The Roving Party

by Rohan Wilson

  Batman crushed the letter in his fist. Then let us strike out tomorrow, he said.

  DAYBREAK SAW THE ASSIGNEES STUFFING THEIR skin drums with the necessaries of bush life. They were loaded, each man, with what he could carry by way of powder and shot until their lean backs bent beneath the weight and their mutterings grew. When William Gould arrived at their cookfires, rednosed and shivering, he had a half-dozen pair of leather prison slippers tied up in a sack and he walked among the men dispensing them. The slippers hung flaccid and grey as if sewn from the skin of old dugs.

  Jimmy Gumm took a pair in his hand and looked them over. What’s this?

  It’s shoes, said Gould.

  Be damned if it is.

  Near as you’ll get at least.

  It aint near. It aint shoes.

  Better than bare feet.

  Gumm looked over his shoulder. You hear that, Horse? Better than bare feet he says.

  Tell that maggot he can shove his slippers up his ringhole.

  See? Even Horsehead says you can shove yer slippers.

  Gould hawked snot in his throat and spat.

  Nonetheless they took those poor shoes and they crouched and unwound the puttees from their legs and tossed the grimy rags onto the fire where they blackened and smouldered. The boy wedged his foot inside one slipper and split the sole clear through the heel. A moment before he’d appeared wholly satisfied at his turn of luck but now he thumped the earth and ripped the slipper off his foot, tossing it to burn beside his rags. The other men fitted the little things upon their feet, clasped between thumb and forefinger in a dainty motion of the hand akin to a lady pulling on her hose, and they all glanced around and stared at Gould.

  The sunlight burned through the window hole and Katherine passed before it aglow. Bill squinted as she set a mug of sassafras tea near his hand. He hacked some meat off a wallaby leg for her and they ate and watched smoke unfurl out the hole in the siding. Bill removed the tea and sugar rations from his drum and gave them to her, the best cuts of mutton also. The tobacco he kept. She took them quietly.

  We could be gone a month or more, he said.

  She raised her eyes.

  When he stood he pushed back his chair and lifted the doorflap on its leather hinges. Katherine followed him outside into the morning. A chimerical mist remained caught upon the gums and it tore as he moved through it. He settled his knapsack and his almighty fowling piece across his shoulders and sucked a draught of the freezing air. There he stood a moment, studying the scrub. He walked a slow circle of the humpy between the stumps of felled trees long gone grey with age. His woman stared.

  They’ll approach from that way, he said. He pointed up the shallow incline where the scrub grew stouter and more gloomy than elsewhere. She looked up at the blue gums trailing peels of bark from their limbs.

  Keep plenty of water inside. They’ll be looking to burn you out.

  She made no reply but her breath beaded pearl white.

  Dont leave the hut without a gun. If they see that it’s the end of you.

  And he went to her and held her hand for a long while. The two of them standing in the forest ruins in silence. Then he set off into the bush alone.

  They went with the leaden hearts of men who knew what a hundred miles was and saw it stretched never-ending across days into weeks before them. Eliza was ringed by her girls and they raised their hands in farewell and watched the party slog up the mud track. Crossing the hill the men were skylit and their shadow forms rose over the crest then vanished. They left behind an emptiness the bleating of sheep and the hollering of children could not fill. Eliza shielded her eyes and scanned the paddocks and the scrub stands and the sky in every direction. It was country riddled with the bruised souls of a decade’s war and although she could not see them she knew they were there, walking their trails, voices intermingled in song, bearing spears meant for her and her children. She turned and herded the girls indoors.

  THE PARTY CUT ALONG THE ROAD’S centre where the sunken ruts of cartwheels lay in dark parallel. Each man labouring under forty pound of packweight in a rambling single file. They walked gentle park that morning, country far removed from the tangle and suffocation of Ben Lomond’s foothills. Everywhere they looked across that wooded grassland leapt boomers by the hundreds, great bounding beasts like cattle gone mad, and John Batman made a sport of potting them over great distances by firing from one knee or on the move, it mattered not which. The wounded roos made strange moans and they kicked their legs like dogs deep in dream and scores of crows descended from the sky to gather about the dead, tail feathers in the air, gobs of ruby-red meat flapping in their beaks.

