The Night They Stormed Eureka (11 page)

A noise behind her startled her. She turned around. There, up on the hill above the gully, the troopers led a line of shackled men, chained together wrist to wrist. One man bled from a wound in his leg, the blood mixing with the mud on his trousers.

‘Wait till they’re gone,’ said the Professor quietly. ‘If you don’t have a licence they might grab you no matter how young you are, even if Mrs Puddleham has bribed them today already.’

Sam shivered. The past, it seemed, was no longer a safe haven.

The Puddlehams were subdued that evening as they served out dinner — or supper, as they called it. It seemed the two of them had come to an agreement about the licence fees, though they didn’t tell Sam what it was.

About twenty men gathered around the stew pot that night, as the muskets blasted about the camp and the cockatoos rose screaming into the sky.

Happy Jack sat with his dog again. It cowered behind his boots in case anyone kicked it, while the little man stared up at the cockatoos as though they were the most beautiful sight he had ever seen. Which they might be, thought Sam. What had Happy Jack escaped from?

Happy Jack’s grin grew bigger. ‘Birdies,’ he confided to her. ‘Pretty birdies. We’re happy, ain’t we?’ he asked his dog.

The dog gazed over at the stew as Mrs Puddleham poured a ladleful into each bowl, then handed them to Sam or her husband to pass to the men in exchange for their threepence.

Who’d have thought that lumps of meat and potato could turn to something as rich as this? thought Sam, asshe handed a plate to a young man with white scars around his wrists. No wonder hungry men would pay threepence for a bowl of it.

She watched as Happy Jack slurped down a few mouthfuls, then put the plate down for his dog to gulp the rest. The dog wasn’t the only one licking the plate, she thought. One of the miners had bits of potato in his beard. She imagined him picking the bits out later, as he lay in his tent …

More men tramped down into the gully as the shadows thickened and the first star began to glow on the horizon. Mrs Puddleham surreptitiously poured more water into the cauldron and beckoned to Sam.

‘Always a good turnout after them troopers have been,’ she whispered. ‘A bit o’ nice grub takes men’s minds off their troubles. But you keep a sharp eye out, deary, that none o’ they slips a spoon into their pockets. There ain’t nothing a Vandemonian won’t steal if it ain’t nailed down.’

There was a strange joy in watching men gulp down a stew you’d made, seeing the look of pleasure on workworn faces. Mrs Puddleham might make sure she got her coins from each man, Sam thought, but she also couldn’t help giving each of them a plate almost brimming over. Mrs Puddleham would love to feed the world, she thought — especially if everybody gave her threepence in return.

After the stew there were slices of treacle pudding for those who had tuppence extra. The men ate the slices with their hands and licked their fingers. Mrs Puddlehamgathered the bones for Happy Jack’s dog, while Sam washed the plates so that the next lot of waiting diners could use them.

‘Meeting at the gravel pits tomorrow,’ announced one of the men, eyeing the gravy-laden plate Mr Puddleham handed him.

Mrs Puddleham put her hands on her hips, scattering drops of gravy from her ladle. ‘An’ what sort o’ meeting would that be?’

‘A meeting of anyone who wants justice, missus.’ This second man spoke with his mouth full, a chunk of pudding in his hand to wipe up the last of the stew. ‘A meeting to elect councillors to represent all diggers, and take our message down to Melbourne.’ The miner met her gaze. ‘Or mebbe more. Mebbe it’s time we stood together, back to back, like in America or back in Ireland, an’ fought off the oppressor.’ He pronounced it
O-pressy-or.
‘America’s free of England now. We can be free too!’

‘Aye, an’ get killed for it,’ muttered someone in the shadows.

‘Words is all very well.’ Mrs Puddleham struck the cauldron with her ladle. ‘But ye’ll get no more stew from my pot, Rummy Hawkins, till you stop talking politics.’

‘A man’s got a right to his own views!’

‘An’ a woman’s got a right to say who eats her cooking. Ain’t that the case, Mr Puddleham?’

Mr Puddleham said nothing. He began to collect the empty plates without looking at his wife.

Rummy Hawkins slammed the tin plate down on theground. ‘Take yer stew then, and be dammed to ye!’ He stomped off into the night.

There was silence around the campfire.

‘I see he finished his stew first.’ It was the Professor’s voice. Sam hadn’t seen him slip through the darkness to the cook tent. Men laughed, a little nervously. They began to spoon up their food again.

