The Coves

by Whish-Wilson, David;

  He looked to her, but she wouldn’t meet his eyes. In the midday light her skin was sallow and her hair was haloed by particulates of dust. Her mouth was grim, her lips bloodless.

  ‘Son, I told him what you told me. A mortal secret between us, I know. I had to buy us some time. But I kept your name out of it, I promise. Told him that the whore told me, let it slip. The location of the Coves’ strongbox, as you described. All their gold. Their unofficial bank and treasure chest. And that’s why we got to act now. The ship I told you about, that’s Chile-bound. She leaves at dawn tomorrow morning. We got to be on it, or I’m dead.’

  Without knowing, Sam stood away from her. Couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘Where’s Mr Walker now, if he ain’t countin his money?’

  She looked at him without guilt or shame, her chin raised. ‘He’s gone to the Presidio, with his cutthroats. He means to make the major there an offer. He told me as much. If the major will lead his company of Indun-killers tonight against Sydneytown, acting on Mr Walker’s instructions as to the location of their bank, the military may take whatever they desire. All the money and gold they can carry. So long as they burn Sydneytown to the ground…’

  She saw his move to the door, even before he thought it, and stood to block him. Held his forearm in a fierce grip. Washerwoman hands beneath the doeskin gloves. ‘Son, I know you’re bone-weary, as am I. But we got to think straight and act fast. I risked my neck and yours to steal from my husband. That is a betrayal justified by me but, in this lawless place, not by any other. I’ll hang for it, as will you. If you love me as your mother, and if you value your skin, you’ll do as I say. You must plunder the Coves’ strongbox before the army arrives. In the melee that follows their warfare, nobody will notice your crime. We can make the ship tomorrow morning and flee with our lives, and our livelihoods guaranteed against every future hardship. Son, don’t struggle…’

  For Sam was wrenching this way and that. Tears in his eyes. She began to shake him and he let himself be shook. ‘I showed my loyalty to you by stealin from my husband. Now it’s your turn. You have loyalty for them that took you in, but you reckon they feel the same? Love you like your mother does? They have given you employment in their devices and their schemes but that is demonstration that they have only used you, an innocent boy, and will continue until you’re all used. You’re still a wee lad but you got to act manly here. For me. Your lovin Ma.’

  It was just a glance but the tears in her eyes were pulsing onto her face. Her lips trembling and her voice shaken by a depth of emotion that she hadn’t yet shown. Pleading with him, holding her to him. His own tears soaking the shoulder of her satin bodice.

  ‘Ma, tell me you sent Sarah Proctor down off this hill to the shore. Tell me that.’

  ‘I did, son. I did. I took no joy in abusin her name, but I got to keep you clear of this. Till we are clear and free ourselves. Go now. Steal as much as you can. Meet me on the docks tomorrow morning before daybreak. Keep free of the night’s bloodshed. Let the men who’ve imprisoned us and used us fall upon each other. The ship’s name is the Mary Jane and we are set on the cabin manifest as Mrs Bellamy and Son. The way it used to be.’

  The dog fell in behind. It had blood on its mouth from eating rabbits whole. Sam kept to the track, which had dried somewhat in the hour of sunshine the skies allotted before the clouds closed in again. The ocean was a clotted green colour, and there were flocks of gulls and terns diving into a circle where the water bounced like stones in a sieve about five hundred yards from shore. Three or four great pelicans dove into the spitting wash and scooped a bladderful of whatever it was crowded to the surface. Sam paid the rim of his hat through his fingers in little rips like he had seen others do with rosaries. He didn’t feel any better or clearer in his mind.

  He had told his mother the truth about the Coves’ iron-cage lock-up on the same floor as the armoury and medics’ room but that didn’t mean he ever reckoned on stealing from it. A boy his age is assumed a natural thief, and he’d been careful to avoid the room and never linger outside the door. He heard the iron door hinges groan when all the bawdy-houses and card games had tallied their takings and delivered them in person every morning. Usually it was Barr who sat at his wooden bench with his sleeves rolled up and drank coffee and counted the money and weighed the gold dust and made a tally in his ledger.

