The Ghost of Waterloo (32 page)

Captain Rossi first dropped off Miss Hathaway at her lodgings to repair the damage from the drain. The men drove on to the Hope and Anchor, where William King found some pies that passed scrutiny (‘Sometimes,’ he remarked, only half-jestingly, ‘there is too much life in them!’). The friends also found there some other regulars: Dr Owens, the O’Bannion brothers and Alexander Harris.

The Patterer retold his adventure; even the avenging Pieman and Captain Rossi needed details of what had happened before their mercy dash. Dunne made a note to reward Bungaree suitably.

At last, in his bed at the Bag o’ Nails, Nicodemus Dunne let the balm of freedom wash over him. What had happened? On the surface, it had been a confrontation with a deranged man eaten away by sexual jealousy. And with his flunkey. In the end, they both had been smart. Thwarted, they were still able to dismiss the escapade as, at worst, a macabre ‘game’. They were powerful men and could not be brought down by what they had done.

But was there something more? Had the real issue been knowledge of the bank robbery and the French plot – information that the Patterer possessed or was thought to have? Mr Potts at his bank should see the souvenired coins.

Only during his recounting had he also awakened another train of thought. Was it just coincidence that, in his questioning, Samuel Marsden had invoked the Devil (shades of Bonaparte?), thirty pieces of silver (Creighton?), an angel (the inn?), the wages of sin (the robbery?), forbidden fruit (the poisoned ‘oranges’ that killed Bagley?) and the plague of raining frogs (Froggies?). Had the cleric tried to tell him something? Was that his ‘game’? Even the sexually charged ‘pipe’ was a reminder of Dawks. And, at the end, as they finally faced each other in the banking chamber, Dunne had noticed that the minister wore in the lapel of his frockcoat a shiny badge. Depicting a bee.

No, surely he was reading too much into it all. He punched the pillow, carefully snuffed out the candle on the bedside table and closed his eyes. It would be a long day tomorrow. So many things had to be done, and done properly.

He heard the door open slowly. There was a soft movement of unshod feet on the wooden floor, then a strong, warm body lay down beside him. He put out his hand and his fingers found soft, long hair.

The Patterer groaned. ‘Not now, Norah, please … Just go to sleep.’

Munito did as he was told.

Chapter Forty-four

Dawn was almost ready to march across the eminence of Bunker’s Hill, roll over The Rocks and seduce the Sydney Cove wavelets to dance with subtle light as the new day moved to kiss awake Macquarie’s Fort and all points of the compass.

The fort, thus far, was silent. Yet there were many figures there, standing still and showing no man-made glimmer, not even the tiny ebbing and flowing intensity of a nervously sucked segar or pipe.

No one was in the tall tower today. They had all gathered on the gun decks of the two smaller buildings. No one put his head above the parapets.

As night at last rolled up its blanket, the lightening sky above the western slopes of the Cove – on Bunker’s Hill, near Dawes’ Battery – was disturbed by an odd interference. Like a giant bird, a black shadow swooped in a graceful arc towards the water. Seconds later it was joined by another bewildering blur.

The quiet was suddenly smashed by a series of loud, hard smacks that came from the cannons on the
Three Bees
. Heads swivelled to the sounds coming from the western side of the swinging hull wreathed in dirty smoke. In a blink, the rattle of small-arms fire followed.

General Ralph Darling was one of the men on the fire step. He now danced a jig, or the nearest to one that King’s Rules and Regulations permitted a general. ‘The damn fools!’ He turned to Captain Rossi. ‘They have been gulled! Bamboozled! Humbugged!’

‘It’s not over yet, sir,’ warned the Police Chief.

William King and Dr Thomas Owens kept their own counsel, while Brian O’Bannion and his brother exchanged puzzled glances.

But the Governor was convinced and confident and, uncharacteristically, verbose about it. ‘No, Rossi!’ he exclaimed. ‘They are looking to the stars, while Dunne is gnawing at their bowels!’ He shook his head, suddenly subdued. ‘Let us pray our marine sap succeeds.’

‘What’s a sap? Where’s the Patterer?’ asked the younger O’Bannion.

William King turned to peer at him in the thin light. ‘It’s a mine in a tunnel —’

‘Jesus and Mary!’ Cornelius didn’t wait to hear the sentence end.

He leapt up onto the parapet, waving the long scarf he had seized from the doctor’s shoulders. He semaphored incoherently, madly.

‘It’s a trap!’ he screamed. ‘I’m not the footballer. There’s no fookin’ footballer! The danger’s be—’ His word ‘below’ was never completed, as another fusillade of musket and rifle fire opened up from the frigate. Most fell harmlessly short. One ball, however, blessed by the gods of war and perhaps some extra grains of powder, knocked him down.

He fell back onto the flagging, into the arms of the Pieman and his brother.

