The Ballad of Desmond Kale (47 page)

TO BE TAKEN FROM A rotten cell of the Hell's Gate prison of Van Diemen's Land, pushed along an oyster-bladed shore by a resentful guard, placed in a rowing boat, made to take up the oars while manacled, and then, still wearing prison rags, and under the worst incessantly raging sky experience-able that end of the planet, under dense cold clouds that could be reached up and touched, almost, if one had the will to meddle with such dripping smoke — then ordered from that boat shivering cold and led up a rocky path, there to be greeted by a prison governor detested, to have iron rivets removed by a waiting blacksmith, and be told there was hot water and a washtub being made ready — was, you would have to agree, the most fairly refined sweet torture of any experienced during the convict age.

But more of it on the compelling side of experience was to come for Tom Rankine. His captivity, he was told, was over — if he wanted to believe it.

Men were chained like beasts to a wall each night, after doing their day's work. Men were made to stand to their necks in freezing water moving great logs floated across the dark harbour, while
Rankine, for his sins, had been given a clerk's ledger and better rations, and except for being locked in a windowless room for twelve hours each night was allowed some of the gentleman convict mitigation that was dispensed to the few prisoners of his class, called the white handers. Small mercies saved lives in descriptions of pits of hell. When beaten, it wasn't as hard as some. Rankine shared what he could with those worse off: a stale crust, a rancid chew of salt beef, a trickle of sugar onto a horny old palm, with a grunt of gratitude directed at him. He lived, with nerves badly blown, and flinched at any noise, saw shadows of slinking creatures that weren't there, gave malicious willpower to a blade, a rock, a marlin spike, and having been biffed around the hairline once too often, swingled his head louringly on a lookout for blows. It would take him many months to lose the habit. More than a year. And what of the companions he made, the revelations, attachments, consolations and narratives of life's misfortunates transfused to a sympathetic heart and soul? Those fellow prisoners were the salt and bread of Rankine's four hundred and twenty days. They were the magnified, sorriest expression of what he touched in Kale. Through networks of sympathisers he learned that Meg was safe, with friends, and awaited him: but there came no privilege of letters, and no assurance his messages smuggled back in the other direction ever reached her.

While he was splashing in that bath house, clean clothes were laid out for him, and almost fainting from the confusion of the switch, from cursed to cared for, Rankine was surprised to find they were his old uniform coats, with the insignia of rank cut from them. That was all right, as he believed his resignation of commission came before Wilkie's move against him in the order of their final interview. His regimental pride was not so very dented (procedure
still counting), while more to the point, he believed he was removed from further punishments in courts of N.S. Wales rangers.

What he wanted very much now was to get the word through to Meg, that he was all right in his way, at least alive, and better still, hoping, loving, and trusting the word he received of her safety. He longed to learn how she was faring with the Josephs and Mick. How to do so from the teardrop-shaped end of Van Diemen's Land was a question soon to be answered.

Better — or worse, depending on the finality of the outcome — was to succeed this moment of surprise for Tom Rankine in that fourteenth month of his captivity, when from Hell's Gate he was taken by ship to Hobart.

There he was informed how legal opinion, rather than any compassionate clemency, had turned over his conviction; apparently it was a free pardon; no apologies, no recompense, and none expected, far from it; but an order signed by a new arrival at Sydney Town, an officer unknown to the colony when Rankine was in it — by name, Convict Commissioner Valentine Lloyd Thomas, RN.

Was this the Val Lloyd Thomas of Thomas's Mill? It could be no other. They had played together as boys. Their fathers were friends in the years when the Thomases thrived on wool. At twelve, Val entered the navy. Rankine in latter years heard of his brilliance in law, his recklessness at gaming, his appetite for sexual conquest. When Napoleon wreaked havoc they went to their separate wars, Rankine's in Spain, Lloyd Thomas's at the Admiralty, where he was greatly admired for winning indictments against troublesome captains.

It looked like what seemed fixed in the rancorous universe of whips and gallows had a second guesser. The commissioner's charge was to question everything concerning the public purse and
the dispensing of justice. Broad powers of request. Enforcement of answers. Rankine was called to give evidence in his court of enquiry. As well as the summons to attend, he was handed a warrant of ship's passage to Sydney Town, and a packet of letters.

Now his blood began to warm. The letters were from Meg. A cornucopia of them spilled from red string. His fingers trembled gathering them up.

