The Dark Mountain

by Catherine Jinks

  ‘She said that you had endured too much, and that it had affected your judgement,’ Louisa replied. ‘She said that she was sorry for it.’

  I began to cry, then. I could not help myself. And James crossed the room to give me his crumpled handkerchief.

  Twelve

  1838

  It was the shooting that truly unhinged George Barton.

  The attack took place on the twenty-third of June, 1838. Before that time, Barton’s spells of unreasonable behaviour could usually be traced to a bout of drinking. Something would distress or weary him; he would ease himself with a few drams, and then another few drams, and another; finally he would commit a violent or disturbing act, and then fall into a stupor, from which he would emerge ill and unhappy, but more or less sane.

  Consequently, we lived our lives as many do who are at the mercy of the sea. There were long stretches of calm sailing, in sunny waters. But always there would be a lookout posted, to watch for signs of coming squalls. And when encroaching storm-clouds were espied, there would be a hurried battening down of hatches, and a securing of gun ports. That is how my family lived, throughout 1837 and the early part of 1838.

  As to the outside world, we saw little of it. We kept ourselves very much to ourselves, though whether this seclusion arose from choice or necessity I do not know. Certainly, we were not much feted at church, where the congregation had doubtless heard certain rumours. And my uncle and aunt grew ever more frosty as they became more and more financially embarrassed.

  Our own financial affairs were not what they should have been either, though I saw nothing of this at the time. I was too young, and the signs were too subtle. My stepfather, you see, was a man distinguished neither by good sense nor industry. He made poor decisions, and when the consequences of these decisions became evident, was insufficiently energetic in his attempts to reverse them. He was intemperate, lazy, and destructive. He was also a bad farmer, and a poor master. He did not like to leave Oldbury, and gave his excuse as the ‘flagellation’ that he had endured. Consequently, he was taken advantage of. And where Fate and Nature failed to undermine his efforts, there were those among his assigned men who must have been delighted to play a saboteur’s role. For he was not beloved. That much became clear in the winter of 1838. By then, someone had decided that George Barton would have to pay for his many offences.

  It was a frigid evening, and a fire had been lit in the sitting room. All of the family were gathered there except James, who had been in bed for most of the day with a feverish cold. This cold had been contracted first by Louisa, then by my mother and James in rapid succession. I was slated to be the next victim, though at the time I was still healthy. That is why I had been asked to read aloud. My mother was tired, and hoarse from coughing. Emily was unequal to the longer words in Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus. As for George Barton, though he could read, I had seen him moving his lips when consulting a newspaper. And in any event, he was not of a disposition to find any pleasure in gratifying others. He was especially inimical to books. I do not think that he ever picked up a book, voluntarily, in his whole life.

  But he did like to fall asleep with the murmur of prose or poetry in his ears. It soothed his soul, for some reason. He refused to have us read novels or plays, for in novels and plays there is always a good deal of lively conversation, which caused him some disturbance when he was drifting off. He preferred essays, or volumes of history, or botanical texts. The slow rhythms of these works affected him like a species of lullaby.

  He would snore away while we read, with a noise like a cross-cut saw on ironbark. (How I hated the man!) No one was sacred: neither Byron nor Coleridge, neither Crabbe nor Hume. I am glad now that he would not allow us any Shakespeare. Shakespeare was never spoiled for me by the snorts and gurglings of George Barton.

  There we were, then, in the sitting room. My mother was sewing. I was reading. Emily was attempting a portrait of Louisa, who had a remarkable facility for sitting still.

  George Barton sat collapsed in an armchair, his head thrown back, his mouth open, his breathing loud.

  All at once, the room seemed to explode around us.

  It was the noise that frightened me more than anything—the deafening clap of gunfire and the shattering of glass. Screams rang in my ears. I remember a smell of powder and the roaring oaths of George Barton. Suddenly I was on the floor; I do not know how. Perhaps my mother had pulled me. ‘Get out!’ she shrieked.'

  Confused and frightened, I began to crawl towards the door.

  But my stepfather reached it first. He overtook me, bent double, and flung it open. One hand was pressed to his neck. ‘My gun!’ he shouted. ‘Get my gun!’

