The Soldier's Curse (12 page)

Ten years later another Monsarrat, a different man in the same body, relived that experience when he heard of Dory's apprehension, as he had whenever anyone was apprehended for any reason.

Slattery had indeed lost no time in going after Dory, taking a horse from the stables and riding it hard, praying he was not passing the young man hiding in the trees.

When he came upon Dory, who had stopped for a rest, the young man had looked up at him with deadened eyes, and had not tried to escape. Slattery told Dory he would take him back to the settlement. If they returned before his escape had been reported, he might be able to pass it off, he said. If word of the escape had made its way to the higher-ups, Slattery would have to take Dory in.

‘I asked him why he did it; of course I did,' Slattery told Monsarrat later. ‘He had five years left, but it's not forever. He said he looked at Frogett and Daines every day and saw nothing. They've both been here a few years, were amongst the first, in fact, and in the colony for five, six years before that. Dory said he didn't want to be hollowed out like them, but he could feel his soul beginning to bleed through his feet.'

‘So why did he stop?' asked Monsarrat.

‘He realised, as he walked, that his chances of making Sydney were slim. He also realised he would never make it back to the settlement in time. He knew then, he said, that he was doomed either way. There was nothing to be done. He might as well sit and wait. Breathe air that wasn't putrid, probably for the last time. And let me and his fate take him.'

Slattery's fear that Diamond would find out about the escape became a reality when he approached the Shoal Arm bridge, Dory on the horse behind him, to see Diamond crossing it.

Slattery said that when Diamond saw him, he gave a smile which ‘turned me to river water'. ‘He looked at me and he shook his head, and that smile didn't flicker,' said Slattery. ‘He just said, “Private, how unwise of you to go after an absconder without taking irons.”'

Diamond had not made the same mistake. He had brought shackles. He had Dory dismount, and ordered Slattery to apply them. Then the young man was marched to the prison to await whatever punishment Diamond decided to bestow.

Dory was a foolish boy, Monsarrat thought, not only to escape, but to do so while the settlement was under the control of Captain Diamond.

Monsarrat himself bypassed the kitchen the next morning, the solace of a cup of tea and Mrs Mulrooney's comforting presence. He felt certain that Diamond would be by sooner rather than later, and knew it was important, particularly now, to demonstrate rectitude by being at his desk and well into the day's work when the captain got there.

His instincts were proved right when Diamond swept into his workroom mid-morning. Ignoring Monsarrat for the moment, he went directly to the major's study, and sat himself behind Shelborne's desk – a place no one but the commandant had sat before – only then showing he was aware of Monsarrat's existence by calling him in.

‘I shall require your services, Monsarrat, when it comes to dealing with yesterday's absconder. First, though, there is another matter between us.'

Monsarrat related the contents of Gonville's report, with Diamond unaware that the source of the information lay near his elbow, resealed in a way which would withstand all but the most thorough of examinations.

The captain's face was impassive as he listened. ‘Well,' he said when Monsarrat finished, ‘things seem to be moving with a frustrating sluggishness.'

Monsarrat assumed, or wanted to assume, that Diamond was referring to Honora Shelborne's failure to rally. If he let his imagination run away with him, he could almost believe that Diamond was referring to the young woman's failure to die with efficiency.

‘I shall be expecting another report tomorrow. See that your information is fresh.'

‘Yes, sir,' said Monsarrat. He would redouble his efforts, from here on in, to be scrupulously correct in his dealings with Diamond. There were a handful of genuine monsters sprinkled amongst the settlement's mostly petty criminals, and Diamond, to Monsarrat's mind, was fast assuming the mantle of one of them.

‘Now,' said the soldier, ‘you and I are going to the police house to sentence the absconder William Dory. I will give you the sentence so you can make a start on the administrative necessities.'

Monsarrat presumed that Diamond wished him to transcribe a report to the Colonial Secretary. It would be telling, he thought, whether he left it with Monsarrat for the major's signature, or signed and sent it himself.

‘You may inform the Colonial Secretary that given the number of recent escapes and the generally refractory nature of the prisoners here, I feel the convict population would be edified by witnessing a more severe punishment than usual,' said Diamond.

Monsarrat felt a sudden wrench of fear for Dory.

‘Please inform him that I am sentencing the absconder to one hundred lashes,' said Diamond.

‘One hundred!' Monsarrat was unable to stop himself. ‘Sir, prior to his departure Governor Macquarie left instructions that no punishment was to exceed fifty lashes, and the major has never ordered more than thirty-five.'

