by Tom Keneally
‘They would never believe you. I am known for my efficiency, my organisation.’
‘Not a bit of it. Very few on the lower rungs of society have cause to think much of either you or your brother. I will be believed, because they’ll want to believe me. By all means, let’s test it out.’ Hannah lifted a fist to rap on the door behind her shoulder. ‘Guards!’ she yelled.
Both women were still and silent for a moment.
‘No one coming,’ said Hannah. ‘No thundering feet dashing down to rescue you. And in truth, you don’t need rescuing. I’m not here to harm you – I’m here to talk.’
‘I find myself not in the mood for conversation,’ said Henrietta.
‘Yes, well, I found myself not in the mood to be locked in a cellar and threatened with a gun, but none of us have what we want all the time, do we?’
Henrietta opened the small drawer in her desk – it had been too much to hope that she’d left her mother-of-pearl pistol behind. She pointed it at Hannah. Suddenly the licking fear was back; it tried to crawl up from Hannah’s stomach and squeeze her mind until she could no longer think. She rammed it down, hoping it would stay there, and took a shuddering breath. ‘Probably not even loaded,’ she said, managing to keep her voice from shaking. ‘Your brother is widely acknowledged to be one of the best marksmen in Australia, and I know you’ve done your share of shooting too – enough to understand the folly of keeping a loaded gun in a desk drawer where seas can get rough. But while an accidental shot would be hard to explain, it would be even harder to account for a dead woman bleeding all over your nice cabin. And I told you, I mean no harm.’
‘You break into my cabin yet mean no harm?’
‘On the contrary, I come with a gift.’ Hannah inhaled, hoping Monsarrat would forgive her. It just did not seem as crucial for the letters to reach London as it had yesterday. Either things would be resolved to the point where nobody would need the endorsement of The Times of London to believe it, or the Duchamps would prevail, in which case Hannah would likely end up dead. ‘I will give you the location of that packet of letters you and your brother are so desperately seeking.’
‘They were never on a ship,’ said Henrietta. ‘We would have found them.’
‘Did you search every sailor and make them turn out their pockets?’
Henrietta slowly put down the gun. ‘Very well, then, where are they?’
‘First, we talk. Let’s start with why you did what you did. Why you felt you had the right.’
Henrietta laughed. ‘That’s it? You’ve gone to all this trouble because you want to explore my motivations? I’m happy to enlighten you on that score, Mrs Mulrooney – you need only have asked.’
‘I am asking now.’
‘The last two governors were good men, so everyone says. I disagree. They exercised lax discipline in the hope of redeeming those who are beyond redemption. Is it any wonder soldiers were committing crimes because they believed they were better off as convicts?’
‘Until the current governor sent one of them to the grave,’ Hannah said.
‘Exactly! An example had to be made. Many examples before people learn.’
‘And if a young man dies after being forced to work in the blazing sun in impossibly heavy chains – a young man who voluntarily left his country to serve its people out here – that’s a price worth paying?’
‘Regrettably, sacrifices must be made.’
‘So the value of a life is determined by social status, the ability to contribute?’
Henrietta sighed. ‘India was a gold mine for people like us,’ she said. ‘The daughters of officers who had been stationed there would swan around at home, exotic silks and the money to pay for a seamstress. Me, well, let’s just say blue muslin can get tiresome. Especially when it draws sneers from idiot girls who can have a different dress every day.’
‘Well, I think I’ve yet to see you in the same outfit.’
‘Oh yes, we are on our way. If I’d left it to Eddie, he would have increased our fortunes by finding a rich man for me to marry. But I will not be sold off, especially not to a man who has far less wit than I do. Those ones who simper after me at garden parties.’
‘So you have made your own way,’ Hannah said.
‘Shipping, sealing, skins, tea. Farming, of course. If we capture this ground, people will be paying me court, bringing me petitions.’
Henrietta lifted her chin, lengthened her neck, as though she was already considering the request of a petitioner.
