‘Yes, Mr Keane.’
‘I commend you to that course of action, now that we know what they’re capable of—murdering an innocent man in his cell. We can’t take the risk of you being arrested, and so I’m pleased you’ve found your kin. And the molly will be in place, when we have his key, for our further manoeuvres with Walker, or we’ll pull her out when you make your departure.’
Sarah Proctor looked at them like they were fools. Talking about her like she wasn’t there. Like Sam’s mother, searching for a place in the world where she depended upon no man for her wellbeing. Sam’s mother hadn’t found that place but she was still looking. Sarah Proctor the same. She’d come eagerly at Keane’s bidding, and the offer of employment otherwise than working on her back. The dog was friendly to her and wagged its tail at her arrival. She’d packed nothing because she had nothing to pack. The other mollies shared what they had in the way of dresses but there wasn’t much to share. Most of the women made extra by stealing from the drunk miners who were their main custom, but that was a dangerous and often fatal employ. And in a month or more Sarah would be too pregnant for molly-work.
She told Sam all this on their way up the hill. He was shocked to find that Sarah Proctor hadn’t left Sydney-town in all that time. It was a cold day with a heavy fog and she held the shawl tight over her chest, as well to hide her breasts from the eyes of the men who tipped their hats and leered. For the first time in his life Sam was properly armed. Keane had insisted that Sam carry on his person a single-shot smoothbore pocket deringer. It hadn’t occurred to Sam that escorting a woman through the public streets required a declaration of naked force. The gun was small but heavy in his hand, and he held it beside his leg as they walked the muck. Men coming the other way sized him up and glanced at his gun but soon ignored him and fixed their eyes upon Sarah Proctor.
‘You’ve risen yourself up, Samuel Bellamy, in a way that I never would have guessed. Your mother must be proud.’
Sam looked into the face of the next man approaching before he answered. ‘That’s only an accident of birth. I’m fast on my feet and the best messenger they have. What is it you hope from this arrangement?’
‘You have promised nothing; that is true. But I hope to earn enough money to support myself, or to meet a man who isn’t a sour-stinking miner. They want their pleasure but they is none of ’em looking for a wife. They come to town then go back to their claims. Say them all, those yonder mountains are no place for a woman, and judgin from the state of ’em, I’m inclined to believe. But I return the question back upon yourself. What is it that you hope from this arrangement?’
Sam laughed, for she had read him truly. His mother had made the request but his own motives were real. ‘I would appreciate your reading of my mother. You said to me once that despite everything you’ve seen, and all that you’ve suffered, that you’re young and not yet damaged beyond any real hope. That because of the drinking, and beating, that every molly, at a point not recognised by themselves, crosses some threshold that means that they’re unable to be kindly any longer. My mother has suffered greatly and I do not judge her, but before I throw in my lot, and leave behind my position with the Coves, I’d appreciate your counsel.’
Sarah Proctor put aside a hand from her shawl and patted his shoulder. ‘You have well learned these past months. That is a shrewd employment for one so young. I’ll do as asked, if you do the same in keeping me apprised of developments that might threaten my position, in the short time that remains before your departure.’
Seagulls feeding on scraps marked the edge of the settlement before the incline that led to Nob Hill. The dog set after the birds and they hovered above and spoke roughly to him and waited skyborne until he’d passed. The track rose into the fog that settled in quicksilver dewdrops on the coastal heath. Between the dun-coloured and vivid-green shrubs, Sam noticed the footprints of the native grey fox, and the dog set off on the spoor and Sam let it go. Sarah was panting and lifting her skirt, and her arms were blotted red as she climbed before him in single file. After twenty minutes they reached the street, and Sarah turned and took in what was visible of the town and embayment, and wiped her brow of sweat and fog-water. Sam led her along the terrace-street and they didn’t speak because Sarah was so puffing and had begun to wheeze. She stood in the street with her hands on her hips and her belly thrust forward and looked at the cottages like they were the cottages of her dreams. Among them stood Mr Walker’s residence as the most prominent of all.
