The Roving Party (4 page)

T
HE MORNING DAMP ON THE PADDOCKS
was rising white in the sunshine when John Batman emerged from the treeline with his greatcoat dragging over the growth, his arms full of bits of bark and grass. He passed the store shed and the shambles still rigged with two lonely hanging ewe’s hocks and sat himself on the ground by the cook fire the men had burning. Black Bill was there, and Pigeon and John Crook of the Parramatta, all crouched at the coals drinking tea in tin mugs. Their dark faces studied Batman as he worked the bark hulls he’d been carrying out flat. They soon saw what he was about and John Crook reached into the fire’s gut and sorted through the coals for something of use to Batman. He placed a few choice embers on the bark and on the moss spread there and Batman rolled the coals and the bark into one long cudgel which he bound up with twists of grass.

On the other side of the fire stationed away from the blacks the assignees studied the goings-on but it meant nothing to them. They picked at the boils infesting their necks and stared.
John Batman blew into the opening and called the coals into life. They’d taken no breakfast but the smokes above the hill put an urgency into Batman’s planning.

On yer feet, he said.

The Dharug men led the party away from the farmhouse around the curves of the plains where the unburnt ground was dressed in saplings and the bracken grew as plush as grass. They made along the boundary of Kingston, tracking beside the wall of forest that rose sheer from the fields, until they reached the rim of Batman’s holdings. Here the stands of gums in blossom, the fiddlebacked acacias and the gauntly made myrtles blanketed the hillside as far as they could see. It was a stretch of forest entirely hostile to folk of any nation, native or not. That beggardly clutch hung in rags and animal pelts and toting rusted firearms walked that ground as if pilgrims guided by the word of a demented god.

It was a hard slog that first morning. The terrain was overgrown and snow stood in the shadows lingering from winter. It was through old country they went, a thousand generations black. They walked hours up foothills and down gutters, passing through a draw of conifer stags burned out by wildfire where a raw wind stirred the branches. They wound through a gully strewn with charcoal that they crushed under their feet.
In the distance the southern approach of Ben Lomond rose out of the forest clefts, its bald peak noosed in clouds, and they followed the Parramatta men ever towards it. Around noon they stopped to eat. Tree ferns made a vault overhead and the men crouched at their bases scraping leeches from their feet and waiting for food. William Gould had a bag of smoked meat for their breakfast which he distributed to every man until he had one last strip remaining.

Give it to Black Bill over there, Batman said.

Horsehead pulled his lip back in disgust. Why dont he eat them boots instead, he said.

Bill worked the meat around as he leaned on his gun, the ligaments of his jaw flexing, his gaze on the old cur crouched across from him. He passed a water canteen back and forth with the Dharugs and spat mouthfuls, darkening the stones. They lingered a moment longer in the stand of tree ferns as the assigned men rebound their feet and once more lurched into the scrub.

Now they pushed through regions of landslip where fallen trees lay mouldering in their furrows and saplings sprouted along the very boughs of the fallen. The rovers mounted those logs one after another and felt the sun on their heads before crossing again into the cold forest cavity. They walked up a talus and over runs of cragged stone burst forth from the earth like
filthy cuspids, stones that foreshadowed the dolerite stacks of the mountain looming in their vision. As they slogged up and down corrugations in the country Horsehead fell in alongside Jimmy Gumm and spoke into his ear.

Dont let that cat’s turd get away with it, he said.

With what?

Givin you a beltin that’s what.

Gumm looked around at him.

I mean a boy like that. It aint right.

Up ahead John Batman turned to take a summary of his party. Horsehead was quiet for a few yards. But when Batman continued on he spoke again. Us old hands ought to learn him some respect.

I dont need yer help, said Gumm.

No, I dont reckon you do.

I’ll see it done meself.

There’s bugger-all to him. Just careful you dont kill the wretch.

They filed on down a wooded swale where the groundcover dragged at their skins. Jimmy Gumm leaned in to speak in a whisper. When the moment presents I will have after him. You watch me back all right?

My oath I will.

But not until it presents, you hear.

They walked all day and deep into the afternoon. As the circular sun carved into the hills they came to a shallow rock face which Batman bade them scale, one pulling up another until all stood on top. They scanned the stretch of country rolling around the bend in the earth away below. It was a sheet of bluish green. The native hunting grounds made a patchwork of that textured expanse where the grasslands showed through and the herds of kangaroo could be seen, turning as one upon the pastures.

