The Luminaries

close to town.’

‘Charleston,’ said Moody. ‘Yes. There’s fortunes to be made, in Charleston.’

Ah Sook nodded. ‘Black sands,’ he said. He stepped forward, and Moody saw that he was holding the soot-blackened tea caddy in both hands. He proffered it, and Moody, surprised, extended his own hands to receive it. Ah Sook did not release the gift at once: he bowed low over it, and Moody, copying him, bowed also.

‘Juk neih houwahn,’ said Ah Sook, but he provided no translation, and Moody did not ask for one. He straightened, tin box in hand, and watched the hatter walk away.

SUN IN PISCES

In which Anna Wetherell is twice surprised; Cowell Devlin grows suspicious; and the deed of gift acquires a new significance.

What was glimpsed in Aquarius—what was envisioned, believed in, prophesied, predicted, doubted, and forewarned—is made, in Pisces, manifest. Those solitary visions that, but a month ago, belonged only to the dreamer, will now acquire the form and substance of the real. We were of our own making, and we shall be our own end.

And after Pisces? Out of the womb, the bloody birth. We do not follow: we cannot cross from last to first. Aries will not admit a collective point of view, and Taurus will not relinquish the subjective. Gemini’s code is an exclusive one. Cancer seeks a source, Leo, a purpose, and Virgo, a design; but these are projects undertaken singly. Only in the zodiac’s second act will we begin to show ourselves: in Libra, as a notion, in Scorpio, as a quality, and in Sagittarius, as a voice. In Capricorn we will gain memory, and in Aquarius, vision; it is only in Pisces, the last and oldest of the zodiacal signs, that we acquire a kind of selfhood, something whole. But the doubled fish of Pisces, that mirrored womb of self and self-awareness, is an ourobouros of mind—both the will of fate, and the fated will—and the house of self-undoing is a prison built by prisoners, airless, doorless, and mortared from within.

These alterations come upon us irrevocably, as the hands of the clock-face come upon the hour.

Lydia Wells had not hosted a seance a second time. She was well apprised of the charlatan’s motto that one must never repeat the very same trick to the very same crowd—but when she was accused, because of this, of being a charlatan herself, she only laughed. She had admitted, in an open letter in the West Coast Times, that her attempt to communicate with the shade of Mr. Staines had been unsuccessful. This failure, as she reported, was unprecedented in her professional experience, an anomaly that suggested to her that the afterlife had been unable, rather than unwilling, to produce him. From this, she wrote, one could only conclude that Mr. Staines was not dead after all, and she signed off expressing her confident anticipation of the young man’s eventual return.

This statement confounded the men of the Crown considerably; it had the effect, however (common to all of the widow’s strategies), of enhancing the value of her enterprise, and following its publication the Wayfarer’s Fortune began to do a very good trade. The establishment was open every evening between the hours of seven and ten, offering cut-price brandy and conversation of the speculative sort. Fortune telling happened in the afternoons, by private appointment only, and Anna Wetherell, in continuance with former policy, was not seen.

Anna only left the Wayfarer’s Fortune to take her daily exercise, in which she was accompanied, invariably, by Mrs. Wells, who was not insensible of the myriad benefits of daily perambulation, and who often said that there was nothing she liked better than a stroll. Together, arm in arm, the two women walked the length of Revell-street every morning, setting out to the north, and returning down the opposite side. They examined the contents of each window box as they passed, purchased milk and sugar, when milk and sugar could be got, and greeted the Hokitika regulars very blandly and impassively indeed.

That morning they had taken their daily walk earlier than usual, for Lydia Wells had an appointment at the Hokitika Courthouse at nine. She had been summoned to appear before the Magistrate about a legal matter pertaining to the estate of her late husband, Crosbie Wells, and the wording of the summons had intimated that the news was likely good: at ten minutes before nine, the front door of the Wayfarer’s Fortune opened, and Lydia Wells, her copper hair shining splendidly against a gown of midnight blue, stepped out into the sunshine.

Cowell Devlin watched Mrs. Wells exit the hotel and descend the steps to the street, drawing her shawl tightly around her shoulders, and smiling at the men who paused in their daily business to stare at her. He waited until she had disappeared into the throng of the crowd, and then waited five minutes more, to be safe. Then he crossed the street to the Wayfarer’s Fortune, mounted the steps to the veranda, and, after glancing back at the blank facade of the Courthouse, knocked upon the door. He was holding his battered Bible against his chest.

The door opened almost at once.

‘Miss Wetherell,’ Devlin said, removing his hat with his free hand. ‘Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Cowell Devlin; I am the resident chaplain of the Hokitika Gaol. I have in my possession a document that I expect will be of great interest to you, and I hope to gain a private audience with you, in order to discuss it.’

‘I remember you,’ said Anna. ‘You were there when I woke up in gaol after my blackout.’

‘Yes,’ Devlin said.

‘You prayed for me.’

‘And I have prayed for you many times since.’

She looked surprised. ‘Have you?’

‘Fervently,’ the chaplain replied.

‘What did you say you wanted?’

Devlin repeated his intentions.

‘What do you mean, a document?’

‘I would prefer not to produce it here. May I come in?’

She hesitated. ‘Mrs. Wells is out.’

‘Yes, I know,’ Devlin said. ‘In fact I saw her entering the Courthouse just now, and hastened here with the precise hope that I might speak with you alone. I confess I have been waiting for just such an opportunity for some time. May I come in?’

‘I’m not supposed to receive guests when she’s not here.’

‘I have but one item of business to speak with you about,’ Devlin said calmly, ‘and I am a member of the clergy, and this is a respectable hour. Would your mistress deny you so little?’

Anna’s mistress would certainly her deny so little, and a great deal more—it being against the widow’s policy ever to admit exceptions to the regulations she imposed at whim. But in a moment Anna decided to be reckless.

‘Come through into the kitchen,’ she said, ‘and I’ll make us a pot of tea.’

‘You are most kind.’

Devlin followed her down the corridor to the kitchen at the rear of the house, where he waited, still standing, for Anna to fill the kettle and place it on the stove. She had certainly become extraordinarily thin. Her cheeks were hollow, and her skin had a waxy sheen; her wasted carriage bespoke malnourishment, and when she moved, it was with a trembling exhaustion, as though she had not eaten a decent meal in weeks. Devlin glanced quickly around the kitchen. On the washboard the plates from breakfast had been stacked to dry, and he counted two of everything, including two ceramic egg cups, printed with a raised blackberry design. Unless Lydia Wells had had a guest to dine early that morning—which was doubtful—then Anna must have eaten breakfast, at least. There was a half-round of bread on the breadboard, wrapped in a linen cloth, and the butter dish had not yet been put away.

‘Will you have a biscuit with your tea?’

‘You are most kind,’ Devlin said again, and then, embarrassed at having repeated the platitude, he rushed on: ‘I was gratified, Miss Wetherell, to learn that you had conquered your dependence upon the Chinese