In the Land of the Long White Cloud (29 page)

“Next time it won’t hurt like that,” Howard said in an effort to console her and kissed her cheek awkwardly. He seemed to be pleased with her. Helen forced herself not to shrink from him. Howard had a right to do what he’d done to her. He was her husband, after all.

T
he second day of the journey was even more arduous than the first. Helen’s lower body hurt so much that she could hardly stay seated. Beyond that, she was so ashamed she did not want to look at Howard. Even breakfast in their hosts’ house had been torture. Margaret and Wilbur would not hold off on the teasing and innuendos, which Howard only moodily returned. Only at the end of the meal did Margaret notice Helen’s pallor and lack of appetite.

“It gets better, child,” she turned to her confidingly as the men went outside to hitch the team. “The man just has to open you up for it at first. That hurts, and you bleed a bit. But then it goes in easy, and it doesn’t hurt anymore. It can even be fun; believe me.”

Helen would never take pleasure in this act; she was sure of that. But if men liked it, you had to let them do it to keep them in a good mood.

“And otherwise, there’d be no children,” Margaret said.

Helen could hardly imagine that children came into being from this indecent business full of pain and fear, but then she remembered the stories in ancient mythology. In those stories too, women were sometimes defiled and bore children as a result. Maybe it was totally normal, then. And it wasn’t indecent; they were married, after all.

Forcing herself to speak in a calm voice, Helen asked Howard about his land and his animals. She didn’t really listen to his answers, but she didn’t want him to think she was upset with him. Howard did not seem worried about that, however. In fact, it was clear that he was not the least bit ashamed about the night before.

Late that afternoon they crossed the boundary onto Howard’s farm, which was marked by a muddy stream. The wagon promptly
became stuck in it, and Helen and Howard were forced to get out and push. When they finally climbed back onto the coach box, they were wet, and the hem of Helen’s skirt was weighted down with mud. But then the farmhouse came into view and Helen promptly forgot all her concerns about her dress, her pain, and even her fear of the coming night.

“This’d be us,” Howard said, stopping the team in front of a hut. If feeling generous, one might also call it a blockhouse. It was made of unfinished logs that had been bound together. “Go on in, I’ll take care of things in the stable.”

Helen stood as though paralyzed. This was supposed to be her house? Even the stalls in Christchurch were more comfortable—not to mention London.

“Well, get going. It’s not locked. There’re no thieves here.”

It wasn’t like there was anything to steal either. When Helen, still speechless, pushed open the door, she entered a room that made even Margaret’s kitchen seem livable. The house consisted of two rooms—the first was a combination kitchen and living room, sparsely furnished with four chairs and a chest. The kitchen was somewhat better supplied; unlike in Margaret’s home, there was a proper stove. At least Helen wouldn’t have to cook over an open fire.

Nervously she opened the door to the neighboring room—Howard’s bedroom. No, their bedroom, she corrected herself. She would simply have to make it more comfortable.

It held only a timber-frame bed, which was sloppily made with dirty linen. Helen thanked heaven for her purchases in London. With new bed linens, it would immediately look better. As soon as Howard brought her bag in, she would change the sheets.

Howard entered with a basket of firewood under his arm. A few eggs were balanced on the logs.

“Lazy rats, these no good Maori!” he cursed. “They milked the cow yesterday all right, but not today. She’s standing there with bursting udders, the poor animal, moaning her heart out. Can you go on and milk her? That’ll be your job from now on anyway, so go on now and figure it out.”

Helen looked at him, confused. “You want me to…milk? Now?”

“Well, wait till tomorrow and she’ll kick it,” Howard said. “But you can put on some dry clothes first; I’ll bring your things right in. You’ll catch your death of cold in this room as it is now. Here’s some firewood.”

This last comment sounded like an order. But Helen wanted to resolve the matter of the cow first.

“Howard, I can’t milk a cow,” she admitted. “I’ve never done that before.”

