The Night They Stormed Eureka (12 page)

She looked up from the woodheap as a yell floated down into the gully.

‘Roll up! Roll up! Roll up at the gravel pits!’

Another meeting, she thought. There’d been meetings every day this week. Mr Puddleham must have known about this one, as he’d vanished after breakfast.

Sam would have liked to see what happened at a ‘roll up', but Mrs Puddleham refused to even speak about them. And Sam was all too aware that one of these ‘roll ups’ — in a week, or a month or even a year — would lead to the violence of the stockade. Yes, it was wiser to stay away.

A drum banged in the distance. Thin breathy-sounding fifes piped above the drumbeat, and the hollow banging of sticks against pots or billies underscored it all.

Mrs Puddleham frowned, and glanced up at Sam. She was ‘turning the cuffs’ on one of Mr Puddleham’s shirts — taking them apart, turning them over and sewing them back on so the frayed bit no longer showed. Behind them the pots slowly glopped above the coals, and the flies buzzed hopefully in the steam.

‘That wood weren’t too heavy for you, lovey?’ Mrs Puddleham seemed to be deliberately ignoring the clamour.

Sam smiled at the enormous woman — it was impossible not to smile when her ‘Ma’ looked at her like that, with such care and concern — and shook her head. ‘Just had to go a long way to find it.’

‘Well, you sit down and have a rest then. I made you a meat pudding, special.’ She gestured with her needle and thread. ‘It’s between them two plates over there.’

Sam picked up the plates and sat next to her. The pudding was the size and shape of a tennis ball, shiny and doughy on the outside, and a bit like a cake inside, dappled with shreds of meat and some sort of green vegetable. She’d never eaten anything like it before, but it was as good as everything Mrs Puddleham made (except the grilled kidneys). She looked up to see the cook watching her take each mouthful. The big woman smiled.

‘You wait till we gets our hotel. We’ll have baron o’ beef Mondays, roast turkey Tuesdays, saddle of mutton Wednesdays with eglantine sauce. Made from rosehips, it is, all stewed till they’re soft and with the seeds sieved out. Her Majesty loved her eglantine sauce with mutton. Most of the men will be after a cut off the joint. But I’ve been thinking we should do teas too, just like Her Majesty had. Can put that on the bill o’ fare:
Teas as Served to Her Majesty Queen Victoria
.’

‘What did Queen Victoria like for afternoon tea?

Mrs Puddleham beamed. ‘My brown betty, that’s what she liked. Good plain cake made with cold tea instead o’ buttermilk, and lots o’ sultanas. An’ teacakes — you should have seen the tray go up with my teacakes. Each slice were browned on both sides, and dripping butter. And thin bread and butter and sponge cake, light as a pile o’ feathers, with cream and strawberry jam, and Indian tea, not China, though o’ course the footmen made ‘er teafresh, not us down in the kitchen. Fruitcake every day, she had to have that, and ginger cake most days, an’ specialities too. Oh, it were fun making them specialities. One of them
monsewers
was ‘sposed to make ‘em but he couldn’t do ‘em good as me. Madeleines and jam drops and petty fours and curd cake and lemon tarts and orange cakes and little caramels … Melbourne won’t know what’s hit it when they sees my specialities.’

Sam hesitated. Would Mrs Puddleham mind her making suggestions? ‘I was thinking too. Maybe we could pay for someone to bring us a cartload of wood every week. I don’t mind getting wood,’ she added hastily. ‘It’s fun hunting under the trees. And I know buying wood would be expensive. But it’d mean I’d be free to help you cook, and Mr Puddleham could serve full-time. We’d make money faster.’

And get down to Melbourne before anyone thinks about building a stockade too, she thought.

Mrs Puddleham beamed even wider, as though Sam had given her the biggest nugget on the goldfields. ‘Why, you’ve got a good head on you, lovey. That’s a right good idea. I’ll put it to Mr Puddleham when he gets back.’ Her face clouded. She looked down at her sewing again. ‘All this going to meetings. Mr Puddleham just don’t know how the world works, that’s his trouble.’ Mrs Puddleham tried to keep her voice calm as she squinted at her needle.

‘But he lived at the palace —’ began Sam.

‘That’s the root of it all,’ said Mrs Puddleham glumly. ‘His dad were a footman, see. So that’s all Mr Puddlehamknows — nice, safe, big houses, all the cold meat you can eat an’ bread an’ jam too, any time o’ the day or night, an’ blankets on the beds. Always a set order to do things, an’ if it’s done wrong there’s someone up above you to make it done right.

