The Night They Stormed Eureka (20 page)

It was difficult to keep track of the days here on the goldfields. But she couldn’t forget which day it was now. One more day until the ambush. Tomorrow night …

She dozed, waking every time she heard a noise — a miner’s cough, an owl’s hoot, the rustle of a rat in the stores. The tent beside her was silent, with none of Mrs Puddleham’s usual snores and snorts. Had she slept at all? wondered Sam.

Dawn was turning the horizon grey as the two of them lugged the pots back to the stockade. Mrs Puddleham looked paler than ever, but insisted on carrying one of the big pots herself.

It was the quietest dawn Sam had spent on the diggings — few men were wasting powder now with morning practise shots.

One of the men lugging picks for the blacksmith to sharpen grinned as Sam blew at the coals of yesterday’s fire, trying to get a blaze going. ‘Bet the attack’ll come today, eh, missus?’ he said through crumbling teeth. ‘That’s what everyone’s saying.’

‘Well, Mr Puddleham will be ready for them.’ Mrs Puddleham still panted with the effort of carrying the pot.

The toothless man’s companion glanced down at Sam. There was something familiar about his grin, she thought. About the light blue eyes.

She looked up at him. ‘Do bushrangers make good rebels?’

The young man’s gaze hardened. ‘The best. Good shots, bushrangers, or they don’t last long. And they knows what they’re fighting for.’

‘Good luck,’ said Sam softly.

‘We’ll make our own luck.’ He touched the pistols in his belt, then lifted his hand in a half salute. ‘I hope you’ll be up there with us when the attack comes.’

Sam nodded, her cheeks blazing with the lie. She bent down to throw twigs on the fire to hide her embarrassment. The bushranger touched the brim of his hat to Mrs Puddleham. ‘Good work, missus,’ he added. ‘Puts the heart into us, a bit o’ hot grub.’

Mrs Puddleham gave a weary smile. ‘When this is all over you come to our hotel down in Melbourne. Finest in the land it’ll be. I’ll give you more than stew then.’

‘I’ll take you up on that, missus.’ He touched his hat again.

Sam watched them lug the picks up to the stockade. When the attack came she’d be back in the gully. And I’ll feel guilty about it forever, she thought. But it’s not cowardice. It isn’t! There’s no point my being there, risking my life for nothing.

By sun-up the stockade and the streets around it were filled with marching men, or others practising the military firing technique — one man to load, the other firing. Sam gazed at the men with their valiant marching, their pretend target practise through the gaps in the stockade, the diggers with brawny arms learning to thrust pikes into bags of sand, as they would the bodies of their enemy.

All for nothing, she thought. All this bravery for nothing …

Suddenly the crowds around the stockade parted. A man walked through. He wore a black coat and white collar. A priest, thought Sam, as the man climbed onto the block of wood in the stockade where Peter Lalor had exhorted his troops.

The man held up his hand.

‘Ye all know me!’ he called. ‘I am Father Smyth, and if ye haven’t been part of me congregation, ye’ll know me still. I’ve come to plead with you to end this useless bloodshed, to go back to your mines and tents. The military camp has seven hundred men, or eight hundred maybe. They have weapons and horses. There is no chance for ye. No chance at all.’

‘There’s ten thousand of us willing to fight on these diggings!’ someone yelled back. ‘Ten thousand men against eight hundred seems good odds to me.’

‘Aye!’ called someone else. ‘And there are more men coming every day! There’s men on every goldfield in the country will rise up when they see what we do here.’

Father Smyth held up his hand for silence. ‘Nay, I know ye would not be agreeing with me. But in all conscience I had to say it, to plead with ye to end the bloodshed. Now I ask just this: that each of ye leave the stockade tonight to come to early mass, to pray to our Holy Father in Heaven that His will and His alone be done.’

‘Whatever it may be!’ The yell came from the back of the crowd.

Father Smyth bowed his head. ‘Whatever it may be.’ He stepped down from the stump, then turned and shook Peter Lalor’s hand.

Sam stared. Was that the hand that Lalor would lose tomorrow?

All she had to do was walk up to Peter Lalor now and tell him that the troops would attack near dawn. Then maybe the stockade would never fall. Maybe the Australian colonies would break away, just like the USA, and declare themselves a republic too.

The people of the USA had fought for freedom. But who had more freedom in her time, she wondered — someone in Australia or someone in the USA? How much difference
was
there?

