Band of Gold

by Deborah Challinor

  ‘It is not. And yet you have ventured out alone?’

  ‘I have.’ Kitty looked pointedly at the teapot and Wong Kai poured her another cup. ‘Thank you. I will bring her here this afternoon.’

  ‘No, not here. Not even my wife comes here. I will arrange to have her collected.’ Wong Kai contemplated Kitty unblinkingly, then inclined his head in a small bow. ‘Thank you, Mrs Farrell. I am indebted to you. I am very fond of my niece. But tell me, what has been the nature of her illness?’

  Kitty explained what had happened to Bao, from the persistent persecution on the Ballarat goldfields, to the fear generated by the Eureka uprising. Wong Kai nodded, indicating his understanding that such things could be unnerving for a young girl. Then, not bothering to conceal her own anger over the affair, she told him frankly about Searle and Tuttle.

  For some time Wong Kai didn’t utter a word. His face was expressionless, except for a small muscle that began to spasm beneath his right eyelid, but his eyes hardened until they seemed to resemble glittering, smoky quartz. Even though he sat some distance from her, Kitty felt the rage roll off him in silent waves, and she involuntarily pressed herself back into her chair.

  ‘These…men,’ he said eventually, his voice taut. ‘Justice was dispensed?’

  ‘Do you mean were the authorities alerted?’ Kitty asked, even though she was fairly sure he didn’t.

  ‘No, I mean were they made to pay.’ Each word came out of his mouth like a ball from the barrel of a musket.

  ‘I believe your brother attended to it.’

  Wong Kai relaxed, just a little. ‘Then we must see what we can do to set poor Bao on the road to recovery. Fu has done the right thing.’ He gave himself a little shake and his anger seemed to get sucked back into him, like smoke disappearing up a chimney. ‘Now, Mrs Farrell, I also hear that you may have other business to discuss.’

  Kitty nodded. How could he have known that? She hoped Mr Wu wasn’t in trouble. ‘Yes, I have a certain amount of gold I am in the market to sell. I don’t wish to go through the official channels, or to approach a gold buyer,’ she waved her hand vaguely at Wong Kai’s window, ‘on the street. I wondered if you could help.’ Gold purchased by Wong Kai, if he was indeed in that line of business, would not go back to England, but to China, and therefore would not be subject to certain duties and taxes. The price Kitty might get for it could well be better than the £3 normally on offer.

  ‘Are you sure that I buy gold, Mrs Farrell, or are you guessing?’

  Kitty smoothed a crease from her skirt. ‘I’m guessing, Mr Wong. But I think it’s a reasonably educated guess.’

  Wong Kai leaned back in his chair and made a steeple out of his fingers. ‘How much gold do you have? If I was in the business of buying gold, I would not be interested in a kerchief knotted around a handful of paltry little flakes.’

  ‘On this trip, 752 troy ounces. There will be more in the near future. Quite possibly a lot more. My husband believes his claim has nowhere near bottomed out. Our intention is to take out all we can as quickly as we can, as we wish to return to sea.’

  Wong Kai looked thoughtful. ‘And your husband wishes to mine this claim himself?’

  ‘Well, yes, he does.’ Then Kitty understood what Wong Kai was thinking. ‘He doesn’t wish to sell it, no.’

  ‘Mmm.’ Wong Kai appeared to put that possibility aside. ‘As it happens, Mrs Farrell, I am in the business of buying gold, and I will buy yours. Here are my terms.’ He wrote a series of figures on a sheet of paper, placed it on a small lacquered tray and passed it to her. ‘And those are my best terms, given the panic the recent uprising at Eureka seems to have caused. They are not terms I am prepared to offer everyone with whom I do business, but you have been of great assistance to my family, so I am offering them to you.’

  Kitty considered his offer; his terms were not spectacular, but certainly better than those she would encounter on the street or at the bank. ‘Yes, I believe we can do business, Mr Wong. I will deliver the gold to you today.’

  Wong Kai finally smiled. ‘And how will you carry forty-seven pounds of gold through the streets of Melbourne, Mrs Farrell? In your dainty reticule? Under your arm?’