What had the men’s attention though was not the country but a twist of smoke hung straight in the still air, a few miles distant to the east of the mountain. Those unquiet faces staring. A cloud shadow crossed the forest like the silhouette of a ship’s hull moving over the seabed. They lowered each other down the rocks, making what they could of any handholds until their feet hit the hard ground once more. But Black Bill stayed on that lookout. Glaring at the crawl of white smoke etched large against the blue he was sucking a gum leaf between his lips until in time the men called him down, and he turned away to join them.

T
HEY MADE CAMP AS THE LIGHT
drained from the sky and it was a miserable camp set beneath a mountain pine that had grown around a rock and split in half. A copse of candlebarks grew nearby, aged like rheumatic fingers and thickly boled. Moss crept up almost everything and the fust of dead wood and mould filled the nostrils; mushrooms as round and white as skulls glowed otherworldly in the shadows.

They piled up wood in the lee of that strange pine and Batman made a fire from his firestick and blew, banking wood on top. The assignees unwound the crusted bindings from their feet and placed the rags near the fire to dry, and in the throw of firelight the men hauled out their portions of flour and added a pound or so each to a communal damper that William Gould kneaded on a slab of bark. A wind picked up and no one spoke but each of them listened to the darkened forest beyond and clutched their loaded firearms across their laps. Soon Black Bill took himself from beside the fire and sat with Pigeon and
Crook where they shared a pipe at a small remove from the rest. Bill stretched his legs out before him and in turn hollowed his cheeks sucking on the stem.

How you come by them boots, friend? Horsehead was looking at him.

Through honest labour. Friend. He spoke around the pipe in his mouth and the words came as white balls that pilled and dissipated.

Huntin your own kind for bounty aint no sort of honest I know.

You ought to shut your mouth about honest I reckon, said John Batman. A crim like you.

Better born a crim than a bloody orang-outan.

Batman leaned forward. I aint above cutting yer tongue out. My word I aint.

Horsehead rolled back his shirt sleeves as if to demonstrate his credentials for just such a life and the firelight showed up the mare’s head inked into his pale prison forearm, baring its teeth, its mane streaming in the wind. His hands were inked over in outlandish devices amassed from the netherparts of the globe, some faded and ill-defined and others freshly needled into his skin. A silence stole over the camp as the assignees chewed their tobacco and gazed at those tattoos.

The boy was first to speak. He looked at Batman. Have you bin this way before?

I have, said Batman.

The boy squinted through the faint rain that was now falling. Come after blacks was you?

Bushrangers. Batman was shining like some river creature hauled freshly ashore as the wet leather of his greatcoat gave back the flames and he looked around at Baxter. Welshman, he said. More wood.

There were a few moments of smoke and spark from the fire.

But there’s more than bushrangers out here, continued Batman. There’s the clans. A good many.

Can you find em?

Batman stared at the boy. Be sure of it.

And if we dont find no blacks, we’ll just haul that one there in and be done with it, said Horsehead and he cocked his thumb in Bill’s direction.

Black Bill was by the split pine, keeping out of the rain. In his hands was the longbladed dagger he wore behind his neck. It was inscribed over in spiral patterns by means of a steel burin and honed viciously keen on a width of east coast sandstone. He turned the dagger point on his palm and kept his hat brim low so that his face receded in the shadows. They all watched him.

What sort a damn ignorance makes you think we could haul him somewheres he hadnt a mind to go? said John Batman.

Horsehead spat on the fire. I seen him with Bickle. He aint much frolic.

What he is or what he aint aint for you to say.

I know what I see.

And that is all you know. I guarantee you. If you was to draw a bead on him, what do you think would happen? You think he’d stick up his hands?

Horsehead sat in silence. Glowered.

Pay attention to me now cause I’ll tell you what. He’ll run you from balls to breakfast with that there blade of his. Spill yer innermosts over the stones before you so much as draw down the cock.

The Vandemonian replaced the knife into the leather sheath strung between his shoulders and he tipped his hat on an angle to better meet the eyes of the assignees gazing at him across the wavering heat of the fire.

