by Adair, Robin
Wearing only their drawers and shoes, the pair roamed casually toward Lieutenant Dawes’s Battery. King’s wet clothes were draped on his staff and they carried this laundry between them.
A scream and the sound of bodies crashing together broke the calm. The noises came from a clearing in scrub near the shore below Leighton’s flour mill. King and the patterer set off at a run.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
And finds, with keen discriminating sight,
Black’s not so black—nor white so very white.
—George Canning, “New Morality” (1821)
THE SCENE THEY DISCOVERED WHEN THEY FOUND THE SOURCE OF the screaming horrified Dunne so much that he froze for a moment. A white man was pummeling, with fists, boots and a cudgel, two black figures on the ground. By his familiar build, tattered red coat and skewed bicorne hat, but particularly his gleaming brass plate, the patterer recognized one of the victims as King Bungaree. He couldn’t yet identify the other fallen man.
Nearby, two men—who were clearly white—held a black woman pinned to the ground. They had torn off her robe and, while one subdued her struggling, his companion, trousers down around his ankles, pawed at her viciously.
The pieman was the first to react physically. Swinging his long staff, he cracked the rapist across the spine. With a second stroke he smashed the face of the man restraining the woman, breaking his nose and teeth, perhaps his jaw.
The patterer moved behind the man attacking the black figures, hitting him with a rock. The man fell senseless.
While the pieman guarded his moaning opponents, Dunne helped the black men to their feet. One was indeed King Bungaree, and now it was clear who his companion was—a huge, though very ancient West Indian they called “Billy Blue” or just as commonly, “the Old Commodore.” He wore a top hat and an old naval uniform, a nod to the lofty rank he had never even remotely held (although he claimed to have fought with Wolfe at Quebec and Cornwallis at Yorktown). In truth, he had washed up in Sydney after stealing a bag of sugar in London. Apart from a relapse as a rum-runner, he had prospered as a waterman and harbor watchman for Governor Macquarie, who had bestowed on him the elevated title when the old lag’s ferry fleet grew from one boat to eleven.
Even now—although Dunne knew Billy had told the recent census that he was eighty—he was far from retired. From his home across the cove at Murdering Point, the Old Commodore and his sons plied for hire as ferrymen. Often he would play on his great age, boast of his service in the Royal Navy and cajole a sympathetic passenger into helping out with the rowing.
After making sure that the commodore and the king had survived relatively unscathed, if shaken, the patterer turned to where the pieman was comforting the woman. Who was she? he wondered.
“She’s Gooseberry,” said Bungaree, as if reading his thoughts.
Dunne nodded. He knew Bungaree had more than one wife. There had been Boatman, Broomstick, Onion and Pincher. This, then, was Matara, also known as Cora Gooseberry.
She was sitting up now, rocking and weeping, clutching together her ripped clothing. She soon began to search in the dirt for the clay pipe she had dropped in the melee. A good sign, thought the patterer. The rest of the point was still now, the welcome calm broken only by the screech of gulls and the swishing and clicking of the windmills’ sails.
While Bungaree spoke to his wife, Billy Blue explained to their rescuers what had happened. He spoke perfect English, a legacy of all his years at sea. To the surprise of many, Bungaree had also polished his own knowledge of the colonists’ language while under sail. With Matthew Flinders almost thirty years earlier, he had circumnavigated the Australian coastline, acting as an interpreter.
The commodore told how he had tied up his skiff at the point and begun working in the hut nearby. With his boys, he ran the town side of his ferry service to and from there. Bungaree and Gooseberry had arrived and begun to cook a meal, which they invited him to share.
Dunne could see the leftovers and guessed they had cooked a dampier, named after the English explorer and buccaneer, but now more often called a “damper,” made simply from flour, salt, sugar and water kneaded together and cooked in the ashes of a dying fire. Beside this ruined fire, the patterer identified what looked like the popular dish baked koala, which was actually a joke; it wasn’t native bear but instead a pielike, hollowed-out gourd filled with opossum meat.