Rankine took the letters to the room where he lodged awaiting a ship back to Sydney. There, overlooking cold Derwent water, he called for a glass of brandy, stoked his pipe, and with a window open to the free movement of air (he was never again to tolerate a closed room) learned that Meg was safe as far as the sequence of the letters went, in the journey started without him, with Stanton's offloaded culls setting a pace for the waggoners and his return daily expected — until the word came (after long delay) that he was taken and held. Most of a year was given to him in the letters, and he cursed the cruelty imposed, in regulations keeping the letters from him.

Rankine read of how they were bailed up by Lehane who brought an offsider to make sure the job was more certainly done this time. How Lehane took bullocks, and a barrel of gin. His accomplice a black fellow, Crouch. M'Carty set off with a friendlier black fellow, Piper, to find them. M'Carty returned in a week saying he saw bullocks, and Lehane by a fire, close enough for his curses to be heard, but on the other side of a limestone ravine six hundred feet deep and no way down or across.

Solly, Arthur and Leah Josephs drove those sheep hard and tight until they arrived at the duck mole reach, with few losses. Rankine smiled. He almost disbelieved the trouble taken. He knew that country too well. He could only imagine how many times the
waggon was unloaded, dismantled, a bullock team packed and driven over riverbed and gorge, then the waggon refurbished to get to the reach. He could only imagine nights of sheep in sapling yards, guard fires lit, warregal dogs howling the perimeter. They were not at the duck mole very long before the word went back towards civilisation and a straggle of settlers arrived in their waggon tracks; and so, while Rankine was forcefully held, distances altered, condensed, and walking paces became easier. There was a ramshackle inn set up, by name of Tharpe's. It was no more an inn than a bark hut and stockyards, with horse rails and a wooden watering trough.

On some pages, Leah Josephs took over the writing from Meg (she made it more vividly seen). Rankine learned that Mick Tornley and old Mother Hauser shared a camp. So, smiled Rankine, Mick was welded to their ways, and the old crone, seen through Mick's eyes, mightn't be so old, or so cronish, either. At night they could be heard singing along, as revellers struck up. Artie Josephs won favour with his fiddle. M'Carty went on a binge. Tharpe's was sworn the greatest hostelry in the land, as well as the loneliest one. Potatoes were planted and maize, by the settlers, a kitchen garden dug, poultry housed, pigs styed; next to establish was a blacksmith's forge. Lehane's blacks came in from the bush, bargaining for tucker. Mick shouted an express order for them to spear Lehane and drive his bullocks home.

They thought Mick a great laugh, with his beard slapped to his belly, his stumpy rage, and his long-reaching whip. When they were too far away for leather he fired after them, across the dance of trees, where they disappeared.

The waggon stalled, throwing a wheel, and was unloaded into three light drays. Rankine deduced the drays were built from waggon
parts. From there they blazed a trail as far as an old camp of Kale's, referred to as the gentleman. From Leah's description it was a camp beyond where Rankine had ever come, at the edge of a wide, rolling plain, grassy, cold and windswept. Kale? He was gone out to the blazes with Biddy Magee — except, in a ballad sung at Tharpe's, it was said now, that the gentleman found a broad river that flowed to an inland sea. McCarty set off with Piper to find him.

The letters were not in any order. In every one the assurance came through that Meg was cared for. Rankine saw that anyone reading them wouldn't know where the country was, exactly. Only he guessed it through joining the parts. Pulling one out without forewarning Rankine learned that Meg was pregnant. It was difficult to read through the tears. She'd waited a while to be sure she was carrying. She hoped it made Rankine happy. Happy? He threw the letters down and went to the window, took hold of the window frame and leaned out into the night. Being alive, having such life heaped on him that his heart ached from joy. Now it was like Meg was with him in the room, when he turned back in, Meg walking him about, looking him over and gazing at him with love, shaking her head wonderingly as she covered his face with her hands — warming his cheeks with her fingers — and stopping the shakiness Rankine had in him from a good few hard beatings that he discounted as not as bad as others were dealt.

That there was to be a son born to them — wrote Meg — a son and not a daughter, she precisely emphasised — was winkled through enchantment spun in two sticks bound across a third, and suspended with string over Meg's protruding navel by Martha Josephs.

Rankine counted on his fingers. The boy would be seven months old now.

