by Sarah Lark
“Brought in?” Linda asked uncertainly. “They worked?”
Irene laughed. “You’re just a babe in arms, aren’t you? Haven’t been with your Fitz for long, huh? How did you find him, anyway? Doesn’t fit, an innocent little thing from the countryside like you with—”
Linda tried to object, but Irene waved her off and continued.
“Yes, my sisters worked. My father sold them to the men who were traveling alone. Three months at sea and they get randy. Plus they’re all excited, convinced they’re going to get rich here in three days. No problem for them to spend their last few pence on board ship for a whore.”
“What about you?” Linda asked, shocked.
“I was only twelve,” Irene said.
Linda’s eyes widened. That meant Irene could hardly be more than sixteen now. She had thought the young woman was at least in her midtwenties.
“My ma looked out for me. Unfortunately, she died of typhoid when we were still on the ship. But I still got a reprieve. And when we got to Dunedin, the fellows realized that the streets of Otago weren’t paved with gold. They needed at least a minimum of equipment to get started. Spades, gold pans, tents . . . They didn’t have anything left to spend on whores.
“And at first, there was really gold here. Da sent us to the fields. Believe me, each one of us girls worked the claim like two men. We knew what would happen to us if we didn’t.”
The women had reached the stream. Linda was surprised. The streams she knew flowed through green, grassy landscapes and often had raupo reeds along their banks. This one wound through a desolate landscape, its banks just as gray and muddy as everything else. Irene was right. Every bit of Gabriel’s Gully had been dug up.
Irene hiked her skirts above her knees, heedless of who might see. Linda did the same and thought uneasily of Deborah Butler, who had always scolded the sisters for riding astraddle, even though their stockinged ankles had hardly been visible at all. If Mrs. Butler could see her now . . .
Like Irene, Linda took off her shoes and socks. Afterward, her new friend showed her how to use the pan to scoop sand out of the streambed, and then separate dirt and gold with careful circular motions. She carefully shook more and more sand and water out of the pan until only gold dust remained.
Linda didn’t need long to grasp the technique. Once she actually found her first few specks of gold, she threw herself into the work with a fiery ardor. Amy dug on the bank of the stream with just as much enthusiasm.
“Well, she’s a quick study,” Irene said with a smile. “I wonder if you can teach dogs to smell gold?”
“You’d need a tracking dog for that,” Linda said, trying to keep her tone light. “Amy is a sheepdog. She’d be more likely to try and herd the gold together.”
Irene sighed. “My da could have used a dog like that. Gold just seemed to slip between his fingers. When there was less, we girls had to take up the slack. Me too, later. But I fell in love . . .” For a moment, the girl looked smitten. “Paddy was Australian. He was like your Fitz. Always cheerful, promised to fetch me all the stars in the sky. Not that I believed him. Even when he offered to buy me from my father. ’Course, he never got enough money together for that.”
“Your father wanted to sell you to Paddy?” Linda asked in disbelief.
Irene shrugged. “A young whore is worth her weight in gold on the goldfields,” she said with resignation, and then smiled sadly. “But I foiled his plans. I got pregnant. And I wasn’t about to get rid of little Paddy here so quickly either. Believe me, my father tried. He beat me to a pudding. But I didn’t lose the baby.” Her voice rang with pride.
“Did you marry your Paddy?”
Linda glanced with disappointment at her empty gold pan, and immediately refilled it from the streambed.
“Yes,” Irene replied. “At the beginning, it was wonderful. He even built a hut for me. That’s where you’re living now, and I’m in the one where my father and sisters lived. Then little Paddy was born, and it was a difficult birth. I’m so small, and the midwife was too expensive. The baby cried a lot at the beginning. I didn’t want another child immediately, so Paddy decided to lie with my sister, and got in a fight with Da. Finally, Da took my sisters and moved on to the west coast. There was hardly any gold left here. A few days later, Paddy left too. Now there’s only me and the little one.”
With practiced ease, she swirled her gold pan. Sighing, she put the specks of gold dust in a small leather pouch.
