LINGER AND DIE
by Neil Brooka
FINAL Part twelve (chapters twenty-three, twenty-four and twenty-five) of my steemit weekly(ish) serial
And for those who came in late, click here and check my blog to start from the start.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE – THE DOGGED LEAD
Fawkner awoke to see a palm poised for slapping. He caught the wrist in flight and used to as leverage to swing himself into action. Morgan and his men were already casting about, this way and that, and as Fawkner stumbled to find his bearings, the world spun and his head throbbed. He tried to remember what had happened. Caesar had appeared out of nowhere, armed to the teeth. He could almost still smell the lingering wrath of the man. The hard wood and cold, heavy iron – the trigger guard Caesar had used as a knuckle duster, had been the last image frozen before he had lost his place in time.
"You hit one of'em, " Morgan, pointed to a dark patch. “Blood in the sand.”
Not far away, gripping to Mary's skirts and struggling to breathe, Johnny started to cry. Caesar had gone before them through the undergrowth, and he could only assume that Mary had followed. The tears came in a moment of clarity – at the pure, white-hot exhaustion of it all. As if his despair had been transmitted through the ether, he felt Mary slow before him. Even over his panicked gasps for air, Johnny could hear the thunder-fall of hooves upon the sandy earth.
"I think," came Mary's conflicted voice, “we'll let them overtake us.”
Through the thick bushels of tea-tree branches Johnny heard them coming. From which direction he could not tell – the sand dunes seemed to baffle their shouts, but soon they were close enough to make out the words and the creaking of leather:
"I've lost the trail. Fan out. They can't have gone far."
Johnny held his breath. Mary did not.
"Over there!"
"Quick boys!"
With another thundering of hooves they were gone.
"Caesar?" came Johnny, “We've lost them, Caesar.”
But it was Mary that replied: "I'm here."
Mary, sounded much too meek for Johnny's liking. "Where's Caesar?" he hissed.
"Can't have stopped running. I think... I think that's who Morgan's men went after."
Johnny collapsed backwards into the sand and began to laugh.
"We've got to go after him." Mary said the words more to herself than to Johnny.
"What?"
"He saved us." She sounded flat and automatic. “We've to help him.”
"Well I didn't ask to be saved." Johnny crossed his arms. “Let's rest here for goodness sakes and just come up with some sane priorities.” He couldn't make out her expression in the dark, but her voice disturbed him.
"We need to tell him where it is," her voice was still emotionless, “where we buried it. You need to share it. The contract –”
"What's got into you? Fuck the contract. Let them get him. Fawkner already knows about the gold. It's done."
"That's not very loyal of you Johnny," said the horribly familiar voice.
Johnny spun around to see Morgan's moonlit form moving down the side of a dune.
Somehow Morgan's men had doubled back to creep around the overgrown dune they'd been sheltering behind. The moonlight speared from behind a cloud and there, too, stood Fawkner with one or two men covering Morgan with their muskets.
Morgan spoke: "I think the time for talking has ended. Rivet their heads once and for all, boys."
Johnny looked up to Fawkner, who put his hands in his pockets, shrugged and said: "You're right. Too much talk, not enough murdering."
And Johnny found a rod coming up in line with his forehead.
"No, no, no!" he shreiked. “Fawkner – Mr Short – I'll tell you where you can find –”
"tu, tut, not all at once, eh boy?" sang Fawkner, skipping forward to stand next to his attack dogs.
The men with the guns looked to Morgan, and Morgan looked to Fawkner, who was already crouching down before Johnny to whisper in his ear:
"You tell me andonly me."
"Yes Mr Short," wept Johnny.
Fawkner lurched to his feet and fished something from his pocket. He threw it heavily toward Morgan.
"What is this, Mr Short, sir?"
"Your fee.Twice your fee."
Morgan said nothing.
"They're both dead already – understand?"
"Fair enough," replied Morgan. He weighed the heavy sack in his hand. “That's quite a lot extra. What's it for?”