‘At the cost of a life,’ said Hannah.
‘It’s easy to go a bit soft in your later years, I know. Nothing to be ashamed of – you’re not the first woman I’ve met who has no appetite for the task of building a colony and claiming one’s place among its leaders. But someone needs to, Mrs Mulrooney. Someone needs to recognise that the world runs more smoothly when the right people are in charge. If you are in a coach, would you want a skilled coachman or someone who’s just having a turn in the name of fairness? Some people are simply superior to others, and they should have the reins. It’s better for everyone, otherwise the whole thing goes off the road and we end up in a ditch.’
‘Ah. So it’s better for the convicts, and the underclass, to have you sitting in Government House and ordering your dresses from London.’
‘It is. And enough insolence about the dresses, thank you. You wouldn’t begrudge a soldier his uniform. As for the convicts, have you read Dr Merrick’s papers? I have. He says they are born deficient. That they need their betters to guide them, to feed them, and to make sure buildings are built and farms are farmed.’
And who’s building the buildings and farming the farms?
‘So you never associate with convicts or former convicts,’ Hannah said.
‘Not if I can avoid it. Your Monsarrat, I had to make an exception for him. Would have been rude not to. Politeness, Mrs Mulrooney, sets us apart from them. He seems to have more wit than most.’
‘Oh, he does.’ Hannah silently prayed that the present tense was correct. ‘He’s a highly intelligent man. No one is born deficient, Miss Duchamp.’
‘Leading such a sheltered life, you wouldn’t have had much experience with convicts, so how could you know? For all that you insist on dressing up as a servant from time to time.’ Henrietta ran her eyes up and down Hannah’s working clothes.
Here we go, thought Hannah. For better or worse.
‘How could I know about convicts?’ she said. ‘I used to be one. I committed my crime to prevent the death of my child, and I would do it again tomorrow.’
Henrietta gaped at her. ‘I should have suspected. I knew there was something dreadfully common about you.’
‘And yet, I am not less than human. I was not born with a lust for theft – I’ve taken nothing that is not mine since I arrived here twenty years ago. I have committed fewer crimes than you have, and less serious ones.’
Henrietta smiled, shook her head and reached for the pistol.
‘None of this changes anything, Miss Duchamp,’ said Hannah. ‘The presence of a hole in me would be very difficult to explain away.’
‘Not if the ball is at the bottom of the harbour, along with the rest of you,’ Henrietta said. ‘We are on a boat, yes? You couldn’t have planned it better for me, so I thank you.’ She smiled, raised the pistol and fired.
Chapter 28
Monsarrat was grateful to be inside the coach for this journey. Had things gone differently, he wouldn’t have been surprised if Duchamp had dragged him along behind it.
Jardine had been denied admittance, as had Donnelly and Bancroft. ‘Administrative matters, I’m afraid, gentlemen,’ Eveleigh said. ‘There are plenty of horses – take your pick.’
‘You have more advice for me, then, on how to report the wheat yield?’ Duchamp asked as they bounced along past dark gaps between looming white trees. ‘Or are you just interfering for amusement this time?’
‘I assure you I wouldn’t have found it at a
ll amusing had I lost my best clerk. It would be very tiresome to train someone else, and in the meantime I would have had to do all the work myself. Imagine if Jardine was suddenly taken from you – most inconvenient.’
Duchamp inclined his head in acknowledgement. Monsarrat wasn’t surprised that Duchamp was more than happy to discuss him as though he were a bale of cloth at a market. That Eveleigh seemed willing to do likewise was more of a concern. Monsarrat hopefully ascribed his superior’s seeming indifference to the need to lull Duchamp into thinking he had a sympathetic ear.
Any hopes Duchamp might have had of sympathy, though, were shattered in the next instant.
‘I don’t find this grubby little conspiracy of yours particularly amusing either,’ Eveleigh said.
‘Oh? You would rather have let Hallward destroy the authority we need to govern?’
