The Burning Land

by John Fletcher

  She watched as the boy ran off importantly with his message and felt the weight of her own child, her feelings about it ambiguous as always. It was eight months now. More and more she felt like a sack—of blood, unwanted weight, knotted veins and a mystic something that heaved and turned, filling her less with anticipation than dread. Relations between herself and Andrew had never recovered. God knew what they would be like after the child was born. It depended on what it looked like, she supposed.

  The entourage drew up at the foot of the knoll. The big man on the chestnut horse took off his feathered hat and swept it around him, inclining his head in an enormous bow.

  ‘Good day to you, ma’am.’ His voice was high and fruity, an aristocrat’s voice, as Andy had said. ‘Mrs McLachlan, I presume?’

  Lorna watched him, amused. Aristocrat or not, he was clearly a showman. ‘I am that.’

  ‘And I, ma’am, am John Charles Carter Ingham, Commissioner of Crown Lands in the district. D’you mind if I step down and join you?’

  ‘Ye’re more than welcome, Mr Ingham.’

  Mr John Charles Carter Ingham spoke to one of the soldiers. There were three of them, as Matthew had said, plus the man driving the cart—a black man, she saw, not local but a negro from Africa.

  The lands commissioner dismounted and climbed the knoll to meet her. Once again he doffed his hat. As he did so, a braying sound came from the party at the foot of the knoll. Staring, startled, Lorna saw that the African had taken up a trumpet and was blowing it enthusiastically if unmusically.

  ‘Samuel will never make a musician, I fear,’ Ingham said. She liked the twinkle in the blue eyes that were assessing both her and her surroundings. Not a man to take for granted; she remembered Andrew had said as much. ‘Never a musician. However, it amuses me and impresses the natives. At least, ma’am, that is the intention.’

  ‘It certainly impressed me,’ Lorna said. ‘Yon man should know better than startle a woman in my condition.’

  Her remark might have startled Ingham, too, but he gave no sign of it. Her opinion of him improved further. No one discussed such matters, least of all with a complete stranger, but she had long been beyond such niceties. It was good to know that Commissioner Ingham was either not easily shocked or knew how to keep it to himself.

  ‘I sent the boy for my husband,’ she said.

  ‘I saw him, ma’am. A fine lad.’ He looked about him. ‘You have done a little building, ma’am.’

  ‘We’re hoping to make a regular settlement here,’ she said, doing her bit for her husband. ‘In time.’

  ‘Quite.’ His eye settled on the chapel. ‘That building with a cross on it … A place of worship, ma’am?’

  ‘Aye, it is.’

  ‘You are believers then?’

  Lorna replied carefully. ‘My husband is a religious man, Mr Ingham. We are all … believers.’

  Andrew came running from the workshop, wiping his hands on a scrap of cloth.

  ‘Mr Ingham, sir. Welcome. Would ye like some refreshment? Some tea, perhaps?’ He laughed apologetically. ‘I’m afeart we’ve nae spirits.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr McLachlan. Perhaps later, after we have finished our work?’

  ‘Of course. Whenever ye’re ready …’

  Ingham turned to Lorna, drawing himself up and bowing his head. ‘Your servant, ma’am.’

  At least he said goodbye, Lorna thought as the two men walked away. More than you could say for my husband.

  She watched them ride up the valley. The troopers followed at a respectful distance, sunlight shining on the carbines slung across their backs. Mr Ingham was a pleasant man with his easy ways, but those blue eyes would not miss much. Andrew was afraid their flock numbers were too low, that the commissioner would deny their claim because of it. She prayed he would not, not caring for herself but knowing the effect it would have on Andrew to see his dreams of a kingdom shattered.

  She picked up her hoe and began once again to attack the ground between the rows of stunted vegetables.

  A kingdom, she thought. Where does he get such fancies? There’s work enough looking after a vegie patch.

  The sun was low by the time the men returned. This time Ingham accepted tea. The five of them sat in the open before the hut as the commissioner sipped contemplatively and looked at the valley, the river flowing down the middle.

