by Rachel Leary
‘What do you think?’ he said.
He grinned and it shocked her. She realised she had hardly seen him smile. It was a boyish grin, a shy tug of the mouth, and now with the beard gone the deep dimples either side of it showed. His eyes appeared brighter. Everything he felt showed in his eyes, every change of feeling in him registering in them. It frightened Bridget—this transparency, and the dark hole of need that seemed to open in his eyes sometimes. In his body there was always the sense of something bound, loaded, as though the muscle mass was packed too tightly, his body humming with readiness. But now as she looked at him sitting here by the river he was smiling and he looked almost relaxed.
...
She left the camp alone with him. They walked through slow-moving fog into the bottom of a valley and then headed uphill onto a ridge. The fog cleared to reveal a sea of blue dips and rises, a blanket of silence hanging over it prickled by birdsong. Any speech at all cracked through the silence, settled with the same ominousness as a crude word in a church. They were going to get sap to make cider, he said. Take it back to camp, he said.
They slept the night in a lean-to. Inside, the timber frame had circles and some other shapes—figures, perhaps—cut into the bark. ‘What are they?’
‘Blacks did them,’ he said, nodded at the circle. ‘Moon.’
‘They’re here?’
‘No. Soon. In the summer.’
...
The lake was surrounded by loose black rock most of the way around, a creek entering it at one end, a huddle of gnarled trees crippled and leaning from the constant abuse of wind. Fog crawled down over the rock and over the top of the lake, the lake gone all of a sudden, then wind took the fog, ripped it away again. The sound of wind and the light tink-tinkering of the lake.
They crossed land covered in giant green plants, round but flattened on the top. They were hard and dense, and she made her way by stepping from one to the other when possible, the mud between them so deep that at times she sank to her knees. The ground began to slope and they made their way down a steep hill covered in a thick stand of pines. At the bottom of this hill was a small creek in a valley jammed with ferns. They stopped to drink, then began the climb uphill, reaching a boggy grassland that stretched about a mile to a spot where a thicket of tortured-looking gums grew. ‘Cider gums,’ he said. He pointed to a tree that already had a wound in the trunk like the one he’d just made.
...
Back at the camp they drank and rain came in and stayed. Matt cut branches and piled them on top of the lean-to, which did little to keep the water out. The other men worked in the rain cutting trees and branches, building an A-frame shelter on the other side of the clearing which they then piled into.
Bridget sat in the wet and dripping lean-to next to Matt. He wore trousers and no top, the scarring over his back caught by the weak light. He sat with his knees up looking out of the lean-to, passed her his pipe. There was a tattoo on the top of his right arm, a heart with the initials EF in it. ‘Who’s EF?’
He paused before he spoke. ‘Wife.’
‘Where is she?’
‘Dead. Ask a lot of questions.’
‘How’d she die?’
‘She just died, alright?’ He turned and glared at her, pulled his shirt on, got up and walked out of the lean-to into the rain.
...
The rain eased and they crawled out of their shelters into the rich fug of wet plants. It was dusk when Bridget walked down the track and into the bushes. She had just stood up again when she heard someone coming through the scrub. She saw him and ran, but he grabbed her, hand over her mouth.
The sound of her yelling was muffled. She couldn’t breathe, his hand closing off the air to her nose.
The shape came out of the half-dark and grew large behind him. Suddenly she sucked air. Matt threw Budders against a rock and drove his fist into his face. Blood sprayed out of Budders’ nose. Matt hit him again and Budders went to the ground, Matt’s boot driving into his gut. Then someone running, Henry there, pulling Matt off Budders.
Budders was up off the ground and crashing through the bushes. Henry let Matt go and he strode off in the direction of the camp. Henry stood there and then he looked over at Bridget, his gaze saying: It’s your fault. This is your fault. He turned around and followed where Matt had gone.
‘And so, let us sing.’ The reverend spread his thick rosy hands.
