The Lieutenant Part 6

These men were like, but not like, those Rooke had seen in Antigua. They were not as tall as the slaves and their skin was not that black that was almost blue. Theirs was a warmer, browner black. Nor did they have those swollen lips, fascinating in their fullness, that the Africans had.

As well as those differences they were born with, there were others that he thought life might teach. These two men of New South Wales carried themselves proudly erect, yielding to no one. Isolation had saved them from becoming like those uprooted Africans he had seen in English Harbour, expressionless black cogs in the machine of empire.

Boinbar looked straight at Rooke, at the red wool coat, the bra.s.s b.u.t.tons, the gold braid, at the straight hair, the smooth cheeks, the pale skin. Under his gaze Rooke saw how strange it might be to have such hair, such skin. To cover the body with fabric and small shiny objects.

His eyes met Boinbar's and he felt a bubble of laughter in his throat. He saw his own excitement reflected on the other man's face, the same eagerness to enter the unknown, to be amazed by difference.

But now the governor was turning back towards his house, putting a hand under Boinbar's elbow.

'Come, my friend, we will eat now.'

He made large champing motions and hand-to-mouth actions, and Boinbar went with him willingly enough. Silk had to urge Warungin to follow, going so far as to touch his arm, but Warungin withdrew it. Shuffling in the fetters, his face rock-like, he walked up the road, a muscular nugget of disapproval.

Several times in the two weeks following, Rooke found reasons to go down to the settlement, hoping to see more of the native men, but they were never about. Young Timpson told him they spent most of their time at the governor's house, being shown how to sit on a chair and eat off a plate. But poor homesick Timpson was not much interested in anything that was not about his Betsy, and he had no other information.

Rooke had wanted solitude, had schemed to be cut off from the settlement. He had congratulated himself on achieving it. But, like Midas, he had his riches and was the poorer for them. His isolation was robbing him of the chance to stand beside Silk and exchange words with the native men.

He put his mind to some pretext for calling at the governor's house. The ledger was all he could think of. He might request a meeting with the governor and pretend to ask his advice about any improvements that His Excellency might suggest, before he filled in too many of its pages. Should he, for example, be recording the height of the tides as well as the wind and weather?

It was a shallow ruse, but who knew how long it would be before he could see more of those new planets Boinbar and Warungin?

He was transcribing his most recent readings into their columns, planning to take the ledger down the next day, when he heard someone hallooing outside: Captain Silk, picking his way down between the rocks.

'Rooke,' he called. 'A visitor to your enchanted isle!'

Silk jumped athletically down the last few yards, lost his balance, nearly tripped, did a quick to-and-fro with his feet and had arrived.

'By G.o.d, you are secret out here,' he cried, suppressing his panting. 'A man needs to be a goat to pay you a visit!'

Sure of his welcome, he did not wait for an answer, but went inside.

'Well, my friend, will you not offer me something cheerful to wet my whistle?'

Installed at the table with a cup of brandy-and-water in front of him, he leaned back so that his chair creaked alarmingly.

'So, what news?' Rooke asked.

'Ah, we are sad down at Government House. The governor and I. It is a blow, I will say. Perhaps you heard? The natives have gone, last night, slipped their fetters and made off.'

'Gone!'

'Sadly yes. Warungin had never reconciled himself to our company. Boinbar seemed happy enough-you remember, the taller cheerful chap. The governor is vastly disappointed. We were making excellent progress with the language.'

'Oh?'

Silk made a show of hesitating. Rooke recognised the signs that he was preparing a bon mot.

'Our friend Boinbar was quite the devil of a fellow, he was at pains to teach me the words for such important notions as p.i.s.sing and s.h.i.tting and the other thing as well. Propagating the species is how I decided to gloss it for the governor.'

Rooke laughed, thinking of the governor primly accepting this form of words.

'Other than those exceedingly useful notions we have an extensive vocabulary. We know, for instance, that the north wind is boor-roo-way.'

He separated the syllables out carefully.

'Wait, or was the north wind bow-wan?'

Silk pulled his notebook from his pocket and thumbed through the pages.

'I think we are not altogether sure, to tell the truth. But the east wind is goniee-mah. The sun is co-ing, a mouse is bo-gul, good is bud-yer-i. And we think that the suffix agal means tribe. Or perhaps place.'

'Tribe, I see. Or perhaps place?'

If Silk heard any irony in this, he ignored it.

'Boinbar seems to distinguish something by the use of the suffix. He refers to himself as Cadi-gal, and then he points across the water and says something like Cammera-gal.'

'I see.'

