The Roving Party (2 page)

T
HEY WOULD BE NINE
. A
S THE
dray crawled over the hill it loomed long and blackshaped before the shallow sun, four prisoners hunched and jostling on the flatbed. On the verandah the company of native men passed a pipe among themselves and watched the dray clatter ever closer. Black Bill was among them, on his head a widebrimmed stockman’s hat pushed in at the crown. He pulled his turn on the pipe and gave it along to Pigeon as the cart inched down the mud track onto Kingston farm. With the Vandemonian, John Batman and his manservant Gould, the Dharug men Crook and Pigeon newly come from the Parramatta, and now the lags on the flatbed, there would be nine all told for the roving party.

The dray drew up beside the farmhouse, a cockeyed hut hewn from the stuff of the scrub, and the shackled men on the bed looked it over as if it was pestilent. Walled with rounds of gumtree, roofed with bark shingles and bleeding smoke from a stone chimney, its harsh angles were entirely at odds with
the fields and hills behind it. A pair of soldiers stepped off the bench seat and they trained their firearms upon the prisoners.

Come off there, you bastards, said the senior man, the overseer.

The fettered men, clanging like dulled cowbells, shuffled across the planks of the bed and clambered to the ground. With the stock of his firearm the overseer formed them into a line beside the cart.

Now pay attention to me, he said. Pay it good. Or I will carve my name into the first dogfucker what doesnt. He brandished his weapon before them, pushing aside his red coat, long since faded to a womanly pink, elbows mended with hide.

You hold that line and keep yer damn eyes on that mud there. You ponder on that mud cause damn my livin soul if you lot aint more useless than a hatful of it. I’m talkin to you, you old pisser. Bloody look at me when I talk.

They are a mongrel lot.

Black Bill looked around. William Gould had come up from the back paddocks and was addressing Bill as he stood watching. In his castoffs Gould made barely a better sight than the prisoners but he drew his face into a frown at the state of the new men as his eyes swept over them. Rag and bone and bugger-all else, he said.

Seems that way, said Bill.

One of the four prisoners was a roundshouldered old cur and this fellow fixed the overseer with a malicious stare.

Eyes down, you dog, eyes down. Dont you bloody look at me! The overseer was signalling with two fingers for the prisoner to lower his gaze. Keep your damn eyes off me, he said.

The prisoner dropped his head but his disdain remained and the rest of the shabby lot said not a word as the junior private shifted along to unchain their basils and toss them ringing onto the flatbed. Now freed, the men rubbed their abraded ankles, waiting for whatever came next.

Then Gould called out, Here he comes.

They all turned as John Batman appeared. He stood in the shadow thrown by the house. In his hands was a dead lamb, its head hacked off. When he walked forward into the pale sunlight he was as bloody as a surgeon and he held the carcass out before him. Its fleece was red and blood trailed over the mud behind him.

Bickle. I supposed they’d send you, he said, his breath steaming in the cold. He had a voice serrated by the overuse of his pipe and a fondness for rum taken straight. How was the roads?

The overseer wore a smile that was forced upon him. No trouble, Mr. Batman. No trouble at all.

For your wife, said Batman.

Bickle took the tiny headless thing. She’ll be most pleased she will.

Batman met him with a fierce eye. You got that money yet?

Now I told you about that, said Bickle and laughed. A short tight cough. It wasnt no fairly drawn hand.

Batman moved closer. So you’re callin me a swindler?

I’m callin you a swindler. A chiseller. A bilker. You choose whichever suits you best. Pleased with himself, the overseer looked around at his mate and at the black men arranged upon Batman’s verandah.

There was a little swell about Batman’s throat where he swallowed the word he’d almost used. Remember where you are, he said.

All I know is you turned a knave when it was needed. And knaves dont come up too often.

Well it come up. Now you owe me.

I owe you? Christ. Let a man be, would you. That canny luck of yours will show next time we front up to the table. By God it will. You might just have your money then.

Batman nodded, a slow and measured rocking of the head, but he showed no satisfaction. The horse huffed and shied in her harness. Behind the farmhouse the gum trees lashed in the winds. Batman walked before the line of men who stood with their heads bowed, shivering in their rough hessians. You have been told no doubt what I mean to see through, he said. What that means for youse fellows is this: if you’ve no stomach for killin, say so now.

The four men looked about but each kept quiet.

Then you are with me, he said. Batman’s shirt and coat sleeves were rolled back showing his forearms pasted with a slick of lamb’s blood. He wiped his arms with a rag, returned it
to his pocket and unfurled his sleeves. Staring at the men, he continued: Now I’ve as much regard for peace as anyone but I’ve been given a contract by the Governor and I intend to collect on it.

The men shifted nervously.

How many ayou had seen a black before today? He indicated with a nod of his head the two men of the Parramatta where they leaned their long bodies against the uprights of his verandah. The new men seemed unsure of what he expected. He came around to where he might better catch their eyes or look down into their grubby weathered faces. You boy?

No sir.

No?

No sir, not a one.

Well take a look. Go on. They’re tamed.

The boy raised his eyes, as did the rest, to study the three black men, and in turn they regarded the prisoners across that open space of rutted grass and mud which served as a turning circle for carts. The black men were alike in bearing and build, tall and well shaped for bush life, properly clothed but for their bare feet. Pigeon kept himself shaved and tended and made a fine figure in his calico jacket but his mate, John Crook, wore on his head a red wool cap marred with filth and holes. It was Crook who leaned forward and addressed the new men in his own language, his hand waving in anger.

Thinks it’s white dont it, said the old cur. Dressed up like that.

