by Rachel Leary
In a few weeks’ time Henry Evans would join Sheedy, Merriweather, Little and all the other condemned men and women who now lay here. That burial would be a good deal more public. The bodies of Sheedy and Merriweather, wrapped in hessian, had been loaded onto a cart and transported to the remote graveyard early in the morning in relative secrecy. Following the hanging as it would, Evans’s burial would be far more difficult to conceal. Hordes would follow the soldiers here, jostling for a view of the grave.
One of the eagles was swept out over the water while the other hovered in place. ‘God is mighty,’ the reverend said, his black robes blowing in the wind. They turned their backs on Little and as he passed by Sheedy’s grave, Marshall thought of her again. A report had come down from Launceston in November saying that a Mr Gleeson had found an escaped female convict in his yard. His property, Meadowvale, was not all that far from the location where Sheedy’s body had been found. Gleeson’s wife had nursed her and she had stolen from them and run off. The woman was now thought to have been Bridget Crack.
That was over a month ago, and since then nothing had been heard of her.
As they walked down the damp slope Marshall heard the scrape of the convict servant’s shovel.
‘Look at that,’ the reverend said, pointing at the headland, where one of the eagles was hovering low over the ground. ‘It must have found something.’
Bridget stepped out in front of the cart.
The bullock pulled up. The driver sat and stared mutely at her.
‘Going north,’ she said.
He looked for a little longer. ‘Going a few mile,’ he stated.
She shrugged.
He picked up the reins. ‘Get up then.’
...
She sat on the back of the cart and they followed a track past a herd of cattle, some lifting their heads to look as the cart rolled by. Two figures came into view up the road, both of them wearing red. As they came closer she saw the guns slung over their shoulders. Her heart started to race and she looked behind them and then, as the soldiers came closer, she kept her eyes on her feet. They acknowledged the man as they passed.
A while later they passed a man on horseback who waved to the man driving the cart and noted her presence, the question clear on his face.
They crossed a creek where two pieces of split timber had been placed across it and then went up a wooded hill and down into an open valley. They had been going for some time when the ground got marshy and one of the wheels became stuck. He hadn’t said anything since picking her up. Now he got down, looked at the wheel. ‘Get off,’ he said. She got down and he pulled at the bullock’s head. The animal pulled but the cart remained stuck. He walked away from the cart towards the creek. She watched him picking up branches, breaking them under his foot. He came back with an armful of sticks that he put down in front of the wheel. This time when the bullock pulled the cart rolled forward. ‘Stay off,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to walk a while.’ He grabbed the gun from the seat and walked next to the animal’s head.
After a while he stopped, turned and walked to the back of the cart, where she had also stopped. He stood in front of her. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Mathilda.’
He nodded. ‘Mathilda.’
He went to grab her shoulder and she stepped back.
He stood staring at her, then walked back to the bullock’s head, picked up the reins and moved it on. When the ground became drier he stopped the bullock and got up into the seat. He didn’t look at her. She got on the back. When they came down the hill to a cluster of cottages she got off. He turned and looked at her then turned back, cracked the whip next to the bullock’s rump.
...
The road to Norfolk Plains followed a flat slow river, the town itself consisting of a few big buildings on a plain. A black horse was tied to a post outside a two-storey building, a pile of fresh shit steaming on the ground behind it. It stepped back into the pile and then lowered its head to doze. Two young girls, well dressed, came out of the building and crossed the road, giggling as they went, one whispering to the other behind her hand.
Bridget pulled the bonnet around her face and went further up the road.
A man walked past with a pick over his shoulder and then two boys ran by, one chasing the other. The boy behind picked up a rock and pelted it at the other one. It hit him in the shoulder and he turned around and swore at the other boy, laughed and kept running.
Daniel had said Eliza was here. That Eliza had been reassigned to Norfolk Plains. Bridget asked a girl in convict clothes where there was a public house, followed her directions to a hut near the river.
Inside, Bridget scanned the room while unfamiliar faces turned to look then went back to their drinks, their cards and conversations.
‘Want a drink, do ya, sweetheart?’
‘You know Eliza Maloney?’
‘Liza Maloney.’ The man swayed. ‘Nah. Anyone here know Liza Maloney?’
A pudgy woman with a handful of cards looked over. ‘Gone. Launceston. Went to the gaol then reassigned there. Why?’
Over in the corner of the room now Bridget saw a man looking at her. She recognised him, had seen him somewhere before. She could see he was thinking, trying to place her too. The memory came to her, with it a cold sweat. At the lake. She remembered rum running down his chin, the hard cold glare in his eyes. One of the surveyor’s men.
Bridget turned around, went out the door.
Along the road she thought she heard someone following her. She turned around. There was a man yards back. Not the surveyor’s man, and didn’t look to be in a hurry, but she ran for a while anyway.
A mile or so along the river she saw a convict man alone in a field, ploughing. She watched him and then went over to him.