The Pacific man at the gate was shrouded monk-like in a blanket and looked miserable but his face broke open at the sight of Sarah Proctor. He looked to her hands for luggage but there was none. Instead he bowed and doffed his hat, and Sarah smiled and lifted her skirt over the first step, and he put out a hand and raised her thus.
Inside the parlour, Sarah stared at the walls and the floors and the scrimshaw carvings on the table by the stairs. Down came Sam’s mother, wearing a face prepared and eager in its hospitality. She surprised Sam by embracing Sarah and then stood back and looked at her.
‘I’ve prepared a hot bath and will scrub your back myself. It’s ready in my chambers. We have much to talk about. Samuel, say goodbye to this lady, whose name I do not know but who I suspect will ken everything about me before the day is out. So eager am I for company.’ His mother turned to Sarah and waved her toward the stairs. ‘Quickly, lass. I’ll speak with my son, but will be with you presently.’
They watched her climb the stairs, looking back every few steps as though in disbelief. ‘She seems a friendly sort. Overawed, of course, as I was myself.
She put her mouth to his ear. Held his forearm. ‘Is the girl, or any other Sydney-town citizen privy to our plan? Tell me the truth now. Since I last enquired, you didn’t tell the Coves about this, did you?’
‘No, she isn’t. I didn’t,’ Sam lied.
‘Good. I’ve set her a bath and laid a good feed, because she will not reside here long. Our time is nigh. My husband has confided in me that the paddleboat from Sacramento arrived last night. And that the gold he delivered has been replaced with banknotes sufficient to our needs. Tonight is when you must act. There is a ship at harbour that will take us to Valparaiso in three days. So you must conceal the theft by taking only a portion of the currency, or we’ll be discovered. Come to the rear window at midnight, and I’ll pass you the key. That will give you ample time. My dear son. Soon we will be free.’
She held him and looked at him and held him again. The smell of rosewater on her skin. ‘Be careful, my son. Walker is a dangerous man. Go.’
She kissed his cheek and turned him toward the door.
The cutthroat Anderson Dempsey would have subscribed to certain blood rituals, bowdlerised from the Old Country, before attempting such a task. But the more practical-minded Keane had Sam jumping from rooftop to rooftop and practising the levering of redwood shingles from the roof with a prying-tool borrowed from the farrier. Also from the farrier was a small brick of the softest white clay, to take a mould of the key.
Sam crouched in the dark scrub above his mother’s house. In that alien place at that hour he longed for the company of the dog, who was safely with Clement. He’d held the animal against his chest and cooed to it in the expectation that he might never return. Clement was a good man, and didn’t need to be asked.
On his way to the hill Sam passed through the Chinese quarter hoping for a glimpse of Ai, where even a shadow on a window would have sufficed. But Chen’s establishment was barred and dark and gave off a hostile mood like the man himself when he wasn’t pretending. Sam held to the remembrance of her hand in his own, and the smell of the jasmine oil that she combed through her hair. The bright mischief in her eyes. That rare smile and those pretty teeth. The warmth of her body when she sat beside him. Her delicate phrasing of the British tongue.
He was frightened, laid out on his belly in the bushland in the dark. Like the bushland along the Swan River, he could see why the natives, a
ccording to Clement, also importuned the night spirits with shamanistic flattery and respectful dances, and otherwise huddled together in temporary domelike structures of bark around a warming fire and were always ready to move camp if the auguries were wrong. Clement told him that the measles and the smallpox had wiped out most of the Ohlone Indians who, like the Swan River blacks, tended the land with firestick and song. It was their absence, in that cold night, that made for Sam a powerful presence, and with the fog on his shoulders and the muffling of sound, the calls of the owl and fox were startling in their proximity.
