The Ink Stain

by Tom Keneally

  Donnelly looked up towards Monsarrat. ‘Lovely day for it,’ he called. ‘A shame you’re detained at present. You owe me a fishing trip.’

  Monsarrat laughed.

  ‘You are disturbing the peace, and will disperse immediately,’ Jardine called to Donnelly.

  ‘I’m afraid we can’t oblige you there,’ Donnelly replied calmly. ‘We are exercising our right to peaceful assembly.’

  ‘You have no such right on private land,’ Jardine called.

  Laughter rippled through the crowd.

  ‘Private land, is it?’ said Donnelly. ‘Who owns it then? The colonel?’

  Jardine was silent.

  ‘Or is it the Crown? Which would make it public land.’

  ‘You still have no right to be here,’ said Jardine. ‘It’s in the governor’s domain.’

  ‘Actually, you’re half right,’ said Donnelly. ‘We’re an inch outside the governor’s domain. Of course there’s probably some regulation or other about preventing ingress and egress, I forgot to check. We shall wait patiently while you get someone to look it up.’

  ‘You’ll do no such thing – you’ll move on.’ Jardine shouldered his musket and aimed it, and the other soldiers did likewise.

  ‘Donnelly, don’t be a fool,’ said Monsarrat. ‘Move on before they shoot you!’

  ‘Not a bit of it, Mr Monsarrat,’ called Donnelly cheerfully. ‘We are simply standing here. Lieutenant Jardine knows what would happen if he fired on a group of people standing peacefully on public lands, whose only offence was to hold up signs he didn’t like. Of course, in Sydney there are no independent journalists, but the news would still travel. Fancy a court martial, Lieutenant?’

  The soldiers stared at the protesters, waiting for Jardine’s signal to fire; the protesters stared back, waiting for Donnelly’s signal to flee.

  Henrietta’s voice rang out from the carriage. ‘Oh for goodness sake!’ She leaped out and ran to a soldier’s horse, which had been left to its own devices when its rider had dismounted to deal with the protesters. The soldier heard the horse whinny, turned, shouted and started running towards her, but she vaulted onto the animal in an arc of green fabric. Monsarrat could see shock on Jardine’s face as Henrietta spurred it towards the protesters. When they didn’t move, she pulled back on the reins, and the horse reared. She looked down at Donnelly from the saddle. ‘If you don’t get out of the way, you filthy little man, I’ll trample your friends.’

  Monsarrat was fairly sure she would make good on her threat.

  Donnelly obviously agreed; he turned around and spoke to the group. ‘Best make way. I don’t think this lady cares much for the regulations.’ The protesters parted, leaving a gap just wide enough for Henrietta and the horse to get through. She kicked its sides far harder than was necessary and galloped off towards the gaol.

  Jardine turned to the soldier whose horse Henrietta had taken. ‘You’ll stay here, Watkins, and take the names of this lot – serves you right for being so careless with your horse. The rest of you, off we go. And as we are now short of mounts, Mr Monsarrat, you will go on foot.’

  ‘That package you are waiting on, Mr Monsarrat,’ Donnelly called out, ‘your friend has gone to collect it. Where would you like it delivered?’

  Monsarrat should have known. Mrs Mulrooney had gone alone to retrieve Peter. He hoped Donnelly’s little ploy had given her enough time to get away.

  ‘Perhaps best to take it back where it came from,’ said Monsarrat, hoping Donnelly understood he meant the Chronicle offices. ‘It seems we will have company at our boarding house. House arrest, you see, until tomorrow – the colonel’s challenged me to a duel at dawn.’

  Donnelly frowned, nodding. ‘Very well, Mr Monsarrat. I wish you the best of luck.’

  ‘What’s this package?’ Jardine asked.

  ‘Oh, some writing implements,’ said Monsarrat. ‘My pens are heavily used and don’t last as long as I’d like. Although by the looks of things, I shan’t need them.’

  ‘Well, I must say I hope you do – hard to find good clerks,’ said Jardine, but then he nudged Monsarrat in the back gently, urging him towards the boarding house and its parlour. Monsarrat realised it would probably be the last room he would ever see.

