Toward the Sea of Freedom (57 page)

The farther south she went, the colder it became, especially at night. While she slept in her wagon at the beginning of her journey, now she stopped at inns whenever possible. It no longer seemed advisable to sleep in the open. The roads brimmed with men, and not all of them were honorable—there were also adventurous but less savory figures around, on foot and on horse. Bearded men, their faces weathered by wind and sun; whalers and seal hunters from the West Coast; and sailors who had heard somewhere in Westport or Nelson about the gold finds and had left their ships. Every morning, she tried to find some honorable merchant or farmer whose wagon she either drove ahead of or followed behind and who would keep an eye on her. When she could, she traveled with whole families, of which ever more headed toward Dunedin.

After almost six weeks traveling, Lizzie finally reached Dunedin. She was enthusiastic about the new, vivacious city. It was wonderful to stroll the shopping streets, admiring the pretty dresses and hats in the displays; for the first time in many years, Lizzie almost felt as if she were in London again. For a moment, she thought longingly of taking a job. Without a doubt, the merchants, bankers, and high-earning craftsmen needed maids. Not having responsibility for her own business had its appeal, but on the other hand, her pay would be bad, and she would receive no thanks from her masters. She might even be preyed upon again. No, Lizzie never wanted to return to that life, no matter how attractive a warm room and cozy kitchen might be.

Lizzie shivered; in Dunedin, it was already bitterly cold. Yet the town was in a good location, and the climate was mild. In the mountains, however . . .

“Do you really want to go there?” asked the proprietress when Lizzie finally found an inn where she could rent a room. “Along the Tuapeka all alone? You’re not, you’re not a woman of easy virtue, are you?”

Lizzie was proud that people no longer saw that in her. “I’m looking for my man,” she insisted seriously. “I don’t know if he’ll get by without me.”

The innkeeper laughed heartily. “They all get by one way or another, and not half bad if you ask me. It’s true that when Reverend Burton comes to town, we only hear the absolute worst, but I always see the wagons heading up there. Every day at least one wagon full of whiskey, so it can’t be all bad.”

Lizzie was annoyed she had not brought the still with her. She probably could have made more with that than by panning for gold, but that would require Michael hearing reason first. Now she could hardly wait to travel up the Tuapeka River.

Peter Burton had been horrified when he reached Gabriel’s Gully. The terrain around the Tuapeka River had once been beautiful: green and forested, with the valleys and riverbanks covered in flowers. What the gold miners had left behind was a stinking wasteland. In the early phase of mining, no one had worried much about staking claims. The men had pitched tents and dug right where they were. Near Gabriel’s Gully the gold was often just beneath the surface. Other gold seekers—especially the veterans from Australia—took to panning for gold in the streams, and the trees fell, victims in the construction of sluice boxes used for prospecting.

In the area of the first gold finds, nothing grew anymore. The earth was torn up and dug over many times. Every strong rain transformed the camp into a mud hole. Tons of dirt had washed away—and a few tents with it. At the communal camp, there were improvised taverns and primitive stores selling groceries and whiskey. There were whores, too, though only a few of the girls had come to the camp on their own. Most had come with gold miners who rented out their own lovers when their searches for gold failed.

Three such disappointed and desperate girls, who wanted nothing more than to be able to leave their men and the camp, ran to the reverend immediately after his first service. Reverend Burton fought two of the fellows—he had boxed in college—and so won unanticipated respect. He sent one of the girls to Dunedin—first to Claire and Kathleen but with a final destination of Waikouaiti. He hired the other two to help him set up his parish. Reverend Burton had known ahead of time that the men in Otago needed active, concrete help more than they did prayer. The camp needed latrines and attention to hygiene; with the current hygienic conditions, disease was inevitable.

Reverend Burton was prepared when cholera began to spread in autumn. Together with his assistants and other volunteers from Dunedin, he tended the sick for weeks, winning more respect in the camp. During this period, it was not unusual to see him in the taverns. After a long day spent washing the sick, saying deathbed prayers, and sanctifying the constant stream of coffins before they were lowered into the muddy earth, he needed a whiskey. In the end, the men began to listen to Reverend Burton. The camp became more orderly; people set out roads and latrines.

However, the men at Gabriel’s Gully were just about to scatter. The land was stripped. People had found gold in other places. The men—and the reverend with them—moved on to new riverbanks and streams only to inflict the destruction anew.

Lizzie followed the rugged paths into the mountains. Her horse had to exert itself to pull her wagon up the inclines; mules would not have been quite so exhausted. Still, she had luck: in the bitter cold, the ground was frozen and hard rather than muddy.

When she passed Gabriel’s Gully, the dead terrain of which was now frozen in ice, she understood the Maori’s words. The natives must have been shocked when they saw what had happened to their land.

On the second day of her journey up the river, it began to snow. The blowing snow soon became so heavy that Lizzie could not see her hand in front of her face. Finally, she unharnessed her horse, covered it with a blanket, and tied it to the wagon. Then she crawled under the wagon, grateful she had planned well enough to purchase the wool items and tarps that were keeping her halfway warm.

When Lizzie awoke in the morning, it was as if she were in a fairy tale. The mountains and trees and anything around were under a heavy blanket of snow. Lizzie could hardly look at it enough, especially after the sun rose and made the snow shimmer like splinters of diamond. In London, snow had always been a dirty, gray mass. In the Bay of Islands on the North Island, it had never snowed. Here, however . . . Lizzie began to fall in love with the mountains of Otago.

