The Luminaries

by Eleanor Catton

  At last the prosecutor called for the testimony of Margaret Shepard, Jeremy Shepard’s widow—and it was here that the trial took a startling turn. Upon the stand, Margaret Shepard flatly refused to corroborate with the prosecutor’s line of questioning. She insisted that Sook Yongsheng had not murdered her husband. She knew this to be true for a very simple reason: she had witnessed his suicide herself.

  This startling confession gave rise to such an uproar in the court that the judge was obliged to call for order. Ah Sook, to whom these events would only be translated long after the fact, never dreamed that the woman was risking her own safety in order to save his life. When Margaret Shepard’s questioning was allowed to continue, the prosecutor inquired as to why she had hitherto concealed this very vital information, to which Margaret Shepard replied that she had lived in great fear of her husband, for he abused her daily, as more than one witness could attest. Her spirit was all but broken; she had only just mustered the courage to speak of the incident aloud. After this poignant testimony, the trial dissolved. The judge had no choice but to acquit Ah Sook of the crime of murder, and to release him. Jeremy Shepard, it was decreed, had committed suicide, may God rest his soul—though that prospect was, theologically speaking, very unlikely.

  Ah Sook’s first action, upon his release from gaol, was to seek news of Francis Carver. He learned, to his surprise, that in fact the Palmerston had been apprehended in the Sydney Harbour some weeks ago, following a routine search. Francis Carver had been found in breach of the law on charges of smuggling, breach of customs, and evasion of duty: according to the report given to the maritime police, there were sixteen young women from Kwangchow in the ship’s hold, all of them severely malnourished, and frightened in the extreme. The Palmerston had been seized, the women had been sent back to China, Carver had been remanded in gaol, and Carver’s relationship with Dent & Co. had been formally dissolved. He had been sentenced to ten years of penal servitude at the penitentiary upon Cockatoo Island, effective instant.

  There was nothing to do but wait for Carver’s sentence to elapse. Ah Sook sailed to Victoria, and began to dig the ground; he acquired some facility in English, apprenticed himself to various trades, and dreamed, with increasing lucidity, of avenging his father’s murder by taking Carver’s life. In July 1864 he sent a written inquiry to Cockatoo Island requesting to know where Carver had gone upon his liberation. He received an answer three months later, informing him that Carver had sailed to Dunedin, New Zealand, upon the steamer Sparta. Ah Sook bought a ticket there also—and in Dunedin, the trail suddenly went cold. He searched and searched—and found nothing. At last, defeated, Ah Sook gave up the case as lost. He bought a miner’s right and a one-way ticket to the West Coast—where, eight months later, he chanced upon him: standing in the street, his face newly scarred, his chest newly thickened, counting coins into Te Rau Tauwhare’s hand.

  Ah Sook found Ah Quee sitting cross-legged on a shelf of gravel, some few feet from the boundary peg that marked the Aurora’s southeast corner. The goldsmith held a prospector’s dish in both hands, and he was shaking the dish rhythmically, flicking out his wrists in the confident motion of a man long-practised in a single skill. There was a lit cigarette in the corner of his mouth, but he did not appear to be smoking it: the ash shredded finely down his tunic as he moved. Before him was a wooden trough of water, and beside him, an iron crucible with a flattened spout.

  His rhythm followed a circular pattern. First he shook the largest stones and clods out of his dish, keeping to a persistent tempo, so that the finer sands tumbled, by degrees, to the bottom of the pan; then he leaned forward, dipped the far edge of the pan into the clouded water, and with a sharp movement tilted the pan back towards his body, swirling the liquid carefully clockwise, to create a vortex in the dish. Gold was heavier than stone, and sank to the bottom: once he skimmed the wet gravel from the surface, the pure metal would be left behind, shining wetly, tiny points of light against the dark. Ah Quee plucked out these glistering flakes with his fingers, and transferred them carefully to his crucible; he then refilled his dish with earth and stones, and repeated the procedure, with no variation whatsoever, until the sun sank below the treetops to the west.

