‘What you need’s a wife,’ said Cuff, ‘a good stout woman who likes hard work. I can see the maids lining up, fresh off the scow, keen as mustard.’
Joe bowed his head like he was embarrassed. ‘Same ol’ Thaddeus,’ he said. ‘Anyway, I’m too old.’
‘Well, you know what they say about old. The older the violin the sweeter the music.’
‘I ain’t a violin.’
‘And I ain’t jokin’. You need a woman.’
‘It’s a turn in the road I just might take, if I can find one can read.’
‘What!’ said Freddie.
‘Well you can’t read.’
‘Women don’t read neither, mostly.’
‘He’s a eligible bachelor Freddie, you best know that,’ said Cuff. He winked at Mackie. ‘Fine acreage, ample surplus weather permitting, the savages eatin’ out of his hand like . . . like tame birds.’
Cuff ’s head had a habit of wobbling like it was on a spring whenever he was teasing.
‘He is not egible, and he don’t need no woman,’ said Freddie.
Cuff was wearing a wry smile. ‘I think you should advertise, Joe. A public notice in the Gazette.’
‘Advertise?’
‘Then every lonesome woman in the colony will know you’re available.’
Cuff thought for a moment or two. Then he continued, as if dictating to a notary. ‘Wanted. Wife or concubine. Must be sturdy and reliable, mild temper and sobriety essential, a commanding presence behind a plough. The advertiser, a gentleman, is by no means desperate or embarrassed. His intentions are honourable. He seeks prudent helpmeet for connubial contentment if not happiness. A premium on wholesome character, and a nice bosom.’
‘Must have reading,’ said Joe.
The gathering was laughing along with Cuff. Even Mackie was sufficiently entertained to add a passage of his own: ‘Accustomed to frugality and preferably with a few hundred pounds at her disposal,’ he said, as if the line came to him from nature itself, like sap out of a tree.
‘Just don’t mention the Branch, nor the savages neither!’ said Freddie, who took the laughter to mean all this wife talk was a joke, which it was.
They fell to silence, each man contemplating some thread of the conversation thus far.
‘Joe, you ain’t a gentleman,’ said Freddie, finally.
‘That’s true,’ said Joe, ‘not sure I want to be one neither.’
‘Personally I value my lowly standing,’ said Cuff, ‘if I was a gentleman I’d been shot long ago.’
16
The dark had set in fast when they heard the sounds of Dan Sprodd and Caleb outside, the clatter and the talk as they set the cookfire beneath the tripod.
They heard the unmistakable cadence of Caleb’s English. They went out and gathered around the budding fire. ‘Return of the prodigals,’ said Cuff and they counted the catch.
‘Got some bream and a coupl’a perch,’ said Sprodd.
‘Good evening to you, Mr Caleb,’ said Cuff.
‘A good evening, yes sir,’ said Caleb.
‘How is your grand-daddy, how is the old boy old Wolgan?’
‘He is well, thank you.’
‘That’s good.’
Caleb’s only garment was a pair of cotton canvas trousers, torn at the knees and threadbare at the arse and half-mast at his shins. He likely towered over the original occupant, name unknown. His torso was heavily scarred in the ritual way of the Branch mob and his shoulders were muscled in proportion to his long and lean frame and his long hair, matted like the thrums of a mop, was dressed with feathers and teeth.
Joe sat on a stump stool by the budding fire, next to Harp. He beckoned Caleb to sit. ‘Big cook up?’ he said.
The fire had worked up a sizzle in the heavy skillet and Joe was pushing the fish round the pan with a stick.
As Cuff sat himself down he rested a hand on Caleb’s shoulder and Caleb watched the hand as he took the old constable’s weight.
‘What news, Dan?’
‘News?’
Cuff cocked his head in Caleb’s direction. ‘Yes, news, worldly affairs.’
‘Oh that. They don’t trust the government, they say the concession is a trick.’
‘It is not enforceable, and they know it,’ said Joe.
Cuff was warming his hands at the fire. ‘The fact is they cannot forage or fish for fear of the muskets, fear they’ll get shot like ducks on a pond.’
‘It’s not right.’
‘Just don’t you tell me it’s their river Joe. If I hear that again, talk of proprietors and such, I might have to emigrate, go somewhere where property’s safe, back to America.’