The main road went to Launceston, he told her. Walk out to the main road then follow it. Or, it was about twelve mile down the river. ‘You’d have to cross the river first and there’s not much track or nothing. I wouldn’t be going that way.’ Was she on her own? he wanted to know then. Need somewhere to stay?
No, she said. She didn’t.
...
The cottage sat on flat cleared land, a fenced paddock behind it, a donkey dozing there. Beyond that was an area of burnt stumps dotting a plain where a flock of sheep grazed and water sat in the lowest part of the land like a shallow lake, the wind scouring its shining surface. Next to the paddock was a haystack and a bullock cart, the shafts resting on the ground. A cow tied to the outside of the paddock fence was watching a brown dog that had just squeezed underneath the fence and was now cocking its leg against a post.
The hut’s chimney was smoking but there was no sign of anyone. In the paddock the dog had noticed the donkey, wandered towards it and then stopped. It watched the donkey and then gave one short bark at the resting animal, who looked at the dog and then went back to its dozing. The dog barked again and then kept up its barking until the donkey tossed its head impatiently. The dog responded by getting down low, its rear stuck up in the air. It continued to bark, trying to engage the donkey in some kind of play that the donkey took exception to and, seeming in no mood for the dog’s games, it ran at the dog, head down and teeth bared. The dog quickly took off back under the fence, the cow watching it go, and ran to the back of the cottage, where it stood looking back at the paddock before it lay down in the dirt. The donkey stood near the fence for a while, twitching its ears, and then resumed its dozing in the new spot.
Behind her among the wattles where she stood watching there was a grave—a pile of grey stones with a wooden cross at the head of the pile. She went on up the rocky hill around the cottage and came down on the far side of it. Further on was another cottage, a woman working in the garden that was between it and the cart track. While Bridget watched the cottage door opened and a little boy ran out, went through the fence into the garden and stood next to the woman digging. Another woman came out, stood at the fence and then went through and picked up the child, who
screamed and kicked his legs as she carried him back to the cottage. A few minutes later the woman in the garden stopped digging, wiped her hands on her apron, left the garden and went inside.
All day yesterday Bridget had pushed through bush above the river, had spent a cold night under a rock overhang. The night before she had slept in a smoke house, eaten curing meat. This morning she’d come to a house and circled around it, found a cart track and walked along it until the furrows in the soil became deeper and she felt herself to be on a well-used track, up and down slopes, through mud to this group of cottages.
...
The sun crept towards the horizon and the track led through forest. Bridget ate the three eggs she had taken from a chicken coop at the back of the last cottage. On dark she stood on a rise; lights twinkled below and tendrils of smoke rose to join a blanket of fog that hovered above the lights. The track widened as it led down the hill, the dark shapes of houses either side of it.
There was a bang and she fled from her place in the middle of the road to the trees on the other side. The bang had come from a cottage on the other side of the track and now its door opened and a woman yelled: ‘I don’t care, do I? I don’t give a damn. Why don’t you bugger off?’ A person came out the door towards the road. A man. He stood out on the road looking back at the cottage and then he turned and went down the hill, disappearing into the dark. The hut door shut and behind it the woman yelled again. ‘I told you, get down off there. Now!’
...
The town’s dirt streets were quiet in the early evening, the odd lantern glowing over a doorway here and there. Bridget stuck close to the buildings, turned up a lane where there was a place with a group of men milling out the front on the street, a lantern casting light over them. The windows of the building were lit with candles, and laughter, music and singing came from inside. Someone pulled the door open and there was a burst of noise and light; they went in and it was gone again. Bridget crept up the lane and stood in a narrow gap between two buildings, the ground here stinking of piss.
She watched the men in the street for a while then went back down, asked if any of them knew Eliza Maloney. One of them nodded, said she was a servant at a big place out of town. He pointed. ‘Guildford’s place,’ he said.
Behind him there was a pole, a sign nailed to it. WANTED. Under it was her name. The man saw her staring at it, glanced at the sign and then back at her.
She turned and walked quickly away, felt him watching her. She continued up the hill, stopped at a stable. It was empty. No one around. Inside she slumped down in the darkest corner, pulled straw around herself.
...
The stately house sat at the top of a slope, casting its importance out over the land below it. The land between the house and the river had been cleared and planted out with English grasses which grew greener than the native grass. Some new trees had been planted and, close to the riverbank at the bottom of the lawn, there was an ornate bench overlooking the river and a small jetty with a boat tied up to it.
Bridget went around to the back of the house, stood there a long time looking at it. She tried to imagine Eliza in there, what she might be doing. The sun had sunk behind the hills and shadow lay down softly over the fields around the house.
She found what she thought might be the door to the servants’ quarters and knocked.
‘Eliza Maloney here?’
The girl who’d opened the door shook her head. ‘Liza ain’t here no more.’
‘Where’s she’s gone?’