Fawkner ignored him. Instead he turned to the two lumps upon the sand and said: "Now ... where is Caesar?"
"I – I dont know where he went," said Johnny lamely.
"He's going to our camp," came Mary quietly through the dim light. “I told him where we were camping. I expect he'll be waiting for us for a time.”
"A man of principles is he?"
"No!" yelped Johnny. “Mary's – she's – ”
"Show me," croaked Fawkner, cutting off Johnny's stream of thought.
"I'll show you," said Mary. “I'll show you where you can find him.”
Fawkner's silence in the dark rattled Johnny into speaking.
"No," he said again, desperately. “I mean – I'll show you, Mr Fawkner, sir. Mary is hardly –”
"This man belongs to me now," cut in Fawkner. “The extra? For you to hold him here while the lady takes me to Caesar. I'll kill the nigger myself.”
"Why not take us?" said Morgan, puzzled by his masters strange behaviour.
"No," screeched Johnny again, “Mary will cross you – she'll trick you – and her and Caesar will take it for themselves.”
"Take what?" said Morgan.
"Are you drunk?" bellowed Fawkner. He backhanded Johnny violently before turning to bark at his own men. “She's a woman. What do you take me for?”
Morgan raised his hands. "You've got it boss. You want to kill the nigger, but at least take some of the men –"
"Enough! I'll have no more. I've told you what I wish of you – to keep an eye on Johnny, here, in my stead. I've given you a lot of coin for this simple task and I wish to speak of it no more."
"You know best, sir," said Morgan, exasperation still on his tongue.
"Make haste woman, quickly now."
After almost an hour of walking, Fawkner pulled up the reigns and flicked a wave along Mary's leash. Initially she'd told him that their camp was only a short stroll from Williamstown, but it now looked to Fawkner as if Mary was stalling. She kept stopping to take a bearing, or to take a rest.
"Get on with it," he growled down to her.
"That way," she replied simply, turning back to the fidgeting horse and pointing in the direction of the hill upon which their camp had been struck.
When they were only one more clump of thick scrub away from camp Mary stopped for the final time.
"What? Where to now?"
She collapsed to her knees. Fawkner, already impatient out of his mind, tugged violently upon her rope so that it squeezed the wind from her waist with a strange honk. Fawkner rode around to her front and tugged her hard again. When she failed to rise he dismounted his horse and strode up to her hunched form.
"Don't think I don't know what you're up to," he said in the early grey light, “but you know very well that there are two ways this can go. You take me to your camp like you said you would, or you get a hole in your head. Understand?”
She had lost count of the number of times weapons had been placed before her skull.
"What are you laughing at?"
Had she been laughing? That strange sound had mixed so well with the Magpies trying out their own warbled song in preparation for the coming of the sun.
"I'll do it. I tell you I'll do it."
"Too late." Even as the words evaporated from her lips the morning's light was shifting towards blue and the first birds were leaving their trees for a day of foraging beneath the decaying carpet of eucalyptus bark.
Fawkner crouched down and took a handful of dead leaves. When he had watched her walking before him – when the light had still been grey – he had seen her tracks in the natural mulch. She had been dragging her feet, scouring dark lines in the damp soil. Waisting his time. But now with the blue tones of first light, as he brushed the leaves from his palms, he felt the foreign sensation of sticky tar on his skin. The first fingers of sun hit the canopy above, and the downward drooping gum leaves scattered the light so that he could see Mary's ghostly pale face. He looked back down upon his hands to the bright red blood, to the spatters lining the deep inscriptions of her tracks in the forest floor.
"You've been shot," said Fawkner simply.
Mary fell backward into the leaves, but the sky continued to turn. She could see the morning stars scouring lines overhead. Fawkner appeared up there in the foreground, face writ large with selfish dispair.
"Tell me – the gold," he was saying. “I know you must have buried it somewhere nearby.”
Mary smiled at her son, who was somehow melting in and out between the cracks in Fawkner's face.
"Damn it, woman."