'Well, Rooke, the governor and I were making considerable progress, but we would not pretend to be fluent as yet. His Excellency is confident, however, that there will be other opportunities. We treated them like kings, Rooke, did not of course let them guess at our shortness of supplies, and between them in a day they made short work of what would last us a week. Warungin would not touch anything but fish, but Boinbar tried everything and developed something of a taste for wine. We even taught him to toast the king, excessively amusing to see. We have every confidence that he will return before too long.'

Silk sat up at the table memorising the list of words, covering the English with a hand, staring up into the underside of Rooke's shingles.

'Co-ing, the sun. Bo-gul, a mouse,' he whispered to himself, a conscientious boy learning his lessons. 'Bud-yer-i, good. Budyeri, good.'

He closed the notebook and stretched a leg out, ostentatiously at ease. Rooke knew something was coming.

'My intimacy with the native men, I have to tell you, Rooke, is of the most inestimable value for my little narrative. The whole story is excessively diverting. But I lack the beginning: how they were taken. Gardiner would not speak to me about it. It is far and away the most momentous event that has taken place in our time here! I need detail, I need the account of an eyewitness, but he would tell me nothing.'

He leaned forward across the table.

'What did you hear, Rooke, Gardiner must have spoken to you of it?'

Rooke drew back as if from heat, took advantage of the table wobbling to hide under it, adjusting the chock that kept it steady. When he came up again he had the words.

'Why, only that it was a complete success!'

He felt a flush coming to his cheeks. He had never learned the knack of lying. He got up and busied himself with some kindling.

'But Gardiner said nothing to you?' Silk demanded. 'At the time, or afterwards? Or at any time since the event took place?'

He would have made a good lawyer, Rooke thought.

'We speak of all manner of things,' he said, snapping a handful of twigs over his knee. 'We have in common an interest in the heavenly bodies, of course.'

He heard himself, Lieutenant Rooke at his least lively. Silk went on watching him. He felt the muscles around his mouth tense, straining to allow his face no expression whatsoever.

'Well,' Silk said. He sat smoothing his hair at the back, where it curled in a glossy wave over his collar.

Rooke could feel the pressure of his gaze, that wordless coaxing. He felt ugly in his skin, clumsy in his attempt to be secret. He wondered if writers of narratives could smell when there was more to a story than met the eye.

All Silk hungered for was a piquant addition to his narrative. But if he should get hold of the story the way Gardiner had told it in the privacy of the hut, and make it public, it would be a catastrophe.

The governor would be obliged to act. The colony did not have sufficient officers to hold a court-martial, but he would have Gardiner suspended from duties to live in a kind of blank until a ship arrived that could take him back to England to face judgment.

And then? Gardiner had not disobeyed, only regretted having obeyed. He would not be hanged. Probably. But His Majesty's service could not accommodate an officer who questioned an order. The best Gardiner could hope for would be to lose rank. That would be like losing a limb. Or he might be expelled in disgrace like those rebels in English Harbour. Whatever the outcome, Gardiner would spend the rest of his life a marked man.

'Really, Silk, you pay me a greater compliment than I deserve,' Rooke said. 'In thinking I might be aware of things. That you are not.'

Outside he could hear the white parrots gathering to roost in the tree on the side of the ridge. They swooped and cavorted with harsh squawks like creatures in pain.

I wish to G.o.d I had not done it. He had heard those words, and heard them with sympathy. That made him subject to their dangerous power. He must forget that he had ever heard them.

The settlement was nine months old, and the earliest date for the return of Dr Vickery's comet had arrived. Rooke had Dr Vickery's calculations: the comet would re-appear between October 1788 and March 1789.

Every night he groped his way up to the dome. He wished he had made the room a little bigger: with the quadrant on its rock and the telescope on its stand, there was not a great deal of room for an astronomer.

He had never yet seen a comet. He was four years too young to have seen Halley's and since then lack of instruments or cloud cover had prevented him observing those that had been discovered. Dr Vickery had showed him drawings of Halley's comet, but he could not believe that a glowing tail could light up half the sky, thought that the artists must have exaggerated.

Nothing was lighting up half the sky over Sydney Cove, New South Wales. Inch by inch Rooke scanned the arc in which Dr Vickery's calculations placed the comet. He took care, he did not hurry, he checked that the arc was correct. The first time he found a blur on the black sky, the heat of his excitement fogged the eyepiece and he had to wipe the lens clear, and take a few steadying breaths. He spent the next day in a state of suspension between hope and the determination not to hope, and when he found the object again the next night, he was glad he had not hoped too hard. The blur had not moved in relation to the stars around it. It was not a comet, just a nebula sent to tease him.

