Lands of Red and Gold #70: True Colours
This forms the prologue to Act 2 of
Lands of Red and Gold. I’m still reformatting the whole structure of the currently published timeline to date and will eventually repost this, perhaps in a separate thread. But in the meantime, this is the opening framing device (and something of a teaser) for
Act 2: The Four Horsemen.
* * *
24 December 1912
Gerang’s Falls [Buckley’s Falls], near Cumberland [Geelong, Victoria]
Carl Ashkettle paces slowly up and down the road atop a dam. He steps from one length of the dam to the other, then turns around and repeats the process. The dam is small, and in truth he could walk it quickly if he wishes, but he is in no hurry. Or rather, he is in a hurry, but this slow walk will have to do as a means of marking time.
To his right – as he now paces – the waters of the lake grow ever darker as the sun sets behind them. The lake is only small; the River Wandana [Barwon River] has been dammed here purely to hold water for fishing and aquaculture. He supposes that the dimming glimpses of the lake might be soothing, if he were in the right mind, but all he cares about now is the much-delayed arrival of the source he has arranged to meet here.
Moments later, he notices a man walking down the road at the far side of the dam.
Walking. The man has come here on foot. Strange, that.
As the man draws nearer, Ashkettle studies him with a practiced chronicler’s [reporter’s] eye. Old and short, are his first impressions. The man barely reaches Ashkettle’s shoulder, and Ashkettle himself is far from the tallest of men. The man’s advanced age is obvious from the whiteness of the hair on his head and neatly-trimmed short beard. Something is odd about his face, though; it nags at Ashkettle, but he cannot place it for now.
The newcomer’s clothes are undistinguished. He wears dark green linen overalls with a few blackish stains. Nothing that would be out of place in any of Cumberland’s many mills [factories].
“Good evening, Mr... Clements, is it?” Ashkettle says, with the briefest hint of a bow, but with no effort to shake hands.
“So I’m called,” Clements answers, with a vague hint of a bow in response. “My most recent name, that is.”
Ashkettle raises an eyebrow, but the other man does not elaborate. After a moment, Ashkettle says, “Why did you ask me out here, Mr Clements?” A little abrupt, perhaps, but the long waiting past the appointed hour plays on his nerves.
“Because I want you to tell my story,” Clements says.
“The tale of your life, or just one particular story that you want the world to hear?”
Clements grins. “Oh, my life story. Enough as would interest the world, any ways. I dare say they’d be right taken with most of it.”
“Enough to pay to read it?” Ashkettle says, in what he hopes is a disarming tone. Lots of people think they have stories worth telling, but usually other people do not find those stories worth listening to.
“I’d say so. Yes, I’d def’nitely say so. Not that it matters much to me, you see.”
“Oh?”
“Don’t care nothing for this,” Clement says, and rubs his thumb against his first two fingers of his left hand. “Make what cash off’ve my tale as you can. Only one condition I have for you.” At Ashkettle’s inquiring noise, the old man says, “Write as much as you can while I live, to get yourself ready. But you can’t print nothing in your paper or books til I’ve gone.”
“Ah.”
That kind of story could well be interesting. Perhaps not, but the chances are so much better. And a story for which he pays nothing will cost him only his time. Easy enough to stop hearing the tale if it proves worthless.
Ashkettle produces a notebook and pencil. “Shall we begin? The short version, to start with.”
Clement chuckles. “No such thing, with my tale. But we can go from the beginning.”
“As good a place as any, I suppose. Where were you born?”
“Yigutji [Wagga Wagga]. The city. The old city.”
Ashkettle has to think for a moment. History has never been his forte. “Ah, yes. The old – very old city. Must be a tale there. How did you come to be born in an archaeological site?”
“My mother didn’t live in no place of diggers. When I was born, Yigutji was still a real city. A living, breathing place. The heart of its kingdom.”
Ashkettle gives a hollow laugh. “Oh, your mother borrowed a time machine before she gave birth?”
“Not on your life. Born there too, she was, may she rest in peace.”
Ashkettle considers whether to rip the page out of his notebook and walk away on the spot, but decides to indulge this would-be scammer a little longer. “How old are you, then?”
“Don’t rightly know, not to the day. Live long enough, and the oldest times start to blur in your head, know what I mean?” Clements looks at him, and apparently recognises how close he is to leaving on the spot. “But I dare say I would’ve been born around 1610, give or take.”
“You’re telling me you are three hundred years old?”
“That I am, or thereabouts, any ways.”
“And I’m Prestor John. I think I’ve wasted enough time here,” Ashkettle says, and tucks the notebook back into his pocket.
He goes to put the pencil in after it, but Clements lays a hand on his shoulder. “I assure you, Mr. Ashkettle, that hearing me out will be worth your time. I am offering you the biggest scoop of the decade, if not the century, and you are not willing to listen.”
The change in diction is astonishing. Ashkettle knows he is staring, but cannot stop.
