The Dark Mountain

by Catherine Jinks

  But the death of Thomas Smith elicited a different sort of response. I overheard no free speculation on the subject; instead there was an almost complete lack of comment. No one seemed eager to answer my questions. Eliza became even vaguer than usual. Jane dropped a handful of cutlery, and begged to be excused. Bridget tried to turn the conversation. (‘Would ye be fancyin’ a taste o’ me batter, Miss Charlotte?’)

  I was puzzled, though not much concerned. Convicts killed each other all the time. Besides, I had not been intimately acquainted with Thomas Smith. So I turned my thoughts to more important concerns, at least until the police arrived.

  There were three of them, and they interviewed Mr Barton at length. They also questioned some of our assigned men, formally, one by one. When I saw the line of mute convicts on our veranda, each with his hat crushed in his hands and his bleak gaze fixed on his boots, I went straight to Eliza for an explanation.

  ‘Why are our men standing idle, out there?’ I demanded.

  ‘On account of them traps, Miss.’ By ‘traps’, Eliza meant the mounted police. ‘They bin rounding ’em up.’

  ‘For what reason?’

  Eliza shrugged.

  ‘Is it something to do with Thomas Smith?’ I pressed, and her expression became blank, as if a curtain had been pulled across it.

  ‘So I heard,’ she said cautiously.

  ‘But I thought he was killed by a bushranger!’ This had been a natural assumption to make. ‘Surely they cannot blame any of our men?’

  ‘That I couldn’t say, Miss,’ Eliza replied. She was clearing the breakfast table, and hid any confusion that she may have felt in a vigorous flapping of linen. Frowning, I turned away. It was suddenly clear to me why the murder had occasioned such little remark. For if the murderer was among us, no one would want to talk freely lest he suffer the same fate as Thomas Smith.

  I ran directly to my mother, who was checking the contents of the store cupboards.

  ‘Mama,’ I said, ‘the police are questioning some of our men!’

  ‘Yes, dear, I know.’

  ‘They’re none of them murderers, are they?’

  ‘Shh.’ My mother put a finger to her lips. She glanced towards Louisa, who was perched on the kitchen table, eating apple peel out of Bridget’s hand. ‘Not too loud, if you please.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘The police are making inquiries. You must not fret, Charlotte. This is a matter of convict discipline. It does not concern any of us.’

  She was wrong, as it happened. Because it was Mr Barton’s statement that condemned John Lynch. I found out later that George Barton claimed to have seen Lynch in the vicinity of the corpse, around the time that the murder took place. No sooner was this fact presented to the Chief Constable than he immediately sent for Lynch, who—surprisingly enough—had not already absconded. Had I been in his shoes, I should certainly have taken to my heels at the first opportunity. Or perhaps he was about to do so? At any rate, though I did not see him brought in, I was to witness his departure.

  And here we arrive at the infamous John Lynch, of evil memory. No doubt you will recall what I have said on another occasion: that I knew most of our assigned men by sight, though not always by name. This was the case with John Lynch. I believe that he spent a good deal of time on our stations, away from the house. Certainly he was not a man often applied to in the domestic sphere. Nevertheless, he was vaguely familiar. When I saw him that day, waiting in the sun, I recognised his crooked nose, and the hairy mole on his jaw.

  He was standing near the back veranda with a constable beside him. I would hardly have spared him a second glance, had he not been chained. Though I had seen such chains before (one could hardly avoid them, during that far-off era), they were rarely worn at Oldbury. You might have seen chained men on the roads sometimes, for there were gangs based at Berrima and Bong Bong. But on private estates, chains were less freely employed. Certainly they were not used on our estate.

  That is why I was so surprised when I caught sight of the iron shackles, and the heavy links dangling from Lynch’s roughened hands. I stopped short, staring. Whereupon he caught my eye, and winked.

  You may want to know what he looked like, this fiend in human form. The fact is, he was not in any way remarkable. Like most of the assigned men, he was quite short. He had freckled skin and mousy hair; I cannot recall what colour his eyes were. I do remember that he was very neatly got up for a labourer, with none of the frayed hems and missing buttons that you so often saw about the place. He was also quite neatly put together, well proportioned for his height, and neither too fat nor too thin.