Diamond slowly rose from behind the desk and leaned forward. His eyes narrowed, and Monsarrat fancied he saw a spark there which had not been present as he listened to the report on Mrs Shelborne's condition.

‘Now listen, Monsarrat, with your ridiculous intellectual pretensions. I don't care if you can recite the Psalms backwards in Latin. You're a convict like the rest of them. Worse than the rest, actually, as you're educated and should have known better. Clearly beyond redemption, criminal to the bone, and no amount of Roman poetry will change it. This settlement has been left in my care, and I will do what I think best to ensure its integrity.'

He sat back down. ‘The governor who gave that order is taking his ease in Scotland. He and I never even stood on this landmass at the same time. One hundred lashes is the maximum allowable by law, so one hundred it shall be.'

Monsarrat was certain Diamond would have ordered more, had the law allowed it. One hundred lashes, he knew, was a discount on the brutality of previous years, which had seen several hundred administered. Sometimes, by the end, the scourger had been flogging a corpse.

But one hundred lashes could kill a man too. Sometimes the heart gave out, simply stopped beating in protest at the pain. Or it stopped beating due to lack of work, too much blood having been drawn off by the knotted cords of the flail. Or if it struggled on with its work, the wounds could absorb the noxious atmosphere around them, turning blood into poison.

But he was sure any further protest would see him on a work gang, or worse, by that afternoon. He confined himself to a small bow.

‘The sentence will be administered tomorrow,' said Diamond, rolling his shoulders as though to entice the robe of a ruler to settle there. ‘Dory will then endure solitary confinement on bread and water for one month. Please draft a report to this effect, and be sure to emphasise that past punishments have failed to prevent further escape attempts.'

Monsarrat swiftly withdrew to his workroom to begin writing up the loathsome report, until Diamond told him to make for the police house for the sentencing. He hoped Dory got the right scourger. One of the convict constables was usually appointed to do the job. Two of them usually had to be urged to strike harder.
But a third, an ill-favoured man with scrawls of black hair around a bald crown, like a demented parody of a monk's tonsure, needed no such urging. He enjoyed inflicting the punishment, smiled while doing so. Quietly, Major Shelborne had decided not to appoint him to the task in future. Monsarrat doubted Diamond would have the same reluctance.

The business at the police house was a quick affair. Dory was brought in, and Diamond had Monsarrat read the charge. Diamond then pronounced the sentence. Monsarrat looked at Dory in a way which he hoped conveyed support. Dory didn't see him, though. His eyes lost focus when he heard the sentence, and it seemed he was channelling all his concentration into maintaining a neutral expression. In his short life, he would have learned the dangers of showing fear to wolves.

Monsarrat had hoped Diamond would make for the parade ground on their return, but he seemed to like the commandant's office. As Monsarrat forced himself to calmly compose the report, he heard papers being moved. He's playing at commandant, Monsarrat thought. Trying it on for size.

After a few minutes, Diamond stalked into the workroom. ‘Oh, Monsarrat,' he said as he pushed open the door. ‘Please also make a note that we will not be using a trustee to carry out the sentence. Clearly they are not doing a proper job, if thirty lashes is not putting people off. Slattery, now there's an interesting soldier. You're acquainted with him, I believe. Do you know, he went after the absconder with no means of restraining him? He brought him back without so much as a belt or a rope around his wrists. I applaud his initiative, but he really needs to be more careful. He will give the prisoner his hundred lashes. It will teach him not to be sloppy in future.'

He knew it was cowardly, but Monsarrat would have liked to avoid seeing his young friend scourge a fellow he had some regard for. The choice, however, wasn't his. All convicts were required to watch floggings. In a society where many viewed convicts as
irredeemable, born criminals who could not change their nature, Monsarrat found it odd that observing a flogging was thought to prevent further, similar misbehaviour. If transportation and its attendant miseries hadn't forced a man to change, what difference was watching someone else suffer going to make?

So he stood in the yard near the convict barracks that afternoon, with a great number of other felons, staring at the triangular frame, slightly taller than a man, which had been set up there. The wood of the frame was light but festooned with darker blotches, which Monsarrat knew to be blood stains.

Dory was brought in, his eyes down. He was made to face the frame, his wrists tied to its apex. Then Slattery entered, both arms straight, trailing the scourge, its nine cords knotted to increase their capacity to sunder flesh. His jaw was set, whether in determination or horror was not immediately clear. But as he approached the frame, his eyes moved over the crowd, settling on Monsarrat.

