Shepherd

by Catherine Jinks

  ‘Aye. I’ll tend to her.’ Rowdy hesitates. ‘Bar the door,’ he says again. ‘Tom? You’ve no gun. Bar the door.’

  Yes, I heard. Bar the door. Gyp’s breathing has changed. Her eyelids flutter. I squeeze a trickle of water into her mouth and tuck my jacket under her head. Please God, save her. Please God, don’t let her die.

  Lady Jane is rattling her cage. She must need tending as well, after two days without food or water or room to move. It could have been worse, though: I’ll wager someone was going to wring her neck and roast her.

  I have to let her out. But first I have to find a blanket.

  There are blankets in the hut behind the kitchen—through the back door, past the hen-house, between ranks of young fruit trees. The hut hasn’t changed. No one has mended the hole in the roof or the creaky board on the threshold. No one has whitewashed the grey slab walls. My old bed’s still in one corner. My old mattress. My old blanket. Whoever’s been using them recently must stink like a goat.

  A full chamber-pot sits under Charlie’s bed, but there’s no sign of Charlie or Jim or the new hand. Charlie’s keepsakes are strewn about like seedpods under a tree. He never could keep a tidy berth. His woomerang was captured on Mr Barrett’s first raid, which Charlie called ‘beating the coverts’. As far as I can tell, Mr Barrett’s party must have beat more than coverts, for they brought back many things: shells, nets, spears, spear-throwers. Charlie often complained that Mr Barrett hadn’t let ’em bring back women.

  Carver was part of that raid: he brought back a human ear.

  I was at the farm, waiting, when Mr Barrett returned from his second raid. His notion was that if he confiscated the blacks’ weapons, they were less likely to threaten us. I could have told him that they wouldn’t be able to feed themselves either, but it hardly needed saying. Perhaps that was also his intention. At any rate, Mr Barrett burned a lot of spears in the farmyard that day. But Charlie kept the wooden dish he’d brought back with him.

  Looking around, I can see that there must have been another raid since I left, because a stone axe is hanging on the wall. Has Mr Barrett been having trouble with the blacks? They certainly haven’t been bothering us. Sometimes I wonder if Mr Barrett organises a raid whenever he feels out of sorts. My father used to beat me when he was angry with the world; there was nothing fair or reasoned about his punishments.

  Of course, Mr Barrett had his reasons for the raids: stolen sheep the first time, a neighbour’s murdered shepherd the next. But I wonder if he’s developed a taste for such pursuits.

  Back out of the hut again, with the blanket tucked under my good arm, I spot Rowdy leading Woodbine towards the stables. I won’t go looking for bandages—I don’t want to leave Gyp a second time. Why not cut up another dishcloth? That’s what I’ll do. They can’t flog me for cutting up a dishcloth.

  ‘Here, Gyp. Here, girl. This’ll keep you warm.’ There’s kindling in the basket by the kitchen hearth, so I can easily lay a fire. I don’t care if Carver sees the smoke. It’s Gyp I care about.

  Would a dose of rum dull her pain?

  She wheezes as I tuck the blanket around her. Her eyes open a crack. What about laudanum? Mr Barrett has laudanum. He keeps it in his bedroom; I saw him go and fetch it once when George Trumble broke his arm.

  Should I go and fetch it?

  ‘Does it hurt too much?’ I ask Gyp. Perhaps I should give her the laudanum. She may need it when I bandage her wound. But I don’t know what the dose should be—not for a dog. You can kill someone with laudanum.

  I stroke her head lightly. She tries to lick my hand; stiffens; gasps.

  ‘Gyp?’

  Her eyes widen. Her limbs tremble and her back arches.

  ‘Gyp!’

  Her body goes limp.

  No. Oh, God.

  She’s left me.

  I didn’t watch my mother die. I wasn’t allowed to. My father wanted to spare me the sight of her blood—or so he claimed. Perhaps I slipped his mind.

  I saw her later, when her face was clean, her hair was combed and her hands were crossed on her breast. She’d never looked so pale. Someone had tied a strip of cloth under her chin to keep her mouth shut. Someone had closed her eyes. She wasn’t dressed in her finest because her finest had been sold. It was a bad time, then. The brass bed she prized was the only piece of furniture in the room.

  We were living above the Mackerel’s Eye in Ixworth High Street. The midwife got drunk downstairs afterwards. So did my father.

