The Roving Party (10 page)

T
HE ROVING PARTY HAD SETTLED ON
a piece of rocky mountainside cut across by southerlies as cold as glass, and lit only by the halfmoon affixed above the hills silhouetted in the west. They sat in that subterranean darkness, wrapped in their blankets, with their pieces in hand as they chewed on raw mutton strips. Gunfire had sounded all day along the mountain’s flanks and from fear of an ambush they had made no fire as the night drew down. Pigeon would not take his ease and he strode the edge of the rocks in silent observation, awaiting some sign of the Plindermairhemener. They had fashioned a rope collar for the girl and tied her hands at her back that she might be more easily led and she lay in her skins staring from her one unswollen eye at the Dharug man as he moved back and forth. Her child sat near her, shapeless in the dark but for his white eyes.

No feature could be told out of that shrouded forest save what shadows were thrown up by the moon and John Batman tossed a small stone at Pigeon and motioned for him to quit.
He looked at Batman, drew his blanket around his shoulders and moved off again at his scouting. And despite the savage cold most of them found sleep in whatever positions they held, beside and leaned against one another, and still Pigeon walked the boundary. He had slept not a shade the previous night and would not this night. It was near midnight when a call of cooee cut the silence. Pigeon nudged his countryman Crook and bade him to rise. Batman had chucked off his covers, finding his weapon even before the call had died on the air. The scrub beneath their outlook was a formless black and silver gradient along the mountain’s flanks, and they studied that sweep of country for what little they could make of it. Again came the call and the men in one motion aimed their weapons at the quarter from which it had emanated. John Batman was wary of this ploy and he would not return the cooee as was customary along the frontier. He walked out a short way and stood listening above the insect din. When the call sounded a third time it was followed by some words he could not make out. He turned to Pigeon.

What do you spose that was?

Pigeon grinned. Said he found some old cretin.

Who said?

Our Billy Black.

Batman kicked at the ground. Did he? Well call him in then.

Through his hands Pigeon bellowed out his own cooee and it was returned a moment later. The men stood down, eased
back the hammers of their pieces, and before too long the stragglers approached the campsite and wordlessly sat themselves down among the others. Horsehead had fared poorly and was shivering and bleeding. He set his grubby feet upon the stones, and by the moon’s light plucked thorns and tended the various gashes in his soles.

We believed you lost, said Jimmy Gumm.

I was, said Horsehead. Now I’m found.

He worked with great tenderness upon a two-inch score in his foot, probing it for remnants of splinter. I had a time of it with the crows, but.

Where’s yer piece? said Batman.

Out bush somewheres.

Christ almighty.

Horsehead sipped a mouthful of water and spat into the gash. The pain had him wincing. You see em too, Bill?

I did. They were tracking Mr. Clarke here.

And near had me too, by God.

They mean to raise Cain I reckon, said Batman. We’d do well to watch our backs.

I saw that chief atheirs, said Horsehead.

Ugly heathen wretch, aint he? said Batman.

I had no weapon or I would’ve bagged him meself. Bill there, he shot up a pound-weight of ball and I seen him drop one at least. But not that chief. No. He has some cunning in him, he does.

We havent the wherewithal to take him. He is beyond us.

They all looked around at Bill. He said nothing more but merely pushed back the brim of his hat and brought his features into the moonlight and they watched him proceed to pick at the dry scabby cakes of blood spattered up his arms, the blood of dogs, of clansmen, and some of his own.

A
T NOON THE FOLLOWING DAY THE
bush first thinned over a few yards then evaporated entirely as the party approached the open grounds of Kingston. A change of temper washed over them and talk rounded to rewards and their spending, rum and its swilling, women and their laying. They retraced the curve of the field long ago burned from the forest by the Plindermairhemener. They passed the sheep bones and skerricks of yellowed wool that littered the ground, evidence of the slaughter committed upon Batman’s flocks some years back by those same folk. They led the native girl along and her dull eyes saw but did not see. Her feet kicked over the bones that rattled like ruined pottery.

As they neared the farmhouse Batman’s three girls came bolting over the paddocks and topping fences to embrace their father. The eldest stood back when she caught smell of his clothes but the little ones seemed untroubled and latched on around his legs.

Is she sick, Father? said the eldest. She was pointing at the black girl who’d dropped to her knees.

She aint no concern ayours. He hauled the girls off his legs and steered them towards their sister. For a moment the three girls lingered, their dresses catching on the breeze. Then the youngest spotted the child Jimmy Gumm had on his hip.

A baby. He has a baby, she said.

Get inside. Get! Batman yelled and the girls took off.

On Batman’s word, Gould led the native girl to the outbuildings. The key groaned in the padlock as Gould cranked it around and the chains fell free from the looped handles of the store shed. He freed the crossbrace and yanked on the door and its toe scarred the earth as it moved. The faded afternoon sun issued through the separations in the woodwork and caught in the cobwebs. That was all the light the girl would have. Gould pushed her into the stink of wool and sheep shit, and shouldered the door shut. Not a sound did she utter.

When Eliza Batman appeared on the verandah she had in her hands a pisspot turned from wattle wood that contained their night’s purgations and her girls were leading her along by the skirts, pointing at the party men as they neared the farmhouse—the boy in his clothes stiffened with dog’s blood and the smiling black men and among them Jimmy Gumm
holding the hand of a native child. Batman kept his distance until she’d slung the contents of the pisspot on the grass. She was a slight Irish woman, pockmarked but handsome still, and she met those men with a glare which made plain her displeasure.

