The Clay Dreaming (64 page)

According to what she had learned of his complex mythology, that vengeful spirit would often employ another agent to do its dirty work. Druce himself was dust, a ghost; less substantial than Wall, more a Moonshine sort of man, made up of lantern, dog, and thorn-bush. If he were the killer then she was his mouthpiece, the one to deliver his curse.

Had she herself embodied the ‘
In-gna
’?

And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time. Therefore whether it were I or they, so we preach, and so ye believed.

Harbinger of doom, or doom herself; for all she knew the tail of a fiend lurked concealed beneath her skirts. It could not have been any worse if she had killed him herself, and either buried or burned all evidence.

Sarah clutched her free hand, which had been resting on Druce’s manuscript, to her racing heart. She knew something, a little, of Aborigine custom. Should she disclose to anyone her suspicion of his death by haunting, Brippoki’s
erstwhile fellows might feel it their obligation to seek out the killer – be he or she alive or dead. And if the guilty party could not be discovered, then another of his people would do as well: as and when the opportunity presented itself, sooner or later they would enact their dreadful revenge.

When it came to knowledge of secrets, she began to understand the responsibilities of holding one’s tongue.

The murder unsolved, late revelation of Brippoki’s heritage, his white blood, drove Sarah once more to consider that long list of names, names of those who had wronged Druce during his lifetime, trawling for possible suspects. Captain Lawrence had intimated rumours of a figure in authority, a governor perhaps, or ship’s captain at least. Grose, King, Bligh, Macquarie…for whatever reasons, there had been a quick turnover among the governors of that colony. Each of them had some recorded association with Joseph Druce; and they were also, presumably, in daily contact with the native population, if only as their servant underclass. Dalrymple, Simeon Lord – who knew? It could be one of any number of early traders, chancers and swindlers who had chanced to cross paths and swords with the unfortunate man. Seventy-six years had elapsed since the date of Druce’s transportation in 1792 and the present moment – the span of up to at least four possible generations, maybe more.

Hic Occultus Occulto Occisus Est
: thus read the epitaph of Kaspar Hauser. ‘Here an unknown was killed by an unknown.’

Really, there was no way for her to know. Here she was, still trying to make sense of the evidence when more often than not there was none, or else none that could be qualified, the larger part of the story already over, long before she was even born.

Pale face reflected in the window glass, Sarah looked to herself, not recognising that creature staring back, strange and new. She surprised herself at the immediacy with which was willing even to think along these lines, able by now to enter into the mindset of men as different as either Brippoki or Druce.

‘In consideration of a certain reward…’

Sarah opened up her closed palm. In it lay the whittled carving of a small boat. She had found it on the windowsill about an hour earlier. A crimson impression creased her palm from where she had clutched on to it so tightly, for so long; gladly she endured the vague ache of her tendons.

Brippoki had perhaps intended to represent the
Rangatira
.

His superstitious belief proved inspirational in another way. Any ghost story necessarily entailed belief in a return from the dead: if not the resurrection exactly, then at least notions of an afterlife. By the same token, his ultimate conviction in what threatened and probably killed him revealed – to her mind at least – an aspect of hope. Both Lubbock and Lawrence had intimated Aboriginal concepts of an afterlife, one entailing a return across the oceans,
supposedly home; even so far as wearing the skin of a different colour. They entertained ideas concerning the persistence of the soul…its migration, after death, into the living body of another, be it animal, vegetable, or white man; and, perhaps, of a better world.

Mutability of matter, immutability of soul – the flower may bloom and die; buried, the bulb lives on. Lambert would have liked that.

Christ preached that he rose from the dead, and yet some still argued against the feasibility of resurrections, the Feast of Trumpets, the Feast of Tabernacles. If there was no resurrection, then Christ had not risen: preaching was in vain, and her faith also. Her faith, which was above all a quest for truth – even if it might never be grasped. What was real, except for what the mind told you?

