Mrs. M

by Luke Slattery

  The remainder of the Governor’s day was spent in furious activity, all of it defensive: meetings with allies and inspections of the barracks and fortifications, accounting for the progress of public works. My husband behaved as a man might before an important interview, running a brush over his coat to ensure no blemish was visible. He needn’t have bothered. If there was some gain in the matter Bigge would have proclaimed an unsightly discolouring on the lapel of a coat straight from the tailor, and his supporters would have crowed that they had seen it there, too.

  Macquarie rode home briefly around lunchtime — I heard the percussive beat of hooves before I saw him — to warn me and bestir me to action. The raincloud of the previous day had moved inland. It was a hot dry day on the coast with a bitter scent on the air. I remember it as the odour of fear, though it was more than likely a forest fire lit by the natives deep in the interior. How much more vivid are my memories when I reach into my treasury and lay my hands upon one of the few things — a letter, a clipping, a shred of bark — that survived the journey with me from my past.

  *

  ‘Quickly now!’ Macquarie cries sharply from a few yards away as if I were a domestic. ‘A function will be held tonight at the residence — a joint welcome for Bigge and Freycinet, a table for eleven.’ He comes forward in a determined mood, his footfall heavy. ’I thought it politic,’ he adds, ‘in the circumstances.’

  ‘A not inconsiderable imposition at such short notice,’ I reply as he strides through the door.

  He delivers his instructions for the evening to Hawkins, pounds down the hall to his study, and after some time reappears on the verandah where he pauses briefly to view the town — his town, as he sees it — before plunging again into the white day.

  There is time enough to ask, ‘How was your meeting with the Commissioner?’

  ‘Civil,’ is all he says.

  He leaves clutching a thick roll of papers tied with a red ribbon. I have the pantry and the cellar raided, a fire lit so that it will collapse into a pile of coals by nightfall, and a few extra servants appropriated from John Piper.

  Brody arrives shortly afterwards with a flat parcel in wrapping the colour of pastry, his eyes uncharacteristically anxious as he searches mine.

  ‘Are you well?’ he inquires.

  ‘Yes, quite. A little on edge with these … events. The wheel of providence, it spins rather wildly. And you?’

  ‘I have only once been so unnerved and that was under fire from a Spanish raider.’

  I do not envy the lad. He has been sent to find Bungaree, if at all possible. To ensure that he is sober — and to insist that he remain so. The native king is to attend the evening’s function in a white shirt and a fresh pair of trousers, without the admiral’s uniform to which he is so deeply attached. This was Macquarie’s firm request, although the terms of it may have been laid down by Bigge. There will be a reward — a side of beef and a hogshead of ale — as an inducement.

  The summer sun arcs gracefully towards the Blue Mountains. Why, I wonder, could a more imaginative name not be found for this low granite cordillera, now pierced by a road opening up the rich pastures beyond; no mountain when seen from a distance is anything other than blue, unless of course it is snow-capped.

  I flee to my garden. When I return the dining table has been set. The kitchen is a scene of ferocious activity. I am desperately tired of my fellow man. If only I could steal away to that stone bridge over the icy stream and disappear without anyone noticing.

  I sit instead on the wicker chair beneath the towering Norfolk pine — as lofty as Macquarie’s lighthouse and perhaps taller — with its spreading arms like the spokes of a vast arboreal wheel. I catch the raucous screech of a sulphur-crested cockatoo, and an answering cry from its mate. From somewhere in a nearby copse of native trees I hear a melodious toot: deep and hollow and liquid. It sounds like a creature of enormous size, but eventually I catch sight of it: a dowdy black bird on long thin legs with a hooked beak. The imposter!

  The lawn, freshly cut at midday despite the heat, gives off its fresh vegetal scent. A family of plump black swans waddles up from the small ornamental lake. They keep to the centre of the sandy paths as if they are the domain’s true gentry and we are merely minions.

