The Ink Stain

by Tom Keneally

  ‘We had no idea whether we would be there in time,’ Donnelly was saying. ‘We kept listening for shots – ah! There she is!’ He jumped off the desk.

  Cullen beamed. Peter stirred and woke.

  ‘Our heroine,’ said Donnelly.

  ‘Stop that blathering,’ Hannah said.

  ‘Oh, I’m not the only one who thinks so – look.’ He pointed to the board. A child’s drawing showed a woman wearing a white blob of a servant’s hat. She was holding a sword, and facing a creature that might have been a dragon.

  ‘Did you do this, Peter?’ Hannah asked.

  The boy nodded, still a little groggy from his sleep.

  ‘It is by far the best drawing I have ever seen,’ she said.

  ‘That’s what I told him,’ said Cullen. He deposited Peter on the floor, went to Hannah and took her hand. ‘Are you unharmed? Did you find Miss Duchamp?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Hannah. ‘I doubt there’ll be any consequences for her, though. Perhaps not for any of them.’

  ‘Ah, well, you might be wrong there,’ said Donnelly. ‘I heard Mobbs was arrested earlier. How true it is, I don’t know.’

  ‘Nothing would surprise me, not with that one and her brother. But for now,’ Hannah kneeled down, taking Peter by the shoulders, ‘I thought you might like to come back to the boarding house and eat shortbread and sleep in a feather bed for the night. After a wash. There’s a dragon who lives there – she looks a lot like a woman – but we just ignore her and she goes away after a while.’ Hannah looked up at Cullen. ‘Will you be all right without the lad?’

  Cullen smiled. ‘If I know you’re the one taking care of him. You probably don’t believe it, but I have a cottage. Haven’t always lived at the Chronicle. Just enough room for a little bed near the hearth, when you’ve finished ruining the boy. For as long as we stay there, anyway.’

  ‘You’re moving on?’

  ‘I seem to be out of a job. But I hear there are more opportunities to the west. I wonder, if I find myself passing through Parramatta, would you have any objection to a caller?’

  Eveleigh and Monsarrat were standing outside Government House, looking down across the green slope towards the dazzling harbour.

  ‘And are we to leave tomorrow?’ asked Monsarrat. ‘I can’t help feeling as though the job isn’t done.’

  Eveleigh glanced sideways at him. ‘Mr Monsarrat, have you something to say to me?’

  Monsarrat paused. Eveleigh was not the worst of them, not by a long way. But very bound up in structure, in hierarchy, in the respect due to his office. Criticism from a clerk may not be taken well. Still, the man had invited him to speak, and the shadow had not yet receded far enough to allow him to hold his tongue.

  ‘I took you, sir, for a believer in justice. How is this outcome just?’ asked Monsarrat. Judging by the shock on his face, Eveleigh was as surprised by the challenge as Monsarrat was himself. Perhaps, thought Monsarrat, his own respect for authority was not as robust as it was when he arrived in Sydney.

  ‘Yes, Mobbs will be punished, deserves to be,’ he continued. ‘But what about Duchamp and his sister? They conspired to kill a man and enslave a colony, yet there is to be no consequence?’

  ‘No, there is not.’

  ‘And does it not enrage you?’

  ‘Mr Monsarrat, I do not get enraged. But I am not happy about it. You are right, they deserve punishment. But you and I do not live in a world of ideals. We cannot afford to. Don’t forget that Duchamp was probably acting on the governor’s orders, or at least with his knowledge, and even if he’s not, they are brothers in arms and the governor has shown an inclination to give favours to those he is close to. If I were to push for a trial, I would get nowhere. Everything would be swept under the rug, and I would find myself reassigned to Van Diemen’s Land. Unless they were able to find a credible complaint against me, so that I could vault the chasm and join the ranks of convicts.’

  ‘You are silent from fear?’

  ‘I am silent from practicality. At least this way, Mr Monsarrat, someone pays – someone who deserves to. But if payment is to be extracted from Duchamp or his sister, it will occur in the afterlife.’

  ‘So, expediency and connections are more valuable than justice.’

