The Dark Mountain

by Catherine Jinks

  It never crossed my mind that he would lay claim to my mother’s bed.

  The next day we all went to Sutton Forest. Mr Barton rode one of the horses, while the rest of us—my mother, myself, James, Emily and Louisa—went squashed together in the gig. It was a subdued and modest wedding. The Reverend Vincent officiated. Miss McRae was present, and signed the parish register as a witness. There were some others, too, but whether they had been formally invited, or whether they were simply villagers eager for distraction, I have no way of knowing.

  My uncle did not appear.

  The ceremony itself proved to be rather a disappointment. I believe that I must have expected something more splendid, or at least more joyful. But my mother and Mr Barton looked very strained throughout. Mr Barton, his hair slicked down with oil and his best boots polished up, was so nervous that he dropped my mother’s ring. As for my mother, though she had shed her widow’s weeds in favour of an old gown of cinnamon-coloured silk, her appearance was not much improved by this change of costume. On the contrary, her cheek was pale and her mouth set. Perhaps she was conscious of a malicious air among those who gathered, rustling and nudging, in the rear pews. Or perhaps she was simply annoyed by the Reverend Vincent’s quite evident desire to be elsewhere. Our rector, I should tell you, was not a very amiable man. Though tall and handsome, with a devoted wife and eight healthy children, he was often to be heard complaining about his health, his house, his servants, and the distances that he was required to travel. No doubt he viewed the wedding (like almost everything else) as an imposition. I know that he was a firm supporter of banns, for I had heard him moaning about special licences, and about the ‘lawless’ speed with which a marriage might be accomplished if a special licence were employed. Maybe that is why he looked so discontented. My mother, you see, was married by special licence.

  Our dinner after the wedding was far more enjoyable than the event it honoured. There was roast fowl, currant cake, and ginger beer even for the children. Bridget and Jane had decorated the dining table with sprigs of gum blossom and late China roses. Mr Barton drank quite a lot of wine. After dinner, we all went out to the convict huts, where rum was distributed to toast the health of the happy couple. My mother was then presented with a painted tin containing a specimen of mimosa—in deference, no doubt, to her botanical interests. The domestic servants had also made an effort, producing a pair of embroidered handkerchiefs. The atmosphere was fairly muted, however, and even after sunset there were no boisterous dances around the camp-fire. The best that could be said for the day is that we children enjoyed currant cake twice: once at dinner and again with our tea, before bedtime.

  I think of that cake as being a species of Last Supper. For as we climbed the stairs, wiping crumbs from our mouths, my mother said: ‘Louisa will be sleeping in the nursery tonight.’

  I could not have been more astonished. As you know, Louisa was accustomed to bedding down near Mama. Never before had she been allowed to try her luck in the nursery.

  Emily clapped her hands.

  ‘Oh, good!’ she exclaimed. ‘Louisa! You will sleep with us tonight!’

  ‘But not in my bed,’ said James, with a touch of alarm. ‘She won’t be sleeping in my bed, will she, Mama?’

  ‘Of course not.’ Pushing open the nursery door, my mother explained that Louisa’s cot had been placed between Emily’s bed and mine. Sure enough, there it stood: Louisa’s cot, all made up, with her knitted yellow duck sitting on top of it. Louisa looked confused.

  ‘You will have fun with us here, Louisa,’ I said, feeling all the obligations of an eldest sibling. ‘You are much too old to be sleeping in Mama’s room.’

  ‘If you want, I shall sing you a lullaby,’ Emily added.

  ‘And I will give you my soldier to sleep with—just for tonight,’ said James.

  At first, Louisa seemed quite happy. She accepted our tributes with a queenly air, and was eager to be placed in her cot. But after the lamp was extinguished, and the door closed, she began to whimper. She began to call for Mama.

  Nothing that I did or said made the slightest difference.

  At last I had to fetch Eliza, who lit the lamp again. When that failed to console Louisa—when soft words and lullabies had no effect—Eliza removed her from the nursery. The cot, however, remained. Expecting that they would both return within minutes, I promptly fell asleep.

