Song of the Spirits (4 page)

Piano music poured into the salon from what had once been the study—now transformed into a sort of school and music room. James stuck his head in briefly, since it was theoretically possible that his prey was giving Kura a lesson at that moment. But the girl sat alone in front of those damn ivories, playing Beethoven without a care in the world. James had not expected otherwise. It was typical of Kura to leave all the preparations for a trip to her grandmother and governess while she saw to her own amusement. Later she would complain that they had not packed the right clothes.

James allowed the door to close without saying a word to the thin, black-haired girl. He did not have eyes for Kura’s obvious beauty, which everyone else praised the first time they laid eyes on her. Particularly since Kura had ripened into a woman, observers often found themselves breathless. James McKenzie saw her only as a child—a spoiled child whose moods often drove her family and the servants to distraction.

James was climbing up the broad staircase that connected the social and work rooms of the lower level to the upper story when he heard angry voices coming from Kura’s room. Gwyneira, and Heather Witherspoon. James smirked. It seemed that his wife had beaten him to it.

“No, Miss Witherspoon, Kura will have no need of you. She will have no trouble making it through a few weeks without singing lessons—besides, I do not recall hiring you on as a singing instructor. You lament constantly as it is that you can hardly teach Kura anything more where we are. And as for piano lessons and the rest of her instruction… if Kura will truly, as you say, dry up like a petal in the desert, my friend Helen will intercede. Helen has taught more children their ABCs in her lifetime than you can imagine, and she has played the organ in church for years.”

James smiled to himself. Gwyneira really knew how to take someone to task. He had often been on the wrong end of her temper
himself—and was always torn between anger and admiration. Even by the way she seemed to rear up during an argument! She was small and very slim but unusually energetic. When she was in a rage, her red hair seemed charged with electricity and her excited azure-blue eyes appeared to shoot sparks. It was as impossible as ever to guess her age. Though she had begun putting her hair up in a bun, instead of simply tying it at her nape as she had previously done, a few strands always managed to free themselves. Naturally, the years had carved a few wrinkles into her face. Gwyneira had never had a high regard for parasols, and umbrellas were no better—and her skin had been exposed the caprices of the Canterbury Plains a great deal over the years. Yet James would not have wanted to erase a single one of her laugh lines, nor the deep crease that formed between her eyes when she was angry, as she was now.

“No ‘buts’ about it!”

Heather Witherspoon must have made some reply that James had not heard.

“You are needed right here more than anywhere else, Miss Witherspoon. Several Maori children can still neither read nor write. And my son could stand to be challenged at his own age level. So unpack your bags and return to your actual work. The children should be in school. Instead they are outside playing with a ball.”

So Gwyneira had not missed that either. James applauded her as she swept out of the room.

Running into James startled Gwyneira, but then she smiled at him.

“And just what are you doing here? Were you also on the warpath? Our Miss Witherspoon’s high-handedness is really too much.”

James nodded. As always, his mood improved when Gwyneira was with him. For the last sixteen years they had hardly been apart for even a day, and yet the sight of her still made him happy. Which made it all the worse that he would not have her around, maybe for several weeks.

Gwyneira recognized immediately that he was upset.

“What’s wrong? You’ve been running around all day with a long face. Are you against our going?”

Gwyneira had been about to follow her husband down the stairs, but then she heard Kura playing the piano. They both turned into their private apartments as though at an invisible signal. The walls of the salon might have ears.

“Whether I’m ‘against’ it is hardly the point,” James said moodily. “I just don’t know whether traveling is the answer…”

“To bring Kura ‘under control’?” Gwyneira asked. “Don’t deny it. I heard you talking to Andy McAran about it in the stables—not exactly discreet, if you ask me.”

Gwyneira removed a few items from her wardrobe and put them in a suitcase, thereby signaling that her trip was set in stone. James’s uneasiness flared into full-blown anger.

“It was Andy’s expression. If you really want to know, he said: ‘You have to see that you bring that girl under control. Otherwise, Tonga’s going to marry her off to the next Maori rascal who’ll act like his slave.’ How was I supposed to respond to that? Let Andy go? For doing nothing but telling the truth?”

Andy McAran was among the oldest workers on Kiward Station. Like James, Andy had been there even before Gwyneira was sent to New Zealand as a bride for the farm’s heir, Lucas Warden. Indeed, there were no secrets between Andy, James, and Gwyneira.

Gwyneira did not keep up her agitated tone. Instead, she lowered herself listlessly onto a corner of the bed. Monday rubbed herself against Gwyneira’s leg, hoping to be petted.

“What should we do then?” she asked, stroking the dog. “‘Bring her under control’ sounds easy enough, but Kura is not a dog or a horse. I can’t just order her around.”

