Chapter 24

Lies

Max's eyes had flicked, almost involuntarily, from the coin in Wynyard's hand to Jasmine’s face. She wore an expression that was easy to recall but hard to read; maybe triumph, secret triumph, but not surprise, though how she could not be surprised was itself surprising. No one could have expected such a find.

Professor Wynyard took a long moment to compose himself, and while he did, the coin was spun over and over in his dusty fingers. Then it slipped into his waistcoat pocket and was gone.

“Mr Skilton. First thing Monday morning. My office,” he said in a distant voice. “We need to talk a little more.”

Max met the Professor's eyes and saw in them a profound confusion; he was trying hard to make sense of the nonsense discovery. The only lead that he had was the fact that Max had presented him with a similar coin, very recently.

Feeling suddenly exposed Max glanced instinctively at Jasmine again. She was looking back at him with guarded suspicion. Max quickly gave the Professor a small business-like nod.

The return train rattled its way back toward Collingwood. In the two passenger carriages students huddled together to talk or watch the bush and mudflats slip by outside. Max tried hard to concentrate on what Wiremu was saying.

"Not particularly exciting for me either,” was his first reflection on the day at Paturau with his Māori Studies class. “All a bit simple really and no new ideas, Māori Basics 101. We covered it all; Paturau hupu being here, logically, because of the abundance of fresh and salt water food, the mild climate for gardening and its place on the Pounamu trail.”

“Guess you could have stayed home for that,” muttered Max, trying to dismiss the image of the golden coin from his mind.

“We did cross over to Karaka, in that little steam boat, and Evans marched us down the coast track to look at an old fence."

"An old fence?" repeated Max. "I hope it was worth the walk."

"Not really."

"What was the point?"

"Evans was convinced that the timber in the fence must have been scavenged from the old Pā's palisade wall. He reckoned that the raiders dragged it down there to fence off a garden or something."

"What did you think?"

Wiremu gave a laugh.

"I told him it was more likely to have been a slave pen or a cage to keep the captives fresh for dinner! He was not too happy about that idea. I think I offended his English sensibilities. Apparently not ready to accept the finer points of our history."

"You seem comfortable enough," observed Max.

"To him it's all academic. Me not so much. But I've gotten used to the old stories. Anyway, there was something strange about this fence. I couldn't for the life of me tell you what kind of wood it was made out of."

"That is strange oh reader of wood," teased Max, recalling their earlier conversation outside the master cabinetmakers, Anton Seuffert & Son. "Maybe Chinese would be a better third language."

"Oh I'll figure it out," laughed Wiremu. "It was very old. It'll just be something I haven't considered yet."

Professor Wynyard had sworn his students to immediate secrecy about the finding of the Chinese bowl and coin. It would be, he said, a necessary test of their future professionalism. His fears were two-fold; one, that every gold digger and treasure hunter in The Dominion would, on hearing the news, descend on Paturau and proceed to rip the precious archaeological site to pieces. The other was more delicate; how to suggest or even appear to be seen to be suggesting or even be seen to be associated with the suggestion, that New Zealand had been visited, before Cook or before even Tasman, by the Chinese. Wynyard was very concerned, due to an interest in his own career, about managing that piece of news.

On the return train trip, a small number of Archaeology students had found ways to discretely question Max as to why their Professor should request a first thing Monday morning meeting with him. But their questions had been light hearted, showing that they didn't believe that Max could be an expert on the coins of the antiquarian orient, but might be a teachers favourite. He had been able to turn them aside without too much trouble.

Jasmine had never approached, but Max imagined her eyes on him the whole time.

* * *

“Of course, it was not a midden heap,” continued the Professor, pacing about his office that following Monday. “But it was the intention of the hiders of the bowl and coin for any would-be finders to think it so, and thus abandon their search before unearthing the real treasure. Clever. It almost worked too.” Max, who was seated and the only other person present, thought this at least made sense.

There were three mysteries in Max's mind; the first had existed for him since the eve of the Chinese New Year, when that first brass coin had rolled from the murdered swordsman and come to rest against Harriet Leith's boot. The second was the question of how the gold coin had come to be hidden under the floor of a Māori hut. The third was about the possible connection between the two, for surely there had to be one.

