Band of Gold

This is for Florence Kim McBride

Cover Page

Dedication

Part One New Gold Mountain

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Part Two To Stand Truly by Each Other

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Part Three The Lamp of the Wicked

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Acknowledgements

Copyright

About the Publisher

Melbourne, August 1854

A
s surreptitiously as he could, Daniel Royce gazed down the long table at the woman he loved more than anything else in his life. The woman he had silently but passionately adored for the past fifteen years, the woman his heart had bade him follow to the ends of the earth. The woman who, unfortunately, was utterly devoted to someone else.

She caught him looking and offered a quick, friendly smile. Some women lost their looks as they aged, while others seemed somehow to become more beautiful, and at thirty-three Kitty Farrell was most definitely one of the latter.

On her left fidgeted her daughter, Amber, the half-Maori, half-European foundling Kitty had rescued from the rutted and muddied streets of Auckland in 1845, now just turned fourteen and already threatening to rival her adoptive mother in looks. She had been a trial, Amber, and still was. But she was adored by her mother and father,
and indeed by the entire crew of the schooner
Katipo II
, presently sitting around the table finishing what had been a very filling, if not terribly tasty, meal.

On Kitty’s other side sat her beloved husband, Rian Farrell, captain of the
Katipo
and Daniel’s boss for the past ten years. Daniel sighed, as he had a thousand times before. He had developed such a liking and respect for Rian that he would also gladly follow
him
to the ends of the earth.

As the apparently sole serving girl of the Old White Hart’s dining room staggered past under the weight of plates of steaming stew and roast mutton, Rian stopped her and asked her to prepare the bill for their meals. Several minutes later, in a harassed fashion, she dropped a folded piece of paper onto the table before rushing off to attend to someone else.

Rian opened it, his flint-grey eyes widening. ‘Good God, this is extortion! It’s almost five pounds!’

Kitty glanced at the bill, unsurprised: everything in Melbourne seemed to be absurdly overpriced at the moment. She collected her reticule and slid the cord over her wrist. ‘Perhaps you should just settle it. We’ve sat here long enough, and we’ve things to do.’

Rian looked shifty. ‘Er, well, actually, I can’t.’

The
Katipo
’s crew eyed him with amusement: none of them could pay the bill either, as they’d not seen wages since the schooner put into Port Phillip three days ago. But no one was concerned: their entire cargo of supplies from the California goldfields had been sold this morning, so their pay wouldn’t be far away.

Kitty’s brow creased in a frown. ‘Why not?’

‘Because I don’t have the money.’

‘But what about the sale this morning?’

Rian rearranged his knife and fork. ‘Well, the fellow couldn’t pay for all of it at once, so I’ve held half of the cargo back until he hands over the rest of the cash.’

‘But you should still have half of the money, shouldn’t you?’

‘Yes. Yes, I
did
have it.’ Rian stopped fiddling with his cutlery and added cheerfully, ‘Actually, it’s quite a long story, but it’s probably best if I don’t tell it to you here.’ He tucked the bill under the salt pot and looked purposefully along the table. ‘So we’ll have to do the usual, I suppose. Is everybody ready?’

Kitty stared hard at her husband, a bubble of wary suspicion beginning to form in her chest. Nonetheless, she swivelled daintily on the bench so she faced away from the table.

‘Go!’ Rian urged, and all nine of them leapt up and charged out of the dining room, scattering as they burst out onto the street.

Behind them Kitty heard a bellow of rage, then the heavy footsteps of the publican as he pounded out of the hotel. Perhaps assuming that Kitty would be the easiest to run down, he set off after her, his boots slipping and sliding in the mud of Bourke Street. Risking a glance over her shoulder, Kitty caught a glimpse of him, his apron flapping and his face scarlet, apparently determined to risk death by heart attack for a mere £5.

Her skirts held high, Kitty raced ahead of him, Amber beside her giggling with excitement, dodging puddles, people and vehicles as they swerved across to the other side of the wide road. On and on they ran, past Exhibition then Russell streets, then Swanston Street. But before they reached Elizabeth Street, Kitty and Amber ducked into an alleyway, negotiating crates and broken barrels and heaps of ill-smelling rubbish, then shot out the other end like corks from a bottle and sprinted along Little Bourke Street and into the shadowed elegance of Victoria Arcade.