  ‘They shouldn’t be, but they are,’ said Eveleigh. ‘Come on, Mr Monsarrat, you know this! You have lived through its consequences. I took no joy in negotiating away the just punishment for the Duchamps. But I would do it again, because it was the only way.’

  ‘And you get another clerk out of it.’

  ‘This should please you, Mr Monsarrat,’ Eveleigh said.

  ‘Well, it doesn’t displease me.’

  ‘Ah, your reaction is far too muted. And I am intimately familiar with muted reactions, so I know what I am speaking of. Because with another clerk, I might be able to allow you some time to search in the west for a certain female convict.’

  Chapter 30

  Two months later

  Gerald James Mobbs, former editor of this newspaper, has been placed at the bar to receive sentence following his confession to the wilful murder of Henry Thomas Hallward, the editor of the now defunct Sydney Chronicle.

  His Honour, after much deliberation, passed the sentence of death. Having consideration for Mr Mobbs’s contribution to the colony over many years, the sentence was commuted to life.

  Monsarrat folded the Colonial Flyer and laid it on the table in his parlour – his own parlour, thankfully, in his little cottage in Parramatta, with no one to scold him for getting newsprint on the tablecloth.

  ‘If you smudge that, you’ll be washing it.’

  ‘I do apologise,’ he said, putting the paper under his arm and looking up at Mrs Mulrooney. ‘It’s happened just like Eveleigh said. They’ll probably tuck him away in some quiet penal settlement – can’t see him on a chain gang.’

  Mrs Mulrooney sat opposite him. ‘It’s been a month. You must stop picking at it.’

  ‘But look! Look at this.’ He handed her the newspaper. ‘Bottom of the page.’

  He waited as she read, squinting a little as the lamp on the table battled with the dusk. The words, contained in a border due to the importance of the news, notified the reader that Miss Henrietta Duchamp was to marry some baronet from Hertfordshire.

  ‘Duchamp probably needed to get her out of the way. But still, hardly a just punishment,’ Monsarrat said.

  ‘She will make her own prison, Mr Monsarrat, and you must leave her to it. Ah, Helen, let me help with that.’ Mrs Mulrooney walked to the parlour door and held it open for the young convict who had been assigned to them as a servant.

  Helen had to turn sideways, and probably inhale, to get both herself and the tea tray through the door. ‘You should sit, missus,’ she said. ‘I cannot be a servant if you will not allow me to serve.’

  Mrs Mulrooney laughed and did as she was told. The girl who had come to them from the Female Factory, with a daughter conceived through unwilling congress with the superintendent, had been quiet, watchful; the young woman who was now emerging was quick witted, efficient and just a little bold.

  Helen was followed into the room by Eliza in her night-dress, the little girl dragging a doll as she trotted up to the table and climbed without invitation into Mrs Mulrooney’s lap. Helen put her tray on the table, and Mrs Mulrooney started feeding Eliza morsels of shortbread. She seemed to care far less about the crumbs on the tablecloth than she had about the newsprint.

  ‘Have you washed the windows?’ she asked Helen.

  ‘I have. Yesterday, too, and I’ll be happy to do them again tomorrow if you like. But you know that he’s not coming for the windows.’ She smiled and laid an affectionate hand on Mrs Mulrooney’s shoulder, who put up her own hand to squeeze it.

  ‘You seem to be more excited at the prospect of my assistant clerk than I am,’ Monsarrat said.

  ‘Mr Cullen will make an excellent clerk, Mr Monsarrat. And I can try to put some fat on to young Peter.�
� To Helen, she said, ‘It’s good of you to take on another one. Peter won’t mind where he sleeps, but I’d rather him here than in the Prancing Stag with Mr Cullen, at least until they find more permanent lodgings.’

  ‘It’s no trouble, missus,’ said Helen. ‘Now, if you feel she’s had enough shortbread, I’d better get Eliza into … Oh, I’ll answer it.’

  The knock was not the tentative tap of someone sorry to rouse a household as night drew in; nor was it the hammering of someone to whom knocking was a prelude to breaking down a door. It was polite but forceful.

  ‘Nonsense, off you go, Helen,’ said Mrs Mulrooney. ‘Mr Monsarrat will get the door and I’ll take care of the tray.’

