Band of Gold (17 page)

With his tongue, Rian probed the hole where his tooth had been. ‘Would it have made a difference?’

Doctor Hurley looked as though he might be going to lie. Then he shrugged. ‘He wouldn’t have been the first. Ask Peter Lalor. What difference is it to me? I’m a doctor, not a politician.’

Kitty lifted the lid and peered into the oversized picnic basket. ‘They look lovely, Pierre, thank you, but we’re only going to Melbourne, not England.’ He must have risen especially early this morning, because he’d made them a selection of really tempting pastries, speciality breads and pies for the journey and arranged them in a snowy white cloth. ‘We’ll never eat them all.’

‘
Mais oui
, Haunui is with you.’

‘That’s true,’ Kitty agreed.

At her elbow, Haunui chortled.

The sun was only just up, but it was already obvious it would be another scorching day. They had gathered outside Bath’s Hotel, and were waiting for the horses to be backed into the shafts of the Cobb & Co coach. Currently three coaches were leaving Ballarat for Melbourne every day, and they had booked the earliest as they wanted to arrive at their destination before sundown.

Rian said, for at least the tenth time, ‘Are you sure you’re happy about doing this?’

Struggling to keep the exasperation from her voice, Kitty replied, ‘Yes, of course I am. Really, what can go wrong?’

Plenty, actually, and they both knew it. Delivering Bao to her relatives
should
be a straightforward exercise, but the Chinese were a very closed society not known for welcoming those it did not recognise or trust. However, Kitty would, of course, have Bao with her, and a letter from Wong Fu himself should she be unable to locate Wong Kai immediately in Melbourne. She had also been warned by Wong Fu that Wong Kai could be a difficult man, but Kitty had elected not to share this particular piece of information with Rian. The other undertaking on the agenda for Melbourne did have the potential for trouble, but Kitty was confident that, with the help of Haunui, Simon and Daniel, she would manage.

The livery man fastened the final buckles on the harnesses, then signalled the driver that he was clear to start loading. Pierre passed the picnic basket to Haunui, who heaved it onto one of the bench seats inside the coach.

‘We won’t all fit, Ma,’ Amber said, peering in after it. ‘Can me and Bao sit outside with the driver?’

‘Bao and
I
,’ Kitty corrected. ‘No, you can’t. You’ll sit inside with me.’

‘But that’ll be boring,’ Amber complained.

‘I’m sure it will,’ Kitty countered, ‘but there will be plenty of stops.’

Amber was right, though; the interior of the coach would only
seat six comfortably, and now just five because of the picnic basket—two people
would
have to sit outside. She raised her eyebrows at Haunui.

‘Suits me, as long as you keep passing up those pastries. You want to sit up with the driver, too?’ Haunui asked Simon.

Simon said yes, even though he knew he wouldn’t be next to the driver—he’d be perched on the little seat behind and slightly above him, because Haunui certainly wouldn’t be travelling all the way to Melbourne on it with his knees up around his ears.

‘I will,’ Daniel interjected quickly. ‘Could do with the fresh air.’

He did look peaky, which was no surprise after the amount he’d had to drink the day before. Kitty wondered if he remembered what he’d said. Since he wouldn’t meet her eyes, perhaps he did.

As the last of the luggage was loaded, Rian squeezed Kitty’s hand and said, ‘You’ll be very careful, won’t you?’

‘I will. And you be careful, too. Watch out for Sergeant Coombes—and for God’s sake, Rian, steer clear of Lily Pearce.’

Rian grimaced as he handed Kitty into the coach. ‘Don’t worry,
mo ghrá
, I intend to.’

Wong Fu embraced Bao, then watched sadly as she climbed on board the coach, followed by Simon. Tahi hung back to wait to see where Amber sat, then settled himself beside her. Observing this, Haunui leaned into the coach and tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Hey, boy, how do you know she wants you to sit next to her?’

Tahi reddened.

‘It’s all right, Haunui, he can stay,’ Amber decreed graciously.

Kitty suppressed a smile, and shuffled over so that Simon and Bao, next to her, had more room.

Haunui winked at Kitty, then disappeared, and the coach gave an ominous groan as he climbed up onto the seat next to the driver. A more subdued lurch signalled Daniel’s arrival on his perch and then they were off, Kitty, Amber and Bao leaning out the window waving
at Rian and Wong Fu until they went around a bend and could no longer see them.

