The Luminaries

by Eleanor Catton

  ‘I’m thinking to write my old friend Adrian a letter.’

  ‘Yes, do,’ said Mrs. Wells. ‘And I shall make some inquiries of my own.’

  ‘The insurance money did come through. Gascoigne was as good as his word.’

  Presently she said, ‘Let’s to bed.’

  ‘You’ve had a trying day.’

  ‘A very trying day.’

  ‘It’ll all come out right, in the end.’

  ‘She’ll get what she deserves,’ said Mrs. Wells. ‘I should also like to get what I deserve, Francis.’

  ‘It’s dreary for you, waiting.’

  ‘Frightfully.’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘Are you not tired of it also?’

  ‘Well … I cannot show you off in the street as I would like.’

  ‘How would you show me off?’

  Carver did not reply to this; after a short silence he said, low, ‘You’ll be Mrs. Carver soon.’

  ‘I have set my sights upon it,’ said Lydia Wells, and then nobody spoke for a long time.

  EQUINOX

  In which the lovers sleep through much commotion.

  George Shepard directed Sook Yongsheng’s body to be brought into his private study at the Police Camp and laid out on the floor. The blacking on the man’s chin and throat seemed all the more gruesome in death; Mrs. George, as the body was brought in, breathed very deeply, as though steadying herself internally against a wind. Cowell Devlin, arriving from the Police Camp gaol-house, looked down at the body in shock. The hatter perfectly recalled the hermit, Crosbie Wells, who had been laid out in this very way, two months prior—on the very same sheet of muslin, in fact, his lips slightly parted, one eye showing a glint of white where the lids had not been properly closed. It was a moment before Devlin realised who the dead man really was.

  ‘The shot was mine,’ said Shepard, calmly. ‘He was drawing his pistol on Carver. Meaning to shoot him in the back, through the window. I caught him just in time.’

  Devlin found his voice at last. ‘You couldn’t have—disarmed him?’

  ‘No,’ said Shepard. ‘Not in the moment. It was his life or Carver’s.’

  Margaret Shepard let out a sob.

  ‘But I don’t understand,’ Devlin said, glancing at her, and then back at Shepard. ‘What was he doing, drawing a pistol on Carver?’

  ‘Perhaps you might clear up the chaplain’s confusion, Margaret,’ said George Shepard, addressing his wife, who sobbed a second time. ‘Reverend, I’ll be wanting you to dig another grave.’

  ‘Surely his body ought to be sent home to his people,’ Devlin said, frowning.

  ‘This one has no people,’ said Shepard.

  ‘How do you know that?’ said Devlin.

  ‘Again,’ said Shepard, ‘perhaps you ought to ask my wife.’

  ‘Mrs. Shepard?’ said Devlin, uncertainly.

  Margaret Shepard gasped and covered her face with her hands.

  Shepard turned to her. ‘Compose yourself,’ he said. ‘Don’t be a child.’

  The woman took her hands from her face at once. ‘Forgive me, Reverend,’ she whispered, without looking at him. Her face was very white.

  ‘That’s quite all right,’ said Devlin, frowning. ‘You’re in shock, that’s all. Perhaps you ought to lie down.’

  ‘George,’ she whispered.

  ‘I consider that you did the ethical thing today,’ the gaoler said, staring at her. ‘I commend you for it.’

  At this Mrs. Shepard’s face crumpled. She clapped her hands over her mouth, and ran from the room.

  ‘My apologies,’ said the gaoler to Devlin, when she was gone. ‘My wife has a volatile temperament, as you can see.’

  ‘I do not fault her,’ Devlin said. The relations between Shepard and his wife troubled him extremely, but he knew better than to give voice to his fears. ‘It is very natural to feel overcome in the presence of the dead. All the more so, if one has a personal history with the deceased.’

  Shepard was staring down at Sook Yongsheng’s body. ‘Devlin,’ he said after a moment, looking up, ‘will you share a drink with me?’

  Devlin was surprised: the gaoler had never made such an invitation before. ‘I would be honoured,’ he said, still speaking carefully. ‘But perhaps we might go into the parlour … or out onto the porch, where we will not disturb Mrs. Shepard’s rest.’

  ‘Yes.’ Shepard went to his liquor cabinet. ‘Do you have a taste for brandy, or for whisky? I have both.’

