Band of Gold (3 page)

Simon surreptitiously flapped the cover over his window.

Then, ten minutes later, it happened again.

Amber giggled.

‘Shush,’ Kitty reprimanded her, noting that Simon had slid so far down inside his coat that only his eyes were visible.

Rian had his eyes closed, his face set in a very odd expression. Kitty couldn’t decide whether he was grimacing or trying not to laugh. She breathed through her mouth, but not too deeply—God only knew what they were inhaling.

Almost immediately, another even more sulphurous wave assaulted them, and this time Mr Harcourt had the grace to mumble, ‘Beg pardon.’

Amber erupted into laughter, closely followed by Rian, who quickly rolled up his window cover and exclaimed, ‘My God, man—have a heart!’

Without a word Mrs Harcourt reached into her bag, withdrew a bottle of milky white liquid and handed it to her husband.

Mr Harcourt took a generous swig, wiped his mouth and stifled a burp. ‘Thank you, my dear. Tripe and onions,’ he said, as though this excused his behaviour. It certainly explained it.

Kitty allowed an interval of ten minutes to pass, then enquired politely, ‘Are you and Mrs Harcourt travelling all the way to Ballarat, Mr Harcourt?’

Rian and Amber succumbed to a fresh outbreak of giggles; Kitty gave them a very pointed look.

Ignoring them, Mrs Harcourt replied, ‘Just to Bacchus Marsh, my
dear. We’re visiting my sister and her husband. They have a hotel there.’

Kitty held in check a sigh of relief and, soon after, they reached Bacchus Marsh. But as the coach slowed, Mr Harcourt released one final nauseating, and very audible, manifestation of his intestinal complaint. The coach stopped and Amber hurled open the door and staggered off laughing hysterically, followed by a grinning Rian.

Kitty glanced apologetically at the Harcourts and shook her head. It was Rian’s fault, the lack of respect and propriety their daughter frequently exhibited. And Pierre’s. And possibly Mick’s, as well. She wondered not for the first time whether Amber should be enrolled at some sort of girls’ school where she would learn manners and the sort of refinement befitting a young lady. But Kitty knew in her heart that she could never do that to her precious daughter, and knew, too, that Rian wanted Amber near him. As a result she could not help but be party to the crew’s escapades, not to mention their occasional smuggling operations. Rian justified this by insisting that, although Amber might not be able to play the piano, or plan a dinner party, she was learning how the world worked, and how to negotiate all the things that life would throw in her path, and Kitty had to agree. Amber could cook, though—Pierre had seen to that.

After a very good hot meal at Flanagan’s Border Inn and a change of horses, and having bid a heartfelt farewell to Mr and Mrs Harcourt, Kitty, Rian, Amber and Simon set off again, this time with only one travelling companion.

Warily, Kitty studied the woman from beneath her eyelashes. She was extremely striking, with dark red hair—hennaed, Kitty was sure—arranged not in the currently fashionable centre-part flanked by sweeps of hair secured in a chignon, but in the long ringlets popular some years ago. She wore no bonnet, but had simply
raised the hood of her heavy velvet indigo blue cape, and her dress of burgundy brocade hugged the impressive contours of her body. Kitty felt positively dowdy in her practical travelling dress and black cape, and had an overwhelming desire to throw her own loathed bonnet out of the window.

The woman’s skin was powdered to the colour of milk, and her languid eyes, an arresting moss green, were outlined with a hint of kohl. Her jaw was strong and her rouged cheekbones high, and her lips painted a rose pink. Judging by the lines bracketing her mouth and at her eyes, Kitty guessed she was somewhere in her early forties. Not a classical beauty, but definitely a woman to turn heads: Rian’s had been turned in her direction since they had set off again.

They stopped at Ballan, just short of halfway between Bacchus Marsh and Ballarat, at three-thirty that afternoon.

‘I suspect she might be a whore, don’t you?’ he remarked as they stood stamping their feet while the horses were changed yet again. The driver had disappeared into the Ballan Hotel, followed by the mysterious woman.

Kitty blew on her hands. ‘A bit long in the tooth, don’t you think?’

‘I’ve seen plenty older. But not so well preserved, I have to admit. I still wouldn’t touch her with a ten-foot bargepole, though.’

‘You stared at her long enough,’ Kitty said teasingly.

‘So did you. But she is quite mesmerising, isn’t she?’

Kitty nodded. ‘And we could be wrong. She could just be the wife of some well-to-do prospector who likes to wear a lot of rouge and lip paint.’

Rian looked alarmed. ‘The prospector?’

‘No, the woman,’ Kitty said, smiling.

