Kill, Page 2

squire,” agreed Tom quietly, “with a vulture like thee for neighbour,” and he spat with such emphasis that Naaman’s horse shied and backed off. Fletch yelled and my other cousins drew their swords, but I was the first to speak, my confused thoughts having just completed a shuffling and sorting of the shock happenings.

  “How come, Uncle?” I strode after his skittish mount and steadied it by grabbing harness. “All these documents, red-waxed and legally processed. But the news of Da’s killing was sealed in that letter you just gave me.”

  “There was another letter.” His shifty eyes avoided my stare. “From my business colleagues at Swan River. Came by faster ship three weeks ago.”

  “You knew three weeks ago? My father dead and you didn’t tell me?”

  “It was unofficial. There was no point distressing you earlier.”

  Against such callousness I could find no words, but Tom’s outrage oozed into disgust. “That was right con­siderate of ye, squire, hiding thy piracy. Until, that is, this bag o’ bones you call solicitor did the legal stitching. Your own brother dead so you cheat his son.”

  “Silence,” snapped Naaman.

  “Empty of’ heart you are. You’s no more’n pig-turd.”

  Naaman’s eyes rolled wildly and his fingers scrabbled at his lace stock as if choking. “Shut up, shut up!” Then he shrieked to his sons, “Silence him! Kill him!”

  I wanted to jerk my sword up and stop them. Tom was my friend and my father’s friend. On the battlefield he had saved my father’s life. I wanted to help Tom, but my sword stayed put. I did nothing. I was scared.

  I BECAME a coward at the age of four, when my cousins taught me fear.

  Once or twice a month I was delivered to play at Uncle Naaman’s castle, while he and my father discussed family business. They were never close but Naaman, a wealthy man, liked to patronise his struggling young brother and lecture him on how to make more profit from a given stretch of land.

  “Joanna and I have enough,” Da would respond. “We enjoy what we have.”

  “And if you hadn’t gone to war against Bonaparte you’d have much more to enjoy.”

  Uncle liked to gloat about that.

  The Hanwell family was of the landed gentry, owning our own crumb of England. It had been granted to an ancestor by Cromwell, for heroism in the Civil War against King Charles many genera­tions before.

  Now the estate was divided between my uncle and my father. The castle, the village and its rural tenancies had gone to Naaman but the choicest farm acres to my father Gideon - a parental decision that wisely had reflected their natures.

  During the French wars Naaman made a fortune, explaining to Da: “Fools like you join the army, I supply it.”

  “Wellington needs men as well as supplies,” Da insisted and became Major Gideon Hanwell in the months before Waterloo.

  On the day of the deciding battle he showed a notorious disregard for orders, which was recorded in several staff complaints to the Iron Duke:

  “Leaving his assigned position as the French advanced, he wheeled his battalion into extended line formation to pour vol­leys into their flank. While this contributed to the observed enemy panic and eventual victory, it was contrary to General Orders, which were to form square and defend against the advanc­ing mass of the French columns.”

  Old Tom had put it more simply: “Thy Da and his Oxford Light Infantry won the day for Old Wellie. Rapid fire in volleys, a beautiful sight, and Boney’s big push was destroyed. Ah me sprat, the generals hated thy Da but he were the real hero.”

  The same initiative took Da to a new start in Australia following years of post-war recession and his many lost battles against Nature. By then, our desperate farm had long been mortgaged to Naaman. I think it was these loans that took Da so often to the castle.

  AT each visit I was left to the mercy of three older playmates aged seven, nine and ten. One day they tortured me. Before rescue by one of Naaman’s servants, I was bound, branded on the buttocks with heated fire-tongs, and convinced that I was theirs to harm.

  “He’s our victim!” Fletch screeched at the nanny, while the other two chanted “Burn, burn!”, and Crazy Cedric was slobbering even then.

  Wounds heal but fear lasts. In later years, even with my fencing skill, Fletch’s cruel scorn sent me into panic, weakened my knees and transformed me to a wimp.

  “With a mite more experience you’ll be county champion,” Tom encouraged, but Fletch thrashed me for the title. It was his sneer, not his blade, that turned my knees to jelly.

  And it happened again that sad day in the yard as I stood with Tom against Naaman and his three sons.

  “Silence him, kill him!” Uncle Naaman screeched.

  Cousin Fletch, his sneer now tinged with delight, heeled his horse forward, leaned from the saddle and whipped Tom’s mouth with the back of his lead-knuckled gauntlet.

