Band of Gold (27 page)

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?’

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.

HarperCollins
Publishers

First published in 2010
This edition published in 2010
by HarperCollins
Publishers
(New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1, Auckland 1140

Copyright © Deborah Challinor 2010

Deborah Challinor asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers.

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National Library of New Zealand Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Challinor, Deborah.

Band of gold / Deborah Challinor.

ISBN 978 1 8695 0634 6 (pbk.)

ISBN 978 0 7304 5104 4 (epub)

I. Title. NZ823.3—dc 22

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