  I didn’t kiss my mother goodbye, because she wasn’t there. I could see that well enough. Why say goodbye when she couldn’t smile back?

  I wish I could have said goodbye. I wish I’d been allowed in the room.

  If she had anything to tell me before she breathed her last, I never heard it.

  9

  AFTER MY mother died I was all alone. It’s the same now.

  Why would God take Gyp and leave Carver?

  Her fur is wet where I’ve been crying into it.

  I’ve no dog.

  What am I going to do?

  ‘Tom!’

  Rowdy’s knocking.

  ‘Tom!’ He knocks again. There’s a creak of hinges. ‘Chrissake, I told ye to bar this door!’ His footsteps sound uneven, as if he’s limping. His voice cracks. ‘I—I found the others,’ he says brokenly. ‘They’re in the meat-house. They…’

  He trails off. More footsteps. He’s standing near me; the air shifts.

  I don’t look up.

  ‘Ah, no,’ he murmurs. His knees crack as he squats down. His gun hits the floor. ‘I’m sorry, lad. I’m so sorry. She was a good dog.’

  She was more than good. She was the best. The best dog there ever was.

  She’s still warm. With my face buried in her coat and my eyes shut I can pretend she’s still with me.

  Oh, God. Oh, God.

  ‘Listen, Tom, I know how ye feel,’ Rowdy continues, ‘but we can’t sit here like this. Even with the horse it’ll take us all o’ three days to reach town and…Tom?’

  Go away. I don’t care. Leave me alone.

  He lays a gentle hand on my shoulder. ‘‘Tis a sore loss, indeed, but Tom—God help us—there are six slaughtered folk out in the meat-house. Six. Dumped in a pile like…’ His voice wobbles, and he stops. I can hear him gulping down air like a drowning man. ‘Jaysus,’ he whispers. ‘God help us all.’

  He rises and goes to the sink. Water splashes. He retches and coughs, sniffs, sighs.

  ‘If we don’t lay a plan, we’re lost,’ he says hoarsely, coming back to crouch beside me again. ‘Carver will find us. He’ll find us and he’ll kill us.’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘What?’ He can’t hear me. Not through Gyp’s fur. ‘What did ye say?’

  ‘I don’t care!’ Sitting bolt upright, I shout at him. ‘I don’t care! I don’t care what happens to me!’

  ‘Well, I care!’ He grabs both of my arms and gives me a shake. ‘I care what happens to ye.’

  ‘You don’t.’ My voice breaks on a sob. ‘Why should you?’

  ‘Because we’re friends. Eh? Friends and allies.’ He can talk very quickly when he wants to; the words flow out, soft and tuneful like a song. He has a fine voice. I daresay he needed a fine voice to pass fake coins in public bars. ‘I’m all ye have now, and you’re all I have,’ he says. ‘But we’ll survive this together. D’ye hear?’

  Survive. How am I going to survive? Gyp is dead.

  ‘Now, I know you’re not fond o’ folk,’ he continues. ‘That’s clear enough, and I don’t doubt you’ve got yer reasons. You’d trust a beast above a man—well, I’d not fault ye on that, or on grievin’ the friend who loved ye.’

  She loved me. She did. I wipe away the tears as they trickle down my cheeks.

  ‘But what would Gyp say if we were to perish?’ Rowdy pushes my chin up with iron fingers and looks me straight in the eye. ‘She’d not be happy. She would have given her own life to save yours, would she not
?’

  She did. She gave her life.

  ‘So why would ye throw it away?’ Rowdy demands. ‘Why would ye throw away somethin’ that Gyp valued above her own life, as if it means nothin’? D’ye think she’d thank ye for it?’

  No. She wouldn’t.

  ‘Seems to me ye should honour her by staying alive,’ Rowdy murmurs. He releases my chin and puts his hand on my head. I used to do the same with Gyp, to calm her. ‘Seems to me there’s other beasts need yer help. What about the horse? I’ve done me best with her, but…’

  Woodbine. Has he dried her off? Has he put a blanket on her?

  ‘We have to act, Tom,’ Rowdy insists. ‘And we have to do it before Carver gets here.’

  When I nod, his hand drops from my head. I have to swallow and clear my throat before I can speak.

  ‘I’m going to kill Dan Carver.’

