by Ed Hillyer
However this report, being rose on me, was the separation of Dargane and me, for as soon as he heard it he came to me in a violent hurry, and burst into such a fit of laughter at the lies that was told about me that I could not get one word out of him for some time.
But as soon as he recovered himself from laughing, he uttered these words:
– Bruce, I give you all that I possess, farm and wife, children and all my money, if you tell me how you do it.
– Do what, Dargane?
– How you fly, Bruce.
– Me? Fly? Dargane, I wish I could. But tell me, what do you mean, Dargane?
– Why, I can’t help laughing, Bruce, when I hear what horrid lies they tell of you. There was a man murdered yesterday on Dick River Bridge, and there is one of the most dreadfullest liars in my house you ever heard tell of. He’s just come from the green hills and positively swears that he saw you yesterday on the bridge, alongside of the murdered man. And that he would have caught you, if his foot had not caught a stump and he fell down! But he vows, by all the virtue of an old cabbage stalk that he has with him which he calls a gun, that he will have you Dead or Alive before this day week. So, come in and talk to him, for I am sure that he don’t know your person at all. For he is not been in the country three months, so how can he know you? But mind, Bruce. Before him, call me ‘Faithful’, and I will call you ‘Swift’. Because if we call one another by name he will discover you, and then you will be obliged to put him in the river.
We both entered the house.
– Come, my dear, is dinner ready? For I am sure poor Swift must be hungered, for he has been hard at work. Ain’t you hungry, Swift?
– Yerse, Master Faithful, I am.
– Well, come, my man, sit down and fill your belly. Thank God for it, here is plenty. Come. I don’t know your name, Master, but come and have a bite with us.
Here we all sat down to meat, and after we had all eaten our fill, I thus addressed my accuser:
– I presume you know Bruce, that you are in pursuit of him?
– Know him? Ah, that I do. And if ever I see him again, I be bound he don’t get away.
– Ho, then you have seen him?
– I see him yesterday murder a man on Dick River Bridge, but he didn’t know that I knowed him. But I did, though.
– Well, my friend, but if you see Bruce murder a man, you are as bad as him if you didn’t strive to stop him.
– I did, sir, but he run away from me.
I turned to Dargane.
– Well, Master Faithful, what do you think of it?
– Why, Mister Swift, I think what a dreadful thing it is, if this poor man is mistaken in the person of Bruce.
– Yes, Master Faithful, that is what I was thinking of myself. But this man says that he is sure he knows Bruce. And Bruce don’t know him. Those words, Master Faithful, puts me in mind of a few words that I heard a doctor of the blessed elect say once, when I went with my old mother to hear a sermon preached. The old man took his text about St John the Evangelist, and these was the words: ‘Behold, my dear brethren, St John was in the world, and the world knew him not, but he knew the world.’ Do you understand those words, my man?
I was speaking to the stranger once more. He replied:
– No, sir, I don’t. It is like a riddle to me.
– Well, my man, I will tell you. Understand that St John the Holy Evangelist is as God, and God is as the Holy Evangelist St John. For whatever one said, the other agreed to, together with the Holy Ghost when they made your seed and mine. And then made they a garden to sow that seed in, which is this world, that you and all people are in. If you mind and look out sharp, you will become a freemason by my discourse to you.
– St John was one that was with God when he lay the foundation of this world. Therefore the Holy Evangelist knowed the Heavenly works as well as the Earthly ones. But the world, and the people that were in the world at that time, knew nothing about how Heaven or Earth was made. So, how could they know anything of St John the Holy Evangelist that was at the making of all? So it is with you, my man. How can you know anything of Bruce, when you told Master Faithful that you have not been in this country four months? And to my knowledge Bruce has been in the country above eight years, for I came in the ship with him.
– And there is another thing. I am sure Bruce has been in the woods this five months. So how can you say that you know a man you never saw? And when you do see him, you don’t know him! Why, I might be him for all you know.
– No, I am sure you aren’t him, sir.
– Why, what makes you think I ain’t him?
– Because you would run away, sir, for fear I should shoot you.
– Ho, Master Faithful! Do you hear this?
– What is it, Mister Swift?
– This poor man says that if I was Bruce, I should run away for fear of this old candlestick that he has with him… Putting all jokes aside, I tell you what you had best do, my man. That is to go home, and pray to God to give you Grace, that you may know better than running about seeking a man’s blood for the sake of emancipation. That is what you are to have, my man, ain’t it? If you take Bruce dead or alive.
– Yes, sir. And I aim to have a farm, as that is a settlement in this life, for a short time.
– But look here, my man. What a shocking thing it will be for you, if by seeking the life of Bruce for the sake of your emancipation you lose your free pardon from Christ for your immortal soul, and drop into Hell, where you will have a settlement forever.
Sarah turned the page.
At those words, all in the house, instead of laughing as they had done, they all burst into a flood of tears. Because Dargane and his wife well knew my spirit, and expected every moment to see the poor midget wallowing in his blood. But Dargane see the fire of my soul darting through my eyes, and exclaimed with a loud voice:
– O Bruce!