  Looking at him, you would have thought: domestic staff. You would have marked his jaunty, well-groomed, unthreatening appearance, and you would have imagined him cleaning shoes. This is what I find so very puzzling. Because I have seen my share of desperate characters. They were in the chain gangs, hewing rock. They were on the drays that rumbled down the old South Road. They were in the streets of Sydney, loitering near the wharves and the grog-shops. We even had one or two among our assigned men, on occasion, though not for very long; invariably they would abscond, or assault a fellow convict, or commit some other crime. They struck me as being men who had lost at least a portion of their manhood—brute beasts without regard for the trappings of civilisation. They were always noticeable. A kind of fury hung about them like a cloud of gnats. They demonstrated their disdain for authority in all kinds of ways: refusing to shave their beards, speaking only to utter a curse, flaunting their scarred backs. There was nothing to be done with men like this. They each had one foot planted firmly in the Fiery Pit, and were refusing all aid with the most obdurate vehemence. So embittered were they that life had lost its savour for them.

  The sinfulness of convicts is something that I have discussed at length with various religious men over the years. While some maintain that convicts were born to sin, others claim that ill treatment can warp any conscience, no matter how tenderly reared. I am not well placed to pass judgement on this matter. As a child, I was carefully shielded from any direct observation of convict punishment. Yet I could not entirely escape its consequences. Though our assigned men were always flogged at the stockade, and were often attached to the local iron gang for long periods thereafter, it was impossible to ignore the change wrought in them when they returned.

  Physically, they were often much affected. I have seen many scarified backs, some bearing only a net of thin white lines, others horribly ridged, with the skin all gouged and deformed as if by a massive burn. Such injuries can be disabling for life, especially if they are not given a proper chance to heal. But the physical effects are no more damaging than the spiritual. I do not doubt that flogging will often result in a great deal of unseen harm. Surely it cannot be a coincidence that I saw the worst scarification on the backs of men whose faces had lost all semblance of humanity? Clergymen like the Reverend Vincent might argue that the heaviest penalties are naturally inflicted upon the most degraded objects— that a severe flogging is the inevitable consequence of moral degeneracy, and not its cause. I wonder if this can be true. Sometimes I think it likely. At other times I recall certain incidents that took place at Oldbury when I was a child, and begin to question their meaning. I remember one man who hid behind the woodpile, screaming and sobbing, when Mr Throsby paid a visit; this man had apparently been sentenced to fifty lashes by the local Bench, over which Mr Throsby had presided. Then there was the man who went to his punishment with a cocky grin on his face, only to return hollow-eyed and shuffling like someone thirty years older. I heard much later that he tried to hang himself while in Captain Nicholson’s employ. Memories like this do nothing to persuade me that corporal punishment has a wholly salutary effect on those who receive it. And they suggest that men who are treated like vicious dogs might become like vicious dogs.

  John Lynch was certainly vicious. Whether his character was irreparably deformed by the flogging that he had received while employed by my mo
ther is impossible to judge. Was it some cruel notion of revenge that propelled him to commit his loathsome crimes, or was he born evil? Only God can be sure. One thing I can say, however, is that Lynch was not among the ranks of those who no longer pretended that they were anything but beasts. There was nothing wild about John Lynch—or so it seemed to me. In later years I read that he had been transported for robbery. This is not quite true. My father, into whose care Lynch was assigned straight from his ship, once told my mother that John Lynch had been convicted of false pretences. In other words, he had been caught impersonating someone else.

  Perhaps that was his special skill. Perhaps he was able, with utter conviction, to impersonate a tidy, cheerful, ordinary little man. That is what I saw when I looked at him.

  ‘Who is that?’ I asked my mother.

  ‘Go inside,’ was her response.

  ‘But he is one of our men.’

  ‘Obey me, Charlotte!’

