The Prisoner Read online

  As his feet touched the earth, the female appeared, the blackened cauldron in her hands. She glanced at the prisoner, then at his wooden leg, and placed the cauldron on the ground with a bottle of water, and turned to walk back up to the house.

  “How long you out here for, Mary?” the prisoner asked, and the girl stopped momentarily. Without turning her head, she said softly: “Mrs Morris said I weren’t ta speak ter yez,” and walked away. She had only gone a few paces when she stopped again.

  “Fourteen year,” she said, and continued on her way.

  “Not ta speak ta us…are we some kinda disease, or somethin’?” Wallis growled, and dug into the cauldron with his fingers.

  “They’re jes’ tryin’ to make sure no funny business gets started between us,” the prisoner said, and began eating. He picked up a loaf of bread the girl had placed beside the water-bottle, tore off a chunk, and dipped it into the greasy mess in the cauldron. As he ate, he watched the girl, moving towards the house. She was young, perhaps seventeen or so, and had once had long black hair, when she had bothered to wash it, which must have been some time ago. Her face was pitted with smallpox scars, and there was a long, livid scar down the right cheek. But he had noticed her eyes most of all: a light shade of green, they appeared to contain all the misery a world could throw at a human being.

  ‘A prostitute in London,’ he thought to himself; her life would not have been an easy one.

  They finished their meal, and the prisoner left Wallis, scraping the remains of the gravy out of the cauldron with a chunk of bread, and managed to hoist himself aboard the buggy again. He set off down through the paddocks and across the river, and began work on the next panels of fencing.

  Dusk was setting as he drove the buggy through the fence along the lower boundary, and waited until Wallis had got all the sheep back into their holding-pen for the night before coming up through the remaining paddocks and pulling to a stop before the barn.

  He was tired, and his leg was chaffing badly from climbing in and out of the buggy, opening and closing gates, and getting down to inspect fallen panels of fencing all afternoon. He walked the buggy into the barn, unhitched the gelding and led it into a stall, made sure it had water and hay, and locked the stable-door, then limped outside as the girl approached, the cauldron in both hands.

  “C’n I take that for yer, Mary?” he asked, and gratefully, she passed the heavy cauldron to him. He carried it down to the shack where he and Wallis slept, placed it on the floor, then sat on the step, watching as Wallis tried to engage the girl in conversation.

  A flicker of movement caught his eye, and through the back door of the house, Morris appeared. Seeing the girl and Wallis standing close together, he moved quickly down the yard, and as the girl turned, his open right hand caught her across the cheek. As the girl stumbled away with a cry and a hand pressed to her cheek, he snarled: “I tole yer not ta talk to ‘em! Do as yer told!” Then he stood there, glaring at Wallis.

  The prisoner saw Wallis’ fists bunch, and for an instant, he thought the convict was about to strike his master. But then Wallis shrugged, turned away, and continued up the yard to the shack.

  “By Gawd! ‘E’s a bastard!” he muttered as he passed the prisoner and threw himself on his bunk.

  “I see ‘e’s taken off her leg-irons,” the prisoner said, entering the shack; “at least she has that much freedom.”

  “Yeah…’e’s not afraid of ‘er runnin’ off and joinin’ tha natives, like ‘e is me, for fear of gittin’ ate by them,” Wallis growled, sitting up and lighting his pipe; “if ‘e ever took mine off, I’d be outa here like a shot. ‘E’s even worse than tha animals back at tha prison-camp!”

  The prisoner lowered himself so that he sat beside the cauldron. He reached down, unstrapped the wooden leg, and laid it on the floor, then began massaging the stump where it had been chaffing. The skin was red-raw, and blisters were beginning to appear at the edges, where the movement of the stump against the wooden appliance had been greatest.

  “’Ere…you…” a voice spoke from the doorway, and they looked up, to see Mrs Morris entering the shack. She tossed a small brown bottle of salve to the prisoner, who caught it and began unscrewing the lid.

  “It’ll take tha sting out of it, an’ you’ll be able ter work termorrer,” she said, turned, and left the shack. They heard her footsteps, moving away up the yard.

