Fortune

by Lenny Bartulin

  ‘What would you rather?’ he said, hoping she’d agree to come with him.

  Kathleen laughed. She’d have no more of that work, she said. The stink of wet wool and pellets of shit slimy in the rain, the dreary long days of her girlhood.

  She washed back into the crowd, down at the Rocks, gone.

  The soldiers came for him, on the very morning he got his sheep, a set-up plain from the start. Seven sheep there, plump too, but the soldier boys only counted four in the ledger.

  UPON HIS RELEASE, THE GÉNÉRAL HAPPILY RETIRES FROM THE LIFE HE ONCE KNEW

  Field Marshal Curado said, ‘Where will you go?’

  Marta, heavily pregnant again, wore Juan strapped to her back and she rolled clothes into bundles, gathered their things from around the room. Curado and the général stood watching her, cups of dark rum in their hands.

  ‘Somewhere quiet,’ Fourés said.

  ‘you will not return to Cayenne? Or to France?’

  ‘It would be no life for Marta and the children in either place,’ Fourés said, looking at his young family. ‘Nor for me.’

  Curado had expected it. He slipped out some folded documents from his pocket. ‘These will help you pass through the territories,’ he said, handing them over. ‘Beyond that is beyond my control and forecast.’

  The général thanked him.

  ‘I cannot dissuade you?’ the field marshal said. ‘The wild lands are volatile, things change by the day.’

  Fourés touched Curado on the arm and smiled. ‘That is the whole world, my friend,’ he said. ‘There’s no escaping it.’

  Curado glanced at Marta. ‘They’re different, you know. From you and I.’

  ‘yes,’ Fourés said. It was beyond him to explain in words. Marta wanted nothing of him, she’d placed no obligations on his shoulders, and yet there he was, heart brimming for her, the bond between them unbreakable.

  ‘I wish you good fortune, Général.’

  A final look around the room. Marta checked under the bed.

  ‘Away now,’ Fourés said.

  The guard brought their things down to the street. Curado had supplied Fourés with a small horse, a musket, pistol and ammunition, a dagger and an axe, some supplies. From his own pommel, he retrieved the général’s cavalry sabre, from so long ago, cleaned and polished and the scabbard shining black and silver.

  ‘Sharpened and without a speck of rust,’ Curado said.

  ‘I am in your debt.’

  ‘It has been my privilege.’

  Fourés wrapped the belt around the scabbard and sword, tucked it into one of their bags. Everything was tied securely to the horse.

  The two men kissed, holding shoulders, then braced at arm’s length.

  ‘Goodbye.’

  Curado handed Marta the wooden crucifix he’d taken from her before (she took it silently and let it dangle from her hand). Then he watched them walk away, down the hill past the monastery: the Frenchman, his Indian woman and their child, like a small family of peasants, all they owned hanging from the horse’s pommel.

  TWO PER MUSKET IS THE STANDARD RATE

  Claus von Rolt’s head was tattooed and then cut off high on the neck. His brain was removed and the cavity filled with flax and gum, the nostrils too, then his eyes were scooped out and the sockets plugged with the same fibrous paste, and the lids were sewn shut. His tongue was thrown to a dog. A fire was lit and stones were heated in it; Rolt’s head was buried with the hot stones until the moisture had been steamed out. Afterwards, his head was recovered and smoked over another fire, then hung and left to dry out completely in the sun and wind.

  The Ngāti Kuri had Rolt and the six other heads they’d collected that morning on the shipwrecked beach, plus the heads of four more bodies the sea had washed up. Tattooed, smoked and preserved, their skin turned dark brown and blackened, their hair matted and darkened coal black too, noses stretched, ears shrivelled, and ragged, bone-white teeth protruded from between thinned, retracted lips that were curled gruesomely. It was impossible to tell they weren’t Māori, or that the tattooed markings were a fabrication and meaningless.

  Through an interpreter, the chief of the Ngāti Kuri told the Englishman James Crowell the story of their recent battle with a rival tribe, of the fearsome warriors they had bravely faced and slain, of the blood that had been spilled. He indicated where the imaginary battle had taken place. (Crowell turned and looked to where the chief pointed, seeing all that was described to him and laying it down in his memory. He would embellish and retell the story later to his eager collectors.) When the chief finished his story, he pointed to the eleven toi moko that had been stuck to wooden stakes driven into the ground. He said, ‘Eleven muskets.’