‘But the world don’t work like that. He don’t know what it’s like to have chains on yer wrists an’ ankles, an’ rats nibblin’ at yer ears, and anyone who wants to can stick his hand up yer skirts —’ Mrs Puddleham brushed a tear away impatiently. ‘Well, I don’t want him to know, neither. An’ I want better for you too!’

‘Maybe,’ said Sam hesitantly, ‘Mr Puddleham wants the same as you — to make things better. But for everyone.’

Mrs Puddleham snorted. ‘They ain’t got the hope of a snowball in a baker’s oven. Manhood suffrage they call it. Manhood stupidity if you ask me.’

Sam was silent as she finished her pudding. How could she tell Mrs Puddleham that everyone, even women, would get the vote one day, though she couldn’t remember quite when and how?

‘There’s going to be trouble,’ said Mrs Puddleham, biting through her thread.

Sam nodded.

Mr Puddleham said nothing about the meeting when he returned as the shadows lengthened, just quietly added wood to the fire and topped up the stew with water.

Mrs Puddleham was silent too. She was darning socks now, using a rock to fill the toe to stretch out the sock so she could fill the hole with threads woven in and out — it was almost magic, thought Sam, the way she could make the sock look like there’d never been a hole there at all.

‘Need more supplies tomorrow,’ Mrs Puddleham said at last. ‘Sam can stay and watch the pots and serve the stew while you and me goes to the farm.’

‘What if the bushranger catches you again?’ demanded Sam.

Mrs Puddleham tried a smile. ‘We’ll listen careful for hoofbeats this time,’ she promised.

‘But what if there’s one who isn’t riding a horse?’ Sam shook her head. ‘It’s crazy carrying all that money. Why not send a note to the farm and ask Mr Higgins and George to bring the meat and potatoes to us instead? Then they can put the money safe in the bank too. I bet one ofthe diggers would take a note to the farm in exchange for a night’s stew,’ she added.

To her surprise Mr Puddleham looked at her approvingly. ‘The girl has her head on straight, Mrs Puddleham.’

‘Hasn’t she just?’ said Mrs Puddleham proudly. ‘Why just this morning she says, why don’t we buy our wood, Ma? We’ll makes more money if I cooks alongside you.’

‘Wood we can buy from any new chum,’ said Mr Puddleham. ‘But who’s going to write a note?’ He shook his head. ‘I can read a newspaper, Mrs Puddleham, but you know I don’t have a hand with my letters. And who’s going to read it at the farm?’

‘I can write,’ said Sam. Except she didn’t have a pen. Or paper, she thought. But you could write with a bit of charcoal, couldn’t you? And maybe use a strip of bark instead of paper. ‘And George can read.’

‘The half-caste?’

‘He’s not! Well, he is … but —’ She stopped at the look on the Puddlehams’ faces. ‘People should be given a chance. Even if they’ve got brown skin … or are Chinese or Irish,’ she added, remembering some of the insults she’d heard from the men as they ate their stew.

‘Or if they were convicts, I reckon,’ said Mrs Puddleham quietly. ‘You might add that, an’ all.’

‘Never,’ said Mr Puddleham. He lifted her work-roughened hand and kissed it. ‘You are the grandest lady on the goldfields. And I won’t let any say differently.’

Mrs Puddleham flushed.

‘Of course she is,’ said Sam. ‘There’s no gentleman like you either. Please — send the note. I bet George will bring the meat and things right away.’

The Puddlehams exchanged glances. ‘I’ve got the paper my thread were wrapped in,’ said Mrs Puddleham. ‘Sam can have that to write on. An’ the Professor has a pencil. I saw him using it only last week. Imagine us, Mr Puddleham, with a daughter that’s got learning like our Sam.’ She beamed at Sam as though she were a genius. For the first time since the troopers had arrived she looked happy.

And I’ll see George again, thought Sam. She was surprised at how happy that made her too.

It was late afternoon by the time George came along the track to the gully the next day, half a dozen dusty sheep bleating around him, scared into a huddle by the noise of the goldfields.

His father walked beside him, grim-faced as when Sam had first seen him, a sack of potatoes on his back. Both father and son carried long, hooked poles — shepherds’ crooks, thought Sam, just like she’d seen in books of nursery rhymes when she was small.

George saw her. He smiled — a half smile. In his long-sleeved shirt and with his face shadowed under the wide hat it was hard to see his Indigenous heritage.

Mr Higgins waved, then expertly hooked the end of his crook around the neck of a sheep that looked like straying from the track. ‘And a good afternoon to youse all!’ he called, suddenly cheery. ‘A grand day it is too.’