  There was an unofficial payday of sorts every Friday when all of the Coves drank together and Keane passed out calico bags to each member according to their cut. A measure of their mutual trust, Sam never once saw a man open his packet in front of the others. Sam was paid his own salary directly from Keane’s waistcoat pocket, in accordance with their agreement, dependent upon the men he’d lured to the Cove, and how much they’d lost at table or were otherwise parted with their money by way of ruse or diversion. His own savings amounted to twenty-two gold eagles and near a pound of gold dust. That was more than he would earn in twenty years back in Van Diemen’s Land once his ticket came through. It was enough for him to buy land and a house, but in the meantime he’d set his mind on buying Ai’s freedom from the Chinaman, something he hadn’t told her. But that too would have to wait. There was the matter at hand.

  Back at The Stuck Pig, Sam needed a clear head, and lacking Borden’s sweetwater ordered ale instead of porter or rum. The old man in the tricorne passed the wooden mug and answered Sam’s question. He didn’t know where Keane was, but Mannix was said to be with Casey, the Democrat, who was hiding out in Sydney-town. His henchman Charlie Duane was that morning put on the steamer to Panama, and the plan was to exile Casey in the same manner. Clement was asleep somewhere, having waited all night for Sam’s return. The Ancient ruffled Sam’s hair with a claw that smelt of dishwater and tobacco juice, lifted a plate of roast corn from near the floor and passed it over. Sam took his bench and ate and drank, while the old man fed the dog from a plate of cold stew.

  Sam didn’t finish the ale or the stick of corn but got up and paced the boards. His guts were a mess. The thought of stealing from Keane and Clement made the walls crowd closer. He needed sea air, and called the dog and took to the streets. If he was going to steal from the Coves’ strongroom then now was the perfect time, but he couldn’t banish the unease he felt every time he thought on it. The idea of betraying Clement did not abide with any kind of picture of himself that didn’t stink of shame. And yet his mother’s fear for her life was real. She would understand, if Sam wasn’t caught.

  The dog got there before Sam. The farrier was hammering at a pony shoe direct from the fire. The room smelt of coal-dust and the goblin-leather of the billows that in repose looked fearful to the dog. The man put aside his hammer and tongs and removed his leather gloves and wiped sweat on his leather jerkin. Sam didn’t have to ask him. The man went to the wall where there was arrayed a nail-board lined with keys. He selected the key and held it up to the dim firelight and spat on it and took a small file from a leather satchel and worked its edges and spat on it again and wiped it of filings. He looked satisfied and passed Sam the key, which to the naked eye matched the original in every detail.

  ‘The best I could do. A copy from an impression ain’t never perfect. If it don’t open, listen with your fingers to where the obstruction is, and bring it back. I always gets it right.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  Clement still wasn’t in the bar and wasn’t asleep in his cot either. Because of the opium resin, when Clement slept it was deep and long and he slept in many places along the street. Keane wasn’t upstairs either, and Sam deliberately avoided looking at the strongroom door as though some force might overcome his mind and turn his hand to his mother’s bidding. In Keane’s office, Sam leaned over the desk. Now that he’d made up his mind, he felt calm. He took up feather and quill and wrote the message in precise little scratches. He held up the parchment and blew on it and watched the ink settle into the fibres and stain where he’d been heavy with the quill.

  Sam passed the note to t
he old man behind the bar. The Ancient didn’t have letters, so Sam made sure to tell of the urgency of the matter. The man tilted back his tricorne hat and mock saluted and put the message under a tankard. He called the dog and knelt and scratched its ears, held its head as it watched Sam leave.

  Ai looked for the dog in the alley behind Sam, and so he told her. That he would be leaving. Paid particular attention to her response, which was to twist her nose, look away down the alley.

  ‘I got no choice in the matter. Though I ain’t goin far. Just south of the equator. They call it Chile. The town is Valparaiso. And I got to ask you. Can you write a letter?’

  Ai thought about it, or perhaps about something else. She looked sad.

  ‘I could write to you,’ Sam added. ‘Come visit you one day.’

  But she didn’t respond. Scratched one bare toe with the toes of her other foot. Looked from his sheathed knife to the pocket deringer in its sling across his chest. His muddy boots and hat kneaded in his fingers, pushing the brim and waiting for her.

