Corroboree (14 page)

The coachman snatched the swinging watch, and stuffed it into his pocket. ‘Don't preach, sir,' he advised. ‘I'm not partial to being preached at, especially when I'm hoisting.'

Christopher handed over his purse. ‘I hope you're damn well satisfied,' he told the coachman. ‘I worked a month of late hours for that.'

‘Oh,
well
satisfied, sir,' said the coachman. Then he turned to his fellow thieves, and whistled, and said, ‘Come on, now, we're set.'

Just then, however, Eyre heard another whistling; softer and lower. It sounded as if something were flying towards them through the air, like a fast and predatory hawk. And
then the coachman was suddenly knocked in the side of the head by a whirling piece of wood, and shouted, ‘
Ah!
'—just that—and somersaulted right over the side of the phaeton and fell heavily on to the dust.

Red-pepper-face stepped back in surprise, but then there was another whistle, sharper this time, and a long stonetipped spear flashed right throught his throat, in one side and out of the other. He looked up at Eyre in outrage, his eyes crimson with shock; and then he raised his hands and clung on to the shaft which protruded from either side of his neck, and opened his mouth in an enormous bloody yawn.

A second spear hit the bodywork of the coach, so violently that the phaeton rocked on its worn-out springs. The limping man who had been holding the horses began to shuffle-
kick
-shuffle-
kick
back across the street, in the direction of the Cockatoo tippling-house; but a third spear struck him squarely in the back, and he dropped flat on his face.

The last of the thieves ran off so fast that a kangaroo couldn't have caught him, his sailcloth trousers flapping in panic.

There was a moment of utmost tension. Eyre slowly raised his head, and peered into the darkness of the waste ground. The insects were still singing, and the moths still pattered around the carriage-lamp. Over at the Cockatoo, one of the men had fallen dead-drunk off his chair, and the others were bawling at him to
wake up, Jack, you idle sod
, and hooting with laughter.

Down on the roadway, the coachman stirred and moaned. ‘Christ Almighty.'

‘What happened?' Christopher asked, floury-faced.

‘I'm not sure,' said Eyre. ‘Wait.'

They stayed where they were, with Christopher gripping Eyre's wrist, listening and sweating. Then, unexpectedly close, a skeleton appeared out of the darkness; or what looked like a skeleton. When it came nearer, Eyre saw that it was a blackfellow, his ribs and his bones
outlined on his grease-smeared body in chalky white. He was naked except for a headband of kangaroo fur and feathers, and he carried two spears and a spear-thrower.

One by one, silently, like remembered shadows from a prehistoric past, other Aborigines appeared, until there were seven in all, standing around the carriage naked and painted. Eyre could smell them on the wind; that distinctive fatty pungent odour, mingled with the fragrance of woodsmoke.

One of them, the tallest, leaned over and picked up the fighting boomerang which he had used to knock down the coachman.

Eyre stood up in the coach, holding on to the door for support. ‘You came to our rescue,' he said, his voice off-key. ‘We thank you for that.' He rubbed at his shoulder with his free hand and suddenly realised that he was cold.

The skeleton Aborigine came forward and stood close to the coach. He raised his fingers in a quick series of complicated signs, without saying a word. Then he solemnly reached into a small kangaroo-skin pouch which hung around his neck, and took out a piece of stone. He handed it to Eyre, bowed his head slightly, and then retreated into the darkness. The other Aborigines followed him; until within a few moments they were all gone.

‘Well, now,' said Christopher, sounding shaken. ‘What the devil was all
that
about? I'd like to know?'

Eyre sat down, and examined the fragment of stone. It was a piece of granite, sharpened and pointed, with curling decorations carved on it, and red ochre rubbed into the indentations.

‘It looks like a token,' he said. ‘Some sort of a sign.'

‘But what's it all
about
, Eyre? For goodness' sake! And what are we going to do about these chaps? Dead as dodos, those chaps in the street, I should say. And the coachman looks rather more than out of sorts.'

Eyre dropped the stone into his pocket, and climbed down from the phaeton. The coachman was sitting up
now, dusty and dazed; a huge red lump rising on the side of his forehead.

‘Christ Almighty,' he cursed; and spat dust and saliva.