  ‘Well,’ Devlin said, surprised again, ‘it’s been an awfully long time since I had a drop of whisky. Some whisky would be very nice.’

  ‘Kirkliston is what I have,’ said Shepard, plucking out the bottle, and holding it up. ‘It’s tolerable stuff.’ He stacked two glasses, swept them up into his great hand, and gestured for Devlin to open the door.

  The Police Camp courtyard was deserted, and chilly in the dark. All the buildings opposite were shuttered, their inhabitants abed; the wind had dropped at sundown, and it was almost perfectly quiet, the silence like the surface of a pond. The only sound came from the moths bumping against the glass globe that hung in a bracket beside the cottage door. There came a fizz of light each time a moth spiralled down into the flame, and then a dusty, acrid smell, as its body burned.

  Shepard set out the glasses on the banister rail, and poured them both a measure.

  ‘Margaret was my brother’s wife,’ he said, handing one of the glasses to Devlin, and draining the other. ‘My older brother. Jeremy. I married her after Jeremy died.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Devlin murmured, accepting the glass, and holding the liquor to his nose. The gaoler had been too modest: the whisky was more than tolerable. In Hokitika a bottle of Kirkliston cost eighteen shillings, and double that whenever spirits were scarce.

  ‘The White Horse Saloon,’ the gaoler was saying. ‘That was the name of the place. A dockside tavern at Darling Harbour. He was shot through the temple.’

  Devlin sipped at his whisky. The taste was smoky and slightly musty; it put him in mind of cured meats, and new books, and barnyards, and cloves.

  ‘So I married his wife,’ Shepard went on, pouring himself another measure. ‘It was the moral thing to do. I am not like my brother, Reverend, neither in temperament nor in taste. He was a dissolute. I do not mean to commend myself by contrast, but the difference between us was very often remarked. It had been remarked since our childhoods. I knew virtually nothing of his marriage to Margaret. She was a barmaid. She was not a beauty, as you know. But I married her. I did the dutiful thing. I married her, and provided for her, in her loss, and together we waited for the trial.’

  Devlin nodded mutely, staring at his whisky, turning the small glass around in his hand. He was thinking of Sook Yongsheng, lying cold on the floor inside—his chin and throat smeared with bootblack; his eyebrows thickened, like a clown.

  ‘Poor, brutish Jeremy,’ Shepard said. ‘I never admired him, and to my knowledge, he never admired me. He was a terrible brawler. I expected that one of his brawls would turn fatal, sooner or later; they happened often enough. When I first learned that he had been murdered, I wasn’t terribly surprised.’

  He drained his glass again, and refilled it. Devlin waited for him to go on.

  ‘It was a Johnny Chinaman who did it. Jeremy had kicked him about in the street, shamed him most likely. The chink came back to seek redress. Found my brother sleeping off a bottle in a rented room above the tavern. Picked up Margaret’s pistol from beside his bed, put the muzzle to his temple, and that was that. Then he tried to run, of course, but he was stupid about it. He didn’t get further than the edge of the quay. He was tripped up by a sergeant, and thrown in gaol that very night. The trial was scheduled for six weeks later.’

  Again Shepard drained his glass. Devlin was surprised; he had never seen the gaoler drink before, except at mealtimes, or as medicine. Perhaps the death of Ah Sook had unsettled him.

  ‘The trial ought to have been stra
ightforward,’ the gaoler went on, pouring himself a fourth measure. His face had become rather flushed. ‘First, of course, the suspect was a chink. Second, he had ample provocation to wish my brother harm. Third, he had not a word of English to defend himself. There was no doubt in anybody’s minds that the chink was guilty. They’d all heard the shot go off. They’d all seen him running. But then comes Margaret Shepard into the witness box. My new wife, don’t forget. We’ve been married less than a month. She sits down, and this is what she says. My husband wasn’t murdered by that Chinaman, she says. My husband was killed by his own hand, and I know it, because I witnessed his suicide myself.’

  Devlin wondered whether Margaret Shepard was listening, from inside.

  ‘There wasn’t a word of truth to it,’ the gaoler said. ‘Complete fabrication. She lied. Under oath. She defiled her late husband’s memory—my brother’s memory—by calling him a suicide … and all to protect that worthless chink from the punishment that he deserved. He would have swung without a doubt. He should have swung. It was his crime, and it went unpunished.’