  As ever, she wanted her children well shielded from the more troubling spectacles that afflict a penal colony. I can understand this now, though I did not at the time. Forced inside the house, I went straight back to Eliza, who was standing at the window of the breakfast room, looking out.

  ‘Who have they put in chains?’ I asked her.

  ‘John Lynch,’ she replied.

  ‘Did he kill Thomas Smith?’ It seemed doubtful. ‘Is that what they think?’

  There was no immediate response. Instead Eliza watched for a moment, before observing: ‘They have John Williamson, too.’

  They did have John Williamson. And several others. Peering through the little panes of glass, I saw George Barton stride across the beaten earth towards Constable Cheater, waving his arms. He seemed to be protesting about something. They began to argue. Though unable to hear a word, I quickly understood why Mr Barton was enraged.

  The police had herded most of our farm workers into a tight little group. There were so many that there were not chains enough to go around: twelve men altogether, including John Lynch.

  I counted them.

  ‘What are they doing?’ I could not keep the astonishment out of my voice. ‘Why are they taking our men?’

  But Eliza was at a loss. She simply stood there, gaping. I daresay that the Chief Constable was being careful. He was probably hoping to find witnesses among our assigned men, and did not want to risk leaving anyone behind who might run away before being questioned. So he had decided to march the whole crew off to Bong Bong lock-up, where he could interview them at his leisure.

  My stepfather did not take kindly to this decision.

  ‘. . . whole field of maize to harvest!’ he was saying, his words becoming audible to me as he raised his voice. ‘. . . fetch the mail . . . load of pumpkins . . .’ When Cheater placed a reassuring hand on his arm, he flung it off. ‘This is a damnable liberty!’ he roared. ‘I shall write to the Colonial Secretary, and demand compensation!’

  My mother hovered beside him, trying to calm his ruffled temper. She, too, was not pleased; I could sense this from the stiffness of her back, and the set of her shoulders. She tried to reason with Cheater, but to no avail. The Chief Constable stood firm, defying my stepfather in the most public way imaginable. He simply took most of our assigned men and forced them off the estate, leaving no assurances as to when (or if ) they would be returned.

  After they had gone, Mr Barton vanished for a while. He must have retired to a quiet spot with a few drams of rum, because when he finally reappeared, in the late afternoon, he was well primed and staggering. He went straight to the piggery, and drove our swine into the pumpkin patch with a bullwhip. ‘No bloody use to anyone now!’ he yelled. ‘Just pig-feed now!’

  With Robert’s help, my mother managed to save about half the crop. She received one stripe in the process, however; Barton accidentally caught her across the ear. I overheard him begging her pardon later that evening, when they were in her room. He was loud and maudlin, his voice breaking on a sob. I had to wrap my pillow around my head to block out the sound.

  Later, I learned to shut my eyes as well. But it never worked—not any of it.

  There was really nowhere to hide.

  Nine

  Most of our convicts returned to Oldbury within a week. Only John Lynch and John Williamson remained in custody. They were sent up to Sydney, where they were tried in the Supreme Court. This trial was set for the twelfth of August, and George Barton, as a material witness, was summoned to appear.

  Do not ask me exactly when his summons arrived. In July, perhaps? Whenever it was, I could not have received more welcome news. I would lie in bed trying to calculate the length of Barton’s proposed absence. The trip into town would take several days, as would the trip back. For how long, I wondered, would the trial run? A day? Two days? I made a special application to the Lord one night. ‘Please God,’ I prayed, ‘let Mr Barton be away for more than a week.’

  I was on my knees at the time.

  Four months had elapsed between Lynch’s arrest and his trial. During that interval, I had spared the convict hardly a thought. For one thing, there had been very little talk about him. Not once had I overheard the servants discussing his fate. Not once had anyone mused upon his guilt or innocence at the dining table. Like George Barton’s flogging, the subject of John Lynch had been stringently avoided—at least in front of me. Yet I am quite sure that this overwhelming silence did not indicate a lack of interest. Looking back, I am inclined to wonder if the cause might have been fear. Fear of my mother, perhaps, who did not want her children unnerved? Fear of Lynch’s confederates? If Lynch had killed Thomas Smith for speaking out of turn about the attack on George Barton—as was later claimed in the newspapers—there can be no telling what his friends would have done in similar circumstances.

