Band of Gold

by Deborah Challinor

  Bannerman shook his head. ‘Oh, no, no, no. I’m afraid you’ve misheard. I said I want you to sign it over now.’

  ‘I don’t have the authority, not while Rian is still alive.’

  Bannerman’s sleekly groomed eyebrows went up. ‘Really? All right, I’ll kill him.’

  He withdrew a pistol from inside his coat, cocked it and aimed at Rian.

  Daniel started to move and by the time Bannerman pulled the trigger, Daniel was between Rian and the pistol. The bullet hit him in the side and he crumpled, sliding across the floorboards into the pile of bedding, shunting the whole lot against the wall.

  Kitty drew her own pistol and fired it at Bannerman. To her surprise, her shot hit him in the left temple. He leaned back in his chair, a bemused look on his face, then very slowly his head tipped farther and farther back until he was gazing directly at the ceiling. His hand opened, his pistol clattered to the floor, and his bladder let go.

  At the instant that Kitty fired at Bannerman, Lily whipped a small handgun out of her skirt pocket, but before she could even cock it, So-Yee threw his knife. It went through her forearm, the tip of the blade protruding from one side and the handle from the other: staring at it goggle-eyed, she was so mesmerised with shock that she didn’t even notice Bannerman was dead.

  So-Yee ran past Kitty, crouched and pressed his fingers against Daniel’s neck.

  ‘He is breathing. Help me.’

  Kitty, her heart thudding behind her ribs and her bowels feeling alarmingly watery, took hold of Daniel’s boots and hauled him, weakly coughing blood, onto Rian’s blanket. She and So-Yee took an end each and began to drag the two men towards the door. They felt as though they weighed at least a ton, and the blanket kept catching on splinters in the floorboards, and by the time they got across the room she was weeping openly.

  ‘Stop it, girl,’ So-Yee said; and for once, Kitty noted, he didn’t sound bad-tempered.

  There was a crash as behind them a chair fell over, then Lily’s voice, harsh with pain, rang out.

  ‘Stop, or I’ll shoot you!’

  Both Kitty and So-Yee froze.

  Slowly, they turned.

  Lily stood only yards away, her feet set apart for balance, the arm with the knife protruding from it held stiffly across her body, the hand holding the pistol resting on it and aimed directly at them. Fat, dark drops of blood splattered steadily onto the wooden floor. Her face was as white as flour.

  ‘Sign the claim over, Kitty. Sign it over to me.’

  Kitty straightened, careful not to move too quickly. ‘No, you’ll just kill us if I do that.’

  ‘I’ll kill you if you don’t.’

  ‘My men know where we are, Lily.’

  ‘They do not. You would have said that to Avery.’

  Kitty shot a glance at So-Yee, trying to ascertain whether he was carrying another knife. He understood, and with the merest narrowing of his eyes managed to convey to her that he was not. On the floor, Daniel groaned.

  ‘It won’t work,’ Kitty said. ‘What do you think our men will do if you return to Ballarat with a deed saying you now own Rian’s claim?’ She took an almost imperceptible step towards Lily.

  ‘Stay where you are!’ The pistol in Lily’s hand shook and her fingers tightened around the grip. ‘I’ll dismiss them all. I’ll say that their precious captain has finally repaid his debt to Avery Bannerman, and that Avery Bannerman owed me a debt.’

  ‘You’re mad, Lily. They won’t believe you.’

  Anger and pain twisted Lily’s face, and she moved her wounded arm so that it rested against her chest. ‘Why won’t they? Why shouldn’t they believe someone like me? They always listen to you, don’t they? I’m as good as you are. Why shouldn’t they believe me?’

  Her voice rose higher and higher until she was almost shrieking. Spit flew from her paint-smeared mouth, and her wig had slipped so that strands of someone else’s hair stuck to her pale, sweating face.

  Behind her Kitty could feel So-Yee tensing. She hoped he wasn’t about to leap at Lily because she could see that the hammer on the pistol was cocked. Her own gun was useless now, the chamber empty.

  Suddenly, but without taking her eyes off Kitty, Lily bent, staggered slightly and righted the chair she had knocked over. She sat down in it heavily, resting her arms on the table. The tableau was surreal—Lily with the glint of metal protruding from her bloodied, swelling forearm, and the corpse of Avery Bannerman slumped next to her, ruined head back, mouth gaping open, urine-stained trousers already drying in the heat.