  ‘Very wise to build up here‚’ he declared. ‘Very wise. These mountain rivers can bring heavy flooding. Disastrous flooding.’ He renewed his attack on the tea. ‘Excellent, ma’am. Excellent.’ He put down his cup and looked at them. They stared back like bairns watching a schoolteacher, Lorna thought. ‘Wanting to know how I feel about your claim, I’ve no doubt. You don’t need me to tell you you’re understocked. Badly understocked. And this is a large parcel of land you’re claiming. Very large.’ He took up a piece of paper and looked at it. ‘One hundred and eight thousand, nine hundred and three acres. For five hundred sheep and a few cattle.’ He put down the paper. His blue eyes pierced like rapiers. ‘Not enough. Nowhere near enough. If the government gives away parcels of land of this size—prime land, I needn’t tell you, prime land—with such low stocking levels, the future of the wool industry in the Port Phillip District could be adversely affected.’

  He looked at them. No one spoke.

  Ingham smiled. ‘However …’

  He stood up and walked slowly across to the chapel. Rawhide hinges creaked as he pushed the door open and went inside.

  They looked at each other.

  Mary began, ‘D’you think …?’

  ‘Quiet!’ Andrew said fiercely.

  After five minutes, Ingham came back and sat down again. ‘Interesting …’ He drummed his fingers on the table top. ‘You recall what I said when you came to see me, Mr McLachlan?’

  ‘Ye said a number o’ things, Mr Ingham.’

  ‘So I did. So I did. I mentioned you had told me the truth and how unusual that was. The government is concerned,’ he said. ‘We are getting more and more settlers arriving in the outlying districts. They bring their children with them, as you have done. There are no schools in these areas. No churches. No means of ensuring the moral health of our new populations. I see new settlers every week of my life, indeed I do. Many of them are barely literate and the majority, the majority, I say, seem hardly to know right from wrong. We cannot permit this country to grow up in this heathen way yet that is what is happening. That is what is happening. And here I find four settlers who prove by their actions they are honest, and who have even built their own church. Qualities this country needs above all others.’ He rapped his closed hand on the table top. He stood, turning to Andy. ‘You shall have your land, Mr McLachlan. I shall see to it when I return to my office.’

  The next day Andrew rode out alone. The air had winter’s breath in it but his spirit was singing.

  My land, he thought as he rode along the riverbank. He watched the woolly backs of the sheep, grazing amid the good grass. Bannerji was sitting on a rock, watching them. He rode over to him.

  ‘Everything all right?’ he asked.

  ‘Him good.’

  Andrew felt comfortable with the black man. Bannerji did the job and gave no trouble. That was all he cared about. Simmons had warned him that native workers tended to wander off from time to time, no one knew where or why. Sometimes they came back, sometimes they didn’t.

  Andrew had certain ideas about his black shepherd, ideas he had discussed with no one but God. The Lord had sent him into the wilderness to labour and to prosper and this he would do. He had also sent him here to save souls. Bannerji’s soul might be the first of many, God willing. The time was not right to speak but when the Lord moved him he would do so.

  ‘No dingoes?’

  ‘Hear him in hills,’ Bannerji said. ‘No see.’

  ‘Tribesmen?’ He eyed Bannerji as he said it, looked for hesitation or lies, getting neither.

  ‘Him here alla time.’

  ‘No trouble?
’

  ‘No.’

  Satisfied, Andrew spurred Scabbard on. He reached the first of the foothills and rode up through the trees until the river was a sinuous line far below him. He reined in the horse and stared out over the valley, the soft fall of the trees, the grazing land in the distance. My land, he thought.

  He trotted steadily around the head of the valley. The tops of the distant hills rose against the sky to his left, the valley bottom stretched away to his right. At the highest point of the ridge he paused. Everywhere, as far as he could see, his land.

  The wind was colder up here. Puffs of cloud fled before it, outriders of a heavy bank that he could see low to the horizon in the distance. He had better move on if he wanted to avoid a soaking.

  He kicked Scabbard into a canter where the going permitted it, and once, when a half-mile of level sward appeared before him, he gave the horse his head. They covered the ground at a full gallop to arrive, panting and exhilarated, at an immense cairn of rocks that marked the far end.