‘Is he still coming?’ Kitty panted as she stood, bent at the waist, hands on her hips, chest heaving. Whatever must all those people in the street have thought?

Amber peeked out, then shook her head. ‘Can’t see him, Ma.’

Kitty rested for a moment longer and took a last deep breath to
slow her heart rate. She straightened, stared up at the vaulted roof above the arcade’s clerestory windows, watched the sun sparkle off facets of the chandeliers she suspected would look magnificent at night, then took Amber’s hand.

‘Come on, sweetheart. Let’s go and see what your father’s done this time.’

‘You’ve
what
?’ she exploded.

Hawk, his long black braids waggling, shook his head and rolled his eyes. Simon looked dubious, while Mick, Gideon, Daniel, Pierre and Ropata appeared merely philosophical: they’d all had plenty of experience of Rian’s money-making schemes.

So have I, Kitty thought. She should have known—Melbourne was seething with incomers eager to try their luck on the Victorian goldfields.

‘Apparently it’s a guaranteed winner on a proven lead. See?’ Rian handed her several documents.

Unconsciously wrinkling her nose at the windborne stink from the Yarra riverbank slaughterhouses, Kitty warily perused the papers. One was the deed to a claim at Ballarat, where the alluvial surface gold had quickly disappeared during the rush of’51, but reef gold embedded in quartz rock had recently been discovered underground. The other was a document signing over ownership of a ‘dwelling’ in the vicinity of the diggings.

‘How much did you pay for these?’ she demanded, and almost fainted when Rian named the figure. ‘But that’s everything we got for the cargo!’

‘Well, no, we’re still owed half, remember.’ Undeterred by Kitty’s very obvious disapproval, Rian looked very pleased with himself. He rested his booted feet on the verandah rail of the lodging house where they were currently accommodated. It was rather basic but it
was cheap, and all they could afford when they’d put into port. ‘Think about it, Kitty. We’ll make ourselves a fortune!’

Kitty closed her eyes and sighed deeply. Rian’s rather cavalier entrepreneurialism often did make them very tidy sums, but occasionally it left them in serious debt, which meant they then all had to work to their utmost limits, buying and selling and shipping cargo around the world until they were back in the black again. Really, what did Rian know about gold mining? What did any of them know?

‘Are we going to be rich, Pa?’ Amber asked as she ate a handful of dates she had pilfered on the way back from Little Bourke Street.

‘Very unlikely, sweetheart,’ Kitty answered for her husband. She turned back to him. ‘If this claim is a “guaranteed winner” as you say, why has the owner sold it? And his house?’

‘Not “he”:
she
. A widow. Mrs Murphy. Her husband died a month ago and she was wanting to go back to Ireland.’

‘Died doing what?’ Kitty asked suspiciously.

Rian shrugged. ‘She didn’t specifically say. But it was too much for him anyway, apparently.’

Kitty frowned and thought for a moment. ‘What do you think, Hawk? Should we do this or not?’

Hawk’s copper-coloured face was a little more flushed than usual, as though he were trying to keep his temper in check, but he answered her with his customary steady demeanour.

‘I assume that the odds are that we may be successful, and we may not. It is common knowledge that gold mining is a gamble. And it is too late anyway—the money has been spent,’ he finished with a hint of disapproval. Rian Farrell was his oldest and most trusted friend, but sometimes he made decisions about things he would have done well to have taken counsel on.

‘Could we not sell the claim on to someone else?’ Simon asked sensibly. He swept his arm in an arc encompassing the busy street before them, filled with people almost certainly hurrying to and from
business associated with gold-mining enterprises. ‘Surely there would be plenty of buyers.’

‘But I don’t want to sell it on,’ Rian said levelly, his tone confirming to everyone that he had made up his mind. ‘The yield is guaranteed. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.’

Having heard this before, Kitty sighed again. Rian was more than she had ever imagined a husband could be—generous, passionate, handsome, brave and extremely capable—but he was also stubborn, careless of authority, had a quick Irish temper, and was sometimes downright reckless. But none of that made any difference to his crew, all of whom were devoted to him. And she trusted him implicitly, even if they had had rather a lot of narrow escapes over the past decade and a half.