Man feared death in uncertainty of his status in the afterlife. Neither Lambert nor Druce had departed in peace, whereas Brippoki…his eyes had smiled, finally, in recognition – as if to say ‘you’ve been a good friend to me’. He himself absolved her.

She alone might unite Druce with Brippoki in her thoughts, so that they were reconciled, although dying at the opposite ends of the earth from where they most wanted to be. Gladly, or so it seemed, Brippoki returned to that place he came from, wherever it might be – the same timeless realm perhaps where Joseph Druce took stock. They walked in conversation along the shores of Eternity; awaiting, as one, the messenger to bid them embark.

The grandfather clock began to strike the late hour, soon joined by the sound of church bells. Standing at the opened window, Sarah heard none of it – her mind half the world and months on the ocean distant.

More than one path existed to glory and to God; a longer path, and more treacherous, than any she could have imagined…

There was more than one truth.

No one should judge another for the meat they chose to eat, for the drink they chose to drink, in respect of their high and holy days, of new moon or their Sabbath days.

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of the world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

DEATH
OF KING COLE, THE ABORIGINAL CRICKETER

Cricketers will regret to hear that King Cole, one of the celebrated Black Eleven now on a professional visit to this country, died last Wednesday eve in Guy’s Hospital. His death was caused by inflammation of the lungs, and his loss is severely mourned by his mates and all who knew him.

Daily Telegraph
27 June, 1868

No. 1490. - VOL. LIII. SATURDAY, JULY 4, 1868. WITH A SUPPLEMENT, FIVEPENCE.

BIRTHS AND DEATHS.

The following is the return by the Registrar-General of births and deaths in London, during the week ending Saturday, June 27: –

The deaths registered in London during the week were 1454. It was the twenty-sixth week of the year; and the average number of deaths for that week is, with a correction for the increase of population, 1304. The deaths in the present return exceed by 150 the estimated amount, and exceed by 226 the number recorded in the preceding week.

METROPOLITAN NEWS.

A complimentary dinner was given last Saturday to Sir John Young, who has been succeeded in the governorship of New South Wales by the Earl of Belmore. The colonial department was represented by the Duke of Buckingham and Mr Adderley, and of the guests a large number were connected to the Australian colonies. In response to the toast of his health, Sir John Young sketched out a great future for Australia; for although fortunes might not be made as rapidly as they once were, the general progress of the people was satisfactory, and wealth was increasing. He attributed the prosperity of the colonies to the marked absence of intemperance, and to the indomitable energy of the people.

THE AUSTRALASIAN COLONIES.

The arrival at Portsmouth of his Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh on Friday se’nnight, and the
complimentary
dinner given to Sir John Young on the following Saturday – very apposite incidents – naturally bring the Australasian colonies under the public notice at home. The Prince, we rejoice to know, has completely recovered from the dangerous wound inflicted on him in New South Wales by the pistol-ball of an assassin.

We hardly dare contemplate what might have been the state of feeling, from the palace to the rudest hovel, had the dastardly attempt upon the Duke’s life proved effectual. Happily, there is no need that we should do so. The empire has been mercifully spared a great calamity.

It chances that the colony in which the murderous attempt was made had been presided over during the preceeding six years by Sir John Young, whom, on Saturday last, within a few hours of the arrival of the Duke of Edinburgh, several colonists of New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, and Tasmania, just now residing in London, entertained at dinner. The presence of the Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, and of Mr. Adderley, M.P., the Under Secretary, on the occasion, will be regarded by the public on both sides of the world as a sufficient assurance that the crime which had nearly cost us one of our Royal Princes has in no way been taken to cast a shade upon the loyalty of the colonists amongst whom it was perpetrated.