Except for one. He looked down at his plate, still half full of stew, then stood and handed it politely back to Mrs Puddleham. He was a big man, young, with muddy hair. Mrs Puddleham stared at it, bewildered. ‘What’s this, Mr Lalor?’

Lalor, thought Sam. Mrs Quant had taught them about Peter Lalor. He’d been one of the leaders at the stockade. He’d lost an arm in the battle …

She stared at the big square hand that held out the plate. Was it that one? Impossible, that he should just be standing there. Impossible, that she should know what would happen to him, while he was unaware.

‘Your stew, madam. Good as it is, I prefer the taste of freedom.’ He looked around. ‘And I hope every man here will join us at the meeting.’

‘Now you see here —’ began Mrs Puddleham.

Mr Puddleham put a hand on her shoulder. ‘I’ll be there,’ he said quietly to Lalor.

His wife looked bewildered. ‘But —’

Mr Puddleham shook his head, his bearing as erect as if he were serving tea to the queen. ‘I will not be manhandled by dastards with neither manners nor breeding. I will nottolerate a state of affairs where men like that have power over us all. I am doing this for you, Mrs Puddleham. I am doing it for me, and for Lucy. I am doing it for all who have suffered under the tyranny of those who rule us. I said, Mrs Puddleham, that I’ll be there.’

He bowed to her, then followed Peter Lalor into the darkness.

Sam and Mrs Puddleham washed the plates down at the creek after the last digger had left. A slushie candle — a wick flickering in a jar of mutton fat — gave just enough light to see.

‘He’ll be back soon,’ said Sam.

Mrs Puddleham said nothing. She hadn’t spoken since her husband strode off into the night.

‘He won’t have gone far,’ Sam added, hoping it was true. He
couldn’t
go far, surely? she thought. Not in the dark without a torch.

Mrs Puddleham shrugged, her shoulders a mass of blackness against the starlit sky. ‘For a drink, mebbe, to one o’ the grog shops. He won’t take much. Not a drinker, Mr Puddleham.’ Even now her voice was filled with pride when she spoke of her husband.

‘Mrs Puddleham, who is Lucy?

Mrs Puddleham began to dry the plates on the hessian sack that served as both tea towel and apron.

‘Please. She’s your daughter, isn’t she?’

A nod in the darkness, more heard than seen.

‘You … you don’t really think I’m her, do you?’

Mrs Puddleham stared at her, her eyes so wide Sam could see their whites. ‘O’ course not. You could never be our Lucy.’

‘But —’

‘Lucy’s dead.’

They sat by the fire, a pile of coals glowing like the stars above them, just bigger, closer, brighter. Comforting, thought Sam, with the darkness all around.

‘It were on the ship,’ said Mrs Puddleham at last. Sam had made her a cup of the precious tea kept in a wooden box and doled out to favourite customers at sixpence a mug. ‘I were so afraid she’d come while I was in Newgate. They takes your baby there, puts ‘em in the workhouse. Babies don’t last long in the workhouse.

‘I weren’t having that. I’d keep my legs crossed, I told meself. I’d wait till I were on the ship. They lets you keep your baby if it comes on the ship. An’ I did. We was two days out from Plymouth when the pains came …

‘It weren’t easy. The ship diving and rising, so bad you had to hold onto your bunk or you’d fall off. But the other women — there were some good ‘uns there. Black Janey, she ripped up her petticoats to tie me to me bunk. And Annie Three Tooth had been a midwife. Don’t know how long it lasted. The ship went up and down an’ I kept screaming.

‘And there she was. My Lucy. Dark hair just like her Pa’s. No light down in the hold, except sometimes when they left the trapdoor ajar to let in air. Musta been open then ‘cause I could see her eyes too. Blue as the sea, though her Pa’s and mine are green …

‘We’d talked, me and Mr Puddleham, about what we’d do if we ever had a family. Mr Puddleham’s ma was a Lucy, so we said we’ll call a daughter after her.’ Her voice trailed off into the darkness.

‘What happened?’ asked Sam softly.

‘It were all all right for so long. I gave milk like I were a Jersey cow. Fed another baby an’ all, Silver Molly’s, that were. Used my underskirts to make cloths for her.

‘But one o’ the sailors brought a fever aboard at the Cape. Them sailors made free of us women, o’ course. So we got the fever too. More’n half of us died. So bad for a time they didn’t even open the hatchway, just left us with the bodies next to us. You’d look at the girl next to you, her face all eaten by the rats, an’ all you could do was hope she’d been dead afore they started to bite.

