by Paul Howarth
Tommy stood, leaned on the railing, lost the whisper from his voice.
“What about me, then?”
“What about you?”
“I should give mine too.”
Billy glanced anxiously between Tommy and the approaching voices. “Just . . . wait in the room. I’ll come up when we’re done.”
“Like hell you will,” Tommy muttered, rounding the balcony. Billy glared up at him, then dropped his gaze again, as Noone and Sullivan emerged directly beneath where Tommy now stood: the blade-thin parting in Noone’s black hair; Sullivan’s threadbare scalp. The tail of Noone’s longcoat floated around him as he moved. His boots echoed heavily from the walls. He walked directly to Billy, Sullivan introduced them, Noone didn’t take Billy’s hand. He stood appraising him and, as Tommy continued around the balcony, the inspector’s face peeled into view. His thick mustache, the cheeks sunken to the bone, those pale and glaucous eyes. Noone looked up and Tommy stalled at the top of the stairs. His hand gripped tight on the rail. It was the same sensation as when they’d first met: the feel of him tiptoeing down Tommy’s spine.
“You won’t be needed, Tommy,” Sullivan called. “Go on back to your room.”
“Ah, the little brother,” Noone said. “I suppose you saw all this too?”
Tommy nodded uncertainly. The accent was strange, inflected, from elsewhere. Noone motioned grandly down the stairs. “Well, then, down you come.”
“He’s only a child,” Sullivan protested. “It was Billy that found them first.”
Noone ignored him. All watched Tommy descend, slowly, like a lag to gallows, it felt. He stood beside his brother and Noone weighed the two of them, expressionless, nothing whatsoever in his face, until Sullivan led him beneath the stairs to a door in the corner of the wall, and as they followed the two men Billy leaned close to Tommy and whispered, “Agree with what I tell him.”
“About what?”
“Just do it, alright?”
The room was a cramped wood-paneled parlor with a broad writing desk, orderly bookcase, and various weaponry displayed on the walls. Two stud-leather wingback chairs were angled in front of the desk. The sun streamed through the window and fell directly between them, an imprint of the cross frame shadowed on the rug. Sullivan poured two drinks and handed one to Noone, then inched around the desk and sat down in his chair. Noone eased himself into one of the wingbacks; Billy took the other, leaving Tommy to stand in the shadow on the rug. Noone crossed his legs and sipped his drink.
“Right then,” Sullivan began, “Billy, d’you want to—”
Noone raised a hand for silence. They waited while he swallowed and positioned his glass on the corner of the desk. “Let’s begin with the wife—she was in the bedroom, I assume?”
All three frowned at him. Hesitantly Billy said, “Yessir.”
“Was she raped?”
Tommy reeled like he’d been hit. Billy stared horrified at Noone.
Sullivan said, “Christ, Edmund, that’s their mother. Both were dead when they got there—how in hell would they know that?”
“Well, how was she lying? What did they see?”
He alternated between Billy and Tommy like he’d just inquired as to the time.
“She was on the floor,” Billy said finally. “Her skirts were down.”
“A pity. What about the young girl?”
Sullivan threw up his hands. “Hellfire!”
“It would help if she had been. One or preferably both. They usually are. Adds to the public outrage, you see. Assists with your cause.”
“No,” Billy said firmly. “Neither.”
Noone took another drink. “Well, that might need to change. In the final account, you understand. And what about the father? How was he found?”
“Sitting on the verandah,” Billy said. “Had his carbine with him.”
“Meaning he fought them. Must have hit at least one, I assume?”
Billy glanced doubtfully at Sullivan. Sullivan said, “Ambushed, I reckon.”
“Strange for a man to be ambushed when he was already armed.”
“He was shot in the yard,” Tommy blurted. “There were drag marks going up.”
Noone arched an eyebrow. “Well, well. The boy has a good eye.”
“It doesn’t matter who was where or how any of them was found,” Sullivan said. “What matters is who killed them. Billy—tell him about Joseph and them others you saw.”
