The Luminaries (79 page)

Since then he had not woken. He and Anna lay facing each other, Staines lying on his left hip, and Anna, on her right, both of them with their knees drawn up to their chests, Staines with one hand tucked beneath his bandaged shoulder, Anna with one hand tucked beneath her cheek. She must have turned towards him, some time in the night: her left arm was flung outward, her fingers reaching, her palm turned down.

Devlin came closer. He felt overcome—though by what kind of sentiment, he did not exactly know. George Shepard’s whisky had warmed his chest and stomach—there was a blurry tightness in his skull, a blurry heat behind his eyes—but the gaoler’s story had made him feel wretched, even chilled. Perhaps he was about to weep. It would feel good to weep. What a day it had been. His heart was heavy, his limbs exhausted. He looked down at Anna and Emery, their mirrored bodies, facing in. They were breathing in tandem.

So they are lovers
, he thought, looking down at them.
So they are lovers, after all
. He knew it from the way that they were sleeping.

Anna Wetherell’s first glimpse of New Zealand was of the rocky heads of the Otago peninsula: mottled cliffs that dropped sharply into the white foam of the water, and above them, a rumpled cloak of grasses, raked by the wind. It was just past dawn. A pale fog was rising from the ocean, obscuring the far end of the harbour, where the hills became blue, and then purple, as the inlet narrowed, and closed to a point. The sun was still low in the East, throwing a slick of yellow light over the water, and lending an orange tint to the rocks on the Western shore. The city of Dunedin was not yet
visible
, tucked as it was behind the elbow of the harbour, and there were no dwellings or livestock on this stretch of coastline; Anna’s first impression was of a lonely throat of water, a clear sky, and a rugged land untouched by human life or industry.

The first sighting had occurred in the grey hours that preceded the dawn, and so Anna had not witnessed the smudge on the
horizon
growing and thickening to form the contour of the peninsula, as the steamer came nearer and nearer to the coast. She had been woken, some hours later, by a strange cacophony of unfamiliar birdcalls, from which she deduced, rightly, that they must be
nearing
land at last. She eased herself from her berth, taking care not to wake the other women, and fixed her hair and stockings in the
dark. By the time she came up the iron ladder to the deck,
wrapping
her shawl about her shoulders, the
Fortunate Wind
was rounding the outer heads of the harbour, and the peninsula was all around her—the relief sudden and impossible, after long weeks at sea.

‘Magnificent, aren’t they?’

Anna turned. A fair-haired boy in a felt cap was leaning against the portside rail. He gestured to the cliffs, and Anna saw the birds whose rancorous call had roused her from her slumber: they hung in a cloud about the cliff-face, wheeling, turning, and catching the light. She came forward to the rail. They looked to her like very large gulls, their wings black on the tops, and white beneath, their heads perfectly white, their beaks stout and pale. As she watched, one made a low pass in front of the boat, its wingtip skimming the surface of the water.

‘Beautiful,’ she said. ‘Are they petrels—or gannets, maybe?’

‘They’re albatrosses!’ The boy was beaming. ‘They’re real
albatrosses
! Just wait till
this
fellow comes back. He will, in a moment; he’s been circling the ship for some time. Good Lord, what a feeling that must be—to
fly
! Can you imagine it?’

Anna smiled. She watched as the albatross glided away from them, turned, and began climbing on the wind.

‘They’re terrifically good luck, albatrosses,’ the boy was saying. ‘And they’re the most incredible fliers. One hears stories of them following ships for months and months, and through all manner of weather—halfway around the world, sometimes. Lord only knows where these ones have been—and what they’ve witnessed, for that matter.’

When it turned on its side it became almost invisible. A needle of white, pale against the sky.