  The old man’s head came up defiantly. He sucked a torn lip, spat out the blood at Fletch and drew his sword. “Get down here and try again, ye shit stinking pig fucker.”

  Before the old man’s ferocity Fletch retreated hastily and turned pale, but Hector the Fat came behind Tom while I stood frozen. Hector’s rapier was ready and he thrust it deep into Tom’s back.

  The third brother, Cedric, cocked the hammer of a heavy pistol and waved it crazily above my nose. “Him too?”

  I stared into the smoothbore barrel of death that needed only one spark from the flint to blast my brains.

  “Put it away,” said Naaman, his voice calmer now, “that’s your cousin.” As if he cared.

  I darted to cradle Tom’s head. There was no sign of life. I wiped a bead of blood from the back of his leather jerkin, disbe­lieving the smallness of it. The needle blade had left only this smear no larger than a squashed mosquito. The great deeds and glorious battles, the irrepressible spirit, were all reduced to one red blob upon the tip of my finger.

  “Get up, Jeremiah.” Uncle’s command dripped with distaste. “He was only a lackey.”

  “A man,” I reminded him, “a kind and loyal friend to our family. And you’ve done murder.”

  “Self defence,” interjected the lawyer. “I saw everything. I’m your witness, Squire Naaman.”

  “Yes, self defence, I’ll swear to that.” Fletch was grinning at me, now relaxed as a curled adder. “Your cousin Hector had no choice, cousin.”

  “Insolent flunkies must be taught respect.” Smirking, Hector slid his wide hips from the saddle, lazy as an overfed boar from the sty. He wiped his blade on Tom’s trousers.

  I wanted to challenge him, to raise my own sword, but mad Cedric had the pistol in my face again. “Just give the word,” he pleaded to Naaman. “I’ll do it! Bang!”

  “Stop that.”

  The command went unheeded and I kept still as a fencepost. But my tongue could move.

  “In the back, Hector. You stabbed him in the back.”

  My accusation and contempt startled him, so that he turned his melon face to the others for reassurance.

  “Self defence,” growled Naaman. “He raised a weapon against his betters. Hector’s gallant action saved us all, and I say that as an alderman and magistrate.” He waved his hand, dismissing the inconvenience, and turned to his lawyer. “Pay him.”

  The scarecrow tossed me a string-tied purse. “There’s a ticket inside.”

  “Your passage to Swan River has been purchased, Jeremiah,” explained Uncle Naaman. “The vessel sails in two weeks and you’d be wise to be on it. There’s money for you also – payment for the livestock and the unharvested crop. The valuation may seem low but is the best you could expect in the present slump. My own accountant did the appraisal. As I don’t expect to see you again before you depart, please convey my regards and my sympathy to your bereaved mother.”

  He tugged the reins and walked his horse away.

  Fletch jeered. “Goodbye cousin. Go blab on Mummy’s bosom.” To acknowledge the parting, he hawked noisily and
spat upon Tom’s body. “That hero had nothing to brag about.”

  This caused Cedric to bounce from the saddle on to the corpse. “I can fight him easy.” Drooling from his oafish lips, he hauled at Tom’s arm, which was now loose as water, and kicked at his face.

  Cowardice has its limit. With Cedric’s pistol fallen in the mud, I found the courage to push him away from the body, then found my wrist gripped from above.

  “Young fool, think of your mother. Poor Joanna, a widow in the wilderness.” Uncle Naaman’s other hand held a stub-barrelled flintlock. Unlike Cedric’s uncertain aim, his was steady, the metal pressing my temple. “Will you go to console her, or die beside your servant? We’ve witnesses enough for any happening we choose to bring about.”

  Confused, frustrated and ashamed, I wept as they rode away.

  “Five of them, one of me,” I argued with my conscience. “What could I do?”

  Tom’s fearless defiance had only got him killed. Where was the use in me dying too? I had been powerless. Logic and common sense supported my lack of action, and yet I felt unclean. I wanted only to be gone, away to the other end of the world.

  I SOBBED as I dug Tom’s grave in a corner of the fields that had nurtured both of us, and that night I prayed for courage.

  Sleep eluded me. Each time I closed my eyes I saw Tom hold­ing out his age-dulled scabbard to me.

  “Here, lad,” he said. “This’ll help you hate.”

  In contrast to the its dowdy scabbard, the sharp length of that sword had always been proudly waxed, Tom’s