Freddie spoke a great deal about the turnip. He declared it a poor excuse for a vegetable, save fodder for pigs. In this regard he spoke bitterly of a man called Turnip Townsend whom Bea had never heard of. He spoke, too, about the partialities of the sprouting potato and the unsuitability of very rotten manure as opposed to fresh manure mixed with old straw or thatch. He conceded the former had its applications but not, he said, in the vicinity of a sprouting potato for the eyes were most particular as to dung. Better, he said, to have no dung at all than to have the eyes coated in old rotten dung.
They sat Joe nearby, in the sun, with a broad-brimmed hat on his head and a blanket on his knees. They sat him with a view over the corn stubble on the flats and the Branch beyond, but when they checked he was mostly dozing.
Once when she called the young dog he ambled his way to Joe and sat beside him with his long nose on the old soldier’s knee. Joe seemed not to notice and the dog was content just to be there. After a while he dropped down, his forelegs folded beneath his chest, warmed by the sun, dozing with Joe.
In the afternoon Freddie put the ox in harness and ploughed the stubble ground for wheat and Bea Faa followed along behind, shaking out the weeds and bagging them in a corn sack because, according to Freddie, they would greatly impoverish the soil if left to grow in the company of the burgeoning seed.
He told Bea that early sown wheat yielded better, being less subject to the grub and smut and rust and blight to which late wheat was always liable in the close, hot, sultry weather that marked the coming of summer on the river. He vowed to plough some more in the days to come, get as much of Mackie’s seed into the ground as early as they could, for wheat meant credit at the store.
Late in the day the last of the westering sun bathed the flats and the banks of the Branch. It was hard to see menace in this scene, and they did not at first see menace when a skiff skimmed into the frame with the familiar nor’-easter in the sail, beaching on the flats by the big she-oak.
They had put Joe to bed.
Freddie was fixing the fire, anticipating a cool evening come the dark. He was grumbling about autumn’s slippery cunning. Bea was sipping at a mug of tea on the doorstep, the dog by her side. ‘A boat, three men,’ she said.
She watched them as first they folded the sail and tied off the boat and headed across the patch, skirting the fresh ploughed ground. She recognised Sparrow the moment he was off the mud and squared up, walking his walk. Amicus tried to force past her but she grabbed him and held him tight.
Freddie was behind her now, his feet in motion like he was treading grapes or mushing the makings for a sod house. ‘That’s Reuben Peskett,’ he said.
She watched Joe come sharply awake. He pointed at the mantelshelf. ‘The gun?’ said Freddie, reaching for Thyne’s musket on the pegs, but Joe’s agitation did not affirm the gun.
‘The bayonet?’ Joe nodded and Freddie took the bayonet from the mantelshelf and handed it to him. ‘One time Joe give him a thrashin’,’ he explained to Bea.
Joe fumbled at the leather scabbard until he drew out the blade. He worked his fingers on the scalloped handle he had carved to measure. He put the weapon under the blanket, touch close to his hip. He straightened up a little, ready as any stricken old soldier could be.
The girl moved aside, held tight to the dog, as first Peskett, then Redenbach and then Sparrow filed in.
All the way down the river Sparrow had worried about what Bea Faa might say to Peskett. She knew the truth about the boy’s death, as he had told it to Mr Catley and Moowut’tin, and Mr Mackie too, and she had no notion of the story he’d told Peskett to elude the rectal pear and get himself off that hook in the gaol and into the woods. He fully anticipated his plan would fall apart in the course of their stopover at Joe’s.
He said hello as he filed into the cabin, and she said hello back, but there was not the moment for another word. She let go of the dog and Amicus pranced about Sparrow and nuzzled into his hand.
Peskett was staring somewhat triumphantly at Joe. ‘Well well, the celebrated duelist, the great conciliator. Let’s all coddle the damn savages.’
‘What’s wrong with him?’ said Redenbach.
‘He got up for the necessaries and he took a turn,’ said Freddie. ‘He can’t hardly talk anymore.’
‘No damn use to anyone,’ said Peskett. He handed his musket to Redenbach. He looked the girl over. ‘Here she is, the sealer’s whore.’ He was thumbing his false teeth into the lock position that never quite locked.
