Tarrapaldi

by Wayne T Mathews

  “You can pack your kit and report back here in an hour. I’ll have your orders dictated by then. You can take your skinny little carcass out into the wilderness, until such time as I see fit to bring you back.”

  The Lieutenant stiffened to attention while holding his right arm in its sling, tight against his chest. After a second of indecision, he threw a left-handed salute and departed the office.

  “I beg pardon, Miss Wordsworth,” the maid said by way of interrupting the music being practiced by the slender young woman at the piano. “Lieutenant Caruthers is at the door to see you.”

  “Show him in, Bridget. And ask Cook to prepare a tea tray, if you would, please.”

  Bridget gave a bobbing curtsy before closing the parlor door. Seconds later, she reopened the door, ushering the Lieutenant into the sunlit room.

  “This is an unexpected pleasure, Clive,” Claire Wordsworth said, leaving the piano to greet her visitor. “Have you met Mrs. Ferdanez?” Claire waved her hand to indicate the middle aged, frumpy woman sitting in the window box of the bay windows. “She’s been telling me the stories from the servant’s quarters, about the chase you led, and the battle you had. All while teaching me to play Beethoven’s Sonnets. But tell us. What brings you to Rose Bay?”

  “I believe we’ve met before, Mrs. Ferdanez.” Caruthers nodded to the woman whose unsmiling eyes appeared to be looking into his soul, before he turned back to Claire. “I’ve come to tell you I’ve been ordered out to Bathurst. I’m to accompany the supply wagons that are leaving this afternoon.”

  Claire frowned. “How long will you be gone?”

  “Until Major Morris decides to bring me back.”

  “The beast,” Claire said. “First he sends Dennis out there, and now you. He seems determined to have me attend the Governor’s ball unescorted.”

  “Harrington will be returning to Sydney once I’ve arrived to relieve him,” the Lieutenant said before clearing his throat with a slight cough. “Which brings me to the next reason for today’s visit. I had intended, at the ball, to ask you to marry me. Circumstances leave me no choice, Claire, and I have so little time.” Caruthers dropped to his knee, ignoring the woman in the window box who covered a vengeful smile with her hand. “Will you marry me?”

  “Oh, Clive,” Claire said, looking quickly to Mrs. Ferdanez, then back to the kneeling man. “You mustn’t. We’re friends. But I couldn’t possibly consider marrying you. Dennis would be devastated.”

  “Harrington isn’t the man for you, Claire.” Caruthers snatched her hand into his. “He’s not been to a proper school. And his mother was a convict.”

  “What our mothers were has no bearing on what we are today, Lieutenant Caruthers. As for the question of schools. Dennis and I had exactly the same tutors,” Claire said, “I’ll have you know that what they taught us was at least as comprehensive, and in many cases, far exceeded what is being taught in England.”

  “Claire, please. Be serious,” Caruthers said. “Colonial tutors are fine for young ladies. But there’s no future in the Empire for the likes of Dennis Harrington. He’s just a currency child who happens to have a wealthy father. He has no future.”

  “Dennis has a commission in the King’s army, the same as you.”

  “It’s not the same, Claire. I earned my commission at Sandhurst.”

  “You were granted your commission, Lieutenant. As a favor to your uncle as I understand it. Dennis’s was bought and paid for. He may not have the twaddle being taught at Sandhurst. But he knows more about the bush, and the people who live here, than you’ll ever know.”

  “And what use will that be to him when he goes home?” Caruthers asked.

  “This is home to Dennis and me. He hasn’t been to England, but I have. I’ll take Port Jackson, and even the Hawkesbury,” Claire said, “over the squalid horror of London and the Thames any day, thank you very much.”

  “Oh come, Claire. You’re speaking like an emancipate. New Holland, or Australia as our current Governor would like it to be called, is a fine place to make a fortune. But it hardly compares with home. Most of the people here are either convicted, or should be convicted, scum. It’s up to people like us to keep them under control. While we gather the wealth that is needed to keep our society functioning in England,” Caruthers said.