Mary's fingers crept down to where the last of her sovereigns had been sewn, and felt for that other, more oval object. With her last vestiges of strength she ripped the fabric and extracted a thin, soap-bar sized object.
A crow laughed.Waa, waaa, waaaa. With a shower of bark, its wings exploded into flight. It had been startled by the explosion of powder-flame and splinters. Caesar's shot had hit a scabby bough by Fawkner's head. Mary heard his heavy footfall sprinting off into the forest, followed by the frightened whinny of his horse. Then another set of footfalls, quick and concerned, but unmistakably in control.
Mary felt Caesar's strong hands around her. His head moved closer to listen to what she was whispering beneath sulfur-crested screech, magpie warble and raven laugh. Her lips moved and he listened.
"Men, come upon your horses and ride with me!"
Morgan's goons had started another fire. Fawkner stood before them, eyes ablaze with anger and adrenalin, while everyone looked reluctantly upon their resting boots in that warm nest of dunes. Slowly, the men got to their feet to take a few final puffs from their pipes as they kicked sand upon the fire and stretched their legs into action. While all of this went on, Fawkner weaved about on his fiery black steed, which was still half spooked from Caesar's attack. It had taken Fawkner quite some time to find his horse and now the sun was up almost to the point of showing over the lip of the dune.
"Where's Mary?" said Morgan offhandedly. The passion in the words was masked behind an apparently deep concentration in buckling up his mount.
"Dead," Fawkner replied without hesitation. “Now – you, Johnny, up and show me the way.”
Johnny took a few moments to hear what had been said, and then a strange elation came over him. The more he thought of it the more his nerves calmed and the more his mind boiled with exaltation. He, and he alone, was now in possession of all of Mary and Caesar's shares combined. He alone.
"You, Johnny," barked Fawkner. “UP.”
Mind still buzzing, Johnny climbed behind the wiry businessman. The horse took off with a start. It now occurred to him that with each heaving gallop his advantage was quickly being degraded. Soon enough Caesar would be dealt with and he would be forced to reveal the location of their riches. If he could only escape from these men ...
With surprising speed and clarity Johnny played through all the scenarios to his favour. Naturally, Fawkner would not want Morgan in on the deal. Maybe he could do what Mary had tried and failed at – in selectively releasing the facts. What if he told Morgan now? Would they all double cross one another in a frenzy of greed, or were they men of honour? Might he somehow escape in such a confusion of alliances?
"You can still come out of this alive, Johnny," said Fawkner.
Johnny felt the voice on his chest as he clung to Fawkner's back like a child. He leant back, half certain it was his renewed heartbeat that had given him away.
"I can do better than that, Mr Fawkner. I can show you the way to Eldorado." He hushed his voice on those last four syllables. “I wonder if Morgan would like to know too.” Johnny felt the horse slowing and Fawkner's elbows moving back as he pulled up the reigns.
Like statues, the three riders stood angle-wise across the track. Those broad hats. Those long riding capes. Johnny recognised the outlines of the two old greyhounds with the their young-shark protégé. The bushrangers drew their pistols and fired their warning shots.
"Out of our way," barked Morgan.
The rangers smirked in unison.
"Well, well, well," said the young shark, his sleek black steed weaving forward, “these men are packaged neatly.”
"Empty you pockets lads," barked the oldest dog Johnny remembered as being named Tommy.
"Do I know you?" said the young shark, squinting at Johnny.
Fawkner drew his pistols. Morgan and his men drew a second later. The young shark checked his pan. In slow motion Johnny saw the two old bandit's eyes bug out. By his boot he felt Fawkner lunge with a spiked heel hard into the horse's ribs. The horse reared up from the cruel jab and a second later everyone, it seemed, fired their weapons at once. The horse continued to stand on it's hindlegs against cacophony of smoke and spatter. It's body acted as a shield and the hot lead buzzed into its belly with ease. Johny found himself being hurled backward.