  Hannah had climbed over the fence, not wanting to risk the noisy rust of the gate. The small click the key made as it unlocked the door seemed impossibly loud in the still morning, and she half expected a detachment of guards to run out of the gaol to investigate.

  She opened the front door only as far as she needed to, in order to slip through – she did not want to risk it being as talkative as the gate was. Standing just inside, she listened for movement, trying to feel any disturbance in the air. There was none.

  The entrance hall was dusty, with long-abandoned cobwebs in the corner of the ceiling. To the right, the dining room looked equally so: a large empty table that had lost its sheen, surrounded by mismatched chairs. On her left, though, was a room that had been in more frequent use; a small parlour with two chairs faced a fire that smelled of fresh woodsmoke.

  Hannah hoped the front-door key would also work on the cellar door – searching the place would take an unacceptably long time. She quietly made her way downstairs to the cellar. Naturally it was locked, and the key had no effect. She swore, and reprimanded herself for doing so; this investigation was turning her into a foul-mouthed harridan.

  ‘Mr Cullen told me not to use that word,’ said a small voice from the other side of the door.

  ‘Peter! You are unharmed?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Hannah exhaled noisily in relief. ‘Peter, I can’t open the door. Do you know where the key is kept?’

  ‘Have you a hairpin, missus?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A hairpin. My mother used to have one before …’

  ‘Oh. Yes, of course.’ Hannah slid her fingers under her cap, extracted one of the pins and pushed it under the door.

  After a moment, she heard metal disagreeing with metal. The lock clicked, and the door opened. Peter stood staring at her.

  ‘Oh my Lord, look at the pallor on you! Well, there will have to be shortbread when it’s all over.’

  Peter looked at her, then closed the last few steps between them and threw his arms around her waist, his head side-on, nestling into her stomach.

  She stroked his hair. ‘There will be hugs later, too, if you want them, Peter. For now, though, there is no time. Tell me, do you think you can still run?’

  He nodded vigorously.

  ‘All right, then. So you and I are going to the front door – very quickly, but very quietly. When we get outside, we’ll run as fast as we can. And then you will be safe.’

  Peter nodded again. Hannah took his hand, and they began their way up the stairs.

  Perhaps if Hannah had not had to spend time convincing Mrs Selwyn to hand over the key, things would have been different. Or if she had found its burial place more quickly. Or if the key had worked in the cellar lock.

  As it was, when they got to the top of the stairs and walked towards the front door, it opened. Henrietta stood there, her face pink, her hair messy, a stain on her skirt. But her hands were steady. Hannah could tell, because the hand pointing the pistol at her was not trembling in the slightest.

  Chapter 25

  ‘I thought I was hiring rooms to respectable people!’ Miss Douglas said, glaring at Jardine and the two soldiers with him. ‘What will everyone say when they see them at my door?’

  ‘They will say that you are a good woman, helping the colony,’ said Jardine. ‘Mr Monsarrat here is under house arrest, and this is the closest thing he has to a house.’

  ‘His aunt has taken over my kitchen, you know!’ Miss Douglas said.

  ‘Yes, I’m sure that’s very … inconvenient.’ Jardine failed to mask his lack of interest. ‘But I promise you, you will never have to see either of them again after tomorrow. We will simply need to impose on you until dawn, when Mr Mon
sarrat has an appointment.’

  ‘Dawn, then,’ Miss Douglas said. ‘And if you or any of your soldiers trample my flowerbeds, you will be paying for them.’

  Jardine bowed slightly. ‘I will be here with Mr Monsarrat. I wonder, actually, if there’s a chance of a cup of tea?’

  ‘No,’ said Miss Douglas, ‘there is not,’ and she flounced out of the room.

  Jardine and Monsarrat stood in the parlour, staring at each other.

  ‘You might as well sit down, Lieutenant,’ Monsarrat said. ‘It’s many hours until dawn.’

  ‘You just want me to sit down so that you can.’

  Monsarrat shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter to me whether I sit or stand. I would not be doing either for long, in all likelihood.’

  Jardine lowered himself into a seat at the parlour table, laying his musket across his lap so that the bayonet and barrel were pointing in Monsarrat’s direction. ‘I must say, you seem quite sanguine about the whole situation.’