  Slightly insulted by the silly picture of her his words had just painted, Kitty replied brusquely, ‘I have several of my husband’s men with me, Mr Wong. They will bring the gold.’

  ‘No. It will be collected from your hotel this afternoon along with Bao. You will receive the money then. After the gold has been weighed, naturally. Is that acceptable to you?’

  ‘Yes, it is.’ Kitty rose to take her leave. ‘Thank you, Mr Wong, it has been a pleasure doing business with you.’ Well, she had achieved everything she had come for.

  Wong Kai stood himself, and bowed. ‘And thank you again for your service to my family. I hope I may one day return the favour.’

  Wong Kai rang a bell, and So-Yee appeared and escorted her downstairs and out into the warm, fish-tainted air.

  Mr Wong’s people arrived at The Criterion as arranged that afternoon, all three attired in smart European clothing. One, a bespectacled gentleman who introduced himself as Mr Chen, carried a case in which was packed a set of elaborate measuring scales, which he assembled in Simon and Daniel’s room, before weighing Rian’s gold ounce by ounce. The money was then handed over and the gold taken away, along with Bao. She wept a little and said she would miss Kitty and Amber, and that she would return to Ballarat as soon as she felt rested. It was obvious to Kitty, though, that the child was relieved to be away from the brutality of the goldfields. Here in Melbourne, Bao would benefit from the familiar and comforting company of her aunt, and, in the rabbit warrens that made up the Chinese quarter in Little Bourke Street, would perhaps also find the physical security she needed.

  The following day Simon went to visit Patrick in the Melbourne gaol, where he’d been transported from Ballarat along with the thirteen other insurgents arrested after Eureka who had been charged with high treason. Daniel had gone off somewhere after breakfast, and following the midday meal Haunui, Tahi and Amber had set out on a mission to find an Irish ensign for the Katipo.

  Having spent the morning happily browsing around the shops with Amber, Kitty was now packing, ready to return to Ballarat the following day. She had made a few purchases for Amber, including a new dress, and bought Rian a beautiful white lawn shirt and herself a panama hat—which she was going to wear in the sun whether people laughed at her or not—and was struggling to close the lid on the trunk she was sharing with Amber when a discreet rap came at the door. Distracted, she crossed the room.

  ‘Oh, hello Daniel. Are you looking for the others?’

  ‘No, actually, it’s you I’d like to speak to, Kitty. If that’s all right,’ Daniel replied, hoping he didn’t sound as nervous as he felt.

  He’d been standing in the hall for ten minutes trying to pluck up the courage to knock, and praying she didn’t suddenly open the door and see him hovering there like a fool.

  ‘Oh. Yes, of course.’ She stepped aside. ‘Come in, please.’

  His heart gave a silly little lurch. ‘Into your room?’

  Kitty smiled. ‘We’ll leave the door open, shall we?’

  He hesitated, then removed his hat and followed her inside.

  ‘Please, sit down, Daniel.’ Kitty indicated a chair.

  ‘No, thank you,’ he replied, then cursed himself for sounding so pompous. He crossed the room, averting his eyes from the lace-trimmed chemise that lay folded on top of the open trunk on the bed, and stood by the window, his heart thudding with a combination of nerves at what he needed to say and exhilaration at being alone with her. He closed his eyes. This had been a mistake.

  ‘Daniel?’

  He turned away from the window and saw that Kitty had decided to take the chair herself. She was gazing at him in that patient, slightly amused and genuinely attentive way she had that always made people think they were special, that she was listening just to them. And
she looked lovely. She always looked lovely. He cleared his throat. ‘I wanted to apologise.’

  Kitty inclined her head quizzically, but said nothing.

  ‘For saying what I did in the doctor’s surgery. When I was drunk. I didn’t mean to. It just…came out.’ He held her gaze for a moment, then looked away, knowing he still hadn’t told the truth. Because what he was truly sorry for was that he hadn’t also told her he loved her. ‘And I’m sorry if what I said embarrassed you, Kitty, I truly am.’

  He felt himself reddening, and turned back to the window. Outside, in the street, a wagon had lost a wheel and there were barrels all over the road.