She ran her fingers through her hair. She didn’t know. Could anybody know?

None of us here knows enough, she thought. Me, the Puddlehams, Peter Lalor. The diggers dreaming of a free nation with no idea of how it might work. Father Smyth too was doing his best, what he thought was right.

And what
was
right?

She looked over at Mrs Puddleham. Strands of hair stuck to the woman’s face from the steam. Her eyes had brown shadows around them, and her lips were tight with worry. She saw Sam looking and leaned over to give her a quick hug. ‘How about you go over to Wilson’s and buy us an egg and a handful of currants an’ a slice o’ butter,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll make Welsh cakes just for you and me and Mr Puddleham, eh? A treat like?’

Sam nodded, and tried to smile back. What had the Professor said? Humans are only capable of seeing small bits in the pattern of history. All you can ask yourself is — is this bit that I do good, or is it bad?

The Professor! She hadn’t seen him for days, she realised. She’d promised George she’d tell him why he wasn’t coming for his lessons, but with everything that had happened she’d forgotten.

Why wasn’t the Professor up on the stockade? Surely he’d have chosen to join the rebels! Maybe he’d slipped on his ladder and was lying in the mine with a broken leg. Many miners slipped and fell, especially when they were fuddled with grog. Maybe his mine had collapsed!

‘Ma?’

Mrs Puddleham turned from the floury dish where she’d been pummelling suet dumplings — without the suet — to eke out the stew. As always her face lit up at the word ‘Ma'.

‘Yes, deary?’

‘The Professor. He’s not here! Can I go and see if he’s all right?’

Mrs Puddleham’s face clouded with concern. ‘Not like him to stay away. Drink-fuddled, mebbe,’ she added hopefully.

For once Sam too hoped that that was the reason.

Mrs Puddleham began to take her apron off. ‘I’ll come with you, lovey. Ain’t a time for a girl to be on her own.’

‘No, I’ll be fine. Really,’ she insisted, looking at the doubt on Mrs Puddleham’s face. ‘All the danger’s here, not near the gully.’

‘True enough. You’re safer there than here.’ Mrs Puddleham shook her head. ‘Mebbe I should put you on the coach on Monday, get you safe down to Melbourne. You could put up at a good hotel, wait for us to join you.’

Sam was grateful there was no coach on a Sunday. A lot would happen before Monday’s coach arrived. ‘We’ll think about it tomorrow. I won’t be long — I’ll just check the Professor’s okay — I mean all right — then be straight back.’

Mrs Puddleham looked back at the stockade above them. Even among all the drilling there were still trousers hung out to dry on a line outside a tent right in the middle, so the men had to march around the dripping washing. Two children threw a ball of rolled-up dead grass to each other in another corner of the stockade. Their parents too, it seemed, had seen no reason why they should move their tent away from their claim, just because of a rebellion. ‘Have they any chance do you think, lovey?’ she asked quietly.

What should Sam say? That they were doomed — the stockade would be torn down, men killed, arrested. No, she could say nothing of that.

‘Of course.’

Mrs Puddleham hesitated. ‘I been thinking I should go up to the stockade tonight. Stay with Mr Puddleham. We … we ain’t been parted since he found me again, not for a night, till now. You could stay down in the tent with the pots. Like you said, it’s safe down there.’

Sam stared. ‘No!’

Mrs Puddleham bit her lip. ‘Of course, deary, you’d be scared to stay there on your own, with all this happening.’

‘That’s not it … I mean yes, I would be.’ It was a good excuse, thought Sam. Whatever it takes. ‘Maybe Mr Puddleham could come back just for tonight too? If the redcoats don’t attack today?’ Guilt stabbed through her like one of the soldiers’ swords. ‘The soldiers wouldn’t attack on a Sunday, would they?’

Mrs Puddleham shook her head. ‘Nay. It wouldn’t be right.’

‘Then on Sunday night we’ll all go to the stockade together.’

Mrs Puddleham put her hand on her bosom. ‘You will not! The very idea.’ She placed her rough red hands on Sam’s shoulders. ‘I been through too much to lose you now, deary. I want you safe! You’ll go to the Higgins farm tomorrow. I should o’ thought o’ that before. It’s even safer than Melbourne for a girl like you.’

Sam stared at her. ‘But I can’t leave you!’

‘No argufying.’ Mrs Puddleham’s mouth was set, but there were tears in the big woman’s eyes. ‘It would just kill me if anything were to happen to you, deary. You go off to the Higginses. Please. For the sake of your poor old ma.’