“The bowl is a trade piece... from the same period as we discussed the other day... Ming Dynasty,” confirmed Wynyard, still pacing. “And the coin... well is the very same as the one you found, only days before, in a city-side junk shop!” Wynyard stopped his pacing and with eyebrows held high on his forehead in question, regarded Max.

“I’m sorry sir...” replied Max, shrugging. “I really don't understand any of it.”

The truth was more than a little complex and as Max turned it over in his mind fear gnawed at his insides. Even if he could convince Wynyard that the coin had belonged to a Chinese swordsman, who had been murdered by the gangster leaders of Chinatown, possibly because they believed he was an Imperial agent, and that the coin had then been given to the steam engineer Harriet Leith by the murderer's, drug dealing brother... what good would exposing that story do any of them? More importantly, what harm? Max couldn't shake Wang's warnings, that anyone entangled with the Tong was in danger!

Fong Wai Sung's face floated in Max's mind, on it was that same look that had so disturbed Max when he had spied him watching Harriet at the new year’s festival. Max shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

Wynyard gave an agitated hiss before continuing.

“Oh I did not wish for this! As I have said before; this is not my field. And, out of principle, I do try to avoid contact with the Chinese and their schemes."

"Quite," agreed Max, thinking of Wang. The Professor flopped down in his chair.

"I must say, with a little candour, that one having turned up in my class is almost too much!” Max wasn't surprised by such an attitude. It was more of the sort of thing that Sir Hugh would say.

“How so, sir?” he asked, playing innocent.

“Oh, they can't be trusted. Hard enough to understand them. Such ideologists, thousands blindly following along with what they are told. Never trust a man who can't think for himself. Imagine a million men who think as one! What they could achieve if they set their mind! What was it that old Boney said about China?”

Although Max thought that Wynyard was ranting and wished above anything else to be able to remove himself, he provided the requested quote from Napoleon;

"Let her sleep, for when she wakes, she will shake the world."

“Quite right too. You have to keep an eye on them. But these ones we have here are the worst type. Only the bottom of the barrel ends up here, outlaws, opium... and with them they bring their gangs and little emperors, all their evil!” Wynyard mopped his brow with a white handkerchief. “I'm sorry, I forget myself. Most unseemly. They are dangerous that's all.” He seemed to take hold of himself then and leaning forward on his desk he regarded Max closely. "But something tells me, Master Skilton, that you are not being entirely honest with me about that coin.” Max held his gaze. “I mean to say,” continued Wynyard. “What possessed you to take a rubbing of that particular brass coin in the first place?”

Max knew this was the weakness in his story. Why would anyone, perusing the shelves of an antique dealers, and finding a coin that held no significance to him, be moved to take it's rubbing? Wynyard hadn't questioned Max's motivation when it had seemed to be just idle curiosity. But that was before the gold version had been found. Now his earlier actions were cast in sudden suspicion, seeming well beyond coincidence. Although that was exactly what Max claimed, and at some level it was true. Max hadn't believed there was any more to the coin than.... well, he wasn't going to tell Professor Wynyard that, in the first, his interest in the brass coin had been an extension of his infatuation with Harriet Leith. That was too humiliating. Nor was he now going to reveal his new conclusions about both coins’ connection with Chinatown. Again, that felt too dangerous.

His new conclusions? Well, something he and Wiremu, under the watch of a very reluctant Wang, had cooked up together on the train home from Collingwood on the night of the field trip.

“I wonder,” Wiremu had said, with a slight shrug to illustrate a level of non-committal to his forthcoming wondering. “If the brass was some sort of copy, an identifier, something held by someone in search of the real thing.”

“Right!” Max had responded, warming up to the creative thinking. “Or what if it was a kind of charm… no a group symbol…like for membership in a guild or some such?!” Wang had sniffed at this and looked out of the window, distancing himself from the other two’s conversation.

“Yes!” Wiremu had agreed, leaning in to whisper enthusiastically. “The Guild of Coin Hunters!”

“The Tong of the Brazen Coin!”

This had brought Wang back into the talk with a jolt.

“Stop it will you!?” he’d snapped. “Ridiculous! How many Chinese treasure hunters do you know?!”

“Well, none. Of course.”