  The Aurora was a good distance from both the river and the sea, an inconvenience that accounted, in part, for its undesirability as a goldmine. It was necessary for Ah Quee to transport his own river water to the claim every morning, for without water, his task was all but impossible; once the water was clouded with dirt and silt, however, it was very hard to see the gold, and he was obliged to tramp back to the river, in order to fill his buckets again. A tailrace might have been constructed from the Hokitika River, or a shaft might have been dropped for a well, but the goldmine’s owner had made it clear from the outset that he would spare the Aurora no resources at all. There was no point. The two acres that comprised the Aurora was only barely payable ground: it was only a dull patch of stones, treeless. The tailing pile at Ah Quee’s back, testament to long hours of solitary industry, was long and low; a burial mound, under which no body had been interred.

  Ah Quee looked up as Ah Sook approached.

  ‘Neih hou.’

  ‘Neih hou, neih hou.’

  The two men regarded each other with neither hostility nor kindness, but the gaze they shared was long. After a moment Ah Quee plucked the last of the cigarette from his mouth, and flicked it away over the stones.

  ‘The yield is small today,’ he said in Cantonese.

  ‘A thousand sympathies,’ replied Ah Sook, speaking in his native language also.

  ‘The yield is small every day.’

  ‘You deserve better.’

  ‘Do I?’ said Ah Quee, who was in an irritable temper.

  ‘Yes,’ said Ah Sook. ‘Diligence deserves to be rewarded.’

  ‘In what proportion? And in what currency? These are empty words.’

  Ah Sook placed the palms of his hands together. ‘I come bearing good news.’

  ‘Good news and flattery,’ Ah Quee observed.

  The hatter took no notice of this correction. ‘Emery Staines has returned,’ he said.

  Ah Quee stiffened. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘You have seen him?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Ah Sook. ‘I am told that he will be in Hokitika tonight, at a hotel upon Revell-street where a celebration has been planned to welcome his return. I have been invited, and as a gesture of my good faith, I extend my invitation to you.’

  ‘Who is your host?’

  ‘Anna Wetherell—and the widow of the dead man, Crosbie Wells.’

  ‘Two women,’ said Ah Quee, sceptically.

  ‘Yes,’ said Ah Sook. He hesitated, and then admitted what he had discovered that morning: that in fact Crosbie’s widow was the very same woman who had operated the White Horse Saloon in Darling Harbour, who had testified against Ah Sook at his own trial, and who had once been the lover of his enemy, Francis Carver. Formerly Lydia Greenway, her name was now Lydia Wells.

  Ah Quee took a moment to digest this information. ‘This is a trap,’ he said at last.

  ‘No,’ said Ah Sook. ‘I came here of my own accord, not under instruction.’

  ‘This is a trap to capture you,’ said Ah Quee. ‘I am sure of it. Why else would your presence be so specifically requested at the celebration tonight? You have no connexion to Mr. Staines. What purpose can you serve, in a party to welcome his return?’

  ‘I am to play a part in a staged drama. I am to sit on a cushion, and pretend to be a statue.’ This sounded foolish even to Ah Sook. He rushed on: ‘It is a kind of theatre. I shall be paid a fee for my participation.’

  ‘You shall be paid?’

  ‘Yes; as a performer.’

  Ah Quee studied him. ‘What if the woman Greenway is still in league with Francis Carver? They were lovers once. Perhaps she has already sent word to him, that you will be present at the party tonight.’

  ‘Carver is at sea.’

  ‘Even so, she wil
l notify him as soon as she can.’

  ‘When that happens, I will be ready.’

  ‘How will you be ready?’

  ‘I will be ready,’ Ah Sook said, stubbornly. ‘It does not matter yet. Carver is at sea.’

  ‘The woman’s allegiance is with him—and you have sworn to avenge yourself upon him, as she must remember. She cannot wish you well.’

  ‘I will be on my guard.’

  Ah Quee sighed. He stood, brushing himself down, and then he paused, inhaling sharply through his nose. He advanced several steps upon Ah Sook, and gripped his shoulders in both hands.

  ‘You reek with it,’ he said. ‘You are reeling on your feet, Sook Yongsheng. I can smell the stink of it from twenty paces!’

