by Rachel Leary
Henry was staring at the body on the floor. ‘Bloody hell.’
Budders sat up, grabbed hold of a chair and dragged himself up from the floor.
‘Let’s go,’ Matt said.
Henry stood there.
‘Let’s go!’
Budders stumbled towards the door. Matt grabbed Bridget and they went up the hall and through the kitchen where Matt picked up a sack from the floor and the frightened maid slunk back against the bench. They went out the door into the yard, Henry and Sam behind them now. Budders was slow and Henry half dragged him across the paddock, into the trees. He was bleeding from the side of his head and yabbering insensibly. Henry let go of him and he crumpled to the ground.
‘A daft cur,’ Budders said. ‘Come here and let me get a look at ya.’ His voice changed. ‘I never done it, sir, it weren’t me, I never done it.’ He started to whimper and curled up on the ground, still gibbering.
‘Leave him,’ Matt said.
Henry stood over Budders. ‘Can’t leave him; they catch him he’ll tell them any bloody thing they want to know.’
‘What about a bit a whiskey, surely you can spare a drop. They call him Bobby Riser, he’s from Norfolk. From bloody Norfolk.’ Budders laughed. ‘Rock-a-bye baby in the tree top, when the wind blows the cradle will rock, when the bough breaks the cradle will fall…’ Budders groaned now.
‘Jesus,’ Henry muttered.
Matt lifted his gun, aimed it at Budders’ head. Henry sighed, shook his head and turned his back to Budders, looked towards the house at the other end of the clearing.
Bridget’s ears rang from the shot. Budders was quiet.
Henry turned back around, looked at Budders’ body. ‘I met his sister once.’
‘Come on,’ Matt said.
Sam had already walked away. Matt turned, pushed Bridget ahead of him and they ran up the hill.
...
Six days of moving fast, Matt almost dragging her along, swearing at her for being so slow. On the second day they had been chased, shot at. Bridget heard the sound of the bullet close to her head, saw it lodge in a tree in front of her. In the night the men were up, prowling and pacing.
When they stopped again it was at Doyle’s hut. The cocky was gone. Where was the cocky? ‘Where’s the cocky?’
Doyle looked over at her. ‘I ate it.’
In the morning Bridget woke up nauseous as she had the last few days. Outside she was sick in the scrub, came back to the hut wiping her mouth, Matt watching her.
The next evening he packed two knapsacks, told her to put one on. Sam and Henry didn’t look set to go anywhere.
‘Where are we going?’
He opened the door, pushed her out. She almost fell, turned around to swear at him, then saw the hard shine in his eyes.
...
‘Bloody stupid, chasing after some kinda bloody principle that’ll never give you nothing even though you’ve piled your whole flaming life on its back.’ Matt was pacing in the scrub. He flicked his arm out towards the dark forest. ‘You know what they say—blokes like me, we have no principles, but it’s just that; a fucking principle leading a man to his death half the time, a fucking principle that’s dragged a man out here into this hellhole. And in the end everything’s so that you don’t even know what it was you were after, what you were chasing in the first place.’ He drew breath, stood with his back to her where she sat on the damp ground, then turned, fixed her again with his frightened gaze.
He sat in the bush with his face in his hands, crying.
She sat a few yards from him, waited until he stopped. ‘Where are we going?’
‘Sully’s,’ he mumbled. ‘Take you to Sully’s. Sully’s alright,’ he said faintly to the bush, as though he were thinking about something else. ‘Sully’s alright.’
It was close to dark when she and Joseph Primrose—Primmy—and the donkey crossed a fern bridge to a hut that was barely visible, dark as it was in the shade of trees. As they arrived a man appeared from inside.
‘Who’s that?’
Primmy threw a sack off the donkey onto the ground at the man’s feet. ‘Who is it? Sheedy’s woman.’
‘Sheedy? What’s she doing here?’
Primmy kicked the sack. ‘Take that in.’
A boy came out then, stood there staring at her.
Inside, they ate soup in silence.
