The Whitest Flower

by Brendan Graham

  As soon as she was freed, Ellen – maddened with the horror of it all, her whole body shaking – grabbed the knife from Kalinga, and looked for McGrath. She saw him down on one knee, his back to her, shooting at the Ngarrindjeri who had gathered reinforcements and returned, but too late to save their children. Now they were being shot down, butchered, the element of surprise gone, their wooden, quartz-tipped spears no match for the guns of the overlanders.

  Her heart pounding, she started to run towards McGrath, possessed with a hatred that consumed her. She ran, unmindful of any danger, wanting only vengeance for the children, wanting to rid the world of this evil. This evil the same colour as her, the same creed as her, the same Irish blood as her, and who had offered her as the prize for the lives of six innocents. She ran, her lips drawn back, her teeth bared like fangs, her nostrils flared.

  McGrath turned, sensing the danger, and raised his pistol arm to shoot her. But he was not quick enough and the ferocity of her attack sent him hurtling backwards. Suddenly, she was astride him, white, fearsome, savage. He started to shout at her: ‘Striapach! Fucking boong whore!’ Until she drove the jagged quartzite blade deep into his throat, severing his jugular – silencing his smooth-lipped Irish brogue forever.

  39

  The next day amidst the devastation and grieving in the camp of the Ngarrindjeri, Rupulle advised Ellen and Lavelle to be on their way.

  ‘Whitefella killem Ngarrindjeri – no one come to Kurangk. Ngarrindjeri killem whitefella – many people come to Kurangk catchem Ngarrindjeri,’ the leader of the Tendi said, knowing from bitter experience the way things were in the colony.

  The Ngarrindjeri would move, Rupulle told them. They would bury their children, search out the bodies of their women discarded after use in the billabongs, or half-buried in the middens. Then they would remake and refashion the items stolen by the overlanders who had escaped on horseback. Just as they had been doing since the white man first came sixty years ago.

  Ellen was sickened to her soul by the events of the previous day. Sundered with grief at Annie’s death, the desecration of her burial had been a further blow. Then the horrific murders of the Aboriginal children, followed by her murder of McGrath, had kept her deeply traumatized. Lavelle had tried to comfort her, but she was beyond comfort. She just kept going between the she-oak tree where Annie was buried and the place of pulyugge. There she sat on the sand, hoping forlornly against all hope that some holy force would rise out of this sacred place and purge her soul of its darkness.

  And she wondered how long the Ngarrindjeri could survive under continuous onslaught from the settlers with their diseases, their murderous attacks, their enslaving religions.

  Rupulle had seen to it that they were given sufficient food for the journey. Fortunately, the horses had come through the onslaught of McGrath’s Overlanders unscathed, so they would have transport and a means of carrying their provisions. A tracker would lead them safely east to the boundaries of the land of the Meintangk – also part of the Ngarrindjeri nation – near Kingston. The tracker, Piltayinde, would then hand them over, using the passage rituals required by each of the lakalinyerar. European Overlanders, Lavelle later told her, had in the past forced Aboriginal guides to break these rules to gain clearance to cross boundaries. To their cost.

  Then Rupulle said to Ellen: ‘Alinta, you are fierce warrior, killem enemy of Ngarrindjeri, Rupulle give you this.’ And with that, the leader of the Tendi presented Ellen with a lustrous nugget, which radiated a kind of dull sunlight.

  ‘It’s gold!’ Lavelle exclaimed beside her.

  She didn’t want to take it.

  ‘Pondi swim long time to mouth of Murrundi bring this for you Alinta,’ Rupulle said, pressing it on her.

  Then the grieving Ngarrindjeri gathered to say goodbye.

  ‘Nugune ngoppun,’ Kalinga and those staying behind said.

  ‘Slán agus beannacht,’ Ellen replied in her own language. Then, ‘An ungune,’ she added in theirs, throwing her clasped hands away from her stomach the way she had seen Kalinga expressing thanks.

  Finally, as they mounted their horses, Wiwirremalde – doctor, sorcerer, priest – stepped forward and raised his hand in blessing over them.

  ‘Kau-kau Alinta,’ he benedicted.

