I Got His Blood on Me: Frontier Tales

by Lawrence Patchett

  Now DeMarinis ran past me with a calf in his arms. Swerving clear of my brother, he threw the calf into the sea, then ran back up the rock for another. Wrenched from my stupor I lifted a calf of my own. It was slippery and difficult to grip, sliding down my chest as I ran. At the rock edge it fell to my feet and I half-threw, half-booted it over the edge.

  Turning to rescue another I saw how few seals were left. We’d succeeded. I shouted, truly joyful for the first time. Running back up the slope I saw John protecting a few last cows as the clubmen closed on them. Feinting and darting, he ran between the seals and the men.

  ‘Yah! Yah!’ he said, putting himself in the way, giving the cows time to escape. At the same time, he glanced over the rookery to gauge the danger closing on us.

  Half-watching him, I bent for another calf and felt a great downward lunge on my arm. It was a cow, chomping it to protect her calf. For a moment I gaped while my arm hung raglike in her mouth and she shook it. There was no pain, but I saw the blood. I kicked at her face to release it; she shook; I kicked again. At last with my boot at her eye I wrenched my arm free and was running, the calf scooped with my good arm and bouncing roughly as I took him to the sea and threw him over. Then I stood panting, my arm dangling at a strange angle.

  Then I heard a single shout, distinct from the other noise and piercing. It was my brother. He’d seen me. A pile of seals lay round him. He’d done all the damage he could, and now his target was shifting. Leaping over the carcasses of seals he ran straight for me.

  I froze. He was shouting unintelligibly, and it wasn’t clear whether he’d recognised me for his brother, distinct among the Orderists. He had long hair now and it flew back from him as he came, his red knife slashing the air. For a long moment there was just Cameron, leaping and snarling, and me, rooted to the spot, distantly aware of my mutilated arm.

  Then a DeMarinis struck me, barging me off-balance and shouting. Then John came, pointing up at the ridge and running. I turned and fled. Ahead of me the other campaigners were scrambling up the rock. We were all in flight. At my back I heard Cameron roar in wordless rage. I flashed a look behind and saw him, a knot of other clubmen coming, and some remaining behind to finish off calves and lance the remnant cows.

  Most campaigners were on the boat already, and John was leaping in. I heard my brother thunder after me, scattering stones. I was three paces from the boat now; the Blacksmith made room for me; I leapt for it and crashed on him, knocking him down. He threw me off immediately, pulling on the oars, and for a moment I was on my back, staring unfocused at the sky as it rocked above me.

  Then my brother was there—flying, suspended parallel to the rocks, then the water. He had tripped—or leapt, he had leapt for our boat and was flying. His arms were in front of him, he was flying, then he crashed against our boat with his head. It was his eyebrow and forehead that hit, slamming into the wood, then he snapped back and his face went blank, and in that neutral face I saw our resemblance. Then he slipped with limp arms backwards and he was in the water—down, gone. Wide concentric ripples marked the surface. He’d sunk straight down.

  ‘Cameron! Cameron!’

  In the sudden quiet the water lifted and slopped. Our boat rocked lazily on it.

  ‘Cameron!’

  All around me, people were staring. The clubmen looked stunned on the rocks.

  ‘Cameron!’

  It was me—it was me shouting my brother’s name. John and the older DeMarinis were at my arms, restraining me from leaping in after him. Elsewhere in the boat, I caught the scowl of other initiates.

  ‘Edward,’ said John.

  ‘Cameron,’ I said. ‘Oh God.’

  John restrained me, but I wasn’t struggling against him. I wasn’t trying to jump in. I was simply shouting my brother’s name.

  ‘Edward,’ said John.

  ‘I can hear you, John,’ I said. ‘Let me go.’

  ‘Don’t jump in,’ he said.

  ‘I won’t.’

  They let me go. I leaned closer to the water and stared down into it. There was no sign. He was so far down.

  ‘Don’t you jump in there,’ said John.

  ‘I can’t swim,’ I said.

  ‘He was stunned,’ said John. ‘He was stunned when he hit the water. Don’t go in there—you’ll drown too.’