So he was grateful when the candlelight appeared in the laundry window, which was the sign. Up until that moment his fear at the coming trial was contained in the idea that his next actions weren’t quite real. He scampered down the hill, and climbed the stave-fence, and his nerves were restrained by the series of simple actions that were urgent and stealthy in the light of pressing time. His mother’s pale hand held the key on a silver chain. It was the first time he had seen her skin, and he looked closely at it because her face didn’t reveal itself. He took the key and returned to the bush, and from there made his way down the track and into the lamplit streets of the better part of town.
Walker’s storehouse, like each of the major buildings on the plaza square, was gabled lengthwise to the street. There were guards stationed three on the front porch and one at the side entrances and two in the yard at the rear. They sat before braziers, and smoked and muttered, and he listened as he climbed the stairs at the rear of the emporium that was stationed beside the government commissary, and beside that Walker’s storehouse. Each of the buildings was three-storeys high, and made out of mudstone block, stuccoed with limewash and mortar.
Sam hoisted himself onto the shingled roof of the Emporium and measured with his eye the pattern of the nailed shingles and the location of the joists. He had been warned by Keane that the constant quaking of the ground loosened the shingles and broke the fixing nails, and that although his instincts would draw him to the roof-peak, he would better avoid that transport because then he’d be visible from the square. So he crawled over the shingles, and many of them were loose, and he felt with his hands the way before him. His nerves were settled, and his way was slow with the required concentration to avoid spilling to his death. He reached the edge of the building and peered below, and saw no guards.
Firming the farrier’s tool in its sling over his shoulder, and the knife at his belt, he leapt catlike onto the commissary and settled onto his belly. As advised, he lay there for a goodly time and let the stars turn above him before beginning his traverse toward the next roof. This roof was recently fixed, and his hands met with the buckled and snapped nails from before the latest quake.
He made good time, and peered over the edge at the guard beneath him, and measured his leap and the possibility of his moonlit shadow passing over the guard. But the guard’s head was on his chest. He’d made himself comfortable with a Mexican shawl, and his boots were turned out like a man asleep. Sam knelt and fixed his fingers on the rough shingles. He leapt, then lay there for the sound to hide itself in the darkness, waiting for his breathing to settle. But his heart was beating faster and his palms were clammy; his belly began its twitching dance.
Sam returned to action before the nerves overcame him and froze him to the spot. The rough diagram of the internal layout of the establishment carried in his mind. The awareness that guards might be stationed inside.
He sat above the edge of the roofline where the drop inside would be lowest, and began to work loose the shingles with the farrier’s tool as he had practised. The roof hadn’t been lately fixed and the iron nails groaned as they came loose. He lay the shingles in a neat formation and removed enough to let him inside. He braced himself with his hands and peered into the dark. It was as his mother described. The top floor given over to storage. He saw the bulky shapes of tea-chests piled one above the other, and bales of softer material that smelt of lanolin, and now that his eyes were adjusted the giant hardwood beams, joists and uprights that supported the roof. Very quietly he let himself inside the roofline and felt with his boots the nearest tea-chest and then he was inside. Ears and eyes and all his senses attuned to the sound of boots on the stairs. No smell of torch or pitch or brazier-coke. The great black pipe of the internal heating that rose through the floors gone cold in the shadows.
He could see surprisingly well, and made for the stairs, and each step down through the building he paused and listened and looked around. On the ground floor he made for the corner office. He knelt before the great plate-iron strong-box and ran his hands over its face.
As described, the iron-box was big enough to lock a man inside, fronted by a hinged cast-iron door adopted from a safe. Sam’s fingers traced its dimensions and felt the welds and returned to the lock. He placed the key inside the lock and turned his head to regard the windows and worked the key with his ears. It required no great force. He heard the tumblers snip and drop into place. He worked his fingers to the edge of the door and pulled it slowly open. Keane would have kept the hinges unoiled but the heavy door made no sound. He opened it enough for him to slip inside, and pulled it behind him. Lit a match whose brightness burned his eyes and made him look away. Saw the bounty all pressed into shelves and so deep that the match-flame didn’t illuminate but only hinted at the gold stored there. Walker’s wealth impossible to measure. A shelf given to banknotes in neat array. A shelf given to notables and promissory declarations and bonds and titles to gold-claims and town buildings. A shelf of gold dust and flake placed in leather bags of different weights. A box of nuggets and a sack on the floor of dust and flake, too heavy to lift. A wooden crate of rifles and cartons of ammunition.
