Part 3 (2/2)

Rather than go straight to the hospital, the patterer went on to one of his best paying regular engagements, although it was one that always puzzled him. Ever since he had become free to work for himself, he had visited each week the Bank of New South Wales in George Street near the military barracks. He did not query the bank's strange location, sharing a building with the dismal Thistle Inn.

The oddness of the a.s.signment lay in the fact that he was required to read a round-up of commercial news, much of it rather out of date, to a solemn audience of one man who never took notes. This was out of keeping, Dunne always thought, with the general efficiency of the bank. It had come a long way in the eleven years that had pa.s.sed since it began trading as the colony's first bank, in cramped rooms in Macquarie Place opposite the site where the obelisk from which all distances were measured now stood. This location was known, widely and slyly, as ”the center of the universe.”

Certainly, the Bank of New South Wales could boast of being at the center of Sydney's business universe. Its only true rival was the Bank of Australia, begun in 1826 by wealthy pastoralist John Macarthur and his fellows. Most colonists spurned this inst.i.tution, which was widely derided as the ”Squatters' Bank,” and stayed loyal to the Wales.

But no one was more loyal to the bank than the man to whom Nicodemus Dunne now, and always, reported-Mr. Joseph Hyde Potts. He had started as the bank's first employee, as porter and general servant, but Mr. Potts now used his penmans.h.i.+p, calligraphy and cleverness to draft official doc.u.ments, even to design banknotes.

As he had done since his first day, Mr. Potts always slept on the premises, ever watchful but hoping never to have to use the rifle and case of pistols he kept handy. Only once had the iron chest that served as a vault for money and valuables been threatened. On that occasion, Mr. Potts had to see off a drunken burglar who climbed down the chimney.

This day, as usual, he and the patterer shared the cane-bottomed couch that welcomed visitors and customers while Dunne served a digest of London stock markets, fat lamb prices, wool sales, bills and bonds, land sales and s.h.i.+pping movements: much the same fare that Sam Terry had demanded.

Dunne could never quite fathom why the bank-which surely had its own intelligence sources as quick as those of any newspaper-needed him. But Mr. Potts always a.s.sured Dunne of the value of his news and paid him the handsome sum of six pounds a month for his trouble. Also odd was that this client insisted that the fee be paid into an account opened for the patterer, but the credits always showed up and Dunne shrugged it all off as merely a banker's eccentricity.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

Fair Cloacina, G.o.ddess of this place, Look on thy supplicant with a smiling face.

Soft, yet cohesive, let my offering flow, Not rudely swift, nor insolently slow.

-Ancient Roman prayer to a deity, entreating success over the cesspit, or cloaca (translator unknown)

EVERYONE CALLED HIM SIMPLY THE OX. OR THE OX OF THE ROCKS, THE violent Sydney village in which he lived and worked. The name suited him, for he was tall and powerfully built, and after all he did work as a slaughterman.

But The Ox was puzzled by another nickname. G.o.d knows, he thought, why they called this place a ”house of ease.” In other ordinary language it was a privy, an outhouse, the jakes, a s.h.i.+thouse. But house of ease?

He had even heard older people call it the ”hole of the siege.” And in his case, ”siege” was a good word. Because, again, for days he had been laying siege to his bound-up bowels. And losing.

In the word of the apothecaries he haunted he was ”costive,” as it was delicately called, constipated. Yes, he ate well, he thought, though perhaps not as well as he had in the service. Now his teeth-missing, broken, worn down or decayed-left him unable to chew his food properly, even though his diet was as good as that of any other working man: maize bread and mutton or, when he couldn't afford that, Norfolk Island mutton. (That's what transported men called the despised subst.i.tute, goat.) And there was always the chance of bullock's head brawn, boiled calf's head, cow's heel or calfs feet broth. You couldn't eat too much meat. That wasn't the problem. He'd always been known to his messmates as ”old cannonball guts.” They'd reckoned only a charge of gunpowder would move him.

No, he had tried everything in search of the sovereign remedy for his condition. Nothing worked-pray G.o.d it wasn't a sore! He couldn't afford to consult a leech, so he regularly plagued the twenty or so apothecaries who hung up their mortar-and-pestle signs throughout the town.

He'd loudly complained about his predicament in so many places that the whole colony must know of his failures. Castor oil was three and six a pint down the drain; Epsom salts were the cheapest chance at nine pence a pound, but they didn't succeed; senna leaves at one s.h.i.+lling an ounce were no answer; rhubarb root at the same price had the same negative effect; ipecacuan powder at two and six an ounce had a result but with the wrong orifice-it simply made him vomit.

