The Making of Martin Sparrow

by Peter Cochrane

  He took note of Agnes and his eyes seemed to lock upon her. Agnes pulled at her hair and looked to Woody for some form of intervention. But it was Catley who came to the rescue. He unstrapped his haversack and took it off his shoulders and set it down. ‘Permit me,’ he said, ‘I am Mr George Catley, explorer and botaniser specialising in the eucalyptii, and latterly anatomist for Sir Joseph Banks, whose unfailing servant I am.’

  He removed his straw hat and bowed an elaborate bow, thus revealing a tight-cropped head of light brown hair.

  The mule had again stepped into the doorway and this time butted into Catley’s arse, almost shunting him into the arms of Agnes Archambault and filling her senses with the unmistakable odour of onions.

  Catley turned and slapped the mule on the muzzle with such power that the creature shrunk back and almost sat down on its haunches on the porch. The cottage shuddered and they heard the bay mare snorting and stamping.

  Agnes stepped clear of this violent turn and bumped the doctor’s sideboard and steadied the frame lest something fall. ‘Fear not madam, I am a gentleman,’ said Catley. ‘I did not mean to cause alarm, least of all ’neath these calamitous skies. Moreover, I am glazier’s putty in the presence of any gentlewoman.’

  ‘Forgive him Agnes,’ said Woody, ‘he spends too much time in the wilderness with nothing for companionship but that mule.’

  ‘Not quite,’ said Catley.

  Agnes was reminded of Mr Catley’s reputation. He lived wild in the fastness for much of the year and wore those sandals in all weathers. It was said his only companion, apart from the mule, was the splendid young mountain savage called Moowut’tin, otherwise known as Daniel, who guided him about. He was a slave to science, botanist to Sir Joseph Banks who sailed with Cook on the Endeavour. But Agnes Archambault was not a woman to be moved by reputation alone. ‘I am no gentlewoman,’ she said.

  Moreover, she was not keen on onions.

  ‘Words, meanings,’ said Catley. ‘Kindness is gentility and there is nothing in this world to equal a woman’s kindness save perhaps a woman’s touch which is, of course, a kindness beyond measure.’

  Agnes pulled a face. ‘I can whack a mule same as you.’

  Woody was ready with a fresh subject. ‘You are embarked, George, upon another campaign?’

  ‘I am that, I seek the duckbill in situ et in vivo and the answer to one of the great mysteries of anatomical science. Madam, will you dine with me before I gather my provisions and depart?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Apologies, beauty renders me impulsive beyond measure, whether flower or the flower of womanhood.’

  ‘George!’ said Woody.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I am busy here.’ The doctor picked up the chopstick and recommenced his probing at Shug’s brain matter.

  Catley stared. He stepped forward. ‘Work of the utmost importance. Forgive me Thomas I was . . . diverted.’ His gaze shifted from the specimen on the slab to Agnes Archambault.

  He stepped outside and took to fiddling with the harness and the buckles on the panniers. The mule had retreated and was nibbling at bright green shoots by the porch footings.

  ‘You tether that mule clear of my porch, and the mare,’ said Woody.

  ‘Have you seen the duckbill?’ said Agnes, hoping not to offend two men of science in the one day.

  Catley seized on the opportunity for conversation and stepped inside once again. ‘I have, yes, but not in her lair, that now is my mission.’

  ‘A new mission!’ said Woody.

  ‘I have presently set aside my botanical passions in order to address, for the benefit of Sir Joseph and the Royal Society, and for posterity, the most burning question on the anatomical schedule.’

  ‘I thought you’d finished with the duckbill?’ said Woody.

  ‘I seek not so much the duckbill these days as the modus regenerandi thereof. I am advised they headquarter in vast numbers on the Branch.’

  ‘How they birth, you say?’ said Woody.

  ‘That’s it, does she lay her eggs and hatch them in the warmth of her lair or does she hatch them inside herself, in her belly, as some fish do? Is she oviparous or ovoviparous, that is the question.’

  ‘To lay or not to lay, that is the question!’

  ‘A most damp and uncomfortable mission, I see myself mostly prone on muddy banks, soaking wet. You might say I have forsaken the flint-lock for the mat-tock. It’s most fortunate I have my father’s constitution, that of an ox.’

