The Roving Party (5 page)

They waited for Bill to go on but he drew on his tea and listened to the trees groan like the damned and presently they understood that his tale had finished.

No more was said. The wind shearing through the campsite drove the company men deeper into their blankets for refuge. By now the rain had ceased but the ground was sodden, except
at the base of the thickest trees, and they contorted themselves between these roots for shelter. Darkness lay beyond the firelight and their eyes burned as they scrutinised that formless sweep of black. Nine men cloistered among the recesses, as cold and dulled as stones. What might be conceived of as a measure of men was for them a simple paucity. For that which moaned inside them was given no idiom to show itself.

Black Bill awoke to the prodding of a bare foot, cold and split-nailed in the fireless dark. He pushed his hat from his eyes. A figure stood over him training a weapon upon the square of his chest. The other men slept a dead sleep and stirred not a wink when Horsehead, with his consumptive’s wheeze, drew down the hammer on his piece, the unoiled creak of it like floorboards giving.

Hand us them boots, darkie, he growled.

The Vandemonian pushed back his blankets and tenderly raised himself up.

Horsehead was shrouded in his own blankets and his breath showed in the void between the two men as he spoke. You got no need of em.

Black Bill slid against the tree he’d been sleeping under and rose to his full height. From behind his neck he drew his dagger, the blade held downwards. He waited and stared. In the
silence Horsehead made no move nor did he release the hammer. He was in a bind: firing would wake Batman and Batman was likely to respond in kind. Bill raised the blade alongside his cheek from where he might better strike a blow.

It was a long instant as the pair stood off like dogs and the ragged snores of the company men came from the darkness. Bill clenched his fist upon the bone handle.

Horsehead went backwards a pace and wheezed at the Vandemonian, I’m takin to the bush. I dont want no part of this madness. Now givem here. Elsewise I’ll finish you with ball. He watched the Vandemonian’s blade wink and he studied that hardened face for evidence of fear or doubt but all he beheld was clear intent.

He moved back another pace, then another. At length Horsehead lowered the mouth of his gun, but even as he rested the weapon upon a tree root and raised his hand to signal for calm the Vandemonian kept his knife bared. Eventually the assigned man sat himself beside his gun and tugged his damp blankets across his legs like some shabby squatter taking his ease.

Keep the bloody things then, he said.

Black Bill pulled his hat brim low and stared at the creature hunched down beside the fire, shivering beneath his bedding. And he watched that figure until the sun flowered behind the horizon.

A
LL THAT NEXT MORNING THEY FOLLOWED
where the Parramatta men led, going over the rough underscrub sorely and without enthusiasm. To the rear John Batman followed with his gun crooked over one arm, watching every movement of the scrub as if it meant him ill. The shoeless men slipped down the banks and mossed chines, struggling through their long task without a break. Their empty guts cramped up and they hounded Batman for food but he would not be swayed. In the hour before noon they cut across a markener snaking through the bush that had been hacked by clans passing around the mountain. It was a fine track that followed the mountain’s swells and hollows and Pigeon considered both courses a moment, the other men watching him at his deliberations. He waved the mosquitoes from his neck, folded his arms across his chest. Then he led the party off along the markener’s northern route. The markener had not seen fire in many a year; at one time it had been wide enough for two men abreast but now it
was narrowed into archways of sinewed leatherwoods and in the light wells young shrubs of every sort swallowed up the path and clawed at their clothes. The bush was festooned with leeches like gaping black worms reaching from the branches and as the men walked they plucked them from their skin and burst them between their fingers.

In the afternoon they moved up through thinner groves of rainforest and through squatly grown tree ferns and their pace picked up. John Batman took up whistling a broken tune which dipped and rose across the same few bars over and over as they strode along; the emus he raised with that sound crashed off among the trees in threes and fours, booming deep down their throats in alarm. Somewhere a lone crow called. A few more miles around the swollen base of Ben Lomond they crossed a stand of black gum, towering like immense stone pillars. The company men climbed over the roots and tipped their heads back to study the ironcoloured sky labouring past the crests of those trees. The uppermost branches stirred as long gusts full of the cold of the southern ice lands flowed through. The men moved around those colossal gums, watching the rotting turf that shifted with the little scurrying life, but they had not got far before Black Bill held aloft his hat and brought the party to a halt. He was stood with his six-foot fowler trained on the trees and he raised a finger for silence. The company men waited.

tawattya, Bill called but it soaked into the forest, lost amid the bird cry.

In the near distance was a ring of temma. They were built on loose uneven soil but the clans had little ground now to choose from, as Batman had the best of it for his sheep. Bill approached each of the temma in turn, calling, and peering inside. He stepped over a dead hearth fire strewn about with the shattered bones of wallabies, their fur and dark signs of blood and he held his hand above the coals a moment then tipped back his hat at an angle. The party men emerged and moved guardedly into the village with their weapons to their shoulders, studying the stretchings of bush that led off away eastwards around Ben Lomond. Away from the temma, piles of scat lay cast over with handfuls of grass caked in wipings and the Dharugs nudged at the turds with the points of their toes. Blackening, hard, juiceless. Crook pinched a clod in his fingers and it split open. Wet inside still. They were not long departed. He showed Bill.

Two days gone, said Bill. Not more.

Batman gazed up at the mountain. Two?

Not more.

Aye. Well then.

