by Ed Hillyer
‘Sorcerous powers are generally the preserve of the aged, but may come as early as the first grey hairs of middle age. Clever-men or Cooragie, as they are called, acquire their magic influence by eating of human flesh, but only twice in a lifetime…once that of a young child, and once that of a fellow burka, or elder. Among the powers they come to possess is the ability to bone-point, causing or curing sickness…and control of the weather. The very smartest of these clever-men are the wammaroogo, medicine-men or charm-men. Having the cloaking-power of invisibility, they are also able to transport themselves instantaneously over great distances. Time and space present no obstacle.
‘Women,’ said Sir John, ‘are never sorcerers.’
The Guardian of the Wisdom of Dead Men heaved a huge sigh of relief.
‘Prodigious appetite and indolence aside, another feature of this savage race most often remarked is their carelessness of the future. It is said they have little concept of an afterlife according to either state, neither great reward nor everlasting damnation…no life at all of a sensual character. Their religion, such as it is, operates independently of morality. Before Christianity, humility appears quite unknown.
‘When questioned as to what becomes of them after their decease, some answer that they believe the spirit of the deceased leaves the body and makes its way to the spirit world. This immense repository of souls is, according to varying interpretation, on or beyond the great water, over the far horizon, or up above the clouds… Boo-row-e. But this will only happen so long as the correct ceremonies are performed.’
This sounded a little too conveniently like heaven, and a lot more like a mess of contradiction. If Sarah had learnt one thing from her time with Brippoki, it was that he was often too quick to agree. He went out of his way to avoid confrontation; and if this wasn’t the definition of humility, then she did not know what was. Conversely, he stubbornly held to his beliefs, and kept them for his own. The Aborigines had every reason to conceal their greater truth from the invader, by telling them exactly what they wished to hear.
‘…ascended,’ Sir John was saying, ‘in the shape of little children, first hovering in the tops and in the branches of trees, and eating, in that state, their favourite food, little fishes.
‘When it comes to the rites of sepulture, and disposal of the dead,’ said Sir John, louder now, ‘their ideas of correct ceremony are different in almost every instance. Among the Adelaide tribes, a body is wrapped in animal skins or a cloak possessed in life, and placed on a bier made of branches. A day or two later,’ he concluded, ‘and the body is removed, being deposited, head pointing west, in a grave four to six feet deep.’
Sarah suddenly saw herself standing, sto, above an open grave. She could not quite make out the prone form within – or say to whom it belonged.
‘In the vicinity of Encounter Bay,’ said Sir John, ‘four separate modes of disposal have been recorded. Only the elderly are buried. Middle-aged persons are lodged in the crook of a tree, hands and knees brought nearly to the chin, and the mouth, nose, ears and so on sewn shut. The corpse has three coverings: bark, netting, and an outside layer of sticks. A fire is lit at the base of the tree and there the wailing relatives gather. The body remains up the tree until the flesh has wasted away, after which the skull is taken for a drinking cup.
‘Alternatively, the corpse is placed in a sitting posture, facing east, and exposed to the elements until desiccated, only after which it is placed in a tree. A fourth method is to burn the body, but this only happens in the case of infants or stillborn children.
‘In Northern Australia a man’s widow carries his head with her in a bag, the body being interred in a shallow grave. At the Flinders River, Gulf of Carpentaria…’
In his supply of gratuitous detail, Sir John Lubbock’s mischief had taken a wicked turn. However much she might wish to leave, something in the style of his delivery compelled Sarah to stay.
‘Only the lowest races of men,’ he was saying, ‘African Bushmen, many of the native Australians, Calmucks and so on, neglect to bury their dead, leaving them to the wild beasts. The Brazilians burn the bodies, pound the dust and drink it, with the hope of inheriting the good qualities of the deceased. Some savages perform their burials in ant-hills, and others inter the body upright.