‘As far as authority goes, I’ve always felt it incumbent on us to earn it. By behaving appropriately. By leading. By not murdering those we govern.’
‘I did no such thing,’ said Duchamp. ‘But the only reason you don’t see Hallward as a problem is that he is not your problem. He was whining in print every day about land grants and the treatment of convicts, especially those who used to be soldiers. You, Mr Eveleigh, were not one of his favourite targets – I was. Puts rather a different complexion on things.’
Monsarrat’s shadow – it, too, responded to the idea of impunity when it came to punishing one’s tormentors, although it did draw the line at murder.
‘I was on the receiving end of the occasional barb, when Hallward bothered to turn his eyes westward,’ said Eveleigh. ‘But you’re right, he did not pillory me about land grants, almost certainly because I haven’t been given any.’
Duchamp leaned forward. ‘That can change, Eveleigh. Lovely farmland out around Rose Hill, I understand.’
Eveleigh clapped his hands and rubbed them together, and for a second Monsarrat feared he had been misjudging the man, mistaking practicality for moral rigour.
He needn’t have worried.
‘Oh, how fascinating. A bribe!’ Eveleigh said. ‘I fear I must decline, though.’
‘I am not bribing you, Eveleigh. I haven’t done anything wrong to make such an action necessary. I simply seek to elevate your station – however, if you have no wish to be elevated, it’s probably all for the best.’
‘Done nothing wrong? I would be most grateful if you could explain to me how you came to that conclusion.’
‘You’re not in the governor’s confidence,’ said Duchamp, ‘so you might not be aware of the plans to license newspapers. All in response to Hallward, of course. Mobbs is a solid fellow, but the Flyer would have been hit as well – can’t apply it to one and not another. They both would have needed government permission to operate. The licence would be withheld if we felt that a particular paper was being regularly used to peddle sedition.’
‘And there’s a matter of tax, I understand,’ said Eveleigh.
‘Yes, four pence.’
‘No one is going to spend so much on a newspaper, are they?’ said Eveleigh. ‘Even if it’s your friend’s.’
‘They won’t have to now, that’s the point. The governor does not have to resort to regulation now that the only newspaper in Sydney is run by a responsible man, a fellow who understands what a misplaced word can unleash. I might remind you that my attempts to discourage Mr Hallward did not at any time amount to a breach of the law.’
‘Perhaps not,’ said Eveleigh. ‘Oh, except the murder. That, I am fairly certain, could be described as a breach of the law.’
‘A murder I had nothing to do with.’
Monsarrat had been holding his tongue, knowing that Eveleigh liked to talk uninterrupted. He had been doing a first-rate job of silently chipping away at Duchamp. But there hadn’t yet been time for Monsarrat to tell Eveleigh everything he knew. And Duchamp liked drama – an unexpected interjection would land between them far more devastatingly than one that had been discussed in whispers beforehand.
‘What did you think Mobbs would do with the pistol you gave him?’ Monsarrat asked.
Duchamp glared at him, then turned to Eveleigh. ‘For God’s sake, keep your man under control. His ramblings are interfering with our business.’
‘Yes, he does ramble. But sometimes he rambles to interesting places. I would like to see where he is bound right now.’
Monsarrat briefly bowed his head to Eveleigh, before turning to Duchamp and pointedly failing to repeat the gesture. ‘You gave the pistol you fired at Hallward during your duel to Mobbs so he could help it complete its task.’
‘I did no such thing.’
‘Odd, then, that the ball in Hallward’s forehead came from a pistol. Likely a duelling pistol. And you are in possession of some of the very few scratch-rifled pistols in the colony. The only ones capable of a hit at that range.’
‘How did you … Dr Merrick would never –’
‘Merrick didn’t,’ said Monsarrat. ‘But, of course, he is not the only person with access to the effects of the deceased.’
‘Be careful, Mr Monsarrat,’ said Duchamp. ‘I could have you charged for obstructing the investigation. If that’s not already an offence, I’ll make sure it becomes one.’