Howard frowned.

“What do you mean, you’ve never milked a cow before?” he asked. “Aren’t there any cows in England? You wrote that you were responsible for your father’s household for years!”

“Yes, but we lived in Liverpool. In the middle of the city, next to the church. We didn’t have any livestock!”

Howard looked at her coldly. “Then see that you learn how. I’ll do it today. You clean the floor in the meantime. The wind’s blowing all this dust around. Then get the stove going. I’ve already brought the wood in, so you just need to light it. Mind that you stack the wood carefully; otherwise, it’ll smoke us out of the cabin. But surely you can do that. Or do they not have stoves in Liverpool?”

Howard’s contemptuous expression made Helen drop any further objections. It would just anger him further if she told him that in Liverpool they’d had a maid for the heavy housework. Helen’s tasks had been limited to raising her younger siblings, helping in the rectory, and leading the Bible circle. What would he think if she described the manor in London? The Greenwoods kept a cook, a servant who lit the stove, maids who anticipated their every wish, and Helen as governess. Though she was certainly not considered one of the masters of the house, no one would have expected her to so much as touch a piece of firewood.

Helen didn’t know how she was supposed to manage everything. But she didn’t see a way out either.

Gerald Warden could not hide his delight that Gwyneira and Lucas had arrived at an agreement so quickly. He fixed the wedding day for the second weekend of Advent. That was the height of summer, and part of the reception could take place in the garden, which still needed to be fixed up, of course. Hoturapa and two other Maori who had been hired especially for the purpose worked hard to plant the seeds and seedlings that Gerald had brought back from England. A few native plants also found a place in Lucas’s carefully planned garden design. Since it would take too long for maple or chestnut trees to grow big enough, southern beeches, nikau, and cabbage trees were planted so that Gerald’s guests could take a stroll in the shade in the foreseeable future. That didn’t bother Gwyneira, who found the native flora and fauna interesting. It was finally an area where her proclivities and those of her future husband overlapped, though Lucas’s research focused primarily on ferns and insects. The former were found primarily in the rainy western region of South Island. Gwyneira could only wonder at their diverse and filigreed shapes from Lucas’s own well-executed drawings and in his textbooks. However, when she saw a living example of one of the native insects for the first time, even hard-bitten Gwyneira let out a scream. Lucas, ever the most attentive of gentlemen, rushed immediately to her side. However, the sight seemed to fill him with more joy than horror.

“It’s a weta!” he said, getting excited, and poked at the six-legged creature that Hoturapa had just dug up with a twig. “They are perhaps the largest insects in the world. It’s not uncommon to see specimens that are eight centimeters long or more.”

Gwyneira could not share in her fiancé’s joy. If the bug had only looked more like a butterfly or a bee or a hornet…but the weta most closely resembled a fat, wet, glistening grasshopper.

“They belong to the same family,” Lucas lectured. “More precisely to the ensifera suborder. Except for the cave weta, which belongs to the rhaphidophoridae.”

Lucas knew the Latin designation for several weta subfamilies. Gwyneira, however, found the Maori name for the bugs more appropriate.
Kiri and her people called them
wetapunga
, which meant “god of ugly things.”

“Do they sting?” Gwyneira asked. The bug didn’t seem particularly lively and only moved forward sluggishly when Lucas poked it. However, it had an imposing stinger on its abdomen and Gwyneira kept her distance.

“No, no, they’re generally harmless. At most they sometimes bite. And it’s no worse than a wasp sting,” Lucas explained. “The stinger is…it…well, it indicates that this is a female, and…” Lucas turned away, as always, when it had to do with anything “sexual.”

“It’s for laying eggs, miss,” Hoturapa clarified casually. “This one big and fat, soon lay eggs. Much eggs, hundred, two hundred…better not to take in house, Mr. Warden. Not that egg laying in house.”

