Sparrow was not certain that he was most assuredly of this persuasion. He was, on the other hand, most assuredly certain he could not decline to see Mort, not under the circumstances. Mort could help in various ways. If Mort was fraternising with the savages he might put in a word for Amicus Amico, should a word be required. Sparrow could hardly believe the turn in his fortunes. He was free of Reuben Peskett, and Redenbach, and good riddance.
And soon he would see Mort again and Mort, at least, was a white man to whom he could recite his most urgent needs.
55
They heard the first shot somewhere ahead and next day they heard a second shot, which confirmed, as had the first, that Peskett and company were following the line of the river as expected. They slogged on, Cuff and Sprodd and the girl, the going more difficult as the river narrowed and the country about them cut more steep and inhospitable by the mile.
The terrain went hardest on Sprodd, who frequently had to rest his cramping legs. On one of these occasions they took their rest by the pillar of stone where Cuff had formerly seen Moowut’tin snare the eagle. There was not a breath of wind and a faint, feather-touch rain was falling upon them. Cuff chose to say nothing of the mastery he and Mackie had witnessed that day, and they moved on.
They rounded a sharp turn in the river and made for a thumbnail of sand further along the reach where, once again, they might rest.
Midway there they heard a babble and thought fearfully of the savages but, as they neared the beach, they could make out a word here and there, a familiar tongue. Then the tongue fell silent and they halted, the current curling on their shins as they listened for more.
They moved slowly upriver, single file, Cuff in the lead, his musket primed.
They passed beneath a sandstone shelf fringed with rotting logs and frigid, copper coloured pools in the scalloped recessions in the stone, the fry darting for cover. Cuff raised his hand and they paused once more. Not a sound, save the murmur of the waters. Then they heard the voice again, from atop the shelf. ‘Oh thy kindly breasts . . . oh Mrs Wise, let me rest my head.’
They were, all three, plainly astonished at the clarity of both diction and meaning in this otherwise alien place.
‘That’s no savage,’ said Sprodd.
‘Thank you, Dan,’ said Cuff.
‘That’s the north-west,’ said Sprodd.
‘That’s Manchester,’ said Cuff.
‘That’s Mr Catley,’ said Bea Faa.
Cuff considered the prospect. He recalled, immediately, the gossip at the ridge upon the estrangement of Catley and the widow Wise. The rumour was that Catley was most distressed, having been turned away for making of her a mere convenience between his sorties into the fastness. The widow’s charge could hardly be denied.
He recalled, too, a certain amount of supplementary information supplied to him by none other than Betty Pepper. That was some time ago, when Thelma Rowntree was still there, before Griffin Pinney whisked her away. Catley had turned to Thelma for comfort, thinking her a most ample substitute for Mrs Wise. He came to her night after night, dipped his wick and then visited all his sadness upon her, and sometimes he paid for an extra session, just talk. And then he was gone, restored, set for yet another heroic assault on the wilderness, in the name of science, England, the empire, the Royal Society, and Sir Joseph Banks.
The voice from atop the rock shelving was now somewhat more feeble. ‘Fool that I am . . .’
‘That’s Catley alright,’ said Cuff as he picked his way up the slope at the near end of the shelf.
On the shelf, he saw a hollow at the base of the sandstone scarp. Catley’s haversack was there and his prone boots were plainly visible and they were plainly inhabited by Catley’s feet, for they were moving in a most agitated fashion. Then they ceased to move, whereupon their owner withdrew them, very slowly, into the darkness of the hollow.
Cuff squatted down, steadying himself with the stock of the musket planted upon the stone and a firm grip on the barrel. ‘Good day to you sir,’ he said. He could hardly make out the upper half of Mr Catley until the specimen hunter raised himself and the light, such as it was, played upon his features.
Catley stared at Cuff and a look of immense disappointment set upon his countenance. ‘I was hoping you might be Mrs Wise,’ he said, his voice a mere whisper.
‘No no, she ain’t here. Now what’s the matter Mr Catley, what ails you?’
‘You must never ever take a good woman for granted.’
‘Don’t I know it. What ails you Mr Catley?’
Catley continued to stare. ‘I have hardly the sense God gave a chicken and a dead arm to prove my own miserable adjudication on the matter.’