  He was out of sight before I had even reached the vestibule.

  ‘Upstairs!’ my mother ordered, her voice shrill and breathless. But my sisters and I clung to her, crying. We would not be separated. By this time James had appeared at the top of the stairs. He had wet himself, and his face was dead white.

  ‘Mama!’ he bleated. ‘Mama!’

  My mother saw then that she could not leave us. Instead she rushed us up to the nursery, where we all huddled together on one bed, while she locked the door and stationed herself at the window. There was a candle burning. It had been left alight to comfort poor James.

  We could hear cries echoing in the darkness outside: cries of interrogation and excitement. It sounded as if the whole estate had been roused.

  ‘What happened? Mama?’ There was still a ringing in my ears. I could not seem to collect my thoughts. ‘Was it an accident?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ she replied. Her eyes and brows looked very dark in her pale face. She was panting, as if from extreme exertion.

  ‘It was a gun!’ said James, hoarsely. ‘I heard it!’

  ‘Shh. Everything’s all right, now.’

  Even as my mother spoke, however, there was a rap on the door. She jumped, and Emily cried out.

  "Tis only Eliza, Mam!’ came a muffled, unsteady response. ‘Mrs Barton? You’re not hit?’

  ‘No, Eliza.’ Moving away from the window, my mother admitted our nurse. ‘Where were you?’ she demanded. ‘Why were you not with James?’

  ‘I went to empty the pot,’ said Eliza, whose eyes were stretched wide and whose lips were shaking. ‘I—I heard—it saymed like—’

  ‘It was a shot,’ said my mother. ‘It came through the sitting-room window.’

  ‘And the master?’

  ‘What of him?’

  ‘He was a-holding his head, Mam. When I saw him in the yard.’

  My mother turned to address her children.

  ‘You must stay here with Eliza,’ she instructed. ‘I shan’t be long.’

  ‘No!’ James screamed.

  ‘It’s all right, James. Nothing will happen now—the men are all alerted.’

  ‘No! No!'

  In his weakened state, James would not be reasoned with. He sobbed, and clutched at my mother’s skirts. At last she had to succumb.

  ‘You must go down,’ she told Eliza. ‘Find out if it’s safe. Find out what’s happening.’

  ‘Yes, Mam.’

  ‘Find out about Mr Barton. He might have been shot.’

  How wonderful for us all, if he had been! But alas; he had escaped unharmed. The ball of the musket—or large pistol—had passed through his collar, burning his skin slightly. He had sustained no other hurt. When Eliza reported back with this information, she also told us that the grounds were being searched, and that no intruders had yet been discovered or detained.

  Even at the time, I wondered if the culprit had been an intruder. It seemed to me, when I considered the countless small offences committed by George Barton against his staff, that there was quite enough ill feeling among the Oldbury convicts to provide a motive for killing him. And I was angry at my stepfather for putting us in such a position. If it had not been for George Barton, we would never have been attacked at our own hearthside.

  I was also very frightened. I
knew well enough what could happen when a convict came into possession of a firearm.

  There was little rest for anyone that night. Not knowing if we had experienced the first assault of a gang of bushrangers, my stepfather mounted guards, and distributed sharp-edged farming implements. Then, when no further incidents occurred before sunrise, he sent one of our men to notify the police—who had been transferred to Berrima from Bong Bong the previous year. This man was given strict instructions to bring back a constable, and look sharp about it.

  While awaiting his messenger’s return, Barton had my mother write out an advertisement. I overheard him dictating to her as I hovered at the study door; he was offering a reward of fifty guineas to anyone who might help to identify the perpetrator of such a dastardly assault. His advertisement was published in The Australian two weeks later.

  It did not, as far as I know, elicit any useful information from anyone.

  I have no wish to apportion blame for something that was clearly the product of a diseased mind. A person with impaired faculties can be very suggestible; he (or she) will identify almost every approach as a threat, and almost every gathering as a conspiracy. Therefore I cannot say: the police were at fault. For they were only doing their job.