A black man raised white, said Batman. Think upon that fact. Not a day passing where some slander aint spoken in his presence. How many times you suppose he has defended hisself? I tell you somethin else. He keeps account. I seen him break a man’s arm twelve months after the fact. This fellow had once drawn a blade against Bill, but he wont draw nothin again God help him.

Horsehead spat a string of tobacco liquor onto the fire where it hissed and raised a stink like charring hair.

I reckon even halfwits like you gang of dirts know of the Man Eater, said Batman.

The men nodded at mention of Jeffries.

You’ll likely have heard tell it was John Darke what finally caught him, said Batman.

They nodded once more.

John Darke I was told by some, said Gumm. But Jeffries give himself up. Boneless coward that he was.

That aint the strict truth of the matter, said Batman. He was pursued by several parties but it was him, Black Bill there, caught the monster.

Him?

The selfsame.

The Vandemonian leaned forward and flung the dregs from his mug over the fire. His wet clothes clung to him. I was a party to the taking of Jeffries, he said. But merely a party.

The Man Eater told me it was you took him, said Batman. I was there too dont forget.

Under the gaze of the eight men Bill filled his mug from the billycan. Rain fell from the limbs above, fell and vanished in the fire’s gut. They watched him crush a gum leaf into his tea and then stir it with a long black finger. A good many things come out of his mouth, he said. But for the most part they were lies or worse. I will tell you this much though. Then Bill began upon a history he’d recounted a thousand times in grog shops and stock huts and walking the trails of the back country.

I saw her with my own honest eyes, he said above the popping of the fire. A woman hardly older than you, boy. Blackened about her eyes, missing her front teeth, bleeding and staggering and near enough to naked she was. Crying as if she never meant to stop. Something truly awful had visited her for which
she had no words to tell. I never saw its like. I was raised in the house of James Cox, Esquire, raised as good as blood, raised alongside his own children. I saw a good many things in my life there but now I was seeing something wholly new. When this woman arrived at the house she was tended by Mr. Cox’s maid and given rum and water for the pain and put to bed. Come the following day she’d regained herself somewhat but more was the pity for her.

I believed her deranged and I dont doubt even now that she was. I told Mr. Cox and he was inclined to agree but nonetheless we went to her room and tried to get some sense from her. In the darkened room where she tolerated no light and where she was hidden among the bedclothes with her face covered over she commenced to tell us her story. And Mr. Cox and I, we listened and scarcely believed what we heard.

Bill paused in his storytelling and drank from his mug of tea. The rain was easing and the thudding on his hat had slowed. He raked his eyes across them.

Two men—Jeffries and a companion—had fallen upon this woman’s hut and upon her family, he said, but to hear her describe them we thought they were devils set forth from the core of the earth all ablaze and bent on blood spill. Most of what come out was barely more than nonsense but what I heard, what I understood at least, stopped the marrow in my bones.

Seems these men entered her hut in the evening. They had
hold of a servant belonged of her neighbour and held a pistol to his head. They entered the hut where were sitting the woman and her husband and her infant and they screamed like animals and bade the householders to stay down. They knelt that old servant man among the child’s toys and proceeded to release the hammer. I saw his body when it was buried. The whole front of his head shot clean away. The woman’s clothes were rank with gore even a week later. Then a second pistol was produced and the husband was shot.

The lags were unmoved by the tale. They pulled their blankets around and wiped their faces as the rain ran off their hair.

Bill nodded, continued. Aye. If that was the worst, surely you’d sleep the night and wake come sunrise and never think again upon the Man Eater. But I have not finished. Not yet at least. So he marched that woman from her hut at pistolpoint while his partner sacked the place for food. The infant wailing in her arms. And he snatched the child’s leg and tore the child away and to hear this woman tell it he tore the very blood from her beating heart. He tore that child away and set to dashing it against a gum tree and all that sad scrub was filled with the sound.

The company was silent as the Vandemonian swirled his tea and stared into the dark fluid as if he might there find an answer or at least find a question worth his breath. He swirled the tea and swallowed and went on.

Having been marched a dozen miles by Jeffries and his partner and having suffered their depraved attentions over some days, the woman made her escape by chewing through her bindings in the black of night. Her husband had survived his wounds but even the living sight of him seemed no great comfort to her and it was some time before Mr. Cox’s maid was able to move her from that bed. I sat with her a good long while and listened to her ramblings and I came to know the Man Eater by his deeds and to see him outlined in my mind. So when Mr. Cox put together a party intended to track the pair, I was the very first to put myself forward. Our own Mr. Batman organised a party too, after hearing my account of the matter.