That was a little too loud.
Sarah leant in closer, to render the shout instead as a sort of stage whisper. Brippoki sat further forward, on tenterhooks himself.
– O Bruce, consider my dear children, and don’t take his life in my house!
Brippoki jerked backwards, as if losing his balance.
‘Are you all right?’ Sarah asked. She continued.
At those words the poor miserable wretch turned quite pale, and got up and left the house. Whatever betide him, I don’t know, for neither Dargane nor me ever heard of him after. But for the safety of Dargane and his family, I that night went down the river to Samuel Woodhum, a freeholder to whom Dargane had recommended me.
I stopped with him till the cries became furious through all that country about me. All through I was hard at work for my living. But when I heard those horrid lies that daily rest on me, I said in my heart: ‘Behold, old merciful Redeemer. It is not men that tell lies on me, but devils. Therefore I will again return to thy desert places, where thou hast ordained for a wicked wretch like me to wander.’ I told Woodhum my intent. He pressed me to stop a few days, and then he accompanied me back to my first friend by that riverside, who received me with great joy. It was at night, but, it being too dangerous to stop in his house, he then took me to an old house half full of straw. It had no doors, nor window-shutters. Within the immense body of straw there were hundreds of snakes, adders, vipers, rats and mice. I was inexpressibly tired. Now, the responding eases fell from the loud cries of my soul, filled all the chambers of my heart, and hushed all my worries to sleep. I fell down amongst the straw, where I remained till the next night, when I went down to the riverside with that intent to cross it, and go up among the mountains of that country.
‘Go…up among mountains dat country?’ Brippoki queried.
Sarah nodded, ‘Go up among the mountains.’
Having entered fully into the drama, Sarah enjoyed the taking on of different character parts. She had varied the tones of her voice to suit the supposed manner of each. Just as her father had lived much of his
life by nature outward-bound, her mother had best enjoyed the diversions of theatre, and it was perhaps these instincts that ran thickest in her blood – another innate talent lain dormant.
With his wide grin, or frown, or expressions of shock as appropriate, and the occasional steady nod, throughout her performance Brippoki had egged her on.
‘Thomas Dargane,’ said Sarah. ‘Does that name mean anything to you? No? What about Hobbes?’
Brippoki merely extracted the stick he had been sucking at and tucked it away behind his ear.
Of course not – wasn’t it Hobbes, in the Leviathan, who wrote that man was a naturally selfish unit? Sarah consulted another of the lists she had made on various slips of paper.
‘Mark Dammers,’ she said, ‘Charles Bell, Samuel Woodhum?’
What was in a name? Brippoki shook his head to each one. He sported a daft expression, as if they played at a game.
‘How about the River Oxbury, or the River Dick?’ she pressed. ‘I was wondering if either of those places were familiar to you.’
No. She supposed the Aborigines would have their own names for such places.
‘No matter,’ she said. ‘Carrying on… Something happened in the middle of this sequence that I don’t fully understand, an interruption of sorts to the ongoing narrative. It reads as follows…’
Just as I was about to relate to the world this part of my life, where Dargane laughed so hearty at the lies that was told behind my back in New South Wales, then three of Beelzebub’s gang jumped up in the house of Greenwich, where I was in the year 1817, June the 16th, about this work. It was eleven o’clock in the day when the three devils came about me, and all of them being in authority over the rest of devils, they demanded I should go with them to their master, to answer for a quarrel that I had with the she-devil that was one of the three. As I went with them to their master, every now and then I would look them in the countenance, and they all three looked like an old tame baboon that I saw once playing with a child. When the child gave him a smack of the head he would twinkle his eyes and screw up his mouth as if he was sucking plums. So were the faces of those vipers. They twinkled their eyes and screwed their mouths, being crammed with infernal lies by the Serpent, which they vomited before their master.
‘And there,’ said Sarah, ‘the digression as suddenly ends. It reminds us, I suppose, that he is in the Hospital while dictating all of this. We then return to the main story, and the account of Bruce’s dialogue with Dargane.’
According to her calculations, performed earlier that day, the reported events took place just after the turn of the century, around the year 1803.
‘Oddly enough, Dargane shares a joke with Bruce over precisely this: his ability to be in two different places at the same time.’
Brippoki looked guarded. His face, drawn, seemed a shade paler than before. He had definitely lost a touch of his former pristine colour.
Whilst enjoying his grisly supper, and whenever she looked to him as they read, he had seemed much at ease in her company. It was only when she caught sight of him out of the corner of her eye – when he was not concentrating, not overly conscious that she observed him – that Sarah sensed collapse in his posture.
He looked so very far away, lost among his private thoughts.
However hard she worked, she really was no wiser than when they had first met.
‘If you don’t mind,’ Sarah said, ‘I think that’s where we’ll leave the reading for tonight. It has been rather a long day…as I’m sure it has been for you, too.’
He should have been at the cricket match, in Richmond.
‘Tomorrow,’ she continued, ‘I shan’t be able to read to you. The Readingroom is not open on Sundays. And anyway, I should spend the day with…with my father.’
