The Lieutenant Part 14

'Actually, Rooke, between you and me, the governor had wished to bring in ten men. I suggested that six would serve the purpose as well, and he was kind enough to agree with my view.'

'Ten men,' Rooke said. 'I see.'

But Silk was not concerned with arithmetic.

'When the governor asked which men I wished to make up the party, naturally yours was the first name I mentioned. You and Willstead and myself. Two days, thirty privates, double rations.'

Rooke smoothed with a finger at his cup, where a crack made a line down one side. He tried to picture it: the string of men walking through the woods, thirty men and the officers, double rations bouncing along in the packs on their backs, a musket hanging from its strap over every man's shoulder.

He could see the picture, could hear the clanking of their kettles as they marched, the snapping of the twigs. But he could not see himself. Could not put himself in that line of men, the compa.s.s in his hand, the gun over his own shoulder.

Being reminded that he was a soldier, a man who had sworn to serve and obey, was like forcing open a rusted hinge.

'No,' he said without thinking. Once uttered, it seemed right. 'I think not. No.'

The wind flung itself in spurts against the hut, rattling the flap of the door, making the canvas of the observatory dome thrum and snap.

Silk fingered the whitewashed planks of the wall beside his shoulder. A speck of white drifted down, pa.s.sing brilliantly, as if showing off, through a beam of sunset that streamed in where the mud between the planks had fallen away.

It was as if he had not heard Rooke speak.

'The governor asked me, which officers would I take? I named them. Rooke and Willstead.'

He licked his finger and used the spit to glue back some loose flakes of whitewash.

'See? He has your name, Rooke.'

The stripe of sun fell on his scarlet shoulder, putting his face in shadow.

'I think no is not an answer.'

Thirty men walking through the woods, each man watching his feet and the back of the man in front. And behind trees and in the high places of rocks, the natives watching. Seeing kamara, friend of Tagaran, a person in whose mouth their language was beginning to take shape, marching with the others, his musket over his shoulder.

He could not think of the words that would turn Silk away.

'Do you know, Silk,' he exclaimed, hearing his voice a little wild, 'I have found that they use the dual plural, like Greek. Dual p.r.o.nouns too, I think, though am not sure, but have collected some examples...You and me, or all of us, or me and these others but not you, all embedded in the p.r.o.noun! While English makes only the crudest of distinctions! Imagine, Silk, a race of people using a language as supple as that of Sophocles and Homer!'

He was going to go on, his voice louder now with excitement, his hands drawing pictures on the air of you and me, of all of us, of me and these others but not you.

'Rooke, I am beside myself with fascination,' Silk said. 'But Sophocles and Homer are not to the point. The point being, I have given your name to the governor. He has your name and he knows you to be the best man for getting us there and back without losing our way. Now there's a good fellow, we leave on Wednesday, and will be gone two days, and there will be no more of this business of spearing our men as they go about their business in the woods.'

There was a long silence. The beam of sun had moved, or perhaps it was Silk's shoulder.

Rooke watched his foot, moving the toe of his worn old shoe into the sun, out of the sun. He could not say to Silk, I cannot do this, because the men we bring in might be the uncles, the cousins, even the brothers of Tagaran. Could not say, I cannot do this, because I am too fond of Tagaran.

Fond? he imagined Silk repeating. Too fond of a native girl to obey an order?

'Do not ask me,' Rooke said. 'As you are a friend, do not ask me. I would not deny you, only do not ask. I have friends here among the natives. As you know.'

Silk cleared his throat.

'Yes. I am, shall we say, aware. But Rooke, think: this is not a request, it is an order.'

Rooke watched dust puff and subside in the shaft of sunlight. Dust seemed weightless, until you watched it fall.

'You know as well as I do, Rooke, the way they hide in the woods. We know how clever they are at hiding. When have we ever succeeded in finding natives who did not want to be found?'

His face was warm, coaxing.