Captain Marshall rose from his pew. The convicts who stood up the back accounted for more than half the people squashed into the church and they sang with vigour, the volume of their voices dominating the congregation. The fabulous sound they produced always surprised Marshall—he consistently forgot to expect it. Next to him Eleanor stood with her neck long and her mouth round. Marshall had never been much of a singer himself. He had always found it rather like the process of getting a shy child to kiss its churlish aunt. The whole thing was quite tainted with reluctance. He just preferred not to. It was an aspect of himself over which he felt interminable shame; the enjoyment of singing was natural. No one ought to trust a man who did not like to sing. And so he employed now the strategy that, as far as he knew, had served him well over many years—his lips made the shapes of the necessary words and he emitted a little bit of noise, enough that it might pass as singing to anyone who should glance in his direction, while all the while keeping his voice to himself.
The reverend read to them now, paused over the book and, looking out over the pews, considered them. ‘A man shall not be established by wickedness, but the root of the righteous shall not be moved.’ The reverend read this same passage nearly every week—for the sake of the convicts, of course. However today Marshall sat wondering: was he righteous? ‘A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband, but she that maketh ashamed is as rottenness in his bones.’ Eleanor looked down at her hands, which were folded in her lap.
They sang and then the reverend read again. ‘A river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads.’ He motioned to the window and when he spoke his voice was grave. ‘Here now, through the goodness of God, the Lord hath given us Van Diemen’s Land, delivered her unto us that we may take her riches and with them build good and prosperous lives.’
Marshall looked up at the bright red of the stained-glass window. Dust motes hovered high in the light.
‘And now, let us pray.’
There was loud shuffling as the congregation went to their knees.
The tea-coloured river roared through the forest. A waterfall ran down over rocks like stairs, a wash of white. Sunlight leaked through the canopy and down into the water, where it dazzled the rocks at the bottom of a pool. Fish sat in the current, the bigger dog, Caesar, seeing one and barking at it so the thing darted under a rock.
They came out into the shock of light. Bridget wasn’t sure how long they’d been at the camp. Her heels had scabbed then healed but were sore again already. Her legs ached and she wanted to stop but it was only the middle of the day.
...
A dry ridge, hills veiled under a hush of light cloud. A wide river in the distance, snaking through the landscape. The rowdy squawk of a flock of white cockatoos, far off at first, like pieces of paper floating in the sky, then closer, argumentative. Then a loud crack, sharp and sudden. Budders stood with a musket pointed to the sky.
Matt grabbed it off him. ‘What the fuck are you doing?’
‘Shooting the noisy bastards. Get one of ’em to eat.’
‘Don’t be bloody stupid. As if you can shoot one of them from here. Jesus, you’re a stupid bastard.’
...
The hut was among wattles beside a fast, shallow creek. Smoke rose from its chimney in a thin and almost straight line. It was late afternoon; the gullies were full of shadow and cold was rising from the ground into a dark blue sky turning darker. As they came up through the damp clearing in front of the bark hut Matt called out. ‘Smith!’
The door opened slight
ly.
‘It’s Matt, ya sly bastard.’
A tall, gaunt man stood in the doorway, a gun by his thigh. He squinted. ‘Who’s that you got with ya?’ he said, trying to see behind Matt. ‘Jesus!’ He spoke over his shoulder. ‘They got a woman.’ One of his green eyes looked at Bridget, the other one looked off to her right. In the hut behind him a man sat at a table smoking.
She looked away from the tall man’s bung eye.
‘Missed us did ya, Smithy?’ Henry pushed past the tall man into the hut, Matt behind him. Budders, who had also stepped inside, grinned.
Smith saw him looking. ‘Get up.’
A girl who looked not more than twelve rose slowly from where she squatted in the dark corner of the hut. She was naked, her hair cropped close to her head.
Smith pushed the man in the chair hard on his shoulder. ‘Dennis here just finished. Didn’t ya, Dennis?’
