Death and the Running Patterer (19 page)

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Authors: Robin Adair

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Both men were obviously at leisure: William Francis King, though in full fig, was not towing his gaily painted pie-cart and Nicodemus Dunne was not carrying his satchel stuffed with newspapers.
Dunne was in the habit of swimming, or at least splashing about and sunning himself, at Soldiers Point, which nosed out into Cockle Bay two blocks west of the army barracks. Sorry, he thought, not Cockle Bay; now it was all to be called Darling Harbor. The name
Cockle
would satisfy him, though—a cold fish in a hard shell was a perfectly apt description of the taciturn, aloof governor.
Seabathing was the best way to keep clean in Sydney. Lack of water and difficulty heating it made tubbing a distinct luxury. And, of course, many people—even doctors—believed that too much washing was unhealthy. Better that risk than stinking, Dunne had decided long ago. And many women (not Miss Dormin, he was certain) reeked almost as badly as the men.
Today he had gone to Soldiers Point, but soon left. There were, well, too many soldiers rowdily enjoying the clear waters. He had moved north to a quieter strand beside another headland that had similarly exercised the naming rivalries of the citizens. Some called it Cockle Bay Point. Others, and the patterer was among them, preferred the more colorful, even romantic Jack-the-Miller’s Point. The name honored the pioneer miller on the point, John Leighton. Now there were other windmills; Miller could have owned the whole point, but he had refused to fence the area, the main condition of his land grant, and so lost it to others.
It was after Dunne had walked along Kent Street, passed the stone quarry and headed on toward the limekilns (dross from which threatened to pollute the bay) to reach the sandy stretch that he had come across William King, who was decked out in his best formal Pieman uniform. Quaintly dressed in a fashion that had expired years before, he wore red knee breeches meeting skin-tight white hose. Over these he wore a pale blue jacket, and his head was topped by a tall hat that seemed to almost have a life of its own, due to cascading, trailing streamers of many colors. Sometimes he wore a simple jockey’s cap rather than this extravaganza, but he always carried a long, stout staff that was decorated like the topper.
When he reached the beach, the patterer stripped to his underdrawers and slipped into the chilly water. It was always calm for swimming here, but he knew of people back home (there, he thought, I’ve said it) in Devon and Cornwall who deliberately battled out through the heavy seas that thrashed the shingle beaches, then rode the waves ashore using only buoyancy and body movements. Some, he believed, even skimmed to the shore on slabs of driftwood. He didn’t know if anyone here had tried it on the beaches to the east, such as the one called
Boondi
, which was native for “sound of the surf.” He was certainly not sure enough of his swimming ability even to consider testing the theory.
“Aren’t you coming in?” he called to his companion, who stood stock-still and fully dressed well away from the water’s edge.
King shook his head so hard that the ends of his moustache flapped and the ribbons on his hat rattled. “I have taken a vow never to meet the sea waters. I hate the sea. Anyway, I can’t swim.”
Dunne was intrigued. With his athletic prowess and great strength, the pieman should have been as at home in the sea as a seal.