‘I think we made the concession so we ought keep to it, share the river and the fruits of the river, what say you, Caleb?’
Caleb rose slowly. He was staring into the dark in the direction of the Branch.
They heard a gravelly voice. ‘Comin’ in, don’t shoot me.’
‘That’s Thyne,’ said Joe, as Thyne Kunkle stepped from the shadows into the firelight.
‘It’s alright Caleb,’ said Cuff, ‘he misbehaves we’ll shoot him.’
Thyne Kunkle was a former soldier, heavy-set, with the calcified bearing of an old blacksmith. His musket was on his shoulder, a fist wrapped around the lock plate. The firelight sparkled on the silver trimmings on the walnut stock.
Kunkle studied Caleb. ‘You lot sup with the devil you better have a long spoon.’
‘The devil you say!’ said Cuff.
‘As black within as without for God’s light does not shine within them.’
‘I don’t see much of a glow comin’ out o’ you Thyne.’
‘You be careful Thaddeus.’
‘Careful makes me torpid, I don’t do careful.’ Cuff beckoned
Kunkle into the circle. ‘Why don’t you sit and talk, never know what we might reconcile, the family o’ man gathered about the fire in the forest primeval.’
‘No man’s safe with them on the river.’
‘They ain’t on the river; you and the likes of you, you’ve drove ’em off.’
‘We’ll do more’n that,’ said Thyne. He sat the butt of the flintlock on a stump stool and took the barrel in his fist. He spied Harp’s bladder. ‘That bang-head?’
‘You want some?’
‘Is the Pope a heretic in the devil’s pay?’ Harp gave up the bladder and Thyne sat himself down on the stump stool and took a prolonged draught. ‘Right now I could eat the arse out of a camel through the bottom of a cane chair.’
‘You can have some fish,’ said Joe.
‘That’s a beautiful gun, Thyne, where’d you find that?’ said Cuff.
Thyne put down the bladder and wiped his chin. ‘It’s a Swedish flintlock and I bought it ’cause I need it,’ he said, staring at Caleb.
‘Here we go again,’ said Cuff.
Caleb was fixed staring at the fire, attentive to every word.
Sprodd leaned forward in a most earnest fashion, intent upon further discussion of Joe’s stratagems. ‘Joe says there’s a better way,’ he said.
‘I think he’s probably right,’ said Cuff, intent upon argument.
Thyne turned his head and spat into the dirt. ‘Joe’s gunna wake up with a small axe in his skull. Until then he’s a danger to us all.’
‘Come on now Thyne, let’s break some bread here,’ said Cuff.
Thyne made ready to depart. ‘I got family, no time to fraternise with savages.’
Cuff got to his feet. ‘We’ll miss the delicate touch you lend to the conversation. By the way, how’s the missus, that little one still on the tit I fancy?’
Cuff could see he’d achieved what he wanted to achieve.
‘You keep away from my missus,’ said Thyne. ‘And you come for them stooks,’ he said to Joe.
‘I will, soon as I can,’ said Joe.
Kunkle turned and walked off into the dark, the little company watching. Cuff spat in his pipe and thumbed it out. He pushed the
pipe in his vest pocket, adjacent to his spoon. ‘And good riddance to that,’ he said.
They were peeling the cooked flesh off the fish and bouncing it in their palms and blowing on it and then taking it on their tongues.
‘I suppose you want the losses for the assess?’ said Joe.
‘I do,’ said Mackie.
‘Some damage to the corn. Most of it we got in, say ten bushels with some allowance for moisture.’
‘Wheat?’
‘I’ll sow two acres, one for the store; say twenty bushels. The wheat stack, that’s gone. Thyne snared that downriver.’
‘Wants one part in five for salvage. The man’s a brigand!’ said Freddie.
‘I have to be thankful we have an arrangement,’ said Joe.
‘Doesn’t seem fair,’ said Cuff, ‘the deluge serving up grain to venomous loafers like Mr Kunkle. Thieves’ market on every damn reach.’
‘You did not have that wheat stack on the bottoms, surely?’ said Mackie.
‘Alister, that flood swallowed a lot more than the bottoms, wheat stack and all,’ said Joe.