Sam regarded everything and returned to the banknotes and as instructed reached into the middle of every pile and extracted notes to the depth of his thumb. There were a hundred or so piles, and he stuffed the notes into his shoulder sling and straightened the piles and made sure that everything appeared as before. The smell of match-head sulphur in the confined space was strong, however, and he admired his mother who had thought of this eventuality and suggested that before departing he wait with the safe-door open for a good while. He stood by the open door until he’d counted to three-score and then knelt and worked the door shut. The door locked easily, and he replaced the key on its chain under his shirt, and with his sleeves wiped away any dirt-smudges from his fingers. He arose through the building and onto the roof as though in a dream. The shingles could not be hammered into place so he sat and listened while he bent the prised nails free of the four shingles and slipped them back under their cousins to form a seal against the rain. The night air was cold against his skin and he felt giddy, and understood that he needed to breathe deeply for a spell. He listened to the muttering of the guards and began to crawl toward the patch of low sky against which was silhouetted the gable peak. He reached the peak and looked down at the sleeping guard and cast his eyes around the scene of the sleeping town shrouded in wood smoke and fog. He pressed his fingers to the leaden gable-cap, took a deep breath and leapt into the air.
20
But where he’d hoped for happiness and relief, his mother’s face showed only disappointment. She sat at the porphyry table beside her bed with the banknotes arrayed in piles and measured him with her stare.
‘You sure nothin fell lost on your way here? This ain’t enough.’
She was speaking her real language, and gone was the disappointment. Her eyes were angry beyond anything he’d seen of her.
‘I risked my neck, and this ain’t enough. Not to set-up on another shore. Not for more than a few months.’
Sam had delivered the blue canvas bag of money on its rawhide sling in the hour before dawn, as instructed. His Ma sitting in the laundry darkness waiting for him. Didn’t speak, just put her hand into the coldness and hooked the bag and the keychain and pulled the curtain shut. He’d returned three hours later when Mr Walker was gone from the
house. Could have sworn on his life that he’d stole more money than that. The bag had been fairly bulging.
Now she had her head in her hands. ‘It ain’t enough, and he suspects. Come here, boy.’
Sam sat beside her on the bed. She slung a sisterly arm around his shoulder, drew him in. ‘You was brave, my son. But now we got to take steps. I saw his face, this morning. He took up the key off that there dresser and his face smudged with suspicion. He places it just so. Sets it with angles in mind according to some mathematic of his. So he’ll know if it’s been moved. I did put it back just so, I’m sure. But maybe got it wrong, by an inch.’
Sam squeezed his mother’s hand draped around his neck. ‘Ma, you got worry. Might be readin—’
Her laugh was a convulsion of ridicule and anger. ‘Don’t hazard to tell me, boy, what I got right or wrong. I know the bastard. He suspects, and where he suspects, he acts. He don’t account for no margin of error. He just goes ahead and exacts his retribution and if he’s wrong he don’t lose any sleep. So we are likely doomed. The key wasn’t right and he knows I moved it. Was there in his voice. What he said.’
‘What did he say Ma?’
‘Said, slow and clear, what he always says when he intends to punish me. That he’ll have words when he gets home. And it was then I reckoned his next course of action. The certainty of his next port of call. That fast as his gelding can carry him, he’ll be in his strongbox counting his money and matching the accounting against his records. So by now he’ll know exactly how much we stole. And then he’ll kill me, son, this time he will, you wait and see.’
‘I won’t let that happen, Ma. I won’t.’
‘I know, son, I know. You’re a good, brave boy. But I bought us some time, and I got to apologise about that.’
The Coves Page 18