by Jock Serong
He turned side on and gestured at the interior of the house. She is not here, he said.
The man glanced into the space without moving from the doorway. Grayling found himself staring at the splay of long, bony feet on the cut sandstone block he had ordered and laid himself as a front step. The feet bore authority, as the stone did. Together, the meat of them and the cold block of cut stone spoke of death and interment.
The man turned and left without another word, and Grayling was surprised to find his heart racing in his chest.
Later that afternoon, Grayling walked to Government House for the meeting he had promised he would attend.
He watched as William Clark settled himself in the chair that faced the governor’s desk. To Grayling’s eye, his movements looked freer now, and the wounds around his face had cleared into a faint matrix of pink lines. His hair was cut neatly and his jaw again clean shaven. He wore a dark coat and trousers, not new but hastily acquired by someone from the governor’s office for the purpose. His hands, still bandaged, rested in his lap.
The governor had stood as Clark entered: he seemed unsure how to formalise his greeting, given the state of Clark’s hands. He settled on a solemn nod before he resumed his seat. The customary notebook lay open in front of him, the quill to its side. To his left, pushed back towards the bookshelves, an easel had been covered with a dark cloth. It stood, along with the violin in its case there by the wall, as a mark of the private John Hunter, the one the Corps loved to pursue and to mock.
Here and now he presented only his public self. He spoke to his guest with diplomatic ease.
‘Mr Clark, thank you for coming to see me. I have followed your progress closely through Lieutenant Grayling here. I trust you have been well looked after?’
Clark’s face resumed the stiff reluctance Grayling recalled from their first meeting.
‘Thank you, excellency. The care has been impeccable.’
‘Good, good.’ The passage of a cloud somewhere over Sydney changed the light. The fire crackled behind them. Nothing about the governor’s face revealed the slightest clue to his thoughts.
‘And your hands?’
Clark lifted them, looked at the bandages. ‘The doctor says they are free from infection, which is most important. It will be a slow process.’
‘Do they hurt?’
‘No. No, very little. An inconvenience, mostly.’
‘Of course.’ The sunlight strengthened again, picking up the straggling silver hairs that stood from the governor’s scalp.
‘Mr Clark, there is nothing unusual about this meeting, I want firstly to assure you of that. Lieutenant Grayling here has told me that he is reaching a critical passage in your story, and I thought it would be of benefit if I listened. Does that cause you any concern?’
Hunter leaned forward slightly, studying Clark closely.
‘No, sir. None at all. It’s a pleasure to be in Your Excellency’s company.’ Clark’s eyes roved over the desk, the drapes behind it, the squared timbers of the window frames. The wood smoke mingled with timber smells and rosin and turpentine and all of it offered a seductive feeling of civilisation.
The governor smiled brightly. He retreated behind his desk, sat down and took up a quill.
‘Fine, then! Lieutenant Grayling, would you proceed? And just pretend I’m not here…’ he smiled again and Clark tried wanly to respond.
Grayling opened the journal at the page he’d bookmarked with a length of twine. The bookmark was unnecessary: the book fell open there because of the weight of the page, stained and smeared in old brown blood.
‘Forgive me, Mr Clark,’ Grayling began. ‘This is probably not material you will wish to revisit, but what I wanted to examine is the twenty-sixth of April. I will read your entry back to you, perhaps, before I ask you about it.’
Clark watched him and said nothing.
‘At 9 a.m. observed several natives on the top of a high bluff, who came down to us as we approached and remained with us for some time.
‘Now firstly, my understanding was that you were attempting to cut off a headland by walking north over a range of hills here, is that right?’
‘Yes.’ Clark chewed his lip pensively.
‘Was the going steep?’
‘Yes, it was. We were quite exhausted by the time we reached the ridge. I think we had stopped to recover from the climb.’
‘I see. Then you encounter the natives. And then you write this—
‘When we had made signs to them that we were hungry and much exhausted, they brought us plenty of fish and treated us very kindly.