He was surprised that there were no grog bottles—Bungaree was known to be a fearsome drinker. Instead, they appeared to have taken tea. Tipped over beside the fire was a large, empty, blackened tin. Most probably it had once contained preserved boiled beef that the French, who invented it, called boeuf bouilli. Settlers used the empty tins to brew tea and called them billy—for bouilli—cans.
The men, Billy Blue said, had attacked without warning.
Dunne and the others now turned their attention to the vanquished intruders. The one Dunne had hit was still unconscious, the trouserless rapist was temporarily crippled on the ground and the one with the broken face moaned and bled.
The patterer looked down at them closely. “They’re not much more than lads,” he said, shaking his head sadly. One attacker had started to blubber. “Probably the dregs of those they turn out from the Carters Barracks when they’re old enough.”
“Old enough for trouble,” said William King.
Dunne nodded.
“So what do we do with them now?” asked the pieman. “In particular, how do we stop a revenge attack on these blacks—or, for that matter, ourselves?”
“Well, you can forget the constables,” said the patterer. “They’d want too many details, and that means names, that is if they were interested.” He paused. “These animals probably wouldn’t recognize us when we’re dressed—certainly not when you’re in your usual garments. So you see, there was a bright side and a benefit to your going into the sea.”
The pieman frowned. “And the king and the commodore? And Cora?”
The patterer pondered, then snapped his fingers. “I have it!” He loomed over the three young men, who were now struggling to their knees. “Do you know what The Ring is on Norfolk Island—and here?” he asked, slapping one upturned face, hard, to concentrate their attention.
The now-toothless youth nodded, wide-eyed.
“Aye,” said Dunne. “And you know its punishment for its enemies? Just to remind you, we cut open their bellies and stuff in sheep guts instead. I’m a Sydney Ring-master and we’ll always find you. Take your friends and get out of here. And if I hear of you tampering with anyone—white or black—you’re deader meat than any man left ironed on Pinchgut and forgotten.” He kicked one in the rear as they staggered away.
“Steady,” said William King. “There’s enough violence in this town. You can’t be judge and executioner.”
The patterer shook his head. “How else could we have stopped them? And how would they have been punished? If it got to court, what would they have been charged with? ‘Taking liberties with blacks?’ Anyway, it would only be our word—and I’m merely a pass-man—against theirs. No one would listen to three old ‘Indians.’ If you are concerned about that business of The Ring … Well, there is such a convicts’ secret society—God knows they need someone to help them—and I’ve known men who are members. But that’s the closest I’ve come.”
He had a sudden sobering thought. Was the killer he was seeking perhaps someone who could justify his actions with similar logic: that there were times and places that called for summary justice?
To clear his mind, he turned to the two black men. Only then did he notice that Bungaree’s left arm was hanging awkwardly in its uniform sleeve. “You’re sorely hurt.”
“No, sir. My arm is double-jointed after an old break. Another fight.”
The pieman pointed to Cora Gooseberry, who was now more composed and puffing on her pipe, which she had recovered and relit from the embers of the fire. “Is she all right?”
Bungaree nodded. “They wanted to rob me, t
oo, but all I had was a handful of dumps I was paid on the last two ships I met. If they think I have gold, they’re wrong. All I ever get is dumps. But I thank you, sirs. If you ever need friendship, my people will help you.” He saluted smartly and led his queen back toward the town.
The Old Commodore raised his top hat and held out a huge hand to Dunne and then King. “I, too, am grateful. I owe you a great debt. Call for my services at any time. Just send word to me.” He turned and limped off toward his boat.
THE PATTERER AND the pieman were silent and subdued as they dressed and began to walk away from the battleground. Both had been badly shaken by the fight.
Dunne tried to lighten the mood. “You know, some people say that the name Miller’s Point really refers to Governor Phillip’s secretary, Andrew Miller.”
William King thought about that then shook his head. “That can’t be right. Too much of a mouthful—that would make it Andrew-the-Secretary’s Point!” They both laughed, but soon fell back into their earlier gloom.