  ‘Sanguine or not, it will happen anyway,’ said Monsarrat. ‘Might as well meet it well. An easier death than hanging, especially as I suspect the colonel would request a long rope.’

  Jardine gave a short bark of laughter. Monsarrat had the impression that it was precisely calibrated to convey grudging amusement, but not to invite familiarity.

  Monsarrat managed a small smile. He had been close to death before. He had lain in a cell in Exeter, howling into the stones after a judge had placed a square of black cloth on his wig and said that Hugh Llewelyn Monsarrat was to be hanged by the neck until dead. And he knew there were those in Parramatta who would be delighted to see that sentence carried out. His railing against fate, his sobbing in that faraway cell had helped Monsarrat stand straight as he walked to what he thought was the gallows. But he found he had instead been walking towards his death as an Englishman, sent to the colony with no possibility of return. He could not now, though, wring his hands, kick the wall, keen for himself. So he relinquished control to the shadow, which knew all about bravado and bluster but nothing about mortality. If the documents had reached Eveleigh in time, mortality was something he might not have to confront just yet.

  The shadow, as it turned out, had some rather interesting things to say. ‘I suppose the colonel will have to explain to my employer why he is now without a clerk.’

  ‘I imagine he’ll dictate something, yes,’ said Jardine.

  ‘I wonder if he’ll help Eveleigh find a replacement. The streets of Parramatta are not fertile hunting grounds when one is looking for a copperplate hand.’

  ‘Nevertheless, I think Eveleigh will have to make do with what can be found there,’ said Jardine. ‘The colonel would like nothing better than to see Eveleigh have to transcribe his own letters.’

  ‘Yes, he does rather seem to have taken a set against my employer. I wonder why. Eveleigh is an inoffensive enough man.’

  ‘Not to the colonel, he’s not,’ said Jardine. ‘For a start, he foisted you on this investigation. And he tried to tell Duchamp how to run things. Gives him advice about the kind of reports to be sent back to the Home Office. It is not appreciated. The colonel has said he knows best how to serve the governor, as he did in Mauritius. He said Eveleigh had probably never picked up anything sharper than a pen.’

  Monsarrat thought for a moment, remembering what Eveleigh had told him. ‘Probably not, but it’s a weapon he is very skilled in wielding. The colonel, though, seems almost to believe he has some sort of ownership over the governor.’

  ‘I wouldn’t go that far,’ said Jardine. ‘He does like to make sure that all important information comes to the governor through him, but that’s what a private secretary should do, I imagine. Make sure the message is accurate – and make sure it’s heard.’

  Monsarrat began pacing around the room, more out of habit than anything else. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And only room for one messenger. Must be frustrating.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘A man of your ability – and your age – I’d expect you to be a captain by now. Perhaps the colonel wishes to be the only senior officer around the governor.’

  Jardine laughed. ‘I see what you’re doing, Mr Monsarrat. Very clever of you, I must say. You use your words every bit as effectively as I would use musket balls. But no, I’m afraid my loyalty is to God, the King and my commanding officer, and that will not change. Oh, could you stop pacing? It’s very distracting.’

  Monsarrat stopped and inclined his head in acknowledgement. ‘Your fidelity is admirable. Unshaken by your commanding officer’s involvement in conspiracy to murder.’

  ‘You are very amusing, Mr Monsarrat, truly,’ Jardine said. ‘But the man doesn’t have it in him.’

  ‘Your faith in him does you credit, Lieutenant,’ said Monsarrat. ‘I do hope you don’t have cause to regret your service to him.’

  ‘I won’t. Now, do you think your landlady has a chess set? For all your crimes, all your dissent, I still enjoy the way your mind works, Mr Monsarrat. The colonel may have challenged you to a duel, but I’m challenging you to a game.’

  The pistol had a mother-of-pearl grip, the green and blue glints complementing Henrietta’s dress. ‘Tell me,’ she said, ‘I’m curious. What’s your real name?’

  ‘You know my real name,’ Hannah said.

  ‘But I presume that there is no Mulrooney blood in Mr Monsarrat’s veins.’

