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The Playmaker
Thomas Keneally
To Arabanoo and his brethren,
still dispossessed.
Contents
Dramatis Personae
The Players
PART ONE
1. The Reading
2. Isle of Turnips
3. Players
4. Recruiting the Perjurer
5. Dreams
6. By the Spikes
7. A Full Company
8. The Morality of Plays
PART TWO
9. The Hunt
10. Wryneck Day
PART THREE
11. Perjury and the Play
12. The Autopsy
13. Hanging the Marines
14. Playing to the Indian
15. Enchanting the Indian
16. The Play and Poetry
17. Judging the Perjurer
18. Exorcising Handy Baker
PART FOUR
19. Letters
20. Bruises
21. The Redeemed Forest
22. Ca-bahn
23. Curse or Cure
24. The Watching of the Ill
25. Withholding Prussian Blue
PART FIVE
26. Tattoo
27. Celebrating the Part
28. Lag Matrimony
29. San Augustin
30. Performance
EPILOGUE
Author’s Note
About the Author
Dramatis Personae
MEN
CAPTAIN PLUME, the Recruiting Officer
Henry Kable
MR. WORTHY, a Gentleman of Shropshire
Robert Sideway
JUSTICE BALANCE, a Country Justice
Ketch Freeman
CAPTAIN BRAZEN, a Second Recruiting Officer
John Wisehammer
SERGEANT KITE, Plume’s Sergeant
John Arscott
BULLOCK, a Country Clown
COSTAR PEARMAIN, a Recruit
}
Curtis Brand
THOMAS APPLETREE, a Recruit
John Hudson
WOMEN
SILVIA, Daughter to Justice Balance, in love with Plume
Mary Brenham
MELINDA, a Lady of Fortune
Nancy Turner
LUCY, Melinda’s Maid
Duckling
(Sometimes known as Ann Smith)
ROSE, a Country Girl
Mrs. Dabby Bryant
SCENE: Shrewsbury
THE PLAY IS MANAGED BY
Lieutenant Ralph Clark, Marines
The Players
HENRY KABLE: Sentenced at Norfolk Lent Assizes, 1783, held at Thetford before Sir James Eyre Knight and Fleetwood Bury, Esquire. For burgling the dwelling house of Abigail Hambling, Widow, taking goods to the value of some eighteen pounds. Sentenced to death. Reprieved on account of extreme youth. Seven years’ transportation.
Occupation: labourer.
Age at sentencing: sixteen years.
Present age: twenty-two years.
ROBERT SIDEWAY: Tried by the London Jury before Mr. Recorder at Justice Hall in the Old Bailey at the sessions which began on October 16th, 1782. For stealing property value twenty-eight shillings. Guilty. Transported for seven years.
Then at a special session for the County of Devon held at Exeter Castle on Monday, May 24th, 1783, was found at large still within the realm of Great Britain without any lawful cause. Guilty. Death. Respited on condition of transportation for life.
Occupation: watchcase maker.
Age at second sentencing: twenty-three years.
Present age: twenty-nine years.
KETCH (JAMES) FREEMAN: At the Hereford Lent Assizes on March 4th, 1784, before Sir William Henry Ashurst Knight and Jerome Knapp Esquire, Justices. Sentenced for highway attack on Thomas Baldwin and taking from him twelve shillings in money. Guilty, to be hanged. Reprieved. Transported seven years.
Occupation: labourer.
Age at sentencing: seventeen years.
Present age: twenty-two years.
JOHN WISEHAMMER: Sentenced Bristol, February 10th, 1785, for stealing snuff from the shop of Messrs. Ricketts and Load.
Transportation, seven years.
Occupation: no trade.
Age at sentencing: twenty years.
Present age: twenty-four years.
JOHN ARSCOTT: At Bodmin Assizes, August 18th, 1783. Sentenced for burglary and breaking and entering the dwelling house of Philip Polkinghorn and then the house of George Thomas. Watches and tobacco stolen. To be transported for seven years.