‘Well, if she is, she’s either mute or very retiring. She hasn’t said a bloody word since we left Bacchus Marsh.’

‘I wouldn’t think she’s the retiring type—not with that amount of face paint.’

But the woman turned out to be neither mute nor shy. Her name was Lily Pearce, she said, leaning forward after they set off again and offering her hand to both Kitty and Rian, who in turn introduced themselves, then to Simon, who took it very gingerly.

‘I own a business at Ballarat.’ Her voice was low and seductive, her accent revealing a trace of East London. ‘On the diggings of course, not up near the Camp,’ she added, smiling enigmatically to herself.

Kitty said, ‘That sounds very enterprising of you. And your husband helps you run this business?’

Lily Pearce gave a tinkling laugh. ‘Oh, no, I’m not married, Mrs Farrell. Never have been, and never plan to be.’ She turned her attention to Rian. ‘Is Ballarat your destination, Captain Farrell, or Bendigo?’

‘Ballarat.’

‘Ah, I see.
New chums
.’ Her eyebrows were raised in amusement.

Kitty felt her hackles twitch in response to the woman’s apparent condescension. ‘I’m sorry—new chums?’

‘Yes, it’s what the diggers call newcomers to Australia and the goldfields.
Are
you newcomers?’ Again she directed her question at Rian.

He stared at her for a slightly unfriendly moment. Perhaps, Kitty thought, he has also sensed something vaguely disagreeable about Miss Pearce. ‘Actually, no. We trade at Australian ports frequently.’

‘Oh, a
sea
captain. And now you’re going to make your fortune on the diggings?’

Rian held her gaze a little longer than was necessary. ‘Who can tell? Other people obviously have.’

Touché, Kitty thought.

Miss Pearce smiled slightly. ‘And who is this enchanting child?’ she asked, inclining her head towards Amber.

‘Our daughter,’ Rian and Kitty replied simultaneously.

Miss Pearce looked from Rian’s fair skin to Kitty’s, then to Amber’s
caramel-coloured complexion, her face giving nothing away. ‘You’re a very pretty girl, aren’t you?’ she said. She tilted her head to one side. ‘How old are you, dear?’

‘I’m fourteen,’ Amber replied.

‘Mmm, very nice,’ Miss Pearce said, somewhat speculatively. ‘You will need to keep an eye on her, Captain. A pretty young face is a welcome sight on any goldfield.’

Kitty stared at her. ‘What was it that you said you sold, Miss Pearce?’ she asked, her voice as cold as the weather.

‘I don’t think I did, Mrs Farrell.’

Kitty slipped her hand into Amber’s. They rode in silence after that.

Dusk was approaching when the coach began to rattle past clusters of small buildings, most of them hardly more than shanties. Both sides of the road revealed evidence of mining in the piles of dirt and the shadowed pits and dips, the ravaged land dotted with small tents and lean-tos, and strange sail-like structures thrusting upwards into the gloom. Half a mile on, a hotel with glazed sash-windows and a fancy lamp over the door appeared out of the dusk. Soon, the shanties were replaced by more substantial and permanent-looking buildings, and Kitty saw that interspersed with a number of well-built houses were stores, a boarding house, offices and various business premises. But still the diggings were evident, encroaching almost upon the rear of the buildings on both sides of the road.

The coach came to a halt outside a solid two-storeyed establishment, its signage proclaiming that it was Bath’s Hotel. Miss Lily Pearce stretched elegantly, then gathered her cape around her.

‘Well, it was lovely travelling with you all.’ Her gaze lingered on Rian. ‘I hope to see you again, Captain Farrell. I’m sure our paths will cross, aren’t you?’

Then she opened the door and was gone.

Simon retrieved his hat from the luggage rack. ‘She was certainly a piece of work, wasn’t she?’

‘Didn’t you like her, Ma?’ Amber asked.

‘No, actually, I didn’t,’ Kitty replied tersely, gathering her things.

‘Ma?’

‘What, love?’

‘I didn’t like her either. She made me feel…strange.’

‘Well, you’re not strange, sweetheart,’ Rian said, pulling Amber close and giving her a quick hug. ‘You’re just right.’ But over her head, his eyes met Kitty’s, his face expressing both offence and anger.

‘Well, she’s gone now,’ Kitty said, ‘and let’s hope our paths
don’t
cross again.’

She stepped down from the coach and onto the verandah of Bath’s Hotel, where they intended to lodge for the night. While the coachman passed down their luggage to Simon and Rian, she wandered along the boards until she came to a gap between buildings, and paused to look south across the Ballarat basin.