‘If it come out o’ that gorge, woe betide all downriver!’ said Cuff.
‘I never seen anything like it, ’twas biblical,’ said Joe.
17
Sparrow had several times started for Prominence and then changed his mind about the good sense of attending another execution. Finally, he decided he must go. Better to be seen, absorbing the moral drama for the benefit of his character, for soon enough he would be gone and his absence noticed.
He was curious, too, about how Shug might die. In that regard no two executions were ever the same. A man might meet his death with contrition, with prayers and torrents of tears, perhaps sing a psalm and declare the heinous nature of his crime and the great folly of its commission. Or he might have none of that. He might damn his betters with vile oaths and curses, nothing but insolence and execrations proceeding from his mouth, a degree of boldness that might well shock all present. Contrition or defiance, which would it be from Shug? Sparrow reckoned it would probably be contrition, but who could know what kind of misery or mastery a man could summon on the brink of death?
What the captain might say about the bolters, the fastness and the far beyond was yet another reason for his presence. Captain Henry Kettle would surely speak of the horrors awaiting any man who took off, for the entire colony was imperilled if the trickle became a flood. So Sparrow was eager to hear Kettle’s every word. He was eager for any little slip of the tongue, any formulation that might suggest or confirm the existence of a river and a village and a people who lived free, unencumbered and un-put-upon, on the other side of the mountains.
A menace of black cloud hovered in the north-west and distant thunder carried to the the ridge as the soldiers fell in, five in a row, two rows deep in front of the barracks, and Sergeant Peskett thumbed his ill-fitting denture into position and called the muster to order, the last vestiges of the bivouac jostling with incoming settlers and their bonded felons, civil department men, concubines, and others who were victualled on the store and thus compelled by law to be present.
Shug, in double irons, was dressed in the ritual white nightshirt of the condemned and flanked by the Reverend Warrington Abbott and Captain Kettle, his wolfhound bitch at his heel. The head of the stolen pony hung from Shug’s neck, bloodied, blank-eyed like some ludicrous talisman, the prisoner hunched over with the weight of it.
Kettle stepped onto a pedestal with the assistance of his walking stick. The wolfhound dropped down beside him, her long forelegs folded under her chest. Peskett stepped away. The Reverend Abbott looked on, vast in his preaching robes, his eyes locked upon the prisoner, searching for signs of his temper.
Kettle rapped the pedestal with his stick and embarked upon his address as the assemblage fell quiet: ‘You are gathered here to consider the fate of the prisoner Shug McCafferty, a most bigoted fugitive, plucked by mere happenstance from the brink of annihilation. Sunk to ruin after a mere month on the maraud, having barely escaped a most brutal assault by the savages, his perseverance shattered and his restless disposition perfectly corrected into submission. You must all consider most solemnly this fatal example, a wretched soul tragically deluded by an absurd falsehood; by the notion that a settlement of some kind prevails beyond the mountains. Prisoner McCafferty and select others once among you have chosen to wantonly abandon their security, to wander through country known to be impassable, to endure the terrors of fatigue and famine and finally to curse the propagators of these preposterous conjurings, to repent too late of their gullibility and, exhausted, perish miserably . . . death by starvation or death at the hands of the savages. To perish in that infinite waste, alone, without a friend, no loved ones to pour the balm of Christian consolation upon their tortured bosom; no prospect of a respectable interment, their remains picked over, at leisure, by sated carrion.’
From the store porch Sparrow had a good enough view. He could hear most of what was said, words crafted to put the frighteners into any man or woman who contemplated a bolt and a life on the other side. He could also hear the rattle of the cart coming up the track and the voice of Hat Thistlewaite, the executioner, shouting his oaths at the ox in the traces.
Shug was silent all the while, his eyes downcast. When Kettle’s cautionary tale was complete Shug lifted his head and looked about.
He stared at the mustered assemblage on the square and others on the fringing porches. On the tavern porch he saw Fish, Dr Woody and his boy Jug. On the store porch he saw the store hands, the garrison butcher, a few old squaddies and the expiree Marty Sparrow, the very same who Mort said was weak as a puddle. But Shug did not think Sparrow was weak. At that moment, he envied him, for Sparrow had done his time, got his patch and had the good sense to say no to Mort Craggs. He reckoned Sparrow would have to be happy as a pig in muck right now, watching on, thankful for that good sense, thankful he was not tempted by Mort’s overtures, thankful he had not succumbed like a damn fool.