Eyre knelt down beside him, and retrieved his watch and Christopher's purse. ‘You're fortunate you weren't killed,' he said. ‘Your villainous friends were, though, two of them.'

The coachman squinted through unfocused eyes at the bodies of red-pepper face and the limping man lying in the road. His high hat had been knocked off by the boomerang, and Eyre could see now by the light of the coachlamp that his head was shaved, a lumpy skull covered with bone-white bristles. It gave him a brutish, half-human appearance; but at the same time there was something remarkably vulnerable about him; like a retarded child.

‘Christ Almighty,' he spat again.

‘You realise I'm going to have to call the police,' said Eyre.

Grunting, the coachman managed to heave himself up on to his feet, and lean unsteadily against the phaeton's rear wheel. He dragged a rag out of his pocket, and wiped his face. ‘Well, then, sir,' he said, ‘that, I suppose, is your privilege. But I should like to know what happened here. Was it
you
who knocked me down? And what are these spears?'

Red-pepper-face was lying legs-apart on his back, his dead hands still clutching the shaft of the spear which had skewered his neck. His eyes were wide open; and he looked as if he were just about to explain what had happened to him.

‘It seems we have friends, this gentleman and I,' said Eyre.

‘Blackfellows, sir?'

Eyre nodded. He was quite as confused and disoriented as the coachman must have been; but he thrust his hands into his pockets and did his best to walk confidently
around the side of the coach as if he had expected this sudden rescue all along.

‘I wish they had done for me too,' the coachman said, glumly. ‘By God I do.'

Eyre looked at him questioningly.

‘Well, sir,' the coachman said, ‘they'll hang me this time, and no mistake; or worse.'

‘What could be worse than hanging?' asked Eyre.

‘You don't know the penal settlements, sir, if you don't know what's worse than hanging.'

Eyre said, curiously, ‘What's your name, fellow?'

‘Arthur Mortlock, sir.'

‘Well, Arthur Mortlock, tell me why you tried to rob us tonight, if you're so much afraid of the penal settlements.'

Mortlock looked down at red-pepper-face, and his black dry blood in the dust. ‘That man's Duncan Croucher, sir; and he and me was together for seven years at Macquarie Harbour. We're ticket-of-leave men, both of us; and we was supposed to stay within sight of Sydney; but there was no work for us there. So we absconded and came to Adelaide, I suppose to find ourselves a respectable living. They always told us that Adelaide was just the place for respectability, sir. The kind of town where a man isn't looked down on for being a Crown pensioner, sir; nor ostracised.'

‘That doesn't explain why you tried to rob us.'

Mortlock dabbed gingerly at the lump on his forehead. ‘No, sir. But I expect you understand. We tried to start up a carriage business between us, on account of Croucher was a cabbie, back in London; and I was a drayman for Bass. But the times aren't good, sir, and tonight was the first bit of legitimate business we'd had for a fortnight.'

Christopher, irritable and frightened, said, ‘Come on, Eyre. We're frightfully late. Let's call the police and have this chap locked up where he belongs. Daisy and May will be quite frothing by now; and the Ball will have started.'

Eyre said, ‘Just a moment, Christopher. I want to hear from Mr Mortlock what it is that is worse than hanging.'

Mortlock raised his eyes; and they were black and bright and a little mad. Not the madness of rage or felony; but the madness of fear. The madness that dogs' eyes show, when their owners whip them; and which drives their owners to whip them even harder.

‘I was sent out for losing my temper at the brewery, sir, and beating my foreman; but one fine day I lost my temper again and beat my guard; and for that they sent me to Macquarie Harbour. There they flogged me four times in all; two hundred and seventy lashes altogether; but one day I lost my temper yet again and beat a fellow prisoner; and that was when they locked me into solitary confinement, for a year, Christmas to Christmas, with my face covered all the time in a helmet of rough grey felt, sir, with holes pierced for the eyes. And when they let me out of there, and eventually gave me my ticket-of-leave, I was still inclined to lose my temper, and act rash, as I have this evening. But the effect of that confinement, sir, was such that I would rather cut my own throat than go through it for one more hour. You have no idea, sir.'

Eyre put his hand across his mouth. Both Christopher and Mortlock watched him; Christopher with nervousness and badly disguised impatience, and Mortlock with dreadful fascination.