THREE WEEKS LATER RANKINE ARRIVED in Sydney a ghost of himself, impatient to find a horse and busy avoiding any face he knew. He was bound to attract attention — a twitchy man with drawn, pale features, an air of great strain, with resentful reaction to curiosity and a colossal reputation to face down. Everyone had a story of bad leading to worse. Rankine's, leading from better to worse, challenged the ordinary sequence of progress. Many lives were ruined in struggle, but there were few volunteers in the ruining of their own lives. He was traitor to his own class. Fomenter of Irish delusion. Defier of laid-down regulation and deceiver of authority. How he escaped a hanging was the mystery, and now, incomprehensibly honoured with a pardon, his hold on life, though revealed, still remained a riddle. ‘Report daily or lose your freedom' — that was dislikeable to Rankine and his resenters both. Why should he have his freedom at all? asked the offended class. If given it, why must it be partly checked? asked Rankine. To the Irish he was proof of miracle, though some wondered if he'd turned coat.

His pardon, he learned, was free but conditional … He was free to find lodgings, but required to wait about. No straying beyond
three miles of Farm Cove in any direction. The gritty, humid, southerly wind whipped a busy, greedy Sydney Town of sandstone and raw timbers, windmills, brickpits, cesspits, taverns and dusty prizefighting rings. Ships arrived every two weeks or three and sat on moorings in the cove besieged by speculators. Since Rankine was dragged in from Parramatta it was more than ever a gambler's paradise expended in a variety of sports. Lloyd Thomas's name was more than respected, it was feared — whereas the new governor's was not so much. The convict commissioner's runners took wagers on boxing matches, dog fights, horse races. When the flags went up, Lloyd Thomas went to his telescope, with a long view down the harbour, and then to the ships, Rankine learned, to look over the newly arrived women, choosing the unspoiled, where such were to be had, or to carry away the wildest, most beautiful whore on deck.

Rankine walked out daily, taking a heel of bread and an orange, making his way round the foreshore, until he found a place to fish. It gave him a look of belonging, without inviting conversation. After a week of such waiting he was more anxious than ever to get going.

On the eighth day Commissioner Lloyd Thomas had him brought to his office without too much fuss. No sign was given that they had ever known each other. It was all formalities. A stenographer took the record. Coal-black-haired, gimlet-eyed, hungry of attack, Lloyd Thomas was an authority to be reckoned with. There had been an air of forceful certainty, even as a rivalling boy. Now it was given the full authority of the Crown.

First came the sally, that Rankine learned was loosed by the commissioner on all those of experience, following a tried routine:

‘Have you any complaint to make against Governor Wilkie?'

Rankine deflected the shot. ‘I have no rights of protest in this.'

‘Come, do not be coy.'

If Rankine did have complaints, they were at the level of personal relations — and thought the commissioner might not care about those. ‘Not at all,' he was assured, as Lloyd Thomas was passionate in everything. But Rankine remained reluctant, because when it came to leniency — one of the indictments against Wilkie — Rankine was for Wilkie's inclinations of mercy more than another's, and always had been. It was why he'd fallen silent the day he rode in to resign his commission, leaving Meg with the waggoners, he thought but for the day, to discover he faced Lehane, who'd galloped ahead of him on a saddleless nag, bridled with string, to acquaint the governor with ‘Tumbankin', at which the governor asked, ‘Is this you, Tom?' As Rankine dropped his head, half proud, unashamed, he said it might be, and found himself, within minutes, clapped in irons.

‘You were charged with springing convict Kale from a punishment gang.'

‘I was,' said Rankine.

‘And you had?'

Rankine blinked, confused. ‘Sir …'

He was not about to make the same mistake twice, of blabbing his way to perdition, as had happened faced with Lehane's affidavit, that morning with the governor. But hadn't he just said so?

‘Well?'

‘You have the records,' Rankine hedged, ‘my transportation and treatment reports. You have clerks of the court at your bidding, to bring them out. Fourteen months and never being dry, or warm, though better regarded than most, yet, it's all comparative, commander, and I bear some scars, it's true.'

‘Not so fast in humbling yourself, dear man. Wilkie appears to have erred. There is no record of evidence.'

‘None?'

This must be a snare, thought Rankine.

‘Not in colonial files. If you'd been hanged, he'd have a bad conscience. There is, of course, a chance you'll be tried again, if evidence should come to light.'

This made Rankine sit up, although —

‘I am set against Wilkie, not against you,' he was told by the commissioner. It was all so nicely put. A veiled threat, presented as generosity of bias.

At this point Lloyd Thomas asked the convict stenographer to step from the room. Then, removing his jacket, shooting his silk cuffs, he went to the fire and removed a jug of coffee where it warmed on the coals. ‘Tom Rankine, Tom Rankine,' he said. ‘How are you, my good man?'

‘I am knocked sideways.'

Lloyd Thomas poured two cups, passing one to Rankine, who held it between his trembling hands. It was a warm Sydney day, the first of September, the first day of spring, but Rankine's bones were blue cold.

