The Coves

by Whish-Wilson, David;

  He braced himself where he stood, knees slightly bent, feet planted. The great silver Colt mounted across his forearm, his eye trained along its length, to where Dudgeon calmly stood, the musket raised to his shadowed face, both of them made eerie in the moonlight by their whiteness.

  Clement pulled Sam behind him, and stood forward, walked to a distance equal between the two men. Raised a white kerchief above his head.

  Dropped his arm, and stood back.

  Sam not breathing, and no one beside him either. No shot ringing out. Both of the combatants waiting for the other. Keane shifted his weight, and waited for the killing-ball, and when it didn’t come, dropped his stance and stood inviting, arms a-stretch.

  The musket fired, and Keane didn’t flinch. Neither did he fall. He raised the Colt back onto his forearm and sighted quickly, the American pointing the bayonet toward Patrick, daring him to approach. Keane fired, and the muzzle flame and the recoil lifted him, even as the American was lifted, and spun, wrenched onto his face in the dirt. Patrick approached and took back his musket, wiped its stock on his shirt. Saw the nod from Keane, and buried the bayonet in the American’s ribcage.

  Keane was immediately beset. Cheers and slaps on his head, back and shoulders. Kisses from women. Two men tried to lift him, but he shrugged them away, tolerating further enthusiasms until the groghouse steps, when two of his number barred every man who followed. He did not turn to his admirers, even as Clement took Sam’s arm and guided him down the alley, toward the side entrance.

  In the wrecked hall, the Ancient in the tattered redcoat stood unmoved, his tricorne hat tilted in its regular gesture of mockery toward its former owner. Sam was passed a mug of porter, which he drank, surprised to find himself cleansed of his earlier intoxication, excepting the humming warmth of his body that wanted him to be still. He helped the men replace the furnishings, standing chairs and lifting tables, sweeping the broken glass.

  Keane sat by himself, and nobody approached him. Only Clement patted him as he approached the cache of instruments, and hefted the hurdy-gurdy, took to the nearest stool and balanced his feet. Looking at Keane’s bowed head, the Colt still clasped in his friend’s hand, the old man began to fill the bag with his breath and soon commenced his warlike drone, filling the hall with an ancient sound. Keane’s shame when he met Sam’s eye apparent. Not for the combat, or the killing, but for the invitation of his own undoing, the making of himself a willing target. He looked away then, and closed his eyes, gave himself wholly to the dirge.

  November 1849

  9

  The dog bounded across the mudflats so mad and powerful that it appeared to glide upon the silvered surface broken by spurts of sand and water. The three seagulls that were its quarry seemed part of the game as they wheeled about at the end of the beach and flew back along the shoreline so that the dog likewise skidded, and turned toward Sam with crazed eyes and bared teeth, even as the seagulls continued to hover and caw and mock.

  Sam watched the dog’s adventuring and worked his toes into the mud and felt around for the cockles. The water was shin-deep, and when he captured a mollusc between his toes, he lifted his foot and passed himself the cockle that he placed in a sack over his shoulder. He’d learned this manner of harvesting back on the Swan River, and rightly guessed that the Californian shoreline might offer a similar bounty. At the base of Goat Hill he’d also set crab pots made of scavenged wire in the deeper water baited with fish-head and tripe. There were always big swimmer crabs in the pots when he pulled them in, and their claws were large for the task of getting about in the bay’s strong currents. On the rocks about the waterline was crusted a layer of mussels and oysters that he removed with his knife, and they also went into the bag with the cockles.

  It was difficult work at the beginning of Sam’s day, but he didn’t complain because it was peaceful down on the water at that hour. The gentle light on the amber shallows. The wraiths of mist over the forest to the north. The pelicans on the rocks that observed his silent progress across the mudflats until the sun rose over the hills and the pelicans lifted into the sky and the mist burned away and there came the first stirrings of life from the town beside him.