  I was woken some time later by the sound of Louisa screaming, and for a moment I lay in a fuddled state, collecting my thoughts. The room was dark. Louisa was not in it. She was nearby, though. In Mama’s room? She sounded inconsolable, hiccoughing the way she often did when she had been crying for a long time.

  ‘A-coo, a-coo, a-coo,’ Eliza was saying, in a futile attempt to offer comfort. Then a door closed, and the sound of wailing became muffled. I wondered if I should get up, before deciding that Mama probably would not appreciate my help. And I turned over.

  It is quite astonishing what a child will sleep through. I believe that I must have dozed again, briefly, despite Louisa’s noise. It was not her voice but Mr Barton’s that roused me.

  ‘No!’ Mr Barton said loudly, out on the landing, and my eyes sprang open. ‘No you will not!’

  A door banged. Louisa shrieked. My mother protested: ‘Perhaps if I give her something . . .’

  ‘I’ll give her something!’ Mr Barton snapped. ‘I’ll give her the back of my hand!’

  ‘Shh. Please, George. Remember the others.’

  ‘She has to learn!’

  ‘I know. I know.’

  Louisa was still crying. Quickly I scrambled out of bed, and tip-toed to the door. Pulling it open, I saw my mother holding a candle. She was dressed in her nightgown, and her hair was loose. Beside her stood Mr Barton, also in his night attire. His arm was wrapped around her waist in a manner that disturbed me.

  Eliza was with them, carrying Louisa—who looked quite ill with distress. Her face was blotched and wet with tears. Her breathing was ragged. Her trembling was visible even from my vantage point.

  ‘I’ll not have her up here again,’ Mr Barton told Eliza. ‘Not tonight, or I won’t answer for the consequences.’

  ‘Aye, sir, but—’

  ‘What? What?’

  Eliza cast a quick, frightened glance at my mother. ‘It’s just—I’m worried she’ll stop braything.’ As Louisa began to howl, Eliza raised her voice. ‘Or have a fit, Mam. She went blue in the face, earlier.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said my mother, in obvious distress, and reached for Louisa.

  But Mr Barton pulled her back.

  ‘No,’ he growled. ‘She’ll not die of it. She must learn.’ Louisa’s shrill and mounting scream pushed the blood to his cheeks. He thrust his face into hers and snapped: ‘Stop it! Now!’

  Louisa paused for an instant, shocked into silence. She and Mr Barton regarded each other, their faces equally flushed, before she opened her mouth again and roared.

  There was a sudden flurry of movement. Mr Barton began to push Eliza towards the stairs. ‘Wait!’ my mother exclaimed, but was disregarded. Louisa sobbed uncontrollably. Mr Barton kept saying, ‘Go! Go! Get out!’ Eliza turned in obedience, looking more dishevelled and distressed than I had ever seen her.

  My mother tried to follow.

  ‘Let me settle the poor child,’ she offered, pitching her voice above Louisa’s screams. Mr Barton immediately tightened his grip on her waist.

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘But—’

  ‘This is our wedding night!’ he barked. ‘I am your husband!’

  ‘I understand that—’

  ‘She will have to learn!’

  I do not know how much force he employed to propel my mother back towards her room. There can be no doubt that she was torn; her resistance was not as strong as it might have been, since her guilt was pulling her in two different directions. I know that she caught at one of the banisters before releasing it again. I know that she turned a troubled face towards the s
ound of Louisa’s fading screams, which, though loud, did not mask the clatter of Eliza’s retreat down the staircase.

  Finally Mama crossed the threshold of her room, clasped to Mr Barton’s side. Glancing over his shoulder, his face wreathed in shadow, he must have caught sight of me in the dwindling light of my mother’s candle.

  ‘Get back to bed!’ he snarled, with an astonishing degree of venom. Then the door slammed shut, and I was alone.

  I cannot convey to you the shock that I felt. It was as if I had been struck across the face, or fiercely berated. Such loud, angry scenes were normally restricted to the kitchen and convict huts; the house itself had always been a peaceful place. Moreover, I was shaken by all the other changes that had occurred. I could not believe that Louisa had been sent to sleep in Eliza’s room. I could not believe that my mother was sharing her bed with Mr Barton.