  The man at the door looked rough. Dirty. Judging by the lathered state of the horse tied to the fence behind him, he had ridden for some time to get here. Monsarrat might have been alarmed, but the fellow’s darting blue eyes were familiar. He was young, but it was hard to tell how young, as his lower face was obscured by a beard – red-gold, like his hair.

  ‘You must be Mr Monsarrat,’ he said, in an accent Monsarrat had heard with increasing frequency lately, unique to this place, with its far more elongated vowels and far less crisp consonants. ‘May I … may I come in? I’m –’

  Monsarrat heard a shriek behind him, and the clatter of a dropped tray. He was nearly knocked off his feet as a blur dashed past him, and then Mrs Mulrooney was sobbing, reaching up, flinging her arms around the fellow’s neck, dragging his head down so his cheek could be kissed, and kissed again.

  Monsarrat smiled, stood aside and gestured for the man to enter. ‘I presume,’ he said, ‘that I have the honour of addressing Padraig Mulrooney.’

  Padraig was having to eat one-handed. His other hand was being held by his mother. In the past half-hour he had been hugged, kissed, wept on, cuffed on the ear, told he was an eejit of a boy, sent to wash his face at the pump behind the house, and ordered to get a bucket of water for ‘that darling horse that brought you safely’, which was now standing near the pump sampling the greenery.

  Padraig was still in his travelling clothes and doing his best not to dirty the tablecloth, but a few stray smears of road dust had found their way onto the pristine white. Mrs Mulrooney did not seem to mind. ‘I will have your hide if you go silent again for so long,’ she said, kissing his hand.

  ‘I am sorry, Ma, I knew you would worry but I’ve been on my way back to you all this time, working eastwards. I gave the odd letter to the driver of the mail cart, hoping he would ignore the fact that I couldn’t pay. I suppose he didn’t.’

  ‘I thought you were dead!’

  ‘If you haven’t killed me, no one can.’ He ducked to avoid the cuff he knew would come, then turned to Monsarrat. ‘Thank you, sir, for looking after her. Keeping her safe.’

  ‘You are most welcome,’ said Monsarrat, ‘but it has been rather the other way around.’

  ‘Padraig, you can stop here as long as you wish,’ Mrs Mulrooney said. ‘It might be a little crowded but we will all squeeze in – won’t we, Mr Monsarrat?’

  ‘Of course, and I am more than happy to sleep at the office – I suspect Eveleigh would approve.’

  ‘You’ll do no such thing. We will manage.’

  Padraig sighed. ‘I am sorry, Ma, truly. But I won’t be able to stay for more than a few days. I’ve been sent on an errand.’

  ‘To fetch what?’ said Mrs Mulrooney.

  ‘The both of you, if you’d consider a journey west.’

  Monsarrat smiled. ‘I had been considering such a journey in any case,’ he said. ‘But may I ask why?’

  ‘My mother has written to me of your success. Two murderers identified, against the most challenging of odds.’

  ‘Four, now,’ said Mrs Mulrooney. ‘Well, six really, but that’s a story for the journey.’

  Padraig turned to his mother. ‘I boasted about you to the overseer, to the other drovers. The last property I was droving on, I was there for a few weeks. They had plenty of time to hear the stories, so when it started happening, they sent me to get you.’

  ‘When what started happening?’ asked Mrs Mulrooney.

  ‘Convicts. Dying. Killed by the same hand, probably, but in different ways. Imaginative ways – ways that match their crimes. An embezzler had promissory notes stuffed into his mouth until he choked. A man who’d stolen an expensive necklace was strangled with a cheap one. A seditious priest was … well, crucified. No one knows who’s next, or if the killer will stop at convicts, but everyone agrees on one thing. They want someone to come, and quickly. They want the best. And that, everyone says, is the pair of you.’

  Authors’ Note

  Attempts by governments to discredit or stifle the media are dangerous, but they are a long way from new.

  In New South Wales in the mid- to late 1820s, Governor Ralph Darling was a frequent target of two newspapermen in particular. His responses nearly cost the colony an independent press.

  This is the environment in which The Ink Stain is set. We wrote it because we thought it was a good story, and we intend it to be enjoyed as just that – a story, not a manifesto. But we also wrote it because in the current climate it bears repeating that a free and fearless press is one of the most precious products of democratic societies. It’s also important to remember how quickly such freedoms can be taken away.

