Part 16 (1/2)

'Well,' Silk admitted after he had licked his fingers clean, 'he may be a savage but he does seem to have some idea of quid pro quo.'

The fire blazed up into the growing darkness. Rooke lay back on the sand with a sigh, feeling the tension ease in his shoulders. The shape of the ground pressed up against him. Through the treetops he could see Betelgeuse, very red tonight, winking in a gap between the leaves.

In the morning there would be a few more hours of pointless tramping through the forest, then they would direct their steps back towards Sydney, empty-handed but blameless.

Silk's face was swarthy with a day's beard, sunburnt and s.h.i.+ning in the flickering light. He would come out of this well, Rooke thought. He would regale the governor with every detail of the business. The governor would think him a fine fellow, heap praise on his head, mention him in his next despatch.

The attack on the village would make a good chapter in Silk's narrative. He had orchestrated an impressive performance. The checking of the watches was a masterstroke that would add colour to the account. Silk would mask the failure of the expedition with an amusing ruefulness and self-deprecation. There might even be a hint that the failure was no accident. He would emerge as a man who had picked his way with tact and humanity among the pitfalls of the situation. At a time when feeling ran high, he had talked the governor down from ten natives to six. The final triumph of his genius would be to come back with none, and still be praised.

It was a pity Rooke could not share his own triumph with Silk. What a lively chapter it would have made in the narrative: the neat sidestepping of a difficult situation by the unexpectedly deft Lieutenant Rooke.

He sat up, hugging his knees. There would be time now, all the time in the world, all the time in a life. He would apply for another term of duty, and another beyond that. The specifics of the future were not clear, but the outline was wonderfully simple: himself in New South Wales.

He would go on talking with Tagaran and the others. He would master the language. The day he had written I kaadianed it, without thinking, he had taken a step on a journey he wanted never to end.

Double rations, and the failure to capture a single native, had made the men raucous. Beside their bonfire on the other side of the clearing they were having something of an impromptu party. Silk looked over now and then but let them go. Among the three officers there was a peaceful silence, each man gazing into the fire with his own thoughts. Warungin was half-asleep, staring gla.s.sily into the flames, his body relaxed.

The moon rose, bright enough to make the flames sallow. By its light Rooke watched Silk unbuckling his pack and groping in it, he supposed for his journal. Rooke leaned over to help him by holding the awkward flap.

'I look forward to seeing what you make of our expedition,' he began, but he had taken hold of the bottom of the bag by mistake so that the thing upended on the sand. A hatchet slipped out, its freshly honed edge gleaming in the moonlight. Bent around it were several folded canvas bags.

'Why Silk, were you planning to cut your own firewood?' Rooke said, feeling the edge on the hatchet, sharp enough to shave with. 'With thirty men to do it for you?'

In his expansive mood, after the days of anxiety, the idea of Silk with the hatchet in his hand, chopping his own kindling, seemed the funniest thing in the world. But Silk was not amused. He grabbed the hatchet out of Rooke's hand, thrust it back into the bottom of the pack, picked up the bags and tried to jam them in after it.

Willstead was watching with an expression that Rooke could not read. There was something about the hatchet, something about the bags, that Willstead knew.

'Well, Silk, out with it!' Rooke cried. 'Did you hope to bring back a couple of trophies for Dr Weymark to paint? Or add ill.u.s.trations of your own to your narrative?'

The hatchet had drawn blood, black in the firelight, on the ball of his thumb.

'Not so far off the mark, Rooke,' Willstead cried. 'Trophy is very near the case!' He was vastly entertained by some idea.

Rooke saw him glance across the fire at Warungin.

'Lieutenant Willstead!' Silk exclaimed. 'I will thank you to hold your tongue!' He had at last got the pack closed again and pushed it behind him, in the shadow cast by his body.

Willstead smirked at Rooke but said no more.

It was not the hatchet, not the bags, but the set of Silk's face, half visible in the firelight, and a tone in his voice, that sent a chill into Rooke.

