The Coves

by Whish-Wilson, David;

  ‘What are you playing at?’ The Scots accent whispered harshly. ‘You’ll not get any coin from me. I warned my blowhard husband as much, for he does so like to tell that story. That it would encourage impostors, such as yourself.’

  Sam didn’t understand because he couldn’t see her face. Her strategy was unknowable to him. She smelled of perfume and fireside warmth. Her fingernails pinching a continuous march up and down his forearm. He endured, and waited.

  When he didn’t answer she stepped back and took him in. Must have seen something of herself, for there was doubt that she tried to hide behind a sneer.

  Sam put up a hand, stepped back. He was suddenly exhausted. ‘Your three children didn’t die at the hands of the warrior. That part is a lie. Ma, I am Samuel your youngest. The only one now alive. Do you wish me to continue?’

  She nodded, her face a porcelain mask, all the blood gone, but shining with new sweat. Her fingers trembled in the cage of her hands. He looked in her eyes, searching for the longing that he felt, but there was only confusion. To make her want him, he began to tell the story that he’d told so many times, although the automatic quality in his voice deserted him, and he kept pausing, and looking into her face, until the hope of those moments finally brought tears to his eyes, because there was nothing in hers different from any stranger.

  18

  Sam didn’t tell Clement until a week had passed. A week of slogging through the town to deliver messages to men who were frightened and angry and wavering in their loyalty, who asked him to repeat himself to make sure they heard right. Sam watching over his shoulder for the men who might abduct him, and tie him to a chair, and put a flaming torch to his skin, as Mannix had described it. Keane was still sick, but only Sam and Clement knew the full extent of his illness, even as he continued his cohabitation with the Frenchwoman and delegated his wishes to Clement. Matters came to a head with the arrest of Yankee Sullivan, the champion pugilist and Democrat wardheeler, accused of participating in Mannix’s crimes.

  Sullivan was innocent, and the arrest was political in its strategy, but its seriousness was made plain with the lynching of one of Sullivan’s cellmates, an Australian arrested for piracy in the bay, although he too was likely innocent and never given a trial.

  Sullivan, it was said, was shaken by the hanging, and the guards were a torment to him, and both Casey and Duane were frequent in Sydney-town, demanding that the Cove’s free their ally from prison. Keane advised a suitable diversion in the form of riotous behaviour, and he and Casey set to a plan, but shortly there was new intelligence, not helpful to their plans of rescue. Walker, the Australian merchant, had hired extra gunmen to escort the stagecoaches and the paddleboat that carried gold and money back and forwards from Sacramento, where there existed a reliable bank. Both the stagecoach and paddleboat had been set upon by Mannix and his men, and there were five American casualties. Even so, the Governor had refused Walker’s request for soldiers to be stationed in town. Walker had instead lured many of them to burn their uniforms and take up a civilian role as mercenary for Walker’s vigilantes. They were posted around the town square outside the establishments that paid Keane tribute, and they harassed and beat any Australians who looked hard enough to be Coves. The guard detail on the watch house was hired from these mercenaries, and they were well prepared for an attack to rescue Sullivan. There was more talk of lynching, and the rumours made Mannix angry enough to lead a posse of his men into town one night and shoot several of the mercenaries dead, and leave them piled up on the loading dock of Walker’s storehouse.

  Sam was sent to observe the watch house, which he did from the shadows abutting a storeroom, fearful of every glance and passerby. Having confirmed the timing of the change of guard, he returned to Sydney-town with the intelligence, then was sent to the foremen on the docks, and the dram-house proprietors who each had a gang of hard men in their employ, and were now instructed to prepare themselves for war. And all the while Sam walked those lowland hollows and the shoreline flats amid the constant fear of capture, he thought of his mother up there in her eyrie, watching the town and imagining Sam at his business. The idea that someone watched over him was a new kind of strangeness, and yet his head was troubled because her daily words to him were not a boon but a trial. He sought refuge in Ai’s company, because the sound of her voice was enough to cleanse him of worry. He watched Ai and they made conversation, and then one day she let him hold her hand for more than a moment, and the warmth of her skin against his own made his chest near burst with joy. He had to hide his face for a moment. But then he left her and the voice of his mother returned, and his heart was stepped into the mud, and he knew he had to make a decision.