Matt turned to Bridget, who was standing just outside the door with Sam. ‘Stay there,’ he said.
Budders walked over to the corner, cupped his hand around the girl’s dark, barely formed breast and pushed it up. He had just dropped his trousers around his ankles, his naked arse cheeks clenched, when Matt grabbed the back of his shirt, pulled him backwards and chucked him out of the hut so he went sprawling on the ground a few yards from where Bridget and Sam stood.
‘Get her out of here.’ Matt growled the instruction to Sam, pushed the door shut.
Budders was banging on the door, ‘Lemme in, lemme in, it ain’t fair.’
‘Come on,’ Sam said, walked away from the hut.
She followed him along a faint track through trees. He sat on a log, bent forward, jamming a stick into the ground. There was shouting coming from the hut.
Sam pulled a water flask from his knapsack, passed it to her.
He looked over at her and then back at the ground. ‘What was you doing up on that hill?’
She shrugged.
Sam fiddled with the top of the flask. ‘Bide your time sometimes, that’s the thing I never knew. All these blokes what reckon Matt and Henry’s some kinda heroes.’ He scoffed. ‘What you wanna be is smart, know when to do something, know when to shut up. Seen blokes taking all kinds a shit, shutting their mouths and copping it, not saying a fucking thing. I thought they was gutless, but they wasn’t—what they was, was smart. Biggest mistake I ever made.’ He shook his head. ‘Biggest mistake.’
He threw the stick away, sat looking towards the creek. ‘Bloke at the island where we was, Pinky Farrell, got blokes to lay bets: how many strokes Henry could take before he made a sound—cried out.’ He looked up at her then, like he wanted to see if she knew what he meant.
She looked away.
‘Only man to silently take a hundred. And everyone reckoned that made him great. S’pose it did.’ He picked up a stick from next to his boot, twirled it in his fingers. ‘Criers—Misty Symmons first time on the triangle begged at only thirty lashes. Seamus Fogherty made a killing that day, said he’d picked Misty for a crier straight off. Two days later Misty Symmons drove a nail into his own head. They dragged him out of the cell next morning, took him out to Dead Island.’
Budders came through the trees, stood a few yards from them kicking at the ground, his face still puffed and scabby from Matt’s fists. The night Budders had grabbed her Matt had pinned him to the ground, held the burning end of a branch near his face. ‘Look at her again, I’ll burn your fucking eyes out. Understand?…DO YOU UNDERSTAND?!’ The boom of his voice had the trees around the camp standing taller.
The three of them waited now, not saying anything, wet trees calling to the sky all around them.
Matt strode into view, Henry behind him.
Matt didn’t pause, kept walking fast along the track. ‘Told you we couldn’t trust them.’
‘Well, who else is going to do it?’
‘Plenty of people.’
‘You find them then.’
‘Take stuff in, sell it ourselves.’
‘Fucking great idea, just walk into Hobart Town.’
Matt stopped then. ‘Yes. We will. We’ll walk into Hobart Town.’
He walked off again then, Henry standing there swearing.
...
They were a long time following the track before they veered off it and crossed a creek, a rock wall on the other side of it, a wide cave with a low roof. There was a rope tied to the side of a tree that one at a time the men used to pull themselves up into the cave, Matt reaching down for Bridget’s hand and hauling her up while her boots scrabbled at the rock, the dogs the last to find their way up.
...
They had just eaten when Caesar started to bark furiously, Higgins joining him, both of them looking out into the dark, growling then barking again. All four of the men picked up their guns. Matt got up first, told Sam to stay there with Bridget.
‘Why do I always have to stay with her?’
She listened to the sound of them going down the slope. Someone slipped and swore.
Sam drew in the dirt on the cave floor—the same thing he had etched onto the rock with coal up at the camp: a figure, a person hanging from a scaffold. He saw her looking at it, caught her eye in the firelight. Neither of them said anything.