‘So few birds are truly
mythical
,’ the boy went on, still watching the albatross. ‘I mean, there are ravens, I suppose, and perhaps you might say that doves have a special meaning too … but no more than owls do, or eagles. An albatross is different. It has such a weight to it. Such symbolism. It’s angelic, almost; even saying the name, one feels a kind of thrill. I’m so glad to have seen one. I feel
almost touched. And how wonderful, that they guard the mouth of the harbour like they do! How’s that for an omen—for a gold town! I heard them calling—that was what roused me—and I came
topside
because I couldn’t place the sound. I thought it was pigs at first.’

Anna looked at him sidelong. Was the boy making an overture of friendship? He was speaking as if they were close familiars, though in fact they had not exchanged more than perfunctory greetings on the journey from Sydney—Anna having kept largely to the women’s quarters, and the boy, to the men’s. She did not know his name. She had seen him from a distance, of course, but he had not made any particular impression upon her, good or bad. She saw now that he was something of an eccentric.

‘Their calling roused me too,’ she said, and then, ‘I suppose I ought to go and wake the others. It’s too perfect a sight to be missed.’

‘Don’t,’ the boy said. ‘Oh, don’t. Would you mind? I couldn’t bear to have a crowd of people jostling about. Not at this hour. Somebody’s bound to say “Instead of the cross, the albatross”, or “he stoppeth one of three”, and then the rest of the journey would be quite lost to argument—everyone trying to piece together the poem, I mean, and quarrelling over which pieces go where, with each man trumping the next, and showing off his memory. Let’s just enjoy it for ourselves. Dawn is such a private hour, don’t you think? Such a solitary hour. One always hears that said of midnight, but I think of midnight as remarkably companionable—everyone together, sleeping in the dark.’

‘I am afraid I am interrupting your solitude,’ Anna said.

‘No, no,’ the boy said. ‘Oh, no. Solitude is a condition best enjoyed in company.’ He grinned at her, quickly, and Anna smiled back. ‘Especially the company of one other soul,’ he added,
turning
back to the sea. ‘It’s dreadful to feel alone and really
be
alone. But I love to enjoy the feeling when I’m not. Hark at him—the beauty! He’ll circle back in a moment.’

‘Birds always make me think of ships,’ Anna said.

He turned to her, eyes wide. ‘
Do
they?’ he said.

Anna blushed under his direct attention. The boy’s eyes were a deep brown. His brows were thick, and his lips very full. He was wearing a felt cap with a flat brim; beneath it, his hair was a dark gold, rather unruly where it curled around his temples and over his ears. Clearly it had been cropped close some months ago, and he had not returned to the barber since.

‘It’s just a fancy,’ she said, becoming shy.

‘But you must follow through,’ said the boy. ‘You must! Go on.’

‘Heavy ships are so graceful in the water,’ Anna said at last,
looking
away. ‘Compared to lighter crafts, I mean. If a boat is too light—if it bobs about on the waves—there’s no grace to its motion. I believe that it’s the same with birds. Large birds are not buffeted about by the wind. They always look so regal on the air. This fellow. Seeing him fly is like seeing a heavy ship cut through a wave.’

They watched as the albatross circled back to make his pass again. Anna stole a look at the boy’s shoes. They were brown leather, tightly laced, neither too shiny nor too worn—giving her no clues about his origin. In all likelihood he was coming to make his fortune on the Otago goldfields, like every other man on board.

‘You’re quite right,’ the boy cried. ‘Yes, indeed! It’s not at all like watching a sparrow, is it? He’s weighted—exactly like a ship, exactly so!’

‘I should like to see him in a storm,’ said Anna.

‘What a peculiar wish,’ said the boy, delighted. ‘But yes, now that you say it, I believe I feel the same way. I should like to see him in a storm as well.’

They lapsed into silence. Anna waited for the boy to offer his name, but he did not speak again, and presently their solitude was interrupted by the arrival of others on deck. The boy doffed his hat, and Anna dropped a curtsey; in the next moment, he was gone. Anna turned back to the ocean. The colony was behind them now, and the grunts and squeals of the albatrosses had dwindled to nothing—swallowed by the deep thrum of the steamer, and the great roaring hush of the sea.