Air slammed from his chest and for a moment he lost conciousness. He awoke to the sound of fresh gunfire, smoke and hooves everywhere. Still unable to take a breath, he covered his head with his arms and ran. He did not look back. He ran until his legs burned. He ignored the molten-lava air ripping through his chest. He ignored the screams of the horses. He ran into the bush and kept on running until he reached camp. Until he heard the barking of his long lost companion.
"Nigger," crooned Johnny as the little filth encrusted mutt covered him with slobber. “I'm sorry for leaving you.”
Johnny stood, looking around the small clearing for signs of life. The dray was gone. He wasn't surprised. Then he saw it – Mary's black dress all in a mound by the remains of the fire. Nigger, sensing his attention, bounded over to her body. Johnny's eyes slid down to the earth and he saw her tracks. He looked back into the bush and wondered how far she had crawled.
"Mary?" Her pale face came into view as her hand came up to stroke the Jack Russell's filthy muzzle.
"Too late ... Caesar gone," she rasped.
An angry prickling itch tore across Johnny's body. It crept up his torso, wound its way up his neck and set his face aflame. "You told him ... He took it?" The final question mark was expectant and to the point.
"I didn't tell him."
A cool breeze blew across his face and his molten temper subsided. The little dog set about covering Mary's face with loving kisses. "Get out of it nigger." The little bitch really was filthy – all caked in read earth up her front and over the top of her fine black coat. “Err, was it ... Did Fawkner shoot you?”
"No. Shot down at the beach … Johnny – I didn't tell Caesar where the gold was."
Johnny picked up the dog then bent down to kneel. Mary looked at the dog and pointed. Nigger licked the accusatory finger. The mud that hung from her face and paws had a darker, clay-like quality to it. Johnny's eyes wandered to Mary's own, then back to the filth all over little Nigger.
"Nigger?" he said simply. Red earth. He remembered digging the deep pit and how the soil's color had changed from deep black to a sticky, red clay. “No –” he heard himself through the rising heat. The burning acid tiger snake was making its way back up his throat. “Oh, Jesus.” Mary hadn't lead Caesar to where their gold was buried; it had been the dog. Johnny had a vision of Nigger's busy little body getting in his way as he tried to dig the hole. He found himself rising to his feet, stumbling forward without a backward glance to Mary's slowly fading warmth.
Johnny moved around the small hill with a stumbling jog. The scenery around him took on a dream-like quality as it warped into his periphery. It was almost as if his legs – powered by the euphoric horror coursing through his veins – were finding their own way. When he arrived at the spot the truth confirmed itself to him in plain sight. A filthy red crater in the ground tapering down to a rough coffin outline at the bottom. Two strong lengths of rope, attached to pulleys, had been secured to a couple of nearby trees. They lay tangled upon the ground, snaking ominously into the pit. Caesar would've had to have used the horses to retrieve the heavy casket. And indeed he had, for only a few paces back he found horse muck.
Johnny felt light – as if witnessing the aftermath of some great natural disaster. The hole in the ground, the ropes, a spade flung to the side, all pointed to a hasty extraction. Absentmindedly, he poked the dung with his shoe and it gave easily. He picked it up. It was still warm.
"Where'd he go?" Johnny panted, skidding up to Mary's cold body to extract one last piece of value. “He didn't tell you where he was going?” The chances where nill, but he had to ask. Even a direction would have done. “Did you see him?”
Mary smiled and turned her head away. After a seconds thought Johnny grasped her by the ears and yanked her face to his so that she tremored with his shaking rage.
"Tell me." Johnny threw her head into the ground. Disgusted, he scrabbled to his feet and surveyed the area with a feverish hunger. From the ground he picked a gnarled branch and snapped it over his leg to make a forearm length baton. It was too thin to beat her with, but that was not what he intended. Johnny straddled her legs, finding the dark stomach wound easily. It had dried to a scab of filthy, heavily weeping fabric. Johnny pointed his crude bayonet into the wound, moved his head so that he could see her eyes and pushed.
High above, in the sparse canopy of eucalypts, a mob of galahs exploded into the air. Their screams seemed to be amplified by something more. As they flapped into the distance, Mary's squeel of pain rent the air in reply. Johnny pushed harder.
