The Ghost of Waterloo (20 page)

He scanned the room as he ordered a glass of ale. The seating was only lightly filled but it still took him a moment to find the journalist – the small windows did little to lift the gloomy light and the occasional whale-oil lamp or candle in a sconce fought through the clouds of pipe smoke.

Before he located him sitting alone at a table, Dunne spotted a familiar face at another bench alongside Dawks. It was Cornelius O’Bannion. His drinking companion was facing the other way, but the young Irishman answered the Patterer’s nod with a wave and a smile.

The Patterer invited himself to sit down opposite the writer. He carried a pint bottle of rum from the bar, hoping the two shillings thus laid out would be rewarded.

‘What do you want?’ Dawks grunted.

‘To buy you a drink.’

The bloodshot eyes narrowed. ‘And then what?’

‘A courteous word of thanks to start with, and then a gesture in return: information.’

The journalist belched and scowled. ‘Did His Holiness send you – the sainted Reverend Ralph?’

Dunne shook his head and poured a generous measure into the empty glass opposite, leaving himself out of the round.

‘I don’t get on with editors,’ Dawks complained. The Patterer noted with interest that the drunk’s speech was slowed, but still clear and coherent, not slurred. ‘Oh, old Mansfield’s not a bad stick, but I know he only tolerates my habits because he thinks he can “save” me – and because I’m good at what I do. Most of the time. I’m no hack, y’know. I don’t get on with generals, dukes and kings, either.’

The Patterer frowned in incomprehension and Obadiah Dawks elaborated. ‘’Twas the great general himself – wonderful Wellington – who brought me down. Twice. Although I own that one slap was my damn’ fault. Nothing personal.’

The writer reached for a refill. ‘Ah, yes, 20 June 1815. How can I ever forget it? I was working for the
London Gazette
, the official paper. Sent down the coast, I was, waiting for the cutter to come from Belgium with the news from Waterloo. Not just the result; we knew that, but not in official detail. No, the big intelligence coming was a fair copy of the actual letter from the Duke himself to Prinny, the First Minister and the brass at Horse Guards.

‘They said later that it all went arse-up and all happened – rather, didn’t happen – because I was queer. Again. Well, it was bloody cold waiting and I may have dosed myself with too much brandy.

‘So, the cutter arrived and I was rowed out alongside to receive the magic missive and then rush it to London. When the bloody sailor tossed the oilskin package to me – I missed badly and it ended up in the briny.

‘Of course, damn his eyes, a fellow from
The Times
was there and he scooped me.’

‘He did
what
to you?’ queried Dunne.

‘Well,’ replied Dawks. ‘He fished the parcel out of the water with his hat – scooped it up like a fish. Back in Printing House Square and the rest of Grub Street the word gained currency and, so, when one is outmanoeuvred for intelligence by a rival, one is said to have been “scooped”.’ He shrugged. ‘Well, at least I’m famous for something.

‘Any old road, on 22 June
The Times
had the story of the ages. I can still remember the opening words…’ He shook his head but continued faultlessly: ‘ “The attack succeeded in every point, the enemy was forced from his position on the heights, and fled in the utmost confusion…” And
I
had lost it!’ As tears welled in the journalist’s eyes and his voice shook, the Patterer looked away, touched by his pain.

The pressman sniffed noisily, drank deeply and continued. ‘And then, in ’26, I wrote a squib for
The Times
, that Wellington had taken his good friend, Mrs Arbuthnot, to a masquerade ball dressed as a man. Mrs A. complained that she had, in fact, worn a costume as Mary Queen of Scots. The Peer threatened to sue the editor, Thomas Barnes, and I was dismissed. Again.

‘Our Gracious King did for me, too. Do you know what a pipe is? Not the tobacco one, the agitator’s pipe?’

Dunne did know that those pipes were pamphlets, usually handwritten and in doggerel. They were anonymous and scandalous and, by tradition, rolled up (hence their name) and widely distributed, tucked into public places where they would be readily found.