“Of course. Because such would be well advised to begin their hunting in such places where Chinese treasure is actually known to exist! Say in China!”

Wiremu and Max had tried to look bashful… for a moment... before Max gave up.

“So that’s a maybe?”

Max studied Professor Wynyard closely and for the hundredth time reviewed his options for possible extraction from this particular trap. It seemed best to keep lying.

“I must admit, to my shame,” he began. “That I have been a little false. And now I feel a measure coy... hearing your words and understanding the general sentiment within the Dominion... for I have as a friend, a Chinese. A good chap to a...”

“I see,” interrupted the Professor. “An understandable hesitation."

"You do? It is?"

"Friendship is unpredictable. And I would be ungentlemanly if I failed to admit that, as an individual, this Jasmine who is in our class, has indeed impressed me also, with work both scholarly and insightful. Though I will not retract my earlier comments based on the actions of only one or two of them. Likewise, Professor Buford-Bennet also speaks of a talented young Chinese man who attends his Accounting lectures.”

“Indeed,” reflected Max, covering his tracks. “I have likewise seen that fellow about campus.” He daren't say that this latter was the friend of whom he spoke and have Wynyard rushing off to interview Wang about the coin. For Wang had been very clear about his desire to have nothing to do with it.

“It was this friend,” continued Max. “Who took the rubbing from the coin. It stood out to him being a thing from his homeland and naturally he wondered if it possessed a value greater than that of the weight of brass from which it had been cast.”

Wynyard held his own counsel for a long moment, tapping his chin with his index finger.

“I can understand why you did not readily speak of your oriental acquaintance. An indiscretion I can overlook. Your purposes are not entirely different from my own reasons for withholding the discovery of this gold coin from the public.”

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“I don't think I understand, Sir.”

“Don't you? Let me be clear.” The professor leant forward to meet Max's eyes. “Things do not seem to go well in the Dominion for those who attach themselves too closely to the Chinese.”

“I see.” Max thought at once of Coval Leith and again of his friend, the chemist; Fong Wai Sung.

“And for that reason and the others noted, I would not recommend... as I believe you have already discerned for yourself... that you advertise your particular friendship.” Max didn't respond to that, for while he had no shame about his relationship with Wang, it was currently more important to remove himself from the risk of further exposure while he still could. Professor Wynyard let out a big sigh. “Let us wait and see what else comes out of the ground at Paturau. I spent the entire weekend reworking the plots but made no further discoveries of this nature. The third-year students will continue on this week.”

“Yes Sir. And again, Sir sorry about not speaking the whole truth on this matter.”

“No harm done Skilton. You had best get off to class.”

“Thank you Sir." Max stood to leave. "One last thing. May I inquire where the coin and bowl are now?”

“They are locked away safe in the Museum vaults.”

* * *

Later that same day Max stared at the back of Samson Rumbold's head. Ginger's ginger nut. He only shared two classes with that particular hothead; Ancient History and the current one; Latin. There were a lot of classical architects in the class, but there were a lot of everyone.

“Rumbold?” called Professor Vernon Isaacs, whom the student's referred to as Vergilius, from the ancient Virgil, when he wasn't listening.

“Third Declension, Sir,” answered Samson.

“Very good. Nox?”

“Night, Sir.”

“Excellent.”

Rumbold had proven to be rather adept at Latin, a result, Max guessed, from his long association with the language within architectural disciplines.

Ginger had with him his two near constant companions; Linton Conroy and Tancred Raxwrothy. Since discovering their names, Max had taken care to learn a little about each.

Linton Conroy was a non-descript youth with bad skin and dirty-blond hair. He had accompanied Rumbold though Marlborough College in Blenheim and come with him to Victoria. On the other hand Tancred Raxworthy was a tall, lean, athletic young man, with a gaunt face and thinning hair that hinted at early baldness. He decorated his chin with a small triangular goatee, a feature that gave him an appearance that seemed to suggest that he was someone of note. From what Max had observed in their shared fencing class Tancred Rawworthy had some skill with a blade.

Conroy and Raxworthy were also both students of classical architecture.

Other than noting the location of these three, directly in front of him, Max wasn't paying the lecture particular attention. He had too much else on his mind and the back of crowded Year One Latin was as good a place as any to think.