A breeze pa.s.sed over the trees all around, a long s.h.i.+ver of sound like a sigh.

A peculiar kind of sum was working away in Rooke's mind: the hatchet plus the bags, multiplied by Willstead's smirk and divided by the look on Silk's face.

'Silk,' Rooke started.

His voice caught in his throat. It seemed to have closed around the words. He coughed, tried again.

'Silk, a word, might I have a word?'

He got to his feet and jerked his head towards the darkness. Silk hesitated, then got up and followed him. Out of earshot of the men around the fire, Rooke turned to him. In the dimness he could not see what sort of expression was on his friend's face.

'The hatchet, Silk,' he said. 'And the bags.'

He could hear his own voice as neutral as a man laying out the propositions of a calculus.

'May I ask for what purpose they were brought?'

'Well, Rooke, natives were by preference to be captured and brought in,' Silk said. 'But if that did not prove practicable, then my orders were that six be slain.'

'Practicable.'

'Yes, practicable.'

'And the bags?'

'The heads of the slain were to be brought back.'

'The heads of the slain,' he repeated.

It was just words, a phrase of poetry or items off a list.

'The heads, Rooke, were to be brought back in the bags provided. Having been severed with the hatchet provided. The governor's argument was that it was necessary to act harshly once, in order not to have to act harshly again. The punishment inflicted on a few would be an act of mercy to all the others.'

'You did not tell me.'

'Rooke, my friend, the thing was never going to happen. I did not mention the hatchet because it was never going to be used. Old fellow, what is the difficulty here? No natives have been captured and no heads have been...removed. Nor will they be.'

Rooke was looking back at the men around the fire. Willstead was standing, speaking to Warungin who was sitting on the ground beside him. The light picked out parts of Warungin's face as he moved: now the cheekbone gleaming in the light, now the nose, wide and flattened, now the teeth as he laughed at whatever Willstead was trying to explain with his hands. He was leaning back, his face turned up to Willstead so the firelight shone on his throat.

How could you cut off a man's head?

You would have to make sure he was dead. That would be the first thing. Then you would need to turn him over on his front. What with the protuberance of the nose, the side of the neck would be uppermost.

Then you would take up the hatchet. The handle was short, so you would have to get in close. It would not be a matter of one neat blow. You would have to hack at the slack skin of the neck. It would tend to slide away from the blade and the jawbone would present an obstacle.

Someone would have to hold the head so the bony part of the neck could be got at.

Then there was the matter of putting the head in the bag. Someone would have to pick it up. How heavy was a head? To pick it up by the hair would probably seem easiest. Another man would have to hold the bag open.

Whoever had the job of carrying the bag back to the settlement would be followed by a cloud of maddened flies. He might tie the bag to his knapsack to start with, but its bouncing would irritate. He would find it easier to carry it. It would be heavy: he would need to swap it from hand to hand. Could he do that without thinking of what was in there: a human head, a human face? A face like this one in front of him now, laughing with an expression half sly, half amused, and the human soul behind it, with all its exquisite nuances of feeling?

Rooke heard himself gasp, he could not catch his breath, his heart was climbing up out of his mouth, agape for the air that would not come.

Over at the fire, Warungin looked at him, half rose, put out a hand. Had he seen that Lieutenant Rooke of His Majesty's Marines was the colour of lard, and was even now stumbling away into the bushes, where he was loudly, thoroughly, sick?

When the spasms had pa.s.sed Rooke went down the track away from the camp. The bushes seemed to have grown over the path in the night. He buffeted his way through.

Then the last bush fell away before him and he was standing on the top of the dune behind the beach alone in the great cathedral of night. Ahead of him was a wide dark flatness. The sh.o.r.es all around seemed to have retreated in the night. To left and right the low runs of land were nothing more than a distant uneven line, blacker against the darkness of the bay and narrow as a ribbon. Above, the sky was another darkness, the full moon luminous, a wide eye watching.