  Clement didn’t think on it.

  ‘Do it,’ he said. ‘And do it soon. I’ll run it by Keane. But in the meantime, I have a message for Chen that I thought you’d like to deliver in person. Right away, if you prefer. Keane thinks the Chinese useful allies, although you don’t need to know the whys and wherefores. Just tell Chen that Keane wants to meet. It ain’t going to sit well with Mannix, and some of the others who have an aversion for the Celestials, and like to raid them for sport. They won’t hear of an armed Celestial and won’t accept the responsibility of protecting them against American raiders, if it comes to that. But Keane thinks it inevitable and I agree.’

  And that was how Sam ended up before Chen’s tailor shop in the dim light of early morning. He could see smoke coming up the chimney and knew the Chinaman would be at his breakfast, with Ai serving him. Sam went through the front door and didn’t knock. He stood there in his fine clothes wearing his new scabbard knife with a whalebone handle and didn’t take off his hat. He’d been careful not to trip the door chime, and walked behind the counter and knocked on the dividing wall. It was Ai who opened the door, her hair down and dressed in a long cotton smock and bare feet. He stared at the new detail of her toes, then smiled at her but she didn’t smile back. Sam pushed open the door into the room that he’d never seen inside of. Chen nearly choked on his gruel. Got to rising but Sam put out a hand, living Clement’s words. Be the performer, in the hope of becoming the performer. Had thought about his words on the way over. Didn’t want to seem a mere messenger, so he said it plain, looking into the angry eyes.

  ‘Mr Chen, I got some news for you.’

  He said it clearly enough, but his eyes were already darting round the room. Taking it in. He was looking for one bed or two. There were two mattresses, rolled up in different corners. Bit of sheet poking out of each. The room smelt of dried fish and tea and some kind of bitter herb that didn’t sit well on Sam’s empty stomach.

  The Chinaman’s face was a blank, but he nodded. Didn’t indicate for Sam to sit beside him, on a pillow on the floor. Which was fine by Sam.

  ‘Mr Thomas Keane would like to meet with you, at a time of your convenience.’

  Chen looked him up and down. The skinny boy with his lank red hair. Hat and clothes that Chen had made. Who’d seen him in rags when he first set foot in San Francisco, when the Chinaman had been at his own performance of ducking and bowing and scraping. Didn’t seem inclined to perform either way now. Just nodded his great round head, looked down into his gruel, took up his spoon.

  Sam tipped his hat anyway. Had rehearsed this in his mind too. ‘Mr Chen.’ Turned to the girl. ‘Miss Ai.’

  She didn’t look happy at the mentioning of her name, or his performance of being a proudful man of Sydney-town. Her head bowed. He waited for her to look up but she didn’t.

  ‘I’ll see myself out. Good day.’

  Sam reached Nob Hill and braced himself for the climb. His thoughts of Ai were put aside as the deeper anxiety came back upon him. What Mrs Walker was asking. The giant Pacific man at the gate lifted his rifle like a drawbridge and Sam stepped under it. Strode up and knocked at the door. Mrs Walker said to visit only during certain hours, when Mr Walker was absent at his business. That her husband wasn’t to know. Because of her plan.
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br />   She was waiting in the parlour, dressed in a maroon shawl over another of her ruffled and hooped skirts. Her hair was tied in a bun. The smell of rosewater when she embraced him, held him under her arm. Gauged by his level of resistance that he was troubled. Held him away and looked into his eyes.

  ‘It’s a hard burden, Samuel, but the only way I can be free, and us reunited. Go south to sovereign Chile. The port is called Valparaiso. I got a list of all the shipping routines, don’t you worry. We’ll time it just so. Did you speak of it to your countrymen?’