The patterer finally mused aloud, “I didn’t really know it until just now, but I could easily kill someone. I was angry enough.”
The pieman nodded. “You don’t even have to be angry. Look at me. I did kill someone. And the people you talked and drank with the other day … deliberately or accidentally they may have killed. Captain Rossi was a soldier, Thomas Owens is a doctor—both can cause death. Even the governor was a fighting soldier once. Death’s nothing to them.”
A vagrant thought, lurking in the back of the patterer’s mind, itched suddenly, but he couldn’t scratch it to life.
King pushed through a herd of wild goats blocking their path. “They’re a damn plague—like the parrots everywhere.”
Dunne nodded distractedly. Parrots. Again, like his itch of a moment earlier, he had an uneasy feeling that, for some reason he could not capture, these birds were vitally important.
The patterer shrugged. If the birds had flown from his mind, not so the images of Miss Rachel Dormin, who had invited him to watch her that evening in a theatrical performance.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Judge not the play before the play is done:
Her plot has many changes: every day
Speaks a new scene; the last act crowns the play.
—Francis Quarles, Emblems (1635)
AT THE THEATER LATER THAT EVENING, MR. BARNETT LEVEY reassured a rather breathless Nicodemus Dunne: “Rest easy, dear sir, it’s not over until the fat lady sings!”
The patterer was puzzled by this remark but did not comment. A late reading of news to a demanding but well-paying patron had made the young man late (although happily not too late) for that evening’s performance at the Sydney Amateur Theater, which was noisily crowded.
Dunne knew Mr. Levey well; at thirty, he was much the same age as the patterer and he was the brother of Solomon, the partner of Mr. Cooper in the Waterloo Stores. Solomon was a successful Emancipist, freed after having been transported for seven years for stealing ninety pounds of tea (a charge he still denied). Barnett Levey, on the other hand, was the colony’s first free Jewish settler. Dunne belatedly realized that he could have sought him out in his quest for the meaning of zuzim.
The general merchant, builder, banker, grain merchant and bookseller was a busy businessman, but his true love was his theater—at which he wore many hats: owner, entrepreneur, often master of ceremonies, even performer of comic songs. And, of course, he oversaw the sale of drink in the bar of his Royal Hotel, which fronted his business and the theater.
As he entered the auditorium that night, the patterer reflected that, strictly speaking, there should have been no one there at all. Technically, the theater did not exist, for Governor Darling had so far refused to give Levey a license for his playhouse. But the diminutive, rotund young man defiantly mounted his theatricals as “at homes,” “divertissements” or “concerts,” legitimately part of the Royal Hotel’s entertainments. Tonight’s performances had, for instance, been announced as an “olio,” an approximation of the Spanish word olla, meaning “stew” or “hotpot.”
In actual fact, Levey’s rift with Darling ran deeper than a simple disagreement over greasepaint and scenery. When Levey had proudly erected his Colchester Warehouse in George Street, with the architectural help of Mr. Francis Greenway, he had added a windmill to the top story.
If the governor was not impressed, the populace loved the confrontation. Tear it down, Darling ordered. Levey refused and pointedly had the freeman’s friend, Mr. William Charles Wentworth, write a letter on his behalf. It informed His Excellency that Levey would demolish his windmill when the government pulled down its own nearby. Stalemate.
As a safeguard against official sanction, Levey called his theater “amateur.” Similarly, he took no money at the door. But Mr. Levey did accept bookings at five shillings for box seats and three shillings in the pit.
As far as the patterer was concerned, a Theater Royal existed in everything except name. Barnett Levey had told him that the pit and boxes could accommodate 700 people, while the stage had, in the entrepreneur’s words, “a due quantity of trapdoors for entrance and exit of the usual number of ghosts for the grave of Hamlet.”
