any case, Monsarrat didn’t think the letters were needed to ensure that Diamond got what he deserved. His flouting of the directive that floggings be limited to fifty lashes, and of the major’s precedent of thirty or thirty-five, would be enough to offend both the major’s humanity and his sense of administrative propriety, especially when combined with Diamond’s falsification of the records.

  They reached the kitchen, and with difficulty were able to convince Mrs Mulrooney to submit to a check by the doctor. ‘Major’s orders,’ Gonville said briskly, while Monsarrat fixed Mrs Mulrooney with a look which told her he would most certainly be reporting any breach.

  Mrs Mulrooney, proclaimed the doctor, was in reasonable enough health given her recent trials, although a little thinner than he would like. The doctor also remarked on the pallor Monsarrat had noticed in recent weeks. Gonville recommended that she be given additional rations of beef until her health was fully restored. ‘And see that you eat it, too, dear lady,’ he said. ‘I will be checking with Monsarrat, and I may also interview the settlement rats to see whether their pickings have improved, so don’t think of casting it aside.’

  Mrs Mulrooney fixed an expression of subservient attention on her face, and nodded. I will most certainly have to keep an eye on her, thought Monsarrat, even if I have to tip the food down her gullet myself.

  Their business in the kitchen having been concluded with a cup of tea, Monsarrat and the doctor stood outside in the paved courtyard at the back of the house.

  ‘I wonder,’ said Gonville, ‘whether we should produce another version of that document which Diamond confiscated from you. It might add weight to what might seem to the major outlandish accusations.’

  Monsarrat knew he could not allow the doctor to delay, to lose heart. He understood the man’s aversion to bearing such news, but he knew also that falsehoods which were allowed to stand gradually took on the patina of truth.

  ‘I would be more than happy to write another report, without troubling you for dictation,’ said Monsarrat. ‘I well remember the contents of the old one. But I urge you, let us get this business with the major done first; we may then take care of the administrative details at our leisure.’

  The doctor pressed his lips together and nodded his assent.

  Monsarrat’s request for an audience with the commandant was granted immediately, and he stood in the corner of the study while Gonville sat opposite Shelborne and described Dory’s flogging, together with the flogging which had been averted after Diamond had bent his amorous attentions on the daughter of a convict.

  The major scratched notes as he listened, betraying neither surprise nor anger. He thanked the doctor for bringing the information to him, ‘although I would have been grateful had you done so sooner,’ and dismissed him.

  He looked up at Monsarrat. ‘Presumably you were there, Monsarrat.’

  ‘Yes, major. The business unfolded as the doctor has described.’

  ‘And when I was dictating the report to the Colonial Secretary, in which I said William Dory had received thirty lashes, you knew this to be false.’

  ‘Forgive me, major. I did not wish to add to your troubles.’

  ‘So you chose instead to allow me to make a fool’s report to the Colonial Secretary. Let me assure you, Monsarrat, my stocks in Sydney are not as high as you might suppose, especially given recent activities by our chaplain. As any mitigation of your sentence would come on recommendation from me, this fact should concern you.’

  This did indeed concern Monsarrat. To stay for too long in this place, and with Mrs Mulrooney so diminished by her grief over Mrs Shelborne and young Slattery, was a prospect he dreaded.

  ‘Why did the man not try to stop him? Why did he not step in at thirty lashes, let alone a hundred?’

  ‘You may not wish to hear the name spoken, major, but it was Slattery who ultimately stopped him, and paid with a stint in the guardhouse.’

  The major stood, and went to the window. ‘Well, Monsarrat. As you clearly know far more about this business than me, I will leave you to draft an appropriate letter to the Colonial Secretary. Perhaps you can succeed where I would most certainly fail, in putting a decent light on the ne
ws that while one murderer has been exchanged for another, ninety lashes have been retrospectively added to a dead man’s sentence. I wish you luck with it. What I do not wish is to see you again for the rest of the day.’

  Monsarrat nodded and withdrew to his workroom, feeling suddenly leaden. If his hopes of a ticket of leave rested on a man with little influence, and even less liking for Monsarrat at the moment, he would very possibly be drafting dispatches to Sydney until he was so old he no longer had any use for freedom.