  Around noon the company found themselves on a stark plain. It rolled away to the hills south and east and was barren of everything save sheep. They passed through flocks of ewes fording the road and through a cloying fleece stench as that broad white river opened and closed again behind them. Bigboned meat sheep of the sort Batman ran on his own farm as feed for the government stores and the chain gangs. Their wool good for nothing but stuffing ceiling cavities. They mewled stupidly in the cold and clipped at the grass and their demon’s eyes never blinked.

  In the far-off a figure could be made out against the green fields holding his arm high in salute. At first they supposed him to be the shepherd but as they neared they saw the barrel-chest he was standing beside and his highnecked shirt and waistcoat and they looked around at each other in query. He was alone upon that plain with neither rifle nor pistol, alone and stationed beside the cart ruts that were the only bit of civilisation anywhere. He waved and when he spoke he had the airs of society and the men came to a halt some yards off and stared at him.

  I’d thought you might have forgotten me, said the toff.

  John Batman leaned on his weapon and looked the fellow up and down. He was hatless and his jacket was laid over the chest to sit on. Batman turned to his men. What’s he talkin about?

  Must be a drunk, said Gould. Or a madman.

  I was expecting you an hour ago. But never mind. You are here now. Shall we move off? The toff mopped his forehead with a lace handkerchief which he stuffed back into his breast pocket. He knocked on the lid of the chest. You should be able to manage it between you.

  John Batman grinned. He produced his pouch and took a pinch for his cheek and as he worked it around his jaw he brought his gun off his back. He held it slackly as if he meant nothing by it.

  There’s trouble to be had in these parts, he said.

  Sheep wandered blindly in the fields. The toff studied the Dharug men and the Vandemonian and he smiled and nodded but they offered nothing to him by way of reply. They crouched in the grass and watched him through thin eyes. Now he looked across the other faces in Batman’s posse and the questions forming in his mind seemed to find expression in the knitting of his brow. Sweat trickled down his cheeks as he studied the six-foot fowling pieces and the knives and pistols with which they were armed and the hides draped upon their persons like the vandals of old Rome. He cleared his throat.

  I would wager that you chaps represent not the smallest of it, he said.

  You have that right, said Batman.

  The toff pulled out his lace handkerchief and dabbed at his upper lip. I am to meet a Mr. Wedge here. He assured me a buggy would be waiting.

  Seems it aint.

  Are you chaps heading somewheres?

  No.

  Well I should think a militia such as this surely serves some purpose?

  Purpose. We’re full of that, said Batman. Brimming with it.

  Then I wonder if you might not escort me to John Wedge’s property. I’d happily pay for your time.

  John Batman stared at him. You have a name?

  Dawson.

  Take heed now, Mr. Dawson. Even a feckless arse like you should see that if any one of us old boys wants yer money he shall take it. Wont be nothin you can do against it. Not a damn thing.

  The toff clutched the handkerchief to his ch
est, his eyes broad and white as they darted from man to man. With his gun Batman gestured at the travelling chest in the grass. What have you got in there then?

  The toff glanced over his shoulder and all around. Looked for help someplace on that bald plain. But there was nothing, no one.

  What is this? said the toff.

  Batman spat to the side. It is what it is, he said.

  There was something sinister in his tone, something weighty. The toff watched him. He fished a little ring of keys from his waistcoat and turned one in the brass lock set in the oakwood. He raised the lid. With his eyes still fixed on the fellow Batman slung his gun and stepped closer to the trunk. He stood and studied its contents a moment. He looked at the toff. He bent down and placed a hand inside the chest and riffled through the innards. It was lined with red velvet and hung inside the lid were deerskin straps finished in buckles cast from silver and it was perfumed with lavender and rose oil and polished with beeswax. Batman chewed his baccy as he stared into the depths of that chest. Then he stood and moved away.