Owens waved everyone back, but Brian O’Bannion refused to move, cradling the small groaning figure. The doctor’s battle-hardened eyes and hands told him Con O’Bannion would die. Either he had ducked before the ball’s impact or it had been fired by a sniper in the
Three Bees
rigging – perhaps both quirks of fortune had occurred. The result was the same. The doctor reckoned the ounce of lead had pierced the right shoulder, ruptured the pulmonary artery and one lung, and pulverised the spine. It was probably still somewhere in the body. Cornelius was drowning. In his own blood.

‘Why, brother, why?’ pleaded Brian O’Bannion.

‘Because …we had to keep on…fighting the English pigs,’ the young man’s voice was choked but clear. ‘We could … have put Boney back…on his throne…’

His brother was broken. ‘But these people here – the Patterer, the Pieman, the Doctor – faith, they extended the hand of friendship to you.’

Cornelius O’Bannion spat. Red. ‘Ach, an Irishman has no friends outside of the “poor old woman” …the divil take them all …Even now
,
it’s the Frenchies who’s killed me…’ He retched a gout of gore, whispered ‘
Erin-go-bragh!
’ and died.

Good God, thought Owens suddenly, how deuced uncanny. It’s the same wound that killed Nelson at Trafalgar. Two warriors, on different sides, united in death.

His musings were interrupted by a blinding flash, an ear puncturing roar and a breath-sucking wave of concussed air.

The
Three Bees
had exploded.

‘What happened?’ The
Gazette
’s editor, the Reverend Ralph Mansfield, wanted the first report on the explosion from his journalist, the man who now sat in the late Obadiah Dawks’s chair.

‘A boy had attended an officer in the hold with a candle,’ he told his new master. ‘Part of the wick must have fallen unextinguished and touched off some oakum.’ He continued to practise his purple prose: ‘The flame burst forth with an impetuosity calculated to astonish and confound…’

‘Yes, yes,’ interrupted Mr Mansfield. ‘Get on with it.’

‘The fire was contiguous to the powder magazine, where it was reported she had 130 casks on board. The crew forsook her. She was cut adrift, threatening desolation to all around her, with all her guns loaded, and every instant expected to throw down or cover with the dreadful blast all the buildings around or near her!’

Mr Mansfield rolled his eyes and held up a hand. ‘Just the detail, please.’

The chastened reporter edited his narrative: ‘Her first gun exploded over Mr Blaxcell’s and the main guardhouse of the barracks in George Street. Fourteen went off in all. A ball entered the Naval Officer’s parlour window on the western side of the Cove, below Bunker’s Hill, destroyed a writing desk and fell expended. The long-dreaded explosion took place.’

‘The guns went off
before
the magazine, you say?’

‘Yes, and some say they also heard musket fire before the explosion.’

The editor pursed his lips. Musket fire
before
? And why were so many guns loaded? And on a convict transport? Oh well, the Governor obviously didn’t think it was important.

‘What came next?’

The journalist told how the wind, now from the south, and the currents took what was left of the smouldering hull out of the mouth of the Cove, towards the Pinchgut punishment islet. It sank on the way in eleven or twelve fathoms. The official view ‘that no personal injury occurred’ left the
Gazette
man without the chance to paint a truly evocative image – of a Viking funeral for the unknown number of Frenchmen who really died aboard.

That was the version (still dramatic, even if distorted by decree) that the 11000 inhabitants of the town subsequently heard as gossip, read in the papers, or absorbed from readings by the Patterer.

Only a handful of people knew the truth…

Chapter Forty-five

On Bunker’s Hill, Miss Susannah Hathaway had looked by lamplight at her borrowed watch, then at the two teams, each made up of four Carters Barracks boys, ranged alongside her. She thanked her stars: the wind was fair and from the west; soon the moonless night would turn pale blue and gold.

The repeater watch pinged the quarter-hour she wanted and, like a stage manager, she cued her players – five … four … three … two … one … first light. She waved away four boys, who steadily began the move they had rehearsed. They ran down the slope, their movements this time dragging into the air the huge kite they controlled. It soared, and so too did Miss Hathaway’s heart.

Seconds later, she urged into similar action her second team. The great sails of framed fabric and their tethers cracked and creaked, as the biggest kites that Sydney Town had ever seen soared towards the Cove.

More than an hour before, Nicodemus Dunne had been ready to leave the safety in the lee of Macquarie’s Fort and be rowed with muffled oars around into the Cove. He was dressed all in black; even his face was smeared with stage
maquillage
the singer had taken from the theatre (‘Othello can spare it,’ she said). Dunne had even blackened his teeth (‘Now I look like Grenville,’
he
said).

His oarsman was the ‘Old Commodore’, Billy Blue, who was in his usual sombre garb, under a dark overcoat. ‘My face is no problem in the dark, Mr Dunne,’ he noted. ‘And I’m all gums!’

In the bottom of the light skiff stood a shape that looked like an upturned keg. It was just that, but in an unusual guise. It was first sheathed in an envelope of oiled and tightly sewn and proofed silk, sealed further by an outer wrapping of canvas. Only one small aperture existed, at the cask’s top lid. A needle-sharp butcher’s hook was firmly attached to one side, high up and facing outwards.