  “She’s not so bad, but ‘e’s a proper mongrel,” Wallis said; “wonder why she ever married ‘im in tha first place?”

  The prisoner began massaging the salve into the stump, slowly and gently. As he did so, Wallis came over, squatted beside the cauldron, and began eating with his fingers. When the prisoner had finished his task, he screwed the lid on the bottle of salve, wiped his hands on his shirt, and began eating. Just as they had finished wiping out the cauldron with chunks of bread, the girl appeared again, picked up the cauldron, and walked out of the shack. She said not a word, but continued on her way, her head down. The prisoner noticed her eyes were red, as if she had been crying.

  “Don’ take no notice of him,” he said softly; “it don’t do no good.”

  She glanced back at him, paused as if about to speak, then thought better of it, and left the shack.

  The two men moved out to the step and sat there smoking in the early dark. From somewhere near at hand, an owl hooted once, then took flight.

  From down near the sheep-pen, a wild dog howled. Wallis fetched his shepherd’s crook from beside his bunk and moved out into the darkness, towards the pen. As he disappeared into the black night, the prisoner climbed wearily to his feet, and walked back to his bunk, where he unstrapped the leg again and lay down on his back, thinking of all that had happened to him since his arrest back in London.

  It seemed that his life had become an endless chain of brutishness and cruelties. He finally fell asleep, wondering how much longer he could continue to live under these harsh conditions.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  August 30th; 1822: “’Ow many more fences yer got ta inspeck?” Morris asked the prisoner as he harnessed the gelding to the buggy.

  “Take me about another week,” the prisoner replied; “I rode about a third of the outer fences yesterday.”

  “Well, lemme know when yer finished. I’ll send Wallis with yer, an’ yer can both work on tha fences until they’re finished…before all me stock gits lost ta tha natives, not that fences stop ‘em. If they wants somethin’, they just helps themselves…think they can just take what they want.”

  “They don’ know any better, Mr Morris. To them, tha sheep are jus’ stock, to be taken when they need food.”

  Morris, about to walk back to the house, turned and came back. Standing so close to the prisoner, their faces were almost touching, he grated: “If I want yer advice, I’ll ask fer it! Otherwise…shut up!” and he stomped away up the yard as a group of mounted men drew up in front of the house.

  Shrugging, the prisoner climbed aboard the buggy and set off through the paddocks to the west as the sun rose behind him. The day would be hot and dry, with a light breeze blowing. Beside him on the seat sat a haunch of salted beef and a bottle of water Morris had given him for his lunch. Obviously, he was expected to remain at his task for the day.

  He had worked his way along the western boundary, and was just turning onto the north fences when he came across a family of natives camped beneath a stand of eucalypts. He watched, as the woman worked at getting a fire kindled, and the husband set off, a tall, thin man with his spears in one hand. Two small children ran around their campsite, chasing a blue-tongued lizard that soon escaped them by racing up a tall tree.

  Then he noticed, to one side of the fire, was a heap of fleece from a sheep. Apparently, the natives had helped themselves to one of Morris’ ewes sometime during the past few days, and had not yet gotten rid of the fleece. If Morris saw that wool, the prisoner had no illusions as to what the man would do.

  He drove down into the
camp, and the woman looked up from her fire, stared at him through wide brown eyes, watching as he leaned down and picked up the fleece, and stowed it behind the seat. He would dispose of it somewhere far from the campsite, where Morris was unlikely to find it.

  As he drove his buggy through the campsite and into the bushes on the far side, a rifle-shot crashed in the stillness. He turned, as the woman clutched at her breast, then toppled face-down into the fire.

  The prisoner ducked, as a rifle-ball whistled past close to his head, then there was a volley of shots, and the two children were hit. One, a boy, lay screaming on the ground, blood pumping from his stomach. Then the tall native male appeared again, raised a spear, and made to hurl it as a shot took him through the forehead. He toppled over backwards, and lay still.

  All the members of the little family were dead. Stunned, the prisoner could only watch as Morris and a group of men he had never seen, all carrying rifles, appeared from the bushes on the far side of the campsite and walked out to inspect the bodies.