  “The reason I sound like an emancipate, Lieutenant Caruthers, is because I am one,” Claire said. “While you, Sir, are a would be exclusive, who is in fact, nothing more than a frightful boor.” Walking to the bell cord hanging by the fireplace, Claire yanked it repeatedly until the door burst open, and a group of servants rushed into the room.

  “Lieutenant Caruthers is just leaving, Mike,” Claire said to the solid gardener who was standing at the back of the gathered servants. “Will you show him the door, please.”

  “Has he been doing you an injury?” Mike asked, stepping forward and taking the Lieutenant’s injured arm in a grip that made the smaller man wince.

  “Take your hand off me, you oaf.” Caruthers snarled.

  Leaning close, Mike whispered in an Irish brogue, “It’s my job to get rid of any dung on the grounds. Usually I can do that without having it squeeze through my fingers. But you’re an English officer. Surely you’ll not be wanting the ladies to see such a ghastly sight.”

  The grip on his arm caused Caruthers to raise himself onto his toes as Mike directed him through the doors and out to his wiry little horse. Stepping back, Mike crossed his arms over his powerful chest, and watched the lieutenant mount the horse with considerable difficulty.

  Mrs. Ferdanez walked through the front door and stood with the lieutenant’s hat in her hand, watching while he clambered aboard the skittish animal.

  “My Ferdy used to say we shouldn’t hold a grudge,” Mrs. Ferdanez said once Caruthers had his seat. “So here’s your hat.” With a snap of her wrist, she sent it spinning under the horse’s feet, before turning and marching back to the group of watching servants without a backward glance.

  When Caruthers had the horse back under control and away from the trampled hat, he said to Mike, “Pass me my hat.”

  Mike considered the command for a second or so before striding over to the hat and picking it up. He dusted the hat against his leg. Then carefully pushed and prodded it back to its former shape. Walking over to the Lieutenant, Mike turned the hat to look into its crown. Then spit in it before handing it up without a word.

  Tucking the hat into the sling holding his arm, Caruthers glared at Mike. “You’ll pay for that, you Irish bastard.”

  “Perhaps. — But when a woman you shot in the back can do that to you.” Mike nodded towards the slung arm. “Imagine what a man who isn’t praying to his God, or running away, will do.”

  Stepping up and taking the bridle in one hand, Mike turned the horse to point at the gates before flicking its rump with his fingertips. Caruthers clutched the pommel of the saddle, and only just managed to stay aboard when the horse shot forward as though stung by a hornet.

  The servants, gathered at the side of the house to watch the departure, were laughing when Mike strolled over to join them. During the Lieutenant’s depature in a clatter of hooves and flying dust, Mrs. Ferdanez was the only one not laughing.

  “You’ve made an enemy there, Michael Callahan,” Mrs. Ferdanez said. “And it’ll pay you to remember that, when next you see him surrounded by his bully-boys.”

  “I thank you for the advice, Mrs. Ferdanez. But I’ve more to do with my time, than worry about the likes of him.”

  “Mrs. Ferdanez,” the maid, Bridgett, asked while they walked back to the kitchen door. “Is it true Lieutenant Caruthers caused Mr. Ferdanez’s death?”

  “Yes, Lass,” Mrs. Ferdanez said. “It’s true. Caruthers had his bully-boys smash my Ferry’s hands with their rifle butts when he wouldn’t play the tunes they wanted. Without being able to play his m
usic, my Ferdy had no reason to live. I believe that’s why he swam out to sea. Not because he was trying to escape, like they said.”

  For the next four days, Caruthers fumed silently over the humiliation he’d had heaped on him recently. The bullocks pulling the supply wagons slowly plodded over the tops of the rugged range that divided the coastal plain from the fertile lands to the west. He made no attempt to increase the pace. Accepting every excuse to delay offered by the foul-mouthed bullockies, as the men driving the bullocks called themselves with prickly pride. Thinking all the time of ways to delay Harrington’s departure, until he wouldn’t be able to attend the Governor’s ball with Claire.

