by Robin Adair
‘Capital!’ John Macarthur received the Reverend Marsden’s suggestion of an inquisition enthusiastically – and quite literally. Thus, he saw weaknesses in the scheme of things. ‘But we have no rack, no thumbscrews,’ he complained. ‘Where are there weights to crush the chest, an iron maiden with a deadly, spiked embrace, the strappado to dislocate limbs?’
Lord save us, thought Dunne, he sounds like a goodwife finding her larder lacking certain delicacies.
Samuel Marsden was amused. ‘Oh, we could not condone such things in this civilised colony, sir. But it does not alter my plan, which is to have, for our testing time, the hand of God instead of a temporal torturer’s. My idea is to conduct a spiritual and sporting contest to determine Dunne’s fate.’
The Patterer shook his head in wonder. They’re mad, of course, both of them, mad as hatters – who had a reason to be deranged, poisoned as they were too often by the mercurous nitrate used in the making of felt hats. Their body control and mind were lost to chorea, also known as St Vitus’s Dance. Sydney as yet had no St Mary of Bethlehem asylum, but Dunne believed visitors who paid a shilling a visit London’s Bedlam would be satisfied in seeing the antics of Macarthur and Marsden.
The minister continued to soothe Macarthur. ‘I put forward this proposition: I will ask him a number of questions – shall we say fifteen? – all from the Bible, for is it not the source of all knowledge and wisdom? He must answer ten questions correctly. If you’ – he now remembered to include the prisoner in the conversation – ‘fail, Mr Macarthur can deal with you, ah, appropriately.’
‘And if I succeed?’ Dunne called up the stairs.
‘Then,’ Marsden’s voice boomed, ‘we will consider it to be a divine judgement. We will believe you told the truth. And we will let you go – after a suitable period of incarceration down there to reflect on your many other sins, of course. No one may come for days. At least.’
And in the meantime, Dunne thought, my plans to repel the French invaders are also locked away!
‘Very well,’ said Marsden, in a voice that could put the fear of God into congregations and the fear of the cat into convicts. ‘Let us start at the very beginning, a most suitable point … Question number one: After Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, what did they sew together to hide their nakedness?’
‘Fig leaves,’ answered the prisoner.
‘After the flood, which of the creatures on board the ark did Noah send out to search for dry land?’
‘The dove.’
Macarthur broke in excitedly. ‘He said “the” dove. There must have been two of them, so the correct answer should have been “a” dove!’
But the minister disallowed the pedantic objection and continued: ‘What gifts did the Magi bring to the newborn Jesus?’
‘Gold, frankincense and myrrh.’ Jesus – sorry – I might make it! he thought
‘The inscription on the cross, “This is the King of the Jews”, was written in what language?’
A trap? ‘You mean languages, plural – it was in Greek and Latin. And Hebrew, I suppose.’ As his tormentors did not correct him, the Patterer silently thanked the shade, wherever it was, of his birchwielding religious instructor. Four out of four, eh? Not bad.
‘Too easy!’ protested Macarthur petulantly. ‘Where’s your Bible, Marsden? I want to find some questions more testing.’
‘There’s not one to hand; my eyes fail me, anyway. But, after a lifetime as a minister I know my scriptures as well as any man. Better. However, if you want something more difficult, very well. These may serve…
‘What were the plagues God visited on Egypt to convince Pharaoh to let the children of Israel go?’
More silence. Not even a rat could be heard scuttling in the drain. Dunne furiously moved his fingers in tabulation. Everyone remembered raining frogs – he’d always loved that image – then there were boils, locusts and the death of the firstborn throughout the land. Oh yes, rivers turning to blood. He called those up the stairs. But what else was there?
Marsden knew: ‘The dust of the land became lice in man and beast, there were swarms of flies, a very grievous murrain in the cattle, thunder, hail and fire, and thick darkness for three days.’
‘Excellent,’ said Macarthur. ‘One to four. That’s decidedly better.’ He could have been discussing a hand of cards.
‘Who said: “Entreat me not to leave thee … for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge”?’
The Patterer did not know and said so.