He squatted down and called the dog and the dog came to him. ‘This is Mr Kettle’s kangaroo dog. I am formally requisitioning this dog and charging you, Marty Sparrow, with theft thereof.’
He took the dog by the scruff of the neck and closed his fist and pulled the skin tight and lifted the animal off its forelegs.
Amicus snarled and snapped at Peskett’s sleeve and the sergeant let go and pulled away and smacked the dog’s snout with the back of his hand. ‘He does that again, I’ll take his balls off.’
Sparrow made a silent vow that he would not suffer more than the mild chastisement of Amicus Amico from that moment forth. He felt a tingle in his fingers, the finger memory of the weighty helve, the small axe, in hand. Now you know how. He felt himself a sovereign power, silently sitting in judgement. He sensed a shift in the order of things.
‘I want a good firm collar on this dog as of now,’ said Peskett.
‘He don’t need a collar,’ said Sparrow.
Redenbach was warming his hands at the fire, peering into the pot. ‘What you got here?’
‘Corn and cabbage and some fish heads on the warm,’ said Freddie.
‘Well then, put out the plates, we’re starved.’
Bea sliced what bread there was and floated a slice on Joe’s serve and took it to him.
Joe took the plate. He smiled at Bea like he didn’t have a care in the world.
Peskett rapped the table. ‘You get back here.’
The dark had crept in and took a hold all about them, save for the glow in the fireplace. Freddie put a taper to the fire and lit the oil lamp on the mantelshelf, beside the empty scabbard.
‘Now, girl, how’d that boy die, the doctor’s boy?’ said Peskett.
The girl looked to Sparrow and Peskett thumped the table and rattled everything. A centipede scuttled from a crack in the tabletop, pausing near Sparrow’s hand.
They watched.
‘You tell me how that boy died out there,’ said Peskett.
‘A bull shark,’ she said.
‘We know that’s a lie,’ said Redenbach.
‘Shut up,’ said Peskett.
Sparrow took a knife and laid the blade across the centipede and pinned him to the table and they watched the creature wriggle and rear.
‘If you like scarin’ people you’d come back as one o’ them,’ said Redenbach.
‘He’s sure got a lot o’ legs that one,’ said Freddie.
‘Jesus wept, can we just keep to the matter at hand,’ said Peskett.
Sparrow said: ‘If I had a long black pin I could stick this one right through, keep him in a jar, way clear of his deadly venom and his vicious arts.’
‘Like Mr Catley?’ said Bea.
‘Yes.’
‘How did that boy die?’ said Peskett, loud.
She hesitated. She wondered if Sparrow could be that shrewd.
‘A funnel-web spider,’ she said.
Peskett sat up straight, his palms pressed together, his thumbs tapping the one against the other.
‘On the Branch?’
‘Yes.’
‘He said off the Branch.’
‘Close to the Branch.’
‘The doctor’s boy’s out there, dead?’
‘Yes.’
‘Was it quick, did he die quick?’ said Redenbach.
‘Yes.’
‘You tell us then, what happened when he got bit?’ said Peskett.
Bea had no trouble recalling Mr C
atley’s words or, to be precise, Moowut’tin’s words as translated by Mr Catley. Such was the peril of her recent years that she was practised in her attention to detail, any detail that might navigate her out of peril. ‘The poison is swift . . . the skin went like goose flesh, plucked, then his face began to twitch and his body shook, horribly. He lost the power of speech and began to babble and vomit and pant, and then his breathing slowed, ’ere death released the poor soul.’
‘Swift you say?’
‘Yes.’
‘You got any bang-head?’ said Redenbach.
‘No,’ said Freddie. ‘Joe won’t have it.’
‘Get the flagon,’ said Peskett.
Redenbach departed for the skiff and he came back with a gallon flagon in wicker and they drank for a while, just the soldiers. The wicker was worn out and frayed. Redenbach was folding the frayed ends back into the weave. Peskett watched. He whacked Sparrow’s elbow. ‘You weave that stuff?’ he said.
‘Not any more,’ said Sparrow.
‘I thought you was a eeler on the Irk?’
‘That was long ago.’