  Sam had been in the American colony for three months but there was still no sign of his mother. Rather than journeying to the mining camps of the interior, Clement had counselled Sam to maintain his position with Keane’s gang and instead save his money, and learn the skills of survival in this new world. It was hard advice to follow when Sam thought of his mother out there in the diggings, but according to Clement, the pace of the goldrush was such that towns were pulled down and packed up overnight, and moved entire from valley to valley, and there were now hundreds of thousands of people swarming the hills and all of them moving. The chances of finding his mother out there were small, and in the meantime what Clement said was true—Sam could save his money and otherwise keep a weather eye on the comings and goings at Sydney-town.

  The other reason that Sam collected the mussels and crabs and cockles and oysters was because shellfish soup formed the main part of his diet. He was lodging for free at Missus Hogan’s establishment, which was the name of the hotel he’d found himself in that first morning in San Francisco. The sign down in the muddy courtyard never made it to the front wall of the hotel, but within a few days of taking over the building for Thomas Keane, everybody in Sydney-town knew about Missus Hogan and her lodging house.

  Missus Hogan provided Sam lodgings in service to Keane but also on account of Sam gathering the materials for her soup. The only other favour she asked of Sam was that he serenade her while she ripped the beards off mussels and cracked into the private homes of the oysters and lifted them off their sculpted beds and tipped them into her broth. Often when Sam sang his hymns for her, the dog began to croon its own language, and then it was common for the men in the rooms to stand in the hall and listen, and on occasion to enter the doorway of the kitchen if Missus Hogan was amenable.

  Sam hoisted the rattan basket weighty with swimmer crabs and shellfish onto his shoulder and felt the water sluice down his back. The dog got underfoot and he nudged it away and listened to the sad gassy hissing of the crabs as they crawled over one another and waged war in a futile attempt to flee the basket.

  The morning was cold and the water colder, and Sam coughed and hawked into the rippling waves because the new habit of smoking hadn’t settled with his throat and lungs. He looked across the bay that was crowded with ships whose masts were empty because the sails had all been turned into canvas tents and trousers. There was near a thousand ships in the harbour, and most of them were abandoned because the crew of every boat had rushed off to follow the yeller as soon as they arrived. At night you sometimes heard the terrible crack of a new ship entering through the Golden Gate and crashing into an abandoned vessel, because there was no light aboard the crewless hulks, and there was hardly room to get between them anyway. The whole scene resembled a terrible battlefield, or a graveyard of ships, or a dead forest of masts and spars, and the only men who lived out there were the pirates who preyed on the new arrivals, and those men who’d returned broke and sick from the goldfields and couldn’t find a place to sleep on land.

  Sam quickened his pace as warm burrs of sunlight caught the rim-line of the nearest hills in anticipation of the fresh bread that would soon emerge from Missus Hogan’s oven. He was also eager to make a circuit of the nearby groghouses to see if anyone had dropped coins overnight. He was sometimes lucky with a silver dollar or a nugget wedged in a floorboard. He secreted this treasure in the leather purse that hung on a buckskin strap around his neck before heading back to The Stuck Pig, and his regular morning employment of sharpening the knives and bayonets in the armoury, using first a pedalled rotary stone and then a whetstone. If Sam did a satisfactory job he was allowed to take out a rifle or a revolver and practise shooting into the side of Goat Hill, while the dog kept at a distance because he hated the ugly percussion and ran in little circles
in the middle of the track with his tail between his legs and wouldn’t meet Sam’s eye.

  The tideline was clogged with driftwood that was tangled in seaweed, and always the hardest part to climb with the heavy load of shellfish, and Sam braced his feet in the loose sand and shifted the basket from one shoulder to the other. Seagulls spun in a tight loop above his head, still cawing and mocking, and the dog howled to them and danced on its back legs and leapt at them if they came too close. There weren’t many people on the shoreline street at this hour, but over by the docks there was a new company of men disembarking down gangplanks toward the jetty. The men coming off this steamship weren’t Australian, but looked to be Chilenos, or Peruvians, because of their colourful hats and their overlord who stood among them in fine clothes and with a short whip directed the barefoot peons to carry the heavy packs and trunks over to a wagon and lay them there.