  He leaned closer. Bold enough to take her hand. She was still taller than him and he looked up into her eyes. His own eyes bleary and sore from sleeplessness. Hoped he didn’t make a bad impression, like some drunk.

  ‘Listen. I got to ask. I know he ain’t your father. I know he owns you, like I own my dog. I been in that situation myself, but I got myself extricated. I can help you do that. I got some money coming to me, if money’s what it’ll take.’

  He had hurt her. She made to pull away, but he held to her hands. ‘Please. I don’t want nothing from you. But I can help.’

  She looked at him, shook her head. ‘Samuel…’

  The word, so beautiful on her lips. But her eyes were distant. The sadness gone. A clarity, come from bitter experience, perhaps, but it aged her voice, made her smile painful to see. ‘It’s not money. It’s a different kind of … debt. I will never be free of it. You wouldn’t understand.’

  He winced at the certainty in those eyes. Had to look away, like a fool, down at his hat.

  ‘Those stories of China that I told you, I took them all from picture books. There are no cobbled highways near my village, or curious animals. In my village there was only famine. Every family had to give many sons and daughters. The debt isn’t mine alone.’

  ‘Your sister. She’s dead, isn’t she?’

  Ai made no expression. ‘Yes, she’s dead. Of the typhus.’

  Sam nodded. ‘You see, you’re alone, and I’m alone. And our people. We aren’t so different. Everywhere my people go, your people go too. I’m sayin I can try to understand.’

  Her gentle smile. ‘But I will write to you, Samuel. Once you arrive, and write to me.’

  He felt the pressure behind his eyes. Couldn’t speak any more. Lifted her hand to his lips, and kissed. Turned and walked down the alley. Felt her eyes on his back, until he rounded the corner, and let himself fall alongside a bullock-team and a sulky with iron wheels and four Russian sealers in pelts and woollen caps singing a low and mournful song up at the empty sky.

  There was no going in the roof. The town was built right past the square now, and the hills that rose around were crowded with shacks and canvas tents, and the twack-thwack chorus of hammers on nail. He would be visible from the street and from every side, and there was likely labourers in the goods-floor working the block-and-tackle from the loading bay. Sam straightened his waistcoat and collar and went in the back door. There were bullock-teams direct from the inland sawmills, and from the port, bearing barrels of whale-oil and bolts of cloth and canvas. Flour-sacks and sacks of barley and oats and barrels of salt-pork direct from Australia. Sam nodded at some of the stevedores and bullockies who he knew by name. In the loading bay there were crates stamped from all the world, and bales of spun cotton and pallets of canned goods and open caskets with iron-goods ready for the miner’s hand. Wagon wheels and windmill blades and millstones. Shirtless men lugging hessian sacks of flour piled on the loading bay floor. Sam wended his way between them, holding out the message he’d scratched for Mr Walker’s eyes only. If he was asked.

  But there was nobody guarding the stairwell, just as there’d been no cutthroats stationed outside. As his mother had described, Walker’s men were over at the Presidio, prevailing on the major to gather his Indian-killers in a raiding party against Sydney-town. Sam went downstairs, appearing not to hurry. He cast his eyes into the gloom and made out some clerks at their desks in an office made of plank-wood with no ceiling. The babble of salesmen and drunks and the pedalled grindstone of the knife sharpener working at a blade. A hawker of smoked fish calling out his wares.