“Joseph was our blackboy. He took off a few weeks back. Him and Daddy argued over those two others you put in that red gum by the creek.”
“He was Kurrong,” Sullivan added. “From the same mob.”
“He had a revolver with him, same one we found by the well, empty, all five shots used. The dogs was run through with spears, I reckon, and Ma and Daddy had their heads stoved after, clubs it looked like, them tomahawks they have, the wooden thing with the blade.”
Billy fell silent. It had left him in a burst. He waited stiffly in his chair.
“But not the girl?” Noone asked. “She’s still living, John said?”
“They must have got spooked by the boys coming back,” Sullivan suggested. “A big group ran out the house, didn’t they, Billy? Took off into the bush?”
Billy nodded furiously. Tommy could only stare.
“How many?” Noone asked. “How many blacks in all?”
“Maybe a dozen,” Billy told him. “More than we could have fired on anyway. We only had our muzzle-loaders. We’d have been overrun.”
Noone turned his head slowly toward Tommy. “All this sound right to you?”
He could feel the others glaring. It was all he could do to nod.
“Strange, then, that I found no tracks,” Noone said. “Since there were so many.”
“You’ve been down the house?” Sullivan asked him.
“Of course. Saw the bloodstains and plenty boot marks, but no native tracks.”
“Well, we buried the pair of them yesterday,” Sullivan said. He took a long drink and winced. “Had men with us for digging and carrying, we’ll have trampled over the tracks, I reckon. Plus, don’t forget this Joseph boy was shod. Them with him might have been the boot-wearing kind n’all.”
“Of course,” Noone said equably. “Anything amiss inside the house?”
“Amiss?” Sullivan said. “Apart from them all being shot up?”
Noone looked at Billy. “Anything taken? Disturbed?”
“No. Just them three.”
“And this Joseph—you’re sure it was him? You saw him?”
“Yessir. Plus there was the revolver, like I said.”
“Way I see it,” Sullivan interrupted, “is Joseph took offense to them two in the tree, went back and told his mob, they set about the McBrides instead of coming here, since he knows the family and how little they were armed. Snuck up on them quietly. Ned stood no chance, the poor bastard. Just him and the missus and the girl.”
Noone considered him steadily. Raised his glass, sipped his drink.
“Surely now this’ll persuade you?” Sullivan asked him. “On top of everything I’ve already told you, here these Kurrong have murdered a whole family just about—what more evidence do you need?”
“I saw no evidence, John. I’d be relying on the word of two boys.”
“They’ll swear to it—won’t you?”
Billy nodded eagerly. Tommy kept his head down.
“And remember you’ll be rewarded,” Sullivan added. “Handsomely, since I’d consider it a personal favor, and you already know what those are worth. We ride out, come up with them, you make yourself a rich man. Likely get a promotion after—they’ll think you a hero when word gets around.”
“The terms can be discussed privately. Now is not the time.”
“But you’ll do it? We’re asking for protection here. Isn’t that what the Native Police is bloody for? I can’t do this on my own.”
Noone took a long breath, exhaled.
“I will need
both testimonies. I cannot be seen to act without proof.”
“They’ll give it, whatever you need. When can we leave?”
Noone hesitated, angled his head. “We being?”
“Me, Locke, the two boys here. They deserve to see it done.”
“You and your monkey man are bad enough, John. Really I shouldn’t even allow that. But I certainly can’t be taking two children along.”
“We ain’t children,” Billy said. “I’m sixteen and a half and he’s fifteen almost.”
Noone stared at him. Billy shrank back into his chair.
“I already promised him,” Sullivan explained. “I’ll double the fee if that’ll persuade you. Make it more than worth your while.”
Noone snorted a brief laugh. “Fourfold, I should think. One for each man.”
“Call it three—young Tommy can stay behind.”
“I’m coming,” Tommy said. “I’ve as much right as Billy does.”
A smile flickered on Noone’s lips, a twitch beneath the mustache. He drained his drink, replaced the glass precisely on the corner of the desk, adjusting the base against the angle like he was measuring its fit.