Occupation: carpenter.
Age at sentencing: twenty years.
Present age: twenty-five years.
CURTIS BRAND: At Maidstone, Kent, on January 6th, 1784. For stealing two game-cocks. Sentenced to seven years.
Occupation: no trade.
Age at sentencing: twenty years.
Present age: twenty-five years.
JOHN HUDSON: First tried at Middlesex before Mr. Justice Willes at Justice Hall in the Old Bailey at the sessions of December 10th, 1783. For burgling and breaking and entering the dwelling house of William Holdsworth, and stealing therein one linen shirt value ten shillings, five silk stockings value five shillings, one pistol value five shillings, and two aprons value two shillings. Transported for seven years.
Occupation: sometimes a chimney sweeper.
Age at sentencing: nine years.
Present age: fourteen years.
MARY BRENHAM: Tried by first Middlesex Jury before Mr. Baron Hotham at Justice Hall in the Old Bailey at the sessions which began Wednesday, December 8th, 1784. For feloniously stealing stuffed petticoats, a pair of stays, four and a half yards of cloth, one waistcoat, one cap, one pair of cotton stockings, one pair of nankeen breeches and one cloth cloak, the property of John Kennedy. Value thirty-nine shillings. Transported for seven years.
Occupation: servant.
Age at sentencing: not yet fourteen.
Present age: eighteen years.
NANCY TURNER: At Worcester Lent Assizes on March 5th, 1785. For feloniously stealing a silk cloak, a pair of stays, a muslin handkerchief, a lace handkerchief, an apron, and other stuff, goods of Nancy Collins of the Parish of Holy Cross in Pershore. Total value forty shillings. Sentenced to seven years’ transportation.
Occupation: servant.
Age at sentencing: seventeen years.
Present age: twenty-one years.
DUCKLING (SUPPOSED NAME ANN SMITH): Believed sentenced at Old Bailey, October, 1786. For stealing silverware, value forty-five shillings. Sentenced to death. Reprieved to seven years’ transportation.
Occupation: none.
Age at sentencing: sixteen years.
Present age: nineteen years.
DABBY (ALIAS MARY) BRYANT: Devon Lent Assizes, held at Exeter on March 20th, 1786, before Sir James Eyre Knight and Sir Beaumont Hotham Knight. For feloniously assaulting Agnes Lakeman Spinster in the King’s Way, putting her in corporal fear and danger of her life, and feloniously and violently taking from her person one silk bonnet value twelve pence and other goods value eleven shillings eleven pence, her property. Guilty of highway robbery. To be hanged. Reprieved. Transported seven years.
Occupation: forest dweller.
Age at sentencing: twenty years.
Present age: twenty-three years.
PART ONE
First Ralph heard again how Harry had—one evening in the settlement’s first days—discovered Duckling’s absence from her tent across the stream. In those days, soon after the women were lan
ded, Duckling occupied her own little bell of canvas close to Captain Jemmy Campbell’s marquee, for whom she worked for a time as a servant. Harry had set the patrols of the convict night watch and then gone to Duckling’s tent to see sitting in front of it Dot Handilands, the most ancient of the she-lags, rumoured to be eighty years of age. For then, before huts and locks, felons with little else to do were often employed for a small portion of food or liquor to keep watch over people’s possessions.
She admitted, only after threats, that Duckling had gone to see Goose.
Harry crossed the stream in the last blue of the evening and walked up through the women’s camp, which was then all tents or insubstantial tumuli of boughs, looking for an innocent glimpse of Duckling among the cooking fires.
Even in those days the apothecary she-lag, Goose, had achieved a superior dwelling. Her mere tent had been extended with a length of canvas to become a spacious marquee. It had therefore both an anteroom and a sanctum.
Calling Duckling’s name, he went inside this elegant tent. There, on a pallet, the big Marine, Private Handy Baker, dressed only in a shirt, was plunging and rearing between Duckling’s knees.