‘Obstructing the investigation? Obstructing myself?’
Unexpectedly, the ridiculousness of the situation enfolded Monsarrat, and he began to laugh. One of the first genuine laughs he had ever emitted in Sydney. He looked across at Eveleigh, who was keeping a straight face.
‘The only obstruction, Colonel,’ Monsarrat said, ‘was from you. Oh, and that helpful piece Mobbs wrote about my criminal past, his analysis of my character.’
‘And yet,’ said Eveleigh, ‘despite such a vicious attack from a member of the press, Monsarrat somehow refrained from entering into a conspiracy to kill the journalist. So you see, it can be done.’
He is enjoying this, thought Monsarrat. Ralph Eveleigh, who hoards smiles as though they were money, is enjoying himself.
Duchamp, though, clearly was not. ‘Who do you think the governor will believe? A felon twice over, and the man who thought such a person was an appropriate representative of the governor – or someone he has been under fire with?’
Eveleigh leaned forward. ‘Colonel, I feel I can say without any doubt that the governor will believe what it suits him to believe. Of course, if it also suits us, what is the harm?’
‘You and I have rather different objectives, Eveleigh,’ said Duchamp.
‘Do we? I wonder. Let’s set those objectives out, shall we? See if there’s any area where they, if you’ll excuse me, bleed together.’
Hannah’s life was saved by the British guns that had been fired at her more than a quarter of a century ago. She had practised with her fiancé Colm before the old uprising. Ducking, running. Sensing danger and dropping before it could be carried to them on a musket ball. They didn’t dive to the ground; it was quicker, Colm had told her, just to let things go, let all the intention out of your muscles so that they no longer allowed you to remain upright. If you simply crumpled, you dropped out of sight for an instant – and sometimes an instant was all you needed.
With a gun again aimed at her, and no child in need of protection, Hannah dropped.
She felt the air disturbed by the shot as it whizzed over her head, the vibration of the door as its timber splintered.
And on the other side of it she heard the yelp, the thud.
She looked up. Henrietta was staring at her pistol with a frown, as though wondering why it had failed to hit Hannah.
The young lady and the pistol could have all the time they wanted together, thought Hannah. On the other side of the door, however, it was likely someone was badly hurt. She had to pull it a few times to get it open, as the shock of the impact had warped it.
Sitting with his back against the bulkhead was a young sailor. He wore the sparse whiskers of the newly grown. He was wide-eyed, sweating and panting, and blo
od was pouring from a wound in his shoulder.
Hannah kneeled next to him. ‘Settle down now, a buachaill, there’s a boy. I am looking after you now. You’re going to keep your eyes open, is what you’re going to do, and keep talking to me. And we will fetch the ship’s surgeon, and you’ll be back on the rigging before you know it. You look like a tough one – not going to let yourself be dispatched by a shoulder wound, I’m sure. What’s your name?’
‘Jack,’ the boy whispered.
‘Jack, my boy, you’re going to have a wonderful story to tell those old sods in the galley tonight. Bet half of them haven’t been shot, no matter what they tell you. And right now my friend is going to …’ She turned around. Henrietta was standing in the doorway, the pistol still at her side. ‘Have you a scarf? A shawl?’
Henrietta kept staring.
Hannah stood, took her by the shoulders and hissed in her ear. ‘For God’s sake, do you want this boy’s murder on your soul?’
Henrietta darted back into her cabin, fetched a shawl and handed it to Hannah.
‘Now go fetch the surgeon,’ Hannah said.
‘What are we … What are you going to say?’ Henrietta asked.
‘Depends on whether you bring the surgeon back in time. Off with you!’
It was probably the first command Henrietta had ever obeyed, particularly from a social inferior. She lifted her skirts and ran up the corridor.
Hannah crumpled the shawl and pressed it against the wound. ‘Now, Jack, do you have a sweetheart? Handsome lad like you, you must do. You don’t seem like the kind of sailor who goes to whorehouses. I want you to tell me about the colour of her eyes …’