by Meg Buchanan
William held the corner of the linen down and ran his hand across the sketches of the tunnels. “We’ve been down both mines, and over the ground above. We’ve worked it out. We know how deep we went with each shaft, the angle each slope ran at and the direction of the drives. We’re certain we have it right.”
Finn traced the dotted line of the intended tunnel. “We’ll try to drive through this at thirty feet of quartz in a week, find the bodies and get them out.”
“Yes, then John, Courtney and I can deal with them.”
“And you’ve got everything we need to get started?” asked Declan.
“Yep,” John stood up and stretched. “Everything, from dynamite to wheelbarrows. Some of it we already had. The rest Eugene got for us. If we find we need anything else, Courtney here will get it for us. He’s our link with the world for the next week.”
After they’d finished eating, Courtney stood. “If you don’t need me, I’ll go and do some work.”
“Yeah, we can manage, see you in a few days,” said William.
“Time to brush off old skills,” said Declan. “Lead me to the dynamite.”
On Monday morning Courtney sat in the office finally finishing the drawings for McKenzie. It was five days since he’d left Sophie at Declan’s. He hadn’t heard anything from her or seen any sign of Charlotte’s men. Perhaps they’d stopped looking for her.
He’d been to the mine site a couple of times, and William said they were making good progress. Today was the day they expected to break through to where the bodies were. Perhaps by New Year, all this would be over. He’d go there later and see how they got on.
When he arrived at the old house on the mountain, Eugene was just coming out of the front door ready to leave. “Good afternoon Courts,” he said, an urbane businessman again, in a suit, his hat on, pulling up his gloves.
“You’re leaving?”
Eugene nodded. “We broke through this morning. We’ve seen the bodies.”
“What state are they in?” Every time he’d come up here, that was the thing these friends of Declan seemed to be most interested in. Over the campfire, they’d tried to guess. Bare bones? A seething mass of maggots? Desiccated flesh?
“Like grinning mummies. Stiff as boards. Smell like dried dog shit. William says you’ll all take it from here.” Then he looked over at the where the pathway to the house met the bush. “And look who else has found his way here.”
Courtney followed his gaze, and there was McKenzie puffing his way towards the house just as William joined them on the veranda.
William went down the steps. “Good morning, McKenzie.”
John, Finn, Seb and Declan came out of the front door too, all carrying bags and packs.
Courtney watched McKenzie study the group of seven men who had obviously been staying in a house he had every reason to think was abandoned.
Then McKenzie turned his attention back to William. “Good morning Mr Hennessey. I’ve finally tracked you down. I’ve been to your farm, to the claims and now I find you here.”
“You do, Mr McKenzie,” said William, looking a bit shifty.
“I came to make another offer for your land. I see the trolleys and the cage are working again. And you appear to have a team of men here. Are you thinking of opening the mines again yourself?”
Eugene linked his fingers together to smooth the gloves. “No sir, you have shown so much interest in Mr Hennessey’s claims that my partners here and I are wondering if we should make a counteroffer.”
Once the gloves were smoothed, Eugene retrieved his cane from where it was leaning against the doorframe. “We have been exploring the boundaries and the interiors of the mines. Due diligence, dear man.” He made his way down the steps, swinging the cane. “Mr Hennessey and Mr Willis kindly repaired the cage so we needn’t climb down and invited us to spend the night here as we finished late and returning to Thames or Waihi last night would have been difficult.”
Courtney looked at Eugene astonished. He could lie smoothly.
Eugene kept talking. “I see more work has been done in the Anderson mine than I would have expected, but Mr Hennessey has explained that he and Mr Willis worked it for a while after he purchased it. Very little gold was found, so they gave up the effort after some tunnels caved in.” And he’d just explained away every anomaly McKenzie had seen or might have seen.
McKenzie looked disappointed. “I am too late then?” he asked William.
“No decision has been made yet, Mr McKenzie,” said William. “Make your offer in writing in the next few days, and I promise to consider it.”
McKenzie perked up. “I’ll look at the books, sharpen my pencil, Mr Hennessey, and make an offer you won’t refuse.”
McKenzie left, and William turned to Eugene. “You’re planning on offering for the claims? You do realise what McKenzie’s offering, and now he’s said he’s going to improve on that.”
“I am sure it is fair. I’ve just bought you the time you need to straighten up those ducks you’re worried about. Now to go home to my comfortable existence and forget all this.”
After Seb, Finn and Eugene had gone, Courtney asked, “Do you think Mr McKenzie suspects anything?”
“No.” William leaned against the veranda post. “It’s just lucky we didn’t bring the bodies out last night and have them lying about for him to see. When he said he’d been to the site, I was worried he’d have seen something he shouldn’t have.”
“Like this?” Declan held up a jacket of black silk velvet, the embossed buttons gleamed in the sunlight. The last time Courtney saw that it had been inside the mine, covering the face of a dead man.
“Jesus,” he said. “How did that get here?”
“Seb thought William needed a souvenir.” Declan handed the silky velvet to William. “This is yours, I think.”