Clements chuckles. “Oh, yes, I can sound like an educated man, or a common oaf, as I prefer. Or any of several other guises. Live as long as I have, sir, and you will learn to play many roles. If only so you can go on living a while longer.”
Ashkettle looks at the man more closely. His ancestry appears muddled enough that he could be telling the truth about being a Yigutji man of pure heritage, even if he lies about his age. Or he could have a white man or two somewhere in his ancestry, and be a Junditmara [1]. It is difficult to tell.
After studying the man, Ashkettle realises what has been nagging him about the old man’s face. There are lines on it, as befits an old man. But there are no other blemishes on it at all. No scars, no moles, nothing but the patchwork of lines. Clements is old, but somehow he looks less worn than he should.
“
Three hundred years old?” He does not believe it. He cannot believe it. But he writes it down, just the same. Whatever story Clements has to tell may be worth publishing, even if it is just entertaining fiction.
“I’ve already said I cannot tell you, not to the year. My family were not wealthy, and in that era, few low-born families kept what you would call accurate records. But I
was alive and old enough to hear and remember the first confused tales about the “raw men” – de Houtman’s expedition, that is – when they spread to Yigutji in what would have been 1619 or 1620. I was still considered a child then, and boys were thought of as men quite young in those days. So I think that I was born around 1610, and in any case no later than 1615.”
“Is there nothing you can place that would... Actually, forget that for now. It can wait. You don’t look that old.”
Clements smirks. “You expect a three centuries old man to look like some decrepit half-mummified corpse with a beard down to his knees?” He shrugs. “In truth, for most of that time I did not look old at all. I reached the age of twenty-five, and that is where I stayed, in outward appearance. As far as looks go, I did not age at all. Which made saying in one place for too long an unwise idea, as you can imagine. I had to keep moving on and changing my name.”
Clements clears his throat. “Anyway, until about twenty years ago, I looked young. After that, I started aging. Quicker than a normal man, which is why you see me as I am. I expect that I will live a little longer, but now I can see death approaching. Time to tell my story.”
The man certainly sounds convincing, enough to make Ashkettle wonder where the scam can be found. “The story of how you met everyone famous in the last three hundred years, I suppose.”
“A few over the years, but not so many as you might think. My preference has always been to avoid attracting attention. Living in the courts of the rich and aimless was never a good way to remain low-key, since too many people would be likely to remember me.” He pauses, as if thinking. “But I rode with the Hunter during the great crusades. I was in the crowd at Wujal [Cooktown] that cheered Korowal home when he brought his ships back from sailing around the world via the three capes. And Pinjara considered me his friend.”
Ashkettle makes what he hopes is a non-committal grunt. He would have expected a confidence man to claim that he knew many more famous people than those named. Unless he does not want to be caught out giving false details, of course. But then again, years of journalism have taught Ashkettle how fallible human memory is; any man can misremember things even if they are being honest. “What can you tell in your story, then?”
“I can tell you about the way things happened to ordinary people. I saw that. I saw it all, from the earliest coming of white men. I saw their coming. I saw the new marvels they brought. The new hope. And I saw what came after. The wars, the plagues, the famines. The deaths, so many deaths. I lived through it all.”
Ashkettle’s skepticism returns. “You did all that? You lived through the plagues?”
Clements nods.
“Even, hmm, smallpox? Where’s your scars?”
“I do not scar,” Clements says. “That is probably part of why I have lived so long. If I get cut, I heal without scars. I even had half a finger regrow once. Though that is an experience I would prefer not to repeat.”
“
That is something that can be verified,” Ashkettle says.
“Not if I die of infection, thank you all the same,” Clements says. “If you want me to prove my veracity, there are safer ways. I can tell you things about my life, things which history does not remember.
“Listen, and I will tell you.”
* * *
[1] Native Aururians of the Five Rivers (Murray basin) have slightly lighter skin than most other Gunnagalic peoples. In turn, other Gunnagalic peoples have slightly lighter skin when compared to other native Aururians, and the Junditmara have somewhat darker skin than just about everyone else.
This is a consequence of the history of adoption of agriculture. The shift to agriculture meant a lower animal protein diet, which in turn meant less dietary vitamin D available, and thus led to natural selection for lighter skin (i.e. faster biosynthesis of vitamin D in the skin). This process started earliest with the Gunnagalic peoples (the earliest farmers), and spread with them during the Great Migrations (900 BC – 200 AD) as they expanded across eastern Aururia (see also
post #6).
However, during these migrations, the dispersing Gunnagalic peoples were hunters as much as farmers (due to the disruption), and so the selection pressure halted for most of the millennium. Within the Five Rivers itself, however, the hunting grounds had largely been exhausted, and the aquaculture collapsed with the Interregnum, so the selection pressure continued throughout that period. Even after the Interregnum ended and aquaculture (and domesticated birds) became more common, they were still a high-status commodity, and so the selection pressure continues.
The Junditmara maintained a long tradition of aquaculture throughout this period, and thus had as much vitamin D as they needed, and retained a darker skin tone.
* * *
Thoughts?