  “I’ll take that fleece yer’ve got in yer buggy!” Morris’ voice yelled, and the prisoner watched as the short, swarthy man walked towards him, a rifle hanging from his hand.

  The prisoner picked up the bundle of wool and tossed it on the ground at Morris’ feet.

  “There was no need to kill ‘em all, ‘specially tha children!” he said.

  “If we ‘and’t, they’d’ve taken more of our stock, an’ then we’d ‘ave ‘ad more native thieves ta deal with once word got out," Morris spat; “when they start stealin’, yer’ve gotta kill ‘em, as a warnin’ ta the others. Now be on yer way, an’ tend ta yer work!”

  The prisoner could do nothing. He left the campsite and the bodies, and returned to inspecting the fences. But all that day, he thought about the little family that had died, because they had taken a sheep. When he returned through the campsite later that evening, all four bodies were tied by the neck to tree-branches, and hung, twisting and turning in the breeze. They had been left there as a warning to other natives who might come through the area. Already, flies were buzzing around the bodies and flocking on the blood.

  Sickened, he drove through the site and back up the trail that led to the bottom yard.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The prisoner was sitting on the step in front of the shack, enjoying the cool of the twilight, and Wallis had gone back inside to fetch a candle to light his pipe, when a group of some twelve Aboriginal men appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. Ranging in age from about twenty to one in his sixties with white hair, all held spears in their hands. And all looked grim-faced and angry.

  Stepping forward, the oldest one spoke in a language the prisoner could not understand, and he stared at the old man, not knowing how to react or what to expect. Then a younger man stepped forward, and said: “Boss.” He looked inside the shack, and said again: “Boss,’ then stepped back.

  Assuming they wanted to speak to Morris, the prisoner pointed up at the house, and the group turned away, jabbering and gesticulating with their hands, and headed for the house.

  As Wallis returned, the group gathered about the open back door and waited, until the same one who had spoken stepped forward and pounded with his fist on the open door.

  A moment later, Morris appeared, a flintlock in one hand. at sight of the weapon, the men leaped back, and Morris lowered the barrel, and waited.

  The younger one stepped forward again, and there seemed to be a short conversation between Morris and the native. Then Morris held up one hand, and disappeared back inside the house, to return several minutes later holding two white flour-bags. He handed the bags to the men, who passed them to the oldest man. The old one peered inside the bags, jabbered again at Morris, and then the group turned and walked back the way they had come, down through the paddocks and across the river.

  “Wonder what that was all about?” Wallis spoke from behind the prisoner.

  Morris watched until the group of natives had disappeared into the falling dusk, then walked casually down to the shack and stood in front of the prisoner.

  “What’d they say ter yer?” he asked.

  “Summat I couldn’t understand,” the prisoner said; “then they asked for the boss, so I sent ’em to you. why, Mr Morris? What’d they want?”

  “Oh…” Morris said casually, turning to gaze off down the paddocks; “…they carried on ‘bout that mob we killed that stole me sheep. So I gave ‘em a bag of tea, an’ another of sugar, an’ that satisfied ‘em. Yer won’t be seein’ them again.”

  The prisoner gazed off into the distance, but could not make out the men: “Dunno that a bag o’ sugar an’ a bag o’ tea is gonna keep ‘em satisfied, not after a family has been shot,” he said.

  Morris grinned: “Mebbe not…but the poison I put in tha sugar’ll shut ‘em up. They’ll be dead afore mornin’.” And he sauntered away, whistling tunelessly to himself.

  The two men sat on the step and stared after Morris’ disappearing figure.

  “Did ‘e kill a fam’ly?” he asked softly; “fer stealin’ a sheep?”

  “Yes,” the prisoner said quietly; “I saw it ‘appen, this mornin’, just over the river. A group of farmers with rifles shot them, and left the lot hangin’ from branches in the forest.”

  “Gawd!” Wallis swore softly; “they’re real mongrels aroun’ ‘ere. What will tha p’lice say when they find out?”