“In fact, I insist,” he said. “It’s both boys or none at all. If you want to save yourself money, John, you can leave the ape at home.” He turned to Tommy and Billy. “You can shoot, I take it? You have weapons, horses?”
“Yessir,” Billy said.
“Horses are in the stables,” Sullivan said. “Got all four of ‘em here.”
“Four horses were left behind?”
“Two,” Billy said. “We had ours with us.”
Sullivan added, “And the others are a broken-down packhorse and a brumby with eyes madder than yours. There’s no bugger would want either of those things.”
“I see,” Noone said. There was a long silence. “Well, we’d best get on with it. We’re not going anywhere until I have both testimonies written and signed.”
* * *
After it was done, their false confessions sworn, Tommy dragged Billy along the back corridor and out into the rear yard. Heat hit them like a wall. Servants hanging clothes and washing crockery paused to watch them pass, as Tommy cajoled his brother through the yard and into a grassy clearing up the hill. To the east were the stables and other storage sheds and, in the foreground, a little fenced-off area with a struggling lawn and two short rows of evenly spaced headstones.
“Well?” Tommy said.
“Alright. I know. But John said we had to, or Noone might not have agreed.”
“Why wouldn’t he?”
“Joseph on his own, even Arthur, John didn’t think—”
“A dozen blacks, you said! Their heads stoved, Billy!”
“John thought—”
“John, John, John . . . have you heard yourself these days?”
“I’m only trying to do what’s right.”
“Which is what?”
“See to it there’s a dispersal, or whatever they call it. See the bastards hang. I was aiming to keep you out of it, Tommy.”
“Horseshit. You want it just you and him. Crawling after him like a whelp.”
Billy threw out his arms. “All I’m doing is seeing us through this, Mary too if she pulls round. There’s expectations on us to put right what’s been done. And then afterward—you ever think about that? What’ll happen to us then? We’re minors, you and me, can’t take on Daddy’s run, can’t do nothing on our own. They’d make us wards if they found us, put us in some lockup or Mission house, no better than the fucking blacks. But if John agrees to help us, gives us work, lets us stay on . . . he’s the best bloody chance we’ve got.”
“I don’t want to stay here.”
“Where else would we go? Where would Mary get well?”
Tommy looked out across the scrub. “I don’t know.”
“Because there is nowhere else. This is it. But if you keep bleating on and causing trouble, he’ll turn all three of us loose.”
“I don’t trust him. How do you even know he wasn’t involved?”
Billy fell very still. He narrowed his eyes. “Involved in what?”
“There was something else between him and Daddy that we didn’t know.”
“We found Joseph’s bloody gun.”
Tommy frowned into the dirt. “What about Noone, then? You trust him?”
“No,” Billy said. “But we need him, John says. Let me worry about Noone.”
“I signed his testimony same as you.”
“I know you did.”
“There wasn’t a true word in it.”
“You were offered to stay here and you wouldn’t. I said to wait in the room.”
“I ain’t staying behind.”
“Well, then.”
“Well.”
They stared at each other in silence. The pair of them had never been great talkers but Tommy had always felt that most of what lay between them didn’t need to be said. He’d known Billy as well as he knew himself; could guess what he was thinking, read his moods. It didn’t feel like that now. He looked at him, at his dark heavy eyes, the eyes of their father if he thought on it too hard, and couldn’t be sure what was in his brother’s mind. He was presuming the worst these days, and felt himself justified.
Billy nodded like they’d resolved something, walked away down the hill.
15
Nobody came to see them off. Nobody stood waving on the verandah; there were no faces in the windowpanes. As he rode away down the track, Tommy looked back at Mary’s bedroom but all he saw was the outline of the drapes. As if she might have been standing there, ghostly in her nightgown, her little hand raised. Dr. Shanklin was coming to care for her, was expected later that day; she’d be recovered by the time they returned, so everyone said. Billy believed every word of it. He saw things as simply as that. Mary would get better, Sullivan would take them in, their grief would soon pass, and justice would be done. Like knocking down tins on a stall.