  On the impulse, storm coming or not, he dismounted, climbed to the top of the cairn and sat on the edge of one of the massive boulders. There was lichen on its underside where the sun did not reach and it was cool and damp to the touch. He could hear Scabbard below him, tearing with big teeth at the thin grass. Above the valley a large bird—an eagle, by the look of it, with a wedge-shaped tail—circled on up-turned pinions.

  A mile distant and perhaps five hundred feet below him, a movement caught his eye.

  A group of black figures running along a ridge. Carrying what seemed at this distance to be a sheep.

  Movement came before thought. He threw himself down the cairn, hands and feet finding rocky outcrops, mind thinking, where is that Bannerji?

  One thing I will no’ permit. They will no’ steal my sheep.

  The ridge was empty. The men had gone. He rode after them a little way until it grew too precipitous for the horse, then stopped. It was hopeless. He went to look for the shepherd.

  ‘I saw them carrying one of our animals! Right under my nose! Where were you?’ It was unfair and he knew it—no one could be everywhere—but rage stole his tongue.

  ‘Them say,’ Bannerji told him, ‘sheep him drive away kangaroo. If no kangaroo, what them eat?’

  It was true, there were fewer kangaroos about than when they first came here.

  ‘I willna let them help themselves. You find them and tell them that.’ He decided to take a risk and spell out exactly how he felt. ‘Any man I find stealing, I will shoot. Understand?’

  Bannerji looked sullen. ‘No food, what him do?’

  Andrew remembered Gavin Henderson and how he had kept on good terms with the natives at Inverlochrie. In those days he had sworn he would never do it but had learned since then. ‘They steal my sheep they will get nothing. I’ll kill any man I find doing it. If they dinna steal and come to me at the homestead I will give them a sheep to eat. No spears, mind, or I willna know if they’re come for peace or war. Go and tell them that.’

  Two weeks later he was in the workshop when he heard Mary give a cry of alarm. He came at the run, George a yard behind him. He stopped abruptly.

  A group of six black men stood twenty yards away, spears in their hands. Mary was staring at them, lip caught in her teeth, face white.

  Andrew walked slowly forward until he was a little in front of her. ‘Dinna worry,’ he told her out of the corner of his mouth, ‘they mean nae harm.’ Hoping he was right.

  He faced the men, his hands empty. Slowly, with ceremony, the men laid their spears on the ground.

  Andrew spoke over his shoulder. ‘George …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Kill a sheep.’

  It rained nonstop for ten days, a cold, driving rain that soaked everything. All the time, it seemed, they were patching holes in the roof and the nights were melodious with water dripping into pots and pans arranged to receive it. The river rose beyond its banks and half the valley was flooded. The crests of the distant hills, when they could see them, were white with snow.

  In the last week of June the rain stopped at last. The sun was bright yet had something livid and fleeting about it, as though offering not warmth but a warning of trouble to come. The air was still and cold and became steadily colder as the day passed. Shortly before dusk, the temperature rose slightly. To the south, a leaden mass of cloud was drawing its veil across the sky. The sheep were coming down the valley in long grey strings as they sought the lower ground.

  Andrew went out to find Bannerji. ‘What do ye make of it?’

  ‘Many snow coming.’

  ‘That’s what I thought.’ He shivered. ‘Cold, too. Ye’d better come in the house with me.’

  Bannerji would not and eventually Andrew left him and went indoors alone. The kitchen hut was small but that evening they all crammed into it, building up the fire with logs to keep out the cold.

  Later Andrew went out to check the cattle in the byre. It was Lorna’s job but tonight she was flushed and uncomfortable, near her time—overdue by her own count—and he thought he’d better do it himself. Couldn’t take chances with the cows.

  He came back and opened the door into the kitchen. Light and heat greeted him and, turning to close the door, he saw the first feathers of snow drifting out of the dark and silent sky. By the time they went to bed it was snowing hard, the wind rising.

  Next morning it was blowing a blizzard and bitterly cold. On the open ground snow was a foot deep, drifts were building against the south-facing walls of the huts and Andrew was worrying about the weight on the roof. He was also concerned for the sheep.