‘If a man sets forth on an expedition, Tom, what sort of prisoners should he take? Think about this. In my position, I have first call on the best transported artisans — drovers, wheelwrights, blacksmiths, grooms, transported females of various crafts and wiles: I can take them from anyone; Nero had not such powers. The best available I am proposing are yours, for an enterprise of exploration. It will reverse your fortunes from where they now stand. Rankine? Do you hear me? Lift your head, Tom. There is nothing for you to look so far down about. To the extent you have a motive
in mind, to prosper Kale, my interest is the same. Do you remember me, Tom?'

‘I do,' said the trembling returnee. ‘Raindrops running down a window pane, the fertility of a dean's wife, steeplechasing by moonlight, anything and everything grounds for a wager.'

‘I am not changed. In the wager I lose myself, as in love. I come back to my duties braced.'

‘Is this a gamble, then?'

‘On you, a gambler yourself, you princely dog. What I am asking is nothing more than a stake in your interest in Kale.'

‘Over sheep?'

‘Not over sheep. I believe he's found a river.'

‘The duck mole reach,' said Rankine, with nothing to lose, as what information was in Meg's letters would be thoroughly read.

‘The duck mole reach, indeed. Nay, what I seek is an inland sea, fed by a great river. It is called the Kindur.'

‘I've never heard anyone speak of it.'

‘That is hardly likely.'

‘If the Irish bandy a name, it's often poetical,' said Rankine.

The commissioner raised an eyebrow. ‘Don't deny me, Tom, your tangle of secrets is safe. Reach Kale, you will have crossed and surveyed more land than anyone's sensibly found.' Lloyd Thomas rapped the table. ‘Tom, in my commission so far, I have interviewed most of the free inhabitants of Botany Bay, over fifty emancipists and hundreds of convicts. You will not believe the number of times Kale's name has been spoken. The man is a boast to the downhearted, a bother to the secure. I have raked together all the dirt and filth, scandal, calumnies and lies that were ever circulated. Kale's name shines through pretty clear. Your name is in there, twisted, but magnanimous. Reach Kale, send word back of
the country, and you shall carry on with an unconditional free pardon under my authority as commissioner of convicts. For you and for Kale.'

‘Where is it?' said Rankine, wanting the piece of paper.

The commissioner said, ‘I'll have it drawn up. I want you and your mistress to dine with me — your lovely Meg Inchcape —'

‘She is my wife.'

‘Acknowledged,' said Lloyd Thomas wolfishly. ‘And faithfully awaits you, I believe?'

‘As I hope and pray,' said Rankine.

Lloyd Thomas turned to a case of Baltic pine, with brass hinges and a clasp, sitting on the floor.

‘It holds a sextant, Tom, gifted from my uncle, when I joined the navy as a boy. I could hardly carry it around, and was laughed at. It is a precious instrument. Of little use in my present game, though it is barely all I have left of my rightful inheritance. My talents, more forensic than oceanic — anyway, I was put to the study of courts martial, and thrived. As a midshipman, however, I learned enough to know that once navigation rises above the category of a chore, it becomes a science of consuming interest.' He handed Rankine the box. ‘I want you to have it.'

‘I cannot.'

‘Come, now. Take care of it for me, put it to use. Since enlisting in the rangers you play down your service with the 95th, as quartermaster-general's surveyor. You can still take a star fix. Take it, and push on. There is a horse in your name at my stables. I would put Lord Bramley not far behind us.'

‘Bramley?' said Rankine.

‘His eye is fixed on Botany Bay. Bramley would never take on the voyage himself — but shall send an agent, and that agent when
he gets here shall start pegging country down until he owns a good share of it, in Bramley's name. Money, tied to purpose, meets little resistance. Purpose, without money, cannot catch a horse.'

‘Acknowledged,' said Rankine.

‘Ah, but purpose, allied with power, beats money, Tom, if it uses its head. Bramley's purse is bottomless, once Bramley loosens the strings. The day I left England, Botany Bay wools were the topic in Bramley's corner. There's been mail this week bringing confirmation. His agent, addressing the houses of Westminster, made a great splash. That was, by calculation, six months ago. His agent, you should know, is most likely on the water and halfway across the world by now.'

As Rankine left, Lloyd Thomas called him back. ‘You did not ask his name, this agent of Bramley's.'

‘No. Your expression tells me all I need. If I was a betting man like you, I'd put my shirt on it.'

‘On Blaise Henry Cribb, and not go wrong,' agreed Lloyd Thomas.