Song of the Spirits (8 page)

“It’s strange that they sing in the moonlight,” William mused. “As if we were in an enchanted forest.”

“Well, I wouldn’t exactly call that noise singing.” Elaine had a limited understanding of romance, but she was doing her best. She nudged herself up next to him inconspicuously.

“To their females, that noise must be the loveliest of songs,” William remarked. “The question isn’t how well someone does something, but for whom.”

Elaine’s heart overflowed. Of course, he had done it for her! It was for her that he had ignored a well-paid job managing a sheep farm in order to help out her father. She turned to him.

“You would have… I mean, you didn’t have to do that,” she said vaguely.

William looked into her open, moonlit face, which held an expression between innocence and expectation.

“Sometimes you don’t have a choice,” he whispered. Then he kissed her.

For Elaine, the night exploded in that kiss.

Fleurette observed her daughter from the window.

“They’re kissing!” she remarked and sloshed the rest of the wine into her glass, as though wishing she could empty the memory of what she had just seen along with the bottle.

Ruben laughed. “What else did you expect? They’re young and in love.”

Fleurette bit her lip and emptied her glass in one gulp. “I just hope we don’t regret this,” she murmured.

A
long with Kura, Gwyneira McKenzie intended to accompany a goods transport for Ruben O’Keefe and to travel to Queenstown in its protection. She would be able to load their baggage on the freight wagon and they themselves could travel in a light chaise. Gwyneira thought that would be the most comfortable way to travel; her granddaughter did not express herself on the point. Kura faced the trip to Queenstown as ever with an almost unsettling apathy.

The ship with Ruben’s delivery was taking its time, however, so their departure kept being pushed back. Apparently, the first autumn storms were making the crossing difficult. So the sheep had already been herded down from the mountains before Gwyneira could finally depart—which actually calmed, rather than annoyed, the concerned sheep breeder.

“At least I have my sheep somewhere dry,” she joked as her husband and son shut the last gate behind the herds. Jack had once again proved himself. The workers praised him as “a man’s man,” and the boy raved about camping in the mountains and the bright nights during which he had slipped out of his sleeping bag to observe birds and other nocturnal creatures. There were many of them on New Zealand’s South Island. Even the kiwi—that strange, plump bird chosen as the symbol of the settlers—was nocturnal.

James McKenzie was likewise cheered to see Gwyneira when he returned from the sheepherding. The two amply celebrated seeing each other again, during which time Gwyneira put her concerns about Kura into words.

“She still prances about brazenly with those Maori boys, even though Miss Witherspoon keeps reprimanding her for it. When it
comes to behaving appropriately, her head is somewhere else entirely! And Tonga wanders around the farm from time to time as though it will soon belong to him. I should not let him see that it drives me mad, but I’m afraid he can tell.”

James sighed. “The way it looks, you’re going to have to marry that girl off soon. It doesn’t matter to whom. She’s always going to cause trouble. She has this… I don’t know. But she’s a sensual one.”

Gwyneira gave him an indignant look. “You find her sensual?” she asked mistrustfully.

James rolled his eyes. “I find her to be spoiled and insufferable. But I don’t have trouble recognizing what other men see in her. And that would be a goddess.”

“James, she’s fifteen!”

“But she’s developed remarkably fast. Even in the few days we were out herding, she’s filled out. She’s always been a beauty, but now she’s turning into a beauty that drives men crazy. And she knows it. Although I wouldn’t spare a thought for this Tiare. One of the Maori shepherds did some eavesdropping on them the day before yesterday, and apparently she was treating him like an untrained puppy. No chance of her sharing a bed with him. The boy is the object of jealousy, but he also never hears the end of it from Kura and the other men. He’ll be happy when he’s rid of the girl.” James drew Gwyneira back into his arms.

“And you think she’ll find another one right away?” Gwyneira asked, unsure.

“One? Don’t joke! If she so much as wiggles her pinky, there’ll be a line all the way to Christchurch!”

Gwyneira sighed and snuggled into his arms.

“Tell me, James, was I really… um… sensual too?”

The freight wagons finally arrived in Christchurch, and Ruben’s drivers reached Kiward Station driving two gorgeous teams of cart horses pulling heavy covered wagons.

“There’s space to sleep in there too,” one of the drivers explained. “If we don’t find any lodging on the way, the men can sleep in one wagon, and we’ll let you have the second, madam. If that’s to your satisfaction.”

Gwyneira was satisfied. She had slept in less comfortable places in her life and was looking forward to the adventure. She was in high spirits when the chaise, pulled by a brown cob stallion, took its place behind the covered wagon.