‘The native Australians prefer to keep away from the graves of their own people,’ he said, ‘but care little for their maintenance. Little prevents the bones of their dear departed from being scattered across the surface of the earth. They have frequently been seen to handle them, or kick them around with near total indifference.
‘They have other strange quirks in this morbid regard. Often they will drive their sick away to die…either leave them to their fate, or spear them, so that they may cease to be a burden.
‘It is considered most unlucky to utter any dead person’s name.’
Sarah tried her best to maintain composure. The small noises she could not help but make began to attract the attention of those around her. They sat and stared or looked away, presuming her weak-spirited or squeamish – not at all privy to the reasons for the spillage of her feelings.
‘All those not disposed of according to the correct rites become malign spirits, doomed to wander about the face of the earth for evermore, the only gratification allowed them being to do all possible evil to the living.’
She could block out neither his words, nor her runaway thoughts.
‘Death,’ chanted Sir John, ‘Death to them is not the natural end to life, but the work of magic. They have no concept of an individual spiritual life, either before birth, or after death. Death is only utter annihilation.’
Terrible. Terrible. Sarah stood. She must return, she must return home straight away.
‘So you see,’ said Sir John, voice receding, ‘progress in their religious ideas must be gradual indeed.’
CHAPTER XLIX
Thursday, the 18th of June, 1868
SUPERSTITION TOO?
‘A rev’rent fear (such superstition reigns
Among the rude) ev’n then possess’d the swains.
Some god, they knew – what god, they could not tell –
Did there amidst the sacred horror dwell.’
~ Virgil, Aeneid, trans. John Dryden
Sarah pulled herself together for Lambert’s sake; not realising fully how far he did the same for her.
Late afternoon into evening, she indulged him by preparing them both a sumptuous dinner. Lambert enjoyed it so thoroughly that he neither resisted nor questioned, and afterwards actually apologised for his previous outburst. He said that he should like them to be able to speak freely, without fear of contradiction, as they ‘used to’ (as he used to would be more accurate, but still…).
After 27 years, they were finally able to sit and talk like adults.
‘And what,’ Lambert asked, ‘have you learnt today, from Lubbock and his opinions On Savages?’
His interest seemed genuine enough. Sarah hardly knew where to start.
She simply said, ‘He talked about superstition.’
Lambert took up the salt pot from his tray, tipped some out onto his empty plate, and then threw a pinch across his left shoulder. ‘Like that?’ he asked.
‘Something like that,’ Sarah granted, ‘although it might work best when the spill is accidental.’
‘Bah!’ he sneered, playing along. ‘How about this?’ Boldly he crossed his knife with his fork.
‘Well,’ she considered, ‘if we were seated at table, for fear of embarrassment I should say it was an ill omen…but I think it more taboo than superstition.’
Liking her answer, Lambert wanted more. ‘Define for me, if you will,’ he asked, ‘the difference.’
Sarah worked the idea through in her head, to her own satisfaction. She then reached across to rearrange his cutlery.
‘Defiance of taboo,’ she said, ‘incurs a social penalty.’ As Lambert moved to interfere she slapped his hand away. ‘The defier of supe
rstition believes it incurs one that is supernatural.’
‘One what?’
‘Penalty.’
‘You speak too broadly. But that is one thing I may always rely on,’ he said. ‘All superstition is silly, as the “King’s Evil” is silly. A king may die any day of the week.’
Sarah frowned.
‘Be that as it is,’ continued Lambert, ‘superstition properly belongs between a man, and whatever maggoty devils infest his brain.’
‘You dismiss it entirely?’
‘I dismiss it entirely. I acknowledge it, however, a commonplace. Supernatural belief is not so important, almost the lesser evil,’ he said, ‘whereas taboo is a social compact.’
‘Then that is what I have learnt today,’ declared Sarah, beginning to clear their dinner things away. ‘Among so-called “savages”, the opposite holds true.’
Sarah was nothing if not careful in her language. Her comments were specific to what she had so far discovered concerning the natives of Australia and New Zealand, but she did not want to get into antagonistic issues of race.
