Shug spoke softly to Hat, ‘If I’m chokin’, you give me a good hard tug.’
‘That is the prerogative of friends or family,’ whispered Hat.
‘I got neither,’ said Shug.
‘I’ll do it then,’ said Hat and he put a hand on the small of Shug’s back and Shug felt the hand, a gentle hand. ‘I fear I’ll fill my pants,’ he said, but Hat seemed not to hear him.
A foot soldier took up the long whip, waiting for the nod, ready to urge the ox forward.
Shug searched the crowd some more, still looking for Sparrow. He wondered if he’d come along to see the finish. Come along to gloat at the gulled fool. He reckoned Sparrow must be somewhere, laughing. The crowd clapped. Some shouted words of encouragement, others shouted insults, and Shug began to pray, his fingers locked together on the pony’s muzzle.
Abbott shushed them. He led the gathering in the Lord’s Prayer and when they finished Hat tightened the noose at the back of Shug’s head and he took the double irons off the poor man’s legs and the crowd stood silent waiting for the ritual words of contrition from the prisoner, the assurance that he would submit himself humbly and with Christian resignation to the final judgement. But there were no words. Shug was so much overcome by the dreadful pause that his composure forsook him. He jumped into the arms of death causing the crowd ahead of him to shrink back and fall about, one upon another, the solemnity ruined, the horrible moment transformed into a scene something comic.
They heard Shug’s neck crack and his legs bang on the tray and they saw the body convulse. Hat leapt to the ground, ready to tug at Shug’s legs if he had to. But there was no need. Shug was dead and the convulsions ceased and the body freighted with the pony’s head turned slowly on the taut rope, first one way and then the other, the poor man’s neck stretched to extremity.
18
Mackie and company were two hard days getting back to Prominence. On the second day, late in the afternoon, the tide was against them and then the wind swung contrary to their needs and a great deal of unhappy rowing was required to complete the journey, with the corn biscuits gone and the empty demijohn cosied in the prow to mock their thirst.
The dusk was fast yielding to dark as the sloop slid onto the mud beside heaps of salvaged timber. A fatigue party cleaning the mess kettles watched them shuffle off the duckboards and some of the cottagers on the terrace came out of their damp domiciles and watched as the boatmen took to the switchback path, Mackie followed by Harp and Sprodd, and Cuff at the rear.
When Bet Pepper stepped onto her porch Cuff could not resist: ‘I’m back, rejoice.’
‘Huzzah,’ said Bet, her fists planted on her hips.
They saw a light in the doctor’s window as they neared the top of the path but they did not stop for they saw the pillory and the gibbet beyond and they were drawn to it, the sight of Shug, his neck horribly stretched, like the body might come away at any moment.
‘That should be Mortimer Craggs hangin’ there, not that poor pilgarlic,’ said Cuff.
‘He knew the price you pay,’ said Mackie.
Cuff clucked his tongue and shook his head. ‘As ever, quick to chide and slow to bless.’
‘I feel sorry for the pony,’ said Sprodd.
‘They could have brung in the ears, just the ears,’ said Cuff.
‘The ears could be any grey pony,’ said Mackie.
‘We are not exactly swimmin’ in grey ponies here at the river, Alister,’ said Cuff.
‘As to the eyes, wherever I move they seem to follow me,’ said Sprodd.
They crossed the square and set their loads on the tavern porch in the dim light of a swing lamp hooked on a shingle bearing the full title of Mackie’s establishment: The Convivial Hive.
Mackie charged the custody of the copper worm to Dan Sprodd and went inside. He took Harp with him for the old man was entirely worn out. A part of him wished he’d left Harp behind but he couldn’t do that, and now he hoped Dr Woody in his capacity as magistrate would not put Harp on the shovel.
Sam Rattle was seated in the barber’s chair opposite the stairs. He was a he-oak of a man, big in all departments. ‘I’ve torn something,’ he said, pressing at his groin, poking in the vicinity of his package.
