The Soldier's Curse

by Meg Keneally

  But of course, it was a little more complicated than that. When the Birpai had first seen a party of whitefellas stumbling their way through the bush, they were somewhat amused at the newcomers’ incompetence. We’ll keep an eye on these ones, they thought, but they don’t seem up to much.

  But then more came, and more. And the rougher ones, the cedar-cutters and the like, would just as soon go through a Birpai home as around it.

  The Birpai people realised that these men did not share their connection with the land. They didn’t know how to use spider webs to pack a wound, how to light a fire in a canoe when fishing at night, using the right wood to keep the mosquitoes away, or how to make fishhooks from thorn trees. They didn’t know how to cut a shield from a tree in a way which wouldn’t kill the tree itself. They took what they wanted and more – timber, fish and, it was rumoured, sometimes women. And they seemed to believe the land would always provide more, no matter how much they abused it.

  There had been skirmishes – Birpai tribesmen, protecting their land, had raided parties working upriver. From then on these parties were heavily guarded, and the Birpai spears, lethal as they were, did not have the range of the muskets which took many of their lives.

  ‘If we’d known the nature of you, we might have speared you before there were so many,’ Bangar had once told Monsarrat genially. Monsarrat smiled as though Bangar was joking, but he knew he wasn’t.

  ‘There’s a lot of land, though,’ said Monsarrat. ‘Why not just move on a bit?’

  Bangar’s face tightened. ‘So what if I come in and take that kitchen,’ he said, ‘and I say, eh Monsarrat, it’s a big house up here on the hill – which used to be ours. Why don’t you just go and make your tea in the bedroom? But there’s no stove in the bedroom, you say. Well, this place is our house. We have places for hunting, places for ceremonies. Every place has a use. We can’t just move on.’

  ‘We share that, at least,’ said Monsarrat. ‘Neither can I.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Spring, as they approached Government House. The verandah was again empty, Slattery clearly having given up on his haranguing. Of today’s strange events, the young soldier’s reaction had been amongst the strangest. Slattery, too, was on good terms with Bangar and some of the other Birpai men. On one occasion, Monsarrat had come upon a group of them on the beach, being taught Three Card Brag by Slattery, using twigs for their stakes.

  ‘Are you doing them any favours, introducing them to the scourge of gambling?’ Monsarrat had asked him later.

  ‘Probably not, but I may be doing myself some, if the lads in the barracks get sick of losing to me,’ Slattery had said.

  While Monsarrat had heard the natives spoken to in the most vile manner, he had never thought to hear such verbal violence from Slattery, and wondered if the soldier’s friendship with Bangar would survive the report of it from the women.

  Spring seemed to be searching for the face of his own woman amongst the mass there. When he’d found her his eyes flew back to Monsarrat. ‘Oh dear. I shall get them moving,’ he said.

  ‘Could you tell me, Mr Spring, what they are doing?’

  Spring did not answer him; instead, he began to speak loudly in their language. Some of the older women made dismissive gestures at him. One even laughed. The laugh spread amongst them, but then they became solemn again.

  Spring spoke up again. An old woman answered him in the language which sounded to Monsarrat like a cross between the cries of birds and the thud of earth – a voice in fact from this earth, which was not his, but to which he was condemned.

  The women began to concede, rise to their feet, shake themselves and move off. A beautiful young open-faced native in a kangaroo skin and a string around her waist acknowledged Spring as she left. Spring’s mistress. He seemed quite consumed with adoration. If he were a dishonest man, he could probably siphon off enough from the stores to enable him to start farming up here – not an inexpensive matter with all the goods needing to come from Sydney and at a high price. Monsarrat could see that the man would need either to fall out of love or he would live here forever, condemned for his choice of wife by the world. There were probably worse destinies. Indeed, Monsarrat knew there were.

  ‘Sir?’ said Monsarrat, not having had his original question answered.

  ‘Oh,’ said Spring, collecting himself. ‘Tell Mrs Mulrooney – and Diamond if he finds out about it – that it was a prayer for Mrs Shelborne.’

  ‘A prayer?’