  ‘You are correct. He is my employer, my friend. He is not my nephew.’ As Hannah spoke, she eased Peter behind her.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about the safety of the boy you’re about to kidnap. I won’t harm him.’

  ‘I’m freeing him. And what assurance do I have that you won’t?’

  Henrietta cocked her head to the side and pursed her lips as though considering the question. ‘Well, none,’ she said. ‘Best step away from him, though. It’s a small pistol, I know, and rather pretty, but it’s still capable of forcing a ball through you both.’

  A few months before, Hannah had sat across a table from another privileged woman who was intent on her destruction. Rebecca Nelson, though, had been mad, while Henrietta Duchamp seemed in cold command of all her faculties. Utterly sane, if amoral. Capable of helping develop a conspiracy that would have delivered her the entire colony, no doubt wrapped in a bow that matched her parasol. She had clearly decided that the main impediment to her claiming the prize was Hannah.

  While Rebecca and Henrietta were different, they were equally deadly. And the fear that Hannah had struggled to tamp down when Rebecca had locked her in a burning house, the terror she knew would rob her of the ability to escape, rose again now.

  I will not have this, she thought. You will not shoot me.

  She wasn’t sure, though, what she could do to prevent it. Her only hope was to delay Henrietta long enough to think of a way out.

  ‘You’ve been remarkably clever,’ Hannah said, ‘and you like things tidy. So why put yourself to the trouble of having a dead body to deal with? Surely you’d rather not answer questions about how I got that way. Especially when I’m no threat to you alive.’

  ‘No threat? Are you not standing here, with the boy?’

  ‘And you think they will believe me, over you?’ Hannah asked.

  ‘I would rather not find out. I was not made to be a convict.’

  Of course you weren’t. While the rest of us chose it. Begged for it.

  ‘But what have you done, really?’ Hannah said. ‘What can you be accused of? Meeting with a newspaper editor? Taking a young orphan from the street and feeding him? That’s what Peter will say when they ask.’ She turned to the boy, who was standing very still, breathing heavily, his eyes fixed on the gun. ‘That is what you will say, isn’t it, Peter? That you spent a lot of time here with Miss Duchamp, eating more than you have in a year.’

  He nodded slowly.

  Hannah addressed Henrietta again. ‘After all, it isn’t as though you pulled the trigger of the gun that killed Mr Hallward.’

&nb
sp; Henrietta said nothing. Hannah would have loved to see some faltering of her arm, some shaking of the hand that held the pistol, but it was as steady as ever.

  She still wasn’t talking, though. Simply staring.

  She is calculating. Assessing her options.

  ‘Well, you cannot be held responsible for the actions of a man.’

  ‘Mobbs – a common little journalist. A man who, at his trial, would say I gave him his instructions,’ said Henrietta. ‘That I cut a groove for the pistol in the windowsill, so all he had to do was pull the trigger. That I drilled him, day after day. That we wanted to use the same weapon with which my brother should have dispatched the man.’

  ‘Let him! No one believes journalists.’

  Henrietta laughed softly, then raised the gun so that it was pointing at Hannah’s forehead. ‘My dear, if that were true, I wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble.’

  You must not let her confess anything else to you.

  ‘And what trouble have you gone to?’ Hannah asked. ‘Trying to introduce the poor man to a bit of culture? A lost cause, probably, but not against the law as far as I’m aware. Shooting me, though, would be. At worst it could see you hanged, while at best it would be an inconvenience. What would you do with my body, bury it? Blood and soil, they tend to stain. Your dress would be ruined.’

  Henrietta glanced down briefly. ‘Very well. Perhaps it might be something of an error.’

  ‘I knew you were an intelligent woman. You’ll let me take the boy, now, yes? Look after him? I don’t believe hurting a child was part of your plans.’

  ‘Many things weren’t that have since had to be enacted,’ said Henrietta. ‘No, I don’t wish to hurt the boy. I probably would have sent him back to the orphan school, where he would have been whipped for telling tales. But you are not a child, Mrs Mulrooney. You will for the present share Peter’s confinement. Things are unsettled now. Your path might end in gaol – it would be no trouble at all to find one of my necklaces in your pocket – or it might end in the cellar. Either way, that is where it is taking you for the moment.’