Freddie took the cookpot to the water barrel at the back of the byre and swilled it with a dipper’s worth of water and gave it a good scrub with dirt and then with a handful of straw and then he swilled it again. He was relieved to be free of the somewhat fixed atmosphere in the cabin.
Redenbach was drinking steadily. ‘Get a lamp in there girl, I’ll see that bugger’s eyes.’
‘Joe’s worn out.’
‘He’s more’n worn out, he’s useless,’ said Redenbach. He stood up and kicked back his chair and went to the bedside and bent down and stared into Joe’s eyes and saw the old man was wide awake. ‘What you up to you randy old bugger?’
Joe said nothing. The girl could hear him breathing, heavily, through his nose. She stepped to the bed’s end and saw Redenbach had a handful of Joe’s nightshirt in his fist and he was shaking Joe, demanding some sort of reply. ‘You’re gunna talk to me one way or another.’
The dog was close by, watchful. Peskett was entertained.
Bea saw the veins in Joe’s neck, thick as rope. She saw Joe’s left hand pull slowly at the blanket, the blanket coming away and Joe’s fist, secreted there, wrapped tight on the sculpted handle of the bayonet. She saw him swing up the blade and ram it through the meaty part of Redenbach’s chin.
Joe let go off the bayonet and slumped back as Redenbach reeled away, his mouth chocked open, the sound a guttural squall, like he was gargling nails.
He worked the blade free.
The dog inched forward, licking at the blood on the floor.
‘Come away now soldier,’ said Peskett, getting to his feet.
But Redenbach was beyond recall. He stood over Joe, raised the bayonet as you might a hatchet over a wood block, and he chopped down at Joe and struck him at the juncture of the neck and shoulder and split him to the breast. ‘He cuts like lard, the wretch has no bones,’ he hollered.
Bea went swiftly to Joe and took him in her arms. A faint moan carried on his failing breath.
‘You’ve killed him,’ said Sparrow.
‘What we do not need, Alvin!’ roared Peskett.
The dog had gone to Bea and stood close at her side as she laid Joe on his back and set his pillow neat beneath his head, the bed soaked in blood.
She pressed on his shoulders, trying to halt the coming away. Then she heard the breath go out of him and she felt the stillness, and the coldness, of his flesh.
Redenbach stepped away. He sat himself at the table, holding a bloodied rag to his chin. He took a long draught and wiped his mouth with his sleeve.
‘Damn you for more trouble than we need,’ said Peskett.
Bea rested her head on Joe’s chest and the tears ran from her cheeks onto his nightshirt. Her mind swept across her brief time on the Branch with Joe and Freddie. As if it had never rained, she could only think of sunny days, of good hard sweaty work and kind words, of reading to Joe by lamplight, Bunyan, the Gazette. Of a time like no other in the entirety of her life, a time when she was not put upon. What now?
Joe’s skin had already lost its colour. His corpse was pale as tripe. His entire frame was cold and she could not warm him, as she once had.
She heard Peskett growling at his subordinate. ‘That puncture might well shut you up.’
Sparrow’s eyes locked on Redenbach’s bloodied chin.
The soldier took the flagon by the wicker handle and lifted it and tipped back his head and Sparrow saw the bayonet wound, bloodied and raw.
Redenbach spat blood into the rag and folded the cloth in his fist. ‘Damned ol’ squaddie,’ he said. He dabbed at the runnage of blood and bang-head on his neck.
‘You killed him,’ said Sparrow.
‘You just work that out?’
Freddie was back with the cookpot. He stared at Redenbach’s bloodied neck and shirt. ‘Who did that?’ he said. He looked to Sparrow with some degree of puzzlement.
‘Never you mind,’ said Peskett.
Freddie watched as Redenbach took another swig from the flagon and he saw the running wound in the soldier’s chin. ‘Balm’s no good for that, you need a stitch or two in that. That or a plug.’ Then he remembered the bayonet.
In the darkness of the recess he saw Joe, lifeless and horribly bloodied. He shuffled his way to the recess. He sat by Bea, took Joe’s hand, and let out a terrible wail.
