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Authors: Robin Adair

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“First though, I had to remember how, in this very room, you, Captain Crotty, were explaining military nicknames. You mentioned, for instance, how sailors had corrupted
Bellerophon
into Billy Ruffian. And you mentioned another concoction. I called upon a veteran who told me how the 57th and its soldiers had bivouacked during the Spanish campaigns at an agreeable place that captured their fancy so much that from then on they sentimentally attached its name to subsequent comfortable watering holes (in the alcoholic sense) and billets. The name of that Iberian oasis was Casa Alta.”

The patterer paused. “Tell me, Captain Crotty, do you know in what rude manner old soldiers render this happy hideaway, Casa Alta?”

“Good Lord! I’ve heard it garbled as ‘the Case is Altered.’”

“Thank you. Now, Colonel. Your turn. Most often, the surrogate Casa Alta for the men has been a public house—there is more than one in Middlesex, the regiment’s home territory. Sometimes it refers to a brothel. Here in Sydney we have no tavern or whorehouse bearing the Spanish name, or even its Anglicized corruption. Nonetheless, there is a connection.” Calling on all his skills as a patterer, Dunne let the tension build. “Colonel, what exactly does ‘Casa Alta’ mean in Spanish?”

“Why, ah, ‘High House,’” said Shadforth.

“Exactly!” said Nicodemus Dunne. “The very name of the establishment of the late Madame Greene. Abbot was placing Madame Greene conclusively within the fatal circle. But why?”

Captain Rossi nodded approvingly, but William Charles Wentworth only sneered and leaned forward pugnaciously. “So you’ve connected the brothel-keeper to the others—is that the true extent of your progress? Answer the real questions, the ones you’ve made such a fuss about. Who among us is a killer?”

“Very well,” said the Patterer. “If you demand satisfaction”—at this, he thought he caught a flicker of disquiet cross the lawyer’s face at the double meaning of the phrase—“you shall have it. But first, I say that six of you had the opportunity to kill the blacksmith.”

The room was suddenly hushed.

“You were all involved in a clandestine meeting and were loose in the early hours of that Monday morning. And there was certainly death on your minds. You were illegally conspiring to kill or at least maim one man; perhaps even two could have died. So, yes, by all means let’s talk about what happened … at Garden Island. You have a lot to explain.”

There was silence. Then, at a nod from the governor, the flood-gates finally opened.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

’Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to the world: now could I drink hot blood,
And do such bitter business as the day
Would quake to look on.

—William Shakespeare,
Hamlet
(1601)

A
S EACH OF THE ASSEMBLED MEN CONFESSED HIS PART IN THE escapade, the patterer pieced together the story. In the small hours of the Monday morning in question, the morning of the blacksmith’s murder, two skiffs stood bobbing at the Governor’s Wharf in Sydney Cove. They had been ordered there during the previous afternoon.

Apart from its oarsman, one boat already contained its complement of three passengers; the two men to be carried in the other vessel impatiently awaited the arrival of their third companion. He finally arrived, breathless, and boarded with apologies.

“Sorry, gentlemen,” puffed Captain Crotty. “I was obliged to detour to confuse the guard.”

His associates either grunted or said nothing. The tension remained.

Without further instruction, one crewman took the lead as the boats quietly moved off, first north past the water bailiff’s building and the heaving-down place. They then turned east around Macquarie’s Fort on its outcrop, and next crossed the mouth of Farm Cove to Mrs. Macquarie’s Point. The last leg of the journey took the tiny fleet farther east, then down to a landing strand on Garden Island. It seemed the long way around, but approach from the town through the Domain and Gardens in the depth of the night was not practical.

Crotty’s boat arrived first. His companions, who soon splashed ashore with him, were Dr. Thomas Owens and Governor Ralph Darling. The second vessel then discharged the Reverend Dr. Halloran, Mr. Edward Smith Hall and Mr. W. C. Wentworth.

Although they had remained silent during their ride, they now made no effort to disguise their presence on the island. They knew that the area, which had been given to First Fleet settlers forty years earlier as a vegetable garden and later also used for convalescents and as a quarantine station, would now be deserted.

For this reason, it was Sydney’s dueling ground of choice, a place where the town’s gentlemen came to settle questions of honor. Its appeal lay in its remoteness, for armed arbitration was illegal. The authorities sometimes turned a blind eye, but duelists were often severely punished. That purest of pure merinos, Captain Macarthur, had been sent back to England in disgrace to face court-martial for seriously wounding his commanding officer. And only four months before, a Garden Island duelist had been jailed for three months for fatally wounding an opponent, as was the man who had stood the killer’s second. Sometimes, combatants emerged with bodies unscathed and honor restored. The guns were clumsy and often inaccurate (or the shooters were).

“It’s almost a family tradition!” Dr. Owens joked nervously to the governor.

Darling shook his head grimly. He knew the doctor was alluding to the fact that only the previous year his brother-in-law, Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Dumaresq, had felt obliged to challenge that damned Wentworth’s partner, Dr. Robert Wardell. Dumaresq had taken umbrage at an article in
The Australian
, “How to Live by Plunder.”