After her third day of travel, she finally reached the new gold miners’ camp. Hundreds, maybe thousands of tents stood on the banks of the river as well as around the newest discovery sites. The camp bustled with horses, mules, and oxen. Men stood around a fire trying to warm their hands, and Lizzie thought they looked more worn down and sick than optimistic. The weather was clearly taking its toll, and since the frozen ground did not permit any serious digging, they couldn’t be earning much money. It seemed quite possible that some of the men were starving.

Lizzie immediately began to ask for Michael, but without any luck. It seemed the men were only acquainted with their immediate neighbors or the men with whom they were working at the time. Finally, she talked to a digger who gave her some useful information.

“You’d do best to ask the reverend, girl. At least, he writes down the names of the men who die here.”

Lizzie did not find this very encouraging; nevertheless, she set off toward the center of the camp to find the reverend. She passed improvised taverns, brothels, stores, and, finally, a post office.

The postman told her where to look for the reverend: “’E’s in a tent with a cross on it. You can’t miss it. But now, the reverend’s usually in the ’ospital. What, is ’e supposed to pray the ’ole time?”

One of the prostitutes, who looked even more frozen than the men around camp, showed Lizzie the hospital tent and pointed to a man standing on a ladder.

“There ’e is. Reverend? ’Ere’s someone what wants something from you. You ain’t knocked a girl up an’ run off to the gold mines, ’ave you?”

The men all around the infirmary laughed. Only the reverend himself did not seem to find the matter funny. The slender, brown-haired man, whose tattered clothing and weathered skin in no way differentiated him from the diggers, was not in a good position. He hovered more or less between heaven and earth: the ladder swayed noticeably, but none of those watching moved to hold it still. Worse yet, the tent fabric whipped around in the wind, defying his attempts to secure it. In truth, he would have needed three hands to hold it in place, align the nail, and hammer. He tried hard not to curse as he smashed his thumb during a renewed attempt to nail the thing down.

Lizzie seized the ladder and then a log that lay near the entrance. She leaned the log against the wall of the tent to hold the tarpaulin halfway securely in place. The reverend realized at once what she was doing and quickly hammered in the nail. A short time later, the men in the tent were again protected from the snow and wind.

Peter Burton climbed down and smiled at Lizzie. “At least then I would have put the most handy woman in a family way,” he told the prostitute who had brought Lizzie to him, drawing more howls of laughter. “Though you’d be a fool to leave this woman.”

He bowed politely to Lizzie. “Many thanks, madam. Please do forgive the people here. They’re of a rougher sort. I am Peter Burton, a pastor for the Church of England, even if that doesn’t appear to be the case.”

Lizzie now caught sight of the priest’s collar hidden under his wool scarf.

“Can I assist you in some way?” he asked.

Lizzie nodded and inquired about Michael. Her heart was hammering violently. If he really had been buried by this man . . . She had not heard from him in seven months, after all.

“Michael Drury. An Irishman. He’d be Catholic, of course.”

Peter Burton dismissed that. “No one cares about that here—at least not until Rome sends us a priest too. I’d be grateful for any help. Michael Drury, hmm; a tall man, dark-haired?”

“He has blue eyes,” said Lizzie. “Very blue.”

The reverend noticed how her own eyes brightened at the mention of Michael’s, and he smiled at her. “Yes, I believe I know him. He’s with one of my parish assistants.”

Lizzie’s heart turned to ice. That could not be. He could not have already found a girl; he . . .

“Chris Timlock,” Reverend Burton continued. “A good fellow, came with the first wave of gold seekers from Wales.”

Lizzie sighed with relief.

“But those two aren’t here. They go their own way. They’re on some stream upriver and firmly convinced they’ll find gold there.”

“And? How are their prospects?”

The reverend arched his right eyebrow. “Don’t ask me. I’m a theologian. I have no idea when it comes to panning for gold. But they say all the streams here carry it. It’s just a question of how much. Can I perhaps offer you some tea? I’m half-frozen, and you look to be too.”

Lizzie gladly accepted. She soon found herself again in a warm room, likely the improvised kitchen for the hospital. There were roughly assembled tables and benches. Stew bubbled away in a giant pot set on a woodstove.

“Whenever it’s possible, we offer a warm meal,” explained Reverend Burton. “Only for the needy, of course, but we never have enough to make everyone full. Which encourages more illness. In autumn, we had cholera, now influenza and pneumonia. And tuberculosis. There’s nothing that can be done for a few of the men. They’ll soon die on me.” The reverend sighed and poured Lizzie a cup of tea.

“Do people find so little gold?” asked Lizzie.

Reverend Burton laughed. “Most men here don’t earn more than a laborer in the city. Often less. That’s the average, Mrs. Drury.”

“Miss Portland, Lizzie Portland,” Lizzie corrected him.

The reverend looked at her questioningly. “Alas, Miss Portland, life here is considerably more expensive than in Dunedin or Kaikoura. Did you see the shop? They demand exorbitant prices—which is fair enough, I suppose, since they have to haul every morsel of food up here. The pubs are not running a charity either, nor are the women for sale. Add to that, men betting on everything. I preach against it, of course, but I can understand it, in a way. The boys work hard, six or seven days a week. They want to have some fun Saturday night. In any case, the merchants, barkeepers, and whores make more money here than the gold miners.”