Peskett took hold of Redenbach’s head and probed at the chin wound and Sparrow watched. He reckoned the soldiers quite vulnerable, busied there. He had never been quite the same since he cleaved that axe into Griffin Pinney’s head. He surmised he was a better man for it. No longer helpless, weightless, like ash on the wind. He reckoned he might yet get away, him and Amicus. And now Joe was dead. That could be quite helpful: Bea might come too. But it was hard to think past the moment, for Freddie was wailing, a desolate, wretched sound, and Bea’s anguish was hidden yet plain, her face in her hands.
53
Neither tide nor wind favoured the deputy constables. They were compelled to lay over on a nameless stretch of the river and thereafter to lay over again, to mend a broken tiller. The loss of time was such that Cuff and Sprodd did not reach Joe’s patch until late the following day. There they found the soldiers were gone, having left at dawn, Sparrow and the dog with them. They found Joe, dead, and Freddie at the foot of his bed in a miserable state of confusion.
Bea Faa had stopped up Joe’s rear with a wad of linen and tied an old bit of harness tight about his shoulders to hold him together. Then she draped him in his greatcoat and laid him out on the bed, his hands by his side. ‘He near cut Joe in two,’ she told them.
Cuff lifted the lapel on the coat and saw the nightshirt soaked in blood. He stood there, quiet, head bowed. ‘Redenbach you say?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, there’s a lot of secrets in them woods and one more won’t do harm to man nor dog,’ said Cuff as he sat himself at the table.
‘What secret?’ said Sprodd.
‘I aim to kill that weasel, drop him down a hole all the way to hell.’
‘I’ll sit with him for a while more,’ said Bea.
‘You do that.’
‘What am I going to do, Thaddeus?’ said Freddie.
‘You’ll do what we all do my friend: we just keep goin’. That’s all we can ever do.’
‘I’ll try I will, but I . . .’
‘We’ll see to a decent burial tomorrow, early.’
‘Seems burying’s all we do, these days,’ said Sprodd.
‘I would like to stay on, here.’ Freddie seemed to be in a daze.
‘It’s your patch Freddie.’
‘It is?’
‘You were here, Joe came along.’
‘Good pals ever since.’
‘Don’t you forget that. You and this patch, you were Joe’s salvation.’
‘I s’pose we was, yes.’
Cuff beckoned the girl.
‘Come and sit, we’ll talk,’ he said. He could see the sadness in her eyes and he wished he had something in the way of comfort to say to her. Instead he was the bringer of bad news. He patted her hand. ‘I have no desire to add to your troubles missy but trouble is comin’.’ He took the warrant from his haversack. ‘I know you can read.’
The dark was fast closing. She lit the candle on the table and the dim residue of the day was charged with a russet glow.
She read the warrant.
Sprodd was by the foot of the bed. ‘My Lord, old Joe,’ he said.
‘They didn’t quite spell your name right but I’d say that’s you,’ said Cuff, poking at the paper.
‘That is me.’
‘The thing is, if you stay here the military will come for you, once they know.’
She nodded. ‘A close call then.’
Cuff chuckled. ‘Yes.’ He took the warrant from her hand and turned it about and scanned it for the line he wanted. ‘Tell me about this Boston negro.’
‘His name was Jessop. He was one of five stranded on a sealery in the lower forties, no sign of the mothership. They thought themselves forsaken. Their little settlement was naught but mean huts lined with pelts.’
‘Desperate.’
‘They had succumbed to a terrible melancholy, and variously suffered the scurvy, their teeth coming away and their gums bleeding and their skin all dappled.’
‘You found them somewhat . . . needy?’
‘We did. And we found bales of raw pelts. But there was a small batch, finished, the coarse long hairs entirely gone and the hide and the fur none the worse for the treatment.’
‘I’ve seen one of them pelts.’
‘Then you know they are flawless, finished to perfection.’
‘That warrant says they were butchered in their sleep.’
‘Jonas gave them biscuits and grog forthwith, and he promised them carriage off the island on one condition.’
‘They trade the cure for their salvation.’
‘Yes.’
‘Doubtless they surrendered their secret.’
‘They did, the makings and the measures, every detail, and for that they got a meal of cheese and salted beef and grog.’
The Making of Martin Sparrow Page 32