Since the night of the autumnal equinox both Anna Wetherell and Emery Staines had remained incarcerated in the Police Camp gaol. Anna’s bail had been set at eight pounds, an outrageous sum, and one she could not possibly hope to pay without external help. This time, of course, she had no fortune sewn into her clothing to use as surety, and no employer who might consent to pay the debt on her behalf. Emery Staines might have stood her the money, had he not been remanded in custody on a charge of his own: he had been arrested, on the morning following his reappearance, on charges of fraud, embezzlement, and dereliction. His bail had been set at one pound one shilling—the standard rate—but he had opted not to pay it, preferring, instead, to remain with Anna, and to await his summons to the Magistrate’s Court.

Following their reunion, Anna’s health began to improve almost at once. Her wrists and forearms thickened, her face lost its pinched, starved quality, and the colour returned to her cheeks. This improvement was noted with satisfaction by the physician, Dr. Gillies, who in the weeks after the equinox had visited the Police Camp gaol-house nearly every day. He had spoken to Anna very sternly about the dangers of opium, expressing his fervent hope that her most recent collapse had cautioned her never to touch a
pipe again: she had been lucky twice now, but she could not expect to be lucky a third time. ‘Luck,’ he said, ‘has a way of running short, my dear.’ He prescribed to her a decreasing dosage of
laudanum
, as a means of weaning her, by degrees, from her addiction.

To Emery Staines, Dr. Gillies prescribed the very same: five drams of laudanum daily, reducible by one dram a fortnight, until his shoulder had completely healed. The wound was looking much better for having been sewn and dressed, and although the joint was very stiff, and he could not yet raise his arm above his head, his health was likewise very rapidly improving. When Cowell Devlin brought the jar of laudanum into the Police Camp gaol-house each night, he watched eagerly as the chaplain poured the rust-coloured liquid into two tin cups. Staines could not account for his sudden and inconsolable thirst for the drug; Anna, however, did not seem to relish the daily dosage at all, and even wrinkled her nose at the smell. Devlin mixed the laudanum with sugar, and sometimes with sweet sherry, to allay the tincture’s bitter taste—and then, under the physician’s strict instruction, he stood over the two felons as they drank their twin measures down. It rarely took long for the opiate to take effect: within minutes they sighed, became drowsy, and passed into the underwater moonscape of a strange, scarlet-tinted sleep.

They slept, over the coming weeks, through a great many changes in Hokitika. On the first day of April, Alistair Lauderback was elected as the inaugural M.P. for the newly formed electoral district of Westland, achieving the majority by a triumphant margin of three hundred votes. In his speech of acceptance he praised Hokitika, calling the town ‘New Zealand’s nugget’; he went on to express his great sorrow at the prospect of quitting the place so soon, and assured the voting public that he would take the best interests of the common digger with him to the new capital city the following month, where he would serve his term in Parliament as a faithful Westland man. After Lauderback’s speech the Magistrate shook his hand very warmly, and the Commissioner led three rounds of Huzzah.

On the 12th of April, the walls of George Shepard’s gaol-house
and asylum went up at last. The felons, Anna and Emery included, had been transferred from the temporary quarters at the Police Camp to the new building upon the terrace of Seaview, where Mrs. George was already installed as matron. Since Ah Sook’s death she had been kept very busy hemming blankets, sewing uniforms,
cooking
, tabulating stores, and making up weekly rations of tobacco and salt; she was seen, if possible, even less frequently than before. She spent her evenings in the Seaview graveyard, and her nights in the residence alone.

On the 16th, Francis Carver and Lydia Wells were finally
married
, before a crowd that, as the society pages of the
West Coast Times
had it, ‘befit, in dress, number, and demeanour, the marriage of a widowed bride’. The day after the wedding, the groom received a large cash payment from the Garrity Group, with which his creditors were paid in full, the last of the copper plating was pried from
Godspeed
’s hull, and the bones of the ship were given up, at long last, for salvage. He had ended his board at the Palace Hotel, and was now installed at the Wayfarer’s Fortune with his wife.