“Now it’s your turn!” she said to Linda. “Are you really from a sheep farm?”
By the end of the day, the women had found a little gold, and had become firm friends. Irene had listened to Linda’s story with great empathy, but Linda felt privileged when she compared her own bad luck with young Irene’s. At least she still had Fitz, who took care of her. When the women returned to the hut, tired and shivering, he had already lit a fire and was chopping vegetables for a stew. A little ham was cooking over the fire. Linda felt deeply grateful, and didn’t want to ask any probing questions about what her husband had been doing all day. But Irene had no such reservations.
“So,” she said, “did you find any gold?”
Fitz grinned and began to tell the story in his usual lively manner. Of course he hadn’t found gold, but he’d made plenty of new contacts. All kinds of prospectors had expounded on theories about how it might still be possible to find gold in Gabriel’s Gully. He’d made an appointment to dig with one of them the next day.
“It’s a sure thing,” he declared.
Fitz spent the next day at the edge of Gabriel’s Gully, digging under a boulder and then lighting a fire under it. The goal was to make the rock crumble, and then to hammer it apart. Fitz’s new partner, Sandy, was certain there would be gold underneath. As usual, when Fitz attacked any new project, he worked as though possessed. On the fourth day, the boulder finally cracked. Underneath it they found black earth, but nothing more.
When Linda got home that night, no one was there. There was no fire, nothing to eat, and the last of her money was gone.
“Where could he be?”
“The pub,” Irene said.
She was carrying two buckets of water from the Tuapeka River. Once, there had been an improvised water system leading to the camp, but no one had bothered to maintain it.
“I saw Bobby and Freddy at the river. They’re all laughing about Sandy and Fitz’s boulder. They actually managed to crack it apart today, but they didn’t find a vein of gold underneath. No doubt they’re drowning their sorrows in beer right this minute. Don’t you worry, now, he’ll be fine!”
Linda was less worried about Fitz than she was about their savings. Besides, she was hungry. She finally mounted Brianna bareback and helped Irene and Paddy up behind her. Together, they rode to Tuapeka to sell the gold dust they’d collected.
Fortunately, Oppenheimer’s office was still open, and he treated the ladies, as he called them, in a gentlemanly manner. He even slipped a bit of candy out of his desk for Paddy, which surprised Linda. After all, not many children came by. But his offer for the gold dust was disappointing. For five days of hard work, the two women hadn’t earned more than four pounds. And that was after he’d rounded up. Oppenheimer obviously liked Irene, and he seemed to feel sorry for Linda.
“It might work better if you try the upper reaches of the stream,” he said encouragingly. “You have the horse now; you can ride there. You’ll have to build up a little reserve. Can’t stand in cold water all day in the winter.”
“He’s right about the horse,” Linda said after they’d thanked him and left. “We should have thought of it ourselves. We’re surely more likely to find something farther away. But build up a reserve? It doesn’t seem likely.”
Irene nodded darkly. She, too, was worried about the coming winter. At least Linda still had boots and warm clothes. Irene and Paddy hardly had anything more than what they were wearing.
The women couldn’t save anything from their four
pounds. It was barely enough for a little food. If they wanted to have enough for the coming weeks, they’d have to go right back to work the next day.
Nonetheless, Linda’s stomach was full by the time she rolled herself up in blankets, without Fitz for the first time since her wedding. Instead, Amy leaped onto the mattress, the way she had in Linda’s room at Rata Station. Linda cuddled her and was warm and comfortable, but she couldn’t sleep. Her mind was occupied with too many dark thoughts. So far, their stay at the goldfields had been a misadventure, and Fitz would figure that out soon enough for himself. But what could they do next? She slowly began to worry about his absence. Irene’s question nagged at her as well. How could such different people be together? Linda thought about Fitz’s lust for adventure and her own caution; his idiosyncratic relationship with the truth, and her cultivated honesty. His tendency toward improvisation, and hers toward responsibility. Did those qualities complement or contradict each other?