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
‘He is not well,’ she said.
Brippoki stood, and bowed. Sarah stood also.
‘Are you…I can get you something,’ she suggested. ‘Perhaps a drink. You can stay a while longer, if you like.’
He shook his head and made for the open window. The night was mild and the curtains hung slack.
‘We can reconvene on Monday, in the evening,’ she told him. ‘There is some way I can contact you, in the meantime?’
‘I will come,’ he said.
‘I can’t fetch you anything? You’re sure?’
Sarah had intended passing him a few coins: the man was reduced to eating cats! But he was already gone. He had got all that he wanted, which was for her to continue with Bruce’s story. She returned to the table and gathered up the various texts.
Dargane had very obviously feared that Bruce might strike, or even possibly kill his accuser. It seemed all the more remarkable that Bruce, while protesting of his innocence, should freely admit the same; a lively bit of drama, relived in the moment, and, Sarah felt, played successfully to much the same end.
In a short time after I met A boy who was Minding sheep. the child was much terfied. But I soon consold him.
As in the library, when first reading these innocuous-seeming phrases, she was struck by a vivid mental image – that of the escaped convict beating the boy; not praying, but cursing God the while. Why continue to doubt the truth behind what she read?
Sarah began to suspect herself of base prurience.
…my Heart was full of grief it whold hold no mor. And my soul was so light with faith in God. that I Deared every insick on the earth to touch A Heaire of my head.
Bruce sounded beatific, resigned to his fate or his fortune. She wondered how he must have looked – probably wild, his flesh torn, and horribly burnt by the Australian sun.
Sarah closed the window, and climbed the stair. She would clean up the supper plates in the morning, making sure to dispose of those bare bones Brippoki had left behind.
Feeling a little queasy, she stopped on the middle landing, next to the door to Lambert’s room. She couldn’t hear anything.
She opened the door a crack. It was too dark to see within.
‘Father?’
She barely breathed the word. Opening the door wider, she peered towards the bed. It was so very dark.
‘Father?’
Her throat caught. Sarah saw the shape of him, sat up in the bed. She caught the glint of his eye, and heard a faint sound.
‘…Lambert?’
A chill finger ran the length of her spine.
Lambert Larkin was sound asleep. The rattling in the darkness was his lungs as they laboured.
CHAPTER XXXIII
Sunday the 7th of June, 1868
‘UMBRA SUMUS’
‘The feelings are blunted, […] the future a blank; in the dirt they are, and in the dirt they must remain.’
~ George Godwin, London Shadows
All is without form. Then comes red brick and hard paving, the sting of grit on flesh, in eye. The street swirls into focus for a few rapid heartbeats, before layers of burning gauze again strip it away.
Brippoki jogs through billowing swells of vapour: the white mist at the base of a storm-fed cataract, turned acrid and choking. It leaks from every open window, through hot grilles underfoot. He glimpses the bodies of men, below the level of the ground, stripped naked against fearsome heat. They stir at great vats of boiling red liquid, a stew of raw sugar, blood, and charcoal. The smell is astonishing, and soaks into everything. Brippoki beats at his sleeves and chest as he progresses from one cloud to the next.
All turns white, then again red. The earth shakes, and the air fills with hammering and screams from a sky plunged into sudden darkness. He feels his clogged lungs about to burst.
Sweet sticky steam – the same taint he suffers to linger since that first night, deep in the Well of Shadows – threatens to swallow him whole. He is not Dreaming. Here is death, physical death.
Turning aside from the main street, Brippoki runs through a small square. He takes this brief opportunity to breathe, only to be faced with more of the same
. Unwilling to backtrack, he has no other choice but to plunge headlong, deeper into the miasma.
For all of the reasons the manuscript brought back to mind, Sarah Larkin no longer went to church, not even – most especially not – on a Sunday.
Throughout her childhood she had been forced to attend twice daily on the Sabbath, in addition to at least two visits during the week. Her own father was ever the main speaker, and Lambert would speak at the pulpit in the same way he did at home – stern, didactic, above all disapproving, inspiring more of fear than devotion. His business often seemed less about heaven and happiness than the threat of banishment from the same. Petitioners and practitioners of other religions, notably the multiplying sects within the Anglican faith, were his particular targets.
Above all reproach when it came to his own moral conduct, he had never to her knowledge touched a drop of alcohol. And he never, ever went out at night. Between the hours of eight and nine o’clock in the evening the curtains would be drawn and the holy candle lit for family worship; she was taught early to kneel separately, in private prayer. A Bible reading, then a half-hour’s discussion concerning the text, and she would be put to bed.
On rare occasions, at least while Sarah’s mother was still alive – Lambert being somewhat highly regarded within his own professional circle – they would receive other ministers as their dinner guests. Conversation after the meal invariably turned to examination of doctrine and a re-establishment of principles. At needlework and such in the same room, Sarah and Frances were allowed to attend, but only on the understanding that they were strictly forbidden to speak, unless spoken to.