They took a spell there, kneeling among the native huts. Out of his drum Batman produced an apple, a perfect red apple, and quartered it with his skinning knife. Liquid ran clear over
his knuckles and he sucked them clean and then laid the segments neat before him where they glistened under the gaze of eight men.

I never had apple before, the boy said.

Batman gave a quarter to every man and the fellow beside him to divide how they saw. Howell Baxter and Jimmy Gumm halved a quarter widthways and ate it. Black Bill placed his segment in his creamy palm and looked at the boy.

Have it, he said.

Without a word the boy snatched the apple and stuffed the lump sideways in his mouth. He resembled the beggar children in the back alleys of Launceston, those tiny souls stealing food from households and pleading coins from passers-by. Bill had given them his pennies and his last wedge of bread and then his blanket. They’d thanked him and asked if he was a nigger and he’d replied that he was a Vandemonian born and grown; they’d nodded like old weathered sages and shaken his hand. They stank of the muck of the towns and their eyes loomed too large in their skulls.

What’s he done? said the boy.

He? said Bill.

This witch.

Boy, what is your name?

Thomas Toosey.

You shouldnt be here, Thomas.

Well I know he done somethin.

Dont concern yourself with it.

The boy jutted his head at the armed men settled thereabouts. It is my concern though, aint it.

Bill allowed that point. He did as we all do, he said.

Did what?

No more questions. You are a boy.

I’m fifteen.

The boy licked apple juice off his fingers. Black Bill took up a handful of leaves and let them fall. The leaves turned wounded spirals.

He’s just a man is all.

There was more the boy wanted to ask and he showed it by shifting his weight to get a better view of Bill’s face. The shredded sunlight through the trees cast them over in speckling, as if they were fish lying idle in shallows. But Black Bill stood up and walked off, leaving the boy alone with his questions.

The temma were woven from slabs of bark laid over a frame of curved branches that had been jammed into the earth. Skins covered the earthen floors inside, the whole teeming with fleas. As he tossed through each hut for things of worth Black Bill upended a hessian sack. A hand mirror, half a broken teacup patterned with prancing horses, an empty jam tin, a broad red book. Nothing of any value or use to a mob
of wandering clansfolk. He reached down for the book where it lay.

A Bible. As sturdy as firewood in his hand. He turned the damp pages one by one and every page, every column of text, every inch of every surface was inked with arcane circles, spirals, in bloodred ochre. The broken halves of the words hanging between those scrawls were rendered useless. Whatever authority the volume had held was muted by those fierce curls and angles, shapes echoed in the very build of the world. He closed the book and tossed it on the dead fire.

Jimmy Gumm was likewise engaged in plundering and he watched Bill throw that blemished Bible aside. He snatched the book from the ashes and tucked it inside his drum where he’d also stashed a native shell necklace, a sarcenet ribbon and a hairbrush of turned whalebone and boar bristles. He resettled the weight of the bag across his shoulder and nodded at the Vandemonian who was stood at rest in a warm sun streak.

It’ll do for wipin me fundament, he said.

I
N THE FOREST SHADOWS
H
ORSEHEAD DREW
up beside Jimmy Gumm and leaned slightly into him. His vagrant’s face was gathered in a scowl. He spoke hotly on Gumm’s neck. He’s by hisself.

Gumm nodded. He smoothed down his beard, unlooped the drum from over his head and set it down. His hands clenched in two broad fists as he spoke to Horsehead.

Watch them others dont get wind of this. Till I’m done at least.

The boy was squatting in the ferns near the outermost of the native shanties with his trousers bunched about his knees. Flies crawled along his legs and he brushed them away but they rose and returned as before. He shat quietly on the ground then plucked coarse bracken fronds, crushed them into a ball and dabbed at his hole. He was reaching for a second handful when Jimmy Gumm emerged from behind a silver wattle, glancing
over his shoulder before coming forward. He gestured at the boy and looked away.

Stand up now. Take the hidin that’s comin to ye.

The boy hiked up his trousers and moved back. His leavings steamed in the ferns between them. He retied the cord of his pants. What hidin?

The one I owe.

The boy looked around but there were none present save the wattles. He drew himself up and pushed out his jaw.

It’s a matter of my dignity and what you done to it, said Gumm.

You brokeheaded old fumbler. How’s a lag like you got any dignity?

That’s enough out ayou.

Gumm lumbered forward and grabbed him. For an instant he had the boy by the sleeve and was bringing his fist about to crack him in the teeth but the boy was too sly. He snatched his arm away and jumped outside the line of the punch, countering with his own. It struck Gumm square in the throat. He gagged, closed his eyes and stumbled but the boy was on him now, kicking at his groin and driving his awkward fists into the side of his head. The bigger man dropped onto his rear and the boy stood back with his fists raised as Gumm grasped his throat, coughing. Gumm rolled over in the bracken and bits of bark and muck clung to his clothes. On all fours he looked up at the boy and winced. He tried to speak but could not.

From behind the great flutes of a blue gum two men slumped, holding each other, their faces squeezed up as they cackled like beaten cats. Tears leaked down the slates of their cheeks. Gumm lowered his head.

Oh, said Horsehead. Oh he’s done it to you again. Oh dear oh dear oh deary me.

Baxter threw back his head and howled from deep down inside his long frame. A madman’s guffaw.

You miserable bastards, said Gumm through his hoarse throat.

But it only had them laughing the harder.