The patterer bobbed closer to shore, but when he was only several body-lengths from the sand, still in water that was well over his head, the cramps struck. This cannot be happening, he thought … I have not come into the water on a full stomach; all I had was a pie hours ago and then a lozenge pressed upon me in the street by Dr. Owens …
In his panic, he thought he must be suffering a heart seizure or apoplexy. Whatever it was, he lost control of his limbs and his ability to remain buoyant, and began to sink, barely able to thresh the surface. And he was powerless even to stop the slight current dragging him into deeper water.
As he bobbed up briefly he saw the figure of the pieman, agitated and waving his arms, on the shore. He could not stop gulping more water as he sank again. Then suddenly something hard struck his head. Desperately trying to fight to the surface, he saw a large stick with something streaming from it—seaweed? Was this to be his funeral wreath?—and grabbed the wood with one hand.
The stick moved and he managed to go with it. His feet, knees, some body part, touched blessed bottom, then he felt strong hands drag him ashore. A scarlet haze enveloped him.
The patterer vomited copiously, and gradually the cramps and the red dizziness eased. He saw beside him the pieman, grinning with relief—and soaked from moustache to toe. The beribboned staff that had been used to reach him was another soggy reminder of the adventure.
“That was courageous of you,” said the patterer. “You could have drowned, too.”
William King shrugged. “I only waded in as far as possible. My staff did the rest. I couldn’t leave you to drown. I just couldn’t do that. Not again.”
Dunne frowned. “Again? I don’t understand.”
The pieman sighed deeply. “Some know the story. You might as well know it, too. Soon after I arrived in the colony, I fell in love with a convict lass. She was assigned and wasn’t free to marry, so we hatched a plan. I paid ten pounds for cabin passage—for one, mind you—on a bark set for Van Diemen’s Land. I sent aboard my luggage, one big box. You have probably already guessed that my girl was hidden inside, as comfortable as possible. And I had bored airholes in the sides. The idea was that I would release her when we were far out to sea. I came ashore to attend to some business, but when I returned the ship was gone!
“I took a horse and rode, a crazed man, along the winding road to the South Head. I could see the bark heading out to sea. There was no way I could attract its attention. I harbored hopes that someone would hear my love and release her. There was no way I could overtake her. Then later I heard the ship had been lost. Do you wonder that I hate the sea? I drowned her, alone.”
Jesus! thought the patterer. What must it have been like for that poor girl, carried to the depths in her box, a ready-made coffin? He remembered the fear in a storm of every convict battened below in chains. You knew you would never escape. He shivered, not just from his damp near-nudity, but at the memory.
The pieman was weeping.
“Come come,” said the patterer awkwardly, clapping his friend’s back. “Let’s get out of our wet things and walk a bit to dry off.”
Wearing only their drawers and shoes, the pair roamed casually toward Lieutenant Dawes’s Battery. King’s wet clothes were draped on his staff and they carried this laundry between them.
A scream and the sound of bodies crashing together broke the calm. The noises came from a clearing in scrub near the shore below Leighton’s flour mill. King and the patterer set off at a run.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
And finds, with keen discriminating sight,
Black’s not so black—nor white so very white.
—George Canning, “New Morality” (1821)
 