  Ah Sook had indeed detoured past his den at Kaniere, to smoke his late-afternoon pipe, of which the effects were very plainly visible; but he did not like to be chastised. He wrestled himself from Ah Quee’s grasp, saying sourly, ‘I have a weakness.’

  ‘A weakness!’ Ah Quee cried. He spat into the dirt. ‘It is not weakness: it is hypocrisy. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.’

  ‘Do not speak to me as to a child.’

  ‘A man addicted is a childish man.’

  ‘Then I am a childish man,’ said Ah Sook. ‘It is not of consequence to you.’

  ‘It is of great consequence to me, if I am to accompany you tonight.’

  ‘I have no need of your protection.’

  ‘If that is what you believe, you are deluded,’ said Ah Quee.

  ‘Deluded—and a hypocrite!’ said Ah Sook, feigning astonishment. ‘Two insults, when I have been nothing but courteous to you!’

  ‘You deserve to be insulted,’ said Ah Quee. ‘You indulge the very drug that killed your father—and you have the audacity to style yourself his defender! You insist he was betrayed—and yet you betray him, every time you light your lamp!’

  ‘Francis Carver killed my father,’ said Ah Sook, stepping back.

  ‘Opium killed your father,’ said Ah Quee. ‘Look at yourself’—for Ah Sook had stumbled against a root, and partly fallen. ‘You are a fine avenger, Sook Yongsheng; one who cannot even stand on his own two feet!’

  Furious, Ah Sook put a hand out to steady himself, hauled himself upright, and rounded on Ah Quee, his pupils dark and soft. ‘You know my history,’ he said. ‘I was first given the drug as a medicine. I did not take it of my own accord. I cannot help its power over me.’

  ‘You had ample time to shake your addiction,’ said Ah Quee. ‘You were imprisoned for weeks before your trial, were you not?’

  ‘That interval was not sufficient to rid me of the craving.’

  ‘The craving!’ said Ah Quee, full of contempt. ‘What a pathetic word that is. No wonder it has no place in the history you recounted to me. No wonder you prefer such grand words as honour, and duty, and betrayal, and revenge.’

  ‘My history—’

  ‘Your history, as you tell it, dwells far longer on your own injustices than on the shame that was brought upon your family. Tell me, Sook Yongsheng. Are you avenging yourself upon the man who killed your father, or the man who refused to come to your aid outside the White Horse Saloon?’

  Ah Sook was shocked. ‘You doubt my motives,’ he said.

  ‘Your motives are not your own,’ said Ah Quee. ‘They cannot be your own! Look at yourself. You can hardly stand.’

  There was a silence between them. From the adjacent valley there came a muffled crack of gunshot, and then a distant cry.

  Finally Ah Sook nodded. ‘Goodbye,’ he said.

  ‘Why do you farewell me?’

  ‘You have made your opinions clear,’ said Ah Sook. ‘You disapprove of me; you are disgusted by me. I will go to the widow’s celebration tonight regardless.’

  Though Ah Quee’s temper was quick to flare, he could not bear to be made the villain in any dispute. He shook his head, breathing hard through his nose, and said, ‘I will come with you. I want very much to speak to Mr. Staines.’

  ‘I know,’ said Ah Sook. ‘I came here on good faith, Quee Long.’

  When Ah Quee spoke again, his voice was quiet. ‘A man knows his own heart. I was wrong to doubt your motivation.’

  Ah Sook closed his eyes briefly. ‘By the time we reach Hokitika,’ he said, opening them again, ‘I will be sober.’

  Ah Quee nodded. ‘You will need to be,’ he said.

  CARDINAL EARTH

  In which Walter Moody makes a startling discovery; several confusions are put to rest; and a symmetry presents itself‘.

  Walter Moody, upon taking his leave of Gascoigne, had returned at once to the Crown Hotel, to which place his trunk had been delivered. He wrenched the door open, crossed the foyer at a pace, and took the stairs to the upper landing two by two; when he reached the door at the top of the stairs, he fumbled with his key in the keyhole, and cursed aloud. He was suddenly absurdly impatient to lay eyes upon his possessions—feeling that his reunion with the treasured items of his former life would somehow repair a connexion that, since the wreck of the Godspeed, had seemed very unreal.