"That's right," he whispered into her ear. “Take it you heartless bitch.”
By the time his fist touched her stomach Mary could scream no more. With every movement, every twitch of Johnny's wrist, her feet kicked and danced to the desperate relentless barks from Nigger. The dog lay before her on its haunches, with rump in the air, occasionally rushing forward in short bursts at the distressing agony as if to somehow drive it away. Johnny ignored the excited hound.
"A ship … At the pier. Tuesday ... Today ... Mr Bird."
"Say it all and I'll finish it."
"A ticket for freight ready for him – in the anchorage."
Johnny yanked the blunt dagger from her stomach and a stream of dark blood gushed from the wound.
With her last breath Mary watched Johnny dissolve into mist. Turning her head to the earth she heard his pummelling sprint as he rushed down to Williamstown. And then a hand on her face, nearly gone through the darkness.
Fawkner craned over Mary's sodden body to search for life in her frosting eyes. Her left hand twitched and rose to point up the track that Johnny had sprinted down.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR – DOWN TO DAVY JONES
Johnny's head pounded as he hurled himself through Williamstown, bursting through Nelson's place just in time to see the steamer called 'The Firefly' chugging off happily to Melbourne. He gasped for a breath and took a moment to wonder if Caesar might be riding its narrow decks to freedom. It would take him around the bay, up the Yarra then straight for the heart of Melbourne. Just the thought of it made Johnny's burning chest swell with tears. It would make more sense than what Mary had said about Mr Bird waiting at the docks with a boarding pass to ride. Hadn't she originally told him Bird had agreed to give them shipping intelligence? Not a ticket.
The view of the pier itself fired upon his brain and something inside him relaxed. Of course Caesar would be on that vessel; he'd be mad not to. Johnny scanned the ocean up toward the anchorage with it's huddle of ships, searching for a half-hearted possibility that his quarry had managed to get himself upon a longboat before the arrival of the steamer. Yet, squint as he might, he couldn't pick out a single such vessel upon the heaving blue seas. Johnny clasped his scarecrow hair and looked back toward the stone pier. In that direction, too, there seemed not to be a hint of a dray, the horses, or Caesar. Nothing. Johnny began to turn on the spot.
As he looked back to The Firefly steaming off into the ocean haze, he brought his hands before him. The nails were long and broken. Dirt had worked its way into every pore upon his arms. Blood and filth caked his fingers as if he'd had them in a treacle pot. He tried to hold his limbs still before him, but they seemed to have a twitchy mind of their own. He suddenly became aware of his heartbeat. His shirt sleeves were a tattered, moth-eaten composite, bonded together with sweat, blood and many weeks worth of grime and stress laden pheromone. His stolen trousers and boots, too, were in much the same condition.
Johnny turned, head down, to place one foot before the other as if in a dream. The ground seemed to tilt. Nelson's place looked as if it might fall down to consume him in an avalanche of stone and timbre. And then Caesar seemed to fall from one of the shop doors, defying gravity and sending Johnny's heart into another rapid fusillade. In front of the building was the dray. The road pitched to a higher angle and Johnny felt a fluttering in his inner ear. The dray was empty except for a few small kegs he'd had not seen before. Caesar and the other man seemed to ignore it as they walked. The other man nodded and pointed back toward the pier.
Mincing behind a waggon that was moving it's wares down to the water, Johnny followed while occasionally ducking his head beneath the undercarriage to keep track of Caesar's boots. When the wagon moved off to the customs house, Johnny skirted a wide ark to hide behind a stack of large shipping crates. He wormed himself between them, finding a small cave-like space from which to watch Caesar's movements.
Caesar spent a good deal of time scanning the area. When he moved out of sight with a bound, Johnny strained his neck to get a more favorable view.
"Are you Mr Bird?"
"Yes, sir ... why ... don't I know you?" Bird's voice trailed of with a noticable hiccup of fear. Caesar wouldn't have known it, but Bird had been in the audience at St. John's Tavern during his violent stage debut.
