Blacksmith at Lumber Yard
—strongman with a big mouth.
The Flying Pieman
—Dunne′s peddler pal William Francis King, also an athlete extraordinaire.
Private Joseph Sudds
—wayward soldier whose fate convulses the colony.
Private Patrick Thompson
—Sudds′s partner in crime, and punishment.
Bungaree
—“King” of the local Aboriginals.
“Commodore” Billy Blue
—the harbor’s most famous ferryman.
Cora Gooseberry
—King Bungaree’s queen.
Barnett Levey
—a man with theater in his blood and blood in his theater.
Mrs. Norah Robinson
—a very accommodating hostess.
Muller
—a German typesetter.
Brian O′Bannion
—an old lag from the Auld Sod.
James Bond
—a young lag, suitably stirred and shaken.
Thomas Balcombe
—a man for whom every picture tells a story.
Oh, and Master William Shakespeare
—dead more than 200 years, he wanders through the story, scattering clues.
Sydney, Australia 1828
CHAPTER ONE
Ours [our army] is composed of the scum of the earth—the mere scum of the earth.
—Duke of Wellington (1831), quoted in P. H. Stanhope,
Notes of Conversations with the Duke of Wellington
A
SCARLET-COATED SOLDIER, A PRIVATE OF HIS BRITANNIC MAJESTY KING George IV′s 57th Regiment of Foot, was dreaming, drunk and disorderly, as he leaned against the bar with his head on his arms. He dreamed he was home in his West Middlesex village, safe and sweaty in the arms of his common-law wife. He hadn’t seen her for years, didn’t know if he ever would again.
When the regiment had marched out of its depot, bound for Sydney town, six wives were allowed to accompany each company of 120-odd men. At dusk the night before they marched, the Color Sergeant had drawn from his military cap a piece of paper for every camp follower. For the lucky ones these read “to go.” Hers had read “not to go.” Ah, well, luck’s a fortune. Any old how, there were plenty of women here and now. Some men were still allowed to live out in the mean streets near the barracks, in miserable dwellings with their wives, old or new. For others there were harlots for hire, chances to seduce town girls who had an eye for a man in uniform—it was called “scarlet fever”—even blacks, who could be bought for a drink, a threepenny nobbler of rum. There were plenty of boys, too, for those who leaned that way.
He′d first taken the king’s shilling to escape grinding poverty or a life of crime, or both—and, bugger me gently, here he was now, in the year of Our Lord 1828, in the world’s biggest and most remote prison (as a guard, mind) on Sydney Cove, 15,900 miles from home.
Not that it wasn’t an easier billet than some he’d had to endure in the past. God knows he′d fought in Spain at Corunna (he’d seen them bury the general, Sir John Moore) in ’09 and then at Waterloo, where they’d pushed back the Frogs, screaming, “Avenge Moore!”
There had always been an answer to his soldier’s prayer, “God save me from the surgeons”; he’d beaten battle wounds, his cock hadn′t fallen off—not for want of trying—and yellow fever had never turned his flesh to custard.
Now he spent most of his off time in the pub. And most of his money, even the extra he made from weaving cabbage-tree hats during the dull hours in barracks and selling them to traders in the town. Tom Killett’s Crispin Arms was good sport, but a bit close to the barracks. He liked the Cat and Fiddle and the Brown Bear, which stood together in the rough-and-ready Rocks. But so did too many sailors for comfort.
Once, he seemed to recall, he’d gone to the World Turned Upside Down and seen a giant Otaheitean pimp beat a man halfway to heaven for refusing to pay for a prostitute. And some publicans were reputed to sell drunks to crewless captains.
No, on a dry day he’d settle for the Labor in Vain. Its sign outside always made him smile. A crude artist had depicted a black in a tub of water, with a sailor trying to scrub him white. The rum they served there was good Bengal spirit, not, like some you got elsewhere, too heavily cut with water, brown sugar, black Brazil tobacco and a dash of vitriol. And there were dudeens to be had, short clay pipes at a penny each, and you got your own glass and didn’t have to share what was called the circling glass, a common cup passed around.
At two shillings for a pint of rum and one and six a gallon for colonial beer, a man could drink his pockets dry in a hard session. Thank God soldiers were on the stores. The weekly ration was five pounds of beef, two pounds of mutton, seven pounds of wheat (not maize) bread and two pints of rum—not nearly enough for a thirsty man.
The taproom was clean and lit with oil lamps, not tallow dips like some, but as the soldier roused from his slumber he felt suddenly dizzy. Dimly he listened to a fat old tart tell him she was just out of the Female Factory. “I got a five-bob fine or the stocks for an hour for being drunk,” she said. “So I called the charley a
cunt-
stable and they gave me a month in the aviary!”
Then she broke into song:
I’ve to the Factory been, my Jack,
and lost a lot of fat.
And wouldn’t mind going there again,
for I’m none the worse for that.
Not to be outdone, the soldier roused himself and bellowed back at her, and to anyone else who would listen:
I don’t want a bayonet up my bumhole,
I don’t want my bollocks shot by ball.
For, if I have to lose them,
Far better I can choose them
To cop a pox from any whore at all.
He suddenly felt his belly rebel, and staggered to the door; if he puked inside, he knew he’d be barred. In an alley nearby, shadowed by buildings that leaned so precariously toward each other they almost kissed, he retched and fumbled with his balls to piss. A sound made him turn around and squint. “Hello, mate. Come to shake the snake, too?” Then he frowned as the fog of rum cleared briefly. “But your lot shouldn’t be here.”