  The flock had come down last night, sensing the change in the weather, but the snow had followed and half of them could be buried. He stood with George at the door and stared out at the swirling white wilderness. For all his experience of Inverlochrie Andrew had never handled sheep in the snow.

  ‘We must do something.’ Anxiety was chafing him.

  ‘Nuthin we can do,’ George said.

  Andrew turned on him angrily. ‘We canna just leave them. Lose them, we lose everything.’

  ‘Go out now, we’ll lose ourselves ’fore we gone ten yards. Never find most of ’em, anyway. They be buried b’now.’

  Andrew glared at him, blaming him for the snow, the frustration, everything. ‘Ye’re telling me they’re dead. Is that it?’

  George laughed, remembering blizzards on Bodmin Moor back in Cornwall. ‘Bless us, them sheep bain’t dead. They be a heap warmer down there than what we be up yur. A sheep can live for days under the snow, no trouble ’t all.’

  ‘Ye’d best be right …’

  Andrew went out anyway to see if he could find the shepherd but there was no trace of him and the cold soon drove him indoors. George was right. They’d never be able to see their way in this. It was hard, though, thinking of the flock buried in snow and able to do nothing about it.

  At eight that morning Lorna, scouring pots in a kitchen overflowing with bodies, felt her first pains. For a minute she rested her weight on the kitchen table, hands clutching the edge. The spasm passed and she thought it was nothing.

  She was tired. That was what it was. But when the pain began grinding holes in her spine she accepted it was more than tiredness. Quietly she put down the pot she had been cleaning, turned to Mary and said, ‘I am going to lie down.’

  One look told Mary all she needed to know.

  ‘I’ll come wiv yer.’ To George she said, ‘Look after Matthew. Keep ’im outer the way.’

  Andrew, frustrated and irritable, mind on sheep, said, ‘What’s the problem?’

  ‘No problem,’ Mary said scornfully. ‘Your wife’s havin’ yore baby, tha’s all.’

  His expression showed nothing. Behind his eyes his mind posed unanswerable questions.

  The two women went out of the kitchen and into the cold house. There Mary helped Lorna onto the bed. Lorna was shaking, the shock of what was happening to her beginning to bite.
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  Mary looked dubiously about her. The room was dark. The window shutter, closed to keep out the worst of the weather, kept out most of the light too.

  ‘You can’ stay ’ere,’ Mary said. ‘You’ll freeze to death.’

  They had made such preparations for the birth as they could but weather like this had been beyond their expectations.

  Lorna smiled shakily. ‘Worse out in the yard.’

  ‘I was thinkin’ the kitchen.’

  ‘Och, no.’ The last thing she wanted was a fuss. ‘We take that over, where’ll the men go?’

  ‘Who cares about them?’

  But Lorna had made up her mind. ‘I’ll be fine.’

  ‘I ain’t too sure ’bout that,’ Mary said. ‘But you’re the one havin’ it. You wanner freeze, ’s up to you.’

  Lorna said, ‘Ask Andy to come in a minute.’

  Mary looked at her. ‘You want ’im now?’

  ‘Please.’

  Mary sniffed disapprovingly. It was no place for a man. Mind you, things had hardly started yet.

  Andrew looked uncomfortable when he came in, as though he, too, thought he shouldn’t be here. ‘Ye wanted me?’ Like an accusation.

  She looked at him. There was a gulf between them, a distance as great as man and woman, yet despite or perhaps because of it she had found a sense of healing that she needed to share with him.

  ‘Aye.’ Softly. ‘It’s coming at last then.’

  ‘So it is.’

  ‘I wanted ye to know …’

  A spasm of what might have been pain twisted that normally impassive face. ‘Know what?’

  He thinks I’m going to tell him the bairn is no’ his. Compassion moved her like a warm tide. She reached out and took his hand. Rough hand, hard-working. ‘I ken ye’ve been worried these months about the baby,’ she said. ‘There’s nae need. No one else can be the father. Only you.’

  He looked at her a long time but his hand was unresponsive and she saw she had not reached him. She shivered, a cold more penetrating than the cold of the room creeping through her.

  He said, ‘Ye’re telling me yon men held ye all that time and nothing happened?’