Band of Gold (19 page)

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.

Ballarat, late January 1855

B
ao 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.

Gideon handed him a mug of coffee enhanced with a liberal splash of whiskey; he downed half in one go, and glanced up at the sun. It was around three, so he’d been underground for four hours. ‘When did the rain stop?’

‘About two hours ago,’ Gideon replied, peering down the shaft and waiting for Mick to appear.

Rian nodded, and eased his aching back and shoulders. The heat certainly hadn’t abated, and the steam rising off the ground and the mullock heaps surrounding the neighbouring shafts gave the landscape a rather unearthly effect. As Mick’s dirty face appeared over the lip of the shaft, Gideon halted the horse on the whip, held it until Mick decanted himself, then detached the rope from its harness. The horse, having done the same thing thousands of times, turned itself around; Gideon reattached the rope, the horse plodded off along the worn path and the bucket descended, on its way back down to Ropata to be filled.

A creaking of harnesses announced Daniel’s arrival with the cart, Haunui and Simon rattling around in the back. The splint had come off Daniel’s arm a week ago but it was still weak, so he’d been put in charge of driving the bullocks, a pair of docile, semi-somnolent beasts. Haunui and Simon jumped out, reached for their shovels, and began tossing arcs of washdirt into the cart. Rian watched for a few minutes, finished his coffee, then picked up his own shovel and set to. In twenty minutes the cart was full and they set off for the river, leaving Gideon behind to supervise Simon’s descent into the shaft. Hawk and Tahi were already at the Yarrowee’s edge working the long tom.

Because of the rain the Malakoff Lead wasn’t as crowded as usual, but not everyone had been flooded out and the diggings were still reasonably busy. Rian nodded in response to hands raised in greeting, and wondered what Pierre was preparing for supper. He’d been bringing it out to the claim lately so they could keep working, and Kitty and Amber, and Leena and the children, often came with him to share the evening meal.

Ahead he could hear the Yarrowee, in summer normally little more than a meandering stream, hissing and gurgling along, swollen and extended beyond its banks after the week’s downpour. The day before yesterday they’d had to move the long tom back from the river’s edge:
instead of leaving the gold in the riffles, the current had simply swept it away, along with the washdirt.

As they rounded a bend the river came into sight, a dirty brown snake of water bringing with it debris and foam from upstream. As usual its edges were lined with diggers bent over cradles and long toms, and the odd low flume temporarily abandoned over water that was for now far too deep and swift. Daniel brought the bullocks to an untidy halt, and everyone got off, boots sending up small dollops of mud.

Rian plodded across to watch as Hawk shovelled washdirt into one end of the long tom and Tahi walked along its length, picking out any large pieces of gravel carried along by the water that might damage the sieve. What collected in the tray at the other end was clean gold.

‘Much in this lot?’

Hawk grunted without looking up. He’d removed his shirt, and his skin was glistening with sweat. ‘No sign of bottoming out yet.’

‘Shall I take over?’

Hawk glanced at the pile of washdirt at his feet still to go into the long tom. ‘After this.’

Rian took off his hat and fanned his face. The leaden clouds beyond Black Hill had darkened even further and it was raining again to the north, the smell of it travelling on the warm wind.

Soon, the cart was empty and Tahi and Daniel were ready to return to the shaft. Hawk sat on the riverbank to rest his aching back, Mick began the delicate job of removing the washed gold from the riffles in the collection tray, and Rian took a long draught of unpleasantly warm water from his bottle, then started on the heap of washdirt. The long tom was set parallel to the river’s edge, a foot or so into the water to catch the current, which meant he had to stand at the head of it with his boots submerged, but he didn’t mind because at least his feet were cool. He began to establish a rhythm, bending first to the left to scoop up a shovelful of washdirt, then swinging it
to his right and dropping it neatly into the long tom, being careful not to overshoot the mark and tip any of the precious gold-bearing ore into the river. After a while he became aware of little more than the fluid movement of his muscles and his clothes sticking sweatily to his skin.

Which is why he got such a shock when the ground suddenly began to vibrate beneath his boots and a rumbling noise seemed to rise straight out of the earth. Alarmed, he looked up to see Hawk and Mick staring at him. Earthquake?

Then the rumbling grew to a roar, and a torrent of water, mud and small boulders burst around the narrow bend in the river, and swept away everything in its path.

Hawk felt himself tumbling over and over, but still he held his breath, feeling the skin on his torso and arms rubbing raw as he scraped against rock and riverbed and branch, praying that he would find air before his lungs burst. Then his scalp felt afire and he was hauled upwards by his hair and out of the watery maelstrom. He reached out and grabbed at whatever had saved him.

‘Jaysus, mate,’ Mick gasped, as Hawk wrapped a muscular arm around his throat.

Hawk let go and pulled himself further out of the torrent, draping himself over the overhanging bough to which Mick was clinging.

‘Where—’ Hawk exploded into a fit of coughing, then vomited up a ribbon of dirty water.

‘He should have been just behind us.’

Hawk coughed again, and spat. The water level was beginning to subside now, and rapidly. A minute ago it had reached his armpits—now it was only waist-height. A flash flood.

‘He’ll have got out further downstream,’ Mick said, sounding more hopeful than confident, and cleared his nose into the water. ‘Be
walking back by now.’ He glanced at Hawk’s shoulders. ‘You’ve a few good scrapes on your back, so you have.’

Hawk wasn’t even aware of them. ‘Did you see him after we went into the water?’