  ‘That will hardly fend off a skewer if the savages stick you in the gizzard,’ said Woody.

  ‘I am long ago launched upon a systematic cultivation of amity with the Aboriginals. I have never hurt a one nor they me. What’s more I have Moowut’tin with me in the woods, one of nature’s diplomats.’

  ‘Well good luck with that,’ said Woody.

  Catley scratched at his stubbly chin. ‘Thank you, Thomas. Like all progress in science, it’s the hard-won answers that bring us closer to

  clarity as to God’s design.’ He took a raw onion from his pocket and took a bite, the chomping like the sound of a chaffcutter.

  Woody had turned to polishing his glasses with a rag. ‘I hope that’s true.’

  Catley turned to go. ‘There’s a pony’s head on the porch, you know that, Thomas?’

  ‘Yes.’

  22

  The examination of Rupert Chaseling in the matter of the savage murder of Thyne Kunkle, settler, formerly of the New South Wales Corps, took place in the government store.

  Kettle and Woody empanelled themselves behind a dry-goods bench, the bench cleared and the entire setting swiftly rearranged by the storemen.

  Chaseling sat on a single chair before the panel and Mackie sat by a pile of empty flour sacks and a row of empty meat casks, the lids unsealed. Soldiers filed in. They lined up at the long counter.

  Reuben Peskett was there.

  From the rear of the store Sparrow cast a furtive eye over the sergeant, saw him thumb his false teeth into place. He was searching for the man’s charm, but he could see none. ‘He’d be a eel if he had a slippery tail,’ he whispered to Bet Pepper.

  ‘A tad more yellow and you’d be a Chinaman,’ said Bet and she whacked Sparrow’s thigh with the back of her hand.

  Sparrow felt entirely hopeless. He sunk once more into a slough of despond. Then he saw another hand, an ancient hand, softly tapping his elbow. It was Harp Sneezby.

  Harp glanced about the store, his head tipped back in that familiar fashion. He leaned into Sparrow, shoulder to shoulder. He spoke softly in his ear. ‘Griffin says get the copper worm and you won’t need no dog for the savages.’

  Sparrow looked about, noting the comers busy with conversation. ‘Where is the worm?’

  ‘It’s in the gaol.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Hat and me, we fraternise.’

  ‘What about the axe?’

  ‘Oh you’ll need the axe alright, but the worm is the sine qua non.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means you better get the worm.’

  Sparrow surveyed the scene. It seemed most of the village was packed into the store or gathered on the porch, pressing at the doorway, where Private Redenbach had positioned a hurdle.

  The folk there were eager for the details of the most recent terrible assassination and full of talk as to its meaning, but Sparrow no longer cared for such details. He could think of nothing but Bet Pepper’s cruel designation. A colour, yellow, a mere word, but enough to confirm in his mind that Biddie Happ would never come to his patch. What girl in her right mind would ever attach her affections to a yellowy man?

  ‘This is a heaven-sent moment, Marty. No time like the present,’ said Harp.

  Sparrow did not know what to think. He reckoned he might never get another chance like this and a coil of copper piping was surely a lot less trouble than a live dog. He wanted the problem solved, over and done, and he could think of
no better way, and no better moment. He got up and made to leave but upon reaching the doorway found himself confronted by Private Redenbach.

  ‘You go you miss the show, best show in town,’ said Redenbach.

  ‘I got to piss,’ said Sparrow. Redenbach stepped aside and Sparrow shifted the hurdle and pushed his way through the crowd and hurried across the square as the examination got under way. The private watched Sparrow go, then he reset the hurdle and turned his attention to the examination.

  The light from the river-side window did not carry far into the store. It lent a pale brown texture to just about everything. The entire atmosphere put Rupert Chaseling, prize witness, at some considerable unease. Nor did the framed print on the rear wall help him much; a wild skirmish amidst flesh and armour and swords and flames, a furious battle betwixt the Israelites and the Amalekites at a moment in the battle when the Amalekites were not doing very well at all.

  ‘This is an informal inquiry, Rupert,’ said Dr Woody. ‘You do not have to swear an oath but you must tell the truth, do you understand?’