Silk was right. They watched from behind trees and rocks, their skins part of the speckled light and shade of the place. From half a mile away they would hear the pa.s.sage of thirty men through the woods, sixty feet crus.h.i.+ng leaves and twigs underfoot, sixty hands pus.h.i.+ng bushes aside, thirty kettles clanking on thirty packs. Not to mention the officers. Another three packs, another six shoes. Two of them belonging to himself.

'Rooke, old fellow,' Silk said, 'You know the governor cannot let the spearing of that poor wretch go unremarked. His own gamekeeper, a terrible lingering death ahead of the poor devil. A show of force is required. Thirty armed men: would he be ordering a force of that size to take a handful of natives? You could think of it as a piece of theatre, Rooke, if you wished.'

Rooke could imagine Warungin in his gregarious mood, telling the story of how the white men had blundered through the woods while he watched from behind a tree.

'I know you are a man of principle, my friend, and I respect you for it,' Silk said. 'Your scruples do you credit. But this is a simple enough thing, two days on the march and then life will resume as before.'

He did not wait for Rooke to say yes. 'We leave on Wednesday, at sunrise. I will send the lad out with your rations and so on.'

Silk was too quick, Rooke thought. He had run along the broad road of his argument and arrived at the end, panting and pleased, while Rooke was at a standstill, trying to remember how to put one foot in front of the other.

Silk reached for his hand, shook it.

'Good man, Rooke. Until Wednesday!'

And was gone.

It was time for the evening reading of the instruments. Mechanically Rooke went through the motions. He walked between each instrument and the ledger, dipping the pen in the ink, putting the number where it belonged. Wind, S-S-W, 3 knots. Weather, fine. Remarks: none.

He wished Gardiner were here. His absence was like a cold wound. He was the only man whose advice he would trust. What would Gardiner say?

He remembered the grim way Gardiner had agreed that they were all loyal subjects of the Crown. He had never again referred to the duty that was by far the most unpleasant he ever had to execute.

Gardiner would spell out the consequences of refusal. Rooke had done the same for him: remind him that the service of humanity and the service of His Majesty were not congruent.

It had been simple enough to speak to Gardiner of duty. It must have sounded glib, he thought now. He wished he could tell Gardiner, I am sorry, my friend, I spoke too easily.

Until this point in his life he had allowed himself to be propelled by circ.u.mstance, situation, need. He had never had to take the grain of life in his bare hands and twist it to another shape. Never stopped and asked, But what am I doing?

Silk's logic seemed una.s.sailable: the expedition would fail, and so there was no reason to refuse it. But if the governor were merely performing a piece of theatre in the interests of intimidation, where was the fearsomeness, what was the deterrent, if the terrific procession met not a single native because they were all laughing from behind bushes as it pa.s.sed?

'The logic is faulty, you see.'

He was startled to find he had spoken aloud.

Still, the central fact remained: the expedition would fail. Whether or not the governor hoped to capture six natives and whether or not Silk hoped the same, it was almost certain that no native would be caught.

Almost.

'It could be done, however,' he said. He could see how a man might get into the habit of talking to himself. It cleared the mind, to hear the words aloud, as if spoken by a sympathetic other who knew you as well as you knew yourself.

'I could do it.'

Rooke could have gone looking for Warungin or Boinbar, but that would have meant allowing himself to know what he was doing. Instead he set off towards the settlement as if on some errand. He watched his feet on the uneven ground and did not think beyond one step, another step.

He left the thing to chance, and chance gave him the boy Boneda, sitting by the track on a rock. He could not have been waiting for Rooke, but showed no surprise at seeing him. He held out the thing in his fist: a fat lizard, not quite dead. In a stream of words and gestures Rooke only partly followed, Boneda said something to the effect of, I caught it over there, it ran very fast, I am going to eat it and it will be very good.

There was something that the eyes of the natives did when they smiled, a gleam under their heavy brows, so that the smile seemed to come from within as much as from the play of muscles on the face.