  Alinta, Ellen Rua, Fire Ancestor, spirit-sister to the Ngarrindjeri, returned the blessing. ‘Kau-kau’

  40

  Ellen did not speak for the first two days of the journey. She was hardly present to them at all. Just a shrouded shape on horseback, whose spirit was absent, somewhere back there in the place they had left.

  She had washed the grease and pipeclay from her body and head, ridding herself of McGrath’s bloodstains at the same time. Her naked head she had wrapped with a cloth tied tightly at the back of her neck. This she then covered with a sedge cloak given her by one of the Ngarrindjeri women. As she rode, she clutched to her breast Annie’s swaddling shawl and the cloth with the handful of Coorong earth from Annie’s grave.

  Wiwirremalde had treated Lavelle’s face, and Kalinga had attended to Ellen’s shoulders and her wrists where they had been chafed by the rope.

  Now they rode in silence, each with their own thoughts, thankful to have survived, but burdened with all that had taken place.

  Piltayinde was an experienced guide and their journey out of the Coorong towards Kingston was uneventful. At times he would seek the higher ground to look backwards for any signs of pursuit. There were none.

  They were herded safely from lakalinyeri to lakalinyeri. And they made good time by horseback and boat until they had left the peninsula. Day after day they journeyed dawn to dusk, close to the coast, heading towards Mount Gambier. Nineteen days in all it took them.

  At the Blue Lake they rested for two days, recuperating in both mind and spirit.

  ‘Another two weeks, at this rate, should see us in Melbourne,’ Lavelle said. ‘It’s Boston I’ve decided on,’ she said in reply. ‘It’s the near side of America. I could get something started there – something me and the children could come back to.’

  She had begun to converse with him more and more. But their talk was of the countryside, its changing nature, and how she would get from Melbourne to America. Never once did she allude to the death of Annie. Never once did she speak of McGrath or how she had gone for him like some avenging angel. The most she would say, and more to herself than him, was, ‘We are all savages beneath the skin – all of us,’ and that would be it.

  It seemed to Lavelle that she saw Boston as her – and the children’s – salvation. A place to make her mark and then go back home strong, and reclaim her children from Pakenham. Boston, because she had some idea that it was an Irish place, full of people like herself, and because it was near – ‘The last parish of Ireland,’ she called it.

  He didn’t mind himself. Boston was as good as New York or Chicago, or anywhere. He wanted to be with her, wherever she was. He wondered what she thought of him.

  Ellen did not think much on Lavelle at all. Her thoughts were of Annie: her long hard coming, her quick going. An angel, if ever there was one. Now she was back there in the Coorong, under that she-oak tree. There would be no mother’s tears to be shed over her, only the tears of Ngurunderi, Dreaming Ancestor of the Ngarrindjeri. Ellen realized that she would probably never again see the place where Annie rested. But, if she looked skywards, she would see her at night, up there in the spirit world. Up there with the Máistir and Cáit, as she had always imagined it would be. She clutched Annie’s shawl tightly to her breast. God, it was a cruel thing – first Michael, then Annie. How was she ever to fulfil Sheela-na-Sheeoga’s riddle, to crush the petals of the blackest flower, when she was the one being crushed, ground down by grief and loss?

  Now she had murdered a man as well. Sat across his chest, looked into his eyes, and then taken his life in a savage act of violence which she felt compelled to do, even wanted to do.

  She crossed herself. ‘God forgive me, for such a g
rievous sin,’ she whispered into the confines of her sedge cloak. The Ngarrindjeri, or Lavelle even, would probably have killed McGrath anyway, but – and this is what horrified her – she had to do it. She had to avenge the deaths of those children, had to put it right. McGrath, one of her own, had done a terrible, terrible, thing to the children of the people who had taken her and her child in. These people had tried so hard to save Annie’s life, and then failing had laid her to rest with such ceremony and dignity – and love.