‘Why—I’m just a little confused. How far inland were you at this point?’
‘Some hours’ walk, though we did not cover the ground with any great haste.’
‘Fish?’ The governor put the goose quill down. ‘Are these river or sea fish?’
Clark looked perplexed. ‘Why I—I don’t…I cannot say. I assumed they were sea fish, Your Excellency.’
A look of irritation creased the governor’s face. ‘It is my experience, Mr Clark, that these people travel light. Why would they have carried fish up onto a high ridge, several hours’ walk inland, on the off chance that you might ask them for a meal?’
‘I—I don’t know, sir.’
‘Were they stored somewhere? Were they carrying the fish on their persons?’
‘I really could not say, sir. It is just, just…I think we had fish there.’
‘You think…’ The governor looked sceptical. ‘Very well. I am sorry, lieutenant.’
Grayling looked for the point in the scrawl where he had left off. The governor took up his quill once more.
‘After we had refreshed ourselves and put up some fish to carry with us, we were preparing to proceed, when about fifty strong natives made their appearance, of whom we soon took leave, giving them such little presents as we could afford, and with which they were apparently well satisfied.’
Grayling stopped there and thought for a moment. ‘Mr Clark, do you recall what you gave these people?’
‘No.’ Clark’s mood had soured. ‘No I don’t, but the usual things were calico and the knives, the axe. We handed them most all of our belongings by the end.’
‘You couldn’t have had much left to hand over by this stage, surely,’ contributed the governor.
‘No. Very little, I would think.’
Grayling did not want his witness to turn sullen. ‘I only ask because I wonder whether the gift could have inadvertently caused offence.’
Clark sighed. ‘That is not how these people work. They are entirely unpredictable from one encounter to the next, one moment to the next.’ His voice was rising. ‘Surely you can see it outside this very window?’
‘Yes of course. Allow me to continue.
‘We had not parted more than twenty or thirty minutes when a hundred more approached us, shouting and hallowing in a most hideous manner, at which we were all exceedingly alarmed. In a short time a few of them began throwing their spears, upon which we made signs to them to desist, giving them some presents, and appearing no ways dismayed at their conduct—
‘Now here, I—’
‘You what? What troubles you here, lieutenant?’ Clark’s voice was shrill now. He had lifted himself slightly in his seat by leaning his forearms on the arms of the chair, his physical discomfort ratcheting his anger higher.
Grayling waited a moment. ‘Here, Mr Clark, I—’
The governor interrupted. ‘I imagine the lieutenant merely wanted to ask you what were these further presents?’
‘I don’t know! I’ve said I don’t know. Maybe it was something Mr Figge was carrying. Maybe it was Mr Kennedy’s tools, or one of the pistols. Maybe we sang them a bloody song.’
Once again, the governor dropped the pen. ‘You wouldn’t have handed them weapons, Mr Clark, surely?’
‘We’d already given them a short sword. Besides, the pistols didn’t work.’
‘Let me continue, M
r Clark,’ said Grayling. ‘I realise this is distressing, but it is important that we understand it all.
‘No sooner had we turned our backs on this savage mob than they renewed hostilities and wounded three of us, viz., Mr. Hugh Thompson, myself, and my servant.’
‘Yes. I had instructed the others to retreat from them and we had turned around when I saw a spear strike Mr Thompson in his side. He fell and I, I turned around and raised a hand to command them to desist, and one of their spears passed clean through it. The treacherous fiends had launched their salvo behind our retreating backs. That’s the measure of their character.’
The governor was writing furiously to keep up, but now he paused. ‘The spears that I’ve seen are nine or ten feet long, Mr Clark. Are you saying the whole thing passed through your hand?’
‘Yes. It was launched from a wumera, so fast I could not see it in flight.’
‘And the other hand, Mr Clark?’