  The newly berthed steamship was named SS Oregon and was well known because it sailed the Panama–San Francisco route. There were a few Americans among the migrants, and by their condition Sam could tell that they weren’t wealthy but were ordinary young men. Like the new arrivals of yesterday, and the weeks before, the Chilenos and young Americans didn’t waste any time but instead began to troop off the docks toward the plaza square, where they would most likely continue straight out the other side of town toward the nearby hills. Most virgin gold-seekers couldn’t afford the paddleboat upriver to Sacramento, and this daily migration of many hundreds who lacked maps usually meant following the man in front, and the churned mud track that disappeared down the peninsula.

  Back on the shoreline street, Sam followed the dog past the horse stables and down the alley to the rear of Missus Hogan’s. He kicked open the gate and edged sideways into the muddy courtyard. The smell of the privy was strong behind the wall of mildewy sheets hung to dry in the yard where the mud was green-tinged, and sucked at Sam’s toes. There was a wooden bench against the back wall that he hefted the basket onto. He went and collected a pail of water from the horse-trough to refresh the sea animals, before knocking on the rear door.

  Mister Hogan stuck his head out, and grunted and was then shoved aside so Missus Hogan could eye the catch. She smiled and winked at Sam, who went back to the trough and stripped off his shirt and began to wash the fishy juices off his shoulders and hands and legs. He ducked his entire head in the trough and washed his hair and face and neck, before drying himself using an old horse-blanket special for the purpose. Beside him, the dog got up on its front paws and drank from the trough in a delicate way.

  Inside Missus Hogan’s kitchen Sam warmed himself by the hearth-fire, and drank a mug of tea while the soup pot came to a boil and a loaf of soda bread cooled. Mister Hogan peeled potatoes seated on an old barrel and whistled some Irish song. The sun was barely risen but he was already drunk, although it was true that Sam hadn’t seen Mister Hogan in a sober state at any time of day or night.

  Missus Hogan entered the kitchen and unheeding of the snapping claws took hold of the crabs and dropped them into the cooking pot. She wore an old patterned dress and a heavy canvas apron stained all the colours of blood and jam and pickle. She rested her great boots on the edge of her stool and began to separate out the mussels and oysters from the basket. When she finished, she dropped great handfuls of cockles into the stock while casting a disapproving eye at her husband who was staring at a patch of dusty light instead of peeling.

  Missus Hogan began to hack into the loaf of bread and pass the slices to Sam, who placed them in his lap and reached for the plate of dripping.

  ‘There’s deer-stew in the clay pot by your feet, Samuel. You’re welcome to take it to share with Clement, and there’ll be soup here ready for your return. In the meantime, when you’ve finished eating, that second loaf should be baked plenty if you’d assist me by getting it out.’

  Sam swallowed the last of his bread and dripping and wiped his hands on his soaked trousers and knelt and opened the oven door. With some blackened tongs he drew out the loaf and placed it on the cob. The soup came to a boil beside him, and as the steam began to rise to the ceiling, as though summoned by the smell, he heard the muttering and grumbling and hawking and bootscraping of Missus Hogan’s lodgers arising and getting dressed.

  ‘Here come the Devil’s Army,’ she said. ‘Concealing their lizard wings beneath frock-coats, and their horns beneath hats.’

  Sam grinned. ‘You wish me to set the table?’

  ‘No lad, the first one down is the genuine hungriest. He can array the plates and spoons for the rest of the curs.’

  The residents of Missus Hogan’s lodging house were Australians of the criminal persuasion. Their schemes were varied but they each fenced their stolen goods to Missus Hogan against the price of their rent, and for as little as she could pay. They brought her goods such as pocket watches, and silver chains and wedding bands, and silver tobacco boxes stolen by cunning or force in the better streets to the north of the plaza, which Missus Hogan kept in an iron strongbox beneath the floorboards of her kitchen. She showed the cutthroats nothing but contempt, in order to keep the prices low, but still they loved her as a representative woman of the Southland who many called Ma. The braver ones even teased her around dinnertime, but the image of her working a butcher’s cleaver against the flank of a goat or deer usually put them to a respectful silence. According to Missus Hogan, Sam shouldn’t trust none of them, seasoned as they were in the arts of charm and deception, but who were likely to abuse him for a girl if given the chance.