  Coming down the western slopes of the dividing range, one of the bullockies, a slight man no taller than the shoulders of the beasts he drove, but with a whip that had an eight foot handle, and a lash such, that he could disintegrate a fly on a bullock’s ear from 17 feet away without touching the animal, called back to the Lieutenant. “Riders coming in from the west, Guv. Looks like Lieutenant Harrington leading the push. I’d recognize that gray mare of his anywhere.”

  When the five horsemen were 200 yards out, Caruthers saw Harrington raise his hand while reining the magnificent horse he rode, down to a trot. The horses were all sweating when they came to a halt in front of Caruthers, but the gray mare wasn’t breathing hard like the others. The man sitting on her swung down and stepped forward with his hand outstretched and a smile on his face. “You had us a bit worried, Clive. Even with the bullockies being paid by the day, rather than the mile, 4 days to here is a bit much.”

  “I’m in a lot of pain,” Caruthers said looking at, but declining to take the well-built, young man’s hand. “So you’ll have to excuse me for being a little slow,” Caruthers said. “Damn lucky I’m here at all in fact, what with my having been wounded in action. I really should be recuperating back in Sydney. But duty calls. I hear the colonials out here are getting a bit much for you local lads. Old Morris mentioned something about the squatters needing to be controlled.”

  “That’ll be the day,” Harrington laughed, his blue eyes flashing. “It’ll take more than a couple of years at military school to learn how to get along with the squatters.”

  “They don’t need to be ‘got along with’, Harrington. They need to be controlled. The sooner you locals learn that, the sooner and easier it’ll be for us real officers to get the job done,” Caruthers said.

  Harrington leaned in close and spoke softly so that no one else could hear, a muscle twitching on the side of his tanned jaw. “Do you have to practice to be so stupid, Clive? Or does it just come naturally? There’s no-one out here who’s going to be even mildly impressed with that sort of nonsense.”

  Caruthers stepped back slightly to give himself space. “There’s no need to get unpleasant, old chap. I was only joking.”

  “The hell you were,” Harrington said straightening up and looking down his nose at the other Lieutenant who reminded him of a bad tempered fox terrier. “There’s a chance you can do well for yourself in this country, Clive. But you’re going to have to realize that the people who live here, and especially the people who live in the outback, are neither fools nor gutless wonders.”

  “It never once occurred to me they were. I’ve noticed a lot of people out here are riding the finest horses. That gray of yours as an example. Where’d you get it?”

  “I caught her last year on one of the brumby runs down south of Bathurst. She’s mountain bred and game for anything. I call her Waratina,” Harrington said with icy politeness. “I was up north a few weeks ago, and came across one of the Aboriginal girls who live up that way. Came as close as I have so far on this mare, to tagging her in the game of ‘catch me if you can’ those girls like to play.”

  “I don’t understand,” Caruthers frowned.

  “It’s God awful country up north of Bathurst,” Harrington said, his anger dissipating. “The local Aboes stay clear of it. From what I’ve been able to learn, some Koradji from the Dharug people on the upper Hawkesbury went bush when the whitemen arrived.” Harrington paused when he saw the puzzled look on Caruthers’s face, then continued. “Koradji is what the Aboes call a clever man. But there’s more to it. As near as I can tell, a Koradji is some sort of special witch doctor. I’ve been hearing stories since I was a child, of Koradjis who can change into birds or animals. Some of them can change themselves, or anyone else, into anything they want.”

  “And you’re saying one of these witch doctors lives north of Bathurst with a group of girls?”

  “Well I’m using the term figuratively.” Harrington chuckled. “And what a figure. The ‘girl’ I saw was at least six feet tall with everything exactly where it’s supposed to be on a woman.”

  “Six foot tall, you say? Wouldn’t happen to have shoulder length, medium brown, wavy hair, a cherubic face and breasts about this size?” Caruthers said holding his good hand up, fingers cupped, indicating a breast slightly larger than a big grapefruit on an imaginary woman in front of him.