During this latest visit, the apothecary had desperately suggested he consider the gum resin called asafoetida, until the disgusting smell convinced The Ox otherwise. So he was frantic enough to grasp at any help when he left the shop, even though the apothecary had promised to think of something and send word to him.

He had walked only a few hundred yards along George Street when he felt a tug on his coattails. Looking around and then down, he saw a barefoot urchin of streetwise teenage years.

”b.u.g.g.e.r off,” The Ox said, raising his fist to give the lad a cuff. He was surely a beggar wanting a penny, a child of the streets or even a stray from among the child offenders in the Carters Barracks at the southern end of town. There were hundreds of masterless children at large.

”No, sir,” said the dusty boy. ”Something for you.” He held out a small envelope.

”Who from?”

” 'Pothecary, sir. 'Pothecary sent it. For you, sir. Said it was urgent.”

Sure enough, the envelope was addressed to The Ox by name. He took pride in his ability to read.

”Said you could pay later,” piped the scrawny street sparrow.

That idea appealed to the big man and he looked down at the boy. ”Did you get anything for your trouble?” he asked.

”Threepence, sir.”

”All right. Then here's a tip from me-b.u.g.g.e.r off!”

Much amused and hopeful, The Ox headed home.

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HOME, WITH ITS privy out the back, was a dingy room in a dilapidated house in The Rocks, near Cribb's Lane. The narrow thoroughfare, made by a butcher whose yard was nearby, was nondescript and anonymous to most outsiders. So if The Ox wanted to give directions to it, he simply said it was near a hotel, Jasper Tunn's Whale Fishery.

Now he was back at the siege-hole, reading a note from the envelope. It told him that the accompanying powder would work most efficaciously if swallowed while he was at stool in the squatting position. He prepared to take his medicine.

He sat over the latrine pit. In Sydney, if you were fortunate, cesspits emptied into a drain or the mess seeped into the surrounding soil. Many, however, overflowed or even leaked out under adjoining buildings. Some people simply emptied their chamberpots into street gutters or even threw their contents onto the street out of a window. The warning cry, ”Watch under!” was so common that human emissions were generally known as ”chunder.”

The only people sanguine about the unwanted abundance of dung were the men called rakers-usually Celestials-who collected nightsoil to spread on their market gardens. Fullers of cloth would seek urine but it was rarely pure.

Hoping finally to end his lonely vigil, The Ox obeyed the note's instructions. He was ready. Optimistically, he had set beside him what were called a.r.s.e-wipes-paper was scarce in poor households, so a.r.s.e-wipes were usually old cloths or even small piles of dried cut gra.s.s. Some men, old salts come ash.o.r.e, stuck with their maritime habits and used a sponge and a bucket of seawater.

In accordance with the instructions, The Ox had a beaker of water, half-filled, into which he mixed white powder from a spill of paper in the envelope. He swirled around the mixture then, as instructed, swallowed it in one gulp.

He sat awaiting results. Which soon manifested themselves as increasing pain in his belly, pain that he felt spreading to his muscles and extremities. He tried to call out for help but his throat was too painful, as if it had been scalded, and he found breathing difficult.

Before he lost consciousness, he felt himself lose control of his bladder and his bowels began-finally-to empty. The pain was beyond endurance.

Waking briefly from his faint-he didn't know for how long he had lost his senses-he knew that his agony was worsening. The icy chill settling throughout his limbs did not diminish his pain.

As he jerked against the privy wall then slid to the dirt floor, his bowels, mouth and nose voided blood. The Ox was dying, not even as quickly as one of his slaughterhouse victims.

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THE SMELL OF feces, human as well as animal, was usually unremarkable in much of the town. Even the grandest manor might have runnels of noxious waste flowing, not so freely, close beneath polished floorboards and Turkish carpets.

But no near neighbor could for long ignore the stench of The Ox's violent last relief at the siege-hole. When a nose-holding fellow lodger finally investigated and pushed open the privy door, he turned tail and ran, yelling for help.

At first, he believed that the figure on the floor was alive. It still seemed to be moving and a low groaning sound arose from it. But the movement simply came from Lucilia cuprina, Lucilia cuprina, the blue-black blowfly, and perhaps 60,000 of its cousins at work, as did the drone that accompanied their feasting. They heaved on the carca.s.s as they searched for new parts in which to plant their eggs, the millions of eggs that would soon hatch into maggots. the blue-black blowfly, and perhaps 60,000 of its cousins at work, as did the drone that accompanied their feasting. They heaved on the carca.s.s as they searched for new parts in which to plant their eggs, the millions of eggs that would soon hatch into maggots.

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