James Stack
Dublin, Ireland, 1852
James sprang on his heels to get out of the way of the 59th Regiment. He watched as the men pushed towards the dock in close formation, like a boulder rolling downhill, unable to stop, capable of grinding bones under their boots. So strong and confident – James wanted that.
On board the Blackbird, the regiment came to an abrupt halt and stood at attention in three parallel lines. James crouched against the sun-warmed stone of a warehouse wall and noted the detail of the red jackets he was so fond of. Cut trim to the waist with a belt and a brass buckle, then flared to the thigh. Brass buttons ran up all the way to a small stand-up collar. Another belt criss-crossed over the chest, complete with a small white ammunition pouch positioned over the heart.
James caught the attention of some of the soldiers leaving the deck and asked about the possibility of joining their ranks. The answer came short of any necessary explanation: No Irish wanted.
The 65th Regiment, on the other hand, were good company when he ran into them at the Queen’s Arms later that evening. A much more relaxed regiment in washed-out red uniforms. Bawdy giants, most of them, towering over James, and hairy with unkempt beards. James enjoyed the slightly unruly character of the Royal Tigers – a name they wore like a badge. It made him laugh listening to their heroic stories of war in India, exotic beauties and near-misses.
James felt especially comfortable around Abel, the group’s leprechaun. Like James, he was below average in height, but broad – when he walked, his arms swayed outwards slightly, as did his legs. It was as though he’d been riding horses across those Indian deserts, but he hadn’t; the 65ths were most definitely a regiment on foot. His hair was fair and his eyes a mischievous blue. And he was loud – the kind of person it’s easy to be around if you don’t talk much, because he can keep the conversation going all by himself. Abel told James his name wasn’t actually out of the Bible. His mother called him Abel because his father wasn’t.
James found himself aching from laughter that first evening. He was convinced he had to join their ranks, so Abel guided him to another public house, the Blue Anchor, a few blocks from the Queen’s Arms. There he was enlisted immediately.
‘Her Majesty’s 65th Queen’s Own Regiment of Foot,’ Abel repeated, before being reminded how serious the moment was by the corporal on the other side of the desk.
James had no idea it would be so easy to enlist, or he would have come earlier. Three weeks had passed since Aileen’s sentencing, and he wasn’t proud of the things he’d done to survive. Eagerness shook his fingers when he reached for the pen – that and a few nerves. It was the first time he’d been asked to sign his name and he was uncertain about what to do.
‘Just make a cross,’ Abel whispered.
A cross. He looked at the page and studied the scribbles of others before him. One looked like a flower, another like a wave of wheat bending in the breeze. And yes, there were other crosses. James rolled his fingers awkwardly around the pen. Black ink trailed on the paper. It wasn’t a cross, more a series of circles, one large and three smaller, shrinking away to a curved line. And so his mark was made, the first documentation of the life of James Stack. He was there, he had himself to trade, and from there on in he would always be a man of his own means.
‘The regiment,’ the corporal said, handing James his advance of one penny, ‘is awaiting service. No, no guarantee it will go to New South Wales.’
‘New South Wales? Don’t want New South Wales. I want Australia, Van Diemen’s Land,’ James said.
‘It is Australia. Anyway, wherever your regiment goes, you go too. It’s not optional, you know.’
But James knew that wasn’t true. He’d be with the regiment only for as long as they were heading in the direction of Australia, following the path of the Blackbird and Aileen.
‘The food’s not great,’ Abel warned on the way to barracks. ‘One pound black bread and coffee for breakfast, half-pound meat with bone, soup with cabbage or mashed potato, and bread for dinner. That’s it, plus one penny a day for extras. What with drill morning and night, it’s not much, but we’ll be on full pay once we get assigned a ship.’
James didn’t respond. To him it all sounded good – a warm uniform, a bed, food, and money for rum. Drill he wasn’t sure of; he supposed it was some kind of battle practice. A musket. He was looking forward to his own musket.
‘You think we be put on a ship, Abe?’
‘Hard to know. Folk paying to leave these parts now-days. Once they get there they start grumbling about all the criminals. Maybe they’ll send more of us down there to settle the settlers down, yeah?’
James returned to the same worn spot against the warehouse wall as often as regimental restrictions allowed. The Blackbird nudged against the dock and pulled against the ropes as if impatient to set sail. It was a large wooden vessel with one white stripe along the side and three main masts as thick as cathedral pillars. There were many others just like it, but this one would take Aileen away and he disliked everything about it for that reason.