Spread before her in the middle distance were hundreds of fires, the smoke rising upwards and mingling with the settling mist, the flickering flames throwing countless tents and rough little shelters into jagged relief. There was barely a tree left standing, and the ground illuminated by the fires looked as pockmarked as though from a fierce and sustained artillery barrage. On the cold night air came the howls and barks of dozens of dogs, the lonely, mournful lowing of bullocks, and the smells of smoke and sour earth, mouldering canvas and human refuse.

It seemed to Kitty that she was staring straight into Hell.

K
itty poked an experimental foot from beneath the bedclothes, then braved the chill to cross to the window. She rubbed a circle of condensation off the glass. The view was certainly a little less daunting than it had been the night before, but the scene was still one of organised chaos.

‘Is there a frost?’ Rian asked.

Kitty nodded. ‘Quite a heavy one. I hope our new house isn’t down there in the basin.’

‘Actually, I think it might be,’ Rian muttered, then groaned as he heaved himself out of bed. The frame was relatively sturdy, but the mattress left a lot to be desired. He glanced at the heap of blankets on the vacant mattress on the floor. ‘Where’s Amber?’

‘Gone downstairs to wait for the wagon. She’s worried that Bodie might have frozen to death overnight.’

Rian snorted as he reached for his trousers. ‘I doubt it. Not while Pierre’s still breathing.’

Kitty turned away from the window. ‘They won’t be here until after midday, though, will they?’

‘Not if they stopped overnight at Bacchus Marsh.’

‘Well, I’m starving. Shall we go and have breakfast?’

Rian slid his hand over Kitty’s hip, the silk of her chemise sliding under his fingers. The skin on his naked chest was goose-bumped, and she set her palm against his hard, flat stomach.

‘I’m starving, too,’ he said, ‘but not for food.’ He nuzzled her neck, and she pushed him away, laughing. ‘Can you think of nothing else?’

‘Not really,’ he replied cheerfully. ‘But I suppose, if I absolutely have to, I can think about what we’re going to do today.’

‘We’re going gold mining, aren’t we?’ Kitty said as she stepped into her dress, wriggled her arms into the sleeves and turned her back. ‘Can you do me up?’

Rian deftly fastened her buttons. ‘No mining today. There’s a lot we have to do before that.’

‘Such as?’

‘We need to have a look at this house of ours. And the claim, and pay off the bloke who’s been minding it. And when the others arrive we’ll need to unload all the gear.’ He turned her around and kissed her nose. ‘And then we’ll have to buy ourselves a licence. Apparently you have to repeatedly pay the government to break your own back digging out enough gold to make a living.’

‘To make a living? I thought you said this claim is a guaranteed winner?’

‘It is a winner. Or will be, according to Mrs Murphy. She said Mr Murphy had a nose for it.’

‘A nose? Good God,’ Kitty said. ‘Is that what happened to her husband—he died from a broken back?’

‘No, I gathered it might have been a heart attack.’

Kitty poked him in the chest. ‘But
you’re
not going to have a heart attack, are you?’

‘Hardly.’ Rian flexed his muscles and struck a pose. ‘Look at me, I’m as fit as a fiddle.’

‘Yes, well, you’ll also be late for breakfast if you don’t hurry up and put your shirt on.’

Breakfast was fried potatoes, porridge and black pudding. Whereas Rian had two helpings, Amber refused to eat the black pudding, insisting that it looked like rounds of dog turd. Rian laughed, but Kitty told her to watch her language and keep her voice down—other patrons were looking at them.

After breakfast, they set out for the diggings that spread out on both sides of the main road heading south towards Geelong. The night before, they had come in along the Melbourne Road through the diggings that extended eastward, and there were other heavily mined leads to the north, but their claim was to the south of the town proper and the Camp. On the advice of the publican’s wife they hired a cart: the going would be very mucky and wet, even on the road.

The going was indeed extremely muddy, particularly down the hill on the Main Road into the basin that was Ballarat Flat. The carthorse, though, was an enormous animal, and negotiated the greasy slope with a minimum of snorting and head-tossing. There was little room on the seat of the cart, so Amber and Simon sat on the back, holding grimly onto the sides. Once they reached the flat, the ride was marginally smoother, but still hazardous and slow, and the holes to be avoided in the road even larger.