‘That’s all very well, Mr Higgins.’ Mrs Puddleham stared at the sheep. ‘But we only wanted one sheep, not six o’ them. And with their skins off, if you gets my meaning, not with their bleats still in them.’

‘Ah, not to worry at all,’ said Mr Higgins easily. ‘It’s easier to let the beasts bring themselves than for us to carry them, and Ginger Murphy the butcher up by the gravel pits will get rid of those bleats for youse in a twinkling. He’s sure to buy the rest an’ all. It was George here’s suggestion.’ He gave his son a brief slap on the ear. ‘Say good morning politely to the Puddlehams, boy.’

George glanced up from under his hat. ‘G’day.’

‘Hello,’ said Sam happily. (She had discovered that no one understood when she said ‘Hi'.)

Mrs Puddleham glanced over at her, then at George. She seemed to come to a decision. ‘Would you like a slice of dumpling, George? It’s a long walk for a growin’ lad.’

George looked startled, his father even more surprised.

‘Thankee, Mrs Puddleham.’

His father watched as his son gulped down the dumpling, his face twisted with an expression so powerful that Sam felt a twist in her heart. Why, he
does
love him, she thought.

‘Now,’ said Mrs Puddleham, eyeing the animals, who had already left scatterings of small round droppings about her camp, ‘about these sheeps …’ She gathered up a couple of pots and a clean hessian sack.

They left Mr Puddleham minding the camp and the bubbling stew, and followed George, Mr Higgins and the sheep along the track then up the main road past the gravel pits to the butcher’s shack.

Sam watched as the sheep were locked in a small wooden pen. The butcher expertly slipped a rope aroundthe back legs of one of the sheep, then slung the other end of the rope over a branch of a tree next to his shack. Mr Higgins held the animal steady while the butcher pulled its head back, then slid a knife across its throat. Blood gushed onto the ground.

‘Don’t waste that good blood!’ Mrs Puddleham dashed forwards with a big tin dish. ‘You ain’t tasted nothin’ till you’ve tried my blood puddings,’ she added to Sam over her shoulder, as the blood trickled into her pan. ‘Just blood and oats all boiled together, and herbs to make it savoury. The secret’s in the herbs.’

Sam’s stomach lurched.

The sheep’s legs collapsed under it. Its head lolled to one side, its tongue poking out of its limp mouth. Blood still seeped from its throat, though the great gush had stopped.

‘Haul her up,’ called the butcher.

Mr Higgins and George hauled on the rope while Mrs Puddleham nursed the pan of blood. The dead sheep sailed up into the air. It hung there, a little blood still dripping onto the dark-stained ground below.

How many sheep had been killed on this spot? wondered Sam. She felt strangely sweaty, as though the day was too hot and too cold at the same time.

The butcher made a cut around the sheep’s anus, then slashed between its back legs and up its belly. A pile of steaming guts spilled down onto the ground.

‘No!’ She retched, but nothing came up. She turned her back, away from the gore, and tried to get her breath.

‘Sam!’ Mrs Puddleham’s arm was around her shoulders. ‘Deary, are you all right?’

‘I’m sorry … I’ve just never seen …’

‘George? Take Sam back to Mr Puddleham,’ ordered Mrs Puddleham, still cradling her pan of blood in her other arm.

‘Really, I’m all right —’

‘You’re not going back on your own some, an’ I can’t leave this lot. There’s six good sheep tongues there no one else’ll want, not to mention sheep brains an’ the belly fat goin’ begging, and I don’t want no one’s dog grabbing ‘em.’

‘I’m fine …’ The world swam around her again.

Dimly she heard George say, ‘Come on then.’

They began to walk. Slowly the world cleared. She looked across at George. He looked pleased with himself. ‘What kind of bleedin’ petticoat lad throws up at a pile of guts, eh?’

‘Shut up!’

‘Bet you’d scream if you saw something’ really bad. Sheep with its back legs all eaten by the maggots, eh? All crawlin’ and bloody …’

He’s trying to make me be sick again, she thought. And she’d been defending him to the Puddlehams. ‘I said shut up!’

‘What kind of a boy can’t —’

‘I’m a girl!’

She hadn’t meant to say it. (And she bet a boy from her own time would have been sick at all that blood too.) Butat least the smug look vanished from George’s face. He stared at her, then suddenly nodded. ‘Ma guessed. All she said was that you was too thin. All bones, she said. But there were somethin’ about the way she said it.’

‘The Puddlehams thought it would be best — safer I mean —’

‘The Puddlehams?’ He stared at her again, more surprised at this than when she’d said she was a girl.

‘Yes, they thought —’