  Of late Moody’s thoughts had been drifting, with increasing frequency, back to his reunion with his father in Dunedin. He found that he regretted the haste with which he had quitted the unhappy scene. It was true that his father had betrayed him. It was true that his brother had betrayed him. But even so, he might have been forgiving; he might have stayed on, and heard Frederick’s part in the story. He had not seen his brother while in Dunedin, for he had fled the scene of reunion with his father before Frederick could be summoned, and so he did not know whether Frederick was well, or married, or happy; he did not know what Frederick had made of Otago, and whether he meant to live out his days in New Zealand; he did not know whether his father and brother had dug the ground as a party, or whether they had gone mates with other men, or whether they had prospected alone. Whenever Moody dwelled upon these uncertainties, he felt sad. He ought to have sought an audience with his brother. But would Frederick have desired such a thing? Even that Moody did not know. Since arriving in Hokitika he had thrice sat down to write to him, but after penning the salutation and the date, sat motionless.

  At last the key turned in the lock. Moody shoved open the door, strode into the room—and stopped. There was indeed a trunk in the middle of the room, but it was a trunk he had never seen before. His own trunk was painted red, and was rectangular in its dimensions. This one was black, with iron straps, and a long square hasp through which a horizontal bar had been thrust to keep it closed; its lid was domed, and slatted like a barrel that had been laid upon its side. There were several baggage labels plastered to the half-barrel of the lid, one marked ‘Southampton’, one marked ‘Lyttelton’, and the standard ‘Not Wanted On Voyage’. Moody could tell at once that the trunk’s owner had always travelled first class.

  Instead of ringing the bell to inform the maid of the mistake, Moody closed the door behind him, locked it, and moved forward to kneel before the unfamiliar chest. He unfastened the hasp, and heaved open the lid—and saw, pasted to the underside, a square of paper that read:

  PROPERTY OF MR. ALISTAIR LAUDERBACK,

  PROVINCIAL COUNCILMAN, M.P.

  Moody exhaled, and sat back on his heels. Now this was a misunderstanding! So Lauderback’s trunk had been aboard Godspeed, as Balfour had suspected: the shipping crate must indeed have been wrongly taken from the Hokitika quay. Moody’s trunk, like Lauderback’s, was not engraved with the name of its owner, and bore no particular marks of identification save for on the interior, where his name and address had been stamped into a square of leather and sewn into the lining of the lid. Presumably the two trunks had been switched: Moody’s trunk had been delivered to Lauderback’s rooms at the Palace Hotel, and Lauderback’s, to the Crown.

  Moody thought for a moment. Lauderback was not currently in Hokitika: according to the West Coast Times, he was campaigning in the north, and was not due to return until to-morrow afterno
on. Suddenly decisive, Moody shucked off his jacket, leaned forward on his knees, and began to go through Lauderback’s belongings.

  Walter Moody did not chastise himself for intrusions upon other people’s privacy, and nor did he see any reason to confess them. His mind was of a most phlegmatic sort, cool in its private applications, quick, and excessively rational; he possessed a fault common to those of high intelligence, however, which was that he tended to regard the gift of his intellect as a licence of a kind, by whose rarefied authority he was protected, in all circumstances, from ever behaving ill. He considered his moral obligations to be of an altogether different class than those of lesser men, and so rarely felt shame or compunction, except in very general terms.

  He went through Lauderback’s chest swiftly and methodically, handling each item and then replacing it exactly as he found it. The trunk contained largely items of stationery—letter-sets, seals, ledgers, books of law, and all the necessities that might furnish the desk of a Member of Parliament. Lauderback’s clothing and personal effects had presumably been packed elsewhere, for the only item of clothing in this cedar chest was a woollen scarf, which had been wrapped around a rather ugly brass paperweight in the shape of a pig. The trunk carried with it the smell of the sea—a briny odour, less salty than sour—but its contents were hardly even damp; mercifully for Lauderback, the trunk must have been spared a full immersion.