  Withdrawing into the nursery, I crept under my own covers and lay shivering in the dark, weighed down by a strange sense of foreboding. This must have been occasioned by the domestic upheaval that I had just witnessed. The shouting! The weeping! The slamming doors! Naturally I was concerned about the future of our calm, domestic existence.

  But it transpired that I was strangely prescient in at least one other way. For the following afternoon, Thomas Smith was murdered—whereupon I first became acquainted with the sinfulness of John Lynch.

  Eight

  I knew Thomas Smith, but only slightly.

  He was one of the assigned men, and had been with us for as long as I could remember. Even so, I doubt that we ever exchanged a word. He was short, with light brown hair and a ruddy complexion. There was a raised mole on his left cheek. Though I cannot tell you how old he was, I learned after his death that he had come from Worcestershire, and that he was serving a life sentence for horse-stealing.

  He was a troublemaker, too. I was vaguely aware of this, for my mother did not like him, and complained about him regularly. She called him lazy and insolent. Only six months before his murder he had been charged with neglect of duty, and sentenced to fifty lashes. (He had been dispatched to collect mail at Bong Bong, and had returned three hours late.) I had heard him speaking to my mother once or twice. I had seen him slouching against a wall, arms folded, as he addressed her. ‘Do not take that tone with me, Thomas Smith!’ she had exclaimed, her voice suddenly rising. ‘Or you will find yourself up before the Bench!’

  What else can I say about Thomas Smith? Not very much, unfortunately. I do know that he smoked, and that there was a scar on his left thumb. I also know that, on the fourth of March, 1836, his head was smashed to pieces, and he was concealed under a fallen log, on top of a small pile of tinder.

  It was as if someone had tried to set his body alight, before realising that the smoke of a fire might be seen.

  If, like Mrs Louise S.A. Cosh, you have read my letter to the Evening News, you will remember the fallen log. You will also remember my tale of one Ned Smith, who was given a ticket-of-leave for his outstanding service as a groom in our stables. I said that Ned Smith was murdered by John Lynch. I also said that his emancipation was regarded with suspicion by the other convicts— who believed him an informant—and that he was murdered as a result. I said that John Lynch had escaped from Cockatoo Island after he was charged with the murder.

  All lies, I fear.

  There was a groom called Ned Smith at Oldbury, but he was never murdered. In fact I am quite sure that he had left us by 1836. As for the escape from Cockatoo Island—well, what would you have had me say? That my stepfather’s drunkenness aborted a trial? That with George Barton’s help, Lynch was set free to kill and kill again?

  I should never have mentioned John Lynch in the first place. I had a suspicion, you see, that my letter might not be published without mention of a notorious crime—that it might be ignored, like the products of so many other aged gentlewomen. So I succumbed to temptation, and raised once again the spectre of John Lynch. How was I to know that there were others still living who had some inkling of the truth? I had thought it buried in the crumbling back issues of the Sydney Gazette. There are few now who even remember John Lynch, let alone his first murder. Had he still been as notorious as he once was, no mistake would have been made in numbering his victims. For you may be sure that I never accused him of killing twenty-three people. That figure somehow came to replace the correct tally in my letter. Perhaps it was a mistake. Unless the Editor felt that eleven corpses would not be enough to arouse public interest, and doubled the total.

  I would not put it past him. He certainly eviscerated my letter. When I read it in the Evening News, I was furious to discover how much had been left out. All the material about the ploughing matches that my father organised, his experiments with turnips, his 1829 pamphlet, On the Expediency and Necessity of Encouraging Distilling and Brewing in New South Wales—all of this (and more) had been removed. With the result that my prose had the disjointed, confusing flavour of something produced by a victim of advanced senility.

  You may be sure that I shall not be writing to the Evening News again!

  But why dwell on my own concerns? It is George Barton who interests you, I am sure. You must be wondering what he did. How he became involved. You must be asking yourself: why was Thomas Smith murdered, and what did George Barton do to set the murderer free?