It was immediately evident that the Ballarat basin was a swamp. But, despite this, the Main Road was lined with stores and hotels, and behind them and to the south, as far as the eye could see, was a vast number of tents, slab and log huts, and tiny bark-and-tin shanties. Above the long-dry underground rivers that threaded beneath the basin, the ground had been excavated into a barren and currently
frost-rimed landscape of gullies and deep trenches topped with great heaps of soil and gravel, as though a giant mole had gone berserk, spanned by spindly-looking timber viaducts and criss-crossed with rail lines. And again, the odd sail-like structures Kitty had noticed the night before were everywhere, taut in the raw, cutting wind. The vista was one of hectic, mud-sodden industry.

The people they passed on the street—and they numbered in the hundreds—wore heavy layers of clothing against the cold and damp. Men, many sporting bushy beards, wore rough work attire and sou’westers or the unglamorous but evidently ubiquitous cabbage-tree hats. The few women looked little different from working women everywhere, in their shawls, bonnets and flapping capes. All, however, appeared to be wearing very sturdy boots or clogs, and their hems were noticeably shorter than those in Melbourne. Among the civilians were several mounted and foot police, distinctive in their dark-blue uniforms with red trim.

‘Where exactly is this house?’ Kitty asked, her ears humming with the cold.

Rian transferred the reins to one hand and dug a piece of paper out of his jacket pocket. ‘According to this, it’s near the Red Hill Lead and it’s the fourteenth dwelling directly behind the saddlery on the left.’ He glanced along the road and pointed. ‘Just up there, I’d say.’

He steered the cart into an alleyway and down a short slope, then along a rough track past a dozen or so shanties. ‘This must be it,’ he said, reining in.

Kitty’s heart sank.

The ‘dwelling’ was a timber-and-iron cottage, with a window in each wall, a chimney and a single door. The windows were glazed, with the exception of two boarded-over panes, the silver-grey of the slab door testimony to its never having been painted. Above it had been nailed a shingle that read
Lilac Cottage
—the work of the Widow Murphy, Kitty assumed—even though there wasn’t a lilac
in sight. The cottage was tiny, but she had to admit it was markedly more substantial than many of the bark huts and tents flanking it, their sides sagging with frigid rainwater. And, thank God, it wasn’t near any butchers’ tents, more than a dozen of which they had passed. With carcasses hanging in the open air and great piles of discarded offal and skins lying about, they would be a putrefying, reeking Mecca for flies in summer.

‘You could ask next door,’ she suggested, her fingers mentally crossed that they had made a mistake.

Rian climbed down from the cart and rapped on the sheet of iron that served as the nearest hut’s door. A harried-looking woman appeared, wiping her hands on her apron; there was a quick conversation, then Rian turned to Kitty and nodded.

She smiled resignedly, climbed off the cart and brushed the creases out of her skirts. ‘Is there a key?’ she asked as he came back.

He opened his hand. ‘Your woman there was looking after it,’ he said, and unlocked the door.

Kitty stepped inside, followed closely by an inquisitive Amber.

It wasn’t
quite
as bad as she’d been dreading. It was bigger than it looked from the outside, and had three rooms. Two were bedrooms, one only just large enough to accommodate a narrow single bed, and the main room had a fireplace fitted with a sway to hold non-existent pots and cooking utensils. But no matter, because Pierre, as usual, would be preparing all the meals.

There was, however, a small table with two chairs, and a rocking chair, which wouldn’t rock properly because the bare floorboards were uneven, and the larger of the two bedrooms held an iron double bed frame, but no mattress. A glance through the window of the back bedroom revealed that the sanitary facilities consisted of a small copper on a tripod over a brick fire-pit, and a rickety-looking privy.

The cottage was also damp, and Kitty knew she would have
to keep a fire going constantly to dry it out and keep them warm. And she would need to buy fabric for heavy drapes, and perhaps a few rugs for the floor.
If
they stayed at Ballarat, of course: she still harboured a faint but undeclared hope that Rian’s enthusiasm for making a fortune as a gold miner would wane and they could return to Melbourne.

‘It’s a bit cold, Ma, isn’t it?’ Amber remarked. ‘And dark.’

‘Yes, it is, sweetie, but a good fire should fix that.’

But a quick reconnaissance outside the cottage revealed that there was no firewood.

‘We’ll buy some,’ Rian declared, then pointed to the south-west towards a series of wooded hills. ‘Or we’ll go and cut it ourselves. It’ll be wet, though.’

Kitty made a mental account of what they had brought with them, and what they would need to purchase.

‘Perhaps we should stay at the hotel another night, until we have everything we need,’ she suggested.

‘Probably not a bad idea,’ Rian replied. ‘Come on, let’s go and have a look at our claim, shall we?’

Kitty noted the gleam of excitement in his eyes: he looked exactly like a small boy with a new toy.

