Part 2 (2/2)

'You beat her for refusing to sleep with you. But my notes say that the Lin man was beaten by us, so badly that he was taken to hospital, so we might call that quits as well. Apart from that, we seem to be clean.' Mr Hu allowed his scroll to roll up. 'And that concludes our settlement,' he said. 'Allow me the honour of inviting you to share my most inadequate noon rice.'

Lin was surprised.

'No, Mr Hu, wait. There is one more matter. What happened to the Lin couriers, carrying four hundred ounces of gold, who were presumed ambushed and murdered by the Hu family in July 1857 at Golden Point, near Castlemaine?'

Mr Hu opened the scroll again and scanned it hastily but thoroughly, using a magnifying gla.s.s on the faded parts.

'I can find no record of such an event,' he said at last. 'Someone may have murdered the Lin couriers, Mr Lin, but it was not the Hu family.'

The smooth current of the exchange was broken. The scroll curled up from Lin Chung's weakened hand. He stared at the bland face of his erstwhile enemy. It was unthinkable that he should lie. And he had no reason to lie anyway. This was a reglement des comptes and meant to be a final settlement. Keeping something back would vitiate all agreements and continue the feud.

'Then what can have happened to them?' asked Lin at last.

'Come and have lunch with me, Mr Lin,' said Hu, taking Lin's arm. 'And this time tomorrow we shall talk to Great Great Grandmother Hu Ta. She was one of the few Chinese women on the goldfields, and like all the Hu women'-here he winced slightly-'she has a very, very good memory.'

'Thank you,' said Lin Chung. 'I will be delighted to partake of her wisdom.'

'Enlightened, perhaps,' said Mr Hu, leading the way into a sumptuous dining room and the scent of Peking duck. 'But probably not delighted.'

In the thirteenth year of the reign of the glorious Emperor Lord of the Dragon Throne Kwong Sui of the Ching Dynasty in the season of Autumn, festival of Ancestral Shrines.

To his younger sister Sung Mai the elder brother Sung Ma sends greetings. The s.h.i.+p is crammed with people. I find that the only place to contemplate the moon is far astern and I come here when I can. The s.h.i.+pmaster does not like coolies on his deck. Fortunately in the first week I cured him of a stubborn case of the itch and his boy of a fever with the bark infusion and now he allows me to walk where I will.

So I sit on the after deck with the s.h.i.+p's cat, watching the moon and trying to make up poems. It is very exciting to be going to another world. We have some here who have also been to the First Gold Mountain, California, where they were very badly treated and finally expelled from the city of San Francisco. They tell how some of their number were murdered by the other miners. But there was gold there and if there is gold in this Australia the Lin family mean to have it. You know how we used to joke about the Sze Yup and their coa.r.s.e speech and their greed? It was all true but they are very determined. If any succeed, it will be them.

Raising my head, I look at the moon.

Lowering my head, I think of my home.

I hope you are well, little sister, and that mother's cough has cleared up. Continue with your studies and soon there may be a Gold Mountain Uncle returning with his sleeves full of nuggets to buy you a rich husband.

CHAPTER THREE.

This skull was Yorick's skull.

William Shakespeare Hamlet Phryne went decorously to church with Eliza, Jane and Ruth. She did not often attend but it did make a soothing start to the day. Eliza, instead of sniffing at the youth of the building and the primitive nature of the wors.h.i.+p, sank quietly to her knees in a back pew and spent the whole service engrossed in something which looked surprisingly like prayer. Phryne spared a moment to wonder what had converted her acidulated b.i.t.c.h of a sister into a nun and a.s.sumed that if female problems or maybe demonic possession were to blame for the bad moods, then maybe angelic possession accounted for this good one. She really didn't care. Eliza was a sad disappointment to Phryne.

'That sermon,' ventured Ruth as they left the church and came into suns.h.i.+ne hot enough to char-grill an ox.

'Mmm?' asked Phryne absently.

'He said that we were emerging from barbarism into civilisation.'

'Did he?' asked Phryne, settling her cloche and wis.h.i.+ng that she had brought a broad-brimmed hat. And a camel. And was on the way to a suitable oasis, with resident sheik and a bucket of sherbert.

'You weren't listening, were you?' accused Ruth, who would have appreciated the sheik.

'No, I was wondering about the man in the Ghost Train,' confessed Phryne.

'So was I,' agreed Jane. 'It was just the usual sermon. Like that one on Brotherly Love. I've heard it so often I could recite it.'

As she showed signs of doing this, Phryne said hastily, 'We'll talk about the man in the Ghost Train this afternoon, when we go to see Dr Treasure. He has an old friend visiting, an expert on Egyptian mummies. He ought to be good value.'