  ‘Aye, but we’ll need guns to do that,’ Rowdy observes. ‘Where does Mr Barrett keep his guns?’

  What? ‘Don’t you know?’

  Everyone used to know where Mr Barrett kept his guns. He hung ’em over the mantels in his parlour and dining room. Each time a black passed by, or a dog scared a snake, or a mounted man rode up to the front door, Mr Barrett would dash inside and fetch one of his muskets. Every time he wanted to hunt ducks, or kill a maimed sheep, or raid a blacks’ campsite, he would sit on the front veranda, cleaning and polishing one gun or the other.

  Didn’t Rowdy ever see him do it?

  ‘Sure, and I wasn’t here more ’n two days before Mr Barrett sent me off to the hut,’ he explains quickly, with a crooked smile. ‘How long were ye here yerself?’

  ‘Six months.’

  ‘Well, there ye are, then.’ Rowdy snatches up the carbine and surges to his feet. ‘So where are the guns?’

  I don’t understand. ‘With Carver,’ I say, peering up at Rowdy. Can he really be that stupid?

  Carver stole Mr Barrett’s horses. Why would he have left Mr Barrett’s guns behind?

  Rowdy’s shoulders sag a little. His face falls as the truth hits him.

  He holds up the carbine. ‘Is this Barrett’s?’ he asks.

  I shrug. No one ever gave me a gun while I was working on the farm. If there was ever a gun on offer, George Trumble always got to it first. Though Mr Barrett was as jealous of his weapons as he was proud, he would occasionally take Trumble out with him to shoot wild dogs or game. Or blacks, of course.

  I don’t think Charlie or Jim ever got their hands on a firearm. Mr Barrett didn’t trust ’em enough.

  ‘I don’t know Mr Barrett’s guns,’ I have to admit. The only one I’d recognise at a glance is the shepherds’ musket, because Mr Barrett gave me leave to use that.

  Carver has it now.

  ‘In that case we should search the whole farm,’ says Rowdy. ‘There’s no tellin’ what we might find in the way o’ weapons.’ And he extends a hand to help me up.

  Oh, no. I’m not leaving Gyp. ‘I have to bury my dog first.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I’m going to bury my dog.’ With a headstone. And flowers. And a prayer.

  ‘Of course ye are.’ Rowdy’s voice softens again. ‘She deserves a Christian burial—just as soon as we arm ourselves. She wouldn’t want ye undefended, Tom. What if Carver arrives in the middle o’ the funeral?’

  Rowdy’s right. If Carver comes, he’ll desecrate the grave. I have to protect it.

  ‘Mr Barrett kept a gun in his parlour. And another in his dining room,’ I explain, climbing to my feet. ‘But if Carver took ’em there are other things we can use.’

  Better things. Crueller things.

  I’m going to kill Dan Carver.

  My father carved the board on my mother’s grave because he couldn’t afford a headstone. He was so drunk he botched the job; folk were buying him liquor for nearly two solid days before she was buried. During that time Jack and I slept on the landing outside the room where she lay—because the room was our home, then. We didn’t move to my grandmother’s cottage till the shame of our bereft condition forced her hand.

  She was a mean and grudging soul who hated my father almost as much as she hated his two sons, so I didn’t see him for the next few months. But then, without warning, she followed her daughter into the grave. The damp in that house did for her in the end—and since the landlord was one of my father’s customers, we were allowed to stay. No one but my father would have tolerated such a rundown old hovel.

  We lived in the kitchen because the other rooms were full of holes. It amazes me that we didn’t die of consumption, like Uncle John. There was no privy to speak of so we dumped our soil into the neighbour’s privy secretly, at night.

  My mother was buried in the village churchyard next to my sister. The last time I paid ’em a visit, the board was already splitting. By that time Jack was dead and my father in gaol, and I was no longer living in my grandmother’s house because the landlord, a local miller, had decided to knock it down and use the stone to repair his mill. Instead I was back at the beer shop, where I was sleeping in a corner of the stables. But I took some comfort from knowing that my mother had once slept nearby. And sometimes I would spend warm nights by her grave, to keep her company.

  I was very young then.

  My father wasn’t buried. After the hanging, he was sold to a doctor and cut up like a side of beef. I’m glad he’s not lying beside my mother. She never had a moment’s peace from him when she was alive. Perhaps she’s at peace now.