Mort believed, firmly, that Sparrow did not have the mettle and Shug had thought that too, but not now. Now, on the brink, he thought Sparrow’s caution was entirely prudent.
Abbott bent forward and whispered in Shug’s ear. ‘Speak as directed, and speak up.’
‘There’s nuttin’ out there,’ said Shug, ‘nuttin’ but waste. There’s no crossin’ dem woods, for every peak you gain you gain for naught save the sight o’ more. More o’ the same like. Bit and stung I was, near to madness, and wet through like, and the nights the worst of it, shapes full o’ menace and sounds . . . I heard a lion out there I’ll swear to that . . . an’ I had a rat the size of a cat lickin’ at the wounds on me feet and I’m tellin’ yez all there’s no end to them mountains and there’s no end to the misery and I can but hope me sufferin’ will but excite commiseration in the mind o’ humanity, and the mind of me betters in whose hands I place me life, hopin’ like, for some sort o’ dispensation.’
Kettle was unmoved. ‘The prisoner is the beneficiary of a short shrift and a speedy doom,’ he said, ‘and he may thank God in his generosity for that small mercy for, in the course of his flight, the prisoner was party to murder, abduction and rapine.’
‘That wasn’t me,’ said Shug, but his voice had sunk to a whisper.
Sparrow watched as the cart circled around and came to a halt. Hat Thistlewaite folded down the weathered panel at the rear, revealing the foot end of the coffin. ‘You have to sit up there,’ said Hat.
‘I sit on me own coffin?’ said Shug.
‘You do, yes, you know that.’
Sparrow was readying to follow the cart along with everyone else when he saw Betty Pepper and Biddie Happ step from the switchback path and cross to the vicinity of the pillory and the gibbet. The sighting made him entirely uncomfortable. He did not want to see Biddie. Nor did he want to be seen by Biddie. The sight of Biddie made him mad, she who had tattled to Griffin Pinney about his private parts, tattle that was not even
true. He reckoned he might whack her, given the chance. He took to a stump stool at the back of the porch, pondered whether or not to make for his patch. He stood again, went up on his toes so he might catch a glimpse of her from his obscure vantage. How could anyone not notice that red hair, that beautiful sweep of thick red hair, that shy sweep across her eye and her cheek? He felt his legs wobble so he sat down again, for it did him no good to stare at Biddie Happ. Her shy beauty turned his resolve to mush and Sparrow well knew this was no time to have his resolve go to mush.
At that moment it occurred to Sparrow he didn’t really want to see Shug’s pitiful exit. He’d seen such things before, seen them cry, seen them rage. He made ready to go. He snuck away as the cart rattled off the square with Shug seated on his coffin, the official party a step behind, then Peskett, then the mustered assemblage, the miscellaneous comers and goers, the mockers and the mourners and the flanking soldiers.
At the gibbet the cart wheeled about and Hat Thistlewaite backed up the ox, tapping the animal’s shoulder with the butt end of his long whip, until the tray was correctly positioned beneath the noose. Then he climbed onto the tray and lifted the prisoner to his feet and Shug was made to stand beside the executioner, the condemned man still freighted with the pony’s head.
Shug could see the top of tall trees on the river’s turn into Argyle Reach. The storm had raced north. The sun now hazed through thin cloud, the river dappled in the light, the current rippling the reflected world. He heard the sweet sounds of the morning birds all about. He searched the crowd for Sparrow whose presence, he knew, would fill him with rage, rage at his own fool self. But he could not see Sparrow.
Abbott patted down his velvet lapels and interlaced his fingers in ritual pose and took charge as the crowd fell silent. ‘It hath pleased Almighty God to bring the marauder and bolter Shug McCafferty under the sentence and condemnation of the law. He is shortly to suffer death in such a manner that others may be forewarned. A no less dismal catastrophe can be expected than an ignominious and untimely end and it is much to be desired that his atonement may deter others from impulsive acts that cannot fail to plunge them into the horrors of the wilderness or the torments of the savages or the terror of divine judgement through the machinery of British law.’
The Making of Martin Sparrow Page 9