Kitty (28 page)

‘Well, as long as it’s no trouble,’ Kitty said. It might be handy to have someone official on her side. She was turning out to be much better at this sort of thing than she’d thought!

Sergeant Royce led her along the corridor until they came to a set of stairs to the right. He took her elbow as they ascended, telling her that the steps were uneven in places and he didn’t want her to stumble.

At the top she turned right again but he steered her sharply to the left. ‘Not that way,’ he said quickly. ‘That’s the dormitories.’

She allowed him to guide her into a small room, very similar to the one in which she had waited downstairs. This one was furnished just as simply, with a small table and two plain wooden chairs. There was nothing else, only the bare wooden floor and white plastered walls.

‘Visitors’ room,’ the sergeant explained. He pulled out one of the chairs for her. ‘The men are finishing their supper,’ he said, inclining his head towards the single window. ‘Your uncle should be here in a minute. I’m to wait with you until he arrives.’

Kitty crossed the room and looked down into the yard below at the long, narrow buildings that made up the outer wall of the compound. Men were beginning to emerge from the largest—the mess-hall, she presumed.

‘Do all of the convicts take their meals here?’ she asked over her shoulder.

‘The ones who live here, yes. Breakfast, dinner and supper,’ Sergeant Royce said. ‘There are a lot who don’t live here, of course—assigned servants and the like.’

‘And the…inmates here, do they all work on road gangs?’

‘Oh, no,’ Sergeant Royce replied, parking his backside on the table and happily settling in for a session of sounding knowledgeable. ‘They do all sorts of jobs. In the government dockyards and stores, and the mines and quarries out at Parramatta, or the lumberyard or the brickfield. Some are at the waterworks, or the military barracks. And, as you say, there are the road gangs and land clearing and what have you.’

‘How many men live here?’

‘I believe we have six hundred and twenty-three at the moment.’

Kitty turned to face him. ‘Here? All sleeping and eating here, every night?’ The Barracks, solid and imposing though it was, seemed far too small to accommodate so many occupants.

Sergeant Royce nodded.

‘That’s a lot of beds!’ Kitty said.

‘No, they don’t have beds, they sleep in hammocks,’ the sergeant said. ‘You know, like sailors’ quarters on board a big ship.’ He blushed, realising that he had just implied that Kitty would be familiar with the sleeping arrangements of seamen.

Kitty averted her eyes from his obvious discomfort, but the embarrassing moment was deflected by the sound of footsteps approaching along the corridor.

A man in convict garb entered the room, and she prayed that he was in fact Avery Bannerman.

‘Uncle! It’s so lovely to see you at last!’ she cried, and rushed to him with her arms open.

‘As it is you, niece,’ ‘Uncle’ Avery said without batting an eyelid.

Kitty pecked him on the cheek and stepped back as though to get a better look at him, then stumbled slightly and leant heavily on the table.

‘Oh dear,’ she said to Sergeant Royce, who had moved forwards in consternation. ‘I feel quite faint. It’s the excitement. I couldn’t have a drink of water, could I?’

Avery Bannerman sat down at the table.

The sergeant hesitated, then nodded.

‘Oh, thank you so much, Sergeant,’ Kitty said, knowing that he would have to go all the way downstairs, probably over to the mess-hall to find a cup, then to the standpipe, wherever that was, for the water, and then back upstairs again.

They waited until he had gone, then Bannerman said calmly, ‘And who might you be?’

Kitty looked at him and felt her nervousness come galloping back. Sergeant Royce had been surprisingly easy: this bit would be a lot harder.

Avery Bannerman was probably in his forties. His brown hair was streaked with grey and pulled back in a short queue, and he was clean-shaven. He had a long face, with hooded eyes, full lips and deep grooves that ran from the sides of his nose to the corners of his mouth. The overall effect gave him the appearance of a bloodhound, but the intelligence in his startlingly pale blue eyes was unnerving. Kitty felt as though he had seen straight through her already, and was merely waiting for her to present whatever request she had come with.

She cleared her throat.

‘Come on, girl, out with it,’ he said, withdrawing a clay pipe from the pocket of his shirt and tamping tobacco into it.

Kitty stared at the pipe, fascinated and more than a little shocked. It was in the shape of a woman’s bottom: the bowl was her naked buttocks and her legs narrowed to form the stem. The mouthpiece was a tiny pair of high-heeled shoes. It reminded her of Mr Bannerman’s enthusiasm for women and she self-consciously loosened her shawl and allowed a hint of her cleavage to be revealed. Mr Bannerman looked, not even trying to conceal the fact. Gritting her teeth with embarrassment and discomfort, Kitty let the shawl slip a little further.