His days and nights became reversed. When dawn bleached the sky he went down the crooked steps to his living quarters and lay under the blanket on his stretcher, waiting for the day to pa.s.s in sleep and another night of observation to begin.

As October pa.s.sed into November a long run of cloudy nights made observation impossible, but Rooke still spent most of the night awake, sitting in the dark watching for a break in the clouds. November pa.s.sed into December and the sky cleared, but no comet appeared.

By Christmas he was frankly anxious. It had not occurred to him that he would not find the comet. He thought now that was an arrogance for which he was being punished. It was because of the comet that he was exempt from ordinary duties. That was the arrangement Dr Vickery had come to with Wyatt. It was the basis on which the governor had allowed him to stay out on the point with his musket gathering dust in the corner. If the comet were never found, where would that leave the astronomer but with his fellow officers, doing his duty with them?

Rooke visited the settlement only for the Sunday noon meal at the barracks, sitting half-asleep while talk washed around him: the supply ships had still not appeared, a man had been found dead of starvation, an examination by Dr Weymark had found his stomach to be quite empty. The vegetable gardens were robbed every night, Brugden was going further afield to find game but coming back with less. The natives had become bolder. Two prisoners out picking sweet-tea had been stoned. Another had vanished leaving only a hacked hat. A private had become lost in the woods and staggered into the settlement with a spear clean through his shoulder. The governor ordered that no one but Brugden and his fellow gamekeepers was to go into the woods under any pretext.

Some thought these attacks were a response to the kidnapping of the two men. Gosden and Timpson opined that the governor should not have ordered it done. Lennox and Willstead, on the contrary, considered that he should make a greater demonstration of force. Opinion was divided, but the result was clear: the guards had been reinforced and the marines were standing double shifts.

Rooke feared the governor would recall him from the point. If there is to be no comet, Lieutenant, he could imagine him saying, then I must insist you take your turn.

Rooke might have asked advice of Silk, but he did not trust a man whose narrative was so important to him. Instead he turned to Gardiner. Neither of them had ever referred to the day Gardiner had uttered the words that could ruin him. But between them now was a bond of trust.

'G.o.d, yes,' Gardiner exclaimed. 'No doubt about it, Rooke, we have got to get you that comet. Otherwise the governor will have you close up shop here.'

He brought up the old copy of Barker's Treatise on Comets from Sirius and the two of them sat companionably at the little table in the hut re-calculating the comet's probable track. Had Dr Vickery made a mistake? Neither Rooke nor Gardiner put the thought into words, but each knew the other shared a certain private glee in checking the Astronomer Royal's geometry.

Still the comet did not appear: not on the track predicted by Vickery, nor the slight variant worked out by Gardiner and Rooke. From the time the stars appeared at dusk until they faded at dawn Rooke peered through the telescope. During the day he tossed restlessly on his stretcher, sleeping only fitfully although exhausted, and woke at dusk unrefreshed. As January came and went, the face looking back from his shaving gla.s.s was haggard with searching.

Gardiner made the climb up from the settlement one afternoon as Rooke was readying the telescope for the night.

'Leave it, man. Look at you, I have never seen you so careworn. Leave it now and come out in the boat with me. Perfect tide for the whiting and I have got the boat just down here a ways.'

He took Rooke's arm, amiable but adamant, and Rooke yielded.

The sun was dipping low and a flood tide was swelling the port as Rooke took his place in the stern of the little skiff and Gardiner stroked easily along. In the lee of the closest island he heaved the anchor out. The two men sat in silence, their lines disappearing into the water over the stern.

Dusk was pa.s.sing into night, the shape of the land a silhouette, the sky pure light with no colour, the water mysterious, shifting around the boat. Gardiner was right, Rooke thought, he had been looking into a dark tube for too long.

Gardiner suddenly yanked on his line and a fish arched through the air and into the boat.

'Three more like that and we will be shot of that d.a.m.ned salt junk. Or the unnamables that Brugden gets. Have a taste of this one, boys.'

He baited his hook with a slimy yellow mussel and threw the line out again.

'You might write to Dr Vickery,' he went on, as if it were part of the same thought. 'Give him some flummery, you will know what to say. As for the governor, well, something will turn up. But stay out of his way, I would, until it does.'

Gardiner caught four whiting, Rooke two. By the time he was making his way back up to the observatory Rooke was in a quieter frame of mind. He broiled his fish and ate them with his fingers, too hungry and tired to bother with the niceties, before sitting down at the little table, the candle close to the paper.