‘They sent her to the Factory.’
‘When?
‘Month ago now woulda been.’
Bridget looked at the empty yard behind her and back to the girl. ‘Can you get me bread?’
The girl shook her head. ‘Can’t. Isa wouldn’t like it.’
‘Come on—just a bit.’
‘Can’t.’
Bridget turned as if to walk away from the door, then spun around suddenly just as the girl was shutting it, barged past her into the kitchen, grabbed a whole loaf of bread from the table.
‘Hey! Hey, come back here! Hey!’
But Bridget was running now, across the grass and down towards the river where two black swans took off squawking into the sky.
...
Cowpats littered the grass, the wet ground full of holes from the animals’ hooves. Below her the fog was lifting to reveal the town, damp with dew and strange and new under the glare of daylight. Last night she’d gone back to the stable—a horse in it and voices nearby. She’d kept going up the hill then beyond the flicker of lights until there were no more huts, no more cleared or half-cleared plots, until she could sense the town below her but could see or hear nothing of it. She found a leaf-filled hollow in the ground and lay down in it.
Across the field the land sloped away and she walked to a creek that flowed down out of the hills. A cottage sat on a cleared rise above the creek. Behind it was an open-fronted shed where a young girl was milking a cow. From inside the cottage someone called the girl, who got up from her stool and went inside, leaving the pail. Bridget ran across the creek, picked up the bucket and guzzled, some of the milk escaping down the front of her dress.
‘Well, hurry up.’ The voice came from inside the cottage. Bridget put the bucket down as the girl came out the door. As she ran she heard the girl call out, ‘Mama, Mama, someone’s stealing our milk!’ Bridget didn’t look back, ran up the creek.
She followed the creek upstream to a small pool, ferns growing all around it. She sat on a log listening for a long time then started back down the creek.
She was careful to stay out of sight passing the cottage. There was no sign now of anyone near the shed and the cow was gone.
Below the cottage the trees around the creek thinned and she could see the other cottages that dotted its banks, and the rest of the town down in the valley’s basin. She crossed the creek and followed it down on the other side to a place where some of the understorey on the bank had been taken out, the biggest of the trees felled. She saw a small slab hut, a rock chimney at one end. There was no smoke coming from the chimney. The ground was covered in sheep shit, a lot of it fairly fresh, and there were axe marks in the tree next to her. She took a few more steps towards the back of the hut and stopped. The wind was a quiet hiss. Nearby there was the splutter of the creek and a little way off the maw of a crow.
Bridget walked around to the front of the hut where the door was open a few inches. There was a hole for a window, a sack hanging over the opening. On the ground near the door there was a sheep skull. A magpie turned its beady eye towards her, hopped across the short coarse grass. It stopped and turned its head to the side as though questioning her and then flew up onto a branch. She pushed the door and it opened with a creak to reveal darkness, a dirt floor.
In the fireplace there was a half-burnt log. Near it was a small table and behind her on the floor a mattress, some of the hessian covering ripped and the straw coming out. She stood in the darkness of the hut, then went back outside and continued down the hill.
Soon the trees thinned more, there were more stumps, and she could see down to the ploughed field below where only a few lone trees remained. Between the ploughed field and the creek, close to where the trees ended, there was a cottage. She walked near the creek now and got to within fifty yards of it. There was a squeal and then two children appeared from around the side of the cottage, one running after the other. The little one who was being chased ran into the cottage and slammed the door behind him. The girl who’d been chasing him turned and walked to a sprawling tree near the side of the house where a swing had been hung from a low bough. She sat on the seat and pushed off, swung slowly, her head down. A few minutes later a woman came out the door. ‘Elizabeth, you come here now.’
The girl looked up then, ignored the woman, went back to her swinging.
‘If I have to come over there you will get it. I’m warning you.’
The woman was staring at
the girl on the swing, her hands on her hips. The girl slowly got off the swing and walked over to the woman, who clipped her on the side of the head as she went inside, pulled the door shut behind them.
Bridget came down towards the swing and over to a timber shelter between the swing and the creek. Inside there was a plough, a bullock harness, a cart, sheepskins slung over the side of it, and tied across the shelter, a line with kangaroo skins hanging from it. She stood just inside against the back wall, the open front of the shelter being visible from the cottage door. Inside the cottage a child was crying.
A moment later Bridget was about to step out of the shelter when the cottage door opened again and the woman came out, a bucket in her hand. Bridget stepped back against the wall and as she did she knocked a spade next to her that fell down onto a pot. There was a clatter and the woman stopped where she was only yards away, turned towards the shed and looked straight at Bridget.
For a moment both of them stood completely still, staring. Something familiar about the woman—the eyes close together, a scar across the cheek. The memory came to her from a long, long way off, landed like a bird on water. Anne. It was Anne. From the gaol.
The woman put the bucket down, looked behind her. ‘Lizzy, go and get the gun. Now. Hurry.’