They were popular in the colony as well as in London. An earlier Governor, Philip Gidley King, yet another among many an adversary of Captain John Macarthur, had suffered greatly from attacks in pipes. A notorious one read:

Even when the Governor was recovering from illness, a tormentor wrote:

‘Yes, yes, I know about pipes,’ said the Patterer, ‘but what are they to do with your troubles?’ He wished the man, who was fast becoming maudlin, would get down to brass tacks – and gold and silver ones, too.

But, no, Dawks rambled on. ‘You also know about limericks, the verses?’ The Patterer nodded with a sigh. Yes, he knew the popular entertainments, usually five lines of improbable event and innuendo. They had begun lusty life as cheeky songs composed on the march by bored Irish soldiers, hence their name.

‘A jealous gentleman paid me to write one, to go into a pipe,’ said the journalist. ‘It was against the King’s mistress, Lady Conyngham – what was I thinking of? – who was rumoured to be receiving special lessons in the arts of mounting and jumping from her riding master; and she was famed for her breasts, which she flaunted scandalously.’ He cleared his throat and recited:

‘I was unmasked as the author and self-preservation suggested that exile in Botany Bay was the wisest course.’

The Patterer’s patience had evaporated. ‘That’s all very interesting, I’m sure, but I want to know what you meant in your report on the bank robbery: why it was a wise move by the thieves to leave the plate and the sovereigns.’

A cunning look crossed Dawks’s face. ‘So would a lot of other people, I am sure.’ He tossed down the freshly filled glass before him. ‘I know something that could be very valuable, and dangerous, yes. So for that reason, and because you and I are together in almost the same line of business, perhaps I should give you a clue, free.

‘The answer to your question is not so much
what
, but
who
. And the monks and friars know all.

Dunne was baffled. ‘
Who
“knows all”?’

Dawks focused with difficulty. ‘I’m an inky-fingered scribbler. Indeed, you shall have a limerick of your own, a valuable verse. Yes, why not? I’ll write out the matter for you now.’

He fumbled in his pockets and produced a crumpled piece of paper and a stubby pencil. Drunk though he was, he wrote deftly and handed the sheet to his companion, who read the beautiful copperplate script aloud:

But, before the Patterer could question the meaning, if indeed there was one, the opportunity was lost. Suddenly Dawks’s eyes glazed and he flopped across the table and began to snore. Vigorous shaking failed to rouse him.

I must let Rossi hear more from the journalist, Dunne decided. And if this mountain of mystery can’t go to Mahomet, then Captain Mahomet must come here. He turned away from the unconscious man. ‘Cornelius, lad, will you keep an eye on him until I return shortly?’

‘With pleasure, your honour,’ said the Irishman cheerily.

The Patterer headed back south along George Street, for the Police Office at the marketplace.

Chapter Twenty-seven

When Nicodemus Dunne, leading Captain Rossi and the Flying Pieman, returned to the Cat and Fiddle taproom, the inebriated bard had flown.

The rum bottle was gone, too. The only reminder of the recent rendezvous was the continued presence of Cornelius O’Bannion. He was alone now and embarrassed at having to explain that the journalist had apparently woken abruptly from his drunken daze, charged out of the bar and disappeared. At noon, he volunteered, only minutes ago.

‘How did he give you the slip, Con?’ asked the Patterer.

‘I was in the necessary, having a slash,’ said the young Irishman scowling. ‘And when I got back, sure, he was gone. I looked outside but he was nowhere to be seen along George Street. He must have gone uphill – there.’ He gestured towards the higher parts of The Rocks.

Rossi hesitated, fractionally, as he digested this information. ‘Please God,’ he sighed. ‘Don’t let him be in the Holy Land!’

The Pieman, who was a relative new chum in the colony, frowned, so Dunne patiently explained the perceived problem.