  My apologies, he said to the toff, but the toff would not look at him. He pressed the handkerchief to his mouth and the knotted corners caught on the wind. Batman nodded at him. I hope you aint left here too long.

  No, wait, he said, but they did not. Wait. I will pay.

  Batman called the men onwards. The party put along the cloven road once more with Batman at their head and they watched the toff diminish on that long plain until he was a texture on the field. In the wheel ruts the water teemed with polliwogs and the men walked the fringes of the track, their slippers sodden. They paced behind Batman and waited for him to speak but he said nothing. He stared straight ahead, beating out the miles. It was Horsehead who finally addressed the question to him, at the insistence of the rest. He fell in beside Batman, rubbed his running nose on his sleeve and coughed. All was silent except the suck of their feet sloughing in the mud.

  So now, he said, why dont you tell us. Tell us what was in there.

  Batman fingered the tobacco from his cheek and flicked the clod spinning out across the plain. He looked Horsehead in the eye.

  Was it grog?

  Batman walked on unhurried.

  Some Chinese soporific then, wasnt it?

  They’d covered a dozen yards or so before Batman said anything more and in the wash of light spilling through the clouds he appeared strangely serene. We must learn from life how to suffer it with dignity, he said. But I tell you, that bloke has some learning to do yet.

  In the afternoon the company reached a creek edging the grasslands to the south where the forest walled off the plain and the chirruping of frogs sounded out the seconds. All of the party men placed their feet with care as they went among the stones near the water as it was known that snakes bred there in profusion. The creek itself was a dull trickle. The rovers refilled their canteens and drank as the frogs piped mindlessly in the shallows. Along the road further they passed a cete of badgers moving away as the men approached. The badgers had burrows on the plain and laboured off to these diggings. Some buried only their heads, leaving their bodies exposed. The assignees kicked at the animals but the badgers were as solid as barrels and clung to the earth with inch-long claws. The men kicked and dragged at the stumpy legs but the animals huddled up tighter into circles.

  John Batman came alongside Bill to pass him a canteen. They stood together in the saplings grown high along the grassed embankment and watched the men at their foolery. It was untended country, unburned. There were wiry stems, the very beginnings of trees, sprouting in the soil. Gums for the most part, as sheep refused their bitter leaves, but blackwoods as well. Little stands of tea-trees too placed about as if by some enormous hand. All bending in the weather.

  Batman screwed up his eyes in the low winter sun. I’d say the blacks have given up on this pasture.

  Bill drank again from the canteen and recorked it as he began walking off along the track. They can no more give it up than you can give up yer hands and feet, he said.

  The party was a few miles short of St Paul’s Plains when the weather turned bitter. The cloud cover swelled darkly over an hour and when the rain hit it came like stones thrown against the earth, great fistfuls flung in anger, and it was deafening. The men huddled shivering under their blankets, as wet as ship’s rats, and looked out upon a world turned foul. Only Black Bill stayed on his feet with the sleet collecting on the brim of his hat while beyond him at the horizon the cloud banks scuffed Ben Lomond frigid white. On dark the rain eased to a mist and Batman had them pitch an oiled canvas lean-to he’d packed from knowledge of the weather. The makings of a fire were hard to come by so Crook used his knife to strip the bark off some branches and carve raised scales along one end. He took a portion of the dried punk carried as tinder—a habit learned from the local tribes—and before long had a fire sizzling. The men twisted water from their blankets in pairs and then put their clothes inside the blankets and wrung the water out of them too. It was a wretched business and their teeth rattled in their jaws as they piled under the canvas as near to the fire as practicable while they watched the billycan come to the boil.

  Sixteen hundred and ninety-two, said Gumm.

  Baxter passed him a pannikin. William the Third.

  Fourteen hundred and seventy.

  Henry the Sixth’s second reign, said Baxter. You’ll have to do better than that.