“For heaven’s sake!” Just the thought of sharing her living quarters with two hundred of this unattractive bug’s offspring sent chills up Gwyneira’s back. “Just leave her here. If she runs away…”

“Not walking quickly, miss. Jumping. Whoops and you have
wetapunga
in lap!” Hoturapa explained.

Gwyneira took another step back, just to be sure.

“Then I’ll draw it right here on the spot,” Lucas gave in reluctantly. “I would have preferred to take it into my study and compared it directly with the images in the field guide. But I guess my drawings will have to do. You’d also like to know, no doubt, Gwyneira, whether we have a ground weta or a tree weta here.”

Gwyneira had rarely cared so little about anything.

“Why can’t he be interested in sheep like his father?” she asked her patient audience, consisting of Cleo and Igraine, afterward. Gwyneira had retreated to the stables and was grooming her mare while Lucas sketched the weta. The horse had worked up a sweat during the ride that morning, and the girl did not want to pass up the chance to smooth her coat, which had since dried. “Or birds! Though they probably don’t hold still long enough to let themselves be sketched.”

Gwyneira found the native birds considerably more interesting than Lucas’s creepy crawlies. The farmworkers had shown and told
her about a few types of birds since her arrival. Most of them knew quite a lot about their new homeland; the frequent nights out under the open sky had made them familiar with the nocturnal birds. James McKenzie, for example, told her about the European settlers’ namesake: the kiwi bird was short and plump, and Gwyneira found them quite exotic with their brown feathers that almost looked like fur and their much-too-long beaks, which they often used as a “third leg.”

“They have something else in common with your dog,” McKenzie explained cleverly. “They can smell. Which is rare for birds.”

McKenzie had accompanied Gwyneira several times on her overland rides the last few days. As expected, she had quickly earned the respect of the shepherds. Her first demonstration of Cleo’s shepherding abilities had inspired the men from the first.

“That dog does the work of two shepherds,” Poker marveled and stooped to pat Cleo’s head in recognition. “Will the little ones grow up like that?”

Gerald Warden had made each of the men responsible for training one of the new sheepdogs. In theory, it made sense to have each dog learning from the man with whom it was supposed to shepherd. In practice, however, McKenzie undertook the work with the pups almost alone, supported occasionally by Andy McAran and young Hardy. The other men found it dull to go through the commands over and over again; they also thought it gratuitous to have to fetch the sheep just to practice with the dogs.

McKenzie, on the other hand, showed an interest and a marked talent for handling animals. Under his guidance, little Daimon soon approached Cleo’s skill level. Gwyneira supervised the exercises, despite the fact that it displeased Lucas. Gerald, by contrast, let her do as she pleased. He knew that the dogs were accruing value and use for the farm.

“Maybe you could put on a little show after the wedding, McKenzie,” Gerald said, satisfied, after having watched Cleo and Daimon in action once again. “Most of the visitors would be interested in seeing that…I say, the other farmers will turn green with envy!”

“I won’t be able to lead the dogs properly in a wedding dress,” Gwyneira said, laughing. She savored the praise, as she always felt so hopelessly inept in the house. She was still technically a guest, but it was already clear that as mistress of Kiward Station she would have the same things demanded of her that she had hated at Silkham Manor: the direction of a large, noble manor with servants and the management of the whole charade. To make it even more difficult, none of the employees here were even educated. In England one could overcome a lack of organization by hiring capable butlers and matrons, by not scrimping when it came to personnel and hiring only people with first-class credentials. Then the household would practically run itself. Here, however, Gwyneira was expected to show her Maori servants the ropes, and she lacked the enthusiasm and conviction for that.

“Why clean silver every day?” Moana asked, for example, which struck Gwyneira as a perfectly logical question.

“Because, otherwise, it tarnishes,” Gwyneira answered. She at least knew that much.

“But why take iron that changes color?” Moana asked, turning the silver over unhappily in her hands. “Take wood. Is simple, wash off, clean!” The girl looked at Gwyneira, expecting praise.