  Spring leaned in towards Monsarrat, although they were the only two people on the lawn able to speak English. It occurred to Monsarrat that Spring, and the accursed Kiernan, might be the only two whites able to speak the Birpai’s tongue.

  ‘They were easing her spirit away from the earth. They are sure she will die. But that means nothing. They, I emphasise, believe she will die. Fortunately Mrs Shelborne does not know it.’

  ‘Well, she is certainly gravely ill, but how would they be aware of her condition, much less care?’

  ‘As for the caring, I told you, they are peaceable. They acknowledge things, these people. Without rancour, without barracking, without condemnation. They were acknowledging … well – and say nothing of this – they were acknowledging her departure. There is more to it, though. They don’t see themselves as owning the land, not the way we do; they believe they belong to it. That all life belongs to it. That includes us, by the way. They resent our hunting their animals and catching their fish. Resources are not so plentiful that our presence hasn’t affected their own ability to eat well. But they reason that if the land will tolerate us, it must have a use for us which they cannot perceive. And therefore our lives and deaths have a relevance for them, even if they don’t understand why.’

  ‘But how do they know of her condition?’

  Spring removed his glasses to polish their now spotless lenses, and Monsarrat wondered whether word of Mrs Shelborne’s illness had reached the Birpai via the Scot. In fact, now he thought of it, he could see no other means for the news to travel, Kiernan being no longer part of the settlement.

  ‘Well, at the height of her powers, Mrs Shelborne … but I’m saying too much, Monsarrat.’

  ‘You can depend on my discretion, sir.’

  ‘Very well. She hunted widely. And fished. And she was indiscriminate – she took totem animals too.’

  ‘And that made them angry?’

  ‘Not angry, no. But there is a balance, you see. The land can only support them – and us – if no one takes more than they need. She may have taken too much. And I’m speculating now, but it may be they feel the balance is being redressed.’

  He cleaned his glasses yet again. ‘I suggest you tell Mrs Mulrooney they were praying for Mrs Shelborne. That is, actually, what they were doing. Praying for a peaceful passing. And so her soul does not inhabit the trees and river and blight them.’

  ‘A peaceful passing?’

  ‘Well, that is their view of what is happening.’

  After Spring took his leave, Monsarrat decided he had enough time to quickly report to Mrs Mulrooney before Diamond came to Government House to ensure all was as it should be, and perhaps to imagine the changes he would make when he became commandant, which he saw as probable, given the major’s eminent talents and the likelihood of a higher post for him.

  He found her in the kitchen, cooking a broth.

  ‘She loses all her food now,’ she said as Monsarrat walked in. ‘I thought maybe a broth would stay more easily where it is supposed to.’

  Slattery was at the table too. A morning of yelling at women and labourers had earned him a cup of tea, he no doubt felt. Monsarrat would have preferred to talk to Mrs Mulrooney privately, but lacked the time to wait for Slattery to return to his work. In any case, Slattery was a member of their kitchen commonwealth. Not the most judicious member, but Monsarrat felt he owed Mrs Mulrooney an explanation.

  As he had agreed with Spring, he told Mrs Mulrooney the women had been praying for Mrs Shelbo
rne.

  ‘My God,’ said Mrs Mulrooney. ‘And the major away chasing pastures somewhere.’

  ‘I would not be distressed, Mrs Mulrooney. As Spring sees it, they might believe she is dying for having taken too much game, that there is some sort of cosmic set of scales at work. But she is not aware of it and nor do any of us believe that. So she has no duty to die.’

  ‘Something has certainly befallen her,’ said Mrs Mulrooney. ‘It is so sudden to go from full health one day into a total decline the next, and to stay in that decline without getting better or … well, I’ll say it … without dying. It is a strange, strange business, and if in the country in Ireland such a thing happened, people would certainly believe that curses and the fairies were at work. But this is a girl who would laugh off a curse.’

  ‘Did Mrs Shelborne hear them singing?’ Monsarrat asked.

  ‘I think so. Her eyes were open. But who can tell? Just the same, I sat by her, at the start, holding her hand, until I came to you for help.’