Harry launched himself, strangling away, onto Baker’s shoulders, but was soon thrown, with all the diverted violence of Private Baker’s desire, onto the clay floor. Baker landed on top of him now and, with hands which held the odour of Duckling, began strangling him. A shadow passed over Harry’s mind. For the first of the two times he would manage it, Baker took Harry’s senses away.
Waking later, Harry found himself seated on a square of canvas, a tumbler of spirits in front of him. As his brain reached painfully for the memory of the latitude and the year—the common bread of time and place without which Harry was not Harry—the knowledge returned to him and he hurried to the corner of Goose’s tent to be sick.
Looking up he recognised Goose standing calmly by the flap, some firelight from outside richly burnishing her red hair. He knew now that he was still inside her tent. It was a further segment of it than the one in which he had observed Baker and Duckling. Perhaps there was no end to the canvas Goose had already acquired.
She was the same ample, red-haired woman he had seen in Newgate on the occasion he visited Duckling there. He had rarely bothered to face her since the night of Duckling’s commutation of sentence. When he discovered that Duckling and Goose were both in the same detachment of Newgate prisoners marched down to Portsmouth and placed with over a hundred other female convicts aboard the Lady Penrhyn, he had devoted himself to having Duckling transferred to the smaller female convict hold of the Charlotte. This expedient, he now bitterly understood, had been quite fruitless.
Goose sat on a folding camp stool and grinned at him. She had mad, nut brown eyes. “You should never set yourself to stop Handy Baker once he’s in his stride. Handy Baker is a runaway coach and four. Handy can take on three coolers a day.”
Cooler was flash talk for girl.
She surmised aloud that Harry, in spite of the bruising he’d had, wasn’t planning any vengeance based on the letter of the law. “All the camps might laugh at you then, Mr. Brewer,” she told him. Besides, everyone came over here to the women’s camp to see Mother Goose, she said, slapping her stomach. To ask Goose for favours.
CHAPTER 1
The Reading
APRIL 1789
Ralph began hearing for the parts in the play early in April, the day after the hanging of Private Handy Baker and the five other Marines. His purpose was to find eleven or twelve convicts for the chief speaking parts. Much later he could find and begin rehearsing the lesser actors in their movements about a stage which he could only dimly envisage as yet, and among leading players he would somehow have to perfect in the coming two and a little months.
H.E. had given him that span of time in which to bring about the very first presentation of this or any other play ever performed on this new penal planet, which so far as anyone knew had gone from the beginning of time till now absolutely play-less and theatre-less.
On this morning of his first auditions, he was heavy-headed from sitting up late with Harry Brewer the Provost Marshal, and from drinking with him a dangerous quantity of brandy. Then, returned to his hut, he’d paid for it with one of those murderous old dreams he thought Dabby Bryant the witch had cured him of. As long as he drank wisely and modestly, Ralph was safe from them. But in occasional drunkenness they returned, deadly and perfectly discreet little dreams to do with loss, desire, and jealousy.
In this one he met a city and a wife he had been separated from almost precisely two years in time and eight months’ travel in space. The city was Plymouth, for which his convict transport had sailed to join the others at Portsmouth. The wife was of course little Betsey Alicia, her heart-shaped face sharp as a knife in the dream’s definition. He had been holding two chestnut horses, one on either side of him, by the bridles. He had wanted Alicia to mount one of them and go riding with him, but she had refused. He got angry and abused her, falling back on convict insults in his fury, calling her an ulcer, a torment, threatening even to punch her. He hated to satanic lengths her perfect little shoulders and her neat rose of a mouth.
When she had still refused to mount, he’d let go of the bridle of one of the chestnuts, mounted the other and gone flying through the countryside, he and the horse both speeded along and made one creature by a delicious anger. Rounding a corner, however, he had been stopped by the sight of Alicia sitting under a hedge with a sharp-featured young man in a white suit of clothes. And singing a particular song with him, “The Myrtle of Venus—with Bacchus Entwined.”