After four weeks of waiting, the twenty-fourth of May finally arrived, along with the Blackbird’s cargo of convicts. Groups of ten loaded on to carts, each person squashed against the next, bound together with chains that shook with a ghastly rattle. So many of them arrived at once, James didn’t see Aileen until her group scuffed across the deck. He called her name, and the entire group, a few even younger than Aileen, turned to look. Aileen’s face was blank.
‘Aileen,’ James called again. ‘It’s James.’
This time, she tilted her head and a small smile pushed its way through.
‘James,’ she said, too quietly, but James could see the fullness of his name on her lips. She fell to her knees and the chains pulled against her waist, dragging two others down with her.
‘I’ll come for you, Aileen!’
‘Back to line, Miss.’ A red-coated guard broke the moment, the muzzle of his musket pointed straight at her. ‘You –’ he aimed at James – ‘best be getting back to your men.’
‘May the road rise to you, James,’ Aileen said as she struggled to her feet.
‘See you soon, Aileen.’
Aileen’s group turned and moved together like a leaden cloud sinking over the ridge of a gully, down into the belly of the ship.
James stood still and stared into the gap left behind by Aileen. The tip of his finger scratched across the embossed ridge of the number 65 on one of his brass buttons. The air was heavy with the smell of dank wood and decay, the smell of disappointment. It seemed silly now, but he had wanted her to see him in uniform; the pork-pie hat, the Enfield musket strapped across his back, the determination on his face. He wanted her to see he was a Royal Tiger, coming for her. But as he stood there, all the strength left him. He ached like an old man with all the goodness hollowed out.
James woke during the night with the feeling his bed was going out with the tide. Every minute of the following morning, the Blackbird tugged at his mind. Constant marching and gun cleaning kept him busy, but busy wasn’t enough. The image of his name on Aileen’s lips kept washing in and out, the whisper of it sneaking up on him over and over again.
As he strode down to the dock in the afternoon drizzle, James thought of different ways to get Aileen off the Blackbird. If he could write, he could feign orders for her release. If he could write. If he had money, he could bribe her way off. If he had money. If he was braver, he would slit the guards’ throats and steal the keys to her chains. If he was braver.
But by the time he got there, she was gone. James stood with the tips of his new regimental boots against the edge of the dock where the Blackbird had been just the day before. Several ships already sat in the harbour with their small sails up, trying to find wind. Most of them had the same three masts, and porthole windows in the slick of white paint along their sides. There was no way of knowing which one was the Blackbird, so he crossed himself and prayed over each of them. He asked Mother Mary to keep Aileen safe and to bless him in finding her on the other side. He breathed deeply so the tide in his eyes would subside, the lump in his throat would melt. Then he turned and headed back towards the barracks on Arbour Hill.
Partway uphill, James noticed someone behaving strangely at the barrack gates, skipping from tree to tree, ducking behind shrubs. As he drew closer, the figure lifted a musket and took James in its sight. It could only be Abel. He seemed to delight in trying to surprise James, popping out from nowhere just to see him jump. It was a good test of nerve, and James liked the discipline of trying to keep his reactions under control. Sure enough, Abel rushed forwards and feigned an attack. The light-heartedness of it rubbed against the rawness of James’s melancholy. It was good to see him, though, good to have a friend, even a daft one like Abel. In a stiff larrikin march, Abel came down the road, saluting as if James was someone important. He marched right on past without a word, until finally James gave in, stopped and allowed a laugh to rise from his belly.
‘You’re an idiot, Private Lovegod.’
‘I told you, didn’t I, huh, I told you.’ Abel skipped like a child bursting with a secret.
‘Out with it then. What did you tell me?’
‘We’ve got the orders – foreign service. See, I can see the future, don’t you know. Now we can go chase that pretty sister of yours. Might even marry her myself, what you think of that? Is she pretty, James? You said she was pretty, right?’
James looked back towards the docks. A great strip of the river Liffey spread out below. It stretched and curved slightly the same way his sister’s smile had. He felt the damp edges of his heart begin to lift in the new breeze; his fingers prickled as though his veins were dry riverbeds and the blood had begun to trickle again. His eyes followed the length of the river out to the widening mouth where it joined the sea, out towards the horizon where ships dropped large square sails to catch the rising wind.
‘We off to Australia, Abe?’
Abel stood beside him as he watched the sails fill.
‘Indeed. Isn’t it a grand day after all, Private Stack?’
‘’Tis that, Private No Love.’
Abel left James with a punch to the arm. His footsteps faded away up the hill. Specks of drizzle tickled James’s cheeks as he lingered, moving his weight from one foot to the other, until the ships shrank away to nothing more than buttons on the great grey overcoat of sea.