And what by Jaysus is this?

A boy, mam.

She swung about on John Batman. A boy. So where’s his mother?

Locked up.

Dont let’s be lyin to each other, Johnny.

I aint lyin. She’s locked there in that store shed.

In there?

That’s what I said, woman.

She cut through those squalid bushmen with her three girls behind her and banged on the door of the store shed. She called out but there was no sound from inside. Open it, she said.

William Gould produced a ring of iron keys and from that selected one, shaking it free of the rest. He tugged the heavy door open in fits and starts. Eliza bent her head inside.

Fearsome little colleen that, said Gumm, but he was met by the stone cold eyes of John Batman and the grin he wore vanished. The native girl stumbled drunkenly into the noon glare. Immediately the child by Gumm’s side began to keen for its mother.

Take care, said Gould. She has a set of claws on her.

But Eliza showed no caution as she stood taking summary of the girl from head to toe. The remnants of her ritual painting remained on her yet and the smeared ochre and white clay told of her providence among the people of the hills. The animal pelt she wore across one shoulder was crawling with fleas and stank of the smoke and grease of bushlife. She swayed under the baffling sun and covered her eyes with her roped hands.

Eliza looked around at the men. She’s nothin but a child.

Batman grimaced. I dont care what she is.

Aye, she said. God’s mill may grind slowly, John, but it grinds finely. You wont be forgot when he tallies what’s owin.

Carrying the bucket between them Batman’s girls ferried water from the creek and tempered it with boiled water from the kitchen, singing a hymn as they toiled. A small tin bath was borne from the house and stood on the verandah and the girl and her child were hitched to an upright beside it.

Dont be frettin now, missus, said Eliza.

Eliza hiked up her sleeves and leaned in to unfasten the knot around the native girl’s neck. The coarse hemp had chewed at her skin and the girl flinched but did not resist. John Batman was backed against a fencepost, watching the spectacle from a gentlemanly remove with his gun held in the crook of his arm. Eliza steered the girl by the elbow towards the bathtub. Steam
rose off the iron face of the water and the native girl hesitated at the edge.

Look, it wont hurt yer none. See? Eliza splashed water onto her dark skin. The girl put one foot into the water as Eliza tugged on her elbow, and then a tentative second. There she waited with her bound hands at her chest.

She wouldnt never have seen hot water before, said Batman.

Course she has. They love a mug of tea.

Dont bathe in it but, do they?

Go on with yer now. Barely sixteen she is. This aint no business ayours.

It’ll be my business if she bites yer ear off, wont it?

Go on!

Batman crossed his weapon behind his neck and walked off.

Eliza lifted the child also into the water and he thrust out his squat legs and churned up the surface. Using a cook-pot she ladled water over the girl’s shoulders. It ran and beaded over the grease on her skin. So she took a block of soap and raised a lather over the whole of her back and thighs and arms and all the while the girl stood meekly and fixed her eyes downwards.

Here, Maria. You do it. Eliza gave the pot to her eldest and the girl rolled up the sleeves of her pinny and knelt beside the bath.

Look here at these scars on her.

Dont be touchin them now.

What’s her name?

Goodness only knows.

I should like to call her Ellen. Could I call her Ellen, Ma?

Eliza straightened up, her backbones cracking. Katherine, she said. Come up here, would you?

Bill’s woman was belting wet clothes against a stone and upon hearing her name she lifted her head. Her long hair was tied back like a white woman’s and her head came up slowly as if that coil was a great weight to bear. Eliza waved her nearer and she came, wiping her hands on the tattered men’s shirt she wore loosely over her belly.

What’s her name?

Eh?

I want to know her name.

Her?

Yes.

She no one.

She has a name, dont she?

Katherine looked the girl over. Why you want that?

Well fer goodness sake, I must have something to call her.

You call her anythin.

Just be askin after her name, wont yer, please.

So Katherine turned to the girl. mullarwalter nela? she said. But the girl was mute. She brought her face down level and stared into the girl’s eyes. mullarwalter nela? she said again. nina tunapri mina kani?

Luggenemenener.

Luggenemenener?

narapa. The girl didn’t look up.

The water was a rich soup of oil and scum. Maria dumped a potful on the child’s head and scrubbed his hair and she likewise rubbed the girl’s shaven head and her cicatricial skin where inset circles of sun and moon moved below her flesh like the burrowed grubs of moths. The soap picked out those scars and outlined them as they had been previously outlined by clay.

No name, Katherine said as she wiped her hands on her shirt.

She must have a name. Even dogs have names.

But Katherine’s mouth had turned hard and a moment passed where it seemed she might walk off. Whites got no need of our name, she said. You call us anythin.

Having spoken her piece she stepped off the verandah and resumed her washing, the steady slap tolling endlessly across the flats. Eliza pressed her no further. They pulled the girl from the bathtub and unbound her hands and yanked a worn dress over her head. It sagged off her thin limbs, looking no more proper on her than it would have on a gum sapling. They did up her child in an old pinny and in the afternoon sun the two made a morose pair, gazing down at their clothes. Eliza bundled the kangaroo pelt onto the kitchen fire and pointed at the flames taking hold and at the rich greasy smoke they shed.

You dont need it no more, she said to the native girl. Dont need it. You have a good dress now.

And they all stood watching the rainbow forktongues lick along the outers and singe away the fur in a stink of char.