'A G.o.dless occupation for a Sunday,' commented Eliza. The piety, Phryne noticed, had quite worn off.

'Yes, so you will have to occupy yourself in good works and golden opportunities while we are gone. What were you going to say about the sermon, Ruth?'

'Barbarism. He said that we have left behind the barbarism of the past. And I was thinking, Miss Crich said that the Great War killed more men than any other war-not Alexander, not the Romans or a.s.syrians, no one killed more people than... well, us. Our governments. Aren't we barbaric still?'

'Oh, yes,' said Phryne with great feeling. 'The only differ-ence is that we are trying not to be. We at least know what barbarism is, and we reject it. That has to count for something. But not,' she added, breaking into the fast scamper of one wearing a tight-fitting skirt, 'to any great degree of success.'

Eliza, she noticed, was running beside her. And prudent Eliza, wis.h.i.+ng to protect her milk and roses, carried a sunshade. It was frilled and delicate as befitted a lady's accessory for a warm summer's day, but it had a steel shaft and handle.

'And how do you expect the horse to get up if you keep beating it?' Phryne asked a carter, who was flailing at a fallen horse's eyes with a buggy whip.

The carter sighted Phryne's small figure and growled an obscenity. He continued to beat the horse, which was so pinned under the remains of the cart that it could not move.

Jane was interested, warm-hearted Ruth was aghast. Both of them took a step backwards to allow Phryne room to move. Eliza did not.

'See here, my man,' she began. Her aristocratic tone attracted the carter's full wrath and he came up from his stooping position roaring. Eliza was caught by the arm and uttered a ladylike shriek.

Phryne dodged around him, removed his whip with a quick twist, and called to an enthralled crowd, 'Come and heave this cart off that poor horse while I reason with this gentleman. There will be s.h.i.+llings if this is done very quickly,' she added as the carter dragged Eliza towards him.

Then something astonis.h.i.+ng happened. The aristocrat, daughter of at least a hundred distinguished earls, lost her manner, her accent, and her temper. The carter found himself being dragged off balance by a fury who snarled through bared teeth, 'Shut your filthy mouth! If you call me that again, you bludger, I'll knock out your eye with this sunshade! Now take your hands off me! Who asked you to manhandle a lady, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d?'

Phryne, energised and warmed by the return of a small sister who had flanked her indomitably by the pig bins of the Victoria market, poked the whip into the middle of the driver's unsavoury back. He was a big, red-faced, broken-toothed bully, greasy with breakfast sausages and stinking of beer. Phryne knew the type.

'Let my sister go,' said Phryne clearly. 'She means it, you know. And that sunshade is London made. Steel. Which eye don't you need?' The carter released Beth, who shook herself like a cat ruffled by unauthorised handling. Phryne did not allow the carter to turn around. Her gentle voice continued from behind his back, which was disconcerting. 'Now we are going to get your horse up, and you are going to behave, and the Inspectors of Cruelty will be round in the morning to make sure that you don't beat the poor beast to death because we have embarra.s.sed you. a.s.suming it can still trudge, of course. How are the men going, Beth?'

'They've heaved the cart off,' said Beth. 'They've got it onto four hoofs again. It's favouring the off-fore, but nothing's broken as far as I can see.'

'Name and address?' asked Phryne, and wrote down the grudgingly given details in a small notebook. 'You may turn around now,' she told him.

When the carter realised that he had been bailed up and reproved by a woman barely over five feet tall in a cloche hat, he swelled with outrage, remembered the sunshade, and released his beery breath.

'Good, lead it carefully, now. Thank you, gentlemen,' said Phryne, distributing s.h.i.+llings with a liberal hand to her stalwart helpers. 'Now, Beth, I think we could do with a nice cup of tea.'

'b.u.g.g.e.r that,' said Beth, fanning herself with her straw hat. 'We need a drink.'

Phryne and her sister walked arm in arm along Acland Street. The sun shone. The breeze blew the scent of ozone and Turkey lolly and the vinegar scent of best black silks brought out for Sunday. Phryne was suddenly very happy.

'Good afternoon, Dr Treasure. Such a bore to bother you on a Sunday afternoon,' apologised Phryne. The room looked just as it always had. Crowded. Shelves bore books, anatomical specimens far too vividly displayed in gin-clear alcohol, a pair of crossed oars with a kangaroo skin behind them and a rather out of place teddy bear. He was a battered, humorous and much loved bear with an air of slightly cynical world weariness and someone was going to miss him fairly soon. And in all probability, they would then scream. Dr Treasure's family occupied the parts of his house without, Phryne hoped, inter-esting viscera in jars, and he had two small children much given to vociferation.

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