  When I kill Dan Carver I’m not going to give him a Christian burial. I’ll cut him up the way the doctors cut up my father.

  Then I’ll feed him to the wild dogs.

  There are four rooms in Mr Barrett’s house. His bedroom is at the rear, to your left as you enter the back door. I’ve never been inside this room before; it surprises me. The bed is smaller and lower than I expected. The floorboards are bare. The pictures hanging on the walls have been cut out of books. They’re mostly pictures of great houses in England—houses that look like Elveden Hall, near Ixworth. My father used to say that such houses meant nothing but trouble for the likes of us.

  The only really handsome thing in the room is a big cedar campaign chest with brass handles.

  ‘Ah,’ says Rowdy, who’s peering over my shoulder. He brushes past me, heading straight for the chest.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I ask. ‘The guns won’t be in there.’

  ‘I know that.’ Rowdy tosses me the carbine with one hand as he yanks open a drawer with the other. ‘Keep lookin’. I’ll be along presently.’

  He pokes around and drags out a white muslin shirt.

  ‘You’re not taking that?’ I say, as he pulls it over his head.

  ‘I’m cold,’ he replies, his voice muffled by its folds.

  ‘But that’s larceny!’ I was lagged for less. ‘They’ll send you to Port Arthur.’

  ‘I don’t think Mr Barrett will miss this shirt,’ he says. His head is through the collar, now, and all at once he looks sick—pale—as if he’s about to vomit. He swallows hard, then adds, ‘The only other shirts I’ve seen here…no Christian soul would ask me to wear ’em.’

  I know what he’s talking about. I heard the flies buzzing around the cool-room as we were walking from the kitchen to the house. They sounded like a swarm of angry bees.

  Rowdy wouldn’t discuss what was in that cool-room. ‘Six people,’ was all he’d say. ‘I counted heads.’

  I wonder where the rest of the dogs are. Pray God some of ’em survived—unlike Gyp. Gyp’s gone. I’ll never see her again.

  The pain of it hits me in the gut and I’m suddenly bent double.

  ‘Come on.’ Rowdy picks up the carbine on his way out of Mr Barrett’s bedroom. Across the hall, the second bedroom is even plainer than the first. It contains only an iron bedstead and a brass-bound sea-chest. When Rowdy checks inside, the chest is full of blankets.

  ‘Nothin’.’ He lets the lid crash down.

  Back
in the hallway, Nellie the speckled hen squawks and flutters as we drive her ahead of us. The first door we reach opens into the dining room. I’ve never been in this room, either. It reminds me a little of the courtroom at Bury, on account of all the polished wood. There’s a big table, just like the one where the lawyers sat, and a sideboard carved like the magistrates’ box, and a clock, and a hanging lamp. There’s even an oil painting on the wall, though this one doesn’t show a robed man in a wig. This one is a portrait of a lady who’s probably Mrs Barrett.

  Looking at it now, I wonder why her husband left her in England. Then I think: who would want to bring such a beautiful, delicate lady out here?

  ‘Dammit.’ Rowdy points at the empty brackets above the sideboard, which are perfectly spaced for a Brown Bess musket. Beneath them, the drawers of the sideboard have been pulled out and its doors hang open.

  ‘Wait,’ I say, as Rowdy turns on his heel. A gleaming wooden box on top of the sideboard might be a cutlery canteen—or it might be something else. ‘Did Carver not have a duelling pistol with him?’

  ‘He did.’ Rowdy’s whole face brightens. ‘And they generally come in pairs.’

  He beats me to the box by a nose, but when he flings open the lid we’re confronted by a few battered pieces of monogrammed silver.

  ‘Where would a wise man put a pistol so that Carver couldn’t find it?’ Rowdy muses aloud. He stoops to peer at a stack of white table linen, as if hoping to find an arsenal hidden behind it.

  I’m already on my way across the hall to the parlour. I used to report to this room on occasion: Mr Barrett would sometimes call me in when he was drunk. He once had me salute the Queen there. Another time, he told me that I was a good lad, not loose-lipped like some, and that the business of the farm was our business, because we were all of us Englishmen, with a God-given right to defend our hearth and home. He insisted that the Queen, God protect her, would have no quarrel with those of her subjects who sought to tame a wilderness. In such a savage place, he said, even a gentleman must sometimes be savage.