  ‘How can you be sure that your wife wasn’t telling the truth?’ said Devlin.

  ‘How can I be sure?’ Shepard reached for the bottle again. ‘My brother was not a suicidal type,’ he said. ‘That’s how. You’ll have another?’

  ‘Please,’ Devlin said, holding out his glass. It was rare that he tasted whisky.

  ‘I can see that you’re doubtful, Reverend,’ said Shepard, as he poured, ‘but there’s just no other way to say it. Jeremy was not a suicidal type. No more than I am.’

  ‘But what reason could Mrs. Shepard have had—to lie, under oath?’

  ‘She was fond of him,’ said Shepard, shortly.

  ‘This Chinaman,’ said Devlin.

  ‘Yes,’ said Shepard. ‘The late Mr. Sook. They had a history together. You can be sure I didn’t see that coming. By the time I found out, however, she was already my wife.’

  Devlin sipped again at his whisky. They were silent for a long while, looking out at the shadowed forms of the buildings opposite.

  Presently Devlin said, ‘You haven’t mentioned Francis Carver.’

  ‘Oh—Carver,’ said Shepard, swirling his glass. ‘Yes.’

  ‘What is his association with Mr. Sook?’ said Devlin, to prompt him.

  ‘They had a history,’ said Shepard. ‘Some bad blood. A trading dispute.’

  This much Devlin knew already. ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’ve been keeping a watch on Sook since Darling Harbour. I got word this morning that he had bought a pistol from the outfitters on Camp-street, and I applied for a warrant for his arrest at once.’

  ‘You would arrest a man simply for purchasing a pistol?’

  ‘Yes, if I knew what he meant to do with it. Sook had sworn to take Carver’s life. He’d sworn to it. I knew that when he finally caught up with Carver, it would be murder or nothing. As soon as I heard about the pistol I called the alarm. Staked out the Palace Hotel. Sent word ahead to Carver, letting him know. Gave the message to the bellmen, to cry along the road. I was one step behind him—until the very last.’

  ‘And in the last?’ said Devlin, after a moment.

  Shepard fixed him with a cold look. ‘I told you what happened.’

  ‘It was his life or Carver’s,’ Devlin said.

  ‘I acted inside the law,’ Shepard said.

  ‘I’m sure you did,’ Devlin said.

  ‘I had a warrant for his arrest.’

  ‘I do not doubt it.’

  ‘Revenge,’ said Shepard firmly, ‘is an act of jealousy, not of justice. It is a selfish perversion of the law.’

  ‘Revenge is certainly selfish,’ Devlin agreed, ‘but I doubt it has very much to do with the law.’

  He finished his whisky, and Shepard, after a long moment, did the same.

  ‘I’m very sorry about your brother, Mr. Shepard,’ Devlin said, placing his glass on the banister.

  ‘Yes, well,’ said Shepard, as he corked the whisky bottle, ‘that was years ago. What’s done is done.’

  ‘Some things are never done,’ said the chaplain. ‘We do not forget those whom we have loved. We cannot forget them.’

  Shepard glanced at him. ‘You speak as though from experience.’

  Devlin did not answer at once. After a pause he said, ‘If I have learned one thing from experience, it is this: never underestimate how extraordinarily difficult it is to understand a situation from another person’s point of view.’

  The gaoler only grunted at this. He watched as Devlin descended the steps into the shadows of the courtyard. At the horse-post the chaplain turned and said, ‘I’ll be at Seaview first thing in the morning, to begin digging the grave.’

  Shepard had not moved. ‘Good night, Cowell.’

  ‘Good night, Mr. Shepard.’

  The gaoler watched until Devlin had rounded the side of the gaol-house, and then he pinched the empty glasses between his finger and his thumb, picked up the bottle, and went inside.

  The gaol-house door stood partway open, and the duty sergeant was sitting just inside the entrance, his rifle laid across his knees. He asked with his eyebrows whether the chaplain meant to step inside.

  ‘They’re all abed, I’m afraid,’ he said, his voice low.

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Devlin, also speaking quietly. ‘I’ll only be a moment.’

