The Luminaries

that.’
    She loosed the clasps, and heaved open the top. He directed herto a swatch of dark linen, which she lifted up, and Agathe’s dress slithered out over her knees—the black one, with the tatted collar, that he had so despised.
    (‘People will think me an ascetic,’ she had said cheerfully, ‘but black is a sober colour; one ought to have a sober dress.’
    It was to hide the bloodstains, the fine spray that peppered her cuffs; he knew it, but did not say so. He agreed, aloud, that one ought to have a sober dress.)
    ‘Put it on,’ Gascoigne said, watching as Anna smoothed the fabric over her knee. Agathe had been shorter; the hem would have to be let down. Even then, the whore would show three inches of her ankle, and maybe even the last hoop of her crinoline. It would be awful—but beggars could not be choosers, Gascoigne thought, and Anna was a beggar tonight. He turned back to the fire and shovelled ash.
    It was the only dress of Agathe’s that Gascoigne still possessed. The others, packed in their camphor-smelling cedar case, had been lost when the steamer ran aground—the berths first looted, then flooded, when the steamer fell at last upon her side, and the surf closed in. For Gascoigne the loss was a blessing. He had Agathe’s miniature: that was all he wished to keep. He would pay her memory due respect, but he was a young man, and still hot-blooded, and he meant to begin again.
    By the time Anna had changed, the fire was lit. Gascoigne glanced sideways at the dress. It looked just as ill upon her as it had upon his late wife. Anna saw him looking.
    ‘Now I will be able to mourn,’ she said. ‘I never had a black dress before.’
    Gascoigne did not ask her whom she was mourning, or how recent the death. He filled the kettle, and put it on the range.
    Aubert Gascoigne preferred to initiate conversation, rather than fall in with another person’s theme and tempo; he was content to be silent in company until he felt moved to speak. Anna Wetherell, with her whore’s intuition, seemed to recognise this aspect of Gascoigne’s character. She did not press him to converse, and she did not watch or shadow him as he went about the ordinary business of theevening: lighting candles, refilling his cigarette case, exchanging his muddy boots for indoor shoes. She gathered up the gold-lined dress and conveyed it across the room to spread on Gascoigne’s table. It was heavy. The gold had added perhaps five pounds to the weight of the fabric, Anna guessed: she tried to calculate the value. The Crown would buy pure colour at a rate of around three sovereigns per ounce—and there were sixteen ounces in a pound of weight—and this was five pounds of weight, at least. How much did that total? She tried to imagine a column of sums in her mind, but the figures swam.
    While Gascoigne banked the fire for the evening, and spooned tea leaves into a strainer, ready to steep, Anna examined her dress. Whoever had hidden the gold there evidently had experience with a needle and thread—either a woman or a sailor, she thought. They had sewn with care. The gold had been fitted up and down the bones of the corset, sewn into the flounces, and parcelled evenly around the hem—an extra weight she had not noticed earlier , for she often carried lead pellets around the bottom of her crinoline, to prevent the garment from blowing upward in the wind.
    Gascoigne had come up behind her. He took out his bowie knife, to cut the corset free—but he began too like a butcher, and Anna made a noise of distress.
    ‘Please,’ she said. ‘You don’t know how—please let me.’
    He hesitated, and then passed her the knife, and stood back to watch. She worked slowly, wanting to preserve the form and shape of the dress: first she took out the hem, then worked her way upward, along each flounce, snicking the threads with the point of the knife, and shaking the gold out of the seams. When she reached the corset, she made a little slice beneath each stay, and then reached up with her fingers to loose the gold from where it had been stuffed, in panels, between the bones. It was these lumpy parcels that had so reminded Gascoigne of chainmail, in the gaol-house.
    The gold, shaken out of the folds, shone gloriously. Anna collected it in the centre of the table. She was careful not to let thedust scatter in the draught. Each time she added another handful of dust, or another nugget, she cupped her hands over the pile, as if to warm