  ‘He can’t swim either,’ I said. ‘We can’t just let him drown. This isn’t right. It’s not finished yet.’

  John gave me a pained look. ‘We have to go, Edward,’ he said. ‘It’s dangerous for us here.’

  I looked towards the shore. On the rocks the clubmen were staring at us. They were as dumbstruck as we were. No one leapt in to save Cameron.

  ‘Where is he?’ I yelled across. ‘Won’t he come up? Won’t he float?’

  For answer they stared with open mouths, as if I spoke in a foreign language.

  ‘We have to go, Edward,’ said John. ‘Those men are dangerous for us.’

  I glanced at the sealers again, then at John. No one went into the water for Cameron. No one was willing to do it—and I knew that I wouldn’t either. I couldn’t go in the water. I groaned and lunged away to the other side of the boat, holding my stomach.

  ‘Blacksmith, row,’ said John.

  ‘Wait,’ I said.

  ‘Oh for the love of—’ said the older DeMarinis.

  ‘Enough,’ said John. ‘Let him speak. That’s his brother down there.’

  I saw this news hit the Orderists on my boat. I saw them adjust to it. I addressed the clubmen on the rocks. ‘You men listen. Your captain was my brother. I want his body. I want to bury him.’

  Bloodied clubs dangling, they stared. They seemed to get smaller and taller as the swell gently rocked our boat.

  ‘You bring his body to me, when it comes up,’ I said. ‘Leave him outside your camp. I’ll collect him from there. If he’s not there in three days I’ll assume he’s lost.’

  ‘We can’t afford three days,’ said DeMarinis.

  ‘Be quiet,’ said John. ‘Hold your tongue, DeMarinis—all of you.’

  ‘I’ll return this boat on that day,’ I said. ‘Your boat doesn’t come back until he’s there. I want his body.’

  The sealers watched me for another moment, bewildered by this development.

  ‘John, we need to leave,’ said DeMarinis.

  ‘Do you hear me?’ I said.

  ‘Are you sure about this, Edward?’ said John.

  The sealers were conferring. Without taking my eyes from them, I said, ‘I think it’s my job, John. I can put it right. Our father died at sea. Cameron hated that. I have to bury him.’

  ‘All right,’ said a sealer, at last. ‘We want that boat back. We need it. Three days.’

  ‘Outside your tents,’ I said.

  ‘All right.’

  Now John lifted his voice. ‘So all of you heard that? You heard the arrangement? Now we’re leaving. We won’t come back. And no reprisals from you. No revenge attack.’

  ‘All right,’ said the sealers. For one more moment they were standing opposite our boat, watching us, their archenemies. They should have hated us, the destroyers of their trade, but they looked merely tired. They turned and trudged up the ridge.

  I collapsed to the side of the boat.

  ‘Row up,’ said John, to the Blacksmith. ‘Bring us alongside the rookery. Keep us a good distance out.’

  I remembered this from my training, too. This was required of all campaigners. This was the moment of witness.

  In a few moments we were floating off the rookery. The sealers who’d not chased us were already at work. Nearly all were skinning. Some made the cuts while, with great heaves, others peeled back the pelts. Often, to pull off the skin, they braced their feet on the seal’s tail or neck. Elsewhere men walked among the still-alive seals and lanced them, or lifted an indifferent club. All the men were stripped to the waist, blood slicking their arms and chests. Across the water a warm stench danced.

  ‘Look at
that,’ said John. ‘That’s what you’ve prevented—more of that. That’s why we work.’

  Some campaigners were grimly facing it, thin-lipped; others hunched over the side to be sick.

  Noticing us, the sealers glanced up, saw we were harmless now, then went back to their work. Then the clot of men who’d chased us and negotiated with me came down the ridge. Seeing us still there, one of their number broke free and marched down to face us. At the rock-edge he threw his arm out, furious.

  ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Fill your eyes. Get a good look.’

  His sudden fury was stunning.

  ‘You scum,’ he said. ‘Holy scum. You think you’re so holy. But you’ve killed my mate.’

  He paused to put his fingers to his eyes, and it shocked me to see he was crying.