Clark sighed and looked at the other bandaged hand as though the answer was written on it. ‘There was a fusillade of spears by this time. The natives charged forward: they were shouting, howling in a most terrifying manner. The lascar boy was struck a tremendous blow with a club and he fell down: I immediately assumed he was dead.’ Clark paused.
The governor looked up, annoyed. ‘But the other hand?’
‘I am getting to the other hand. I reached down to the small bundle of my belongings, intending to grasp the pistol and wave it at them in hopes its terror might be known to them. But when I had my hand on the bundle, my other hand’—Clark held up his left—‘I was speared. It went through the hand and the bundle, pinning both to the ground. And the one who did it—I can still smell him—he came right up to me, bold as day and he stood on my forearm and pulled the spear free. Not, I hasten to add, out of any concern for me, but in order to retrieve his weapon.’
‘So you were speared—’ The governor placed his own hand on the desk, trying to visualise it. ‘You were speared through the back of your left hand?’
‘Yes.’ Clark looked slightly confused for a moment, then nodded vigorously. ‘Yes, the left.’ He shook his head in exasperation, then added: ‘Really, do you people not believe there is a hole there?’
‘Mm.’ The governor resumed his patient longhand.
Grayling had long since lost the intended route of his questioning. He thought hard now. ‘Did you ever ascertain who these people were, Mr Clark? Are they just the Sydney natives?’
‘Mr Figge had tried to exchange pleasantries with them during the exchange of the fish and the gifts. They were called the Wandandean.’
‘Wan-dan-de-an,’ the governor repeated slowly. ‘These ones here are Eora, as you know. They’re not the same people, are they?’
Clark shrugged. ‘They are of a species, sir.’
‘All right. It’s just—Lieutenant Grayling was explaining to me about there being, perhaps, a kind of sub-set. Could the Wandandean have been Guyangal people?’
Another shrug. ‘I think not. I heard the term Kurial, but…’
‘And this incident: it took place on a high ridge just south of a very large bay that you next encountered?’
‘Yes. And deep, sir.’ Clark seemed happier on this subject. ‘An excellent anchorage, I would think.’
‘What became of you next?’ the governor asked. The old man’s not to be diverted, thought Grayling.
‘We were helpless there. Only Mr Figge and Mr Kennedy had been spared—I do not know why. Mr Thompson was bleeding quite freely and I was in wretched pain. We remained where we were and—’
‘—and the boy? What was his condition? You said you mistook him for dead?’
‘The boy, yes. I believe he had come to his senses by then. It is in the nature of the Bengalis, you understand, to feign unconsciousness in such extremity. He may well have been playing dead in the hope the natives would not finish him off.’
The governor hurried his notes towards an end, as Grayling and Clark watched him. Something was exercising his mind. A maid advanced into the room, looking hesitant. She was elderly, worn. She placed a tray of tea on a side table near the desk and retreated; the dust swirled lazily in the light where she’d been.
‘Mr Clark, can I ask you this: you say you were struck deliberately in both hands. That seems to me to be a feat of extremely fine marksmanship. Yet Mr Thompson, who I can’t imagine was much nearer to or further from their lines, from the way you describe it, was struck non-lethally in the side.’
‘Indeed. It passed through him completely, but only in the flesh above his hipbone.’
‘Do you think that was a deliberate aim or a poor one?’
‘Well, these spears were launched by different people…’
‘Yes, yes. I understand that, but do you think these people were trying to kill you or not? You were unable to take any evasive action as far as I understand it, and yet all five of you emerged alive from a volley of spears.’
‘I am, as you know, reluctant to credit the savages with undue skill. I think it is possible that they intended to wound us, perhaps just for the sport of watching us make our way under even greater duress.’ He stopped, thought for a moment. ‘Or they were marking us for others further up the coast.’
‘That would explain them not completing their assaults by killing you.’
‘Yes, but nor did they offer us any succour. They simply vanished back into the forest. We spent that night in mortal terror that they would return.’
‘What had you done about Mr Thompson?’