 
 
 
 
 
T
HE SCENE THEY DISCOVERED WHEN THEY FOUND THE SOURCE OF the screaming horrified Dunne so much that he froze for a moment. A white man was pummeling, with fists, boots and a cudgel, two black figures on the ground. By his familiar build, tattered red coat and skewed bicorne hat, but particularly his gleaming brass plate, the patterer recognized one of the victims as King Bungaree. He couldn’t yet identify the other fallen man.
Nearby, two men—who were clearly white—held a black woman pinned to the ground. They had torn off her robe and, while one subdued her struggling, his companion, trousers down around his ankles, pawed at her viciously.
The pieman was the first to react physically. Swinging his long staff, he cracked the rapist across the spine. With a second stroke he smashed the face of the man restraining the woman, breaking his nose and teeth, perhaps his jaw.
The patterer moved behind the man attacking the black figures, hitting him with a rock. The man fell senseless.
While the pieman guarded his moaning opponents, Dunne helped the black men to their feet. One was indeed King Bungaree, and now it was clear who his companion was—a huge, though very ancient West Indian they called “Billy Blue” or just as commonly, “the Old Commodore.” He wore a top hat and an old naval uniform, a nod to the lofty rank he had never even remotely held (although he claimed to have fought with Wolfe at Quebec and Cornwallis at Yorktown). In truth, he had washed up in Sydney after stealing a bag of sugar in London. Apart from a relapse as a rum-runner, he had prospered as a waterman and harbor watchman for Governor Macquarie, who had bestowed on him the elevated title when the old lag’s ferry fleet grew from one boat to eleven.
Even now—although Dunne knew Billy had told the recent census that he was eighty—he was far from retired. From his home across the cove at Murdering Point, the Old Commodore and his sons plied for hire as ferrymen. Often he would play on his great age, boast of his service in the Royal Navy and cajole a sympathetic passenger into helping out with the rowing.
After making sure that the commodore and the king had survived relatively unscathed, if shaken, the patterer turned to where the pieman was comforting the woman. Who was she? he wondered.
“She’s Gooseberry,” said Bungaree, as if reading his thoughts.
Dunne nodded. He knew Bungaree had more than one wife. There had been Boatman, Broomstick, Onion and Pincher. This, then, was Matara, also known as Cora Gooseberry.
She was sitting up now, rocking and weeping, clutching together her ripped clothing. She soon began to search in the dirt for the clay pipe she had dropped in the melee. A good sign, thought the patterer. The rest of the point was still now, the welcome calm broken only by the screech of gulls and the swishing and clicking of the windmills’ sails.
While Bungaree spoke to his wife, Billy Blue explained to their rescuers what had happened. He spoke perfect English, a legacy of all his years at sea. To the surprise of many, Bungaree had also polished his own knowledge of the colonists’ language while under sail. With Matthew Flinders almost thirty years earlier, he had circumnavigated the Australian coastline, acting as an interpreter.
The commodore told how he had tied up his skiff at the point and begun working in the hut nearby. With his boys, he ran the town side of his ferry service to and from there. Bungaree and Gooseberry had arrived and begun to cook a meal, which they invited him to share.
Dunne could see the leftovers and guessed they had cooked a
dampier
, named after the English explorer and buccaneer, but now more often called a “damper,” made simply from flour, salt, sugar and water kneaded together and cooked in the ashes of a dying fire. Beside this ruined fire, the patterer identified what looked like the popular dish baked koala, which was actually a joke; it wasn’t native bear but instead a pielike, hollowed-out gourd filled with opossum meat.
He was surprised that there were no grog bottles—Bungaree was known to be a fearsome drinker. Instead, they appeared to have taken tea. Tipped over beside the fire was a large, empty, blackened tin. Most probably it had once contained preserved boiled beef that the French, who invented it, called
boeuf bouilli
. Settlers used the empty tins to brew tea and called them billy—for
bouilli
—cans.
The men, Billy Blue said, had attacked without warning.
Dunne and the others now turned their attention to the vanquished intruders. The one Dunne had hit was still unconscious, the trouserless rapist was temporarily crippled on the ground and the one with the broken face moaned and bled.
The patterer looked down at them closely. “They’re not much more than lads,” he said, shaking his head sadly. One attacker had started to blubber. “Probably the dregs of those they turn out from the Carters Barracks when they’re old enough.”
“Old enough for trouble,” said William King.
Dunne nodded.
“So what do we do with them now?” asked the pieman. “In particular, how do we stop a revenge attack on these blacks—or, for that matter, ourselves?”
“Well, you can forget the constables,” said the patterer. “They’d want too many details, and that means names, that is if they were interested.” He paused. “These animals probably wouldn’t recognize us when we’re dressed—certainly not when you’re in your usual garments. So you see, there was a bright side and a benefit to your going into the sea.”
The pieman frowned. “And the king and the commodore? And Cora?”
The patterer pondered, then snapped his fingers. “I have it!” He loomed over the three young men, who were now struggling to their knees. “Do you know what The Ring is on Norfolk Island—and here?” he asked, slapping one upturned face, hard, to concentrate their attention.
The now-toothless youth nodded, wide-eyed.
“Aye,” said Dunne. “And you know its punishment for its enemies? Just to remind you, we cut open their bellies and stuff in sheep guts instead. I’m a Sydney Ring-master and we’ll always find you. Take your friends and get out of here. And if I hear of you tampering with anyone—white or black—you’re deader meat than any man left ironed on Pinchgut and forgotten.” He kicked one in the rear as they staggered away.

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