The two incidents thus brought into juxtaposition may serve to fix our
thoughts for a moment or two upon our antipodean colonies. We know not that they can be justly said to be looked upon by Englishmen in general with frigid indifference. There are but few families in this country some member of which has not cast in his lot with the people of one or other of Her Majesty’s Australasian possessions, and whose feelings, consequently, are not interested in the well-being of those infant empires. If for the most part, as Sir John Young intimates, Abyssinia is better known to the British mind than Australia, if no great excitement can be got up here over the political crises that happen there, it is yet a mistake to set down these phenomena to any lack of sympathy between the mother country and her daughter. Parents are not necessarily devoid of affection for their children because they do not estimate the joys and sorrows, the red-letter days, and the “black Fridays” of all their juvenile tribe at the same importance as the young ones themselves. We know that nations, like individuals, must bear the yoke in their youth – we hope, not without reason, that early discipline will develop manly qualities – and if we do not make so much fuss over colonial trials as the colonists themselves regard as indispensable to any proof of strong attachment, it is far more owing to pre-occupation by matters to which we are bound to attend than to any conscious neglect of interests which we might and ought but do not attend.

No statement made by the late Governor of New South Wales will be received with more general satisfaction than that in which he concisely submitted to his audience several indications of the substantial prosperity of this group of British colonies. That they should be more distinguished for energy in business than for political propriety and statesmanlike wisdom is one of the inevitable results of their position. Individual affairs necessarily take precedence of the affairs of the community in new and thinly-peopled territories. There the first law of life is to subdue and replenish the earth, and man’s business is not so much with his fellows as with Nature. But whilst the Australians are making rapid advances in material comfort and even affluence, and by their people’s industry are causing the wilderness to smile, we are not to imagine that they are indifferent to the demands of on the one hand, or the benefits on the other, of well-planned social organisations. At great expense, with unfaltering determination, and not without many personal risks and some loss of life, they have put down that form of brigandage which took the name of bushranging, and have thereby achieved the most indispensible condition of civilisation – the security of life and property. Sir John Young testifies of the colonists that they are a most orderly and law-abiding race. In some respects, indeed, they have the advantage of the mother country. Unrestrained by many of the antique conventionalisms which impede our progress, they have happily solved some problems which continue to puzzle us at home. They have not now to fight the battle of religious equality; they have settled on a broad and permanent basis the question of the education of the people; they have made some considerable advances in regard to the means of a higher intellectual culture; and they are encouraging, and to a gratifying extent have succeeded in establishing, habits of sobriety.

Where solid advantages like these are possessed by young nations, political struggles, even when intense, can involve no very serious issues; and great latitude may, with comparative harmlessness, be given to party spirit. We who remain at home may catch the echoes of these colonial strifes without any serious alarm
as to which way they may chance to be decided. They do not touch the bases of colonial prosperity. A quick succession of Ministerial crises and frequent general elections, which, after all, do not remove existing dead-locks, might be perilous here; but there they do not reach down to the depths of the social system. No doubt, they have their passing inconveniences; but their tendency, in the long run, is to give breadth and power to political experience. And this is precisely the qualification which new self-governing communities stand most in need of.

Even in regard to political economy, in which our colonists are under the greatest temptation to get astray, we entertain no feeling of concern as to the future. The laws which determine the wealth of nations are sure to vindicate themselves, sooner or later, in countries where thought and speech and action are free; and those laws are better learned by practice than by theory. Of course, there will always be, in Australia as elsewhere, a balance of good and evil. Utopias exist only in the imagination, and will not bear the touch of facts. But, at least, our kinsfolk on the opposite side of the world are to be congratulated, if not envied, as regards their position. The countries of their adoption are in the freshness of manhood. They will bequeath to prosperity a rich inheritance.

They add strength and grandeur to the empire to which they cling with so enduring an affection.
They are spelling out lessons which may be of unanticipated service even to the whole world.
The return of the Duke of Edinburgh furnishes us with a fitting opportunity for recognising them as members of the British family. We greet them heartily, and bid them “God
speed!”