‘You can sleep there.’ Primmy pointed to a hammock strung between two poles. She lay awake, heard Primmy’s rough whisper. ‘Sheedy’ll kill us if he has any reason to suspect anything. The man’s full of his own imaginings and enough rage for two men. He’ll kill you as good as look at you if he thinks you’ve touched anything that’s his.’
...
Matt had taken her to a small cottage beyond Norfolk Plains, where the woman, Janet, tutted over the myriad small scars left from flea bites all over Bridget’s arms, rubbed oil into her hair against the lice. Primmy had turned up one night and the transaction took place between him and Slip, the owner of the cottage and the father of Janet’s three children—Slip gave half of the money Matt had given him to Primmy; he was to deliver Bridget to John Sullivan and tell Sullivan that he would be there to get her soon, that he was to keep her there until he came.
...
Branches etched mad and scattered stories onto a flat grey sky. Grey trees bent forward, cried out like a whipped man pleading. Boulders huddled together, let out a deep old sound that hummed under the wind. Primmy walked ahead, the donkey loaded with sacks again. The wind dropped and the sky lifted. They went up a dry slope and then followed a track along a ridge above a hurtling river. They cut away from a gorge up a dry rocky hill and for a while she couldn’t hear the river, then the rush of it was back and they had come downhill and were travelling above the river again, following it upstream.
...
Sully stood watching them come, the musket hanging from his right hand. He wore a hat low over small squinty eyes that glared out of a face compressed by a frown, a small stick between his teeth.
The dogs ran at Bridget and Primmy barking and growling. Sully bellowed at them and they went back, grouped around him, hackles raised, snarling like the Devil’s own guards.
Sully took the stick out of his mouth. ‘Well. This’s a surprise.’
‘Sheedy’s woman,’ Primmy said.
‘Know who she is,’ Sully said, chucked the stick on the ground.
The hut was as she remembered it from before: faded chair; hammock; barrels and tins piled on top of each other, some with a layer of dust and grime over them, as though they hadn’t been touched for years. It sat within a horseshoe-shaped piece of land that the river ran around, huge trees towering up all around it. A rock wall came straight up from the other side of the river, a high and vicious peak at one end. At the place where it met the sky clouds stretched and broke slowly, the dark rock spattered with snow.
The hut had been built from the trunks of the tree ferns that grew around the river. There was a flock of sheep between the river and the hut, a garden growing potatoes. Out the front a tree lay on the ground, half of it chopped up, logs strewn around it. ‘Don’t want you here,’ he said. She watched him walking to the river, bowlegged but surefooted, a stream of dogs behind him.
Captain Marshall stopped, put his hands on his hips, and looked at the smooth hunch of rock growing out of the bush ahead of him, like a queer bald head lying half buried, face down. The others had just disappeared up over it and now their retreating voices were mingling with the gossip of the brook than ran below him. His lungs were straining. He had no idea why he had agreed to come on this…this expedition. He had, he recalled, allowed himself to be talked into it by William Watson, who had slapped him on the back and said it would be ‘grand’. Marshall scoffed silently now. Not one for making friends easily, he had observed the popular and amiable Watson, had seen how well he made his way in Van Diemen’s Land society, how quickly people warmed to him, and had wanted Watson to like him.
He had wanted the man’s warm, happy glow to extend over him and so he had reluctantly agreed. That was ridiculous—he was never going to be like Watson; the man was antithetical to him in every possible way. Watson was outgoing and in his demeanour, carefree. He was a joker.
Now, standing on a steep, wet slope, the sounds of slashing and talking moving further away from him as he dropped behind the group, he berated himself for his stupidity. The ‘mission’ that Watson had described was to ‘find out what was beyond the mountains’. He had leaned over the map that Robert Price, the government surveyor, had just completed—the most recent, up-to-date map of Van Diemen’s Land—pointed at a mark that looked decidedly like an old man’s eyebrow drawn sideways. Next to it was written: Very high rocky Mountains. ‘Beyond here,’ Watson said, gesturing to the western side of the map, ‘no one really knows.’ He held up his finger. ‘Not yet.’ Then he laughed, slapped Marshall on the back. ‘Don’t look so afraid, my friend.’