"I'm here on behalf of Miss Mary Draper."
"Oh … I see." For a moment Bird forgot himself. “You've the payment then?”
Johnny lowered his head to see the two men make an exchange. Bird handed over a grubby square of paper – that Johnny recognised to be a boarding pass – while Caesar handed over a heavy leather sack.
"Yes, and Miss Draper asked me to give you this, too." Caesar put his hand in his pocket and drew out his own square of paper. This time in the form of an envelope.
"Very ... very good," said Bird, stuffing the thing in his pocket without so much as a glance. He was far more interested in his sack, cradling it like a newborn babe in his arms. He chanced a peak and for a second golden light flash upon his face. “Give my regards to Mary,” his voice was shaking with excitement. Without waiting for a reply from Caesar, Mr Bird skuttled away.
Johnny saw the old thespian heading in his direction and held his breath as Bird walked briskly behind the crates. The footsteps stopped and he heard nothing more. Had he moved off? But Johnny had no time to consider it – he had to keep an eye on Caesar, who was already talking to another man now. He strained for their words, sticking his head out so far from his hiding spot that anyone looking down might easily spot him. Caesar had handed over the ticket-pass to another man Johnny did not recognise.
"No problems matey. No problems at all," said the lad, taking the pass and giving it a once over. “For freight also, is it? Aboard the Yankee?”
Caesar nodded: "Over yonder … that coffin, see?"
The docker filled his lungs: "THE BOX, over there, for The Yankee. Rig her up!"
Johnny's heart throbbed. Iron squealed into action with a clacking rattle of ratchet gears and whirring tackle. They netted the casket as if to weigh some giant fish and hooked it into the crane's already taught hoist.
"HEAVE AWAY!"
Caesar took back his ticket and disappeared in the direction of Nicholson's place. Johnny's panicked rage blinded him to everything but that swinging casket.
Johnny burst from his boxes like a greyhound – "HEY THERE! STOP THAT CRANE!". He stumbled and barged through the rabble of seamen, soldiers and loitering passengers with impotent rage.
"Stop thief!" came a voice back from where Johnny had emerged.
Johnny whirled around to see Mr Bird skipping from behind the crates, pointing at him and shouting:
"STOP THEIF … WANTED MAN … MURDERER..."
A whistle chirp slurred through the air. Not far away Johnny saw a constable beginning to move forward. He turned back to the crane to see his precious cargo swinging dangerously over a stout longboat high in the water, ready to bear the heavy load.
"Stop it I say," pleaded Johnny as he hobbled his way to the man at the crank, but Bird had leapt before him to point and bellow all at once:
"WANTED MAN!"
"Bird –?" but Johnny's words remained in the air while his body flew in the opposite direction. Mr Bird had tackled him to the ground.
"STOP THIEF!"
"What are you … You double crossing …" Johnny scrambled to his feet and pushed Mr Bird back toward the crane. Bird was giving in, moving back easily into the mechanism of the thing. Johnny's fingers clamped around his neck while Bird's arm jerked back with a sickening metal clank.
The crane groaned and the cracking of timbers made Johnny release Bird at once. He spun around in time to see the coffin breaking apart against the foundering longboat. It emptied its contents with a pell-mell rattle into the white waters seething with the impacting musket balls and shot.
"NO!" Johnny stumbled back, glancing back to the constable, who was distracted for a moment by the chaos in the dark waters below. Johnny ran blindly (“STOP THAT MAN!”) away from the pier. Up the road. Down behind buildings, over fences, through pigsties and paddocks. The earth exploded before him and a horse reared up and he fell to his knees.
It had only been a warning shot. Fawkner dismounted and crouched down before Johnny's weeping, sodden body. "Johnny, Johnny, it's all right."
"The gold – it went to the bottom of the bay … all gone."
Fawkner smiled "It's all right. There-there, my lad."
Johnny found himself being hauled to his feet to be dragged behind a throng of Fawkner's men.