  “Well I’ll be damned,” Harrington said. “You do notice these things. But if we’re talking about the same girls, then you’re describing the older of the two. The younger one, the one I chased the other week, she’s not quite that big. Where’d you see her though?” Harrington asked.

  “If as you say, they’re the same people,” Caruthers said lifting his damaged arm with a pained grimace, “then she’s the slut who attacked me and did this.”

  “An Aboriginal woman did that to you? Clive, what had you done to her first?”

  “I hadn’t done a jolly thing to her when it all started,” Caruthers said, and then went on to tell his version of what had happened.

  “Damn,” Harrington said when the biased tale ended. “Sounds like I’ve been luckier than all get out, not to have ever caught up to one of those girls in our little games of catchies. Who was the man who had her in the boat?”

  “Said his name was John Nathaniel. But when I checked back in Sydney, it appears he’s that American rebel, Nathaniel Johnson.”

  “I know the chap. Seemed decent enough to me. Hard working. Thinks on his feet. Just the sort we need here in the colony if we could get people to give him a fair go,” Harrington said. “I recommended him for a ticket of leave only six months ago.”

  “Yes, well so much for your judgment on this one, old chap.” Caruthers said. “The traitorous swine couldn’t find himself a real woman, so he’s teamed up with a black slut. And now he’s a runner.”

  “So it would seem. But where is he running to?” Harrington said, looking off to the north.

  Chapter Nine

  “So your God has told you I’m to be a stud for your daughter. Is that what you’re telling me?” Nathaniel stared at the older man.

  “If only it were that simple.” Tunggaree chuckled. “But your part in the future of this land requires more than that. I’m told the Goobahs place tremendous value in these stones.” Tunggaree placed a smooth yellow lump in Nathaniel’s hand.

  “Gold,” Nathaniel said, holding the lump up to inspect it in the weak light, before remembering to only transmit. “Is that what it is? Gold?”

  “I’m told that’s what it’s called.”

  “How much do you have?” Nathaniel asked.

  Tunggaree shrugged. “I don’t know. But the floor of this cave is covered with them.”

  Nathaniel looked around and realized the river rocks he’d thought he was sitting on, were actually gold nuggets. Some he could see, were the size of a loaf of bread. But most were the size of duck eggs. And there were thousands of them.

  “My God, Tunggaree. If the English find out about this, we’re dead.”

  “Only if we tell them where it is.” Tunggaree said.

  “Not necessarily,” Nathaniel said. “When I first came to this land, there were rumors that some of the convicts found gold while
working on the road across the mountains. But they were only rumors. One man said he found the gold he had, but he was convicted of stealing it, and melting it down to look like a nugget. He was given 100 lashes with a cat-o’-nine tails. It’s a hard way to die, Tunggaree.”

  “What’s ‘a cat-o’-nine tails’?”

  “It’s a particularly nasty whip. About this long.” Nathaniel held his hands about 4 feet apart. “It has this many lashes.” He held up nine fingers. “Made from leather like this.” He held up the end of the thong holding his hair in place. “In this colony, the end of each lash is weighted with a piece of split shot. Which is the soft gray metal we fire from our guns. Each piece of shot is about this size.” Nathaniel selected a nugget about half an inch round from the floor and handed it to Tunggaree. “They weigh about the same, but the lead is much softer. The people who use the cats, cut the shot most of the way through, and then wrap it around the thong before hammering it closed. The really nasty people then hammer the shot as flat as they can so that it’ll cut flesh when they hit with it. If we show this gold to the English, we’ll get the same treatment.”

  “Why would the English beat someone to death for finding something they value?” Tunggaree asked.

  Nathaniel frowned. “Because of the exclusives. Which is the name given to the military officers and their rich friends. They don’t want the common people to think there’s gold lying around on the ground to be picked up,” Nathaniel said.

  “Why not?”

  “The exclusives need the common, or trades-people as they politely refer to them, to build the houses, roads, boats and things,” Nathaniel said. “They also need people to tend the farms, catch the fish, and do the thousands of other things that are needed to keep society running. If the people who do all those things, stopped doing them, and rushed off to hunt for gold, their society would collapse.”