A lantern hung from a cross beam and a slush lamp sat on a sconce on the rear wall, by the corridor to the lodgings, close to where Sam was resting. In another corner men played at dice in the light of a single tallow candle set in its own wax and further along there were men huddled around an upright hogshead, drinking quietly in their own gloom. The drudge they called Fish was dozing in a chair beneath the stairs, shrouded in the emanations from a smoke pot, like some shabby apparition shaping from another world.
‘Can you work?’ said Mackie.
‘I suppose,’ said Sam.
‘And the trade?’
Sam looked about. ‘Thirsty enough,’ he said. ‘Reckon I dragged that damn yawl up one muddy bank too many.’
Sam had gone out with Dr Woody’s crew in the midst of the flood and they had rowed hard, lifting stranded souls out of lofts and treetops and, coming in, time and again, heaving that boat across the sucking mud. Sam knew his pickle traced back to some moment in all that exertion, though which moment he wasn’t sure. The pain had come on slowly the next day when he was quite recovered in every other facet. ‘Got to get me a truss,’ he said.
He stood and fixed himself down below with a poke and a push and he shuffled to the counter, the movement plainly uncomfortable.
The shuffling sound woke Fish. ‘You’re back,’ he said, leaping to his feet and slamming his skull into the underside of the stairs. He fell into the chair grimacing and feeling at his head and looking at his hand, searching for blood. ‘I’m alright,’ he said.
Sam beckoned Mackie close. ‘Some of this trade, their wheat’s in the ooze or half way to Santiago, the collateral’s mostly rubbish.’
‘Barter what we can use and be generous to the traffic. A premium on nails,’ said Mackie.
‘We short on nails?’
‘We’re always short on nails.’
Sam nodded solemnly, as if he’d just made a pact to restore goodness to the world.
Harp had followed the conversation with some care, hoping it would turn to matters relating to his immediate sustenance and comfort. The light from the lantern favoured a tuppence-coloured lithograph on the wall behind the counter – A Splendid View of the Cheviot Hills. ‘You from there?’ he said to Mackie. He was pointing more or less at the picture but he seemed to be staring at the timbers above it.
‘Near there. Yetholm,’ said Mackie.
‘Pretty river.’
‘Yes.’
‘What you call that river?’
‘Bowmont.’
‘Shame you’re not still there.’
‘Shame is a hard bed for a loafer.’
‘I ain’t no loafer.’
Mackie felt the little needle pricks of pity and regret probing his flesh, prompted as much by the memory of the Bowmont river as by Harp’s sad mien.
Harp pulled at the skin on his throat. ‘I could do with a drink, right now I’ll swallow anything won’t blind me or kill me or make me bleat like a goat.’
Mackie nodded and Sam poured and Harp gulped down a tot of rhum. He bleated like a goat.
‘You saw Shug?’ said Sam.
‘We did,’ said Mackie.
‘Who ever heard of a man hung with his horse?’
‘It wasn’t his horse.’
19
Cuff and Sprodd had lingered outside, sprawled on the tavern porch with their haversacks and their muskets and the empty demijohn. Sprodd had the salvaged harness in his lap and the copper worm on the porch boards by his side. He alone was properly seated. He had commandeered Cuff ’s rocking chair, so Cuff sat on the step, watching the comers and goers on the square.
Fish brought them some grog on a tray. Upon his head was an unfamiliar hat.
‘That’s a strange hat, F
ish. Looks like a chamber pot,’ said Sprodd.
‘It’s mine, I found it, I claim salvage.’
‘So do I,’ said Dan, pointing to the harness.
‘You want to hear about Shug?’ said Fish.
‘We know he’s dead, we seen him.’
‘What about Shug?’ said Cuff.
‘Peskett snaffled him.’
‘Is it a good story?’ said Sprodd.
‘Oh yes.’
People hardly ever listened to him so Fish was more than pleased to recount what he’d seen and heard: the bolter Shug McCafferty had been saved by Caleb somewhere in the fastness, then delivered up to Sergeant Peskett somewhere in the foothills, and Peskett brought him in, and Shug was made to carry the stolen pony’s head all the way because Peskett said the ears would prove nothing, the ears of that particular pony being quite nondescript.