‘I got the fever too. But not Lucy. I shivered and burned but I kept her next to me, so she could feed. When they put buckets o’ water down Silver Molly’d save some for both of us, so we could wash our babies’ cloths.

‘An’ finally the fever burned out, like it had killed all it could and just gave up. They let us onto the deck, first time in more’n a month. The sea light so bright it hurt your eyes. Made Lucy cry, it were so bright. But I could see her then. First time I saw her in the light. So beautiful. And she couldsee the sky and me. She saw her ma, she saw the light, the sea, the blue sky. I’ll always be thankful she saw that.

‘She were dead the next morning. Don’t know why. Maybe I rolled on her in the night. That’s what killed the babies sometimes, bein’ rolled on. I’ve asked meself again and again if I could o’ done that. I’ll never know, you see, never know what it were that killed her.’

‘Cot death,’ whispered Sam. ‘Babies sometimes just die.’

‘You think I don’t know that? But not my baby. Not when I held her so careful …

‘Then when Mr Puddleham came to that kitchen in Parramatta. First he hugged me tight and then he says, “Where is the baby?” ‘Cause he’d heard, you see, that I was in the family way. An’ I had to tell him. Had to stand there by the fireplace turning the boss’s mutton on the spit and tell him how his baby died, how it were all my fault, how I couldn’t even keep our girl alive.’

‘It wasn’t your fault! Not in a place like that!’

‘Course it were my fault! That’s what a ma is for, ain’t it? To keep her child safe.’ Mrs Puddleham’s face was fierce with grief in the starlight. ‘An’ I’ll keep you safe. I failed with my Lucy. But you’re going ter have all that I can give you. Everything a daughter needs you’ll have from me.’

‘Mrs … I mean, Ma …’

Sam put her arms around the heaving shoulders, held the big woman while she sobbed.

‘That’s why Mr Puddleham is joining with the other men, the miners. He won’t blame me, you see. He blames the queen, the soldiers, blames the magistrates …’

‘He’s right,’ said Sam softly. ‘It was them that killed Lucy. Not you.’

Mrs Puddleham wiped her eyes roughly with the hessian sack, then blew her nose on it. ‘But what good will it do if Mr Puddleham gets killed too? Cause we can’t fight people like that, deary. Not us. All we can do is make our way an’ try an’ find some safety. Why, Mr P can even vote if he wants to when we gets our hotel. Think of him, marching down to the Town Hall to vote with all the nobs, and you and me in our best, watching him. You’ll be in pink silk, deary, and me in black satin maybe, an’ a footman from the hotel in case we sees something pretty in the shops that you might like …’

Sam let her talk. Mrs Puddleham was right, she thought. This rebellion would bring nothing but death and heartbreak. But who would believe her if she tried to tell them?

Finally the flow of words stopped. The big woman laid her head on Sam’s shoulder. Mr Puddleham found them sitting like that in the moonlight by the dying embers of the fire.

He looked down at them, his face impassive, then trod down the gully towards them. Mrs Puddleham gave a start, and looked up.

‘Mr Puddleham,’ she began.

The little man shook his head. He lifted his wife’s hand and kissed it. She started to cry.

Mr Puddleham put his arm around her shoulders. He looked at Sam, then nodded. ‘Thank you for being with her,’ he said softly.

‘It’s okay,’ said Sam awkwardly. ‘I mean, it doesn’t matter.’

‘A child matters more than anything in the world,’ said Mr Puddleham precisely. ‘If you can be that for my wife …’ he hesitated, looking at the crumple of Mrs Puddleham’s face. ‘I thank you,’ he said again, then led his crying wife into the tent.

Sam hauled the pile of branches over to the woodheap and tried to get her breath back. She’d been on the diggings for a week now, and had lost track of how many armfuls of wood she’d hauled to the camp. She and Mr Puddleham had to walk kilometres each day just to find enough to keep the pots simmering.

The days had passed in a series of meals; the morning dampers, the lunchtime pancakes, the evening plates of stew, the wild ducks Mrs Puddleham had roasted one night for a miner who’d struck it lucky and wanted to treat all his friends. He’d even paid for apple dumplings for all the cook-shop regulars, with apples at sixpence each too, brought up from Melbourne. Mrs Puddleham had made custard from eggs and goat’s milk and precious sugar, and a special damper flavoured with cold tea and currants.

Sometimes it felt like she had always been here, chopping potatoes and learning how to mix dripping into flour to make dumplings. At other times the wind would whip past without stirring a leaf, and the cold shiver wouldcome over her again, and she’d be afraid to blink in case this new world whirled away.