The Luminaries

You can’t stay here.’

The voice from the warehouse called again. ‘What did you say he was doing there, Ed?’

‘Nothing,’ the youth called back. ‘Just sitting. He’s got a pistol.’

‘A what?’

‘He’s got a pistol, I said.’

‘What’s he doing with it?’

‘Nothing. He’s not making any trouble, as far as I can see.’

A pause. Then, ‘Is he gone?’

‘Get on with you,’ Ed said again to Ah Sook, motioning. ‘Go on.’

Roused to motion at last, Ah Sook slipped out from beneath the corrugated iron, and hurried away—feeling the puzzled eyes of the youth on his back, as he did so. He ducked behind a laundry line, and into the oaty-smelling stables at the rear of the Hotel Imperial, keeping his head down and his pistol clasped tight to his chest. Above the whickering and stamping of the horses he could hear that the two men were still calling back and forth, discussing him. He knew that before long he would be pursued; he needed to hide himself, and quickly, before someone sounded the alarm. Ah Sook ran to the end of the stalls and peered over the half-door. He looked along the row of allotments, at the lean-to kitchens beyond them, the baize doors for the tradesmen, the privies, the pits for waste. Where would he be safest? His gaze came to rest upon the small cluster of buildings that formed the Police Camp, and among them, the wooden cottage in which George Shepard lived. His heart gave a sudden lurch. Well, why not? he thought, suddenly bold. It is the last place in Hokitika that anyone would think to find me.

He crossed the small track between the stables and the Police Camp fence, walked up to George Shepard’s kitchen door, and rapped smartly upon it. While he was waiting for a response he looked furtively about him, but the alley was quite empty, and there was nobody in the yards on either side of where he stood. Unless someone was watching from inside one of the hotels—which was very possible, the cockled glass shielding all view of the interior—then nobody could see him, standing in the shadow of George Shepard’s lean-to, pistol in hand.

‘Who is it?’ came a woman’s voice, through the door. ‘Who is it?’

‘For Margaret,’ said Sook Yongsheng, leaning his mouth close to the wood.

‘Who?’

‘For Margaret Shepard.’

‘But who is it? Who’s calling?’

It seemed to him that her mouth was very close to the wood also; perhaps she was leaning close, on the other side.

‘Sook Yongsheng,’ he said. And then, into the ensuing silence, ‘Please.’

The door opened, and there she was.

‘Margaret,’ said Ah Sook, full of feeling. He bowed.

Only when he rose from the bow did he allow himself to appraise her. Like Lydia Wells, she too seemed virtually unaltered since the scene of their last encounter, at the courthouse in Sydney, when she stepped forward with the testimony—the false testimony!—that had saved his life. Her hair now showed a strip of silver down the central part, and it had turned brittle, such that the few wisps that had escaped her hairnet formed a haze about her head. Apart from this small token of her advancing age, her features seemed more or less the same: the same frightened, watery eyes; the same buck teeth; the same broken nose, broad across the bridge; the same blurred lips; the same look of fearful shock and apprehension. How well the memory is stirred by the sight of a familiar face! All in a rush Ah Sook could see her sitting down in the witness chair, folding her gloved hands neatly in her lap, blinking at the prosecutor, coughing twice into a scrap of lawn, tucking it into the cuff of her dress, folding her hands again. Telling a lie to save his life.

She was staring at him. Then she hissed, ‘What on earth—’ and gave a laugh that was almost a hiccup. ‘Mr. Sook—what—what on earth? There is a warrant out for your arrest—did you know that? George has taken out a warrant!’

‘May I come in?’ said Ah Sook. He was holding the pistol against his hip, with his body half-turned to shield it: she had not seen it yet.

A gust of wind blew through the open door as he spoke, causing the interior walls of the cottage to shudder and thrum. The wind moved visibly over the stretched calico.

‘Quickly,’ she said. ‘Quickly, now.’

She hustled him into the cottage, and shut the door.

‘Why have you come?’ she whispered.

‘You are very kind woman, Margaret.’

Her face crumpled. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No.’

Ah Sook nodded. ‘You are very kind.’

‘It’s a terrible position you’re putting me in,’ she whispered. ‘What’s to say I won’t send word to George? I ought to! There’s a warrant out—and I had no idea, Mr. Sook. I had no idea you were even here, before this morning. Why have you come?’

Ah Sook, moving slowly, brought out the pistol from behind his back.

She brought her hand up to her mouth.

‘You will hide me,’ he said.

‘I can’t,’ said Mrs. Shepard, still with her hand over her mouth. She stared at the revolver. ‘You don’t know what you’re asking, Mr. Sook.’

‘You will hide me, until dark,’ Ah Sook said. ‘Please.’

She worked her mouth a little, as though gnawing on her palm, and then snatched her hand away, and said, ‘Where will you go when it gets dark?’

‘Take Carver’s life,’ said Ah Sook.

‘Carver—’

She groaned and moved on quick feet away from him, flapping her hand, as though motioning him to put the gun away, out of sight.

Ah Sook did not move. ‘Please, Margaret.’

‘I never dreamed I’d see you again,’ she said. ‘I never dreamed—’

She was interrupted. There came a smart rap on the door: the front door, this time, on the far side of the cottage.

Margaret Shepard’s breath caught in her throat; for an instant, Ah Sook feared that she was going to vomit. Then she flew at him, pushing his chest with both hands. ‘Go,’ she whispered, frantic. ‘Into the bedroom. Get under the bed. Get out of sight. Go. Go. Go.’

She pushed him into the bedroom that she shared with the gaoler. It was very tidily kept, with two chests of drawers, an ironframed bed, and a single embroidered tract, stapled to the framing above the headboard. Ah Sook did not have time to look around him. He fell to his knees and slithered under the bed, still with the pistol in his hand. The door closed; the room darkened. Ah Sook heard steps in the passage, and then the sound of the latch being lifted. He turned to the side. Through the calico wall beside him a square of lightness widened, and a patch of blackness stepped forward into it, clouding the centre. Ah Sook felt the sudden chill of the wind.

‘Good afternoon, Mrs. Shepard. I’m looking for your husband. Is he at home?’

Ah Sook stiffened. He knew that voice.

Margaret Shepard must have shaken her head, for Francis Carver said, ‘Care to tell me where he might be found?’

‘Up at the construction site, sir.’ She spoke barely above a whisper.

‘Up at Seaview, is he?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Ah Sook cradled the Kerr Patent in both hands. There would be nothing easier than to slither out from beneath the bed, and stand, and press the muzzle to the wall. The cartridge would rip through the calico walls like nothing. But how could he be sure not to injure Mrs. Shepard? He looked at the patch of darkness, trying to see where Carver’s shadow ended, and Mrs. Shepard’s began.

‘The alert’s gone up,’ Carver was saying. ‘Shepard’s just put in for a warrant. Our old friend Sook’s in town. Armed and on the loose.’