  The major’s attitude to Monsarrat remained cool over the following fortnight. The clerk produced a report for the Colonial Secretary on the flogging of Dory, in which he put the discrepancy in the previous report down to ‘an administrative oversight during my absence’. The major requested that Diamond be transferred to another regiment, his rank reduced to lieutenant, and that he be ‘given no position of absolute authority in the colony, due to his clear disregard for established precedent’.

  Monsarrat wasn’t privy to any conversations the pair might have had, but he would not have been surprised to see Diamond walking around the colony with a split lip to match Slattery’s. He only saw the captain – now the lieutenant – once more, as Diamond was boarding the Sally. Officially, it was put about that he was accompanying a shipment of rum and wood to Sydney, but no one expected him to return.

  Monsarrat was standing in the shadow of the boatshed as Diamond approached the ship. He wanted to be entirely sure the captain had left.

  When Diamond noticed him, he grinned. ‘Goodbye, Monsarrat,’ he called. ‘I do hope we meet again.’

  Monsarrat knew the grin would haunt him far more than any scowl would have, and hoped from now on to see it only in his nightmares.

  Chapter 30

  Monsarrat still made his way to the kitchen early each day to drink tea with Mrs Mulrooney, both of them pretending not to notice how much quieter their mornings had become.

  One morning, he was waylaid by a voice from the direction of the river. ‘You!’ it said.

  If Monsarrat had not been alone, he would have wondered if the voice had been addressing him. But when he saw the speaker, he realised that the man had not been saying ‘you’ but his name, Hugh. It was a name he shared with the man who had hailed him.

  Kiernan, the discoverer of the river to the north (or at least the first one to tell the major about it), stood near a canoe which Monsarrat assumed was of his own making, a long panel of stiff bark tied at the sides to form a boat. Monsarrat had seen much finer handiwork from the Birpai – Kiernan must still have much to learn of their ways.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said, feeling surprisingly little rancour, for all of the fretting he had done over Kiernan’s impending conditional pardon. ‘I haven’t seen you here since you absconded.’

  Kiernan smiled, displaying more missing teeth than Monsarrat had remembered. Although he was roughly of an age with Monsarrat, his face was leathery and brown, with deep gouges and black spots, and a particularly large and nasty-looking brown mole on his neck. His straggling russet beard, in which flecks of white were starting to appear, bore no evidence of scissors and trailed off like a vine when it reached the middle of his chest. He wore slop clothing – without the broad arrow, so presumably he had been given it by a native who in turn had received it from the major – which, despite its toughness, was beginning to wear thin in places.

  ‘No, Hugh, well, you wouldn’t have, would you? I’m hardly going to wander in here and offer myself up to the likes of Diamond for recapture, much as he would enjoy it.’

  ‘Well, Kiernan, you’ll be pleased to know that Diamond is no longer amongst us. Don’t look shocked – he’s still on this side of the grave, but not on this side of the river. He’s off to Sydney, as a lieutenant, and not expected to return. He administered a rather vicious flogging, you see. Robbed the settlement of a strong young pair of shoulders.’

  ‘Bastard. I never understood why our major put up with him. And in fact, it is to see the major, or rather you, that I’ve come. I understand that he wrote to the Colonial Secretary recommending a conditional pardon for me?’

  ‘He did indeed. We’ve not had a reply yet, but I’m sure nobody is going to arrest you.’ He decided not to let Kiernan know that the major felt his recommendations might not carry much weight in Sydney.

  Instead, he said, ‘I imagine you’ll be off to Sydney, then. You won’t want to be around here when you’re free, surely?’ ‘And why on earth would I not want to hang around here, Monsarrat? I grew up in Cheapside sleeping ten to a room. Here I have more land to roam across than the King himself. What could I hope to do in Sydney – labouring? Might bring me enough to get a bedroll in some flophouse.’