  Sam got to the bottom of the stairs and fell to his knees and began to crawl. There was the old iron safe against the corner and open to view from above shelf-height. He held the gun against his chest and crawled in the dust and got splinters in his palms because he was listening over his back. He got to the strongbox and took out the key from his waistcoat pocket and spat on it like the farrier had told him and rubbed it wet all over. He took out the pistol and laid it on the floor beside him. Put the key in the lock, and closed his eyes, and held his breath as though that might help. Heard the lock snip and the tumblers knock and turn. Took the safe door at the base and pulled it open enough to get inside. Picked up the gun and looked back at the empty floor and went inside the safe. Pulled it shut with the welded handle and finally breathed. Put his hands on his knees and wiped the tears of relief from his eyes. Felt like laying down on the floor and balling himself up small as possible. But there was the darkness and the confinement and the sickness of fear in his belly. He checked that the door was shut and lit a match and reached for the shelves and began to stow away the banknotes. And it was then that he saw the bag. Blue canvas with a rawhide strap. The one he’d given his mother. Tossed onto the piles of money. He opened the neck and looked inside. More than his mother had showed him, as he’d suspected. The same amount that he’d stolen. Didn’t know what that meant except the murder of his mother, and then the bolt of anger burst behind his eyes and made it all red. He felt his hands stowing the banknotes but he couldn’t see for the red haze of wildfire blood and when the bag was full he didn’t see his hands reach for the matchbox and strike a flame and throw the match among the shelved papers; the notables and deeds and claims on men and property. The bonds and the promissory notes and the remaining banknotes. The records of everything Walker owned, including people. But Sam should have been out of the safe by now. Smelt the choking fumes and heard the crackle of paper afire. Felt the heat on his face and the noxious broil against his hands. And suddenly his vision cleared and he saw what he’d done and reached for the door. The door was yanked open, and he fell and was pulled. Held down with a boot on his throat. Looked up at the face of the bearded cutthroat and watched Walker enter the safe and heard his terrible cry. The boot pressed down on Sam’s throat and he looked into the man’s face but there was no mercy in those eyes or in the set of his mouth. There was fire at the doorsill and Walker emerged with his sleeves aflame and his face blackened and that was the last thing Sam saw.

  21

  Sam woke up at the drenching. The bucket of water frozen in time. His mouth open and his dripping head. Wet hair in his mouth. Somehow missed the part where the water hit, until he came round again. Lashed to a chair on the top floor of Walker’s establishment. Sarah Proctor was tied to a chair beside. Black-eyed and bloody mouthed where her teeth had gone through her lip. She was unconscious, but a bucket was coming for her. He watched Walker’s man take the bucket off the block-and-tackle hoist and walk to Sarah and douse her and she awoke with a scream. She had been badly abused. Her pinafore was bloodied and hoisted to her baby-swollen belly. Sam heard the heavy footsteps and knew them for Walker. The angry Southlander hove into view and his face was wet where he’d washed the cinders of his fortune clean. His hair was combed and his black beard glistened. His dark eyes fringed with red. Either the smoke or he’d wept over his loss, it di
dn’t matter now. He stared down at Sam and began to cough and a sooty spittle rained on Sam’s face.

  ‘What is it?’

  The man in the black suit who’d waited in the sunlight by the loading bay clothed in pale road-dust was by Walker’s side. Bearer of bad tidings, his whole aspect said.

  ‘They ain’t comin’. Tonight or any other time. I come soon as I was told.’

  Walker grabbed the man’s throat. Got his face eye to eye. Hoisted him a little. ‘Why not? He took my gold.’

  The smaller man closed his eyes and let himself be hung but in the meantime waved to a leather saddlebag by the bay. Walker thrust him away. ‘He give a reason?’

  ‘Nothin but what he said to you. Half his company is out on the road, searchin for untame Induns. Didn’t fancy takin it up to some white men. But I saw a Vandemonian there, come out of the major’s office. Recognised him by his gait and possum-skins. Unsaddled but on a rein, tied to the hitchin post outside the major’s door, was the finest damn thoroughbred horse I ever seen, an’ the only one I ever seen on this damn coast. Tall and proud and glistenin black. I reckon you can draw your own conclusions there, sir.’

  ‘Course I bloody can. Well, it don’t matter. We got the making of a mob outside in the square. Come to watch a hangin’. Get to it.’

  Walker waved at two ropes coiled in the sunlight. Sam understood. His letter to Keane warning him about Walker’s plan to use the army to burn out Sydney-town had been read and acted upon. Sam closed his eyes again and felt his chair lifted and the sunlight on his face. His feet in the drop. The sound of the crowd and their disapproval at the sight of a boy and a pregnant woman. Hand around his neck, from the back. He opened his eyes and looked over the gathered faces and there were many that he knew and many he didn’t. Russians and Germans and Chinese. Mormons in their black suits and hats. Miners with red sashes at their waists and necks and wrists glittering with gold chain. A rough hand pressed Sam’s head and Walker stepped out onto the gantry and stood there with his hands on his hips and riding boots shining in the thin sunlight.