  “Dunno. But I’m not goin’ ridin’ fences tomorrow without a rifle,” the prisoner vowed, tapped out his pipe, and stood, as Mary made her way down to the shack with the little cauldron.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  September 1st; 1822: Heavy rain had fallen all the previous day, and the men had remained in the shack, lying around on their bunks and playing cards, and enjoying a day free of work and toil.

  By the next morning, the clouds had cleared, and Morris woke them early. As Wallis headed down to the sheep-pen, the prisoner followed Morris up to the barn, and was about to bring up the subject of his carrying firearms, when a subaltern and six mounted troopers rode in from the roadway.

  Halting beside the two men, the young subaltern flipped a lazy salute, and asked: “Mr Morris?”

  Morris turned: “Yair…what’dya want?”

  “I understand you had some trouble with natives out here two days ago, sir?”

  The prisoner stopped what he was doing, and turned, expecting trouble, and wondering how Morris was going to get out of the blame for killing the family, and for poisoning a group of native men.

  “I did…but I fixed ‘em. Found tha fam’ly what stole me sheep, an’ shot ‘em, an’ took care o’ a group o’ blacks what come lookin’ fer trouble.”

  The subaltern took out a pad from his dress-jacket, made some notes, then asked: “The…aah…men…how did you ‘take care of them,’ sir?”

  “Give ‘em some poisoned sugar an’ tea,” Morris said, both hands braced on his hips; “what of it?”

  “Oh…” the young subaltern removed his cap, and wiped a hand across his forehead; “…just that we like to keep our records straight as to the number of blacks causing troubles in the area, sir. Can you show me where the first lot are?”

  Morris nodded towards the prisoner, who had resumed harnessing the gelding to the buggy: “Me man ‘ere c’n show yer. ‘E’s goin’ down that way. Dunno where tha second mob went to…but I ‘spect yer’ll find ‘em down there somewhere.”

  “And…how many were in the second group, sir?”

  Morris scratched his head: “Oh…’bout ten or twelve.” Then he turned to the prisoner, who was about to mount the buggy: “Take this lot down an’ show ‘em where that mob o’ thieves is. An’ ye’d better take this…” he walked into the barn, took down an old shotgun, then searched a bench until he found a handful of shells, and handed them to the prisoner.

  “If yer hafta use it, I want a full accountin’…so’s I know who ta come to if one o’ me sheep gits shot,” he growled, and the prisoner to
ok the shotgun and slid it down behind the seat of the buggy. Shoving the shells in his shirt-pocket, he said: “I won’ shoot none of yer sheep, Mr Morris.”

  “Well, if ya hafta use tha shotgun…” Morris said; “…don’ muck about with shootin’ over their ‘eads. It don’t work. Yer shoot fast…an’ yer shoot ta kill. Got it?”

  The prisoner stared at Morris for a second. Then he wheeled the buggy and set off down through the paddocks, the subaltern and his troopers following.

  They crossed the river and headed south through the forest where the murder of the native family had taken place. The four bodies had been cut down from the branches where they had been hung, and were laid out side by side, in a little clearing, and around them sat a large group of natives, both men and women.

  There were no children. All the males sat in a group, talking angrily in their own language and gesticulating wildly, while the females, their faces painted in white clay, sat in a circle around the four bodies and wailed piteously. As the party of troopers appeared through the bushes, the entire group fell silent and sat, staring at the white men. Then one old man, his hair white, his long and stringy beard matted, rose to his feet and shouted at the group then stood, staring straight at the subaltern, a spear in his right hand. One by one, the rest of the males, some in their late teens or early twenties, rose and stood in a group behind him. Each held a spear or a heavy wooden war-club, or nulla-nulla, as the Aborigine called them.

  The subaltern held up his hand, and the two lines of troopers came to a halt, their hands hovering close to their weapons.

  The young officer rode forward, his hand held up before him. As the old man drew back his spear, the subaltern said loudly: “Lay down your weapons, in the name of the Queen! We are here to investigate the deaths of four of your kinsmen!” and the old man hesitated as, from behind him, the prisoner heard a series of loud clicks, and knew the men had drawn their muskets and thumbed back the hammers.