‘Ruth said that to her mother-in-law, Naomi,’ explained Marsden, for his companion’s benefit too. ‘She followed her all the way to Bethlehem.’
Macarthur was pleased. ‘She has brought us another point – what a fine woman!’
‘She must be the only woman in history to get along so well with her mother-in-law,’ replied the prisoner gloomily.
‘Get six out of the next nine,’ threatened Macarthur, ‘or you’ll feel more than a mother-in-law’s tongue!’
Chapter Forty-three
I am escaped with the skin of my teeth.
Job 19:20
Elizabeth Macarthur in her early twenties…She was still a beauty at sixty.
The Reverend Samuel Marsden continued his questioning. The Patterer’s wellbeing, perhaps even his life, was clearly at stake.
It was a deceptively simple query, only four words: ‘Who is St Michael?’
Nicodemus Dunne cudgelled his brain. All he knew was that Mr Potts at his bank the other day had mentioned a St Michael on an old coin, called an angel. And he was with a dragon. Here goes nothing: ‘He was an angel who slew a dragon?’
‘A worthy attempt,’ said Marsden. ‘I’m inclined to give it to you, but…’ He held a hurried, whispered conference with John Macarthur. ‘I’m afraid it is not good enough.
‘No, in Revelation, chapter 12, verse 7, we learn that, to paraphrase, there was war in heaven and Michael and his angels fought against the dragon and his angels. Their place was not found any more in heaven. And the great dragon, that old serpent called the Devil, and Satan, was cast out.’
He almost said ‘Amen’, Dunne thought; this old serpent could not pass up a congregation of even just two souls.
The eighth question came quickly: ‘A quote – “But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt”. What are the names of the two people referred to in this passage from Genesis?’
The Patterer imagined he caught the hint of sly triumph behind the minister’s voice and wondered why. Was this another trick? Everyone knew that the pillar of salt was Lot’s wife. Ah, perhaps that’s it. So: ‘The answer is “Lot and his wife”. As far as I know, that’s all she is; she has no particular name.’ The silence at the top of the stairs told him he was right.
‘What,’ demanded Marsden, ‘is the only flower mentioned by name by our Lord?’ When his victim admitted defeat, the old man again sermonised sonorously: ‘Matthew 6:28 informs us – “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin…” ’
‘Six to go and you have only five correct,’ gloated Macarthur. His companion did not join in the needling. If I didn’t know him better, decided Dunne, I would swear Marsden was not at all comfortable now with his involvement in a violent ending to the ‘game’. Or did he just not relish the possibility of the prisoner winning? But there was no time for such thoughts…
‘This is hard,’ conceded the minister, ‘so I’ll give you a start – it is John 11:35. I ask you, what is the shortest verse in the New Testament?’
The Patterer sweated as he whispered to himself so that his captors could not hear: I don’t know. I never knew. And now I’m panicking. In his growing distress, he groaned aloud: ‘Jesus wept!’
Macarthur’s curse told him that somehow, miraculously, he was right.
‘My, my. That was a surprise,’ Marsden said, ‘What about this, then? What are the three Christian virtues that Paul wrote o
f in his letter to the Corinthians?’
Dunne knew what a sinking heart felt like – he knew he had no answer. Well, fail this one and the score would be five against him. The odds were growing longer. He needed another miracle. And lo, one occurred. The voice of an angel whispered in his ear, ‘Faith, hope and charity’.
He whirled and collided with the angel, Miss Susannah Hathaway, who, for good measure, added softly and brightly: ‘They’re my sisters.’
In the half-light, he saw that her hair was in rat’s tails and her face was streaked with whatever filth also covered her shift-covered body; she wore no other clothes.
‘How did you get in here?’ he whispered.
‘Later.’ She put a hand over his mouth. Her fingers stank.
Macarthur spoke: ‘Well, Dunne, what is your answer, if you have one?’ He fell silent as the three words confidently rose up the stairway. The successful response sent the interrogators into a deeper, longer search of the minister’s recall. The lull was welcomed below.