  What do I, knowing these quite magical creatures, make of their absence from Genesis? Did our Maker’s gaze not extend to the Antipodes? Did God conceive of this as some other world beyond His kingdom, to be ruled by inscrutable laws? The more one ventures into the world, the more one doubts the literal truth of the Hebraic faith, for it is a narrow creed and the Earth is large.

  These thoughts in turn recall the Inner Hebrides and its leaf of ash, oak, willow and elder; the bullfinch, blackbird and all the seabirds — tern, eider, gannet, cormorant. I desire at that moment to leave and never return. I suppose it is my own spacious childhood with its rare liberties that I long for. I feel cramped in this role.

  Hastening back to the residence, still in my long-sleeved morning dress, I notice we have a visitor. William Redfern, thin-lipped and scholarly, sits slumped on a verandah chair like a man in a slough of despond.

  ‘What can be the matter, William?’ I ask, approaching gently, hoping not to startle the man in such a delicate state. ‘This poor soul before me, he looks so grey of cheek and red of eye that I am tempted to call for you, knowing there is no better surgeon in the colony.’

  He gives a pained laugh.

  ‘To what do I owe the honour then?’

  He lowers his head. I sink to a crouch before him. ‘It is not the Architect?’ I cry, fearing some fresh indignity — or worse.

  ‘No, no,’ he shakes his head of fine hair, ‘not the Architect.’

  ‘What then? I feared, for a moment, that you had come directly from the hospital.’

  ‘It is the welcome party tonight, Mrs Macquarie.’ He gives a resolute shake of the head. ‘I cannot attend.’

  I draw up a wicker chair — the chair that he would have offered if he were not so discombobulated — and sit.

  ‘But you are ill. Of course, I see it.’

  ‘Not ill. Troubled.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘The Commissioner,’ he answers heavily with a heave of the shoulders. ‘Bigge. Are you aware he called for me within an hour of his installation at the Judge’s residence? And with malicious intent. He did not need treatment. Of course he made some show of it when I entered, complaining of dyspepsia on account of all his trials. His trials! Huh!’

  ‘I’m sorry, I —’

  ‘No, I am. I truly …’ He scowls and shakes his head once more. ‘I’m sorry for us all. You must make every effort to disarm the man. Immediately, before it is too late. He is a danger to you.’

  ‘Do go on then, if it is pressing.’ I lean forward so that he might lower his voice.

  He looks away, and for a brief moment I permit myself to hope that he might keep his own counsel. But then he turns to face me with a determined expression, and says, ‘I found myself drawn into the Judge’s study. All was prepared there. Bigge offered me a seat on the other side of the desk from him. He looked at me blankly for perhaps a minute, saying not a word. There was a knock at the door, and in walked a secretary with a large open volume in one hand and a quill in the other. His name was Thomas Scott. It was only with Scott’s arrival that the wax figurine before me stirred.

  ‘“You are the same William Redfern whose name the Governor has advanced for a position in the magistracy?” Bigge inquired in a judicial tone. I felt as if I had been arraigned for sentencing.

  ‘He went on without my answering: “The same William Redfern who was convicted of treason?” There was a quiver of the lip, a twitch of the nose, a shallow look from a set of hateful eyes.

  ‘He meant,’ Redfern goes on wildly, ‘to threaten me with the crime for which I was transported, though I was little more than a child. The beast!’

  He leans towards me, quite flushed. ‘I don’t know if you are awa
re of the circumstances, Mrs Macquarie. Shall I tell you the story that he already knew?’

  ‘Do go on,’ I say, after an anxious glance along the verandah. I hear the sound of preparation in the kitchen, the short heavy strides of Mrs Ovens, and smell the savoury scent of baking meats and the sweet-sour aroma of unlidded pickle jars.

  ‘I was a young surgeon’s apprentice on the HMS Standard when its crew, along with those of sixteen other Royal Navy ships, rose up against its officers. The vessel was not at sea; it lay peaceably at the Nore anchorage in the Thames estuary. And the action was not a full-blooded mutiny. It was a maritime strike for better food and pay. Bigge knows all this, of course. But he wanted it from me. Will you hear me out? Shall I go on?’