  Chaseling sat up, rigid. ‘The mere spectre of God’s vengeance is enough to keep me straight.’

  He eyed the giant Amalekite who had clutched the point of an Israelite pike at the very moment another pike was about to skewer his kidneys. That particular Amalekite was done for. The awful realisation of his doom was clearly evident, written, as it were, upon his countenance.

  Chaseling was still studying the besieged Amalekite when Cuff arrived. Redenbach shifted the hurdle just enough for the deputy constable to squeeze through. ‘Nothing but a willowy paragon like myself would fit that tiny aperture,’ said Cuff. He was patting his stomach. The soldiers laughed. They could not help but like Cuff.

  ‘Thaddeus, we are underway here,’ said Dr Woody. Cuff found himself a meat cask, thumping the lid on tight, and he sat quietly.

  Woody watched him. Cuff watched back. He saw in the moment an opportunity. ‘I know he had a hankering for dark trim in extremis, I know that much,’ he said.

  Kettle glared at Cuff.

  ‘Resuming then,’ said Woody. ‘These horrible deeds, tell the panel on what day they occurred, and take off your knit cap.’

  ‘Tuesday last,’ said Rupert as he removed the cap and put it in his lap; he picked it up again, then he tucked it into his belt and then he felt for the scabby lump on his head.

  ‘Tuesday, you’re sure of that?’

  ‘I’m sure ’cause Thyne’s missus, she said to me it’s Pentecost, it’s the Feast of Weeks, and I said not here it ain’t and she said well Rupert, today is Tuesday and it’s Pentecost, how she knew that I don’t know but that stuck with me . . . ain’t often I know what day it is.’

  ‘I believe we have Tuesday for a certainty,’ said Henry Kettle. ‘Now tell the panel how it came to this, your principal, the late Mr Kunkle, butchered in full view of his family.’

  Chaseling took a deep breath. ‘Well sir, I would put my blame on no man but instead upon the locality, in the first instance.’

  ‘The locality?’

  ‘Yes sir, the loam is rich but the situation is entirely perilous. They watch us from above, loaded with their weaponry, their cackle something terrible, like geese in season. Then they’re gone, then they’re back. They come round the point too, in the shallows, armed to the teeth and we’re all down to the drizzles.’

  ‘And?’ said Woody.

  ‘I do believe my principal’s nerves were red raw, as were mine . . . and the missus too and the babe, the poor little thing, riddled with the frighteners.’

  Kettle intervened. ‘Are you saying that, notwithstanding the liberality with which these beggars are supplied with corn and other comforts, you and the Kunkles were compelled to live in a state of alarm due to their unforgiving harassment?’

  ‘A moment,’ said Woody. ‘Your principal, how was he disposed to the governor’s concession?’

  ‘I believe his feelings were, um, complicated.’

  ‘Go on then.’

  Chaseling looked away, an empty stare out the river-side window.

  Mackie clicked his fingers. ‘Rupert, Thyne is dead and you have been dutiful in your care for his family. Now do not ruin this for yourself.’

  Rupert hung his head and scuffed the floorboards with the toe of his boot. ‘I guess it don’t matter now, can’t hurt the dead, can it?’

  ‘No, go on.’

  ‘Thyne said it was all his, even the mussels in the mud, every inch o’ that patch, by virtue of his sweat and his enterprise. He said a man might as well condemn his father for fornication as mourn the founding work we do.’

  ‘That might depend on the father’s work, whether it was courtship or rape,’ said Cuff.

  ‘Thaddeus, enough,’ said Woody.

  ‘So, what happened?’ said Kettle.

  ‘First light we seen ’em in the shallows, Caleb and the one we call Napoleon in his grey frockcoat, and one other. Them spears longer’n a ten-foot pike and brutally barbed to shred a man’s flesh.’

  Dr Woody leant forward. ‘Did your principal take pre-emptive action of some kind?’

  Kettle smacked the bench. ‘I venture to say the time for pre-emption was long gone, that moment being no less than a prelude to encirclement!’

  ‘They was turnin’ the screws, I know that much,’ said Chaseling.

  The panel nodded as did most present, being sympathetic to the situation as described.

  ‘A turn too far?’ said Mackie.