Within three weeks, the 65th Regiment were standing at attention aboard their own ship. The Lancashire Witch was set to trail the clipper route down the Atlantic, across the Indian and into the Pacific Ocean.
James had never heard of so many oceans. An image came to him of Aileen chained in the hull, slipping away, crossing oceans and oceans.
‘There’ll be no interference with the running of me vessel.’ Captain Mollison’s voice boomed from one end of the ship as if racing to the other, clipping James’s ears on the way. ‘You’ll find me a fair captain. But two things I’ll not stand for. Be there mutinous behaviour or acts of sodomy, I’ll be swifter than a fox on a hen. You can be sure of that.’
Sodomy. James had heard that word before, from the pulpit back in Killarney. Morning bread turned in his stomach, and his uniform felt suddenly restrictive, stiff about the neck, the cloth of it heavy on his skin. He could smell the fermented breath of the gentleman in the carriage as if he stood beside him. James held tight, resisted the urge to check behind, and focused straight ahead so it looked as though he was listening to the last of the briefing.
Visions of eternity stretched before him, the kind Father Dunne always put in his head. Hell on a ship called the Witch sailing in a sea of fire, forever standing at attention, the gentleman’s wandering hands all over him. When the ‘Fall out’ command came, the men sprang from their spots, leaving James standing on his own for the longest few seconds before he realised and made for the gangway too.
‘Hey, Jimmy.’ Abel pushed his way back to him.
James couldn’t answer. Men closed in like leaning dogs. He wanted to push them, have them fall into the watery gap between ship and dock. He disliked ships, he decided, this ship in particular, and the oceans that carried them away. He swallowed, trying to rid his mouth of the acid that feathered his tongue.
‘Hey,’ Abel called again.
James forced his way out past the end of the gangway but, just as he was clear, his stomach lurched. He spun back to the edge of the dock, nearly toppling Abel who was right behind him.
‘Wa-hoo, nearly took you with me,’ Abel said. ‘Look at you, white as a ghost.’
‘God Almighty. Who names them? Call a thing a witch why don’t they? Call down the curse on our heads.’
‘It’s called the Witch because King –’Abel tried to explain, but James was once again leaning over the side of the dock, heaving up the last of his breakfast.
‘Lord, Jim, you got it bad.’
‘Be the death of me, I tell you. The death of you ’n’ all.’
Abel regarded the ship with new suspicion, then laughed.
‘Bloody Irish superstitions – those’ll be the death of you, not the ship. Come on, we’ve got to get going, Fernley’s coming.’
‘Got something to do. Meet you back there.’
‘You want me to come?’
‘I don’t.’
‘Hey,’ Abel called as he headed off down the dock, ‘Australia or death, yeah? Australia or death.’
James took a deep breath and waited for Fernley to come down the gangway.
‘You want to go to church?’ Fernley said loudly. ‘Could you not have done this yesterday?’
James shook his head, then remembered the order of things. ‘I couldn’t sir, sorry, sir.’
‘One hour, then back to barracks. I want you packed before supper.’
‘Sir.’ James nodded and hurried up the quay, ducking out of sight as soon as he could.
‘Could you show me to the church, ma’am?’ James asked a woman on the street.
Before him stood a row of pointers, some directing him one way, some the other.
‘What church you needing?’ The woman shrugged her shoulders at him. ‘There’s more than one, you know.’
‘Catholic. I want the Catholic church.’
‘Well, see the bridge down farther?’
James nodded.
‘Take the last road afore it and then another. You’ll not be missing it.’
James tipped his hat the way gentlemen do and ran down the quay. His musket slapped his back with a regular beat – the beat of a man whose freedom spread before him, mapped in the grey-flecked eyes of a woman on the street.
From the doorway, James could see the bowed heads of those already waiting for the priest. As he negotiated the narrow gap between rows of pews, his knees knocked a hymn book from its hold. He left it where it was and took his seat at the end of the pew. Next to him, two women flicked rosary beads rhythmically against their thumbnails. A man inched his hat anticlockwise in his lap as though measuring the inches with his fingers. James tried to think what each of their sins could be, but really there was no telling. Sin was sin, he remembered. Father Dunne always said there was no measure to it.
A curtain of red velvet parted with the sound of wooden hoops clicking to one side. Before anyone else had time to open their eyes, James slipped into the vacant booth, pulling the curtain across after him. The man with the hat coughed, others shifted in their seats, but what could they do, they were in the church – forgiveness and all that.
He leaned back on the stool and turned his head so that his gaze was away from the priest. His finger followed the curve of wood grain on the wall.
‘What is your confession, my son?’ came the voice, deep and marbled like stained oak.
‘Forgive me, father, for I have sinned.’