As Linda brooded, she heard footsteps in front of the hut, and then someone fumbling at the door. So, Fitz had drunk the last of their money. Anger rose inside her.
She had no doubt that it was Fitz who entered the darkened room in a draft of cold air, reeking of beer and pipe smoke. Amy would have barked at a stranger. Linda was wondering if she should complain to her husband or if she should pretend to be asleep, but then she saw him lean over her and begin to scatter fistfuls of paper money over her and Amy’s heads. The dog left the mattress indignantly.
“Wake up, Lindy! Lookie here, your husband found a vein of gold!”
Linda looked around in confusion and sat up. She smelled the beer on Fitz’s breath as he kissed her, but he didn’t actually seem very drunk. He told her all about his futile search for gold as though it had been a great joke.
“You should have seen old Sandy’s face when the boulder cracked into a thousand pieces, and nothing was under it but a few grubs!”
“Then how did you get this?” Linda said, collecting the bills. “It’s at least ten pounds.”
Fitz grinned at her. “Blackjack. They were playing in the pub. And, well, I’m very good at cards.” He puffed out his chest proudly.
Linda raised an eyebrow. As far as she knew, blackjack was largely a game of chance.
“That’s good,” she said. “We need the money. But, Fitz, it can’t go on like this. You’ve seen for yourself that there’s no gold to be found here.”
Fitz laughed and took her in his arms. “We haven’t found any gold yet! Sweetheart, that’s how life is. One day you win, one day you lose. The trick is to be able to deal with both. To be happy, Lindy, with money or without it. It always works out somehow. And so far, you haven’t had to go hungry, have you?”
Linda bit her lip. She didn’t like the “so far” part. Besides, didn’t one need a little more than a full stomach to be happy?
As though he’d read her mind, Fitz began to kiss and fondle her. “You worry too much,” he murmured. “You ask too many questions.”
Linda gave herself up to his caresses, feeling guilty. As before, he skillfully brought her to climax, but his member barely hardened. Was she doing something wrong? Didn’t he love her? Or was she just being ungrateful? Perhaps he was holding back because he knew a child was the last thing they needed at the moment. Linda tried to convince herself of that as she lay next to him after their lovemaking.
Perhaps she really did worry too much. Maybe she just had to be more lighthearted. Linda tried to push all of her dark thoughts aside. Starting tomorrow, she would be more like Fitz. She would try to be happy with what she had.
Chapter 39
At the beginning, Franz had been happy at the missionary station in Opotiki. Carl Voelkner, the station’s director, had welcomed him with open arms and brotherly love. Voelkner and his wife, Emma, were extraordinarily friendly, warmhearted people, and dramatically different from the hard, God-fearing folk Franz had grown up with. Actually, Franz wondered how such a gentle man had managed to create such a flourishing mission. The Te Whakatohea tribe seemed to idolize the ordained missionary, and had joyfully built a church and a school with his encouragement. Almost all their children were baptized and learning English. Money always came from somewhere, although Voelkner wasn’t particularly skilled in economic matters. Franz, who had immediately taken over his bookkeeping, was appalled at the state of it. But the man had more experience when it came to saving souls. He had been a missionary in New Zealand for over fifteen years, and director of the station in Opotiki for four.
The conditions here were ideal for Franz to use his talents to serve God without having to face his fears. The Te Whakatohea were not at all dangerous, but obedient and eager to learn. The church services were led by Voelkner, so Franz didn’t need to give sermons. Instead, Voelkner happily turned over the management of the missionary school to his new colleague, and Franz realized that he truly enjoyed teaching. He did everything he could to awaken the students’ interest and inspire them to perform well. He would never have admitted it, but teaching soon became more important to him than his faith.