  ‘You killed my mate—and for what? To fuck up my job? To see us all starve? You know nothing about it, you scum. Silver-spoon scum.’

  One of our women started up, enraged at this, but the older DeMarinis held her back. ‘Don’t rise to it,’ he said. ‘He’s not worthy.’

  At this response I turned away, disgusted.

  ‘But he cannot say that,’ she said. ‘We can’t let him say that.’

  The sealer was being comforted now. He cried openly, then tore away from his friends, tearing at his shirt in wild grief up the ledge.

  John gave an order and we rowed off. On that last row back I couldn’t face any of the Orderists. My torn arm throbbed in earnest; I felt numb and sick. In the event I wasn’t bothered by anyone, as they all hunched into themselves with elbows on knees, nursing private shame or triumph.

  The others left that day, striking out for Bluff with John in the lead. The Blacksmith, John had decided, would remain behind with me. He had no wife back at the community and the brothers would tend to his vegetables. When told this, the Blacksmith simply nodded. He was exhausted from the day’s rowing.

  ‘Thank you for this, Blacksmith,’ said John.

  ‘Mother preserve us,’ said the Blacksmith.

  Then John surveyed me, my bad arm. Behind him the others were waiting, their faces hardened against me. If John hadn’t been there I believe some of them would have pushed me over and spat. I had concealed a connection to their devil—my brother—and now I was remaining behind to dignify his death. With the unanimous instincts of the pious, they had turned their backs.

  ‘Thank you, John,’ I said.

  He looked me hard in the face. He took me by the elbow, then the shoulder, and I saw that he didn’t expect to see me again. ‘I hope your life turns out right.’

  Then he turned, they all turned, and disappeared into the bush.

  And so began the days of waiting with the Blacksmith. Each morning before noon we pulled the stolen boat from its hiding place and rowed to the sealers’ camp to search for Cameron’s body, then at dusk we repeated the trip. Through two full days no one was visible, and I began to fear our deal had been broken, but at the next visit two sealers came down from the tents and waved, and I took this to be a promise of intent. The wound troubled my right arm as I rowed us back. It was swollen but not infected. Each night I washed and dressed it, then ripped the wound open again by rowing to the sealers’ place, determined to let the Blacksmith rest. The trip out to Baillie’s Point and back had destroyed his strength.

  Through those days he seldom spoke, and I did not disturb him. I knew nothing about him. No one did, save for John and the prophets back at camp, perhaps. Hearsay said he’d worked the ships before joining the Order. He wore a beard and was impassive; two scars ran down each forearm, long and pork-coloured and also unexplained.

  Yet he was a generous man to share a camp with, and resourceful to boot. It was he who found food in the bush to stretch out our last stock of bread with pounded roots and berries, even a kind of tree moss that he boiled to make almost palatable. And although he was religious about Morningsong, rising before the birds to kneel in observance, he didn’t rebuke me for watching from my blankets. He never said as much, but the conflict at Baillie’s Point seemed to have rocked him, the death of my brother and the slaughter we’d witnessed troubling his grave soul in some deep way.

  Even with his foraging, however, we were soon out of bread and short on other sustenance. What gruel or mashed berries he could find we nursed over the fire, drinking water warmed in the flames to fool our stomachs.

  One night I felt the Blacksmith watching me through the smoke. And this time, after these many bare meals, he spoke. ‘When did you last see your brother?’

  ‘Do you mean before this last time?’ I said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘1794,’ I said. ‘October.’

  He smiled. ‘You remember it well.’

  ‘I remember the date.’

  He nodded, went back to his food. We were eating some of his fern-root mix. It wasn’t something you’d voluntarily put in your mouth, but at the community I’d grown used to rough food. When I dreamed of my life after colonial service it was food I pictured most vividly—buttercakes oozing with sugar sauce from my hands down the elbow, pies I could sneak back in Glasgow, greasy with forbidden meat.

  The Blacksmith chewed on, watching me over his hands. ‘You fought with your brother?’

  I laughed. ‘You could say that.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Pardon?’ I said, buying time.