  ‘My arm hurts,’ Lily whined, and beneath the truculence Kitty heard a chilling whisper of rising madness. ‘I have to take the knife out.’

  Before she’d even thought about it, Kitty cried, ‘No! You’ll bleed to death!’

  Lily raised the pistol at Kitty again. ‘You’re lying.’ She looked at So-Yee. ‘Is she?’

  ‘Yes. Remove it,’ So-Yee said.

  ‘Bitch,’ Lily swore at Kitty.

  She laid down the pistol, grasped the handle of the knife and gave it an almighty tug. The blade stuck for a moment, then slid out, releasing a fountain of blood that splattered across Lily’s face and down the front of her fancy dress.

  She cried out, leapt to her feet, staggered and collided with Bannerman’s chair. Bannerman’s head fell forward and knocked over the oil lamp, the contents of which spilled across the table top and onto the floor. The oil ran along the grooves in the floorboards and soaked into the hem of Lily’s skirts, then caught alight, turning her within seconds into a human lamp.

  Kitty let go of the blanket and clapped her hands over her ears to drown out the terrible sound of Lily’s screams as she careened around the room, her clothes and wig alight and her skin bubbling and blackening.

  Then So-Yee jerked her through the door and shouted at her to take hold of the blanket again.

  Somehow, as smoke began to curl down the stairs and fill the building, they managed to get Daniel and Rian outside and onto the sand. The ship’s boat was waiting and it took less than a minute to settle both men in the bottom and push off into the outgoing tide.

  Melbourne

  Flora sat in the chair, her hands folded in her lap, and watched as Kitty packed the last of her things into her trunk.

  ‘And the claim? What have you done with that?’

  ‘I’ve sold it to Wong Kai, and Wong Fu is going to manage it,’ Kitty replied. ‘And all the gear and the livestock and the cottage. There’s probably a little more gold down there before it bottoms out.’ She stopped what she was doing and made a rueful little face. ‘I’m sorry, Flora. If I’d thought about it, I’d have offered it to you. But I just wanted to be rid of it.’

  Flora nodded; she did understand. Her friend looked pallid and exhausted. The last few weeks had been a terrible ordeal for her, which was why she, Flora, had come to Melbourne with the Katipo crew when they’d heard from Wong Fu via a message from his brother about what had been going on. Haunui and Hawk had been preparing to come to Melbourne anyway, having regretted allowing Kitty to ride off in search of Rian with only Daniel as a sort of shadow chaperone. What must they both be feeling now? Flora wondered grimly, given the consequences.

  ‘I still don’t quite understand everything that happened leading up to this, Kitty.’

  Kitty laid a pair of Amber’s drawers on the bed and folded them with unnecessary precision. ‘You already know about what a crook Avery Bannerman was.’ Kitty had told Flora years ago when they’d first met in Auckland. ‘Apparently after he received his certificate of emancipation he started up a few businesses in Sydney, then moved here to Melbourne where he established a few more, mostly illegal. One of those ventures, I’m fairly sure, was to lend money to Lily Pearce to set up—’

  ‘Ah, yes, I knew someone had backed her, but I never found out whom.’

  ‘So that put her in debt to him. And did you realise she was doing personal favours for Sergeant Coombes in exchange for a blind eye?’
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br />   Flora nodded and made a face. ‘I much preferred to pay cash.’

  ‘We were selling our gold to Wong Kai because he gave us a better rate than anyone else, and Mr Chen was Mr Wong’s accountant. Unfortunately Mr Chen had accrued huge gambling debts and had borrowed from Avery Bannerman and couldn’t pay him back. Bannerman offered to wipe some of the debt in exchange for information he might find useful, and Mr Chen happened to tell him about the gold coming from our claim at Ballarat.’ Kitty sighed heavily and sat on the bed. ‘And this is where Rian had no one to blame but himself. And neither did I. I was just as responsible for repaying that debt to Bannerman as Rian was.’ Her throat was suddenly tight and she swallowed painfully. ‘Bannerman told Lily he wanted Rian. She must have thought she could get him into bed and somehow get the claim that way, but it didn’t work.’