  Nevertheless, they planted a notion in George Barton’s head. They asked him about his own staff, and searched the convict huts. And though they came away empty-handed, with no evidence or testimony of any significance, from that time on my stepfather was increasingly mistrustful of those around him.

  In some measure, he had good reason to be. I have said before that he was not beloved. He had been attacked, not once, but twice. He was surrounded by men well acquainted with violence, and had not the strength of character to lead them—only to drive them. Is it any wonder that he was afraid?

  At first the measures that he took did not seem unreasonable. He bought a pistol from one of the officers of the Berrima garrison, and took to carrying this pistol with him wherever he went. He insisted that all the shutters be fastened in the downstairs rooms every night. He applied to the Colonial Secretary’s Office, which posted an additional reward for information relating to the attempted murder.

  None of this, you will agree, could be construed as inappropriate. But as time went on, his actions became more extreme. He took to sleeping with the bedroom door locked and a candle burning beside him. He refused to leave Oldbury’s immediate environs. He would bring one of the more amenable dogs to the table with him at every meal, and feed it morsels from his plate before sampling the food himself. Nothing would persuade him to go anywhere near the itinerant labourers who were employed at certain seasons to shear and harvest; indeed, he came to regard all visitors with acute suspicion, no matter how respectable they might be. And his attitude towards the resident staff was just as deplorable. Increasingly he was to be found hiding about the place—behind doors, in cupboards and under beds—not because he was frightened of any immediate danger, but because he distrusted the servants and was spying on them.

  He seemed not in the least put out to be discovered in such undignified circumstances. On the contrary, he would simply smile a chilling smile, as if to say: ‘You see? I am Omnipresent.’ We all endured this without complaint until one day Jane, surprised to stumble on him lurking in the dairy, dropped and broke a jug of milk. When my mother was informed of the accident, she took it upon herself to remonstrate with her husband. In fact, she lost her temper.

  I remember how alarmed I was. We had long ago learned that it was foolhardy—even dangerous—to take George Barton to task about anything. He could not control himself when challenged: he was quite capable of throwing a hot cup of tea in one’s eyes. Moreover, he had begun to secrete weapons about the house in preparation for an attack. So he always had ready access to clasp-knives, sickles and other sharp instruments.

  Imagine my feelings when I saw my mother storming off to confront her husband. Looking back, I realise that she must have been driven to the edge of endurance by fear and fatigue, having shouldered many of the burdens that rightly belonged in George Barton’s domain. More and more, as the months passed, she had been forced to ride out to our far-flung properties at Wollondilly and Budgong. More and more, she had found herself admonishing sullen farmhands and poring over accounts, while at the same time trying to shield the whole establishment from my stepfather’s fearsome intemperance. Is it any wonder that she suddenly snapped?

  As her shrill voice was raised in the study, the entire household held its collective breath. There was no knowing what Barton would do. Had I been older, or less inured to shouting, I might have felt ashamed of my mother at that point—for she sounded like a common publican’s wife upbraiding a drunken housemaid. As it was, I just stood in the kitchen doorway praying to the Lord, my arms wrapped firmly around Louisa.

  For a long time we waited, but heard no answering shouts from George Barton. When my mother’s raging ceased, and silence ensued, I was suddenly sure that he had killed her. He seemed perfectly capable of killing. And in that instant it occurred to me: had Barton killed Thomas Smith as well? Had he lied about seeing John Lynch near the body? Was that why Lynch and Williamson had been acquitted of the crime?

  Was that why my stepfather had become so frightened of John Lynch? Could a troubled conscience have led Barton to fear reprisal from a man who had been falsely accused?

  Surely not.

  ‘Mama!’ I shouted, and broke away from my sister. I ran from the kitchen into the vestibule, not thinking even to snatch up a fish-knife or fire-iron before I did. The study door was standing open; through it, I could see my mother. She was stooping over her husband, who was slumped in my father’s chair.

  They were locked in earnest conversation.

  ‘You are over-anxious,’ she was saying. ‘These are loyal servants. They can be trusted. I trust my children with them—would I do that, if I had any doubts?’