‘How did I get here?’ Her lips were close to his ear, which put other parts close, too. He liked that. ‘See Second Samuel 22:30.’ She paused to reflect. ‘In a way.’
‘Not you too,’ he chided.
She took pity on him. ‘Well, it says, “By my God have I leaped over a wall”. Only, in truth, I sort of clambered through a hole. Luckily, it hadn’t been completely closed up!
‘King Bungaree saw you taken here and told the Pieman. As he went for the Captain he told me, and I remembered how you had pointed out the drain from the Tank Stream going back beneath the bank. Simple. Your friends should be coming through the front door any time now.’ She amended that prediction: ‘Well, some time soon. Eventually?’
She remembered her other invitee. ‘Oh, and someone else is coming – I ran into Mrs Macarthur.’
‘It had better be soon,’ protested the Patterer. ‘Are your sisters really called that?’
‘Indeed they are. If Father had won the name game for all his daughters I would have been Prudence. But with three girls named after the virtues, Mother drew the line at so naming the rest of their brood – alas, we missed out on Justice, Fortitude, Temperance and, of course, Prudence. I suppose that if I had been prudent I might not be stuck in here now, trying to rescue you.’
‘I would not want you to think I’m ungrateful,’ said Dunne.
‘Well, you may display your gratitude by buying me a new wardrobe. That tunnel can keep the clothes I was obliged to shed so I could fit. And I’ll have to burn the rest – but hush!’
Samuel Marsden was probing once more. ‘What are the wages – and let us hope you don’t have a similar fate – of sin?’
The Patterer needed no prompting. ‘Death,’ he said firmly. Too easy!
Macarthur thought so too and urged a harder line for the thirteenth question.
After a long pause the minister was ready. ‘Where is “the street that is called Straight”?’
Dunne was too impatient and shook off Miss Hathaway’s restraining hand on his arm. He rushed on: ‘There is no street called Straight.’ He now ignored a warning murmur. “Strait is the gate,” says Matthew, “and narrow is the way.” ’
Marsden chuckled. ‘Very clever, but wrong. You are confused. The street called Straight’ – he spelled out the name – ‘is mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles. It is in Damascus, where God sent Ananias to find Saul, who became Paul.’
‘Fool!’ hissed Susannah Hathaway. ‘Why couldn’t you wait?’
Her companion was chastened, and rattled. ‘We must get these last two right.’
‘We?’ she whispered. ‘Oh, it’s we again, is it?’
The next question concentrated their minds. ‘What payment did Judas Iscariot demand before he would betray Jesus?’
That was easy: the old thirty pieces of silver trick, a story so widely known that even the killer of John Creighton at Cockle Bay had left an allusion to the classic fee for treachery.
But was it so clear-cut? This time Dunne heeded Miss Hathaway’s pressure on his arm and listened to her whispered counsel. He acted on it: ‘Sorry to disappoint you, Reverend, it won’t work.
‘Judas received thirty pieces of silver, but he had not demanded that amount specifically. Matthew, chapter 26, verse 15, is clear: “What will ye give me, and I will deliver him unto you? … And they covenanted” – eventually haggled, or dealt – “with him for thirty pieces of silver.” My answer is that, in the strict placing of the word, he demanded nothing.’
He could hear Marsden’s sigh of disappointment and Macarthur’s snarl of frustration. ‘Curse you, Dunne – there’s still one question to sink you. Go on, Reverend!’
After a terse exchange between the inquisitors came the question to end all questions: ‘At Evening Prayer you may hear the canticle Nunc Dimittis sung. Who first uttered these words, recorded in St Luke, chapter 2, verse 29?’
The last words were barely out when something violent happened in the room upstairs from the Patterer and Miss Hathaway. There were clashes of bodies, crashing of furniture, ugly oaths and a woman’s voice raised piercingly.
‘Let’s go!’ cried Miss Hathaway. She headed for the steps, dragging the Patterer behind her. No one stopped them and they flung into the room, which was part of the main banking chamber.