There was more to tell but the constables had fastened onto a detail that required urgent consideration. Cuff scratched at his forehead. ‘To think that Caleb never said a word. Ate with us and not a word.’
‘There’s no knowing the depths of their cunning and deceit,’ said Fish, parroting a familiar line, variations on which appeared regularly in the Gazette.
‘The mystery is why,’ said Sprodd.
‘Because no one asked him, that’s why, a still tongue in a wise mouth. On reflection I admire that young man’s restraint,’ said Cuff.
‘Poor old Shug,’ said Fish.
‘No mercy for Shug!’ said Cuff. ‘That crazy notion of a haven, that takes hold we’re all in a pickle.’
‘Where do they go, that’s what I want to know,’ said Sprodd.
‘They don’t go nowhere. There’s nowhere to go, there’s nothin’ west of here less you’re a bird. That wild country might go on for a thousand miles.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘I know I don’t know, nobody knows, that’s the point,’ said Cuff. He was tired, he was heartily sick of the silliness and determined to put an end to it. ‘I’ll tell you what happens when bolters head west never to be seen again, the likes of Jephthah Big, Tinkerton, Turley Potter, Mary Mingay, them and more – first they get lost in them mountains, then they get hungry, then their feet blister up and bleed, then they get bit by leeches, mosquitoes, damn ticks, you name it. Then they get real sad, then they get tired and giddy, then they pass out, then they get skewered and that’s if they don’t get bit by a snake. We got a good two dozen unaccounted for and I’ll tell you boys, they’re all somewhere in the fastness, rot in their bones, their flesh picked clean.’ Cuff waved a hand westward.
Sprodd thought he might have a trump card. ‘Mr Flinders says there’s a big river over there, and quite possibly a settlement.’
Cuff stared at his boots and shook his head. ‘To the best of my knowledge, Mr Flinders is a master mariner who’s never put a toe west of Parramatta, where he’s supped with the governor in considerable comfort, played some whist, sipped on Andalusian sherry, slept in a nice soft bed, then took a carriage back to Sydney with a military escort.’
‘Yeah but he sailed the whole continent, he should know. Says there’s a river over there, a river of the first magnitude, has to be, he says.’
‘He’s a able navigator but he’s not immune to a passionate lapse in reasoning now and then, like some I know,’ said Cuff, his head waggling like it was set on an old spring.
‘Well Mort and Shug bolted and they took the girl, Dot, and Gordy’s pony.’
‘So?’
‘Them Cape ponies, they’re like goats,’ said Sprodd.
Cuff had to intervene. ‘Dan, Shug’s dead, the pony’s dead, and who knows what’s happened to Mort and that poor girl he took.’
‘They might be skewered?’ said Fish.
Cuff thought there was a good chance Fish was right. If the country didn’t get the runaways the savages would. He and Mackie had chased enough bolters to know something of the wilderness – a vast expanse of ravines and gullies, defiles cut through by rivers and creeks, the severe slopes heavily forested, thick and dark, bottomed with rotting flood-wrack knee deep in parts and topped mostly with sandstone ridges. Rifts a thousand feet deep, and a hundred foot and more of sheer stone at the ridgeline, cracked and crenelled like crude fortifications, conforming to no pattern and dooming puny white men to confusion, exhaustion and defeat.
‘I don’t know why we chase the bolters,’ said Cuff, ‘either they disappear forever or they come back crawling, mostly.’
‘Not lately, that’s my point,’ said Sprodd, ‘they don’t come back no more, not a one of a dozen last year.’
‘They don’t come back because they’re dead,’ said Cuff. He had a sneaking feeling there could be some truth in this wild notion of a sanctuary – all the more reason to dismiss it emphatically. If it took hold there’d be no staunching the bleed. That was Mackie’s point entirely and he had to agree.
They sat quietly for a while, contemplating the mystery of Caleb’s silence and watching the activity on the square, the last of the refugees, the laggards, settling for the night, the poultry crated and the dogs fixed to tether weights, lamplight shadows on calico and canvas, a double guard on the store and the granary, the butcher at the mess door, a pair of fowls in his fist, bled and plucked.