They struck trouble just after Bacchus Marsh, a little more than halfway into their journey. The horses were fresh because they’d been changed less than an hour earlier, so at first Kitty wondered why the coach was slowing.

Then it stopped altogether. For perhaps ten seconds nothing could be heard but the horses snorting and the rattle of harnesses, then Haunui’s upside-down face appeared at the top of the window.

‘Trouble. Stay inside.’ He disappeared again.

Kitty, her heart sinking nauseatingly, looked at Simon.

‘Bushrangers?’ he whispered, his face paling.

Beside her, she felt Bao stiffen with fear.

‘Bushrangers!’ Amber repeated far too loudly.

Her exclamation must have travelled, because there was a subtle but unmistakable warning tap on the ceiling of the coach. Kitty lifted her reticule from the seat and nestled it in her lap under a fold of skirt, thankful she had left her lovely brooch back at Lilac Cottage.

Outside, she could hear murmured voices. Knowing she shouldn’t, she leant as far to the right as she could manage and looked out the window. From her vantage point she could see two men on horseback in front of and slightly to her side of the coach, their shotguns aimed at the driver, and presumably at Daniel and Haunui. No doubt they had emerged from the stand of bush bordering the road. By straining her neck and looking up, she could just see the barrel of a gun aimed back at them. A stand-off. She pulled her head back in.

‘Can you see anything?’ she whispered to Simon.

He looked. ‘Two on this side. Armed.’

‘Could we rush them?’ Tahi suggested, suddenly looking far more mature than his years. The hairs on Kitty’s arms began to stand up.

Bao let out a whimper, and, very slowly, she lifted her feet up onto the seat, put her head on her knees, and folded herself into a tight ball. Kitty felt her heart constrict with compassion, but there was nothing she could do for the girl right now.

‘One’s dismounting,’ Simon said hoarsely.

Footsteps approached, crunching through drifts of dry eucalyptus leaves on the road. Kitty tugged off her wedding ring and slipped it down the front of her dress. Tahi’s hand moved to the hilt of his knife.

‘Steady,’ Simon warned.

A bearded face peered in at the window and inspected them, then its owner stepped back and called, ‘Man, woman an’ three kids.’ Then, still aiming the barrel of his gun at them, he opened the door and leant in, bringing with him the rancid stink of someone who had lived rough for a very long time.

Bao gave a barely audible whimper.

The bushranger had a good peer around the interior of the coach, presumably looking for potential valuables. He lifted the lid of the picnic basket, frowned at the remains of the pastries, then helped himself to one and stuffed it in his mouth. Chewing, he gestured at Kitty’s hands clasped in her lap, which she held out, revealing bare fingers. But he had seen her reticule beneath the folds of her skirt.

‘Gimme that,’ he said, pointing.

Kitty picked up her reticule, slipped Rian’s pistol out of it, cocked it and aimed it directly at the man’s forehead. His startled eyes comically round in his sunburnt face, he stared first at the pistol then at Kitty, before retreating from the coach so rapidly that he hit his head on the door lintel. Tahi rose in a half-crouch, snatched the pistol from Kitty’s hand, took aim and fired it at the bushranger. The ball hit the man in the arm; he let out a bellow, turned and ran.

Instantly a shot rang out, then another followed by a flurry of hoof beats.

‘
Tahi! I could have shot you!
’ Kitty shrieked into the ensuing silence.

‘Have they gone?’ Amber asked, her voice squeaky with fright.

Cautiously, Simon put a foot outside, then almost leapt out of his skin as something very large jumped down from the top of the coach.

‘Everyone all right?’ Haunui asked. ‘What happened?’

The driver followed him a moment later, his face parchment white. ‘No one hurt? God help me, I didn’t even see them. Usually they’ll have someone in the middle of the road, but this time they just came straight out of the trees.’ He mopped his sweating brow with a large red kerchief. ‘I don’t know: I got off the escort carts to get away from this sort of thing.’

Daniel climbed down, his rifle hooked over his good arm, his face like thunder. ‘I think I might have missed.’ He sounded disgusted with himself.

‘Good shot, though, eh, for one arm,’ Haunui said.

‘I still missed.’

‘They missed, too,’ the driver pointed out.

‘Why did they give up so easily?’ Tahi asked.

They were all standing around the coach now, except for Bao, who had refused to come out. Kitty thought a drop or two of laudanum might be in order; it wouldn’t do her any harm to sleep the rest of the way to Melbourne, and it might help to settle the poor child’s nerves.