‘You might wish to ask Mr Figge about that. He took charge of the operation: he lay Thompson on his other side and spent some time notching the spear shaft with a knife, then snapped off the lengths on both sides of his body so that only a small shaft remained in him. The thing had such a terrible barb on it—made of little shards of sea shells. So there was no prospect of pulling it back out—it had to go through in the direction it arrived. He worked away at it for some time and Mr Thompson was setting up an awful hollering, and when he had wriggled it enough in the wound he was able to pull it free. The pain was such that we had to restrain Thompson, and by the time Mr Figge had got the thing out of him, he had lost consciousness.’
‘You must have thought he would not survive the night.’
‘As I say, you would have to ask Mr Figge about that.’ Clark stared resolutely ahead.
The governor did not write any of this down. He looked at the page in front of himself, apparently lost in thought. The silence was an awkward one, tinged with something incomplete. Eventually he broke it.
‘Mr Clark, you’ve been very helpful. I do not wish to tire you unnecessarily. Lieutenant, I take it you are done?’
Grayling nodded. He wasn’t, but the governor’s intent was clear.
‘Very well, then. Mr Clark, I’ll finish up with the lieutenant here. Do you require an escort back to your quarters?’
Clark eyed him with open suspicion. ‘No, thank you, Your Excellency.’ He stood, took his coat from the stand by the door and left. Grayling watched the governor, who watched the door as they both listened to Clark’s footsteps fading over the hallway planks outside.
‘Tell me what you thought, lieutenant.’
‘A little discordant, if I may be so bold, sir.’
Governor Hunter arched a silver eyebrow. ‘Thoroughly unconvincing, you mean?’
‘Yes.’
‘You know, I had a discussion with Ewing about Clark’s hand wounds. I have my reservations about the surgeon and his efficacy generally, but he did say an interesting thing.’ He held up his hands palm-outwards and considered them. ‘Mr Clark has two broken bones in his left hand and one in the right, as far as Ewing can tell. When he was first brought in, the ends of those bones were visible. They were spiked from front to back. Both hands.’
‘Sir?’
‘Mr Clark just told us he had his left hand on the bundle, and the spear went through the back of it and pinned it to the groun
d. Yet the bones broke the other way, lieutenant. Both hands were pierced through the palm, according to Ewing.’
‘As you intimated, sir, Ewing is not—’
‘Nor, I suggest, is Clark.’
‘Through both palms says what, sir? Abject surrender?’
The governor ran the vane of the quill over his cheek. ‘Mr Clark may have been on the right track with his comment about the Wandandean marking them. But what if they weren’t just marking them for others of the native race?’
Grayling looked at him blankly.
‘What if they were passing their judgment generally? What if they wanted to leave visible signs on these men that they had transgressed—the ritual ground they entered, or some other misdeed we haven’t been told about?’
Grayling hesitated a moment. ‘Sir, there is one other matter that might be relevant here. It’s Charlotte.’
‘Yes.’ The governor’s face brightened. ‘I hear she has improved dramatically.’
‘She has sir. She’s been…she’s been out and about.’
‘Oh?’
‘She went to visit the lascar boy. Without asking me.’
The brows came down over those sea-green eyes. ‘Why?’
‘I’m given to understand it was merely concern for his welfare. But she has made a discovery in the process, sir.’
‘And?’
‘The boy speaks English. He understands English. Perfectly.’
‘Oh.’ The governor considered this for a long moment. ‘He’s been privy to some interesting conversations, then.’
‘Exactly, sir. Their exchange was only very brief, but it holds great import for us. I believe the way through our…reservations might be for me to talk to the boy.’
The governor had steepled his fingers and he frowned into them. ‘No,’ he said from behind the fingers. He picked up a piece of rosin from a corner of the desk blotter; rolled it over in his hand so it glowed amber in the light. ‘The boy hasn’t wanted to speak to authority. He may be under duress. If Mrs Grayling has found a way in, let her try again.’