  It is not the right time for such tales, but I have little choice — I am deeply indebted to this good man. I settle into my chair. ‘Most certainly, William.’ Gazing into the surgeon’s eyes, enormous and glinting behind his oval-framed spectacles, I see that the redness at the rims has spread to the whites. ‘Some tea? Water?’

  ‘Water, please.’ He removes his spectacles, wiping them fussily with a cloth extracted from his plain black vest.

  I call for the maid.

  ‘The sailors, as I was saying, asked only that a certain number of men on every ship be allowed to see friends and family on coming into harbour, that they be paid money owing to them before going to sea. And also that the prizes of war be distributed more evenly among the men and not seized by the Captain.’ He looks towards the harbour, a sheet of diamonds under the bright sun, and blinks once or twice into the light.

  ‘It began as a protest for better conditions,’ he says returning his glasses to his nose, ‘and no different in its essentials from any such action on land. When it was ignored, the leaders faced a choice: either step down and lose the initiative, or press on. A decision was made to blockade the Thames; a catastrophe, as it turned out. The protest was brutally put down. The ringleaders — all thirty of them — were hanged.’

  The maid arrives with a mug of fresh water, which I offer to the visitor. ‘But what was your part in all of this?’

  ‘Nothing of any consequence. I simply urged the men, as one boat after another abandoned the blockade, to be united among themselves or risk defeat.’

  ‘A trivial matter I would have thought.’

  ‘Not in the eyes of the admiralty.’ He drains the mug.

  ‘I believed for weeks on end that I would hang, too. I spent that time in the condemned cells close to the gallows. From there I caught the last words — mostly tearful prayers and laments, sometimes curses raised boldly to the heavens — before the sharp clank of the trapdoor, the utterly helpless shuffle of feet presaging the fall, and the terrible tune of the noose and rope bearing the dead weight. I was reprieved on the very day I was to climb the scaffold, but only after an interview with a priest who assured me that my sins would be forgiven by a merciful god. What sins? I inquired. “All those committed, and all contemplated,” he said. Contemplated! The sin I contemplated at that moment was strangulation of a priest. I have never so much as set foot in a church since.

  ‘The reprieve was followed by a sentence to transportation for fourteen years. Then came a few months on the hulks. The voyage out was a greater trial than the condemned cells. I emerged looking more like a shade than a man. I had been perpetually busy caring for the sick and the dying. My skills were noted by the Captain, and communicated at the first muster ashore. And from that moment my restoration began. I flourished under Bligh, and then Foveaux, and in your husband I found a friend. Some time ago — perhaps you are unaware of this — the Governor put my name forward for the magistracy.’

  ‘I am aware, yes. And Bigge will have none of it?’

  ‘He is in furious opposition. I will never forget what he told me: “The crime for which you, William Redfern, were transported …” — note how he avoided the honorific due to me by virtue of long training and service — “that crime is unparalleled in naval history.” Ha! “Unparalleled,” he says. Such dreadful cant and nonsense! And he declared, furthermore, that there will be no emancipist magistrates in the colony. This is what he said — or words to the same effect: “The Governor will withdraw his application on your behalf, or I will have his commission withdrawn.”’

  The recounting of this horrid tale seems to lance a boil and improve Redfern’s demeanour. He is one of those men for whom the talking cure is better than the solace of the bottle. But his mind is quite made up. ‘I simply cannot — will not — share a table with that damned malicious imp.’

  The cursing seems an even better cure than the talking. And when I rise he does too, much restored.

  ‘It is a dreadful turn of events,’ I say as we walk along the verandah towards the steps. ‘We had been warned of Bigge’s malevolence. And we are prepared for battle. But, his pomposity aside, this is the first real sign of it. I assume that he is aware Macquarie has made it a principle of his administration that the sins of the past are forgiven, and one is judged only by the deeds of the present.’