  ‘You’re staying, then? With the natives?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t I? They are a fair people, Monsarrat, fairer than us by a long shot. Their justice is consistent, and it’s quick – once it’s been administered, the debt is considered paid. They don’t force each other to work their youth away in chains. And – now this will sound fanciful, and as you know I’m not a fanciful man – I’d never seen the land as something which is alive, not until I absconded. But living with them these years, it’s hard not to. There’s also a matter of a few native babes with redder hair and paler skin than most.’ He grinned broadly, so that the blackening roots of his remaining teeth were clearly visible, as though expecting Monsarrat to congratulate him on attaining the status of father.

  Monsarrat found himself envying the man on so many levels – a man of the type he would never have envied at home, in England. Kiernan had found himself a family, an expansive home and a way of being which suited him well, and he didn’t particularly mind what European society thought of it, if they thought anything at all. And most importantly, he was about to be granted unlimited freedom in which to live out his days in the enticing bush that marched up to the riverbank. The only aspect of Monsarrat’s life which was unlimited was the number of letters, reports and dispatches he had to transcribe.

  He found himself, unaccountably, shaking Kiernan’s hand, mildly astonished by the contrast between Kiernan’s brown and callused palm and his own white and soft one. ‘Well, good luck to you,’ he said. ‘I must confess, I thought the river to the north was a fabrication, and I was quite looking forward to seeing how you got yourself out of it once it was discovered to be so. But I’m glad it wasn’t. Someone living here, instead of dying here, makes a nice change.’

  Kiernan gave another gap-toothed smile. ‘I wish you the best, Monsarrat,’ he said, ‘whatever best means to you. Most of all, I wish you the freedom to chase after it. Be a good fellow, and send a message with Bangar or Spring when the paperwork from Sydney comes through, if you’d be so kind.’

  His manner of speaking was not that of someone born in a tenement, so Monsarrat wondered for a moment if Kiernan was mocking him. But there seemed to be no mocking in his eyes. Kiernan was a verbal chameleon, able to match not only his language but also his accent and mannerisms to whatever audience he wanted to win over.

  Monsarrat assured him he would send word, and the man somehow gracefully folded himself into the little canoe, paddling away with the roughly hewn oar, again far less fine in workmanship than the Birpai versions. Monsarrat noticed, as Kiernan was getting in, a few fresh bream lying at the bottom of the boat. Probably being taken back to feed the man’s children.

  He continued his march to the kitchen. He had never thought to find himself inferior to the likes of Kiernan, and nor had he ever expected to be happy about it.

  The building which had, for a time, housed the settlement’s few females, and had then been put to the work of containing bushrangers, now had another new use. The bushrangers had been transferred to the gaol, to make room for a panel of inquisitors into Honora Shelborne’s murder.

  There was the commandant, of course. He was joined by Lieutenant Carleton and a few other Buffs, two sergeants and a corporal. The civil officers were also well represented – the c
hief engineer, the superintendent of convicts, Simon Spring and the harbourmaster. This brought the number of inquisitors to nine, beyond the seven the major had initially envisaged – Monsarrat supposed he felt that the more men of good standing condemned Slattery, the better.

  As each witness swore on a Bible to tell the truth, told their stories, and was questioned, Monsarrat wrote everything down and put their words into depositions for them to sign. He recorded the words of Dr Gonville, Mrs Mulrooney, Edward Donald, and the former plasterers Frogett and Daines. No one recorded Monsarrat’s testimony. The major said he trusted him to transcribe a true account for his own signature.

  And then before the panel came Fergal Slattery, manacled and in irons. The major would not look at Slattery as he made his statement, nor did he put any questions to the young man, leaving this to the other inquisitors. But Monsarrat knew that getting Slattery’s signature at the bottom of the piece of paper confessing his guilt was of paramount importance to the major. This was confirmed when, as soon as Slattery had finished speaking, the major nodded to the soldiers who were guarding him to take him back to the cell, and called an adjournment.

  ‘Monsarrat, please transcribe the evidence of the last witness immediately. I would then like you to return here and read the deposition to us, before taking yourself and three inquisitors to the gaol to obtain the private’s signature on the document.’

  So Monsarrat went back to his workroom, and in a final service to the young soldier, wrote his confession in the best hand he could apply.

  Private Fergal Slattery, being duly sworn.