‘A prodigious concourse in the esplanade,’ said Cuff.
‘Ain’t it more a cul-de-sac?’ said Sprodd.
‘You’re out of your depth, Dan. See, a cul-de-sac is a refined thing, cobbled and fringed, you cannot have a cul-de-sac where there’s nothin’ but dust or mud. You cannot have a cul-de-sac in a wilderness. That’s a non sequitur, like a pig in a palace or a bull in a boudoir.’
‘What?’
‘See, the bottoms is nothin’ but a bog and this here, this is a spongy scab on a prominence, framed for the most part by hasty constructions and poor excuses for civic endeavour. It’s a muck heap goin’ nowhere.’
‘You never said that down the river, downriver you said it was Arcadia.’
‘Down river, like here, I have but one purpose in life and that is to leave you all the more nimbleminded for having engaged with me in the conversazione,’ said Cuff.
‘But you said Arcadia.’
‘Well what do you want, you want a billet in some fever ridden garrison in Africa?’
‘Nooo.’
‘Alright then, I rest my case.’
Mackie was standing in the doorway, listening. He would never admit it, hardly even to himself, but he wished he could hold court like Cuff. He wished he could enjoy people, life, the sun, the moon, the stars, a pretty flower, a cup of warm milk, a conversation with a woman, the way that Cuff did. But there was something about contentment that offended him mightily, so much so that it brought disgust, like vomit, into the back of his mouth. ‘It is my firm belief, Thaddeus, that you could talk a fish up a tree,’ he said.
‘If I could find a fish willing to listen I’d do my best,’ said Cuff. ‘Thing is, Alister, they’re stuck in their ways, the fish, like someone I know! You hear about Caleb?’
‘Yes.’
‘He never said a word about Shug.’
‘There’s no telling what Caleb makes of us, save we are riven and vengeful among ourselves. I expect his caution curbed his tongue,’ said Mackie.
‘We agree!’ said Cuff, like it was a miracle.
Fish was back. ‘I heard he put a balm on Shug’s feet and then some rags and then Shug could walk, and he cut him a stick too.’
‘What else you hear?’ said Sprodd.
‘Well, Redenbach was with Peskett and he says Peskett shackled Shug and tied him to a tree, then they went with Caleb and they found the dead pony and the sergeant chopped off the head with a small axe and Caleb went on his way, took a big cut off the rump.’
Mackie took note of the copper worm on the porch boards, safe beside Sprodd. ‘Take that to Hat, he’s to lock it up and I’ll have a docket,’ he said.
Sprodd raised himself with s
ome difficulty and took hold of the worm. ‘What about Mort?’ he said.
‘I heard Mort got a compass,’ said Fish.
‘Big deal,’ said Cuff.
Mackie went to the lantern and turned it down to a flicker.
From the barracks windows came a tune, played on a fiddle. Cuff hummed along; then he began to sing:
A master of music
She came with intent
To give me a lesson
On my instrument
I thanked her for nothing
And bid her be gone
For my little fiddle
Must not be played on
The constables clapped and Fish said ‘What’s that one called?’ and Cuff said he had no idea.
Mackie couldn’t help himself: ‘You’ve an acute recall for drivel.’
‘I see no harm in banter or merriment. You ain’t a painted vase, Alister, won’t crack your face if you smile.’
20
Biddie Happ unbuttoned her chemise at the shoulder and dropped it to the floor and stood there, naked, watching him undress. ‘Well?’ she said.
‘Well?’ said Sparrow.
‘What’s your fancy?’
‘I like to see your face, you have a pretty face.’
Biddie stared at him like he was a fool.
She sat on the edge of the bed with his pizzle in her hand, turning it this way and that, looking for what she called a venereal distemper, which Sparrow took to mean sores. She said, ‘I find the slightest abrasion I’ll nail this thing to a bedpost,’ and he laughed but she did not.
The Making of Martin Sparrow Page 10