The Ghost of Waterloo (5 page)

The doctor instructed his man to hold the head of the quickly captured cat firmly. He then approached with a pipette, the tiny glass tube filled with a small amount of a liquid drawn from a bottle.

‘This is a weakened solution of the prescription you now carry,’ the doctor explained. ‘It is less than a quarter of a grain in toxic strength – you know that a grain is 0.0648 grammes?’

The patient shrugged. He did know of the apothecary’s age-old measure, historically equal to the average weight of a grain of wheat. He disapproved of such outdated measures, and said so. ‘Everything should be – and one day will be – in our metricated code. But get on with it.’

The doctor deftly tipped drops into the animal’s eyes. ‘Observe!’ he said. ‘The characteristics of belladonna.’

The men bent down and saw that the cat’s pupils suddenly widened and stayed dilated. ‘Physicians find this useful in the examination and treatment of diseases of the eyes,’ said the doctor.

His superior seemed unimpressed. ‘How can I be sure that the mixture can perform to full, shall we say, satisfaction?’

The doctor lowered the cat to the floor and decanted another draught into a bowl he filled with milk. ‘This,’ he said, ‘is a stronger solution of the same toxins – this time you are seeing much more than a quarter of a grain.’

The animal soon approached, sniffed at the offering and began to lap. Suddenly it went into violent spasms, overturning the bowl. Hacking retching brought up blood-flecked mucous and the cat’s eyes widened, this time also in pain and fear. The spine arched then collapsed. With an almost human wail, the cat died.

The general scowled. ‘We talked of a painless draught!’

‘Yes, indeed,’ agreed the doctor. ‘Dear me. I shall need to add more opiate.’

‘It would seem so,’ said the owner of the leather bag drily, removing it and handing it back. ‘More laudanum, or whatever. Have it ready for me tomorrow. No mistakes.

‘In the meantime, your demonstration was only on a cat. What of a human? Do you have a solution that matches the potency of my sachet?’

The doctor gestured at another vessel and his patient turned to the assistant.

‘Out,’ he ordered. ‘And this time find
me
an urchin, any street Arab.’ The man looked at his master, who shrugged and waved permission.

The barefoot boy was happy to receive the bright coin from the effendi in the green coat. Indeed, al-Ilah was great! Why, in return, all he had to do was to drink from the glass offered.

Then all he had do was die.

As he turned to leave, His Excellency smiled for the first time, a tight grin that resembled the deadly rictus smile of the poisoned boy.

‘What’s the matter?’ he said to the silent doctor and his stricken assistant. ‘Cat got your tongue?’

Chapter Six

Sydney, Australia – Spring, 1828

Not all of the 11 000 souls in the huge, open prison that was Sydney town – settlers, soldiers, old lags, new convicts (and sometimes it was hard to decide which of these had spawned the greatest scoundrel) – slept easy in the dark early hours of a Monday in mid-September. Most were in their own beds, or someone else’s, for there was still a hangover from the Sabbath and the flagrant wildness of weekdays was still to come, on the streets at least. So, the last drained and plucked patrons of the many whorehouses had (except for some wealthy all-nighters) arranged their clothing and their alibis, and gone home.

No miscreant remained fitfully overnight in the stocks or pillory near the old graveyard. If they had, they would have been fresh prey for the rats and pigs that scavenged and rooted among exposed graves. And no sleepless wretch awaited hanging that morning at the jail. The dispossessed natives led secret lives.

Some townsfolk were awake, with good reason.

At various convict billets, men who had recently been flogged until their backbones showed white – often for no more than answering back to their ‘betters’ – tossed as their salted wounds began to heal. Patients also moaned in the wards of the Rum Hospital, which could do little to ease their suffering.

The redcoat guard tramped its lonely rounds at the sprawling barracks and a handful of town constables, each armed with truncheon, cutlass and lantern, plodded on their beats through the black streets. If these charleys stumbled on a rogue grog shop, among the hundreds of pot-houses, that was still pouring rum for determined drunkards, for a consideration they would turn a blind eye.

But there were others afoot who could not afford to be seen or heard…

A man who answered to the name of George Farrell, when he was not being addressed by his convict number, squatted on the rubblestrewn floor of a cramped, filthy drain. The stench from the slowly flowing sludge that was seeping around his boots made him gag, and he started as a rat climbed across his ankles.

He went cold at the touch. Rats! The poor in his and other rookeries 16000 miles away in Britain still had race memories of plagues spread by rats. Even here, he knew, they would attack sleeping babies. They liked buttocks and lips.

What a shite heap! he thought savagely. And, indeed, there was more than enough excrement all around him. There should not have been. This drain was meant to be only a stormwater sluice under George Street and into the Tank Stream nearby, not a sewage conduit.