  ‘What did you fight about?’

  I looked into the fire. ‘About how to survive, I think.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  I watched the flames. If I didn’t look at him, my answers seemed to come more readily, and more honest. ‘We were boys. I was joining the Order. He wanted to live on the streets.’

  ‘You split with him?’

  ‘I had to,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t live like that. Have you tried it?’

  He laughed gently, timelessly. ‘Yes, Edward. I have “tried” it. I have certainly tried that life.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said.

  ‘It’s all right.’

  ‘Well, in my case, to escape it wasn’t a noble choice.’

  ‘But you chose the Order.’

  I said nothing. I let the silence explain the nature of my choice of faith. For a moment his eyes rested on me, then dropped.

  ‘Don’t pretend to be shocked, Blacksmith,’ I said. ‘You know I’m not the most pious of men. When I made that choice I wasn’t being religious. I was choosing comfort. I like comfort—don’t pretend you haven’t seen that.’

  ‘I see nothing,’ said the Blacksmith. ‘I make no judgement.’

  Like him, I stared into the fire. The whole of that wild land was around us, yet it seemed we had to stare into the fire to talk.

  ‘I want to ask,’ said the Blacksmith. ‘Your brother. We heard so much. He can’t have been quite what they said.’

  ‘As an adult, I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I never saw him, after boyhood.’

  ‘Yet you stay here to bury him. That’s something. That says something good.’

  ‘But I don’t know why, Blacksmith. I don’t know why I made that promise.’

  ‘Well,’ said the Blacksmith. ‘You still did it.’

  ‘He was tough,’ I said. ‘He brought me up to the age of nine. He kept me safe after our father’s death. Then I found an Order school and joined it.’

  ‘He didn’t join.’

  ‘He couldn’t believe in it. He’d always rejected our father’s faith, which was more or less Orderist. He didn’t need it, somehow. He was ... brave enough to see it was fake.’

  ‘But you did believe in it.’

  ‘I believed in it enough.’

  I pitched some sticks into the fire, and more silence passed.

  ‘You will do your service later,’ said the Blacksmith. ‘I feel that.’

  This time I jerked up and stared hungrily through the smoke. I didn’t care for the head-pats of the pious, but somewhere, I knew, I yearned for the respect of men like the Blacksmith.
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br />   ‘In your way,’ he said, ‘with the scholars, back in the headquarters. With your learning, your—’ he gestured ‘—books. You’ll do your part.’

  ‘No doubt,’ I said. ‘But my question is, why did it fall this way? Who decides?’

  ‘Pardon, Edward?’

  It was a shock to hear him use my name.

  ‘My brother brought me up. I followed him, accepted his help, then turned my back.’

  He said nothing to this.

  ‘Who decides?’ I said. ‘Who decides why one boy gets all the hardness, and the next boy gets simply a comfortable life, a soft character, an easy conscience? Who decides that?’

  ‘Well, your brother was older.’

  ‘Yes, but that doesn’t explain it,’ I said. ‘Why was I so ready to accept the easy path? Why was I offered it?’

  Between us the smoke waved and danced, while the Blacksmith stared into it. Even the birds were silent. Then he shook his head. ‘I don’t know the answer to that.’

  Next day at noon my brother’s body was there, sodden and roped to a log on the jetty, his arms splayed out. No one was visible at the tents. After a short time of watching from the boat we moored and walked up.

  It seemed the sealers had dragged him from the sea and not organised him at all. His hair was everywhere, grit stuck to his cheeks and even his eyeballs, which were rolled right back. Small snails were in his hair and beard, and something had nibbled his earlobes and the softened toe-skin.

  I stood above him, fixated. He was very changed—the wild hair and beard, his arms tattooed—but in any crowd I would have recognised him. It was in the bones round his eyes and his nose, still fine like my father’s and now incongruous among those rough locks and broken teeth. Anyone would have seen our connection, would have seen that we were blood.

  The Blacksmith coughed.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Let’s get him into the bush.’

  I took the heavy end of the log and we tottered across the clearing, in front of the tents. We’d almost made the bush when three sealers burst out.