  The bullet had been removed from Staines’s shoulder, and his wound had been stitched. His filthy clothes had been cut from his body, and the dirt washed from his face and hair; he had been dressed in moleskin trousers and a loose twill shirt, donated by Tiegreen’s Hardware on promise of payment the following day. Throughout all these ministrations the boy had drifted in and out of consciousness, mumbling Anna’s name; when he became aware, however, that the physician meant to install him at the Criterion Hotel opposite the Police Camp, his eyes snapped open at once. He would not leave Anna. He would not go anywhere that Anna did not go. He put up such a fuss to this effect that at length the physician agreed to placate him. A bed was made up for him at the gaol-house, next to where Anna lay, and it was decided that Staines would be manacled like the others, in the interests of preventing disharmony. The boy consented to the manacle without protest, lay down, and reached out a hand to touch Anna’s cheek. After a time his eyes closed, and he slept.

  Since then he had not woken. He and Anna lay facing each other, Staines lying on his left hip, and Anna, on her right, both of them with their knees drawn up to their chests, Staines with one hand tucked beneath his bandaged shoulder, Anna with one hand tucked beneath her cheek. She must have turned towards him, some time in the night: her left arm was flung outward, her fingers reaching, her palm turned down.

  Devlin came closer. He felt overcome—though by what kind of sentiment, he did not exactly know. George Shepard’s whisky had warmed his chest and stomach—there was a blurry tightness in his skull, a blurry heat behind his eyes—but the gaoler’s story had made him feel wretched, even chilled. Perhaps he was about to weep. It would feel good to weep. What a day it had been. His heart was heavy, his limbs exhausted. He looked down at Anna and Emery, their mirrored bodies, facing in. They were breathing in tandem.

  So they are lovers, he thought, looking down at them. So they are lovers, after all. He knew it from the way that they were sleeping.

  FIRST POINT OF ARIES

  In which a steamer arrives in Port Chalmers from Sydney, and two passengers are roused before the rest.

  Anna Wetherell’s first glimpse of New Zealand was of the rocky heads of the Otago peninsula: mottled cliffs that dropped sharply into the white foam of the water, and above them, a rumpled cloak of grasses, raked by the wind. It was just past dawn. A pale fog was rising from the ocean, obscuring the far end of the harbour, where the hills became blue, and then purple, as the inlet narrowed, and closed to a point. The sun was still low in the East, throwing a slick of yellow light over the water, and lending an orange tint to
the rocks on the Western shore. The city of Dunedin was not yet visible, tucked as it was behind the elbow of the harbour, and there were no dwellings or livestock on this stretch of coastline; Anna’s first impression was of a lonely throat of water, a clear sky, and a rugged land untouched by human life or industry.

  The first sighting had occurred in the grey hours that preceded the dawn, and so Anna had not witnessed the smudge on the horizon growing and thickening to form the contour of the peninsula, as the steamer came nearer and nearer to the coast. She had been woken, some hours later, by a strange cacophony of unfamiliar birdcalls, from which she deduced, rightly, that they must be nearing land at last. She eased herself from her berth, taking care not to wake the other women, and fixed her hair and stockings in the dark. By the time she came up the iron ladder to the deck, wrapping her shawl about her shoulders, the Fortunate Wind was rounding the outer heads of the harbour, and the peninsula was all around her—the relief sudden and impossible, after long weeks at sea.

  ‘Magnificent, aren’t they?’

  Anna turned. A fair-haired boy in a felt cap was leaning against the portside rail. He gestured to the cliffs, and Anna saw the birds whose rancorous call had roused her from her slumber: they hung in a cloud about the cliff-face, wheeling, turning, and catching the light. She came forward to the rail. They looked to her like very large gulls, their wings black on the tops, and white beneath, their heads perfectly white, their beaks stout and pale. As she watched, one made a low pass in front of the boat, its wingtip skimming the surface of the water.

  ‘Beautiful,’ she said. ‘Are they petrels—or gannets, maybe?’

  ‘They’re albatrosses!’ The boy was beaming. ‘They’re real albatrosses! Just wait till this fellow comes back. He will, in a moment; he’s been circling the ship for some time. Good Lord, what a feeling that must be—to fly! Can you imagine it?’

  Anna smiled. She watched as the albatross glided away from them, turned, and began climbing on the wind.