Cuff worried that the man may have sunk into lunacy. ‘A dead arm you say?’
‘Yes sir, a dead arm, much disfigured, poisoned and paralysed.’
‘You best come out of there. You know me sir, Cuff, I am with the constabulary, with Mr Mackie.’ Catley did not answer for some time. He was pondering Cuff’s introduction.
‘A most severe fellow, your principal,’ he said at last. He could see Cuff and the anonymous boots of another man. For a moment he forgot the information he had just acquired. He felt somewhat fearful, friendless, cast into the hands of unknown strangers. ‘I doubt I can move, overwhelmed as I am with regret.’
Cuff thought it might be helpful if he were to respond on the subject of regret. ‘It’s a torment I know, several fine women having quite sensibly dispensed with me over the years . . . reckoned I was a hard dog to keep on the porch.’
Catley made no reply.
Cuff could see the sleeve torn away on the botanist’s left arm, the forearm much swollen, the hairs thick upon the fevered red of Catley’s flesh. He beckoned Bea Faa and the girl squatted on her haunches. ‘Hello Mr Catley,’ she said. ‘I do most vividly recall your kindness to myself and Mr Sparrow.’
Catley lit up. The awful sadness visited upon him by the hallucinatory form of those kindly breasts deserted him entirely. He felt a rush of blood, a pulse of exhilaration throughout the entirety of his sentient being, except for his left arm which was numb as a plank.
He inched out of the hollow with the bad arm in his lap. He sat up, squinting, shielding his eyes from the light. He was entirely preoccupied by the presence of the girl. ‘Good women brook no misuse, per definitionem,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ said Bea, figuring the Latin was mere repetition.
‘You agree?’ said Catley, beads of sweat on his forehead.
‘I do, yes,’ she said.
‘I felt from the first we were . . . in tune, you and I.’
‘Mr Sparrow and I were most grateful for your kindness.’
‘Ah yes, Mr Sparrow, and that dog,’ said Catley. ‘How fares the dog?’
‘The dog is well and Mr Sparrow too.’
‘He surprised me, Sparrow,’ said Catley, his eyes wandering from Cuff to Sprodd and back to Bea.
‘He did?’
‘You wouldn’t think he’d kill a fly, let alone Griffin Pinney.’
Cuff on his haunches almost fell backwards, such was his surprise. ‘Sparrow killed Griffin Pinney?’ he said, looking to Bea.
Bea saw no point in denial, not now. ‘Yes,’ she said.
‘I don’t believe it,’ said Sprodd.
‘He rescued me, from that vile man.’
‘He did?’
‘Pinney took me for his pleasure in the most peculiar circumstance, and Martin split his skull with the small axe.’
Cuff could not repress a chuckle. ‘Marty Sparrow brained Griffin Pinney in the act?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, that villain got his climax, I’ll say that much,’ said Cuff, his hat in his hand, two fingers scratching at the back of his head. He brought a sharp halt to his chuckling for he realised it might be indelicate in the presence of the girl.
‘Lord,’ said Sprodd.
‘In flagrante delicto, a most honourable intervention,’ said
Catley.
‘I have clearly underestimated Mr Sparrow’s capacities and perhaps too his ambition,’ said Cuff. He had concluded, quietly, that naught but the allure of Bea Faa could prompt a midge like Sparrow to interpose himself in such a manner.
‘Yes,’ said Catley. ‘The horror of that bull shark, the loss of the boy and so on, I am most sympathetic to the poor man’s travails.’
Cuff studied the pitted sandstone between his boots. He cast a glance in the direction of Bea Faa. ‘A bull shark killed that boy?’ he said.
‘I’ve not surrendered a confidence, have I?’ said Catley.
‘I was not there,’ said Bea.
‘But your understanding . . .?’ asked Cuff.
‘I believe the bull shark story is true.’
‘And this cave upriver, this cave’s a lie?’
‘A good lie,’ said Sprodd. ‘Got Sparrow off the hook.’
‘I believe it did,’ said Bea.
Cuff scratched some more at the back of his head and then he rested his chin in the palm of his hand, his fingertips drumming on his cheek. ‘Droves of us up the creek on a wild-goose chase,’ he said.