He needed to separate his own lies from the actual events of the last few weeks. What he knew for sure was that a Chinese man, newly arrived in Chinatin and said to be a government agent had been killed, while carrying a brass coin. That brass coin had turned out to be a copy of a gold coin that was, soon after, discovered under the floor of a long-destroyed Māori whare.

The events at Paturau had an effect on Max, and he hadn’t slept very well over the weekend. The high bush topped cliffs either side of the shallow river, the boom of the sea, the haze in the air, the sand and shells, squares cut in the turf, and the golden coin turning over and over in Wynyard's fingers, were his waking memories.

But when his eyes closed for sleep and his mind dropped away into its subconscious, he was visited by people. At first they crawled out of the cliffs, wandered in from the surrounding forest, then from the river and finally up out of the ground itself. They were Māori people, men, women and children. Max didn't have to look at them to know who they were. They were the massacred of Paturau.

Although they were dead from musket shot and taiaha blow, and some had been eaten, though he did not know how he knew this, they walked. As they rose and came forth they ignored him, turning instead north and wandered away, over Tai Hupu, Meroiti, Kaihoka, Wharariki, onto the sands of long Onetahua, called Farewell Spit. In a great procession they travelled its length before finally disappearing into the northern mist.

When this dream was finished, but sometimes before it, Max would see again the skull face of Mahuika. Sometimes she would open her mouth and blood would come forth, poisoning the river beside which she squatted. Other times flames would spill out, razing the forest through which she walked. Then Jasmine would come, but Max could never tell what she was doing or where she went. She would be in the shadows, then she would be gone. Often he could hear the drone of Wiremu's Purerehua.

“Skilton? Nox, third, singular?”

“Ah, yes,” spluttered Max, finding himself rudely pulled from his pondering. “Nox, noctis, nocti, noctem, nocte, nox and nocti.”

“Very good.”

Max also had more than passing Latin himself, due to his long association with Ornithology.

“Wilson,” continued Isaacs. “The night is a dim part of the day.”

“Nox pars... nox pars obscura diei est,” completed a student apparently called Wilson, to Isaacs' satisfaction.

“Sapientia magis auro desideranda.”

“Wisdom is more to be desired than gold,” replied the class together, chanting the University motto. Max let his mind wander again.

Did the Chinese government agent know that such a coin as he carried could be found in New Zealand? Is that why he was carrying it? Was he murdered? Was he murdered because of his search for the coin or for some other reason, such as being a government agent? If he was a victim of murder, who was the perpetrator? The Tong as Wang believed? Did the Tong know about the existence of such coins? Or did that secret die with the swordsman agent? Were there other agents? Were there other coins!? Did any danger remain for those associated with either coin? Wang thought so.

In the end Max couldn't know and that not knowing worried him, and that worry felt like a warning. It was subtle but he couldn't shake it. Maybe he didn't want to shake it, because it led him to a conclusion and a course of action that was not completely displeasing. A gentlemanly sense of something near noble or heroic bridged the gap, and the tipping point came when Harriet didn't appear for fencing class that next Wednesday.

* * *

Steamers café was busy with engineering students taking their early morning coffees, in small groups around tables or singularly behind the pages of the new days Argus. The smell of the brew lived up to its legendary status.

Max knew, that without an invite, he wasn't supposed to be here. But no one seemed to pay him any attention, as he stood scanning the tables for that one familiar face.

Finally, he saw, not Harriet, but her team reclining around a table. As he drew near, they likewise recognised him. In fact, the tall thin one with scruffy straw blonde hair actually rose as he approached and suddenly, with more than a little menace, demanded;

“Where have you been!!?”

Max took an involuntary step back.

“Ah! Here he is!” cried the short one... Tick, adopting a more friendly tone and rising to take Max by the arm. “Come take a walk with me Mr Skilton.” To his surprise Max found himself being led back to the main door. Tick called over his shoulder “Morris finish your breakfast.”

Once outside Tick released Max in order to walk by his side.

“What was that about?” Max asked at once.

“Ah. Well, Morris. All of us really, have been hoping to see you.”

“Really?" Max was more than a little surprised by that idea. "Here I am.”

“Quite.”