  Flora snorted.

  ‘And then the river flooded, and by chance Coombes found Rian and brought him to Melbourne.’

  Flora said, ‘So what Carl Buckley heard was actually Coombes describing what he’d done?’

  ‘Yes—so I have Eleanor to thank for that. When you next see her, could you please explain to her that we’re not going back, that we’ve sailed for Sydney then New Zealand? And would you please give her my thanks?’

  ‘Of course.’ Flora had two more questions. ‘Did you discover who drew the map?’

  ‘No. I suspect only two people do know who drew it, and that’s probably for the best.’

  ‘And you say So-Yee just took it upon himself to kill Mr Chen?’

  ‘Yes. It turns out he isn’t Wong Kai’s butler after all, he’s his…lieutenant, I suppose you’d call him. And apparently what Wong Kai detests more than anything is disloyalty, so when So-Yee realised what Mr Chen had been up to, he killed him, knowing that Wong Kai would sanction it.’ Kitty made a regretful face. ‘I felt a little sorry for Mr Chen. I think he was so shamed by his gambling debts he couldn’t tell anyone about them, and his pride only got him into even more trouble.’

  ‘Wong Kai, however, clearly values loyalty over ego.’

  ‘Yes. I nearly went back to Lily, too, when she was on fire.’

  Flora rolled her eyes. ‘Don’t say you felt sorry for her as well!’

  Kitty tapped her throat. ‘No, I wanted Rian’s sapphire back. But it was too late.’

  She stood, placed the last of her things in the trunk and closed the lid. When a boy arrived to collect the luggage, they followed him as he wrestled the trunk down the hotel stairs on a wooden hand-truck.

  In the foyer, Flora took Kitty in her arms and embraced her tightly.

  ‘I know you’ll be back one day, Kitty, and I’ll see you then. Or perhaps our paths will cross somewhere else. Take care. You’re a strong woman: I know you will survive this.’

  Her face against Flora’s lightly scented cheek, Kitty said, ‘Thank you so much for being my friend.’ They kissed, then Flora walked out of the Criterion and into the sunshine on Collins Street.

  Kitty waited until she’d blinked back her tears, then entered the hotel salon. Mick lounged by the window, Simon was in an armchair reading the paper, and Rian and Amber sat side-by-side on the sofa, playing with the mah jong set Mr Chen had left behind.

  Simon smiled, then folded the paper and put it aside, Amber ran over to her, and Rian glanced up, then went back to pushing the mah jong counters about.

  ‘Are we going to get Daniel now?’ Amber asked eagerly. ‘Has Flora gone?’

  ‘Yes to both,’ Kitty replied, her eye on Rian.

  Over the past ten days his physical health had been improving as well as could be expected, thanks to the medicines and treatments the doctor was administering—remarkably, in fact, given the severity of his blood-poisoning when they had brought him back from Geelong—but otherwise he’d been feeling fairly grim. Daniel was so ill, yet Rian himself was still recovering from the shock of his ordeal. He hadn’t been savaged by dingos, but he had been whipped about the back and arms by Coombes’s men when they’d found him crawling dazed in the wrong direction one and half miles from the Yarrowee, and he’d lost a lot of blood when he’d gashed his thigh in the river. Then Bannerman had denied him medicine, and deliberately kept him thirsty and underfed.

  And since Kitty had told him two nights ago of what had happened between her and Daniel, his mood had darkened dramatically. She didn’t blame him, of course, but she had had to tell him. She couldn’t look at him all day long, have him smile at her and touch her, while she knew she’d given herself to another man. So she’d told him in just a few, short, unembellished sentences what she’d done and why, and there had been no angry outburst from him, no histrionics. He’d just said ‘Thank you for telling me,’ and had his things moved to another room in the hotel. He’d barely spoken a word to her since. Kitty didn’t know what to do about it, and now there were other things on her mind.

  Daniel was dying.

  The bullet that had been meant for Rian had lodged in his lung and his time was drawing near. He had expressed a wish to die at sea and they were on their way to collect him from the hospital. The others were at the docks now, preparing to sail, and they all knew they probably wouldn’t see Melbourne again for some time.