Fish were jumping in the quiet flow behind them, dragonflies darting about. Sprodd looked over his shoulder. ‘Them perch just beggin’,’ he said.
A water dragon topped the rock shelf and stood stock-still, watching them, his little legs speckled in white, his head and shoulders dressed in streaks of black and splashes of yellow as if for a carnival or a masked ball.
‘Dear me, better the foot slip than the tongue, ever my conviction, yet look what I’ve done,’ said Catley.
He was upset, not so much at the slip as the possibility that he may have alienated Bea Faa. Even in extremis he found his mind, of its own accord, contemplating how a specimen collector in the wilderness, a man of advanced ripeness, might win the heart of a comely girl from Yetholm.
‘No harm done,’ said Bea, but she was not sure that was true. She felt sorry for the man. He’d been nothing but good to her, and to Sparrow, whose dog he had named, in Latin. He had saved them, quite possibly, from an awful death in the stone country to the west. His reverie combined with delirium no doubt fogged his mind and ushered out the secrets he had so solemnly agreed to keep.
Cuff had cupped Catley’s inflamed forearm in the palm of his hand and he was ever so gently pressing on the swollen flesh with the tips of his fingers. ‘Am I hurting you sir?’
‘I have a stabbing pain, though nothing like the first few hours when I hopped and danced and rolled about in paroxysms of agony.’
‘The arm still pains you?’
‘It is for the most part numb and useless which I much prefer to the torments of the initial phase.’
‘A snake?’
‘Nooo, the duckbill.’
‘The duckbill?’ Cuff was surprised. The little fellows looked so frolicsome and harmless on the rare occasions he had seen one in its natural habitation.
‘I located myself as advised by Moowut’tin. I watched and waited and that very afternoon a duckbill surfaced and I hurled my net and the creature in its panic flipped and tipped and spun itself into a complete besetment.’
‘You got one, alive?’ said Bea.
‘I was sure at that point of said duckbill’s affiliation with a certain burrow close by. I hauled in my catch and set about releasing those little paddly feet from the netting, but I got stung, small spur on the hind legs. I had no idea of the ruinous venom they carry.’
‘Stung by the duckbill!’ said Cuff.
‘I have been an invalid the days hence, how many days I cannot say. I can report the most terrible stabbing pains, a heat in the arm like fire, swelling and disfigurement as you can see and my rational faculties periodically succumbing to a delirium and thereafter the retrieval of some clarity, as I do hope I am exhibiting, now.’
Cuff turned to Sprodd. ‘There’s every chance they’ve walked right by, right under this shelf.’
‘Who?’ said Catley.
‘The military, with your Mr Sparrow in tow.’
‘And the young dog!’
‘Him too.’
‘And me, dead to the world.’
‘Yes.’
‘The river’s a veritable boulevard,’ said Catley. ‘I’m sorry I missed Mr Sparrow, I did take a shine to that pup.’
‘It ain’t a cul-de-sac, I know that much,’ said Sprodd.
‘My mule’s gone too, I fear now he’s meat to the savages,’ said Catley.
‘That’s a shame if you’ve lost your mule,’ said Cuff.
The girl set about making a fire on the rock shelf and Sprodd made a fishing rod from an infant sapling. He took a hook and a horsehair line from his pouch and went in search of grubs for bait.
‘Moowut’tin tells me there’s heavy rain over the headwaters,’ said Catley.
Cuff sniffed the air. ‘Well, he’d know I reckon,’ he said.
That evening, deep in the gorge, they dined on perch. Catley ate ferociously, spitting the bones into his lap, and then he caught his breath and ate some more. He drank his fill and fell back on the shelf with a heavy sigh that may have signalled a revisitation of the regret he’d felt throughout the day. He dozed, restless. He was periodically given to bursts of rambling patter though nothing further was uttered on the subject of the widow Wise. They helped him back to the hollow and put a blanket on him and adjusted various items in his haversack and made a pillow of their work.
They sat about the fire. They spoke softly, hoping not to disturb the invalid. ‘Where’s that Daniel when the man needs him, what kind o’ man Friday we got here?’ said Sprodd.
‘I imagine his primary loyalty rests elsewhere,’ said Cuff.