'I want to see Tagaran.'

It sounded very blunt, like that, but it had to be clear, and he trusted Boneda's English more than his own Cadigal.

'Will she come to visit me? Will she come to my hut? Will you tell her, kamara wants to see her?'

Boneda said something Rooke could not follow, pointed in a generally west direction with his stick, and was gone, springing up the rocks towards the ridge.

Had he understood? Rooke did not know. He turned and made his way back to the hut.

He lit his fire, just a few sticks smoking away together. That was to say, I am at home and would welcome a visitor.

Then he lay on his stretcher, hands under his head, staring up at the s.h.i.+ngles without seeing them.

He did not sleep, but had submerged into a stupor when there was a shadow in the doorway. Tagaran was there, hesitating. He swung his legs down and sat on the side of the bed. She was alone. She had never arrived alone before.

She came in and sat at his table, smoothing at the grain of the wood with a finger. She was waiting for him to speak. He was waiting for a miracle that would free him from the thing that had fallen on him like a great heavy cloak.

He got up and sat at the table opposite her.

'Why?' he asked in English. 'Why did the black man wound the white man?'

Her face, wary, lifted to his.

'Gulara,' she said, just that word. Angry.

'Minyin gulara eora?' Rooke asked, Why are the black men angry?

He knew the answer, but needed the words. Needed the thing they were used to, the question and the answer.

'Inyam ngalawi white men.' Because the white men are settled here.

He thought perhaps she needed it too, backwards and forwards, word and word.

One long hand smoothed down her forearm from elbow to wrist as if she were cold. He saw a line of pink dots that marked the graze she had received from the person from Charlotte.

She was looking down again. He could not see her face, only the tip of her nose and her hair.

'Tyerun Cadigal,' she said without looking up. The Cadigal are afraid.

Her fingers smoothed at the mahogany as if she could rub away the surface and see something else beneath it.

'The musket,' he began. 'Remember. You asked me, you wished, to learn. To make it shoot. To load it and shoot it.'

She went on rubbing at the polished wood, but he knew she was listening.

'Why, Tagaran? Why did you wish to know? Will you tell me?'

He heard the water slapping fretfully against the rocks at the foot of the promontory. A loose s.h.i.+ngle rattled, the canvas of the dome creaked, a gull gave a long rueful cry. He might wait all day and hear other things, but he saw that he would not hear an answer.

He went back a step.

'Minyin tyerun Cadigal?' he asked, why are the Cadigal afraid?

'Gunin.' She looked him straight in the eye. Because of the guns.

The word was like a gunshot in itself.

'Brugden,' he said. He would have given the poor devil his other name, but realised he did not know it. Tagaran tilted her face even further towards the table. She knew who Brugden was, and what had happened to him.

He took a breath and made himself go on. 'Brugden will die.'

Tagaran did not look at him. So far he had told her nothing she did not already know.

'They are going out after Carangaray.'

She looked up as if he had shouted. Her hand went to her mouth and her face changed shape around this piece of information.

He sketched the movement of putting a musket up to his shoulder.

'Tomorrow. Parribugo. For Carangaray. For others too. Six men. Six eora.'

He held up fingers to show her.

That was probably enough, but having come so far, there was a luxurious yielding in going all the way to the end.

'Piabami Warunginyi? Will you tell Warungin? I would like you to let Warungin know.'

Tagaran looked straight into his eyes. She understood, he could see that. Not just the words, but the significance of him having said them to her.

'Piabami Warunginyi?' he said again.

There was a pleasure in using her language for this. Each word started emphatically and dropped away, and each sentence did the same, a sequence of diminuendos. It was a language whose very cadence sounded like forgiveness.

'Botany Bay,' she said. 'For Carangaray.'

And copied his gesture, the musket up to her shoulder.

'Yes,' Rooke said. 'Tomorrow, in the morning.'