He didn’t get a bayonet up his bumhole, but a keen blade slashed at his throat, then across his stomach and finally across both ankles. Then a hand showered a cascade of small grains across his face and into his silently screaming, dying mouth.
CHAPTER TWO
Whence are we, and why are we? Of what scene
The actors or spectators?
—Percy Bysshe Shelley,
Adonais
(1821)
I
N A PRIVATE ROOM DEEP IN THE HEART OF THE GEORGE STREET Military Barracks, the largest overseas garrison in the British Empire, three men sat over pipes and claret. Two wore the distinctive red coats that earned their wearers the name
lobster
or, from the French,
rosbif
(roast beef). In turn, of course, the British called their enemy “Frogs” or
crapauds
(toads).
The soldierly pair were Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Shadforth, commanding officer of the 57th Regiment, and Captain Crotty, his aide, an officer of the 39th. The third man, a civilian though he retained the courtesy title of his one-time British Army rank, was Captain Francis de Rossi. He had long ceased getting upset when the English fell into the habit of dropping the “de.”
The soldiers were uncomfortable with the presence of Rossi, and not just because he was swarthy, spoke heavily accented, excitable English and had a Mauritian wife. After all, he was still an outsider, a Corsican. Not like Bonaparte, of course—indeed Rossi had fought against Revolutionary France and served the British Empire for thirty years. But he was a mystery man.
How had Rossi become, Shadforth wondered, in the few short years since 1825, superintendent of police at 600 pounds a year and collector of customs at 1,000 pounds? When, mind, a servant could be had for no more than 20 pounds with keep? As if that weren’t enough, he had also been appointed chief magistrate and thus was the chief of police.
The delicious gossip, of course, was that Rossi had been rewarded for his role as an agent during King George IV′s separation from his queen, Caroline, which ended in her exclusion from his coronation. The royal scandal had thrilled Britain and Europe, and the distant colony, even Shadforth himself, loved the idea of having one of its plotters in its bosom. There was also a whisper that Rossi had been a Secret Service spy, even a slave-trader in the colony of Mauritius.
As if to divert his own attention from any unseemly thoughts about his royal master, Shadforth turned to his subordinate. “The Linnets were damned slow on that exercise, Crotty,” he said. “Perhaps you need another dose of Sankey?”
Crotty flushed.
“Linnets? … Birds? … What is this?” Rossi frowned.
“It’s just the colonel’s joke—and an old one,” said Crotty, tapping the green facings on his uniform’s collar and cuffs. “The 39th is commonly known as the ‘Green Linnets.’ And also as ‘Sankey’s Horse.’ During a Spanish battle, regimental tradition tells that Colonel Sankey mounted his men on mules to speed them to the fighting.”
Shadforth nodded, adding, “Just as we in the 57th, sir, are called the ‘Die Hards.’ On the Peninsula, at Albuera in ’11, our regiment suffered three-quarters casualties. Colonel Inglis, sorely wounded, cried: ‘Die hard, my men, die hard.’”
“Ah,” said Rossi. “Of course. I knew of the ‘Buffs,’ the gallant 3rd Regiment who have been here, with their buff facings.”
“Quite,” said Crotty. “And they are also the ‘Nutcrackers.’ During another Peninsula battle the men heard the enemy loudly boasting that they would break the Buffs’ necks. They heard the words
nuque
—neck—and
croquer
—to crunch—and voilà—nutcrackers! They got it wrong in much the same way as sailors call HMS
Bellerophon, Billy Ruffian
. And Casa Alta becomes ‘the Case is Altered.’”
Shadforth jumped then scowled as a voice from a far corner said softly, “Here endeth the lesson.”
If the military gentlemen were uncomfortable with Monsieur de Rossi, they were utterly frosty toward this fourth person in the room, a man who shared neither wine nor tobacco.
Younger than his companions—he seemed to be about thirty—he was tall and lean, with reddish-brown hair, startlingly blue eyes and a strong nose. He wore a loose jacket of cotton twill over trousers of fustian, a stout fabric woven from cotton and flax. No socks showed above his shoes, which were a poor man’s “straights”—pointed shoes that fitted either foot, after a fashion. His footwear and clothing were the work of convict tradesmen from Hyde Park Barracks, across the town. While his appearance did not necessarily mean he was a convict, he was clearly a class below the other men.
Rossi had earlier introduced the young man to the officers as Nicodemus Dunne, a colporteur. But, they wondered, why was he here?
“What the devil is a colporteur anyway?” Crotty now asked irritably.
Dunne answered. “M. de Rossi … ”—Rossi nodded appreciatively—“… is close, gentlemen, but I’m not a colporteur. A colporteur is a peddler of books and pamphlets, usually religious matter. Neither am I a crier, nor a bellman. I am, in fact, a running patterer.”
The officers nodded. They knew that the role of a patterer was to act as a walking newspaper, reciting stories and advertisements. It was a service particularly useful for illiterates, as, indeed, most of their soldiers were. In return, the patterer received small gratuities from listeners and even more money from publishers if he drummed up any business for advertisements or subscriptions. But that still didn’t explain why Rossi had brought him here today. Or indeed, more to the point, why they had all been summoned.
Their nagging puzzlement was relieved only when the door opened to admit a middle-aged, balding man who walked with military stiffness. He carried a tall gray hat and wore an elegantly tailored coat of dark blue woolen broadcloth cut away to tails to reveal an oyster-gray vest above charcoal-gray trousers. These were fitted with suspenders and highlighted boots with a mirrorlike shine to match his well-manicured fingernails. An ivory silk scarf on a high stiff collar supported a slightly petulant face.
The four men stood instantly. “Sir,” murmured the soldiers and the magistrate.