‘You know him?’ said Bea.
Cuff pondered whether or not to tell the eagle story. It was cold now. The cold seemed to drop into the canyon with the heaviness of solid matter. He was intent upon catching some sleep. He untied his bundle and rolled out his blanket. He thought he might crawl in next to Catley, keep the frost off. ‘I know him, I’ve seen him at work,’ he said.
56
At the far end of the reach the river was flanked by masses of stone, boulders of monumental proportions, some of them big as a byre.
Mort Craggs was seated, cross-legged, on one such boulder, hands upon his knees. Like a potentate awaiting emissaries, a man of considerable mass with a crop of black curls upon his head and upon his shoulders a mantle of layered pelts and upon his feet a pair of pelt moccasins that looked like dirty rags.
‘Had I known you had the mettle, I might have took you instead of Shug,’ said Mort, talking like some queer monument come alive in a dream. ‘I did not believe you had the mettle Marty, I took you for a biddable cog fixed in the wheels of despotism. I see now my error in that regard.’
‘They hung Shug,’ said Sparrow, from below. He could see the stumps of Mort’s cropped ears, the ridging of proud flesh.
There was a pistol holstered on Mort’s hip. ‘I wondered if they’d found him,’ he said.
‘Well they did.’
‘Handsome dog.’
‘His name is Amicus Amico. He’s my dog.’
Mort smiled, cast a glance in the direction of Caleb and Napoleon. ‘I don’t want your dog, but I cannot speak for my sable friends.’
Caleb and Napoleon had gathered eggs of some description. They were sat in the shade, cracking the eggs and gulping down the contents one after another. Amicus was at their feet, busily licking out the eggshells.
Sparrow called the dog away. ‘They got two axes, that’s enough,’ he said.
‘And you got a dog with a peculiar name.’
‘It means friend to a friend.’
‘That’s nice.’
Mort dragged his arse along the top of the tumbledown stone and half disappeared as he made his way down a flight of lesser stone onto the sand and there he stood as if alone, entirely alone, and he studied the golden shallows just inches from his feet, th
e waters rippling over the corrugated sands, a big, gutted bass in his fist. He tossed the fish onto the sand.
Napoleon had retrieved Peskett’s false teeth from his pocket. He and Caleb studied the teeth and then Caleb surrendered them to Mort who took custody of the trophy with some evident pleasure. ‘What a bonny day it is, for now,’ he said. He saw Sparrow watching. ‘Reuben Peskett nailed my ears to the pillory, Marty, as directed by that pig magistrate Abbott, that great gawking tub o’ lard.’
‘I know,’ said Sparrow. He recalled, most vividly, the event in question, the punishment for Mort’s heinous behaviour, to wit, the ravishing of a woman in a manner too shocking to relate.
‘Next day he cropped ’em, severely. Beyond the lawful limits,’ said Mort.
‘He did, yes,’ said Sparrow.
‘I still suffer in my mind the torments and the humiliation of that occasion, but I am avenged,’ said Mort, joggling the false teeth in his hand.
‘You are?’
‘I am now. They skewer ’em, did they, good and proper?’
‘Yes.’ Sparrow chose, at that moment in time, to venture no further into the particulars.
‘Then here I am, at rest in this place, this . . . exquisite fastness.’ He pocketed the teeth. He picked up his catch, bent low and washed off the sand.
‘Exquisite?’
‘It is your salvation and mine, Marty. Don’t you forget that if you plan to be free.’
‘I do, I plan to be free.’
‘You couldn’t plan a fit in a madhouse.’
‘I plan to be free, I know that much.’
‘Remind me, what’s that dog’s name?’
‘Amicus Amico.’
‘Alright.’
‘What of the village?’
‘What village?’
‘The village embosomed at the foot of the mountains, on the other side?’
‘I don’t care for such a village.’
Sparrow was surprised to hear this. ‘Griffin said —’
‘Griffin! Griffin will tell you what you want to hear to get what he wants to have, lure you into his lair. What he want this time?’
‘He wanted his copper worm but that was locked in the gaol, and he wanted a dog to trade, with them,’ said Sparrow, gesturing in the direction of Caleb and Napoleon.
The Making of Martin Sparrow Page 34