The older man had to stop himself from stepping backwards, shrinking from the alarming change in his friend. The laughing rogue he had faced across yesterday's kitchen table was gone. Slattery's eyes seemed to have sunk deeper into his skull, as though he had balled up his fists and pushed them in with the considerable force of which he was capable. Leaping out of them, in almost visible arcs, was a ferocious anger. This is not our dancing boy, Monsarrat thought. This is not our bluffer, our teller of tales. He has been scooped out and replaced with refined hatred.

Slattery gave Monsarrat the briefest of nods, and approached the frame. He put one hand on Dory's shoulder, placed his head next to the boy's, and whispered something. He saluted Diamond, who was watching impassively. Then he stepped back, and struck.

Monsarrat had seen coachmen use whips on horses in England. At the first flogging he attended (and there had been dozens since), he had expected the flail to emit a similar crack. But the sound he heard was duller and all the more horrifying for it, and became more muted as the flesh of the back opened up, the blood and tissues absorbing the noise.

Slattery's first blow was far weaker than it could have been. He did not turn his body and extend his arm backwards. He simply held up the flail, and propelled it towards Dory. Even so, the first lash left large welts, as did the next three. The fourth left a line of blood. Slattery, Monsarrat noticed, was taking care to strike in different places each time, to put off the inevitable moment when the flesh would shred beyond repair.

Diamond, though, was getting impatient. ‘Use more force, private,' he called. ‘If you are incapable of carrying out a task we usually give to the convicts, we may have to reconsider your position.'

For a moment, Slattery showed no sign that he had heard. Then he did reach backwards, and the lash connected with Dory with enough force to open a wound from one shoulderblade to the other. Dory, who until now had been impressively silent, grunted but did not cry out. Convict etiquette dictated that punishments be endured with as little evidence of pain as possible, and younger felons were told by gaolyard elders with scarred backs that crying out only made it hurt more anyway.

The next few blows were just as strong. Then, Monsarrat noticed, Slattery began to decrease the force of each blow, almost imperceptibly, no doubt hoping Diamond wouldn't notice.

Diamond did. ‘If it's too much for you, private, we can get one of the ladies to do it,' he said, earning a snicker from some of the more sadistic or toadying soldiers.

The next thirty or forty lashes continued in the same vein, with Slattery gradually decreasing the force until Diamond noticed and urged him to greater brutality.

By fifty lashes, when Dory's back was more welt and wound than skin, he was grunting with every blow, but still managing to resist the urge to cry out.

Diamond had clearly decided he wanted more noise, and was sick of Slattery's game. He stepped forward. ‘Private, I find myself forced to give you some guidance in administering punishment. Hand me the flail.'

Slattery looked momentarily alarmed, before the instincts which served him in Three Card Brag enabled him to rearrange
his features into a study in neutrality. He gave Diamond the flail, and stepped away.

Diamond turned his torso side on to the frame, stretching his arm as far back as he possibly could. He paused for a moment, uncoiled, arcing the flail upwards and then down towards Dory. When it connected, it made a sound which was as close to a whip crack as Monsarrat had ever heard at a flogging.

And he kept doing it. Turning, stretching, uncoiling and lashing with inhuman detachment. Each movement was precise, coordinated and perfectly timed. It was calibrated to cause maximum damage.

Everyone watching, including Slattery, had expected Diamond to make his point and then hand back the flail. But he didn't. He seemed to become lost in the dance, seeing nothing except the flail, caring about nothing except its trajectory and velocity. He did not stop. He did not seem to tire from the effort. He became an extension of the flail, merely its power source, a river to its mill.

After Diamond's first few lashes, Dory was unable to stop a cry escaping him. After the next ten, he was no longer trying to stay silent. After twenty, the cords on the scourge began to excavate glimpses of bone, which became larger as Diamond continued with the same force, the same gap between strikes, and the same vacant look. By now, Dory was screaming.

‘Captain!' shouted the doctor. ‘Let me examine the boy!'

But Diamond ignored him. At around eighty lashes, Dory's legs stopped supporting his weight, and he fell silent. Monsarrat couldn't see his face, but hoped he had only lost consciousness. He was now held up solely by the ropes tethering him to the frame, his toes the only part of him making contact with the ground, as though he had been frozen in the act of kneeling. His back was a gelatinous, glistening red field, dotted with snowflakes of exposed rib, and streaked with a few – a very few – yellow smears of fat, a commodity he didn't possess in any great quantity.