  The Englishman James Crowell listened to the interpreter. He shook his head and held up two fingers.

  ‘Two heads,’ Crowell said, nodding towards the toi moko. Now he held up a forefinger. ‘One musket.’ He put an imaginary rifle to his shoulder. ‘Tell the chief it’s the standard rate.’

  The chief of the Ngāti Kuri frowned. His warriors stared intently at the Englishman. A few walked around and came to stand nearer, tall and muscled and fearsome. Every hair on James Crowell’s body tightened at the root.

  The chief spoke again and crossed his arms.

  The interpreter turned to the Englishman, began to speak, but Crowell interrupted him. ‘yes, yes, I understand,’ he said. The tribes were upping the price; they had come to realise the value of the preserved heads and sought better remuneration. Their tribal wars had become intense, all over the island, and the trade in smuggled rifles had proliferated. There’d been lots of rumours, of missing and murdered traders who’d attempted to swindle them. And there was no doubting the aggressive, distrustful mood here. Behind James Crowell, the nervousness of his men was palpable.

  ‘Sir,’ one of them said, ‘just give ’em the bloody rifles and let’s get back to the ship.’

  Crowell adjusted the figures in his mind; there was still money to be made. Not as much, but profit nonetheless. And better he was around to spend it.

  He smiled at the Māori chief and indicated the musket crates stacked on the ground near his men.

  ‘Ask the great chief if he requires any instruction in their use.’

  ‘It will not be necessary,’ the interpreter said.

  The heads were wrapped in oilskins and canvas, stowed on the ship in a waterproof trunk. Later that year, Claus von Rolt passed through Customs House in Sydney. Baked head was recorded in the inventory ledger.

  HOBART TOWN GAOL IS FULL OF HOLES

  Into the cell, over the troubled dream-breathing of the shackled men, came the sound of breaking waves. Punchy but small, a rushed gravel splash. River waves, not really waves at all.

  Lying on the wooden pallet, John Myer turned his head to listen. They seemed at once close and then suddenly distant. But in the night dark, in the agitated silence, they were enough.

  He closed his eyes and remembered the beach in San Sebastián, where he’d slept on the coarse yellow sand. He lay on the pallet and longed for the roar of those Basque sea waves, the long rolling crush. His toes in the cold sand, the moon, the stars, the vastness in every direction, starving but free. Salt and sea mist, cool over his arms and face.

  Better not to think it. He knew you only ever came back to where you were. But the taste remained sweet on his lips.

  The guard’s boots now, down the corridor, the slow clip, the oiled clack of a musket over his shoulder.

  John Myer dropped his reverie.

  There was the sound of keys, the dry clatter of the lock. The shuddering creak of hinges, the heavy door swung open.

  A whisper. ‘Turner?’

  ‘Aye,’ the whisper back.

  ‘Now.’

  The one called Turner said, ‘Let’s go, boys.’

  Chains clinked as they stood up, different heights, silhouettes of rags in the dark. They’d all chipped in on the bribe: a silver ring, a brooch, a cha
in, dented rum flasks and tobacco tins and pipes, whatever they’d been able to gamble or smuggle up their arses. Anything shiny a magpie might filch. A king’s ransom in trinkets.

  The guard said, ‘Not a fucking word.’ It was a nice little earner, working the gaol, every now and then.

  AFTERMATH

  Twenty thousand people perished in the earthquake that levelled Caracas. Among them was Elisabeth Montoya’s husband, Alejandro Joaquin Montoya. The only person in the entire decimated city who Elisabeth knew (and who’d also survived as she had) was the lawyer who’d witnessed and then celebrated their wedding.

  Rodrigo Felipe Francisco Ojeda eventually found Elisabeth and couldn’t believe it. He stood before her amid the ruins, his eyes raw and dark-circled. Then he smiled with warmth and sad resignation.