When his pipe was packed to his satisfaction, Bannerman took out a box of matches and lit it, the noxious stink of the white phosphorus filling the room. Kitty wondered how he’d managed to secure such a precious and costly thing as matches in here. But, observing the superior cut and
stitching of his convict shirt, the gold ring he wore on the little finger of his left hand and the velvet ribbon tying his hair back, she realised that he was the sort of man who could probably secure just about anything he liked. Except, obviously, his freedom. His accent was a lot more refined than she had expected, too. Not upper-class, but certainly not cockney costermonger either. He must have been considered spectacularly vexatious by someone in the courts at home to get himself transported; the middle class mostly served their sentences in England.

‘Somebody has sent you, am I right?’ he said, drawing deeply on his pipe and letting the smoke curl out between his lips.

She sat like a stunned rabbit, not knowing what to say.

He inclined his head towards her breasts and smiled, revealing big yellow teeth. ‘Someone who knows me, knows what I like.’

Kitty resisted the urge to yank her shawl back across her chest. ‘I need some papers,’ she said, hoping her voice wouldn’t betray her nervousness. ‘I’m told you’re the best forger in the business.’

‘I am that,’ Bannerman said. ‘Who sent you?’

‘Rian Farrell.’

Bannerman’s eyebrows went up interestedly.

‘Well, not Captain Farrell himself,’ Kitty said. ‘He’s in gaol at the moment.’

‘Yes, I had heard that. That was very careless of him, wasn’t it?’

Kitty frowned. ‘Do you know Rian Farrell?’

Bannerman shook his head. ‘Not very well, although our paths do cross from time to time.’

How could that be, when Mr Bannerman was stuck in Hyde Park Barracks and Rian was more often than not off sailing the high seas? Kitty wondered.

‘I’m here on Rian’s behalf,’ she said. ‘His crew sent me. Walter Kinghazel, the customs and excise man—’

‘Yes, I know who he is,’ Bannerman said, waving his pipe dismissively.

‘Mr Kinghazel arrested Rian on trumped-up charges of failing to pay customs duties on goods he unloaded here last year.’

‘Really. And how do you know the charges are trumped up?’

‘Because he paid the duty but the receipts have been lost,’ Kitty said. ‘We’ve looked everywhere for them but they’ve vanished.’

Bannerman’s long face remained impassive.

‘And we need the receipts to get Rian out of gaol. It’s very important, Mr Bannerman. He could lose the
Katipo,
or be gaoled, or even executed.’

‘Yes, I’m more than aware of the punishments meted out by the current judicial system, thank you.’ Bannerman put an elbow on the table. ‘Are you Captain Farrell’s paramour?’

Kitty flushed. ‘No!’

Bannerman laughed. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Kitty Carlisle.’

‘So what would be in it for me, Kitty Carlisle?’

‘Money? We can give you—’

‘What would I do with money in here? As you’ve possibly noticed there isn’t a lot to spend it on.’

He was right, and Kitty knew it. She tried the next items on the list Hawk had suggested. ‘Tobacco? Spirits? Firearms?’

‘I have all I need of those for now, including a very fine pearl-handled pistol,’ Bannerman said. ‘No, you have nothing I might want.’ He let his eyes wander across her face and down again to her bosom. ‘Unless…’

He let the word hang. The silence between them expanded to fill the small room, and Kitty felt her heart begin to thud as she realised that the possibility she hadn’t allowed herself to seriously consider might actually be about to happen.

Bannerman sat back. ‘Put those away, girl,’ he said, nodding at her chest. ‘I can’t do much with you in here, tempting though you most certainly are. Go on, cover them up before I change my mind.’ His pipe had gone out; he up-ended it and tapped the ash out onto the floor. ‘I’ll give you what you want.’

Faint with relief, Kitty closed her shawl. ‘But what about payment?’

‘Tell Farrell he owes me. Don’t worry, he knows I’ll collect. One day.’

‘Will you need anything to do the…job?’ Kitty asked.

‘Yes,’ Bannerman said. ‘You can’t pluck the tools you need for a high-quality forgery out of thin air, you know. Not even I can do that.’

Kitty nodded. ‘What is it you want?’