Their claim was a hole in the ground. A deep one, granted, but just a hole nonetheless. Worryingly, the sides did not appear to have been reinforced at all in the manner described by Mr Harcourt, but at least duckboards had been laid around the lip to counter the mud. Water dripped somewhere, and Kitty suspected the regular
plink
sound came from the hole itself. And it had taken them half an hour in the cart to get to it. The claim wasn’t in any way isolated, however—it was only one of many on the Malakoff Lead near the Yarrowee River, and their trip had been accompanied by the hoarse shouts of diggers,
endlessly barking dogs, the scrape of shovels, the rumble of barrows and carts, and the rhythmic din of many hundreds of cradles being rocked in the shallows of the river. Judging by the number of tents and shanties, many prospectors seemed to have set up camp near their claims, and Kitty wondered idly why the Murphys had chosen to live so far away from theirs.

Rian was talking to a rugged little man with grey in his beard who had pitched his tent almost on top of the shaft.

‘Kitty, this is Patrick O’Riley. He’s been keeping an eye on things. My wife, Kitty.’

Patrick O’Riley touched the brim of his hat. ‘Mrs Farrell.’

‘Patrick says there have been two attempts to jump the claim, and the winching gear has been stolen, but otherwise he’s had no trouble.’

‘Sure, you turn your back here for more than a moment and everything you could call your own has gone,’ Patrick said ruefully. ‘But Mrs Murphy gave me enough money to keep the licence up to date, so she did.’ He shuffled his feet, looking awkward but managing to hold onto his dignity. ‘She said the new owner’d reimburse me, and pay for me services as a caretaker.’

Rian produced his purse. ‘Been down yourself, then?’

‘Not likely. Not on me own.’

‘I assume this will cover your time and expenses?’ Rian said, handing Patrick a generous fee. ‘Amber! Come away from that hole!’

Amber stepped back, looking only vaguely chastened.

Patrick counted the money. ‘Ah, it will, and very nicely, too, Captain.’

‘You worked for Mr Murphy, didn’t you?’

‘I did that, but I’m goin’ in a syndicate with some diggers now that you’ve arrived.’

‘Promising claim?’

‘’Tis.’ Patrick waved a hand in a south-easterly direction. ‘Just down the track there. We’ll be neighbours, so we will.’

‘Well,’ Rian said, ‘if you’re ever looking for work, I’d be interested. I could do with a man who knows his way around.’

Patrick nodded in acknowledgement of the offer, although his expression suggested that as far as he was concerned his days of working for anyone but himself were over. He scratched at his beard. ‘Seen the cottage? You bought that, too, I’m assuming?’

‘We have.’

‘Me own place is right next door.’

‘Ah, yes, I think we might have met your good wife.’

Patrick nodded. ‘She’s a fine lass, my Maureen. If you’re after needin’ anythin’ for the cottage,
you
come and see
me
. I’ve got the contacts,’ he said, winking and tapping the side of his nose with a dirty finger. ‘Could save the wear and tear on your purse, shall we say.’

‘Thank you, Patrick, that’s good to know.’

‘Only right, seein’ as you’re from across the sea. There’s a lot of us Irish here at Ballarat, so there are.’

They left him pulling up the pegs around his tent and drove back towards Lilac Cottage, sticky mud collecting on the horse’s hooves with every step.

‘I suppose we’ll have to be careful we’re not robbed,’ Kitty said unenthusiastically.

But it wasn’t robbery that Rian was worried about—it was the safety of his wife and daughter. He’d already noted how the diggers’ eyes had followed them, and the thought of leaving them alone while he and the others were working on the claim gave him a prickle of unease.

Simon, who had said almost nothing since they’d rattled down the hill from the hotel, read the concern on Rian’s face and suggested, ‘We could set up the tents behind the cottage. Pierre will be there most of the time to keep an eye on things.’

Rian brightened. ‘Yes, we could, couldn’t we? And if he wants to try his hand down the shaft, someone else can stay behind. Yes,
that’s an excellent idea, Simon!’ He tweaked Amber’s hair. ‘And you are
not
to go anywhere by yourself, do you hear? And nor are you, Kitty,’ he added, knowing his wife’s propensity for doing exactly as she chose.

But Kitty had also seen the men’s eyes hungrily taking in Amber’s lovely fresh face and her barely flowering pubescent body. ‘You don’t have to tell me, Rian. I have no intention of letting Amber wander about alone. Not for a minute.’

By the time they had returned to Bath’s Hotel, the others had arrived and were sitting on the verandah with their backs against the wall, enjoying a warming drink. The horses and bullocks were spattered with mud up to their bellies, and Bodie was still in her cage, looking even more bad-tempered.