  ‘you’re alive,’ he said. He embraced her. She felt very thin in his arms and he let go quickly. Ojeda had come to look for the newlyweds, through the rubble and devastation, the crushed bodies, through the city shaken apart and crumbled, and the crying children, tears streaking their dry chalked cheeks.

  He’d brought a small parcel of food and some brandy.

  ‘I have lost everything,’ he said. His wife, a daughter and son-in-law, his mother, his house, his neighbours. Ojeda hadn’t slept for days. He needed to bring horses and wagons down from his country estancia to help in the recovery of bodies, to deliver supplies. He had to do something, if only not to think, not to be overwhelmed and paralysed, his own life ended.

  ‘I am sorry for your loss, Elisabeth Montoya,’ he said. ‘For all our losses.’ He wiped his brow with a handkerchief. ‘He was my friend.’

  They stood in silence, the heavy silence of fallen mountains. Then Ojeda said, ‘you must come with me. There is no place else for you to go.’

  Together they left the canvas shelter that had been erected for survivors and where Elisabeth had been staying, bewildered and unable to comprehend or believe what had happened.

  They walked through endless ruins and misery and horror. A boy with a donkey and cart took them some of the way. He whistled, as though nothing had happened.

  At his estancia in the mountains, the lawyer signed fresh affidavits confirming the legality of Elisabeth’s marriage to Montoya (the original documents had been lost in the catastrophe). After she’d rested and recovered and some of the shock had loosened its grip on her, the lawyer convinced Elisabeth that she must travel to Valdivia and claim her husband’s property.

  ‘you could stay here, I would not object; I would happily share all that I have. But then you would live forever in this grief, this memory,’ the lawyer said. ‘There is nothing for you here. you are a young woman. It is only right that you should receive what he has left behind and I know that Alejandro would have wished it so.’

  He gave her some money and a few of his wife’s dresses and her rosary beads. Elisabeth would never forget his kindness and generosity, but she was afraid and reluctant to leave. She was alone again. And for the first time since she’d left Berlin with the général, Elisabeth was tempted by the idea of return. Just go home, she thought. But in the moment of thinking it, she knew: there was no truth to the idea and there never had been.

  AGAIN, THE MARCH; AGAIN, THE CALL OF DRUMS

  The story is well known (six hundred loyal men, cheering crowds along the way, King Louis XVIII fleeing the Tuileries) but not everybody watched with love, or even vague interest, as Napoleon Bonaparte triumphantly returned to Paris. Talleyrand had sighed at the news, perfectly aware of what to expect (‘Farce,’ he said to the Duc d’Otrante, ‘affectation, ranting.’), while the gods had yawned and glanced down from on high, taking the scene in only briefly, distractedly. They saw straight off that it was the same man on the same white horse, with the same simple desires, and rubbed their sleepy eyes.

  ‘He’s still here?’

  With the pure intent of his will, yes, he was still here, but what was human will to the gods? They stretched leisurely, turned over. ‘Wake us in Waterloo,’ they said.

  Josephine’s daughter Hortense met with Bonaparte in Paris, as did the Countess Walewska and one or two former lovers, all wondering if the gleam would still be there in his eyes. They supposed it was, but of course so much had happened, the effect on them was different. The old energy seemed renewed, but the flesh was pale, the hair thinner, strands stuck to his sweating forehead.

  ‘I’m off to Malmaison,’ he said to Hortense. ‘Will you accompany me?’

  They arrived in the late afternoon. He sat in her mother’s room alone, the door closed, a hushed silence throughout the house, servants afraid of making a sound. Hortense wished she hadn’t come.

  Back in Paris, Bonaparte wrote to the Empress, but no, never. Marie-Louise would never come now.

  Waterloo came and then went. They tried to wake them but the gods slept through the whole thing.

  FREEDOM

  There were six of them waiting in the barn. The old man who came was burly and short, a thick-forearmed man, serious and intent on his task. He said, ‘There,’ and pointed to where a lamp glowed on the ground. He didn’t want to know their names and kept his own to himself, and all he did was point to the spot on the chopping block where he wanted them to drape their chains.