Sam felt tears prickle her own eyes. Did Mrs Puddleham remember that Sam wasn’t her own daughter? But I
am
her daughter now, she thought. Love creates love. This isn’t the safe world of servants and buttered toast I wanted to come to. But it doesn’t matter.

Suddenly the wind seemed to blow again, though the leaves on the ground didn’t move. It comes when I think about the past, she realised. The future, I mean, and who I was there.

But I’m not going back! I don’t want to! And at least I can agree to go to the farm to please Mrs Puddleham. Because tomorrow it will all be over, no matter what I promise now.

Mrs Puddleham was still pleading, the tears trickling down around her nose. ‘It’s too late to set out today — you’d not make it there by dark. She may be a darkie but I’ve seen her washing on the line, an’ her sheets are clean. An’ that boy of hers is a good’un, for all he’s a half-caste. I want you to promise, deary — you’ll leave tomorrow morning and stay till … till it’s all over.’

Sam shut her eyes for a moment. This had to be right, she thought. ‘I promise,’ she said. ‘I’ll go to the farm tomorrow, if you still want me to.’

‘Oh,’ Mrs Puddleham clasped both her hands against her chest, then wiped her face. ‘Ye don’t know how that relieves me, precious. Ye don’t indeed. Now you run off an’ find the Professor. I bet he’s just been on a bender, with all this trouble about an’ me not there to see he eats proper. Here,’ she fumbled in one of the sacks and held out a big hunk of damper. ‘You give him that to keep him going and tell him to lay off the grog an’ I’ll have a plate o’ stew for him tomorrow. The Welsh cakes will be brown and hot when you get back. And, deary?’

Sam turned. ‘Yes?’

‘When ye go tomorrow, take the chest. The big one in the tent with your dress and bonnet and all. Put it in the wheelbarrow. It’s valuable, that dress. I don’t want no thieving Demon pinching it when none of us is around.’

Sam nodded.

The Professor’s camp was deserted. Even his lean-to hung crookedly, as though the wind had blown it lopsided and there had been no one to prop it up.

Sam shivered. It looked like no one had been there for days.

‘Professor?’

No answer. Had he left the diggings? But his chest was still there, and when Sam opened it there were his books, carefully wrapped in his spare trousers.

The Professor would never have left the diggings without his books.

Had he been wounded? Arrested? But someone would have told the Puddlehams. The Professor was a well-known figure in the grog shops, with his knife-sharp accent and his quotes from strange books.

Which left his mine.

Sam gazed at the hole in the ground, surrounded by the heaps of clay and dirt. She had still never been down a mine — hated to even think of going down one.

Mines were dangerous, not just the danger that they could collapse — suffocate or crush you under cold damp earth. Bad air could kill you too, strange gases that seeped from underground. And there’s always the bunyip, she told herself angrily. Why don’t you be afraid of that too while you’re at it?

She stepped over to the hole and stared down.

‘Professor?

Still no answer.

Sam reached down and jiggled the ladder. It was made of branches, twisted and uneven. But at least it was still in one piece. And if it held the Professor’s weight it would take hers.

Wouldn’t it?

She put the hunk of damper on the ground, then turned round, grasping the edges of the ladder, and cautiously put her foot on the first rung. It felt slippery, as though the ladder was trying to tip her off her feet, and shaky too.

She stepped down onto the next rung and then the next, holding onto the ladder with her hands now as well. The mud seemed to close above her. Why hadn’t the Professor made his mine opening wider? she thought desperately. Water trickled down the sides, dark as blood.

‘Professor?’

The sound echoed.
Essor … essor … essor
… ‘Professor, are you all right?’

‘Sam? Go back! It isn’t safe!’ The weak voice seemed to come from a long way away.

‘Too late. I’m here.’ Sam’s feet hit the ground. It oozed under her feet. She was glad of her boots; sneakers would have been soaked already. The darkness made walls around her after the bright light above.

‘Have you had an accident? A fall?’

‘"He lay great and greatly fallen.” I was never great, but I fell greatly …’

He
is
drunk, she thought. And then: no, this sounds different. Dazed, not drunk. Hurt?

‘Can you get out by yourself?’ she called.

‘You know,’ his voice was steadier now, ‘I don’t think I can.’

‘Then I’m coming to get you. Where are you?’

‘Along the tunnel. Three or four yards, perhaps. But take care!’