  Sam left the kitchen to the sight of Missus Hogan sharpening her cleaver while glaring at her husband snoring in his corner. He returned upstairs to his room to put on his suit. His room was as he’d left it, with his bed made and the single chair squared against the wall, just as he’d been trained in the Boys Home. His suit hung from a nail in the wall, and his boots were stood in formation beneath. He took down his suit and smacked off the dust and laid it on his bed, stepping out of his wet drawers and wiping the mud from his toes with a clumped rag. When he was dressed and his bootlaces were tied he drew fingers through his hair. From the small cardboard box beneath his pillow he extracted a gold nugget and three timepieces and a half-dozen gold and silver dollars and placed them among his pockets, then emerged onto the balcony and locked his door. He’d just started toward the stairs when an Englishman by the name of Vaughan stepped out of his room and barred Sam’s way. Keeping a wary eye on the dog, Vaughan leaned into Sam’s ear and spoke softly.

  ‘Boy, I have a story that I think will be of interest.’

  Sam thought only to get past the man, but Vaughan wouldn’t step aside. Sam knew Vaughan as a pickpocket, who while resident at the lodging house generally got about in his grey woollen underclothes, whose arse-flap had no buttons. He was one of the men who regularly plagued Sam with their attentions, claiming that he was a stage performer waiting for a suitable company, in that no theatre types had yet arrived on that shore.

  ‘Just a few minutes of your time, son.’

  ‘Mr Vaughan, I got to—’

  ‘I know, boy, but hear me out. I’ve struck up a friendship with a Yorkshireman, newly arrived and in the company of his wife and three children. Now, would you meet with this man and hear what he has to say? This man intends a school for the colony, and he thinks you a useful addition as both helper and pupil.’

  ‘Sorry, Mister Vaughan, but I ain’t interested. Bein indentured was my fate back in Van Diemen’s Land, and here I got other designs.’

  Sam tried to step backwards but the man’s arms held him firm.

  ‘I’ll confess to you, Samuel, that the schoolmaster has promised a fee for the introduction, and possibly a position as teacher of dramatics and song. Would you oblige me by meeting him? There’s nothing to be lost in declining his offer, but at least I’ll receive some coin in my pocket, which I’ll gladly share with you.’

  There was a mad look in Vaughan’s eye, and Sam decided that it was due to the
desperateness of the Englishman’s situation, and so he nodded and followed. He could meet the Yorkshireman schoolmaster and go direct from there to meet Sarah Proctor.

  They departed the lodging house and walked the shoreline street. Vaughan wore his green suit garlanded with a thieved watch-chain as well as a new bowler hat. The groghouses were mostly empty at that hour, and at the steps of The Stuck Pig the old man in the tricorne hat sat astride the plank-boards panning the floor-sweepings with an iron basin, to which he added water from a tankard. He greeted Sam with a toothless grin. Even from a distance of ten yards Sam could see the glinting of gold flake and dust in the sediment. Vaughan doffed his hat but the other man only watched coldly. The dog went to him, and sniffed his trousers, then rejoined Sam and like them peered into the recesses of the groghouses whose doors never closed, and where now blankets were beaten and the general odour was that of gunpowder from the purging of miasma, whose smoke drifted toward the crude shacks on Goat Hill behind them.

  They passed the docks that were under construction, and the dog ran to the waterline and sniffed at the dead things lumped in weed and caked in brown foam. Beyond the half-formed docks was the main jetty, lined with merchant ships. Sam assumed the jetty their destination, but Vaughan paused on the sandy shore and took off his hat and waved it at a ship several furlongs out in the bay. He received an answer in the form of a shout, and presently two men clambered down some netting into a dinghy.