‘Their widespread belief in supernatural forces,’ she said, ‘elevates both superstition and the breaking of taboo…makes of them a very real social force. Defiance of taboo incurs both social and supernatural penalties.’
Lambert looked surprised. Sarah impressed even herself.
‘The Royal Institution should be congratulated,’ he said, observing her at work. ‘A superficial taste in arts and sciences is desirable in those to whom fortune gives leisure, for it keeps them out of harm’s way.’
Sarah turned and placed a hand to her hip, the dishcloth swinging. ‘If you think me a lady of leisure – ’ she started. ‘And you know for a fact we have no fortune.’
Lambert grinned. ‘I have some.’
Her frown broke and she laughed.
‘Has anyone ever told you?’ he said. ‘You have a very pleasant laugh.’
Her face clouded slightly, despite the compliment – since no one ever had.
Dishes washed, dried, and put away, Sarah returned to Lambert’s bedside for a little while longer – finding it difficult, for the moment, to be apart from him. She saw that he held a finger between the pages of a new book (R. H. Hutton, Professor Huxley’s Hidden Chess Player), received just that morning by mail order.
‘You look tired,’ he said.
Sarah gave a wan smile. ‘It has been a long day,’ she said.
‘To be serious a moment,’ said Lambert, folding his great hands together, ‘these public lectures are useful only to those who know little, and aspire to little. Real learning is acquired through solitary studies.’
She nodded. ‘I know that.’
Owing perhaps to his great suffering and the death of Aetockoe, the relation of Druce’s signs and wonders still troubled her. Simple folk like the Gilbethorpes or even Druce himself held to a concept of Christianity not so very far removed from superstition, with its ceremony, its portents. The miracles performed by either Son or God the father helped to explain life’s mysteries, soothe its tragedies. They seemed the prime attraction of a truly popular religion.
Sarah, feeling the need to be circumspect, searched for an example the likes of which Lambert would tolerate.
‘Thinking of – ’ She hesitated. ‘Putting oneself in the position of a poor and simple citizen, for a moment, such as a member of the congregation of St George’s in the East… You can understand,’ she said, ‘can’t you, how the poor people, dying in their hundreds, might take to the anointment of oil, to deathbed confession and most especially holy communion, with its promise of trans…transubstantiation…the blood and the body of Christ.’
‘Ironic, is it not?’ said the Reverend Lambert Larkin. ‘The disease took hold because of the cholera.’ He eyed her with suspicion: better an atheist than a Catholic.
‘But,’ said Sarah, ‘my question is: does that make their belief simple? Or profound?’
‘They make Fear their god,’ shrugged Lambert. ‘They fear death.’
Unfolding his great hands, he opened up the pages of his book.
Sarah had skirted around the ignorance of savages, yet Lambert had succinctly hit upon their belief in malign gods of evil – lambasting it, as she’d guessed he would.
‘Are they not then good God-fearing folk?’ she asked.
She wanted to ask that question of him personally – her own upbringing having been designed to put the fear of God into her.
Lambert blandly turned the question aside. ‘God is Love.’
He had never said a thing more dishonest.
‘I prevail on you, then, to regret your dismissal of the Jews, and even to forgive the Anglo-Catholics their ritual.’ Sarah wasn’t exactly sure what she was asking, or why she asked it.
Lambert stared. ‘You prevail upon me?’ he asked.
He might as well have added, ‘in my weakness?’
‘When men have lost sight of their Creator,’ he said, throwing down his book, ‘that is when false notions take His place…superstition, more or less, which soon descends into gross fetish, the worship of false idols…backward steps towards ignorance and savagery. Religion may be corrupted, as surely as morals…and civilisation is, above all, a moral state: without moral foundation, impossible.’
Sarah stood firm. ‘Even within Christianity,’ she reasoned, ‘the fundaments of any one particular sect are held, unfairly, as superstition by the next.’ She was being admirably forthright – ultimately, he would prefer it. ‘What may be poison to one man,’ she said, ‘is still meat to the next.’