Over this time a great many men had tramped up the
switchback
trail to the terrace at Seaview, in order to beg an interview with Emery Staines. Cowell Devlin, on the gaoler’s strict
instruction
, turned each man away—assuring them that yes, Staines was alive, and that yes, he was recuperating from a very grave illness, and that yes, he would be released from custody in due course, pending the verdict of the Magistrate’s Court. The only exception the chaplain made was for Te Rau Tauwhare, to whom Staines had become, over the course of the past month, extraordinarily attached. Tauwhare rarely stayed long at the gaol-house, but his visits had such an advantageous effect upon Staines’s mood and health that Devlin soon began to look forward to them also.

Staines, Devlin discovered, was a sweet-natured, credulous lad, ready with a smile, and full of naïve affection for the foibles of the world around him. He spoke little of the long weeks of his absence, repeating only that he had been very unwell, and he was very glad to have returned. When Devlin asked, cautiously, whether he
remembered encountering Walter Moody aboard
Godspeed
, he only frowned and shook his head. His memory of that period was very incomplete, made up, as far as Devlin could tell, of dream-like impressions, sensations, and snatches of light. He could not remember boarding a ship, and nor could he remember a
shipwreck
—though he seemed to recall being washed up on the beach, coughing seawater, both arms wrapped around a cask of salt beef. He remembered approaching Crosbie Wells’s cottage; he
remembered
passing a party of diggers, sitting around a fire; he remembered leaves and running water; he remembered the rotten hull of an abandoned canoe, and a steep-sided gorge, and the red eye of a weka; he remembered nightly dreams about the patterns of the Tarot, and gold-lined corsets, and a fortune in a flour sack, hidden beneath a bed.

‘It’s all a dreadful blur,’ he said. ‘I must have walked out into the night and got lost in the bush somehow … and after that I couldn’t find my way back again. What a good job it was, that old Te Rau found me when he did!’

‘And yet it would have been much better if he had found you sooner,’ Devlin said, still speaking cautiously. ‘If you had returned but three days earlier, your claims would not have been seized. You have lost all your assets, Mr. Staines.’

Staines seemed very unconcerned by this. ‘There’s always more gold to be had,’ he said. ‘Money’s only money, and it does one good to be out of pocket every once in a while. In any case, I’ve a nest egg up in the Arahura Valley, stashed away. Thousands and
thousands
of pounds. As soon as I’ve recovered, I’ll go and dig it up.’

This, naturally, took a great while to straighten out.

On the third week of April the petty sessions schedule was
published
in the
West Coast Times
.

Devlin, reading this over his Saturday morning coffee, made for the Crown at once.

‘Yes, I saw it,’ said Moody, who was breakfasting on kippers and toast.

‘You must understand the significance of the charges.’

‘Of course. I shall hope for a quick hearing—as will many others, I expect.’ Moody poured his guest a cup of coffee, sat back, and waited politely for Devlin to announce the reason for his visit.

The chaplain placed his hand upon the tabletop, palm upward. ‘You have legal training, Mr. Moody,’ he said, ‘and from what I know of your character you have a fair mind; that is to say, you are not partial, one way or another. You know the facts of this case as a lawyer ought—from all sides, I mean.’

Moody frowned. ‘Yes indeed,’ he said, ‘which means that I know very well that the gold in Mr. Wells’s cottage never came from the Aurora in the first place. It does not belong to Mr. Staines, whichever way one looks at it. You can’t be asking me to stand up in court, Reverend.’

‘That is precisely what I am asking,’ said Devlin. ‘There is a shortage of solicitors in Hokitika, and yours is a better mind than most.’

Moody was incredulous. ‘This is a civil court,’ he said. ‘Do you imagine me performing some sort of grand exposure of the whole story—dragging every last one of you into it—not to mention Lauderback, and Shepard, and Carver, and Lydia Wells?’

‘Lydia Carver, you ought to say now.’