‘A genuine customs receipt, a recent one with Kinghazel’s signature on it. Five sheets of the official watermarked paper he uses and a government customs and excise stamp. I’m sure there’s someone you can bribe for those. A range of pens—steel nibs, not those bloody awful quills—fine and thick, black ink and some blue as well, just in case, and blotting paper. That should just about do it.’ Bannerman rubbed his hands together enthusiastically. ‘I haven’t done a decent forgery since…well, for a good few months now.’ He looked at Kitty dolefully. ‘It can get very boring in here, you know.’

She nearly laughed. ‘I’ll get everything to you as soon as—’

‘And how is your father?’ Bannerman interrupted.

Her father? She opened her mouth to say that her father was dead but shut it again quickly as Sergeant Royce appeared in the doorway carrying a glass of water.

‘I’m sorry it took so long,’ he said breathlessly, ‘but I couldn’t find any lemons. I thought you might like a slice of lemon in it. I had to go outside the barracks to get one.’ He handed her the glass and bowed slightly.

Kitty had forgotten all about her drink of water. She drank the lot off in one go, stifling a burp as she handed the glass back. ‘Lovely, thank you, just what I needed.’

‘Feeling all right now?’ the sergeant asked.

‘Yes, thank you, although I must be going. I believe our ten minutes is well up, don’t you, Uncle?’

‘I would say so,’ Bannerman said.

‘I’ll show you out then, shall I?’ the sergeant suggested.

Kitty stood. ‘Well, it was lovely to see you again, Uncle Avery, and I’ll be back to visit you again as soon as I can.’

‘Very nice,’ Bannerman said, also getting to his feet.

Kitty followed the sergeant out into the corridor. He took her elbow again going down the stairs and kept his hand there as he escorted her
outside, grinning widely at two guards standing near the door as they went past.

At the gates he stopped. ‘When do you think you might be visiting your uncle again, Miss Carlisle?’

Kitty swept a strand of loose hair off her face. ‘I’m not sure, Sergeant. It depends.’

‘Well, I hope I’m on duty when you do. Perhaps you would allow me to take you on a tour of…something?’ he finished lamely.

‘Perhaps,’ Kitty said, trying not to smile. A tour of the barracks wouldn’t be at all appropriate for a lady, and he’d realised it. His open face and bright eyes really were rather appealing, and her heart softened. ‘Yes, perhaps we could do that,’ she said, knowing that they never would. ‘Thank you so much for your help today. I’m not sure what I would have done without you.’

Sergeant Royce beamed and touched his fingers to the peak of his cap. ‘My pleasure entirely.’

She was in such a hurry to get to the Bird-in-Hand where the others were waiting that she spent some of her precious money on a cab back to The Rocks. But the driver said he wouldn’t even think of taking his horse up the steep little lanes that led to Gloucester Street, and made her get out on George Street. So she ran the rest of the way, arriving flushed with both victory and exertion. Everyone looked up expectantly as she burst into the pub, and cheered as they saw the jubilant expression on her face. She sat down, her hand up against the barrage of questions, waiting until she’d regained her breath.

‘Yes, he said he’d do it,’ she said when she finally could. ‘But we have to get him a few things first.’

‘What does he want,’ Sharkey said eagerly.

Kitty reeled off Bannerman’s list.

‘We should be able to get all that,’ Mick said. He turned to Pierre. ‘What about that mate of yours, the “handy” one?’

‘Oui, he can do that for sure,’ Pierre said. He rubbed his thumb and
index finger together. ‘With a little inducement he will get anything.’

‘And what about payment?’ Hawk asked Kitty. ‘What did he accept?’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘he didn’t want money. Or whiskey or tobacco.’

Wai gasped. ‘Oooh, Kitty!’

Kitty looked around the table at faces that now wore comically shocked expressions, even Sharkey’s, and wanted to laugh.

‘Don’t worry, he said Rian could owe him.’

Hawk and Sharkey exchanged worried glances.

‘What?’ Kitty said. ‘Have I done something wrong?’

‘No,’ Hawk assured her. ‘It is just that when a man owes a debt to Avery Bannerman, it is not always a good thing. He is a very powerful man.’

‘Well, it’s not a good thing to be facing the gallows, either,’ Kitty retorted. ‘Surely we can worry about that later?’

‘Rian probably will,’ Mick said.

‘No,’ Gideon disagreed. ‘There will be a way around it.’

‘I hope so,’ Sharkey muttered. ‘That sort of thing can come back and bite a man in the arse.’