  Behind him, Kitty was silent for almost a minute. Then she said, ‘Thank you, Daniel. There was no need to apologise.’

  He waited—hoped—for her to say something else, but she didn’t. Finally, he faced her. ‘Well, that’s all I wanted to say. I’ll leave you in peace now.’

  Kitty rose and came to stand next to him. She touched him on the back of his hand, and he thought the skin where her fingers had rested might catch fire.

  ‘I appreciate it, Daniel. I appreciate…everything. But you do understand. Don’t you?’

  And he saw then that she knew it all—everything that he felt for her, everything he wanted, and everything he wasn’t going to get. In her face he saw genuine empathy, and friendship, and affection, and even respect, but nothing that gave him any hope of anything else—no hint of love, and no desire. And there never had been.

  He nodded, picked up his hat and left.

  For a long while Kitty stared at the empty doorway, feeling upset and inexplicably guilty, then she went back to her packing, jamming the lid of the trunk down and banging on it with somewhat unnecessary force.

  Part Three

  The Lamp of the Wicked

  Chapter Fourteen

  Ballarat, late January 1855

  Bao says she’s feeling much better,’ Amber relayed, holding the letter in one hand and wafting a palm-leaf fan across her face with the other.

  ‘Does she say it’s hot in Melbourne?’ Kitty asked.

  ‘Roasting,’ Amber confirmed. ‘She says people are swimming in the Yarra.’

  I don’t blame them, Kitty thought as the sweat trickled down her sides and pasted the fabric of her chemise to her skin. If she could be granted a single wish right now, she would chose to be on the Katipo, in delicious, cool, full sail.

  Since their return from Melbourne seven weeks ago, the temperature on the diggings had soared. Every morning, the sun rose and beat a relentless path into the sky, wilting everything it touched and fraying the tempers of even the most benign of characters. In the bakery the heat was unbearable, but customers still wanted their pasties and their savoury pies in spite of the height of the mercury in the thermometer. The price of ice had become prohibitive and, as butter became rancid within hours unless kept packed in the precious commodity, she and Pierre had temporarily ceased making croissants. Customers complained at the disappearance of their buttery French treats, but there was nothing for it.

  Things had changed in Ballarat after the uprising. The clash between the diggers and the Queen’s men at Eureka had been more or less impromptu, but the outcome seemed as though it might finally, eventually, clear the path towards the goals for which the miners and shopkeepers of Victoria’s goldfields had been striving for years. Licence hunts had been suspended, and Major-General Nickle, who had arrived with the 800 reinforcements on 5 December, had turned out to be not such a martinet after all. In fact, he had immediately gone about actually listening to the diggers’ complaints, then restrained the behaviour of the police, and within days had lifted the decree of martial law. The diggers charged with high treason, however, were still awaiting trial in Melbourne, although word was that the Crown would have a tough job making the charges stick, given the findings the Goldfields Commission was likely to deliver in its report expected in March.

  Soldiers were still at large in Ballarat, although in smaller numbers, and the police continued to roam, but the respite in the licence hunts reduced the impact of their presence markedly. There were far fewer opportunities for bullying and extortion, and Nickle’s men had been ordered to keep an eye on such activities anyway, which, as Rian remarked to Kitty, must be severely clipping Sergeant Coombes’s wings. All the same, Rian had continued to keep his head down after Eureka, concentrating on extracting as much gold as possible from the claim as quickly as he and the crew could manage.

  Christmas had been a quiet, strange affair. They were more accustomed to celebrating the holiday at sea, and not usually in temperatures of almost 100 degrees. But the crew had knocked together a long table from pieces of packing crate and arranged tea chests around it for chairs, Kitty, Leena and Amber had spent all afternoon decorating and laying it for an evening feast, and Pierre had cooked himself into a lather. True, the ox-tail soup was actually kangaroo tail, and several parakeets had given their lives to stand in for pigeons in the game pies, the plums in the puddings were tinned, and Ropata broke a tooth on a small gold nugget hidden in one of them, but the general opinion was that the meal was superb.