Max stopped walking.

“I have a message for Harriet.”

“Good,” responded Tick without reserve. “But unfortunately, and I mean this with sincerity, she isn't able to see you.”

“It doesn't matter.”

“Oh.”

Max was sure Tick looked disappointed at that.

“In fact it is probably easier this way.”

“I see.”

Tick was looking positively downcast now.

“If you can relay the message?”

“Of course.”

“A couple of weeks ago Harriet returned from a Chinese New Year festival in procession of a certain coin...” Tick nodded, and Max continued. “I believe it was made of...” Max left its substance unstated.... a quick truth test.

“Brass,” supplied Tick

“Indeed. You melted it down for solder I believe?” Tick nodded, looking somewhat puzzled at the shape Max's message was taking. Clearly he hadn’t given the coin a second thought since they had put it to practical use.

“This turns out to have been best. I took Harriet's rubbings of the coin and on investigation it appears that that coin and ones like it have become of interest to... how could I say? The Chinese Criminal underground.”

Sounds so stupid said out loud.

Tick was scratching his head and looking sceptically at Max. Max ignored him and continued to deliver his warning. “I guess that the message is this; if anyone comes asking about the coin, it would be in all of your interests to deny any knowledge of it.”

“That's it? That's your message for Harriet?” Tick looked disappointed and even a little desperate. Max felt more than a little foolish but hoped that Harriet would understand his meaning even if Tick didn't.

“Were you expecting something else?” he asked.

“Something else!? Yes! Completely!”

“Such as?” inquired Max, not hiding his confusion.

“Such as that you love Harriet with all your heart!”

“Pardon!?”

“I think you heard me.” There was a challenge in Tick's voice now.

Max had. But he could scarce believe that such a thing had been said out loud. His mouth hung open for a moment. Then he twisted it into a sneer.

“She has Gilbert Lavisham for that,” he spat.

“Max you don't know what's been going on!”

“No! Mr Tickham, it is you who do not know what has gone on!”

For surely Tick had no idea how close they had come, how he had offered Harriet his heart and how she had walked away with Gilbert Lavisham.

“Gilbert doesn't love anybody,” replied Tick, the force running back out of him again. But Max had turned and was walking away, leaving the Steam Engineer standing alone in the middle of the Engineering Quad.

* * *

Maybe next time let sleeping dogs lie.

Max poured his own coffee and watched the bronze of Admiral Collingwood and his dog Bounce, standing guard out in Morpeth Square. Amelia's Tea house was mercifully quiet. He enjoyed his coffee bitter. Today he had even forgone the customary milk. The dairy asceticism suited his mood.

He had been a little shocked by Torquil Tickham's sudden assertion that he should be carrying a message of undying love for Miss Leith. The fact that the statement was said was shocking. Not said brazenly, or harshly, or without regard. But that it was even said. Shocked that the sound of it had left Tick's mouth, possibly having originated in his brain, before entering the space between the two young men, there to reverberate and at once find its way into Max's inner ear and on to his own brain!

Once there each sacred word in the sentence was a gong of shock in its own singularity. '..that you love Harriet with all your heart!' The incongruity of the delivery of that one sentence, from one near stranger to another, remained with Max for a long time. He had wondered at first if the steam engineer had been mocking him. But that didn't fit with his manner at the time, unless he was a very talented mocker, and very cruel.

Then, after the affront of the speaking, there was the meaning. Max was at a complete loss as to why Tick, and maybe the other two in Harriet's team, believed Max would be carrying such a message and why he would be delivering it to them? And more so why Tick had so obviously hoped that the message would be this? Maybe they simply didn't like Gilbert either.

Fair enough.

Max took a sip of coffee and resigned himself to not ever finding out the answers.

For one fact remained; if Harriet had wanted to restore communication with him she could have sought him out or sent a message to him at any time in the last few weeks. She could have even bothered to reply to his letter.

About that letter he was maybe now beginning to feel a little embarrassed. Although he resolved not to be embarrassed at himself, and only a little for Tick. For to be embarrassed was to care and care he did not.

The ghost of Harriet Leith was well on the way to being fully exorcised.

Until it was he would concentrate on his school work and sword play. And maybe, just maybe another pretty thing would cross his path.