"Where's Johnny?" came the constable's out of breath voice.
"I'm afraid I'm not sure what you're talking about."
"See? Mr Bird?" The constable turned to Bird, who had just trotted up. “It's impossible what you saw. That man can't have been Johnny Potato. Why ... at this very moment he'll be on a ship bound for Sydney. I think you should have a word with Tulip.” The constable turned back to Fawkner. “You boys know when the steamer comes back?”
When the policeman and Mr Bird had left, Fawkner rounded upon Johnny like a hawk. "Now, Johnny. You had been saying something about Eldorado – before we were so rudely interrupted by those rangers?"
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE – HOMER'S TALE
"Mister Homer Mansfield Bird," said Tulip behind a sceptical fist that was mashed against his tired features. He removed his elbow from the desk and angled his body forward. “That right?”
"Yes sir, that is correct."
"Let's go over what you told us –"
"No," interrupted Latrobe. “Go back to the beginning. Go back to Mary Draper.”
The two men sitting before Mr Bird looked weary, although the superintended did have a vague look of disturbance to his features.
"Well, like you know, sir. I met this Johnny English on the road from Melbourne –"
"Yes, yes, we know that much."
"Well ... I recognized him that Sunday in Williamstown ... That Sunday you said you caught them both."
Tulip raised a very thick eyebrow and glanced at Latrobe with a disbelieving look.
"Aye, go on then," said Latrobe, avoiding Tulip's eye.
"He was going to kill me – had a knife. It was this Mary Draper woman that saved me. Aye, saved me she did. Sent Johnny away then paid for my silence with gold – with the promise ofmore of the stuff if I did what she asked."
The two men said nothing.
"It was all a trick – to rid herself of Johnny, see? I was to buy her a ticket for passage and freight to London ... to wait for her upon the pier on Tuesday for the entire day ... Said the freight was for a shipment of gold and that if I helped her I would receive thrice the sum of her initial payment."
Tulip leaned forward.
"Of course I went to you lads directly thereafter. Wouldn't believe me though, would you? How was I to know you'd already caught them both? Never told me, did you?"
"Go on Mr Bird," said Latrobe, still avoiding Tulip's eye.
"Well ... she and Johnny never did turn up of course. But another person did; a negro by the name of Caesar – the very same man that bailed us up at St. John's Tavern. I nearly fainted when I saw him. Claimed to have been sent by Mary. Even had the second half of the gold payment like she promised –"
"About that," began Tulip.
Mr Bird's face turned red.
"You expect us to belive your story? That you had this second payment stolen directly thereafter? Mr Bird, need I remind you that this was the property of the crown, and that if you still have it –"
"Well I never, Mr Wright. Do you want to hear the rest of this story or not?"
"Go on."
"I gave the negro the ticket I'd bought, and then I saw Johnny, and remembered what Mary had asked of me. That's why I went to see you both before – to arrange the trap. Luckily there was a constable nearby –"
"She wanted to rat out Johnny?"
"That was the plan, sir."
"I see." Tulip smiled. “And you're sure it was Johnny you saw on the docks?”
Latrobe interjected with a murmur: "Something's not right about this..."
"I fought with him. Appeared out of nowhere, he did. That's how their gold went down to Davy Jones."
"So you only called for the police when you saw Johnny – and not the negro?"
"I – It was all a blur. The negro seemed to be friendly with Mary. Johnny – he tried it kill me, I told you."
"Why did you take the gold from the negro if you knew he was a wanted man?" Tulip leant forward. “Never mind this tosh about Johnny.”
Before Mr Bird could answer, Latrobe said: "And you swear you are telling the truth?"
Tulip shook his head. "Get out."
Agnes Bird – or Aggie, as Homer liked to called her – stood before the ocean at Sandridge beach and checked her pocket watch. All afternoon she'd been watching the ships crawl across the bay. To her right she could see the anchorage at Williamstown and before her one of the bigger ships looked to be making it's way toward the heads. Exposed by the wind, her large frame heaved with a sigh. Homer should have finished his interview by now. She turned, half expecting to see multiple government horses. Thankfully there was just the one, and Homer was riding it.