  I should tell you, first of all, that Smith’s corpse was not found immediately. He simply disappeared, and his absence was remarked upon. I distinctly recall mention of it at breakfast; there was still conversation at the table, in those early days, and Mr Barton observed to my mother (as he shovelled gammon into his mouth) that Thomas Smith had ‘skipped’.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said my mother. ‘You mean he has run away?’

  ‘He did not return last night,’ Mr Barton replied. ‘And will wear a red shirt for it when he is caught.’

  ‘A red shirt?’ James looked up, his interest aroused. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, my lad, that he will have the hide torn off his back, stripe by stripe, until it is all gone,’ said Mr Barton, with a certain lingering relish. Then he caught my eye. ‘What are you staring at, Miss?’

  ‘Nothing.’ I dropped my gaze, anxious not to offend. I had been thinking about the stripes torn from Mr Barton’s own back, and wondering why he showed himself so keen to condemn others to the same savage punishment.

  ‘Should we notify the police?’ my mother asked him, whereupon he nodded.

  ‘I shall send someone to Bong Bong,’ he said. ‘Someone reliable. Leave it to me.’

  ‘I should not be sorry to lose Thomas Smith,’ my mother observed, dabbing marmalade onto her bread. ‘He has always been troublesome, and inclined to shirk.’

  ‘He is a damnable out-and-outer,’ said Mr Barton, pushing aside his plate, ‘and will come to a bad end.’

  By that time, of course, Thomas Smith had already come to a bad end, though we were unaware of it. I cannot tell you exactly when news of his demise reached Oldbury. The corpse itself was discovered on the fifth of March. It was brought back to Oldbury on a dray, and subsequently buried in the graveyard at Sutton Forest. No doubt there was a lot of talk at church that week, but I was not present to hear it, for my mother was reluctant to face the congregation—what with her recent marriage, and the murder of her assigned man. Therefore I was unable to wring the facts from my cousin John, who undoubtedly would have been thoroughly acquainted with the matter.

  As it was, I had to piece together details gleaned from my mother, Mr Barton, and the Oldbury staff. This was more difficult than you might expect. No doubt my mother would have preferred to keep the news from me entirely; when the shrouded remains were delivered to our doorstep, she provided me with the briefest of explanations.

  ‘It is Thomas Smith,’ she declared, as I stood gaping at the solemn procession that creaked past our house. ‘He died out in the bush, yesterday.’

  Then she wrapped her shawl around her and went back inside. I tried
to press her further that evening, without success. She told me simply that we should pray for Smith’s soul, and not dwell on such unhappy topics, especially in front of Louisa. ‘Mr Barton has the matter in hand,’ she said. ‘There is nothing else to be done.’

  Mr Barton may have had the matter in hand, but he was unwilling to discuss it with me. (‘Get along with you, now,’ was all that he said.) For more information I was obliged to question the servants. Bridget was very cagey. ‘’Twas an ill turn befell him,’ she muttered, ‘or so I heard.’ Robert was more forthcoming. ‘Aye,’ he acknowledged, ‘the poor lad was set upon, and his head laid open. There’s folk will swing for it.’ But the whole affair seemed wrapped in a kind of uneasy silence—at least on the Oldbury estate.

  This I found odd, even at the time. For you have to understand that there was no lack of violent incident in the Argyle region back then, and when it occurred it formed the meat of any gossip from Campbelltown to the Five Islands. A year later, for example, Private Thomas O’Brien was cudgelled to death near the Kentish Arms, on my uncle’s estate. One of our convicts, John McCaffrey, was subsequently accused of the murder, along with John Jones (my uncle’s man) and a settler named John Moore. Jones hanged for his crime, and you may believe me when I tell you that there was no lack of discussion among the Oldbury servants on that occasion. Neither were they close-mouthed when the Reverend Vincent’s family were attacked by bushrangers in their own home—a month after Thomas Smith’s murder—or when William Brown, a runaway convict, was arrested for robbing a traveller on the road between Bong Bong and Sutton Forest, just a few weeks after that. I did not need to question my cousin about these events, because they were so exhaustively discussed in our kitchen, stables, and stockyard.