  ‘Well, neither you nor she need concern yourselves further. The matter is dealt with.’

  Slattery, who had been silent, stood and handed his teacup to Mrs Mulrooney. ‘You are a queen amongst housekeepers,’ he said, bowing. ‘But now I must return to make sure those dullards haven’t made any mistakes with the papering.’

  ‘Off with you then, you spalpeen,’ said Mrs Mulrooney, smiling.

  Monsarrat also said his goodbyes, feeling an urgency to be at his desk and obviously well into the day’s industry by the time Diamond arrived, if indeed he did.

  But the notion of an overhanging curse continued to oppress the settlement. In the days following, he heard rumours of a curse from certain of the junior soldiers and convicts, particularly those from the countryside, and he noticed as well that some, when passing the forests, which to them represented Birpai lands, made signs that seemed an attempt to ward off curses hunkered in the shadows of the trees.

  Chapter 4

  Monsarrat was, perhaps, alone amongst his convict brethren in liking his daily work. His status as a Special exempted him from the gangs cutting wood or hauling timber; the worst-behaved convicts had to perform this work in double irons. He avoided the attentions of the more brutal overseers, so was also able to escape the seeping ankle wounds the men of the chain gangs suffered, and the sloughing skin of those sent to work as lime-burners.

  But his enjoyment went beyond relief at worse fates avoided. He liked the fact that here, as far from the world’s administrative centres as you could possibly get, there was a tiny scrap of perfect organisation, and copperplate to rival any found in Lincoln’s Inn, where some of his own work no doubt still resided.

  This morning he walked to Government House, to the outbuilding from which Major Shelborne ruled the settlement and reported to the Colonial Secretary in Sydney. The building was divided into two rooms, the larger one serving as a study for the major, with a window looking over the ocean. Monsarrat’s smaller workroom also had a window, the first he had had any claim to since his transportation.

  On the shelves in his office, catalogued in huge envelopes tied with black ribbon and thick enough to have their spines inscribed, were some of the older communications between Sydney and Port Macquarie. Others, perhaps more recent and more sensitive, were kept in Major Shelborne’s office, which was locked with a key but one Monsarrat was permitted to wear around his neck.

  He unlocked the inner office door now and went into Major Shelborne’s study. He preferred it here to his other place of work, the police house in the Government House garden. There the major, who was also the magistrate and justice of the peace, heard and adjudicated minor offences, with Monsarrat making notes on the squabbles or skirmishes or petty theft or neglect of work which made up the majority of the transgressions. The work was no more repetitive than the monthly reports and returns Monsarrat transcribed in the office next to Government House, but he would take the latter any day, and had much more liking for writing about thriving crops than about black eyes or stolen chickens.

  Monsarrat picked up a number of rough written drafts of letters to Sydney which he was to transcribe in his own good hand for signature by Major Shelborne on his return.

  But for this copying work, Monsarrat was a free man, or as free as was possible in his current circumstances. Port Macquarie had been intended to be a place of unremitting labour – its inmates proving themselves resilient to all but the bluntest of punishments, by virtue of their second offences. The governor’s instructions to the settlement’s first commandant still hid amongst the ribboned documents on Monsarrat’s shelves. The governor had told him to keep the convicts’ ‘minds constantly employed and their bodies inured to hard labour … they are always to be kept at work from sunrise to sunset, the whole of the weekdays, allowing only a reasonable time for their meals’.

  Monsarrat had read these instructions as he had read most documents in the office, aware of the irony that the leisure time which enabled him to read them contravened the governor’s instructions. The reality was that some of the convicts had far more free time than Sydney would have been comfortable with.

  Diamond had now put his own stamp on the settlement by imposing extra work on a great many functionaries, like Spring in the stores and Dr Gonville, who had been asked to compile a list of all the dead for the past year, together with the cause of their death.

  Monsarrat saw little point to this busy work, as such events were covered anyway in the reports to Sydney, and was grateful that Diamond had not yet got around to him, probably thanks to his relative unimportance. So once his copying was done, he availed himself of another aspect of the major’s room, a collection of histories and biographies of great men, arranged in two bookcases either side of the sea-looking window and designed in their grand leather to intimidate visiting officials, soldiers and convicts.