The Holy Land, also called Little Dublin, was, he said, a common nickname for that part of The Rocks most favoured by the many Irish in Sydney. Oh, to be sure, there were some Mahometans along the narrow streets, and Jews had been there since the First Fleet arrived forty years earlier; but perhaps a quarter of the 2000 or so Rocks residents – men and women, free settlers, sailors, whores, Emancipists or ticket-of-leave lags – were Hibernian by birth, kinship, association or simply inclination. Even many of the soldiers who visited the knocking shops and drinking kennels were Irish recruits.

And the proportion was even higher in a certain part of town: there at least half wore the green. Captain Rossi’s disquiet, and the Patterer shared it, centred on the fact that if the man they were after lived or hid in the area from Harrington Street up to Cumberland Street, in particular the parts of these streets flanking Surrey Lane, and wanted no truck with outsiders, then the wall of silence would be unbreachable.

Dawks may well be a ‘stranger’, as the Irish called anyone without Liffey water, milk stout, whiskey or any poteen gladdening their hearts, but if he was somehow involved in the robbery he would be protected, and anyone nosing around and asking too many of the wrong questions might well be silenced forever. Dark, crooked alleyways, even tunnels, led from The Rocks down to the water and men could disappear, into the Cove or even press-ganged into servitude on ships short of crew. On the other hand, if the journalist had simply stumbled on some clues,
he
could become the target.

The Patterer shrugged. There was only one way to find out and one direction to go: up, into the tangled tenements and onto the spine of the violent village, where life matched the hardness of its name, The Rocks.

The climb began to snatch the Captain’s wind – he was, after all, a man of fifty-two, more used to driving than walking. As William King and Dunne paused to let the older man catch his breath, the Pieman pointed to a narrow lane lined with roughly constructed terraces and tiny cottages. The pavement was uneven, in places it was simply carelessly hewn stone steps. ‘You can see why I don’t know this area,’ he said. ‘I could not wheel my pie-cart here!

‘And the people.’ He nodded at a man and woman, cheaply dressed and both smoking dudeens, short clay pipes, as they lazed on doorsteps, studiously ignoring the visitors. ‘They’re clearly town people; they could be from St Giles or Seven Dials, or any other London rookery. Why do they still call all the Irish here “croppies” when they clearly are no longer small farmers?
And
they pick at old scabs, old wounds.’

‘What prompted that?’ asked Rossi.

William King put a forefinger to his lips. ‘Listen.’

They obeyed and could now clearly hear voices raised in song and drifting from a building at the end of the lane…

The singers soared sadly:

‘That,’ said the Pieman when the last notes had faded away, ‘is called “The Croppy Boy” and was the rallying song, the anthem of rebels in Ireland in ’98. And the name seems to have stuck, even here. As have all the old animosities, on both sides.’

‘Bah!’ exclaimed Captain Rossi. ‘It’s officially a “treason song”, like the one hailing the bushranger – you know it, “Bold Jack Donohoe”. What that dirge fails to say is that “bold” Donohoe was a lifer from Dublin who started his career here as a thief robbing oxcarts because they were slow enough for him to stalk on foot – he had no horse. Then there’s “The Wearing of the Green”. Sing any of those in most other parts of the colony and you’d get arrested. Only Irish troublemakers – Whiteboys, Rightboys, Ribbon Men, Hearts of Steel, whatever gang it is – favour them.’

‘So,’ said the Pieman, ‘it’s all about sectarian differences, for an Irish community here?’

Rossi shook his head. ‘Oh, they wear their religion quite lightly. There’s talk of a grand church coming, but now they’re content to worship in their homes or at a small chapel. No, William, their real religion is their clannishness.’

Dunne had said little to the Police Chief during their journey. He was still smarting from the strange earlier snub over John Creighton’s secret role, but now he felt he should speak up. ‘They don’t have many options,’ he said mildly but firmly. ‘I mean that although perhaps half of the 16000 convicts here and many of the 1000 or more soldiers guarding them are Irish and Catholic, they had to wait fifteen years for the colony to have a mass or a Romish wedding. And even then masses could only be celebrated every three weeks – and under the eyes of the police.’