  Rian grasped his cane and pushed himself to his feet, suppressing a grunt of pain. Outside, the coach they had hired was waiting to take them to Swanston Street.

  Kitty moved to take his elbow, but he kept his arm clamped firmly against his side, refusing to meet her eyes.

  Simon and Mick exchanged a look, but said nothing. The crew knew exactly what had happened between Kitty and Daniel, as Daniel had become less than discreet in his fevered ramblings, but no one blamed either of them. Or Rian for his current foul demeanour. What they blamed, in spite of the buckets of gold they’d extracted from its long-dead rivers, were the soulless, land-locked acres of dirt and clay that made up the Ballarat basin. If they hadn’t set foot on the Victorian goldfields, none of this would ever have happened. They were sailors, not miners, and the sooner they returned to the sea the better.

  Rian became even more taciturn after the Katipo sailed. He spent his time up on deck, and in Daniel’s tiny cabin, the little round window open to let fresh air in, and the smell of the rot consuming Daniel’s chest out.

  Kitty wondered what Rian and Daniel talked about, but she never asked.

  They each took turns to sit with Daniel so he was never alone—even Bodie, who had always loathed him, but who now slept curled on the end of his bunk.

  Israel, whom Pierre had convinced Rian to take on as a cabin boy to replace Daniel, slept on the floor next to his friend at night, quietly snivelling into his sleeve.

  There was little talk on the Katipo, and even less laughter. They were all waiting, and only the normal, necessary shipboard chores helped the time to pass.

  On the second night, Gideon told Kitty that Daniel wanted to see her.

  She went into his cabin and sat down on his bunk. The air stank, as though death itself rode on his breath. There were terrible shadows and hollows in his face, which less than a fortnight ago had been so handsome.

  He fumbled for her hand and his fingers felt like the bones Pierre kept in his velvet bag. ‘I’ll be gone by morning,’ he whispered.

  His teeth were sticking to his lips and Kitty dampened a cloth and dabbed at his mouth.

  Swallowing with great difficulty, he whispered. ‘I’ve loved you since that first day at the barracks.’

  ‘I know.’ She kissed his clammy brow. ‘And if it hadn’t been Rian, it would have been you, Daniel. I promise.’

  Daniel closed his eyes, and the corners of his mouth moved in a tiny smile.

  Daniel died at a quarter to five the next morning.

  Mick and Pierre wrapped him in a sheet, then sewed him into a piece of sailcloth. Haunui and Gideon carried him carefully up on deck and as the sun rose, Simon prayed:

  We therefore commit their body to the deep,

  looking for the
general Resurrection in the last day,

  and the life of the world to come,

  through our Lord Jesus Christ;

  at whose second coming in glorious majesty to judge the world,

  the sea shall give up her dead;

  and the corruptible bodies of those who sleep in him shall be changed,

  and made like unto his glorious body;

  according to the mighty working whereby he is able to subdue all things unto himself.

  Then Daniel was lowered over the side. He floated on the bright waves for a minute or two, as though not quite ready to leave the world of air and light, then as the sailcloth began to take in water, sank slowly until he was no more than a shadow beneath the surface, and then he was gone.

  Israel wept uncontrollably, sobbing until he was puce in the face, so that Pierre had to take him under his arm and almost smother him into comforted silence.

  Rian, standing near Kitty, took her elbow and drew her closer. His eyes, she saw, were wet with tears.

  Leaning awkwardly on his cane, he said so that only she could hear, ‘He told me you would always be mine.’

  Kitty drew back and studied her husband’s face for a long, cautious, hopeful moment.

  Rian added, ‘I hope he was right.’

  And Kitty smiled.

  Acknowledgements

  The characters in this story are all fictional, except for the ones already in the history books. A few points to note about the history: Bendigo was known as Sandhurst in 1854, but I have called it Bendigo for the sake of clarity. There were only thirteen men charged with high treason after the uprising at Eureka, not fourteen as implied in this story. I have altered the shape of the Yarrowee River to fit the plot, and to my knowledge there was no flash flood in Ballarat at the beginning of February 1855.

  This novel is not intended to be a fictional account of the Eureka uprising, although many of the events leading up to that—and the conflict at Eureka itself—do feature in Kitty and Rian Farrell’s story.