The party had arrived at the chosen site, a small clearing. Now all they had to do was prepare for the fight, wait for the first bloom of dawn and let it begin.

Dr. Halloran spoke, by torchlight, as both president and referee of the coming duel. “There is still time to settle this amicably but honorably, gentlemen. Would you repeat the substance of your perceived injury, Mr. Wentworth?”

“He referred to my late father, a pillar of the colony, as a convict, as a highwayman!” he spluttered with repressed anger.

“Governor—your response?”

“No, sir. I merely stated that he had stood trial as an alleged man of the road. As he certainly did, several times.”

“Not quite as damning as you seem to believe, Mr. Wentworth,” said Halloran. “Is that interpretation suitable to you?”

“Not at all. My dear father was an exile, by his own choice. I still demand satisfaction.”

Halloran sighed. “So be it.” He turned to the governor. “Will you withdraw and apologize, Excellency?”

“No, sir, I am a prisoner to the truth. I cannot undo it.”

“In that case, gentlemen, there is nothing for it but to continue. I am the sole policeman of the rules. You will receive three instructions: to take your marks; get ready, which means have your weapons cocked; and fire. Only one shot each will be permitted. If either, or both, of the firers is clearly hit, then the matter is concluded. So, too, if both shots fail to find their mark, I will consider the honor of both contestants to be satisfied. Your seconds may now approach to examine the pistols and observe their loading. The weapons come from a neutral source. I know you brought your own, Mr. Wentworth, but it will not do, sir.”

At this, the lawyer shook his head angrily.

Night had not yet passed and Halloran still needed the flickering torch as he removed the pair of pistols from their plush-lined case. They were beautiful examples of the gunsmith’s art, coldly gleaming and ornately decorated. Crotty guessed they were Whitworths. Edward Hall had no idea.

The referee now addressed the seconds: “I can swear to the flints, the touch-holes are clear, the powder dry.”

After examination, the seconds handed back the weapons. Halloran poured measures of powder into each barrel and primed the pans. Before dealing with the powder, the party had stepped well away from the open flame, but the dimness did not hinder Halloran’s surprising dexterity.

In seconds he seemed to juggle balls, wadding and ramrod into the muzzles. Crotty and Hall took the loaded guns and handed them to their principals before prudently retiring to the safety of the sidelines with Halloran and Dr. Owens.

The referee’s first order, “At your marks, gentlemen,” was a formality; they were already at the twenty-four paces that marked the boundaries of the killing field. They faced each other, coatless, and turned sideways to offer smaller targets.

Ralph Darling had said he did not want the fight, but it must go on. He was not afraid and was confident of the outcome. In the boat, he had remarked to Crotty that he did not yet intend to meet poor little Edward. The simple truth was that his class’s rigid code of honor forced the contest upon him. No gentleman could refuse. All he could do was make every effort to ensure victory.

AS THE PATTERER listened to the story unfold, he reflected that it was all so stupid, yet oddly necessary. He understood why officers led assaults in full uniform—as examples. He knew why Nelson had stood in the face of fatal sniper fire at Trafalgar, invitingly displaying glittering stars of the Orders of the Crescent, St. Ferdinand, St. Joachim and the Bath. Men should always show cool resolve. Wellington had calmly ignored small-arms and cannon shot at Waterloo, and General Picton had allowed himself only the protection of a top hat and an umbrella before his head was taken off by a cannonball.

Some had criticized Wellington for allowing Maitland’s Guards to conceal themselves behind a slope before attacking on Old Nosey’s famous order, “Get them up, Maitland!” (which had been turned by the penny prints into the more commonly known version, “Up, Guards, and at ’em!”).

In the matter of the recent duel, Nicodemus Dunne could not help but feel that if there were ever a reason for one, it was editor Hall writing of Governor Darling’s “tyranny, surpassed only by that of the Great Moghul, the Czar of Muscovy and the Emperor of China.”

The patterer jerked his attention back to the general confession …

AT THE SHOUT of “Make ready!”, the rivals lifted their heavy pistols, which strained their muscles with every passing second.

But “Fire” did not come.

As William Charles Wentworth raised his weapon, a sudden gust of wind lifted his hanging cravat, flapping it across his arm. Unnerved, he pulled the trigger in a reflex action. Dense smoke coughed from the pan and the barrel. Once the smoke blew away and the ringing of the shot faded, there was a hush, but not a fearful one—more one of embarrassment. It seemed the rogue shot had gone wild. Darling stood unharmed.

“It was an accident,” gasped Wentworth finally, appealing to his opponent, who still stood at the ready.

“No doubt,” said Halloran. “But the rules are clear. Although uncalled for, you have had your shot. Now it is the governor’s turn.”

At Darling’s shrug of doubt, he added, “You must, sir.”

Still the governor held his fire.

“You must obey my call, sir,” repeated the referee.

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