After a moment, Eyre asked, ‘Do you think you can still manage to drive the carriage?'

‘I don't understand, sir.'

‘Come,' said Eyre. ‘Let's drag these two bodies into the bushes, and leave them lie. We didn't murder them ourselves, after all; and they still have Aborigine spears in them. Let's leave Major O'Halloran's constables to think that they were slain by wandering tribesmen.'

Christopher burst out, ‘This is preposterous! You're not going to let this fellow go free?'

‘I was thinking of it,' said Eyre.

‘But for goodness' sake, the fellow tried to rob us; he would have killed us himself if he'd half a mind to.'

‘I don't suppose you've heard about the spirit of Christian forgiveness,' Eyre retorted.

‘Well, of course I have. But I've also heard the commandment which says you shall not steal; and I should think that also includes
attempted
robbery, wouldn't you?'

Eyre said, ‘For now, Christopher, I'm not going to argue with you. Mr Mortlock, help us pull these bodies into the bushes. Then let us get on our way exactly as if nothing had happened; and we can discuss the morals of it later. Let me tell you one thing, though, Mr Mortlock.'

Arthur Mortlock looked at Eyre disbelievingly, and nodded his head.

‘From now,' said Eyre, ‘from this very moment, in fact, you must live your life as if you were aspiring to be one of the angels. For if you do not, I will make quite sure that a letter is held in safekeeping which will condemn you at once. Do I make myself clear?'

Mortlock stood up straight. ‘You're asking a lot of me, sir.'

‘Of course. But I'm also
giving
you a lot. Your continued freedom; possibly your life.'

‘I know that, sir.'

‘Well, then, let's be quick. One of those boozy fellows at the Cockatoo is going to look across here soon and wonder what we're up to.'

Mortlock retrieved his high hat, and brushed it. ‘Yes, sir, and God bless you, sir.'

It took them only a few minutes to drag the limping man and red-pepper-face into the thorn bushes. It was a grisly business; and they had to kick dust over the bloodstains on the road. But then they climbed up into the carriage again, and were driving lopsidedly off towards Daisy Frockford's house.

As they passed the Cockatoo, the men outside were swinging their bottles of rum in time to a filthy old song from the slums of London.

‘
If you ever want to charver wiv a leper,

Make sure you chooses one wiv biggish tits
.

On account of when you charver wiv a leper,

Yer avridge leper usually falls to bits.
'

From the carriage, Eyre could see in the men's faces a desperate happy brightness; a terrible oblivious joy; and he was disturbingly reminded of a young blind farmworker he had once seen on the road to Baslow, who was laughing in desperation because his daughter could see a rainbow.

Christopher was sulking. Even when they drew up outside the smart imported-wood house on Flinders Street where the Frockfords lived; with its sparkling lamps beside the door, and its two dark spires of Araucaria pines in the exact centre of each front lawn; he would do nothing more than pull a face and say to Eyre, as Mortlock pulled down the step for them, ‘You're making a serious mistake, Eyre. A
very
serious mistake. You mark my words.'

The driveway outside Colonel Gawler᾿s residence on North Terrace was impossibly cluttered with carriages when they arrived; and as they jostled in through the gates, Eyre could detect a certain lowering of Mortlock's head into his shoulders, which suggested to Eyre a well-suppressed urge in Mortlock to lay about him with his whip, and flick off a few hats and ostrich feathers, and clear a way.

The lawns were lit with sparkling lanterns, which swung prettily in the evening wind, and even the colonel's tame kangaroos had been dressed up with white silk bows around their necks. Two footmen in green frogged coats stood by the door; one of them as tall as a Tasmanian pine,
the other almost a dwarf; and between them, awkwardly, they helped the ladies to alight from their barouches. Each lady as she stepped down glanced quickly around her like an alarmed emu, in case she should see a gown in the same design as hers, or (worse) a gown in the same particular shade of silk. Fine fabrics from London and Paris were in short supply in Adelaide this season, and there were only two dressmakers in King William Street capable of sewing a really fashionable gown; so for the past four or five weeks, fear and secrecy had been intense in the parlours and dressing-rooms of Rundle and Grenfell Streets.