They had brought horses, but had to leave them two days ago—the scrub had become too thick for the horses to get through. All day they had been trudging, the convict servant and Watson in front, slashing at branches and grasses, Andrew Carrington ready with his gun should any natives or bushrangers surprise them and Thompson peering at his compass. The so-called ‘grass’ they were in was tough and sharp and taller than Marshall, and he’d not been able to see above it for hours now. His trousers were wet to his waist and his hands cut to pieces. He had been in rugged country before, he had been in bush before, but nothing as wet and dense and suffocating as this, and never for a reason as seemingly pointless as this one seemed to him now—to see what was over the mountain.
In the late afternoon they finally began to climb out of the boggy sedgeland onto a slightly drier slope. Marshall found the five men stopped on an open rise. Thompson pointed. ‘That lake over there is where the bushrangers robbed us. Out there somewhere’—he pointed to a spread of mountains and lakes—‘must be where they hide.’ Marshall remembered Watson’s words again: ‘No one knows what’s out there. That’s the beauty of it. We will! Don’t you want to be part of that, Captain? Who knows what we might find.’ He remembered Watson’s arm around him.
Marshall didn’t care now what they found. He had found his own physical limit much more quickly than he had imagined he might. He did not have the endurance he once had. He had also found the limit of his tolerance for punishing vegetation. He looked back down the hill, wondered if the so-called ‘track’ they had made would be visible enough for them to follow back down.
...
Marshall reached his hand up and his fingers found the rough edge of rock, a groan coming out of him as he pulled himself up. The fog had crept down over the mountain so that he was within it now. He could hear nothing, no sound from the others penetrating the fog. He looked up at the expanse of grey rock above him, pushed the toe of his boot into a crack and found a chink in the rock where his fingers could take hold, pulled again. There was a rip in his trousers at the knee, blood soaking the fabric all around the tear, but the skin was numb with cold, no pain coming from the cut. His foot slipped and he grabbed at the rock, his arm shaking, the foot finding hold again. The fog was thicker again here. He continued to climb, no sound at all but the rush of the wind. Marshall felt his panic grow. He pulled himself up once again and now stood on flat rock in a swirl of white, his face smarting, his fingers red and raw. The fog cleared for a few moments to reveal columns of rock and then they were gone again, covered in a blanket of white.
‘Captain! Captaaaainnn!’
Watson.
Marshall almost cried, rushed towards the sound.
...
Four of the horses were dead, the other two so close to it that they had to be shot. The vote had been five to one that they turn back, only Thompson wanting to go on in the fog with few supplies to last them. Marshall was confident they all would have perished had they not turned back when they did.
...
Over a week later the hungry, bedraggled group arrived at a house near the Western River. As they came up close to it Watson stood staring. He turned to Marshall. ‘The grass,’ he said. A bemused and faraway look occupied his eyes that stood out in a round face. ‘It was too tough for them to eat.’ It took Marshall a moment to work out what he was talking about, then he realised he meant the horses. Marshall nodded doubtfully. They both stood on the track in light drizzle, Watson squinting at the grey horizon as though he could see something miraculous there. Then he turned around and started walking and Marshall went too, the two of them behind the other four, all of them looking like tramps trudging up the long lane to the house.
Bridget was down at the river collecting water when she heard the dogs bark. She came up to see two men standing outside the hut talking to Sully. One of them wore nothing but a skin around his waist. In his right hand he held a spear. The other one wore trousers, had a leather cap pushed down over his hair.
As she approached them the one in the trousers watched her, amusement playing in his eyes. Sully said something to them and the trousered one said something back to him. Bridget hurried past them and went into the hut.
From inside she listened to them talking, couldn’t understand what they were saying—a foreign sound, Sully speaking it. He yelled over his shoulder for her to bring out a sack of flour. Bridget pulled it from a barrel in the corner, stood in the doorway, held it out to Sully. Through the door she saw him give it to them. They stood there talking a while longer. The one who had taken the flour threw his head back and laughed, said something that made Sully laugh, the other one grinning wide.