  Sam looked grave. ‘No, ma’am, I would never. But I got a woman for your companionship, like you asked. Another Australian by the name of Sarah Proctor, come over on the same boat as me.’

  ‘Is she currently at whorin’?’

  It was strange the way his mother spoke. One minute it was fancy talk, aped off the gentry she’d served as a maid, the next it was her real self. She wanted a young Australian woman because Walker only hired blacks and Mexicans and cannibals. Didn’t trust his own kind, and certainly not Australians. But a young woman, she was lately firm on that. Wanted the company. A young woman like Mrs Walker herself, who still had her looks, was only thirty-and-four years old.

  ‘Yes, ma’am. She is. But I know her to be a kindly soul. She’s amenable to sittin with you during the day when you’re lonely, and to livin in the servants quarters.’

  His mother smiled, and pinched his cheek, drew him into her bosom again. He felt her heart beating against his neck, slow and steady, and it only made him burn for revenge against Mr Walker, who treated her so bad. His ma said she wore the long-sleeve bodice and gloves even on hot days, to hide the bruises that the brute inflicted when he was enraged.

  But soon she would be clear of him. Sam like an angel’s messenger come to rescue her. The kind of trust between them that only blood could own. What his father would have wanted. When they were free, she would hear each of Sam’s stories. Couldn’t bear them now, his tales of woe inflicted in the search for her, when she herself was situated little better than a slave.

  As she did every morning, his mother led him over to the leather bench where tea was set and held his hand. It amused her greatly, his stories of the citizens of Sydney-town. She puffed up at his bravery in service of Keane, a boy doing a man’s work, knowing the ins and outs and characters who inhabited the street and the bawdy-houses and whisky bars.

  She liked to hear the life of the streets such as the story of the new groghouse called The Grizzly Bear, named after the giant beast that was tied to a post and had a taste for porter but who hated smoked fish. And the grand new American establishment on the plaza square, with felt-topped gaming tables and half-naked women flying above the gamblers on trapeze swings, and the most famous barman in the Union who made a drink that was flaming whisky poured in liquid fire between mugs. And when she added that it was preferable, in hindsight, that she’d stayed with her own kind in Sydney-town, rather than try and raise herself up in the world, on the arm of a brute in the cloth of a gentleman, Sam consoled her, because her eyes were full of admiration for him and her gloved hands were soft and tender in his own. She never talked of her husband’s role in persecuting the Coves, and he never raised it either.

  It was only when she returned to her plan that the fear began to gather in his belly, and he couldn’t meet her eyes, and she held him firmly and roused him with strong words.

  Sam could do it, she said. The day wasn’t right, but it was coming. She knew when Walker’s reserves of cash were at a peak. He could do it, and only he could do it, and then they would be together and free.

  She drew him to her again, and began to tell him, again, what he was like as a baby, how she’d nursed him in their hut by the potato field, just as he described it. The colourful parrots of the Swan River raucous in the trees. How his eyes would widen and how without fail the sound made him chuckle. And how she would chuckle, too, because it was parrot-stew in the hearth-pot. His father out in the field, chasing the birds and waving his hat and falling over the ploughed mounds, or down at the lime kilns suffering in the heat, crushing oyster-shell and firing the lime. His brothers crouched beneath trees with hand-fashioned slingshots, which they were too young to use. How at night they sang the songs of home in Glasgow and sat around the smoky hearth with their eyes burning from smoke and laughter. Their bellies empty, mind, but dreaming of the plot of land that his father planned further up the valley. Some pigs and sheep, in that region already cleared by the blacks’ firesticks. His father swearing that he’d had his fill of saw and plough, until kingdom come. And Samuel always watchful, always listening. Peering out from his sling on her back while she worked for the master, cooking and cleaning and sweeping the floor, as though it were the finest marble and not compacted anthill sands. And how far have we come, my son, from that distant place, where we thought at times we would be happy, or that we would all starve, to this new land with its numberless breeds of men and every breed in-between. How far we have come, and how far yet to go.