Sullivan and Locke, Tommy and Billy, four horses passing by the workers’ camp and then out along the same trail the boys and the watchman had taken coming in. The horses were laden with supplies: bags bulging, bedrolls bouncing, weapons and accoutrements hanging from their saddle rings. Pistols, Snider carbines, ammunition belts, bayonets; the silver blade of Locke’s sword slapping against his thigh. Tommy had only his rifle and the folding knife he’d stolen from Song’s, but Sullivan had given Billy his own revolver, a six-shot Colt Navy he wore like a trophy on his belt. He hadn’t told Tommy about it. But then neither had he attempted to hide it from his brother’s view.
They rode through the scrub and between the scattered trees, and when the track forked they followed it northwest. The sun warm and gentle, early morning still, the bush filled with chirruping and chatter and indifferent to the passage of these horses and men. Tommy closed his eyes and listened. Sounds of his country, sounds of his home. A sickness in his stomach at what lay ahead, though in truth he didn’t fully understand. Vague notions of justice, of revenge, and with them a vague and hopeless dread, the fear a lonely child feels after dark, knowing the bunyip is out there, that it’s coming for him, that it cannot be outrun.
Noone was waiting in open ground another half mile to the west. He sat his horse ahead of his troopers and watched them come, small clouds of his pipe smoke drifting on the breeze. His horse flicked its tail and shook away the flies, and behind him the troopers were mounted in a crooked line, four indistinct shapes on horseback, three slouching forward in the saddle and one sitting tall and very straight. Tommy scanned the figures but couldn’t properly make them out. Little details only: two were bigger, one was young, the one sitting upright looked withered to his bones.
“Don’t talk to the niggers,” Sullivan warned. “Treat ’em like you would dogs.”
“Worse than dogs,” Locke added. “Vermin. Fucking snakes.”
They walked their horses over the final stretch and came to a halt in front of Noone, the inspect
or smoking like he hadn’t noticed them arrive. How much did he see? Tommy wondered. How did the world look to him? Once in Bewley there’d been a beggar with eyes no different to Noone’s—children bared themselves in front of his face and he hadn’t ever known. But Noone wasn’t blind. Far from it: he’d picked them out of those Moses bushes from half a mile away.
Tommy watched the troopers furtively under the low brim of his hat, snatching quick little fragments and assembling them into a whole. Four natives, dressed in scruffy, ill-fitting uniforms: white trousers, blue tunics, white hats, the clothing tight or hanging off them, meant for other men. Cartridge belts slung across their chests, the leather faded and worn, every loop full. Martini-Henry rifles stowed in saddle holsters or carried on their shoulders, wooden war clubs dangling from their belts, the smooth-polished blades marked and bloodstained, the stains faded and very old. Scant supplies on their packs: water bags, weaponry, little else besides. A range of ages between them: the one sitting upright was ancient, skeletally thin, his hair receding from his forehead and half-moon cheeks hollowed and drawn; the youngest too was slightly built, sinew and bone, his face bat-like in the protrusion of the jaw, the high and heavy brow. He was smiling. A fixed and absent grin. As if instructed to make sure he bared his teeth full.
The other two troopers were similar in both age and build. Big men, twenties, thirties maybe, broad in the shoulders and full in the chest. A lazy kind of violence in the way they leaned: one was bearded and dead-eyed, a stone-still stare at the ground; the other was smoking a rolled paper cigarette pinched between thick fingers, nostrils flaring as he exhaled. Tommy had never seen a durry-smoking native before, but he did it as expertly as any white, with one eye half-closed in a squint against the smoke, Tommy assumed, until he noticed the knot of scar tissue webbing the brow and eyelid, gumming the eye like drippings of candle wax.
And supposedly they were policemen. Supposedly they were safe.
“Well?” Sullivan asked. “What’s the holdup? What we waiting for still?”
Noone withdrew the pipestem from his mouth and exhaled.
“We’re waiting for you, John. Been waiting a long time. This is not dawn.”
“Aye, well, there was a lot to get done before we left.”