William took it, shook it out and held it up by the shoulders. “The coat that fascinated Theobald. Hard to believe it ever fitted me.”
“You were a skinny bugger then; you’ve put on some weight over the years.”
William dropped the jacket onto the ground, it lay there among the weeds. They followed William back inside to the kitchen.
John released his breath. “I thought the difficult part was over I didn’t expect a surprise visit.”
“No.” William went to the coal range. “I think between now and when those bodies are in their final resting place, we stand the most chance of being discovered. We need to plan our next move carefully. Pull up a chair. I’ll put the kettle on.”
Declan leaned against the door frame. “Why don’t you just burn the clothes and dump the bodies a long way from here?”
John pulled out a chair on the other side of the table from Courtney. “That sounds like a plan to me. And I know the perfect spot to dump them.”
Courtney looked at John puzzled. “Where would that be?”
William brought the cups and the milk jug to the table and sat too.
John picked up the teapot and poured tea into the four cups. “In the foundations for the manager’s office at the stockyards. We’re pouring the concrete tomorrow morning.”
“It makes sense.” William added milk to his cup. “The hole’s dug. We could use the wagon to transport the bodies. We just have to get them down to the road and take them through town.”
John cradled his cup in his hands. “No one is going to question me being there with a wagon. It’s just another load of timber.”
William turned the salt pot around on the spot “And I’m helping a friend. We cover them with a frame of timber. Put a tarpaulin over that.”
Declan studied the delicate pansies painted on the side of his cup. “It could work. When are you going to do it?”
Courtney leaned back in his chair. Now they were calmly discussing tipping six bodies down a hole and covering them in concrete.
John stood up and put his cup on the bench. “First thing tomorrow morning? We dump them at first light. We need to hav
e them covered over before my men get to work.” He shrugged into his jacket.
“What time’s that?” William stood up too.
“Around seven. Now we’ve got the rest of the night to get everything ready.”
Chapter 20
IT WAS JUST BEFORE DAWN, the poppet head towered above the five of them. Mist and dragon breath swirled. An hour earlier, framed by the veranda posts, Daisy had watched them leave the farmhouse. She was still in her nightdress, just a shawl over her shoulders.
“Be careful.” She looked ready to go back to bed when they’d gone.
Now, the wagon was waiting at the bottom of the tracks near the stamper, with the stack of timber beside it.
It was bloody cold for this time of the year. Five lanterns stood at John’s feet, casting an eerie light over everything. Courtney rubbed his hands together then huffed on them to warm them.
“How are we going to do this?” he asked.
William was standing arms wrapped around himself like he was trying to get warm too. “John, Declan and I’ll go down the tunnel, move the bodies to the shaft, and load them. You and Mere look after lowering and raising the cage. We’ll probably need to make three trips for the bodies, it’ll depend on how heavy they are and if they break up when we try to move them.”
Mere shivered. “Disgusting.”
William looked worried. “You’ll be all right helping Courtney take the bodies from the cage, won’t you?” Courtney saw Mere nod. Sometimes William expected a lot from his wife.
“We’ll come up after them,” said William.
The three men got into the cage each holding one of the lanterns. Courtney led the horses around in a circle and the ratchet steadily lowered them into the shaft. He’d never seen bodies that had been underground for fifteen years and Seb and Finn’s jokes hadn’t helped. Skin dried like bark and cracking and dressed in rags held no appeal.
Mere wandered over to an empty crate and sat. The two lanterns left with them cast long shadows over the ground. “How long do you think it will take William and John?” she asked.
Courtney pulled up another crate and sat beside her, keeping an eye on the rope and watching for John and William to let them know the bodies were ready to be lifted out.
“I’ve no idea I haven’t been down.”
“Nor have I.” Mere broke off a stalk of grass. “The bodies will be in a state, won’t they? And we’re going to have to touch them.”
“I can’t see any way around it.”
Mere pulled her coat tighter and shivered again. “How will we do it?”
“Let’s just wait until they get here and then work out a way.”
They watched the rope waiting for that pull. It was half an hour before it moved and the pulley above it creaked.
“This is it,” said Mere, but she stayed sitting in the mist, staring at the poppet head.
Courtney walked slowly to the waiting horses. It was up to him. It didn’t seem like Mere planned on moving, and he couldn’t blame her, the whole idea disgusted him too. He took hold of a halter and led the team around in the endless circles it took to lift the cage.
The pulley creaked and groaned as the cage made its way up, the rope winding evenly onto the reel. The shackle at the top of the cage appeared. Then hair, dusty and matted topped three skulls covered in skin as dry and as translucent as old parchment. In the half-dark teeth grinned at them. The bodies were slumped together against the side of the cage. Shoulders covered by ripped shirts appeared in the flickering light.
Mere joined him. “They’ve stood them up.” She sounded horrified. One of the shirts had a gaping hole in the chest. Then belts and trousers, bare ankles and a few boots appeared.
“They got three in the cage that way. It will make this faster,” he said, trying to be positive about this horror they’d been presented with, and hit the brake to stop the cage going any higher.