  Under Major Shelborne, tasks were only assigned which could be completed by mid-afternoon, leaving convicts with some free hours before night descended, even in winter. So once three o’clock came Monsarrat would stop for a meal, his rations cooked by one of the women and eaten off a tin plate in a mess reserved for those Specials who had proved themselves trustworthy – the convict overseers, Spring’s assistant storekeeper, the coxswain, the surgeon’s assistant.

  Then he’d be back, read a little Roman and Greek history again, or alternate the gossipy Seneca with the fact-obsessed Tacitus (the man would have made a good clerk), or some Catullus, the Roman poet he loved. The only version in the study was in Latin, which was just as well, as some of the Roman’s work made even Monsarrat blush. But he would have dearly loved to see how Catullus would have fared as a clerk – the man’s habit of issuing insults, invitations and even recalls of debts in verse would have made for some interesting dispatches.

  On this morning, Monsarrat took the proposed dispatches to the Colonial Secretary which were written in the major’s fast hand before his departure. He went to the outer office, locked the major’s door again, and sat down at his own desk, in front of his brown earthenware inkwell and the selection of pens which sat beside the great sheet of leather-bound blotting paper.

  Monsarrat had also picked up reports which were to go with the major’s dispatches to Sydney, standard monthly documents: receipts and issues, labour performed, infractions and punishments, convicts received and discharged.

  The most notable case of the month was a man who had absconded unsuccessfully southwards, trying to walk to Sydney, but had returned himself after ten days, looking skeletal. Why do it in winter? Monsarrat thought. Surely better to wait for October, with its milder temperatures. The man deserved punishment for idiocy if nothing else. He copied the major’s sentence – thirty days in the gaol on bread and water, along with the thirty lashes he had already been given.

  The first commandant of the settlement had been urged by Governor Macquarie to use the lash only as a last resort, and then only up to a total of fifty lashes. He had been instr
ucted to err on the side of mercy where a crime was uncertain. The current governor, Brisbane, had done nothing to countermand this, and in any case the major was an efficient but not a cruel man. In Port Macquarie, he had found an expression for both attributes together, as humane treatment tended to lead to better returns from the plantations and the timber parties.

  He was even-handed in his punishments and knew that his future career, in this place, in this colony or in some other far-flung wing of the British world, depended exactly on that, on his calm reports and his willingness to obey the precedents of colonial punishment. But an absconder was an absconder, and there were far too many of them for a place which had been touted as providing excellent natural security. Examples must be made.

  Spring’s report had been compiled in haste that month, to clear some time for the audit. It noted quantities of beef, pork, flour, rice, butter, maize, wheat, tea, sugar, wine and spirits, these last two kept in a locked room at the back of the stores, and reserved for the use of the officers. Alcohol was forbidden to convicts (there was humanity, and then there was stupidity), in spite of which a great many of them seemed able to get drunk. Spring gave an account of the amounts of fish brought in by the coxswain and his crew on the days they went trawling, and rum produced from the locally grown sugar cane lived with its imported cousins in the locked room.

  Gonville reported on sicknesses in the settlement – catarrh, now that winter was here, one case of pneumonia, a doomed case of consumption amongst the women. This was all nicely tabulated according to the practice of the British Civil Service, lists of illnesses, records of pregnancies and deliveries – a child had been born to an unmarried woman named Lawson – and deaths, of which there had been a balancing one, as though to keep the scales of both worlds equal.

  The dead man was an old lag who had been allowed for some years to sit by the hospital in a wicker chair whenever the weather was good. He was quite mad and would have thick-accented conversations with passers-by in the belief that he was still living in a village outside Manchester and had much to report about it – men smashing weaving shuttle machines and such. After he related the tale he always said, ‘And more force to their arms. Those boys know the way the world is going.’ Now Port Macquarie had been relieved of this one demented voice, and it was replaced by an infant yelling for the milk of its bonded mama.