‘Oh,’ said Anna—and then she drew a breath, as if to steel herself, and turned her face away.
‘What is it?’ said Staines, drawing back.
Abruptly she rose from her chair and crossed the room; she stood a moment, breathing deeply, her face turned towards the wall. ‘It’s stupid,’ she said thickly. ‘It’s stupid. Don’t mind me. I’ll be all right in a moment.’
Staines had risen also, in astonishment. ‘Have I offended you?’ he said. ‘I’m terribly sorry if I have—but what is the matter? Whatever can be the matter?’
Anna wiped her face with her hand. ‘It’s nothing,’ she said, still without turning. ‘It came as a surprise, that’s all—but I was stupid to think otherwise. It’s not your fault.’
‘What has come as a surprise?’ said Staines. ‘What’s otherwise?’
‘Only that you—’
‘Yes? Please tell me—so that I can put it right. Please.’
She composed herself at last and turned. ‘You may ask your question,’ she said, managing a smile.
‘Are you quite sure you’re all right?’
‘Quite sure,’ Anna said. ‘Please ask.’
‘Well, all right,’ said Staines. ‘Here. It’s about a man named Crosbie Wells.’
Anna’s expression of misery dissolved into one of shock. ‘Crosbie Wells?’
‘He is a mutual friend of ours, I think. At least—that is to say—he has my loyalty; I am under the impression that he also has yours.’
She did not reply; after squinting at him a moment she said, ‘How do you know him?’
‘I can’t tell you that exactly,’ said Staines. ‘He charged me to keep it a secret—his whereabouts, I mean; and the circumstances of our having met. But he mentioned your name in connexion with a gold nugget, and a man named Francis Carver, and a robbery of some kind; and if you don’t think me too impertinent—which I am; I know I am—then I should very much like to hear the whole story. I can’t say that it’s a matter of life or death, because it isn’t, and I can’t say that very much depends on my knowing, because really, nothing at all depends on it; except that I’ve gone into a kind of partnership with Mr. Carver—I was a fool to do it; I know that now—and I’ve got the sense, the awful sense, that I was wrong about him; that he’s a villain after all.’
‘Is he here?’ she said. ‘Crosbie. Is he in Hokitika?’
‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you that,’ said Staines.
Her hands had moved to her belly. ‘You don’t need to tell me where he is,’ she said. ‘But I need you to take him a message. An important message—from me.’
THE ASCENDANT
In which Te Rau Tauwhare declines to mention Francis Carver’s name to Crosbie Wells, much less to describe the circumstances of their brief interaction one month prior, an omission that owes in equal parts to a deeply private nature and to a certain cunning when it comes to financial profit; the next time he sees Francis Carver, Tauwhare thinks, he will make an easy shilling, perhaps more.
Crosbie Wells had bought four panes of glass for a quartered window, but he had yet to cut the hole, and set the sill; for the moment, the panes were propped against the wall, reflecting, faintly, the flickering lamplight, and the square grating of the stove.
‘I knew a man who lost an arm in the floods at Dunstan,’ Wells was saying. He was lying on his bolster, a bottle of spirits on his chest; Tauwhare sat opposite, nursing a bottle of his own. ‘Got caught in a rapid, you see, and his arm got trapped, and they couldn’t save it. He had a plain name. Smith or Stone or something like that. Anyway—the point is—he talked of it afterwards, the incident, and his real sorrow, he said, was that the arm he’d lost had been tattooed. A full-rigged ship was the picture—a present to himself, after coming round the Horn—and it bothered him extremely that he’d lost it. For some reason it stayed with me—that story. Losing a tattoo. I asked him if he mightn’t just tattoo the other arm, but he was strange about it. I’ll never do that, he said. I’ll never do it.’
‘It is painful,’ said Tauwhare. ‘Ta moko.’
Wells looked over at him. ‘Is it sometimes a shock,’ he said, ‘to see yourself? After you haven’t been near a looking glass in a while, I mean. Do you forget?’
‘No,’ Tauwhare said. ‘Never.’ His face was shadowed; the lamplight accented the lines around his mouth, giving his expression a hawkish, solemn look.
‘I think I would.’
‘We have a saying,’ Tauwhare said. ‘Taia a moko hei hoa matenga mou.’
‘I cut a man’s face with a knife,’ Wells said, still staring at him. ‘Gave him a scar. Right here. Eye to mouth. It bled like anything. Did yours bleed like anything?’
‘Yes.’
‘Have you ever killed a man, Tauwhare?’
‘No.’
‘No,’ said Wells, turning back to his bottle. ‘Nor have I.’
SATURN IN VIRGO
In which Quee Long brings a complaint before the law, and George Shepard, whose personal hatred of Sook Yongsheng has grown, over time, to include all Chinese men, declines to honour it, an injustice for which he does not, either then, or afterwards, feel any compunction.
‘I do not understand what you are saying.’
Ah Quee sighed. He pointed a third time to his certificate of indenture, which lay between them on Shepard’s desk. In the box marked ‘present site of employment’ was written the word Aurora.
‘Duffer,’ he explained. ‘Aurora is duffer claim.’
‘The Aurora is a duffer claim, and you work the Aurora, yes. That much I understand.’
‘Mannering,’ said Ah Quee. ‘Mannering make duffer not duffer.’
‘Mannering make duffer not duffer,’ Shepard repeated.
‘Very good,’ said Ah Quee, nodding. ‘Very bad man.’
‘Which is he—very good or very bad?’
Ah Quee frowned; then he said, ‘Very bad man.’
‘How does he make the duffer not a duffer? How? How?’
Ah Quee took his purse and held it up. Moving very deliberately, so that the action would not be lost on Shepard, he extracted a silver penny, which he then transferred to his left pocket. He waited a moment, and then he took the penny from his pocket, and returned it to his purse, as before.
Shepard sighed. ‘Mr. Quee,’ he said. ‘I see that the term of your indenture will not expire for some years; the term of my patience, however, reached its expiration some minutes ago. I have neither the resources nor the inclination to launch an investigation into Mr. Mannering’s finances on the strength of a half-articulated tip. I suggest you return to the Aurora, and count yourself lucky that you have any kind of work at all.’
JUPITER IN SAGITTARIUS
In which Alistair Lauderback, having now officially announced his intention to run for the Westland seat in the Fourth New Zealand Parliament, an ambition that, in addition to furthering his already illustrious political career, will take him over the Alps to Westland proper in the coming months, thus granting the interview his bastard brother has so long desired, now turns his mind to practical matters, or, more accurately, entreats an old associate to turn his mind to practical matters on his, Lauderback’s, behalf.
Akaroa. 22 Aug.
My dear Tom—
I expect you know already of my ambition to run for the Westland seat; but if this news comes as a surprise to you, I have enclosed an article from the
Lyttelton Times
that explains the announcement, and my reasons for it, in more detail than I have time for here. You can be sure that I am eager to see the fine sights of West Canterbury with my own eyes. I plan to arrive in Hokitika by 15 January, an estimate dependent upon weather, as I will make the journey overland, rather than by sea, in order to follow and inspect the future Christchurch-road. I prefer to travel light, as you know; I have arranged for a trunk of personal effects to be transferred from Lyttelton in the last days of December. Might the