Reverend sir, Rooke wrote, I have looked out every night for the comet at every favourable opportunity, but have not yet seen any thing of it; the weather indeed has been so constantly cloudy for these weeks past, particularly at night, that I have doubted whether it were not possible for it to have pa.s.sed entirely without being seen; on the other hand when we have clear weather it generally lasts as long, with some intervals of cloudy, without being excessively so, or for a long time together.

He was conscious of something wordy and obscuring about this sentence, but he folded the letter up. Heaven only knew when the ships would arrive that would take it to England. Before then, he hoped he would have better news. He would tear it up. No one need be told of failure if it were followed by success. But, as Gardiner had guessed, the act of writing had the effect of shifting his anxiety out of his mind and onto the paper.

The interlude in the soft light of the harbour had steadied him. For once he did not go up to the dome, but laid himself along his stretcher and drifted into sleep.

By April it was clear that, however an astronomer might do the calculations, no comet was going to appear. Rooke had been perched out on his point for nearly a year. He devised a new justification for remaining there with his instruments, and tried not to wonder how long it would serve him.

In the Northern Hemisphere it seemed natural, an aid to navigation provided by the Almighty, that the spot around which the imaginary northern axis of the earth rotated was marked by a brilliant star. In the south there was no such aid. To the naked eye the south celestial pole was an area of darkness.

As far as Rooke was concerned, the lack of a star in the south was one more reminder that, if there were an Almighty, he was not concerned with human convenience.

But there were, in fact, stars at the south celestial pole, visible through a telescope, and the Frenchman Lacaille had mapped them forty years before. When, as a student at the Academy, Rooke learned that Lacaille had died the very day he himself was born, he felt a bond to the man as if something had been handed on. Now he set himself the project of continuing where the other man had left off. Through the eyepiece he made out the constellation of l'Octans Reflexion, just as it was drawn on Lacaille's chart, and Sigma Octantis very faintly marking the spot where the world turned. But he could see stars in addition to those marked on Lacaille's chart.

p.r.i.c.ks of light that only an astronomer could see would b.u.t.ter no parsnips with the governor. His Excellency was not a scientist, did not value knowledge for its own sake. Still, Rooke worked away patiently with quadrant and micrometer, marking the location of each new discovery.

His measure of the months was no longer the small events and anniversaries of the settlement. Time for him was now the time of the heavens, watching each night as one constellation slipped out of sight behind the edge of the slit in his roof, and another appeared on the other side.

It was an eerie feeling, looking at stars that Dr Vickery had never seen, that even Dr Halley had never seen, that Hipparchus and Ptolemy could not have guessed at. Until a thing was seen, could it be said to exist? And if his eye through the telescope were the one that brought a certain star into existence, did not that make him a creator? In the back of his mind, in a place modesty would not allow him fully to visit, was even the possibility that he, Daniel Rooke, could connect the new stars he had found and, as Lacaille had done, give the new constellations names of his own devising.

Rooke could see so much more than Lacaille, with his now-obsolete instrument, ever had. It made him wonder whether in the future some telescope of unimaginable power would reveal even more stars, and still more after that, in the dark s.p.a.ces between the ones he could see. There were nights when he almost drew back from the richness of the sky. Was there, in fact, no end to it? An end only to what could be seen?

When the drummer from the regiment came running down the rocks one afternoon midway through the second year of the settlement, Rooke watched him approaching with a blank heart. The lad would have a note in his breeches pocket. Lieutenant Rooke, I do myself the honour of requesting your attendance at Government House tomorrow at nine o'clock.

His reprieve was over, his time as creator of stars at an end.

But the boy was gabbling something, a message he had memorised and now recited woodenly, his face flushed like a girl's from his run up the hill. From Captain Silk, sir, who sends his compliments and says, you will be interested to know the natives are come in, will you join him by the stream.

As Rooke followed the boy past the hospital and along beside the parade ground, he saw a group of three or four native men coming towards him. Close behind the men was Silk.

The contrast between the natives, clad only in their skins, and the captain in his breeches and jacket, was like a sum that did not add up. Silk did not look quite real, the braid and b.u.t.tons on his red coat a filigree that bore no relationship to the chest beneath. No wonder the natives had needed proof that what lay under the covering was not a beetle or a bird, but a human being.

As he approached he could hear Silk trying out one of his words on the eldest of the natives, a lean man with a fuzz of grey hair on his chest.

'Budyeri? Budyeri, come on old fellow, let me know you have ears!'

The man did not respond.