  Maureen was invited, and even though she said she had a lovely time, she kept blotting her eyes and blowing her nose because of Patrick’s absence. She cheered up only when Rian assured her that, in his opinion, as soon as the commission’s report was released, the ‘Eureka fourteen’ would be released and on their way home before she knew it.

  Flora also came, in spite of Christmas Day being a very busy time for her: so many lonely men missing home and their womenfolk, she explained in a voice designed not to carry as far as Amber’s ears. As gifts she brought, for the women, scent in pretty crystal bottles, and for the men a choice of either a bottle of best single malt whiskey or an hour with one of her girls. Poor Mick was in a terrible quandary.

  Kitty gave Rian the shirt she had bought him in Melbourne, and he gave her a beautiful nightdress of pale green silk he’d had one of Wong Fu’s men tailor, and which made her go the colour of a tomato when she opened it in front of everyone. As usual Amber received extravagant gifts from every member of the crew, and in return she’d made them biscuits in the bakery oven. These were a bit flat and overdone, but they swore to a man that they were the best biscuits they’d ever tasted.

  The new year arrived with little fanfare, the temperature increased even further, and Kitty began to look forward in earnest to the day they would pack up, leave Lilac Cottage and head back to Melbourne, the Katipo and the glorious sea. Since she had been to see Wong Kai, they had sent another two shipments of gold to him, and their stockpile of cash was now accruing very nicely. The dust from the Eureka uprising was settling, the licence hunts had stopped, she had only caught sight of Lily twice in the street and had been given a wide and wary berth, and Sergeant Coombes appeared to be too busy avoiding the eye of Major-General Nickle to pay any attention to Rian.

  Now, if only the terrible weather would break, they might be afforded some relief from the appalling heat.

  Kitty pushed herself out of the rocking chair and propped open the door with a lump of quartz Rian had carted all the way back from the river because he liked the way it sparkled in the sun. A tiny breeze meandered in, but did little to dissipate the stifling heat. Bodie lay on the cool stone hearth, her mouth open, panting. Outside the sky was an ominous ochre colour, staining everything beneath it vaguely yellow. Brooding clouds hovered above the hills to the south-east, constipated with rain.

  Amber put Bao’s letter aside, picked up her skirts and flapped them in an effort to circulate some air around her legs. ‘God, Ma, when’s the rain going to come?’

  ‘Language, please,’ Kitty said automatically, as she looked up at the sky. ‘I don’t know, love, but I hope it’s soon.’

  First week of February 1855

  Rian gripped the soggy rope with both hands and hung on as he spun slowly upwards towards the watery sunlight, his head down against the fat drops
of water falling from the lip of the shaft. At the top, Gideon reached out a huge hand and hauled him out of the bucket and onto solid ground.

  Rian was relieved to see that the rain had stopped—at last—but the sky was still a strange, pale, washed-out grey. Weak blue was breaking through to the south, but the dark clouds still sat to the north of Black Hill and purpled the sky beyond, where rain continued to fall, accompanied by muted thunder. It had been raining almost solidly for five days now, and everyone was heartily sick of it. Where once was hard ground there was now mud, reminiscent of winter but without the freezing cold, and many shafts had flooded to the point that mining had ceased, so dangerous had the soft, waterlogged walls become.

  Fortuitously, however, Rian’s claim was not situated in the path of a new underground watercourse, and had been spared the worst effects of these unexpected subterranean springs. So they had kept on mining, hauling out buckets of washdirt all day and well into the night until they became too tired to work safely. In Rian’s estimation, another three weeks would take them to the bottom of the lead and to the outer boundaries of the claim. By then, they would have taken all the gold they could without encroaching on neighbouring claims. Not a bad investment, as it had turned out, and he expected there to be a tidy sum more before they scraped the bottom. But he knew he had to return to the sea soon—he felt that part of him was slowly dying. They all did. This mining lark had been an adventure, but his feet belonged on a deck above rolling waves, not knee-deep in mud or dust. And there was Kitty to consider: she was pining desperately for her beloved high seas, and he hated to see her unhappy. Anyway, he’d promised.