‘Meat and poison,’ he snarled. ‘Superstition is an offence to God.’
The body of Christ – or was it a maggoty devil infesting her brain?
CHAPTER L
Thursday the 18th of June, 1868
BETRAYAL
‘Arrived in London once again
His gold he freely spent
And into every gaiety
And dissipation went.
But pleasure, if prolonged too much,
Oft causes pain, you know,
And he missed the sound of the windlasses,
And the cry “Look out below!”’
~ Charles ‘The Inimitable’ Thatcher,
‘Look Out Below’
Brippoki is on the move, heading eastwards, out towards Bow Marshes and the lower Lea Valley. Dampened bunches of green weed, piled and tied atop his head, serve both to keep him cool and as a natural disguise. He weaves through the long grasses, leaping the occasional ditch, body low to the ground to prevent him being seen. Here and there sit fishermen – idle spectators who do not concern him.
Beneath his laboured breath he hums, almost wordlessly, to the tune of ‘Captain Jack’s Song’. ‘The European food…the pease… I wished to eat…I wished to eat.’
Expectation fills his mouth with saliva. Brippoki, low on energy, is tired of chewing on fern root. Roused from his torpor, only the thought of wild honey dares him sufficient to risk exposure in broad daylight.
Quarry sighted, he skids to a halt, hand clutching his chest in sudden pain. Ribcage tight, he collapses back, to lie in the long marsh grass – mouth working, like that of a fish out of water. Brippoki heaves a dry and gasping cough, and, for a while, lies supine in the grass.
Against a backdrop of deep blue, the pale ghost of Mityan hangs suspended in the clear noonday sky, more than three-quarters consumed by shadow.
Brippoki, recovered, crawls on his belly over to the nearest water pool. He drinks his fill, then loads his mouth, and rolls over onto his side, where he remains completely immobile – as if one dead.
Presently a bee approaches, poking about the marsh flowers. Hearing its unsteady hum, Brippoki holds his breath. The bee passes high overhead, examining the scene, and then closer, first to one side of his head, then the other. Buzz-z-z-z. Brippoki flickers not an eyelash. The bee hovers a moment more then turns, a change in its tune signifying that it is about to drink.
The instant brother bee touches the surface of the pond Brippoki spits out a powerful jet of water. Seizing the stunned insect by the wings, he attaches a wisp of white goose feather with a spot of his own blood.
Let go, the bee makes for the hive with an angry drone – marker slowing it down, and making it easier for the eye to follow.
Brippoki’s face, shape only just recovered from a previous beating, was a mass of angry lumps.
‘You’ve been fighting again?’ asked Sarah.
She saw similar swellings over much of his body.
Brippoki the hunter looked sheepish. ‘Bumblies no sting in the World,’ he said. ‘Bee is our pren.’ He raised a rueful sounding lament. ‘Not bloody here. Here him bloody lolly pren!’
Bloody fine friend, he is, an English sort of bee: she was finally becoming attuned to his patter.
‘They attacked you?’ said Sarah. ‘Why would they do that?’
His indignant expression transformed into one of delight.
‘Bumbly choogar!’ Brippoki crooned. ‘Climb it tree, nice honey-stuff liket choogar!’
His flickering tongue protruding hot pink between swollen black lips, he resembled some species of lizard or black-headed snake.
Sarah laughed. ‘There’s tea on the table,’ she said, ‘milk and “choogar”. You can spoon as much of it as you like, without fear of injury.’
She sat and watched Brippoki happily sort among the tea set, serving himself – just like a bee at a flower. What complexity of thought might even now be whirling within his skull? If she only knew how to frame the question in such a way that it would not drive him away.
Brippoki sat obediently at her feet.
She fumbled with her notebooks for a while.
They exchanged mute looks, both equally expectant.
Did Brippoki fear mention of Druce’s name, Sarah wondered, simply because he was dead? There seemed no easy way for her to recap events, and so she leapt straight in.