Also, they had little better to do over the next few months. The
Katipo
was on her side on the banks of the Yarra having her hull scraped and being refitted, so they might as well at least go and have a look at Ballarat—and their newly acquired claim of untold riches.

We must look a sight walking all together down the street, Kitty thought as she lifted her skirts to step around a pile of fresh horse shit, then raised the hood of her cape against the rain. They were accustomed to being stared at, though, and it did seem that they were a little less conspicuous here in Melbourne than they had been in some other ports. So far today she had already seen half a dozen black-skinned men, although none had been as spectacular as Gideon with his enormous African physique and shining bald head. His appearance almost always rendered people who didn’t know him very nervous, and it was a treat to see their jaws drop when he spoke in perfectly cultured English and behaved impeccably. Except when he was angry, of course. People were right to be nervous then.

Melbourne in fact seemed to be teeming with people from all
corners of the world. As well as the black men, she had seen Chinese, Jews and Pacific Islanders, and overheard accents from all over the British Isles, Europe and the Americas. There were plenty of women, too—wealthy-looking ladies in fine dresses wearing fancy gloves and bonnets accompanied by equally well-heeled gentleman, as well as women who looked as though they were used to working hard on the land. And there were whores, beckoning brazenly from windows and verandahs, and wild young men dashing about on horseback, and here and there a drunk nursing a bottle slumped miserably against a wall, looking as though his entire world had collapsed. And perhaps it had. As Hawk had said, gold mining was a tremendous gamble.

But she had not seen any other American Indians, like Running Hawk. He was Seneca, a tribe of the Iroquois nation, and was conspicuous because of his copper skin, high-bridged nose, long plaits and the knife he habitually wore tucked into his silver and turquoise-studded belt.

Simon Bullock, on the other hand, with his neatly trimmed sandy hair, pale blue eyes and nondescript clothing, looked exactly like the lay preacher he was. He had been sailing with the
Katipo
for almost ten years, ever since he had turned his back on the Church Missionary Society in New Zealand. He had not renounced God, however, and still ministered to anyone professing an interest, although he never made himself unwelcome and he never pontificated. He was an outcast and he knew it—a man of God without a specific religious order, and also that particular breed of man for whom women held no attraction—and he had never been happier, sailing the world in the company of those who accepted him for who and what he was.

‘What about this one?’ Pierre asked, stopping in front of a busy general store on Elizabeth Street.

‘Let’s have a look,’ Rian said, stepping onto the wooden verandah running the length of the shopfront.

The outstanding payment for the
Katipo
’s cargo had been
delivered that morning, everyone had been paid, and Gideon had been dispatched to the Old White Hart Hotel to settle the dinner debt. They were now shopping for provisions for the trip to Ballarat.

At the store’s doorway, Pierre bowed low and ushered Kitty ahead of him. ‘Pearls before swine,
chérie
.’

Following close behind, Amber demanded, ‘Am I a pearl, too, Pierre?’

‘Of the most lustrous kind,
ma petite
.’

Kitty smiled. Pierre doted on Amber. He had children of his own, he had once said, but had not seen them for many years, and Kitty wondered if he saw in Amber the family with whom he had spent so little time. He was a very kind man, Pierre Babineaux, a bayou Acadian from Louisiana. He was small and wiry, with weathered skin that made it difficult to judge his age—which was about forty-five—dark hair peppered with strands of grey pulled back in a queue that came halfway down his back, a long wispy moustache and several gold teeth. He was the
Katipo
’s cook, and was incredibly loyal and extremely handy in a fight. Kitty loved him dearly.

Inside the store, he rubbed his hands together and said, ‘Now, where will we begin?’ He was in charge of the food side of the expedition and, as always, relished the prospect of shopping for edible provisions. He wandered off, picking up various jars and bottles and peering at the contents.

Rian slid his arm around Kitty’s waist and whispered, ‘Do you think we’ll have room to squeeze in a mattress suitable for two?’

Kitty looked into his mischievously twinkling eyes and didn’t know whether to laugh or punch him on the arm for this latest escapade. Try as she might, she had not been able to remain annoyed at what he had done, such was his zeal for their new venture. And the more he talked about it, the more enthusiastic the others became, until it was clear to Kitty that they were all now determined not to return from Ballarat until they had found gold.