John Batman nodded. It was meself, William Gould there and another fellow, Smith.

What did they have on his head? said Howell Baxter.

Ten pound and yer ticket.

Ten pound?

Ten. And I tell you, wasnt a scoundrel in the district thinkin of nothin else.

Black Bill observed this exchange with dark and unblinking eyes. When a fresh silence descended upon the campsite he spoke again.

It was Mr. Darke found the Man Eater when perchance he saw him skitter in the trees around the flanks of his farmhouse. Jeffries put into the scrub and lost Darke along the gullied banks of the Nile where no sort of bushman could lose his
quarry. Tracks stay a week in the soft earth there and will even confide the frame and height of the mark for those adept at the reading of it. But Darke is no sort of bushman. No sort at all. I was in Mr. Cox’s party who set out with Darke that evening.

Jeffries wasted no effort hiding his trace and it ran so plainly we went at a trot and followed the tracks without danger of losing them. All night we followed and we arrived at a lonely stock hut as the sun was staining the sky and we found inside some of Mr. Darke’s men sleeping off a skinful of rum. You could smell the reeking even outside the hut. Mr. Darke called them out as drunkards and promised floggings for all and raged until a bottle was handed his way. He partook of a dram and then it was himself splayed out between them, necking from the bottle and sleeping through the freezing dawn.

The men had their ears bent listening to Bill’s tale and when he paused to take a sip of his tea they also raised their mugs and drank. The Vandemonian flicked a finger at the billycan in the fire for another serving and the boy obliged by lifting it away with a stick and pouring using his sleeve tugged over his fingers against the burning handle. With a fresh steaming mug in his hands Bill went on and the men listened now like he was giving scripture.

Jeffries was nearby for sure. I read his trace past the hut and off aways. I surveyed the shifting weather and scouted Jeffries’ trace some hundred yards onto Mill’s Plain. As I was running my eye across the line of trees I saw him, dressed in a long dark
coat of leather and wending through the gaunt scrub. To my eyes he was wholly unnatural in that landscape. So I shouldered my weapon and drew a sight on him.

Bill pulled on his tea. I could have struck him, he said. No doubt in my mind. But if I missed he was off once more into the wilds and gone. I had to be sure, you see. For that reason I returned to the hut and woke Mr. Darke and the others and they come half dressed and stinking drunk and we surrounded the Man Eater before he knew it. One of Darke’s men was up to him first and presented his gun to Jeffries, which reduced him to grovelling of the most pitiful sort. They beat him and kicked him and stomped him. Even Mr. Darke, even Mr. Cottrell the constable. I stopped them; if I hadnt surely one more murder would have been committed.

That Man Eater, he was a sorry wretch. Sorry of sight and sorry of deed. They turned out his pockets and what do you suppose they found? You know well and good what they found. An arm severed at the elbow. Rancid and chewed up. It was belonged of his partner murdered cruelly in his sleep. That was a revelation to harden the most amiable among the hunting party. One of Darke’s men urinated on the Man Eater’s bare skin and a knife was pressed to his shoulder and someone screamed that he would be served his own fried arm for breakfast. The Man Eater was hysterical. They beat him out cold. Then he was roped and dragged naked to Mr. Cox’s residence and that’s how it was done. How he was caught.

The boy spoke up. You oughta of killed him.

Would you have?

My bloody oath, said the boy.

Then you would have hanged alongside him. Bill turned and looked across the selection of gaunt faces. I took my leave from Darke for fear of being a party to murder and I fell in the following day with the Leetermairremener, who are a kind people. Around their hearth fire we gathered and I ate their possum and offered my tobacco and I told the story of the Man Eater and the slaughter he so freely countenanced. The old men of the tribe allowed me measure to speak and called me son and smoked my tobacco but I was clothed as a white man and they understood me as white. They listened and nodded as I spoke and the children hid from me behind their mothers. Some of their retinue wore shirts or trousers looted from stock huts and they had a single flintlock which was rusted all but useless and I believe they thought themselves versed in the comings and goings of whitefolk, but as they listened to the awful tale I told, the old men of the tribe grew into the knowledge that their solitary ways were ever closer to being undone.