Henry had spoken to some of them. There had been a group of them on a hill, men and dogs and women with children. He had spoken to three men for a long time, Matt with him. For the rest of that day Henry had seemed strange to her—that new sound having come from his mouth, having been standing with them.
The one in the trousers turned now and looked through the doorway. Bridget looked down into the bowl her hands were in. ‘Bye, missus.’
Mute with surprise—she hadn’t expected him to speak English—Bridget looked up. He laughed and the two of them left.
Trousers, Sully called him when she asked later. But then another name too, in more serious tones—one composed of the unfamiliar sounds he’d spoken before. ‘Them and their people up there.’ He gestured loosely towards the hut door, the gesture meant to extend beyond the mountain. ‘Lived in Hobart Town with a white family. He’s back out here now.’
...
The first morning she was there she had been sick into the ferns behind the hut. When she had come back in Sully had watched her, said nothing. For days she slept into the afternoons, woke to light sneaking in around the timber window shutters. Sully had given her his hammock in the dark corner of the hut, slept on skins by the fire. He hardly spoke to her. At night he lowered his weight into the chair, drank cider and watched flames draw up into the chimney. ‘Met Matt when I first come to Van Diemen’s Land’, he said one night to the fire. ‘Never going to settle to the life of a prisoner.’ He drank again, considered the fire. ‘Some people just are what they are, there’s no changing them.’ He’d looked over at her then, his gaze stern. She’d waited for him to say more, but that was it. It was the most he’d said to her in the time she’d been there.
...
Autumn. Winter and its freezing grey fingers close. In the mornings its cold breath floated over the river. For days it rained and hailed, an occasional sneak of blue then the hard cold kick of weather again, dark grey clouds like balled fists, the hammer of hail, wind that ripped shingles from the hut roof.
...
She was down at the river one morning when she felt it start. She squatted among the tree roots, tried to stand up, but the pain had her sitting back down. She sat by the cold river rocking and groaning and then made her way doubled over up the slope.
...
Sully had the door open. She lay and watc
hed the dust drift through the sunlight in the middle of the hut. Outside the warble of a bird. There was then—there was outside. The smell of blood. That was what she remembered. All of the world had become the smell of blood. And then floating. Floating above herself, looking down at the girl in the hammock, at her sweating, grimacing and clenching. Feeling nothing. Just watching. But then back in the hammock, back inside the hollow vessel that was her body. Later Sully’s face close, his hands large under her, lifting. Him lowering her again, his hands coming away from her. Bridget feeling there was no weight in her for the hammock to take.
Now she turned her head to the shelf next to the hammock, saw the cup. Her mouth was dry and her head felt swollen on the pillow. She sat up and drank. A flap of memory here, like a grey bird passing. So few of early childhood. But this one—her mother on the mattress, the cool grey of her face. The chilliness of her hand. Her aunt there—‘Say goodbye, Bridget’—and Bridget had looked up at her, not comprehending. What could that mean? Bridget lay now, stroked soft grey feathers.
Sully brought her broth.
He waited there next to her while she drank.
‘You should go back to Hobart Town.’
When he put his hand out to take the cup from her she didn’t look at him.
...
Sully had brought a roo up to the hut, dropped it, shooed the dogs away. Bridget was still tired but sick of lying around in the hut. She took the roo and rammed the knife in under its fur, hacked at the sinew. She dropped a chunk of muscle into the wooden trough behind the hut, kneaded salt into the flesh, pushed and pushed the meat into the sides of the trough. Her hands were hurting but she kept ramming flesh against timber. She saw him walk past, heard him stop. He stopped there and watched her then he walked up to her and took her wrists. ‘Stop it.’ She tried to pull her hands away. Her chest heaved and her jaw clenched against tears. She tried again to get away from him but he wrapped his arms around her. He said it more quietly: ‘Stop it.’ Her eyes moistened and she stared up at the black rock of the mountain, stood stiffly in his embrace.