The day-time Lieutenant Ralph Clark had no doubts about the faithfulness of his wife. But the old question was, did the nighttime Ralph, that child of the prophets, of the seers and the holy dreamers, looking straight through the eight moons which divided him from his wife, know something better than the day-time functionary and playmaker might know?
He had had Private Ellis erect the marquee again at the side of his hut, and at ten o’clock on a rainy morning at the beginning of April, a month which here, on this reverse side of the mirror of space, was not spring but instead a temperate autumn, he sat in there at a folding camp table, his green coat slung over his shoulders and two copies of the chosen play in front of him. This was The Recruiting Officer. It had been written some eighty years past by a sad young playwright called George Farquhar, who had not lived to see it become a great favourite of the theatre or to know any of the wealth and fame it would generate for those who presented it or acted in it.
In fact Ralph had read the play four times in the past week, and during at least one of these readings began to see how the play could be thought of as dull and contrived. Just the same, in all this vast reach of the universe this was the one play of which two copies existed. There was Lieutenant George Johnston’s copy, and Captain Davy Collins’s. He himself would have preferred The Tragedy of Lady Jane Grey, because he could remember how he had wept when reading it aboard the convict transport Friendship during an Atlantic storm. But the cultivated Judge Advocate of this penal commonwealth, Davy Collins, commenting on H.E.’s demand for a play, had said with some justice, “Something lively, eh, Ralph? Confused identities, inheritances, lovers, girls dressed as officers, double meanings! We all know the convict lags won’t sit still for death and destiny!”
Four large and robust speaking roles for women, seven or eight grand to minor speaking roles for men. Sitting at a table inside the marquee, he felt ill enough to hope that few prisoners would come to be heard, but he knew many would. For the women prisoners liked to consider themselves actresses, and many of them had followed the trade which, cynics always remarked, was so close to that of the stage—whoredom.
He was not prepared for the first auditioner to be the prisoner Meg Long, the woman-beater. He saw her suddenly at the tent flap, her big flat features gleaming at him wetly through a slick of raindrops. Her hair was slick with rain too, and terrible bald pa
tches from ringworm glistened pinkly. As she came closer, her breath blinded him.
“Morning, Captain chuck!” she said gaily. “I ain’t no mere pretty nun. I’m a Covent Garden woman of high class.”
She smelled like death. She was quite incontinent. The surgeons quoted her as an argument for the building of an asylum. Occasionally she would jump on one of the younger female prisoners and try to caress her, and the girl would scream into those rapt great hammer-flat features until rescued by other women or constables or Marines. But here now her face was lit from within with the hope of Thespian glory. It was so strangely touching that Ralph, despite her madness and her stench, felt it would be inhuman to send her away at once.
“Meg, you must come in out of the rain,” he told her.
She stood in front of his desk, grinning and shaking herself. Water flew from her as from a wet dog. “There are not many parts for women,” he said. “I am looking particularly for actresses who can write. They will have to make copies of this play for their own use.”
He riffled the pages of The Recruiting Officer. He saw the names of Plume and Worthy, who before the play was over would find themselves engaged to heiresses, and the name of Silvia Balance, that lusty, forthright girl who—to fit Davy Collins’s requirements for a play—dresses as a young gentleman and attracts the desire of a farm girl called Rose. Who would be Silvia and who the virago Melinda? This dull morning Meg Long seemed not only to incarnate the gulf between his own fortune and that of happy Captain Plume, hero of the play, but also to show him too clearly the gulf between the convict women and the true actresses, the women of authentic theatrical spirit, he was seeking.
“Now you can’t write, Meg, can you?” he asked.
Meg Long nodded crazily. “I have penmanship, Captain chuck.”
“Where did you get penmanship, Meg?”
“From the abbess of my mob, my canting crew, when I were a kiddie. She teached me penmanship to the hilt.”