He went to the shaft entrance to swing the cage onto flat ground, and the metal bottom hit the side of the shaft. The three bodies fell forward, heads lolling at unnatural angles, bony hands swinging. He’d misjudged it and put the brake on too early.
Then fingers clawed at his arm. He jumped back letting the cage swing freely. It was half shock, half disgust. He turned to the brake to let it off so the horses could do another half circle, but Mere was already there pushing at the handle. The horses plodded a few more steps.
“It’s clear now, swing it again,” she said.
This time the cage swung over, Mere released the brake a little, and it settled under the poppet head. She came over and stood beside him.
“Now to lift them,” she said reluctantly.
“No, stand back, I’ll just open it and let them fall out.”
Mere moved back, and Courtney unlatched the gate. Standing to the side, he pushed it so it swung open, and the three bundles of bone and rag fell to the earth. A skull came free of one body and rolled to near the closest lantern. It looked like a prop for Hamlet. Horrific. But that got them out. Now they needed to move them out of the way.
He looked at Mere. “You take a shoulder and help me pull the first one onto the stretcher.”
Mere shook her head and moved even further away.
All right, doing that didn’t appeal to him either. He couldn’t blame her for being squeamish. Touching them would give him the creeps. The nearest body was a headless corpse now and if a foot or a hand fell off while he was pulling at it, that would be the end of him.
He looked at the pile of sacking stretchers John had made. They were meant to use them to take the bodies to the trolleys.
Mere nodded at the pile of sacking nailed to lengths of timber. “We could lay the stretcher beside the body, then roll it on,” she suggested.
That would work.
Mere picked up the first bundle of timber and sacking. “I’m still not touching the bodies,” she said as they lined it up with the first one.
“Nor am I,” said Courtney. This job had turned out to be far worse than even he had imagined it would be. “We’ll find something we can use to move them.” They searched the mine area for a few minutes. Nothing.
“What about the old shed?” Mere went over to the old corrugated iron shed and came out again with two pieces of leftover timber about as long as broomsticks. She handed one to Courtney. “John can’t have counted when he was cutting these for the stretchers.”
“Good.” He took the piece of timber and walked back to the first body. They slid the sticks under the shoulders and hips and levered upwards. The body was heavy for something so dried out looking, but it rolled onto the sacking. A few wetas skittered away and back down the shaft, all legs and feelers and lightning-fast movement. Harmless, but creepy.
“Ugh.” Mere jumped back so the huge insects didn’t go near her skirts. Courtney leaned on his stick, watching them. Nice to know Mere could be thrown by these things too. Prehistoric looking things, with their one toed feet, spikes everywhere, and shells like armour.
“One body down, five to go,” he said. John, Declan and William wouldn’t have been so fastidious, they probably just picked the corpses up and carried them.
As the next body moved the head fell back, and this time thousands of wetas swarmed out to the gap between the neck and chin.
Mere jumped back out of the way faster than he did. The huge brown insects spread across the dew-covered earth, a swarm of feelers waving, legs scuttling. She stood there watching the wetas swirl across the ground and scramble for the bush and the mineshaft.
“Do you think there are more?” she asked when all the huge insects had disappeared. “That last body is probably full of them.” Courtney could hear the horror in Mere’s voice.
He gave the last body a prod with the stick. Another swarm emerged. “We’ll give them time to run away before we load that body.”
“I won’t tell William if you won’t,” said Mere and looked at him. The fog had touched her hair leaving dew drops sprinkled like sta
rdust.
“About what?” he asked. In this light, William’s wife seemed even more beautiful than she usually did.
“About us being scared of weta’s,” Mere said with a grimace.
He grinned. “No, we’d never live it down.” Mere prodded the body again with her stick. More wetas appeared and scuttled away.
They got the last body onto a stretcher and lowered the cage back down the shaft ready to do it all again.
The third and final time they raised the cage, John, Declan and William were in it. They had brought the rest of William’s old clothes with them and dropped them on the ground beside the cage.
He watched William kick at a woollen jacket. In the light from the lanterns, it was strange to see the silks and velvets, formal suits, cravats, waistcoats, silk shirts, long outgrown. They lay there, dusty and stained, littering the ground.
“The garments from my past,” said William. “Remnants of a life barely remembered.” He moved another piece of cloth with the toe of his boot. “The suit I wore to appease Charlotte once. No diamond buttons, now.”
“What do you want to do with them?” asked John. The flush of dawn was just touching the top of the mountain.
“Stick them in a sack. We’ll get rid of them; those clothes have caused enough trouble.”
John bent and lifted the first stretcher. “Come on, let’s get going before the rest of the world wakes up.”
The bodies were loaded onto the wagon and covered with the timber and the tarpaulin was carefully tied down.
John swung up onto the driver’s seat. “Let’s get moving, if we’re going to get this done before my men get to work, we have to hurry.”
Courtney, Declan and William swing onto their mounts. Mere climbed up on beside John. Sunrise lit up the sky to the east.
The wheels of the wagon bounced over the ruts in the road. Sunrise streaked the sky. Half-way there they become badly stuck in the mud.
William leapt down. “You three help with this. Mere you drive, and we’ll push.”