But manure from horses and oxen on the street escaped into it. And many residents in the area had their privy pits leaking into the drain, some by accident, others for deliberate disposal. And now there was the addition of rain, a rare enough event these days. He felt it falling through the grating above. Perhaps the drought was finally breaking.

Suddenly, body waste was not the only thing he wished was not there.

Farrell registered that there was a moving yellow light wavering above him. And now there were voices, two belonging to strangers – there should have been only one voice, if any. He moved to push away a lantern beside him and bit back a curse as a dislodged block of stone fell and smashed the lamp. He froze. But no one on the other side of the grille seemed to have heard; their conversation had covered his clumsiness.

He caught only a few coherent words: ‘Where … going?’. That was a voice he didn’t know. Then came one that was familiar: something about a ‘glass’ and ‘rum’. Ah, this, muffled though it was, belonged to Dingle. He had a right to be there, on guard. And, thank Christ, he sounded quite calm, if oddly slurred.

Then there was a new voice: ‘Honest … pass … ’

After a silence, the voice Farrell had first heard, said, closer and quite clearly, ‘Get on with it, but be sharp!’

The response was unwelcome – Farrell’s upturned face was thoroughly doused with a fresh shower, not of the rain, but rather a deluge – bittersweet and ammonic – of hot human urine. Farrell ducked and held his breath. He dared not move. Still, he looked on the bright side.

The particularly bright side before him in those dark hours was the fact that he was surrounded by the last load of a treasure trove worth more than a man could earn in a thousand years. And some of it belonged to him. As he stoically received the golden rain, George Farrell wryly noted that the whole business was simply the result of what could be called another, earlier night on the piss!

Chapter Seven

On that occasion, one evening during the previous month of August, the man called Dingle had found himself thirsty but soon emptypocketed in Mr Samuel Thornton’s George Street tavern, the Union, close to the army barracks.

Dingle was a freed lag, one also free of moral restraint. To confuse his creditors, enemies and, naturally, the authorities, he answered to the forenames of either James or, if it served, Charlie. And his surname fluctuated between Tingle and Ingalls, as well as Dingle.

He already had a head and belly full of rum and porter. To keep a clear brain he had at one time switched to drinking shrub, but soon decided that the sugar and fruit in this mixture (he was certain it couldn’t be the spirits within) were combining to befuddle him further.

Now he had no money, and thus no chance of any drink at all – until a scatter of coins showered along the bar, stopping around his empty glass, and a voice behind him said quietly, ‘Have one for the road, then meet me outside in the lot. There are plenty more coins to come.’

By the time Dingle turned, his benefactor was almost out the door, leaving him only with a glimpse of a stocky figure of middle height and the memory of an odd accent.

Dingle ordered another rum and pondered. Who was the man and what could he want? Not a thief; it was obvious there was nothing to steal from a penniless man. A shirt-lifter? Well, Dingle could either flee or fight him. Or sell him what he wanted. No, he shook his head; it would have to be either of the first two options. Any road, why not find out? He settled his score, pocketed the change and went out to the nearby vacant ground, called Thornton’s Paddock. The stranger stood in half-shadow, lit only dimly by the lamp glow from a distant window and a weak tavern lantern.

‘Let us not waste time,’ the stranger said, and Dingle decided that the voice resembled, but could not be, that of the magistrate Rossi, who was a Froggy, or something like that.

The voice continued, ‘I want you to rob a place for me. I can provide the means of entry. The rest is up to you.’

Dingle weighed the words. So he wanted a store picked over for valuable stock, or a wealthy household burgled for cash or plate. Yes, it might well be worth a few dollars for a quick visit.

‘Why can’t you do it?’ he asked.

The shadow sighed. ‘You are a thief …I have, shall we say, other talents.’

‘What’s in it for me?’ asked Dingle.

‘At least a thousand – pounds.’

Jesus, thought Dingle. That’s as much as a labourer could make in – what? – fifty years! He stared at the blur. ‘What the hell do you want me to rob – the Bank of England?’

The man laughed and pointed to a stone building opposite. ‘Oh, no. Just the Bank of Australia.’

The Bank of Australia – sneered at as the Squatters’ Bank – was two years old and the creation of the Exclusives, the name for the widely hated would-be aristocrats who fought to control the colony. It was their counter to the People’s Bank, the Bank of New South Wales, older by nine years, which sat further along the main road.

While the Bank of New South Wales had its chambers in a building shared with a dingy tavern, the Thistle Inn, its rival traded in a new structure of solid sandstone. It oozed wealth, Dingle thought – and impregnability.

He frowned. ‘Why me?’ he asked bluntly of the shadowy stranger.

‘Your record, shall we say, speaks for itself.’