  McGrath wasn’t like the men of the valley back home. How could such evil get inside the heart of a human being? Was it this lawless, wild land, with no priest or bishop to be looking over your shoulder? Was it having no village to come home to, where the old ones sitting around the fire would smell out the wrong, see it in a look, or an uneasy way of standing, and then fix it to you? It was a man’s thing though, she thought. No woman would ever do what McGrath had done to those children – couldn’t. No woman would ever be like a Pakenham, or a Coombes. Men had to do things to other men, and to women and even children – it didn’t seem to matter – as if some bad seed was in them. Michael wasn’t like that; never was, nor could be. And she didn’t think Lavelle was like that. He had been good back there with the Ngarrindjeri – attended on her while she sat with Annie. She knew he had been shocked when she came back with the women – painted and cut and shorn. But he understood that she had to go through with it, stood by her. Then offered himself up to McGrath instead of the children.

  She stole a glance at him out of the corner of her cloak.

  He looked ahead, not noticing her. He had a kind face, she thought, hadn’t been turned by this harsh land, yet.

  Calling themselves Mr and Mrs Coogan as a precaution against any pursuit, they took separate rooms at the Eagle Tavern at the corner of Little Bourke and Queen Street, next to Melbourne’s Theatre Royal.

  Lavelle had cut loose the four horses with their telltale Crockford’s brand – three Cs on each off-shoulder – at the outskirts of the frontier town, and driven them back towards the bush.

  She slept the first day – the whole twenty-four hours of it. The second day she soaked her body for hours in the large tub provided by the Eagle Tavern for the ablutions of its clientele. Food they took in their rooms.

  Lavelle’s savings had fortunately not been located by McGrath’s men. An old habit, he had buried them near the encampment. Now Ellen used some of the money to purchase some medication for their wounds, a few toiletries for herself, and a newspaper. Both she and Lavelle still had the clothing they had brought with them. It had not been ransacked by McGrath’s men for fear that the possession of white people’s clothes, amongst what they had stolen from the Ngarrindjeri, might cause questions to be asked. Ellen felt that they looked presentable enough for the Eagle Tavern, but not for Melbourne’s leading banks. They needed to be dressed ‘right’ when they went to sell the nugget to buy their passage to America.

  It took a fortnight to bring about the transformation Ellen had in mind. They needed that time to recover, and the healing process could not be rushed. Some scars, she knew, would never heal, but having survived such an ordeal had, if anything, made her even stronger than before.

  So, after two weeks’ rest, Mr and Mrs Coogan in their new clothes looked every inch the respectable couple – the sort of people any bank would be glad to do business with.

  As they left the hotel, Ellen caught sight of their reflection in a window. They looked the part, all right. And they were ready.

  William Ferintosh McKillop – named for both William of Orange, scourge of Catholics, and the Ferintosh Distillery, makers of fine Scotch whisky since 1690 – the Battle of the Boyne – peered over the rim of his pince-nez at the well-dressed couple seated before him. Irish, without a doubt. Could be Protestant or Catholic, but probably the latter.

  The Coogans, however, were of less interest to the banker than the item Mr Coogan had just placed on his mahogany desk. McKillop adjusted his pince-nez, delicately, almost imperceptibly, controlling the movement of his fingers, masking the rush of excitement he felt. ‘Be sober, be vigilant, do thy self no harm,’ – the motto of the Australia Felix Total Abstinence Society, of which he was a leading light, ran through his mind. Vigilant he now required himself to be, as never before.

  He said nothing, letting his eyes fall away from the couple and back down to the perfectly formed nugget on the desk. He wanted to reach out and touch it again. Pick it up, feel its texture, hold it so the light could fire up its yellow dullness.

  But he would not. William Ferintosh McKillop knew when to be patient. Knew when opportunity smiled on him. And right now, it was positively beaming. These Coogans almost certainly had no idea of the nugget’s value, and he was not going to alert them to it by exhibiting any haste or unseemly eagerness. No, ‘do thy self no harm’.

  ‘Have you resided long in our town?’ the banker asked, a pleasant burr in his voice.

  ‘My wife and I are taking some travels,’ the sandy-haired man answered, not giving anything away.

  He tried again. ‘Where is it you are domiciled – if I may ask?’

  ‘Well, we haven’t decided yet,’ the man replied evasively.

  Nothing. William Ferintosh McKillop hid his annoyance.

  ‘This nugget – have you shown it to your own bankers yet, or an assayer?’