  He shook his head, and mumbled something into his neckerchief that I could not hear. He seemed very subdued; I guessed that he was still suffering from the after-effects of a long night’s tippling.

  ‘How is such a thing possible?’ my mother pressed him. ‘The huts were searched. The men were questioned. They were all accounted for within minutes of the shooting. How could any of them have hidden a musket, in such a short time?’

  ‘Easily. If they were all involved.’

  ‘Oh, George.’ I sensed that my mother was struggling to remain patient. ‘Would they all be conspiring, without exception? When the Colonial Secretary is offering a conditional pardon to any assigned man who comes forward? It makes no sense, George.’

  ‘They are afraid of John Lynch. John Lynch has friends everywhere.’

  Barton was wearing one of my mother’s shawls, and pulled it tightly around his hunched shoulders. His complexion was pasty, his gaze skittish. ‘Lynch sent one of his confederates to kill me,’ Barton growled. ‘He can send others to kill anyone who peaches on him.’

  My mother’s expression changed. She pressed her lips together, and straightened.

  ‘John Lynch is at the Newcastle stockade,’ she said, clearly bemused. ‘How can he possibly dictate anything that happens at Oldbury?’

  ‘Perhaps he has escaped. Perhaps he has returned here, to seek me out.’

  ‘Nonsense.’

  ‘He has killed once. What’s to stop him from killing again?’

  ‘The stockade!’ exclaimed my mother. ‘He is imprisoned, George!’

  Barton looked up at her, narrowing his eyes. But he said nothing.

  ‘It was a bushranger,’ my mother continued. ‘Who else could have secured a firearm? Look at what happened to the poor Vincents. It was a failed robbery, George.’

  ‘Lynch has many cronies among the bushranger gangs hereabouts,’ Barton mumbled. ‘Him and Smith and the others—they were all conspiring together.’

  He lapsed into a morose silence, which made me acutely uncomfortable. My mother was also affected. She s
hifted nervously from foot to foot. Then she glanced around, and caught sight of me.

  ‘Charlotte!’ she exclaimed. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Spying,’ said Barton, under his breath.

  ‘It is wrong to eavesdrop on other people’s conversations,’ my mother continued, ignoring him. Before I could protest, she added: ‘Go and look after your sisters, please. Now.’

  ‘Are you all right, Mama?’

  ‘Of course I am. Now go—and close the door behind you.’

  Perhaps she was trying to protect me, as I had been trying to protect her. Or perhaps she was simply directing at me the anger and impatience that should more justifiably have been directed at George Barton. I have no way of knowing.

  All I do know is that, in defending our staff, my mother made a fatal mistake. For instead of calming my stepfather’s fears, she simply inflamed them.

  From that day on, he began to regard her with suspicion.

  Thirteen

  Budgong was our cattle station on Budgong Creek, near the Shoalhaven River. It was a long way from Oldbury, across very rugged terrain; a week was hardly sufficient for the return journey to Budgong. Yet my mother was obliged to make that journey, owing to George Barton’s reclusive behaviour. She had no choice.

  She went there twice: once in 1838, and again a year later. On both occasions she took with her certain convicts in whose competence and goodwill she placed enormous trust. James Barnett was the best of them. She came to rely a good deal on James Barnett, who had been a farmhand of some description back in the Old Country. I remember him well—he was quite tall for an assigned man, with heavy eyebrows and a serious, taciturn demeanour. If he had any reservations about my mother or her husband, he never displayed them. He was always calm and usually quite courteous, even when being berated by George Barton.

  Barton disliked him intensely, the more so as my mother came to depend on him. There were arguments about James Barnett. No doubt my stepfather was jealous; three years later, he would formally accuse my mother, in a sworn statement, of having ‘improper and criminal intercourse’ with the convict. I know this because I read Barton’s statement after secretly unlocking my mother’s desk. That was in about 1844; we were still in Sydney, and I was perhaps fifteen. At the time, I was very anxious to uncover the secret of Belanglo. So I surreptitiously consulted my mother’s papers, wherein I discovered a copy of my stepfather’s accusation against her.