  ‘I remember when I was called to treat the Architect,’ he smiles grimly. ‘It is the same principle at work. They dismantle a man in stages. The first is the ruination of his closest allies.’

  I perceive a hammering of the heart and a sickness in the pit of my stomach, though not the kind for which the good doctor has any remedy. Regaining my composure, I tell him that while I understand the reasons for his absence I will not convey them to the Governor until he himself has recovered from the insult of Bigge’s arrival. ‘This is what I will tell him,’ I promise. ‘You are ill — too ill for company. A touch of grippe, contracted in all likelihood from a patient. A professional hazard.’

  ‘Once again, I am sorry,’ Redfern says placing his hat on his head of fine hair and adjusting it. ‘But I simply cannot …’

  I resolve to make light of the matter and, leaning towards Redfern, I whisper, ‘Perhaps Bigge was right after all. You are a born mutineer! For you, sir, have scuppered my dinner party.’

  He recoils a little and regards me quizzically. His lips move. There is the mere twitch of a smile.

  ‘I am sorry to joke, William. I did not mean to make light of your …’ I shrug my shoulders.

  At last he offers up a smile. ‘No offence taken, madam. Laughter is as good a salve as any in the circumstances. As a matter of fact I am rather grateful. It puts me in mind of a story that arrives with Bigge and comes from the surgeon of the Cerebus.’ He leans towards me conspiratorially and begins in a bright tone, ‘It appears that our Commissioner, during a recent term in Trinidad righting some wrong on behalf of the Colonial Office, took his horse out one morning to exercise on the beach — you may have seen how fond he is of riding. He was some miles from Port of Spain when his mount, which he had been riding at a leisurely canter as he enjoyed the sea vistas, was struck and concussed by a coconut.’ He pauses, eyes shining mischievously. ‘Can you believe it? If the trajectory of the fall had been a little different we might not have to deal with him.

  ‘For some time the Commissioner was pinioned by the stricken beast. When the natives finally came to his aid they discovered that his left leg, though not broken, had been badly hurt. Bigge was taken to the local witchdoctor, a statuesque native woman of ravishing beauty. The horse, rendered lame by the fall, was shot.

  ‘Bigge returned the next day in a carriage, limping badly. Over the next few weeks he insisted that no one other than his native doctor minister to him. She visited every day, locked herself with the Commissioner in his room, aiding him in his recuperation. Well, after several weeks of this treatment Bigge pronounced himself cured. But the witchdoctor, she continued to pay weekly visits. Just to check on his progress, mind. And for this she was rewarded with payment from Bigge himself.

  ‘After several months one of the Creole merchants, a man whose trade takes him to the many small villages about the island, came forward with important information. The witch wa
s both woman and man; or, rather, was a man who took the part of a woman for ceremonial reasons connected with her — er, his — doctoring. When informed of this Bigge insisted on his innocence and promptly broke off the arrangement. But there are those in the Commissioner’s household who maintain that he did know, and that this aspect of his cure was one he greatly enjoyed. A chambermaid is not easily deceived in such matters.’

  Redfern lowers one foot onto the steps, leaving the other on the verandah. He places his hat on his head and makes ready to leave. His eyes are still red but there is a hard glint of satisfaction to them now.

  ‘It is a fine story, William. But please — please — ensure that it does not make the pages of the Sydney Gazette. Promise me. If Howe so much as hears a whisper, well, there is no telling where he will go with it. We do not want to defame the man!’

  I can understand why Redfern has held the story in reserve, decanting it only when taking his leave. From anyone else I would judge it distastefully risqué. But I am happy to give the surgeon his head — to allow him this small revenge.

  I recall the advice Octavio Jewkes gave me on my first morning at the Cove: never believe what a man here tells you about his past. It is doubly true of a man telling you of a declared enemy’s past. And yet … I do not doubt that there is something in this tale.

  If true — and if I am honest — it would rather cool my ill will towards the man, which presently runs hot. Bigge would then be more contradictory, more complex — more human — than the fanatic among us.