  ‘No …’ a pause from the Coogan man and then: ‘We wanted a bank we could trust – like yours, Mr McKillop.’

  This was going nowhere, the banker thought. His pince-nez slipped down again, this time helped by the slight clamminess developing on the bridge of his nose.

  ‘Yes, of course, Mr Coogan – the Bank of Australasia does indeed have that reputation.’

  The Bank of Australasia’s man in Melbourne realized that he was now answering questions instead of asking them. He was not being vigilant.

  He wanted to ask these Coogans – these close-by-the-wall, canny Catholics – where they had gotten the nugget. There had been rumours for some time of gold in the vicinity of the Port Phillip Community. Nothing substantial mind, but one heard these things if one was vigilant. Could this nugget be the first manifestation of what would become a gold rush? This backwater frontier town would overtake Sydney in importance if there was gold to be had in the region.

  McKillop had had his fill of graziers, and the stench of tallow from the boiling down of their sheep. Melbourne was turning into a quagmire. Three million sheep and half a million head of cattle its pasturelands held. And the squatters who tended these beasts had brought with them a moral quagmire. Night after night, drinking their sly-grog and poteen. Then roistering in low public houses like the Lamb Inn in Collins Street, until they were ‘lambed down’ and fleeced of their cash.

  Whilst a gold rush would attract yet more roughnecks, it would also underpin the city’s financial stability. Perhaps Melbourne would at last cease to be governed by those noxious northerners in Sydney and become capital of its own colonial state.

  But back to the business at hand.

  ‘Begging your pardon, Mr Coogan,’ he began, ‘but could I enquire as to how you came into possession of the nugget? Mind, I am not implying any wrongdoing on your part – absolutely not,’ he hastened to add.

  The pince-nez had slipped again – it was beginning to irritate him.

  ‘Mr McKillop!’ The tall woman spoke for the first time, and in such an imperious way that his finger, so gingerly edging the pince-nez back to its position, had jolted forward, ramming the spectacles back against his eyes, and unsettling him.

  ‘Ma’am!’ he said, startled.

  ‘Mr McKillop,’ Ellen repeated, her patience with this little banker at an end. As much for the way he had ignored her, addressing all his slieveen questions to Lavelle, as for anything else. ‘We are busy people. Now, do you wish to purchase this valuable nugget or not? We can always take it to the other side of Queen Street …’

  McKillop did not like this, did not li
ke it at all, the Irish woman addressing him thus. But she knew her business – the stress she put on the word ‘valuable’, the oblique reference to the Port Phillip Savings Bank on the other side of Queen Street. He thought of his counterpart at the Port Phillip, a tight-fisted accountant named Smith, who was into everything where there was a shilling to be turned. It was unthinkable that he would ever let Smith get his grasping hands on this nugget.

  No, he couldn’t lose it now – the chance to be the first, to prove his mettle to the higher-ups in Sydney. If it got out that the Coogans had been here and left, his life would be a misery. Why, he might even be deployed to some place worse than Melbourne. Maybe even to Adelaide – heaven forbid! No, he could not let them leave with the nugget.

  ‘Do thy self no harm,’ he muttered to himself, without realizing it.

  ‘Pardon me, Mr McKillop?’ he heard the woman say in that voice of hers.

  ‘Well, ah, yes, Mrs Coogan,’ he started, recovering himself. ‘If you wish, you may go across the street. But I guarantee that you will get no better offer than the one I will make you on behalf of the Bank of Australasia.’

  He stopped.

  Ellen waited too. Her time with Coombes was paying off.

  ‘I will offer you three hundred sovereigns for the nugget, Mrs Coogan.’ King Billy’s banker opened out his hands expansively.

  Ellen said nothing, only reached her hand across Mr McKillop’s mahogany desk and closed it over the nugget, standing up as she did so.

  Lavelle looked at her. What was she doing? Three hundred sovereigns! Why, that would not only see them to Boston, but comfortably allow them to start up a business there too!

  But Ellen was already heading for the door of the Bank of Australasia, McKillop in her wake, his pince-nez now dashed to the desktop. He looked forlorn without them, and his nugget.