  Or perhaps the fear was a kind of unease, engendered by that curious contrast between the innocent-seeming man himself and the crime that he was charged with. People are always inclined to fear what they cannot understand. The fact that a cheerful, common, jaunty little Irishman should have revealed so black a heart is almost beyond understanding. It casts such doubt on human nature that the majority of folk would prefer to turn away and ignore its implications, rather than face them squarely.

  At the time, I gave no thought to the reasoning behind this curious attitude of discretion. For I was preoccupied with other matters. There was the attack on our rector’s family, for instance. There was the opening of the Kentish Arms on the Mereworth estate, an event that prompted my mother to meet with my uncle for the first time in many months. (She returned from the encounter full of scorn and disgust. ‘What kind of a man,’ she said, ‘enlists his wife to supervise the distribution of spirits to all the scaff and raff of the district? Better to live humbly, in a bark hut, than expose her to such degradation.’) Finally, there was the utter collapse of that domestic harmony which had always distinguished our house, even during the last, terrible days of my father’s fatal illness.

  The first cracks appeared very quickly. Looking back, it is easy to plot the course of George Barton’s descent into madness, though at the start we had no notion of what exactly we were witnessing. Every outrage came as a terrible shock; only gradually did we learn to expect (and fear) the unexpected. After some consideration, I would say that Bunny was the first casualty of my stepfather’s bottomless rage. Do you remember Bunny, our pet kangaroo? He would come to the stockyard of an evening to be fed, and was quite a favourite with everyone—except George Barton. George Barton warned us about Bunny. ‘There’s not a beanstalk nor a turnip green is safe from those beasts,’ he said. ‘If one sprig of sage goes missing, I’ll have its hide.’

  This must have been in early April, and there were still some late figs on a tree near one of our sunniest walls. When some of these figs disappeared, Barton blamed Bunny. He pointed out that only the fruit on the lowest branches, within Bunny’s reach, had vanished. And he forbade us to feed the poor creature anymore. ‘It must be chased o
ff,’ he ordered, with the jovial menace that characterised many of his pronouncements when he was sober. ‘It must not be encouraged. Sentiment is all very well, but we cannot fill our bellies with it. Unless it learns to keep clear, it’ll meet its Maker, I warn you. Just stay away from the stockyard, and it will soon understand.’

  ‘You should stay away from the stockyard in any case,’ my mother added, when I turned to her in protest. ‘It is not safe when the men are working, and James has fallen off that fence often enough.’

  ‘I will not climb it again, Mama, I promise!’ James cried, but my mother just shook her head, smiling.

  ‘That is what you always say—and you always break your word,’ she replied. ‘I believe that fence must exert some strange, supernatural force.’

  ‘You obey yer mother, now,’ Barton added, reaching across the table to lay his hand on Mama’s. ‘Yer Ma knows what is best for you.’

  We children were not impressed by this argument. My mother may have known what was best for us, but she appeared to have lost sight of Bunny’s best interests. I had my suspicions about the assigned men, who could be very cunning when it came to stealing food. What if one of them had taken the figs, and shown enough restraint to make it seem as if Bunny was at fault? Emily, for her part, was terribly concerned about the kangaroo’s health. What if it should become ill and weak? What if it should starve?

  ‘It will wait and wait for us, and we won’t be there,’ she fretted.

  In the end, we defied George Barton. We agreed that I should leave kitchen scraps near the stockyard whenever Barton was away from the house. As the eldest sibling, I shouldered the risk myself. I reasoned that, if caught, I would have the best chance of formulating a believable excuse. For Emily had a tender conscience, and James was still too small to have completely mastered the English language.

  I made my secret trips for about a week. Then one morning, when I took some fig skins and pumpkin rind to the stockyard, I found Bunny waiting for me.