‘Forgive me. Lydia Carver,’ said Moody. ‘Reverend, I do not see how I could be of any use at all, at a court of petty sessions. Nor do I see who would benefit, from a merciless exposure of the whole business—the fortune in the dresses, the blackmail, Lauderback’s personal history, everything.’

He was thinking about the bastard, Crosbie Wells.

‘I am not advocating for a merciless exposure,’ the chaplain said. ‘I am asking you to consider acting as Miss Wetherell’s counsel.’

Moody was surprised. ‘I thought Miss Wetherell had engaged a solicitor already.’

‘I’m afraid that Mr. Fellowes has turned out to be rather less
congenial
than his name suggests,’ Devlin said. ‘He declined to take Anna on as a client, following the laudanum debacle in the Courthouse last month.’

‘Citing what reason?’

‘He fears being fined for corruption, apparently. She had offered to pay his retainer out of the very same fortune that she was trying to claim, which was rather unwise, all things considered.’

Moody was frowning. ‘Is there not a duty solicitor at hand?’

‘Yes—a Mr. Harrington—but he is very deep in the Magistrate’s pocket, by all accounts. He will not do, if we are going to save Anna from a Supreme Court trial.’

‘A Supreme Court trial? You must be joking,’ said Moody. ‘This will all be resolved at the petty sessions—and in very short time, I am sure. I do not mean to patronise your intelligence, Reverend, but there is a great deal of difference between civil and criminal law.’

Devlin gave him a strange look. ‘Did you read the courthouse schedule in the paper this morning?’

‘Yes indeed.’

‘From start to finish?’

‘I believe so.’

‘Perhaps you ought to look it over once again.’

Frowning, Moody shook open his paper to the third page,
flattened
it, and cast his eye down the schedule a second time. And there, at the bottom of the column:

Moody was astonished. ‘Grievous assault?’

‘Dr. Gillies confirmed that the bullet in Staines’s shoulder issued from a lady’s pistol,’ Devlin said. ‘I’m afraid that he let this piece of information slip while in the company of the Gridiron valet, who was reminded of the shots fired in Anna’s room, back in January, and fronted up with
that
story. They sent a man over to the Gridiron at once, and Mr. Clinch was obliged to hand over Anna’s pistol as evidence. The match between gun and cartridge has since been confirmed.’

‘But Mr. Staines cannot have been the one to bring this charge against her,’ Moody said.

‘No,’ Devlin agreed.

‘Then who’s behind it?’

Devlin coughed. ‘Unfortunately Mr. Fellowes is still in possession of that wretched deed of gift—the one in which Staines gives over two thousand pounds to Anna, with Crosbie Wells as witness. He has since shared it with Governor Shepard, who, as you will remember, first saw it when it was yet unsigned. Shepard asked me for the truth … and I had to admit that Staines’s signature had in fact been forged—and by Anna herself.’

‘Oh dear.’

‘They’ve got her in a corner,’ Devlin said. ‘If she pleads guilty to the assault, they will claim that it was an attempted murder: they can use the deed of gift to prove that she had decent provocation to wish him dead, you see.’

‘And if she pleads not guilty?’

‘They’ll still get her on the charge of fraud; and if she denies
that
, then they’ll get her on a charge of lunacy, which, as we all know, Shepard has long been keeping up his sleeve. I am afraid that he and Fellowes are very much united against her.’

‘Mr. Staines will testify in her defence, of course.’

Devlin winced. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but I fear that he does not really understand the gravity of the situation at hand. He has a sweet temper, but in his opinions he tends towards foolishness. When I raised the issue of Miss Wetherell’s lunacy, for example, he was perfectly delighted by the idea. He said he wouldn’t have her any other way.’

‘What is your opinion? Is the girl of sound mind?’

‘Sanity is hardly a matter of opinion,’ said Devlin, archly.

‘On the contrary, I’m afraid,’ said Moody. ‘Sanity depends for its proof upon the testimony of witnesses. Have you asked the
physician
to make a report?’