They came back a while later. ‘Wild dog,’ Matt muttered, leaning the gun against the cave wall. She had seen them in the night, the brown dogs with stripes and a long snout. Once one had come close to her. She’d sat completely still, willing the thing to go away. It sniffed her boot, looked behind it into the night then walked off, her breath coming out of her as it went.
...
She lay in the cave next to Matt, Henry and Budders asleep on the other side of him, Sam sitting up with his back to them at the front of the cave, gun across his lap.
‘Who were they?’
Matt’s back was to her. ‘What?’
‘The men.’
‘Shepherds.’
‘Who was she?’
‘What?’
‘The girl. Who was she?’
‘How the fuck should I know?’
‘Where’d they get her?’
Matt turned his head towards her. ‘What?’
‘Where did they get her from?’
He turned away, looked into the darkness. ‘Her people used to pass through this way.’
‘They took her?’
‘Maybe. They might have bought her. Now shut up.’
Caesar lay by the fire, a flick of light over him, his head between his paws. When she looked at him he whimpered, beat his tail against the cave floor, his glassy round dog eyes sad but hopeful. He got up, scampered over to her, ran his rough tongue up her cheek.
...
The man was bent over in a garden in front of a hut as they came up the slope. When he saw them he picked up the gun that was on the ground next to him, raised it and then lowered it again. ‘Jacobson,’ Matt said.
The man looked them over, looked at Bridget then looked again. ‘Heard you had a woman with ya.’
Bridget glanced over at Matt.
‘Taylor was out here day before yesterday, been in Norfolk Plains, said he heard it there, and that you robbed some government bloke up the lakes.’
‘That right?’ Matt said.
Early in the morning from the top of a hill she’d seen flat land in the distance, patches of it cleared—a sign of human life, but as the day went on they’d only traipsed through more forest.
Now they’d arrived here—another lone hut in a damp valley.
Inside the hut the man Jacobson gave them bread and butter then Matt took her down into scrub near the creek that flowed about fifty yards below the hut. Here there was a small A-frame shelter. ‘Wait here,’ he said, went back up to the hut.
She sat on the ground by the spattering creek, thought about what Jacobson had said—someone had told him there was a woman with them. She remembered a day, not very long after she’d arrived at Marshall’s, when she’d gone into the town to de
liver a note for the missus, had walked back past the gaol where a group of people had gathered on the street opposite and stood looking. Inside the wall of the gaol was a scaffold, the top of it in view above the wall. Two bodies hung side by side, limp, their heads covered with sacks. Both spun ever so slightly on the ropes that were around their throats. Next to Bridget a man turned to the man next to him: ‘If they leave them up there too long, their heads’ll fall off.’ People around him laughed.
‘What did they do?’
All heads turned at the sound of a woman’s voice. ‘They’re Beasley and McGuinley,’ one of them said.
‘Who are they?’
‘Are?’ The man laughed and the sound came out of his nose. ‘Were. Don’t you mean, who were they?’
‘Yes. Who were they?’
‘Bushrangers.’
The next time she’d been in the gaol, another two men had been hung. The yard of the men’s gaol shared a wall with that of the women’s and in the morning she’d heard yelling and then cheering. One of the women said the noise was coming from a group out on the road. They were there because there was going to be a hanging. When Bridget went out into the yard later, there on the other side of the high wall were two bodies, white sacks covering their heads. It was windy and the rope that held them creaked against the timber scaffold. A few days later they were still there. The white sacks were black with flies and the breeze brought a foul stench from them.
Bridget sat for a long time and then walked up to the hut. The door was shut. Inside Henry’s voice was raised. ‘They know now that she’s been with us. She knows where the camp is.’
‘Never find it,’ Matt said.
‘Slows us down,’ Henry said. ‘Told you we should never have picked her up in the first place. Bloody stupid idea.’
...
Inside the hut she sat on a log close to the fire, her body soaking up the warmth. Later she lay next to Matt in the dark in the shelter by the creek. She wondered where this place was, how far it was from here to the road.