There was a strange chaotic scene before them. Samuel Marsden was backed up against a teller’s desk, his hands raised defensively against the threatening fists of the Flying Pieman. John Macarthur held a tiny scrap of lace-edged kerchief pressed to his bleeding nose, and Captain Rossi was excitedly calling for order. The kerchief’s owner was there, too – Elizabeth Macarthur was trying to force her way back to her wounded husband’s side.
Within minutes the hostilities petered out. As Mrs Macarthur led her charges out to her carriage in the main street, Marsden called back, ‘It was only a game, no harm done.’ Everybody ignored him.
‘You lost, you know,’ was Macarthur’s churlish contribution. ‘You didn’t answer the last question.’
Miss Hathaway set that right. ‘It was said by Simeon in the temple when he first saw the child Jesus,’ she called from the doorway. ‘It’s now known as the Song of Simeon: “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace: according to thy word.” ’
‘As the lady said,’ added Dunne, ‘we shall depart.’
‘No one said anything about outside help,’ protested Marsden.
‘You could call it divine intervention,’ replied the Patterer. ‘Reverend, may I introduce Miss Susannah Hathaway, star of the Boston and Sydney stages – and the daughter of a man of your calling, the cloth.’
The outmanoeuvred minister had the last word: ‘Well, well, the Lord does indeed move in mysterious ways.’
The allies watched the bear-like figure of the old man clamber into the Macarthurs’ carriage and heard the order given to the coachman – so, they were all going home, which meant to the environs of Parramatta, sixteen miles away, well out of the picture. Still a beauty at sixty, Mrs Macarthur was a lady to the end, having given her cloak to the shivering Susannah as she passed.
Captain Rossi first dropped off Miss Hathaway at her lodgings to repair the damage from the drain. The men drove on to the Hope and Anchor, where William King found some pies that passed scrutiny (‘Sometimes,’ he remarked, only half-jestingly, ‘there is too much life in them!’). The friends also found there some other regulars: Dr Owens, the O’Bannion brothers and Alexander Harris.
The Patterer retold his adventure; even the avenging Pieman and Captain Rossi needed details of what had happened before their mercy dash. Dunne made a note to reward Bungaree suitably.
At last, in his bed at the Bag o’ Nails, Nicodemus Dunne let the balm of freedom wash over him. What had happened? On the surface, it had been a confrontation with a deranged man eaten away by sexual jealousy. And with his flunkey. In the end, they both had been smart. Thwarted, they were still able to dismiss the escapade as, at worst
, a macabre ‘game’. They were powerful men and could not be brought down by what they had done.
But was there something more? Had the real issue been knowledge of the bank robbery and the French plot – information that the Patterer possessed or was thought to have? Mr Potts at his bank should see the souvenired coins.
Only during his recounting had he also awakened another train of thought. Was it just coincidence that, in his questioning, Samuel Marsden had invoked the Devil (shades of Bonaparte?), thirty pieces of silver (Creighton?), an angel (the inn?), the wages of sin (the robbery?), forbidden fruit (the poisoned ‘oranges’ that killed Bagley?) and the plague of raining frogs (Froggies?). Had the cleric tried to tell him something? Was that his ‘game’? Even the sexually charged ‘pipe’ was a reminder of Dawks. And, at the end, as they finally faced each other in the banking chamber, Dunne had noticed that the minister wore in the lapel of his frockcoat a shiny badge. Depicting a bee.
No, surely he was reading too much into it all. He punched the pillow, carefully snuffed out the candle on the bedside table and closed his eyes. It would be a long day tomorrow. So many things had to be done, and done properly.
He heard the door open slowly. There was a soft movement of unshod feet on the wooden floor, then a strong, warm body lay down beside him. He put out his hand and his fingers found soft, long hair.
The Patterer groaned. ‘Not now, Norah, please … Just go to sleep.’
Munito did as he was told.
Chapter Forty-four
An open foe may prove a curse,
But a pretended friend is worse.
– John Gay, ‘The Shepherd’s Dog and the Wolf’ (1727)
Dawn was almost ready to march across the eminence of Bunker’s Hill, roll over The Rocks and seduce the Sydney Cove wavelets to dance with subtle light as the new day moved to kiss awake Macquarie’s Fort and all points of the compass.