  While this is a work of fiction, we are now well and truly in the habit of basing the situations and people Monsarrat and Mrs Mulrooney encounter on real people and events, and here we lay out what is fact and what is fabrication.

  Many of the fictional events based on real situations occur out of order, or earlier than they actually did. We have compressed the timeline in some instances, to account for the fact that this book is set early in the term of Governor Darling.

  Edward Smith Hall and Dr Robert Wardell

  Henry Hallward is an amalgamation (as is his surname) of two newspaper editors working in Sydney at the time this story is set, and events from both of their lives have been fictionalised in Hallward’s.

  Edward Smith Hall, who also holds the distinction of founding the New South Wales Benevolent Society, was editor of the Monitor, and arguably Ralph Darling’s chief antagonist. Darling described him as ‘a fellow without principles, an apostate missionary’, and a ‘revolutionary scribbler’.

  Hall was a frequent critic of Darling and his administration. He was vehemently opposed to the mistreatment of convicts, regularly called for civilian juries at a time when military juries were the norm, and often criticised the decisions of magistrates and what he saw as Darling’s draconian approach to governing the colony. Many of his attacks centred on Darling’s practice of giving land grants and other favours to friends and family, and Hall decried the nepotism and cronyism which he saw as a hallmark of Darling’s governorship. Hall was arrested seven times for criminal libel and, like the fictional Hallward, often continued to edit his newspaper from prison.

  Governor Darling was not Hall’s only target. Hall wrote a satirical piece on the income of Archdeacon Thomas Hobbes Scott of St James’ Church (which still stands, in King Street, Sydney, and is still operating as a church). He also criticised Scott for his involvement in politics, and one of his criminal libel charges relates to his writings about Scott (he was the first person in the colony to be convicted of this particular crime). Hallward’s fictional piece in this novel includes phrases directly lifted from one of Hall’s articles.

  Like Hallward, Hall was also involved in a long-running dispute with the church over a box pew at St James’ Church. Hall, a widower with eight children, had leased a pew for £4 a year. One morning in 1828, as he led his family in to worship, he found his name removed from it, on the pretext that it was needed for public officials, an excuse Hall did not believe. He refused an offer of an inferior pew in a draughty part of the church.

  The next Sunday, on finding the door to the pew locked, he vaulted over its walls and forced the lock so his children
could enter. The Sunday after that, finding a roof had been nailed onto the pew, he and his family sat on the chancel steps. After several other disputes and incursions on the pew, some involving constables, Hall was summonsed for trespass, and sued Archdeacon Scott for trespass on his rights as a tenant. The cases dragged on for two years. In the first matter, Hall was found guilty of trespass – and ordered to pay one shilling. In the second, the court found in favour of Hall and ordered the Archdeacon to pay £25.

  Dr Robert Wardell was another frequent critic of the administration. A barrister, and a former editor of the Statesman in London, he started the Australian newspaper (not connected to the modern newspaper of the same name) with friend and fellow barrister William Charles Wentworth.

  The Australian was very clear on its views on press freedom. Its first editorial read: ‘A free press is the most legitimate, and at the same time the most powerful weapon that can be employed to annihilate influence, frustrate the designs of tyranny, and restrain the arm of oppression.’

  Dr Wardell had a habit of writing satirically, and one story in particular enraged the establishment. Entitled ‘How-e to Live by Plunder’, the story accused Robert Howe, editor of the Sydney Gazette, of stealing a story from the Australian’s offices and publishing it. Wardell, in his editorial, also accused Colonel Henry Dumaresq, the governor’s brother-in-law and private secretary, of involvement.

  Dumaresq challenged Wardell to a duel, which took place near what is now the suburb of Homebush. After trying and failing to shoot each other, Wardell agreed to make a verbal apology and honour was declared satisfied.

  By the way, Gerald Mobbs is not based on Robert Howe, although the Sydney Gazette, like the fictional Colonial Flyer, was more pro-government than either the Australian or the Monitor, and operated as the administration’s official organ. Colonel Edward Duchamp is only very loosely inspired by Colonel Dumaresq.