  He held the heavy chisel over the locked clasps, carefully adjusting the blunt tip with his knotted fingers, then suddenly wielded the hammer (an ugly, rusty cube of iron that seemed to grow out of his fist), swung it with such speed and concentrated power that each man flinched and the horse whinnied and stamped in his stall. He struck powerfully with three successive plink plink plinks (all it took) and the locks burst open under blows that would have crushed all the bones in their feet or severed their hands from their wrists, if not for the iron around them and the man’s precision.

  ‘Jesus!’

  John Myer had his turn and was released. He felt the exhilaration of the shackles cracking like eggs and sliding to the ground, the instant lightness in his arms and legs. Now he was a man again and it was almost as though he were light enough to fly.

  Turner was the last who needed unshackling and balanced a foot on the block. Ankles first, then down on his knees for the wrists. He was blue-eyed and sunken-cheeked, scrawly tattoos down his back and arms. They said he’d tried to sail a jolly boat up the New South Wales coast, except the waves tipped him out and then the sun scorched him dry. And then they sent him down here, but he was having none of it.

  ‘Bless me, Father,’ he said, ‘for I have sinned.’

  ‘Thou art wicked and unworthy.’

  ‘Aim straight, you old bastard.’

  ‘Best you hold still then, pumpkin.’

  Their tone was warm: they knew each other. And there was a young girl there too, who stood among them all, holding another lamp and a shawl tight at her chest. She smiled and Turner gave her a wink. The old man busted the last shackles, a few drops of sweat at his temples now. Turner stood up and flexed his wrists, then took a jacket the young girl brought over to him, punched his fists into the sleeves.

  ‘When’s the master and his family back?’ Turner said.

  ‘In the morning,’ the girl said.

  Turner looked at the old man. ‘Drop the hammer and chisel there, leave the chains as they’ve fallen.’

  ‘I’m not stupid, laddie.’ The old man’s fingerprints were baked into the bricks that were the Hobart Town Gaol. He was no stranger to shackles or running.

  Turner grinned. ‘Rum?’

  ‘I’ve bread and some bacon,’ the girl said.

  ‘And there’s rum,’ her father said.

  One of the convict boys said, ‘We’re goin’ t’eat now?’

  ‘you can do whatever the hell you like, Robbie,’ Turner said.

  The boy looked down at the pile of chains, pale and nervous.

  They sat down around the lamp on the hay-strewn ground, shared the bacon and bread and rum. When they’d finished, the old man held out a coil of rope to Turner.


  ‘The sun’ll be here soon,’ he said.

  Turner nodded and stood up. The old man gave the convict his back, crossed hands at the wrists. ‘Nice and tight now,’ he said.

  ‘Mister?’ The girl was sitting beside John Myer. She held out more rope and turned her back to him and John Myer tied up her wrists. The girl’s arms were thin and white, her hands small, the lines in her palms silted. She watched Turner, silently, as John Myer tied her wrists. And he thought, all this way, all these years, to tie this young girl’s hands.

  Turner saddled the horse. He kissed the young girl on the head and whispered in her ear. She looked with longing and tearful eyes as he took the reins.

  ‘Ainsley’s farm,’ he said to the rest of them. ‘Two days from now.’ And then he smacked the old man on the shoulder and walked the animal out of the barn. They heard the thudding of the horse’s hoofs fade away.

  John Myer glanced at the old man and then at the girl, both on the ground and leaning back against a railing. Only she was looking up at him.

  ‘Quick about it, then,’ the old man said. ‘Out with you.’

  The morning light had already begun to spread. Soon a heavenly orange hazed the sky above the hills beyond the river, smudged the lower cloud bellies pink. It was John Myer’s first glimpse of this Van Diemen’s Land. He’d come in the night and then fled in it, too. At last the light. The sky reminded him of somewhere he’d been before.

  The river was flat, without a ripple, sheens of glass-blue and silver. They were somewhere north of Hobart Town. A few houses spaced across the hills and clearings, dark stands of trees between.

  ‘We have to go north-west,’ the boy Robbie said, pointing into the thickly forested distance of more hills, fold into fold.

  Half an hour later they’d just made the tree line when the fog swept over them. They stopped, stunned and curious. Looking up, the sky was gone, the earth devoured. They could barely see each other. John Myer could only make out the sun, low and veiled and whetstoned into a pure white disc.

  ‘What should we do?’ the boy asked.