SUN IN VIRGO
In which Emery Staines, to whom Crosbie Wells has since narrated the full story of his betrayal at the hands of Francis Carver, each having won the other’s trust and loyalty, decides in a moment to falsify the quarterly report, removing all evidence of the bonanza from the goldfield records, and quite forgetting as he does so the determined worker Quee, who, according to protocol, and notwithstanding the circumstances of his indenture, is nevertheless deserving of a bonus.
Emery Staines, arriving at the camp station, was surprised to see that the Aurora’s box was flagged, meaning that a yield had been submitted. He requested the gold escort to unlock the box. Inside there was a neat lattice of smelted gold bars. Staines took one of the bars in his hand. ‘If I asked you to turn your back a moment,’ he said presently, ‘while I transferred the contents of this box elsewhere, what would be your price?’
The escort thought a moment, running his fingers up and down the barrel of his rifle. ‘I’d do it for twenty pounds,’ he said. ‘Sterling. Not pure.’
‘I’ll give you fifty,’ said Staines.
A PARTIAL ECLIPSE OF THE SUN
In which Emery Staines journeys to the Arahura Valley, sack in hand, with the intention of burying the bonanza, for a period of safekeeping, upon a portion of land set aside for Maori use, having not considered the possibility that Francis Carver might soon return to Hokitika to investigate why the Aurora goldmine, such a promising investment, has become a veritable duffer.
In the flax at Staines’s shoulder a tui dipped its head and gave its rattling cry—sounding, to his ear, like a stick being dragged across pickets, while a reedy whistle played a tune. How wonderfully strange the sound! He stretched out his palm and touched the waxy blades of the flax, noting the vivid colours with pleasure: purple at the blade’s edges, melting to a whitish green in the very centre of the leaf.
The tui beat away, and it was quiet. Staines reached down and took up the smelted bars. He laid them carefully at the bottom of the hole that he had dug. After they were buried, he arranged above them several flat- topped stones in a sequence that he was sure to recognise, and then kicked away his footprints.
PAPA-TU-A-NUKU
In which, some half mile downriver from the site of the newly buried gold, Crosbie Wells and Tauwhare are sitting down to a hangi, a meal cooked in a fire pit that was covered in earth, later to be excavated, and the leaves around the meat unwrapped to yield a feast that is moist and richly flavoured with smoke and tannin and the rich, loamy flavours of the soil.
‘What I’m saying is that there’s nothing in it. You with your greenstone, us with our gold. It might just as well be the other way about. The greenstone rushes, we might call them. A greenrush, we might say.’
Tauwhare thought about this, still chewing. After a moment he swallowed and shook his head. ‘No,’ he said.
‘There’s no difference,’ Wells insisted, reaching for another piece of meat. ‘You might not like it—but you have to admit—there’s no difference. It’s just one mineral or another. One rock or another.’
‘No,’ Tauwhare said. He looked angry. ‘It is not the same.’
PART TEN
Matters of Succession
DETRIMENT
In which Anna Wetherell, who remembers the assault that occurred in the boudoir of the House of Many Wishes in Dunedin upon the night of the 12th of May with a stricken, nauseated clarity, and who is made wretched, daily, by the memory of that assault, a wretchedness not assuaged by the knowledge that her collusion, however tacit, helped an innocent man to escape unharmed, is surprised by the appearance of the disfigured man himself, and, in a moment of weakness, forgets herself.
Francis Carver was riding inland on the Kaniere-road when he spotted a familiar figure on the roadside. He reined in, dismounted his horse, and approached her, perceiving that her walk was unsteady and her face, very flushed. She was smiling.
‘He got away,’ she mumbled. ‘I helped him.’
Carver came closer. He put his finger beneath her chin, and tilted her face. ‘Who?’
‘Crosbie.’
Carver stiffened at once. ‘Wells,’ he said. ‘Where is he?’
She hiccupped; suddenly she looked frightened.
‘Where?’ He pulled back and slapped her, hard, across the face. ‘Answer me. Is he here?’
‘No!’
‘In Otago? Canterbury? Where?’
In desperation, she turned to run. Carver caught her by the shoulder, jerked her back—but just then there came the clap of gunshot, nearby—
‘Whoa,’ Carver shouted, spinning away—
And the horse shied up—
FALL
In which Anna Wetherell tells a falsehood to protect Crosbie Wells, attempting, in this belated act of loyalty, to atone for an earlier betrayal, the partial memory of which shifts and recedes, uncertainly, for her mind has been thrice fogged, once by smoke, a second time by violence, and lastly by the opiate administered by the physician Dr. Gillies, preparatory to a most unhappy procedure, during which Anna sobbed, and groaned, and clawed herself, becoming so distressed that Dr. Gillies was obliged to ask for help in restraining her, and Lowenthal, ordinarily a man of some fortitude in times of injury or upheaval, wept freely as he pried her hands