  Thirteen hundred and fifty-one.

  Edward the Third.

  Uncanny.

  How far back can you go? said the boy.

  Harold Harefoot reliably. Although I have some knowledge before that, tis a mite untrustworthy.

  Nine hundred and sixty, said Horsehead.

  Well now. That’s a better test. Edgar the Peaceable I believe it was.

  What else you know? said the boy.

  Baxter was sitting on his knapsack and he leaned forward between his gangling legs. I knew a Glaswegian what marked the place where my cow’s buried, he said.

  The boy frowned at him. The assignees looked at each other, blankfaced, unable to locate Baxter’s meaning.

  Jimmy Gumm was first to make a stab at it. He squinted at Baxter with his bad eye. You, he said, who was to be put from the gibbet for effectin a robbery under arms? You owned a cow?

  Mike Howe I said. Mike Howe. Murderous governor of the woods. I aint never owned no cow nor bloody will I.

  Spit them Welsh rocks out of your mouth we might understand a bloody word.

  I said twas an old Scotchman who was showed the resting place of Mike Howe or so he told me.

  John Batman tapped his pipe out on his boot. His head or his body?

  Well now. I suppose it must have been his body.

  You cant call it a grave then.

  I never called it a grave.

  What happened to his head? said the boy.

  The Governor had it mounted, lad, said Batman.

  The party men drew their wet blankets around their shoulders and listened to the anguished breeze swirl. God rest him, said Baxter.

  A mournful silence drew over that campsite as they one and all considered the fate that had befallen Howe. They looked into their pannikins and rubbed their whiskers or crossed themselves.

  THEY BARELY SLEPT AND WHEN MORNING came it broke so dim and grey that the sun was full up before they woke. They set out along the road and ate and drank as they walked, strips of cold fried mutton and a canteen of tea passing between them.

  At St. Paul’s Plains they found a scene that sank their spirits further. Pools of standing water as vast and metallic as lakes covered the grassland. Adrift on the ponds like sodden pillows were small lambs and Jimmy Gumm waded in and caught one up but found the meat bloated beyond use. He threw the pitiful carcass back into the water where it sank in a stream of bubbles.

  A corridor of drooping oak followed the South Esk River across the width of the plains and the company reached those few trees alongside the riverbanks and there they were br
ought to a stop. The river had swollen into a broad barricade and each man looked at the others and they all looked at John Batman for his say-so. He surveyed that sliding wall east to west but there was no way across.

  Well I’ll be meanly buggered, he said.

  They walked downstream a few hundred yards for want of anything better to do and John Batman bade them to watch for a narrowing where they might cross. Little scrub wrens hopped along the ground after insects but took wing as the men neared. They had covered not more than a quarter-mile when Bill suddenly yanked off his knapsack and tossed it across the flow. As one the men stopped walking and watched him. He unlaced his boots and lobbed them onto the far bank and then he dived headlong into the rapids and came up bearing his hat in one hand as he powered for the bank. He found a handhold in the drowned brush of the riverbank and dragged himself ashore. Batman chuckled at first and looked around at the other men and soon he was laughing fullchested at the display Bill had made.

  You want to learn a thing or two boys, he said, just watch how old Billy does it. He unwound a hemp rope and cast it over to Bill and Bill tied it off. One after another the men shimmied across, trailing their legs in the flow. On the far bank Bill caught their wrists and raised them up, each likewise until only Horsehead stood on the north bank. He had a sickly air about him and would not approach the water.

  Take good grip of that, called Batman. Or you’ll be lost.

  Horsehead’s look of distress was comic. That he was a man divided against himself was plain to see. He tried to approach the river by inching forward holding his bundled effects yet he could move no closer. He stared at the slack line drawn above the torrent and shook his head.

  A steady drizzle fell upon Batman’s hat and the kangaroo fur of his bag. He gazed up at the sky as if asking what new hardship would befall him next. Then he seized his weapon and started off along the southern plain and his men followed him.