‘Busy road,’ the driver said, and just as he did, a wagon they had passed several miles back appeared around the bend. He flagged it down to warn the occupants of the danger.

But the rest of the journey was uneventful, and they arrived at Melbourne safely, as did the 752 troy ounces of gold from Rian’s claim carefully packed into the bottom of the picnic basket.

The following morning, Kitty rose early. The night before, they had taken rooms at the Criterion Hotel on Collins Street, and at breakfast shared a table in the dining room. Haunui presented an odd sight,
sitting regally with a table napkin tucked into the neck of his shirt beneath his grizzled and heavily tattooed face. Judging by the agitated stares of the waiting staff, Kitty suspected they would have liked to have tossed him out, but were too frightened to do so.

Today he and Daniel were off to inspect the
Katipo
. It was a very good thing that Rian’s claim had proved to be so profitable: God knows how they would have paid for the well-overdue work on the schooner otherwise. Amber and Bao were to be left in Simon’s care, while she would attempt to find Wong Kai.

Breakfast over, Kitty stepped out onto Collins Street and walked until she came to a cab stand. When the driver dismounted from his seat to open the door for her, she told him she wanted to go to the area of Little Bourke Street that fell between Swanston and Russell Streets.

‘Chinatown? Are you sure?’ he asked, frowning. ‘That’s no place for a lady.’

‘Yes, I am sure,’ Kitty said as he handed her into the cab.

‘No shopping there, you know. Not for the likes of…well, people like us, if you know what I mean.’

‘I’m not interested in shopping. I have business to attend to,’ Kitty said as she sat down and arranged her skirts.

The cab driver shrugged; after all, he’d had much stranger requests. He closed the door and climbed back onto his seat.

The cab moved off and Kitty watched as the wooden and brick buildings of Collins Street went past the window. The streets here were not yet paved, but they were remarkably wide, the main streets at least, and, as it was approaching the height of the Australian summer, they were now also dry and dusty, a marked change from the mud and puddles she and Amber had dashed through in August. The town was no less busy, though. There were people everywhere—on foot, on horseback, and riding in carts and cabs and carriages.

The cab driver turned into Elizabeth Street, then Little Bourke Street, but stopped as he came to Swanston and slid back the covered
window behind his head. Through the gap he informed Kitty, ‘I’d rather not take me horse in. Too hard to turn around. Will this do you, Missus?’

Kitty grinned to herself. ‘This will be fine, thank you.’ She let herself out, paid the driver and walked into Chinatown.

For people unaccustomed to the Chinese way of life, she supposed, this particular area of Little Bourke Street might seem a little disconcerting, but she had visited Shanghai and Canton many times and was familiar with the mystery and exoticism. Here, as there, the street was lined with all sorts of merchants, and provisions stores with their wares extending in orderly piles onto the street, and eating houses and Chinese apothecaries and doctors. Upstairs and behind the scenes, Kitty knew, would be the lodging houses and the premises of the
tongs
—the clan and district benevolent societies. And the opium dens.

The faces she passed were all Chinese, and they were neither friendly nor hostile. Some were curious, no doubt wondering what a white-skinned woman was doing wandering alone in the middle of the Chinese quarter.

Kitty caught the eye of a man who was trying not to let her see he was observing her, and stepped in front of him. ‘Excuse me, could you please tell me how to get to Celestial Avenue?’

The man stared at her, appeared momentarily flustered, said something in what Kitty thought might be Cantonese, then shook his head.

‘I’m sorry, do you not speak English?’

The man shook his head again, the oil dressing his queue gleaming in the sun, then hurried away, clearly embarrassed.

There was not a single woman in sight.

Kitty thought for a moment, then entered a shop. It was packed from floor to ceiling with goods in bales and baskets and boxes, on pallets and in packets and hanging from poles. There were foodstuffs,
clothing, tools, fabrics, household goods and all things required for daily living. In short, it was exactly like a European general store, but with a very oriental flavour and the distinct, sharp and spicy smell that came with it.

At the rear stood a man behind a counter, watching Kitty with a gimlet eye as she approached. He was Chinese, but did not wear the usual queue; his hair was cut short, and he was dressed in well-cut grey trousers, a precisely pressed white shirt with a high collar, and a buttoned grey waistcoat. Kitty was fairly confident that he would speak English.