There had been theaters in Sydney before, of course. The debtors’ rooms in the jail had once passed as a playhouse, and another theater had flourished near the Tank Stream, accepting rum and parcels of flour or meat for entry. One patron became overly enthusiastic about obtaining his pound of flesh, killing an officer’s grey-hound and passing off the meat as kangaroo. Officials ordered that theater be pulled down, anticipating Governor Darling’s present view of “our prison population being unfit subjects to go to plays.”
The patterer struggled to find his way through the darkened room and the crowd milling before the stage. There was a reek of rum, beer, perfume, unwashed bodies and pipe and cigar smoke. This was not helped by the strong smell coming from the footlights and other whale-oil lamps that needed trimming.
He finally joined Captain Rossi in a box. The policeman smiled. “Well, what brings you—as if I didn’t know—to the Goose?” While most Sydney drinkers properly called Levey’s hotel the Royal, local thespians and their supporters often referred to it as the Goose and Gridiron, a play on Swan and Harp, a name often given to a theatricals’ tavern, and the coat of arms of Britain’s venerable Company of Musicians.
Dunne put a finger to his lips as a comic began a fresh patter.
“Have you heard about the Irishman, the Scotchman, the Welshman and the English officer, all captured as spies by the Froggies before Waterloo? No? Well, the French captain said, ‘You’re all going to be shot at dawn … ′”
The audience booed.
“‘… So you’re entitled to a last request.’ The Irishman said, ‘Begorrah, I’ll have a thousand United Irishmen singing “The Wearin’ o’ the Green.”’ The Scotchman said, ‘Och, man, I’ll listen to 2,000 bagpipers playing as loud as they can.’ The Welshman said, ‘I will hear three thousand bards on Welsh harps.’”
The comic paused for effect. “Then the English officer said, ‘I say, old boy, do you think you could shoot me first?’”
The audience roared its approval.
“I don’t understand it,” said Rossi.
“Never mind,” said the patterer. “Tell me, have I missed Miss Dormin’s performance?”
“I’m sorry, lad, but you have, by a whisker. She was grand in a scene from Othello. Oh, when she said, ‘She turn’d to folly, and she was a whore … O, I were damn’d beneath all depth in hell, but that I did proceed upon just grounds to this extremity,’ it was quite a sight and she brought the house down. I’m sorry you weren’t here.”
A new act hushed their conversation. A small man, noted in the program only as “Mr. Palmer, tragedian,” began excerpts from Macbeth. As he finished, “Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell that summons thee to heaven or to hell,” some alchemy summoned two constables onto the stage and they began to d
rag Mr. Palmer away.
Over boos and protesting pig-noises from the angry crowd, one constable appealed to Captain Rossi, explaining that the actor was a prisoner out on a pass from the barracks only until nine, and that the time had passed. Rossi consulted his watch, sighed and nodded.
“Exeunt pigs and Macbeth,” muttered Dunne.
Two members of a low act, rushed on by Mr. Levey to calm the crowd, sang a couple of ditties designed to appeal more to the battlers in the pit than to any ladies and gents in boxes. They sang:In St. James’s the officers mess at the club,
In St. Giles’s they often have messes for grub;
In St. James’s they feast on the highest of game,
In St. Giles’s they live on foul air just the same.
The audience then sang along with:Officers’ wives have puddings and pies,
But sergeants’ wives have skilly.
And the private’s wife has nothing at all
To fill her poor little belly.
The patterer felt his cheeks flush as he half saw Miss Dormin suddenly slip into the empty seat beside him. He was grateful that the gloom disguised his too-obvious pleasure.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” she said. “I had to change and get out of my stage maquillage. And the following acts needed help dressing. Did you see me?”
On the spur of the moment the flustered young man lied, “Of course! You were wonderful!”
“You didn’t disapprove?”
“Of the Bard? Never!”
But now it was time for Mr. Levey to bounce onto the stage to announce a solo rendition by a lady who had delighted the courts of Europe—Madame Greene. Madame walked slowly to center stage, her green gown and evening turban shimmering in the flickering footlights. She looked pale, especially against the vivid slash of green lacquer marking her lips.