Franz thought about his sister Ida’s warm memories of their old schoolmaster in Raben Steinfeld, and decided to search for some of the stories that Master Brakel had captivated his students with back then. For the first time, Franz read books other than the Bible. He lost himself in Homer’s Odyssey and The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, and followed along with Captain Cook on his Voyages. Later, he read aloud to his students from the books and was pleased when the children could hardly wait for the next chapter, zealously trying to read it themselves. He’d never been able to inspire them that way with biblical stories. The Maori had originally been a nomadic, seafaring people. Sagas set on the ocean interested his students far more than stories about Israelites wandering the desert.
But mathematics was even closer to Franz’s heart. Numbers had always fascinated him. He had been better at it than all of his classmates. Unfortunately, that had been just as undesirable at the seminary as it had been in Hahndorf. Finally, the young man had found a book about the economic management of church offerings and taught himself some financial skills.
For Franz, the subject was not only interesting but also extremely useful, and he yearned to pass on his knowledge to his students. The young missionary tried to acquaint them with arithmetic, but had to fight against a lack of interest. The Whakatohea tribe wasn’t very wealthy, and no one in the mission had tried to teach them the art of doing business. They lived traditionally, from basic farming, fishing, and hunting. Anything they desired beyond that, such as Western clothing, seeds, or livestock, they received in the form of charity. This ensured that they’d always be grateful to the mission and to Voelkner.
Since Franz’s students had never had a single penny in their pockets, they found arithmetic abstract, and for a time, the young man couldn’t think of any way to motivate them to learn. But then he caught several of the older students attempting to play blackjack. Of course Franz confiscated the cards immediately and talked to the children about the dangers of gambling, but then he realized that each card showed numbers.
Reluctantly, he asked an old prospector who had found refuge at the mission how much arithmetic was necessary to play cards. Finally, he spent a night praying, begged God for forgiveness in advance, and then took the cards to the next lesson. It was a complete success. The children were suddenly enthusiastic about sums, and turned themselves inside out laughing when someone carelessly took a card that brought their total over twenty-one. Voelkner, who had no idea what was happening, scolded the young teacher. There was so much laughter in Franz’s classroom that he assumed the students weren’t learning.
Teaching also helped Franz understand Cat and Chris and Karl and Ida a little better. He had become mellower through the work with the children and Carl Voelkner’s gentle guidance. He was no longer thoughtless about boring listeners with endless prayers, knowing how important it was not to lose his students’ a
ttention first thing in the morning.
Raben Steinfeld and Hahndorf slowly fell away from Franz. But he kept in contact with Ida via letters, and of course he thought of Linda. His young niece haunted his dreams night after night. He remembered her laugh all too well, her bright voice, and her understanding and patience, even when all the others at Rata Station had grown irritated with him. His memories of Linda inspired him to answer Ida’s letters diligently, even when he didn’t really have anything new to say. Ida kept him informed about the girls, and he heard about the loss of Cat and Chris. Of course he prayed dutifully for them. He also heard about Jane’s treacherous behavior. He even wrote a reprimanding letter to her, but didn’t receive an answer.
In her last letter, Ida had told him about Linda’s marriage, which sent Franz spiraling into a whirlwind of conflicting feelings. He should be happy for her and actually for himself as well, because now hopefully thoughts of her would no longer tempt him. He must never awaken from a dream about her with an erection again! On the other hand, he grieved his loss, and worried terribly about her safety in the goldfields of Otago.
Franz didn’t have great trust in Joe Fitzpatrick. He remembered very well how the young man had made a fool of him in Christchurch. He would have wished for a more reliable, stable partner for Linda, especially since Ida herself seemed uneasy about the match. Franz prayed for his beloved niece whenever he had the time and the inspiration. Unfortunately, that was ever more rarely the case, since one catastrophe after another had cast a shadow over the peaceful world of the missionary station.
Franz’s peaceful life, his studies, and the laughter in his lessons came to an end with the war that raged through Taranaki and Waikato. At first, nothing was noticeable at the station. As before, everyone went about their daily work. The fields were tilled, and the Maori christened their children. But then things began to bubble beneath the calm surface. In the iwis on the east coast, people were arguing about whether it was their duty to support other friendly tribes in the war zone.