  ‘What happened next?’ said Woody.

  Rupert Chaseling looked left and right, and then he looked at the Amalekite. He could not have said the picture gave him courage, but he knew he had to continue with the truth as best he could tell it. ‘Thyne was worked up to a pitch, the missus beside herself with fear, the babe screaming, the savages’ jabber something frightful and Thyne said to me he said enough and he put a ball straight into Caleb and they fell upon us with a fierce wrath.’

  The word went around the room: Caleb, he shot Caleb.

  Woody sat up. He put his hands in the small of his back and tried, as ever, to straighten his upper half and he grimaced as he did so. He said: ‘We appreciate your recourse to frankness, is there anything else you would like to add?’

  ‘They will not change their brute ancient ways. They must be kept in subjection and punished wholesale, that’s Thyne word for word, more or less.’

  ‘I think we’re finished here,’ said Kettle.

  ‘Nothing more then?’ said Woody.

  ‘The sergeant will take a hunting party.’

  ‘Forthwith!’ said Peskett.

  ‘What happened to Caleb?’ said Mackie.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Chaseling.

  ‘We are finished,’ said Woody.

  ‘The Branch mob ain’t finished,’ said Cuff.

  ‘One more thing,’ said Mackie, ‘where is Thyne’s fancy gun?’

  ‘Carried off, that and more. Corn, the small axe, poultry, Thyne’s gun. Weren’t nailed down so they took it.’

  23

  Sparrow departed the trade store and headed for the gaol. He was unhappy enough to feel reckless and that was a most unusual feeling. He would shun the hearing into Thyne Kunkle’s death, just as he’d shunned the final chapter of Shug’s execution. Why he was something of a shunner he was not quite sure but on this occasion, he well knew, there was method in his meekness.

  The heavy panelled door to the gaol was chocked open. He stepped inside, into the corridor, and listened for sounds of life. The air was much colder inside than out. No stone so cold as gaol stone. One of the granary cats rubbed against his leg. ‘What you doin’ here?’ he whispered. He wanted to pat the cat but he thought best not. Cats made him sneeze and it was not a good time to be sneezing, nor was it a good time to be patting a cat.

  The door to the turnkey’s billet was slightly ajar. He peered in. He sensed no one there.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, just loud enough. ‘You here,
Hat?’

  There was no reply.

  He walked on, softly, to the cross passage and the cells. Set high in the rear wall there were three small openings that counted for windows. Each one cast a sharply angled shaft of grey light onto the stone floor.

  He could see the spiral worm there, on a hessian sack in the far corner of the cell to his left, the copper sheen defying the faint light. There was a pile of filthy gaol garb next to the worm and a low pallet set against the rear wall with a lumpy, horsehair tick upon it. He glanced over his shoulder. He listened again. He pulled at the cell door and it swung open.

  Sparrow stared at the apparatus, wondering how he might carry off such a thing. He had a feeling this might not be too hard for just about everybody was, at that moment, listening to the interrogation of Rupert Chaseling, and the gaol gang, thankfully, was somewhere on the south road, breaking rocks and filling washaways.

  The worm could be carried in the hessian sack and he could hide it somewhere on South Creek, somewhere on the escarpment. Then he could bide his time at Peachey’s, drink some skull-cracker if there was any left, and come and get the worm in the wee small hours of the morning and sneak it across the bridge and hurry it home and get himself ready to bolt for the other side.

  A shudder went through his flesh. The worm was an awkward thing, delicate too, and just how he might get it across the river and then across country to Griffin Pinney’s hideaway on Pig Creek did not bear thinking about, at least not now. One thing at a time. He took a big deep breath.

  ‘You don’t plan to steal that worm, do you?’ said Hat Thistlewaite. Hat was standing not two feet behind Sparrow.

  ‘It’s you, on the lock,’ said Sparrow.

  ‘O’course it’s me on the lock, it’s me or nobody. It ain’t Marshalsea, Marty.’

  ‘Where’d you come from?’

  ‘I roost up there in the rafters.’

  ‘You do not,’ said Sparrow. He was looking up. Almost directly above him was a block and tackle fixed to a crossbeam, the hauling rope hitched to a metal rest on the wall.