A cold silence followed. Pigeon came down off the verandah and stepped forward. For a moment he put out his hand to the men as any gentleman might but withdrew it when they plainly ignored him. Maybe they did not know what to make of him, a free man in the employ of Batman, or perhaps they saw in him something of their own failings. Only the boy put out his hand for Pigeon.

Good evenin, said Pigeon.

They shook hands.

Here John Batman interrupted the niceties. He addressed the prisoners. These fellows are of a different turn, he said, and as he motioned towards the black men the folds of his greatcoat flapped like canvas sails. They’ve had something of the wildness beaten out of them. Something, I say; not everything. Now the sort you shall encounter in the scrub hereabouts will not shake yer hand. My word. They are a people …

He looked along the row of faces all fixed upon him and the wind blew as cold as river water funnelled through the foothills below the white cotton crown of Ben Lomond, and it set his eyes glistening. Here was a man speaking in deep passion, fullhearted, enjoining them to rise up in common cause. The lags watched him, trying to still their chattering teeth.

A people who havent the smallest inclination towards layin down for us.

From a pocket of his coat Batman produced a quart flask of Indian rum that ran thickly up the glass then resettled. He pulled
the stopper as he repeated, Not the smallest, and threw back a swallow. The Governor is payin us to instil a lesson in the obtuse skulls of these dark skins. But I tell you this right now. It may be the blacks what do the instilling. It may be them affixing our bodies to the trees as you would the common criminal of old. I will offer no indemnity against that outcome. None whatsoever.

Shoals of cloud glowed blood red on the horizon and the sun cast Batman tall and intense. The wind crashed in the blue gums along the hills and squalled down the valley. But the four men by the dray studied the ground in silence. From another pocket Batman produced a cake of negro head. He approached the assigned men and placed it in the palm of a fellow who grinned through his black beard and fixed Batman with his one good eye.

You are a top sort, you are, he said to Batman. Look here, lads, we have some chew for ourselfs. He divided the cake four even ways. They rubbed loose the fibres and dipped a wad into the folds of their cheeks.

As they chewed Batman spoke. There is among them a chief. A warrior. Some say witch. He is called Manalargena. If we dont kill this man we all need a floggin, I tell you. Mark him by his beard which he keeps dressed with ruddle. You must bring him down before all others.

The men spat strings of juice on the ground, nodded their heads and mopped their chins, their eyes always upon Batman.

Sergeant Bickle pointed at a line on the printed warrant. Make your mark here if you would, he said. It was a crumpled certificate he’d pulled from inside his coat and flattened out upon the bench of the horsecart. Batman read the thing over with narrowed eyes then carried the paper inside his house to sign his name to it. In that time Bickle put the new men to unloading from the dray sacks marked flour, tea, sugar and tobacco. In the low sun their shadows grew long and spidered, a procession of fairytale horrors shifting over the turf and all the while he goaded them with threats of a skinning at the end of his whip.

Look here, Black Bill said to Batman as he returned with the warrant. They dont have shoes.

Batman studied the bare feet slopping through the mud as they worked to unload. He raised his hat, smoothed back his hair and then resettled the hat neatly on his crown. He looked around at the overseer.

Sergeant Bickle, where are their shoes?

Dont recall I saw no shoes on the requisition.

You what?

I dont recall I—

What use are the bastards without shoes?

I done what I was ordered. Address your request to the Police Magistrate and he’ll dispatch em.

Batman shook his head. That no-account wants a ball sendin through his bloody brains.

Seems your crows dont need shoes. Bickle raised his gun
at the Parramatta blacks and clicked his tongue. They glared at the soldier where he stood mocking them, their hands tight around the uprights and their jaws firmly set. A month ago the Dharug men had been walking the browned grasslands of New South Wales, but now their feet sank inch deep in the miserable damp of Van Diemen’s Land. They’d trod the August snow slurries and the mud and river marshes and felt the thorns of the pines through their soles and they would not be shod by anyone.

Christ look at the boots on that bastard, said Bickle as he lowered his firearm. Black Bill had on a pair of boots cut in the fashion of a horseman and shined up fresh. The stitching was waxed and white against the boots and the leather had been polished with a lump of glass, much in the manner of saddle skirting, to give it a high gloss.

He’s stolen them from somebody, said Bickle.

John Batman looked him straight in the face. I tell you what. You get them off his feet and you can keep em.

The overseer worked a spit cud around his mouth while he took stock of Black Bill from hat to heels, his hostile eyes betraying his opinion of what he saw there.

You get them off his feet and I’ll call it quits on that money. Call it square.

Bickle nodded slackly, spat on the dirt.

Go and show him some sport. He aint much.

What is he? Six foot?

Sixish. But he’s as untrained as the dog in the street.

That’s as may be.

A man of your history ought not to worry. I’ve seen you put down worse than him.

Bickle never took his eyes off the black man where he was stationed upon the verandah. Quits, you say?

My word on it.

Aye. Well then.

He removed his cap and shrugged off his regimental coat before he approached the farmhouse where the Vandemonian was waiting. Bickle’s rotten boots squelched over the ground; he dropped his cap on the mud and with a small motion of the fingers called Bill down.

Black Bill was a big fellow. He dipped his head under the crossbeam as he stepped off the decking, his dark face shadowed beneath his hat brim. When he moved, the musculature beneath the gleam of his skin drew taut, the cords of his forearms like pulleys. He seemed ignorant or perhaps contemptuous of the sergeant’s intent for he never removed his hat. He waited there before the farmhouse a picture of calm. The assignees had caught on to the happenings Batman had stirred up and they dropped their loads, gathering near the dray to better see what might follow.

The overseer called out. Come ere now, he said, and givem up. He raised his naked fists like some village pugilist calling men to take the ring for a shilling.