As Mr Bird tore down the beach toward her he pumped the air with his fist. Aggie's shoulders collapsed with relief. He leapt from his horse, but it was Agnes that spoke:
"And you told them everything? I suppose we shall have to return our riches now, shall we?"
"Hush, Aggy, we'll do no such thing. I kept true to this Mary's word. I'm just sorry they didn't catch Johnny." Homer hobbled up the side of a nearby dune. Agnes followed close behind. Right at the top of the dune he plunged his hands into the sand and extracted the leather pouch he'd told Constable Wright had been stolen from him.
"Oh, Homer!", “And you say they found her dead?”
"Aye."
"Do you think our lives are in danger?"
Mr Bird tore open the sack. The largest nugget he had ever seen in his life stared back at him. "I'd be more interested to know what became of the negro."
Agnes clutched at Homer's arms and took a look for herself. "Oh, but it's all so confusing. Tell me again what really happened."
"He was going to kill me. Johnny had a knife to my throat that Sunday."
"Oh, Homer."
"Aye, she saved my life, she did. And more. I was to help her to be rid of Johnny."
The two of them turned to look out over the bay, glittering as if full with countless diamonds.
"Took me aside. Said she was a human slave to this Johnny English ... That they were in possession of an untold fortune and that she had a plan to be rid of him. I was to buy a ticket – but that was all for show. She told me she would see to it that the gold would be swapped with lead. That I was to go to the police, to tell them that Johnny would be at the pier on Tuesday. I was to give him the ticket then flag down the police. And if the police didn't catch him, then at least he'd be on a ship with nothing but lead to see him to London. So I did as I was told, although the plod wouldn't believe me. Never mind, I thought. I'd still get my payment either way. But then this negro turned up … a friend of hers I suppose. He had my gold, so I gave him the ticket, but what of Johnny? I didn't know what to do. And then, out of nowhere – when they were loading up – Johnny turned up hollering for his gold. I saw a constable and carried out the final part of the plan. He and I fought, but the dummy lead went down to the bottom of the ocean, and of course he thought it was his gold. I don't know how Mary switched it and had the negro carry out her plan, but there it is."
"Oh, Homer."
"Just a shame they never caught Johnny. Why, they wouldn't even believe me. He was supposed to be on a ship to Sydney to be hanged."
"Did she say where they stole the gold from?" said Agnes who was rumaging about the heavy leather sack. She withdrew the envelope Caesar had given Mr Bird in Mary's stead. “And this note ... what does this mean?”
"Havent had a chance to look at it. The negro said it was from Mary. Give it here." Mr Bird tore open the envelope. Inside was a scrunched up letter that looked as if it had gone through hell. On it was written a few short lines:
Between the fork of the Loddon and Campaspe rivers, from the Black Forest to The Black Marsh to Wolfscrag to Mount Alexander, there is more gold in the ground than any man might ever wish for.
The merchant clipper powered out of the clawing heads of Port Philip Bay and still the crew celebrated leaving that woeful continent. They sang songs and danced and flung each other about, every once in a while dragging Caesar into the frey. But he did not hear them. Instead he kept finding himself being drawn back to the stern of the ship to watch the gentle wake and the distant speck of Melbourne shrinking before the rollers. From his pocket he took the enamel miniature-portrait. It was about the size of a bar of soap and on it's front – in amazing detail – was the likeness of Mary, Brendan, and her husband, Frank. Caesar felt odd looking at the picture now – almost intrusive. He turned his head to the singing and dancing crowd. Under the waves the joyful vibrations of the crew drifted down until, like stratifying silt, their memories came to rest upon the ancient sunken body of the Birrarung river.
The portrait tumbled down into the dark waters. For a long time Caesar stared at the spot where he had thrown it. Only when the ship found herself in deeper waters did he turn his back upon the land that had been so cruel, and yet so kind, to set him down upon that path of fatal fortune.