“Owen can cover a few mares up there,” she said, explaining her decision to harness the stallion. “So that Fleurette’s pure-blood cobs don’t die out.”

Kura, to whom she had directed these words, nodded apathetically. She had probably not even noticed which horse her grandmother had chosen. Kura cast much more interested glances at the young freight-wagon drivers—glances that were returned with no less enthusiasm. The two young men immediately set about courting Kura—or better yet, worshipping her. Yet neither dared flirt openly with the little beauty.

Gwyneira’s enthusiasm for the trip grew still more when they finally left Haldon, the nearest town, behind them and headed toward the mountains. The snow-covered summits and the endless grassland of the Canterbury Plains that stretched out like a sea had fascinated her ever since her arrival in her new homeland. She could still clearly remember the day she had come over the Bridle Path between the harbor town of Lyttelton and the city of Christchurch—on a horse instead of a mule, which the other London ladies she had come with on the
Dublin
were riding. She still remembered how that had vexed her father-in-law. Yet her cob mare, Igraine, had brought her safely through the landscape, which had seemed so cold, rocky, and inhospitable that one wanderer had compared it to the “hills of hell.” But then they had reached the highest point, and in the flatland before them lay Christchurch and the Canterbury Plains. The land where she belonged.

Gwyneira held the reins loosely as she told her granddaughter about her first encounter with this country. Kura let the words bounce off
her with no comment whatsoever. Only the mention of the “hills of hell” seemed to register. It reminded her of the ballad “The Daemon Lover,” and she even began to hum the song.

As Gwyneira listened, she wondered which branch of the family Kura had inherited her extraordinary musical talent from. Certainly not from the Silkhams, Gwyneira’s family. Though Gwyneira’s sisters had played the piano with more enthusiasm than she had, they had not done so with any greater skill. Her first husband had possessed considerably more talent. Lucas Warden had been an aesthete who played the piano beautifully. But he had surely gotten that from his mother, and Kura was not related to her by blood.

Gwyneira preferred not to think any more about the convoluted relations within the Warden family. It was probably Marama alone, the Maori singer, who had passed on her talent to Kura. It was Gwyneira’s own fault for having bought the girl that confounded piano after having given away Lucas’s instrument years before. Otherwise, Kura might have limited herself to the traditional instruments and music of the Maori.

The trip to Queenstown lasted several days, and the travelers almost always managed to find nightly lodging at one farm or another. Gwyneira knew just about every sheep breeder in the area, but even strangers were generally taken in hospitably. Many farms lay in seclusion on rarely traveled paths, and the owners were excited about every visitor who brought news or carried mail—which the O’Kay Warehouse’s drivers, who had taken this route for years, did.

The travelers had almost reached Otago when, in the open country, they had no other choice but to make camp in the covered wagons. Gwyneira tried to make an adventure out of it in an attempt to draw Kura out; up to that point, she had mostly sat glumly next to Gwyneira, seeming to hear nothing except the melodies in her head.

“James and I often lay awake during nights like this and listen to the birds. Listen, that’s a kea. You only hear those here in the mountains as they don’t come as far as Kiward Station.”

“In Europe there are supposed to be birds that can really sing,” Kura remarked in her melodic voice, which was reminiscent of her mother’s. But where Marama’s voice sounded light and sweet, Kura’s was full and velvety. “Real melodies, Miss Witherspoon says.”

Gwyneira nodded. “Yes, I remember them. Nightingales and larks… they sound lovely, really. We could buy a record with bird sounds. You could play it on your gramophone.” The gramophone had been Gwyneira’s present to Kura the Christmas before.

“I’d rather hear them out in nature,” Kura sighed. “And I would rather travel to England to learn to sing than to Queenstown. I really don’t know what I’m supposed to do there.”

Gwyneira took the girl in her arms. In truth, Kura had not liked that for years, but here, in the grand lonesomeness beneath the stars, even she was more approachable.

“Kura, I’ve already explained it to you a thousand times. You have a responsibility. Kiward Station is your inheritance. You have to take it over or pass it on to the next generation if it really doesn’t interest you. Perhaps you’ll have a son or daughter someday for whom it will be important.”

“I don’t want children. I want to sing!” Kura exclaimed.

Gwyneira brushed the hair out of her granddaughter’s face. “We don’t always get what we want, sweetheart. At least not right away and certainly not now. You must move on, Kura. A conservatory in England is out of the question. You’ll have to find something else that makes you happy.”