  19

  Sam stood beside Sarah Proctor with his hat in his hands. Keane and Mannix and Clement and Barr astride the bench seats in The Stuck Pig, faces clouded by the news that Yankee Sullivan, only hours before his forced release by two dozen armed Sydney-towners and fearing his imminent lynching, had opened his veins with a piece of glass, although none of them believed it and each now suspected a spy within, so near was their plan to execution. Charlie Duane had turned riotous at the news, attacking a newspaper editor who’d pilloried him earlier, kicking his head in. He was arrested, and Casey had gone into hiding, and the Democrat cause looked fatally wounded. There was open Nativist celebration in the form of Mayor Bannon speechifying on the plaza square, surrounded by an armed guard of hard-looking mercenaries, paid for by the merchants, who dressed, fed and watered the deserters and billeted them with their own families for protection.

  Before them were arrayed cups of sweet tea and dunking bread, but Mannix called for whisky to mourn Sullivan’s passing and that is what they drank. Beside Sam, Sarah Proctor stood with her hip cocked and shawl pulled tight. She was many months pregnant. Dressed in a white cotton pinafore with her bare arms all goosebumps and pale white hairs. She was waiting for her orders, just like Sam.

  But first the terms of agreement.

  Mannix still wasn’t clear on it, and Sam could see the frustration in Keane’s eyes and set jaw.

  There is murder ahead between these two, he thought, sure as night follows day.

  But Keane waved for Mannix to continue. The giant redhead lit a cigar and toasted Sullivan and drank his whisky and glared around the table.

  ‘We got a boy and a whore headed where no Cove has managed to get—inside Walker’s house. I don’t care what they steal but one of ’em’s gotta cut the bastard’s throat while he sleeps. Then we pursue the safe. That’s the proper order of events. I’m in agreement with the particulars but you got it the wrong way round.’

  There was logic to Mannix’s declarations, but Sam wasn’t going to cut any throat, and they all knew it. Mannix stared long and hard at Sarah Proctor.

  ‘If you can’t do it yerself, you let me in of a night. I’ll be happy to oblige. And slaughter his whole troop of mercenaries while I’m at it.’

  Keane shook his head. ‘Walker is the richest of the merchants and his money funds the Nativists. We take his money, then we weaken him, and thereby Bannon too. Samuel, what have you learned?’

  Mannix sneered at the question.

  ‘The strongbox in Walker’s storehouse is made special against forced entry,’ Sam replied. ‘It’s said to be fireproof and bombproof. The key is a singular design. He had the whole thing imported from New York. There’s only one key that my mother’s aware of, and it’s worn around Walker’s neck. He only takes it off to sleep. Her idea is to pass it to me and for me to steal his cash reserves and any bank notables that can be carried off and hidden, and return the key and the money to her. Walker will
cut off her head if he suspects betrayal.’

  Mannix laughed, threw up his hands. ‘The wisest course of action is to murder Walker and then turn to Bannon.’

  Clement shifted his weight and glanced at Keane, who nodded. ‘I thought we agreed that murdering Walker, at this time, would bring down the Governor’s fury upon us. The Governor takes our tribute, but that won’t count for nothing if we make him come down here with troops. Walker’s agitation is all for cleaning up the town but we know what the real ambition is. There are Americans who want our business, our profits and most of all our land. Walker will keep. Let him bleat on. People will tire of him and his antics. The gold is still coming fast from the hills. All the merchants are making money. And a thousand people are arriving by ship, every day.’

  Clement nodded and Barr didn’t disagree. He’d been wounded on their last sortie into the hinterland, and his leg was strapped and stiff with blood. Clement was the doctor and no doubt had been counselling him while tending the wound.

  Mannix looked at them and shrugged. ‘You think the boy has the courage to rob Walker’s storehouse amid an armed guard? A boy who gets disarmed by an unarmed savage? And when the weakling gets caught, and speaks of our involvement, what then? And I’m not clear on the purpose of the molly.’

  ‘Leave that to me,’ Keane said. Turned to Sam. ‘If your robbery is a success, is your true ambition to accompany your mother to Valparaiso, as stated? Leave these shores?’