“Gwyn, your dogs and horses have always been happy to listen to you, even without the use of force. Because you raised them properly from the beginning. Lovingly, but firmly. You let Kura get away with everything. And Marama didn’t help.” James wanted to take his wife into his arms to take the edge off his words, but then he changed his mind. It was time to talk seriously about the situation.

Gwyneira bit her lip. She couldn’t deny it. No one had ever set boundaries for Kura-maro-tini, the heiress of Kiward Station and symbol of hope for the local Maori tribe and the farm’s white founders. Neither the Maori—who never raised their children strictly, instead confidently leaving their discipline to the land in which they would have to survive—nor Gwyneira, who really should have known better. She had loosened the reins too much on her son Paul, Kura’s father, also. But that had been different. Paul was borne of a rape, and Gwyneira had simply never really been able to love him. As a result, he had been a difficult child who’d grown into an angry, belligerent young man, and his feud with the Maori chieftain Tonga had ultimately led to his death. Tonga, who was both intelligent and cultivated, had triumphed in the end by way of a governor’s decree: the purchase of the land for Kiward Station had not been entirely in accordance with the law. If Gwyneira wanted to keep the farm, she would have to reimburse the natives. But Tonga’s demands had been unacceptable. Marama had been the one to effect a peace agreement. Her child, of both
pakeha
and Maori blood, would inherit Kiward Station, and thus the land would belong to everyone. On the one hand, no one would question the Maori’s right to reside there, and on the other, Tonga would make no claims to the farm’s heartland.

Gwyneira and most of the members of the Maori tribe were more than happy with this arrangement—it was only in the young chief’s breast that anger for the
pakeha
, the hated white settlers, continued to swell. Paul Warden had been his rival while he was alive, not only with regard to possession of the land but also when it came to Marama. No doubt Tonga had hoped that after Paul’s death and an appropriate mourning period, the beautiful young woman would come to him. But Marama did not seek a new spouse at all at first, instead moving into the manor with her child. And later, she had not chosen Tonga or any other man from his tribe but had fallen head over heels in love with a sheepshearer who had come to Kiward Station with his company one spring. The young man, Rihari, had felt the same way about her, and they too were soon joined in matrimony. Rihari was Maori but belonged to a different tribe. He was approachable and friendly, and
he understood Marama’s situation at once: they could not take Kura away from Kiward Station, nor could Marama follow him alone to join his tribe in Otago. So he asked to be taken in by her people, to which Tonga, gritting his teeth, had agreed. The couple now lived in the Maori village; Kura remained in the manor by her own request.

Yet she took the path to the village by the lake with ever greater frequency these days. Though visiting her mother was the reason she gave for her appearances there, the truth was that Kura had discovered love. The youth, Tiare, was courting her—and not as innocently as would have been expected among
pakeha
adolescents of her age.

Gwyneira, who had once calmly tolerated the love between Ruben O’Keefe and her daughter, Fleur, was now alarmed. After all, she knew about the Maori’s loose sexual morals. Men and women were allowed to sleep together as they wished. A marriage was only considered sealed when the two shared a bed in the tribe’s meeting hall. The tribe did not care what happened before that, and children were always welcome. Kura seemed to want to take her cues from these customs—and Marama had made no move to interfere.

Gwyneira, James, and anyone else with any imagination on Kiward Station were afraid of Tonga exerting his influence. Gwyneira hoped that Kura would marry a white man of her social standing—something Kura had no desire to hear about at the moment. The fifteen-year-old had gotten it in her head that she wanted to be a singer, and her exceptionally beautiful voice and pronounced musical talent certainly indicated that she had the potential for that. But an opera career in a new land like this, let alone one so thoroughly puritanical? In Christchurch, they were only just now building a cathedral, and railroads had only just begun to crisscross the rest of the country… Nobody was thinking about a theater for Kura Warden. Heather Witherspoon had naturally put ideas of conservatories in Europe in Kura’s head, telling her of opera houses in London, Paris, and Milan that were only waiting for a singer of her caliber. But even if Gwyneira—and Tonga—were to approve, Kura was half-Maori, an exotic beauty who everyone admired, but would anyone take her seriously? Would they see her as
a singer or as a curiosity? Where would that spoiled child end up if Gwyneira sent her to Europe?

Tonga seemed to want to solve the problem in his own way. Andy McAran was not the only one who suspected him of pulling strings when it came to Kura’s young love. Tiare was Tonga’s cousin; an alliance with him would have considerably strengthened the Maori’s position on Kiward Station. The boy had just turned sixteen, and, in Gwyneira’s estimation, was not the brightest lad. If Tiare—indifferent to all farm-related matters except the piano-tickling Kura—were to become master of Kiward Station, it would no doubt be the high point of Tonga’s life. But it was unthinkable for Gwyneira.

“It won’t help to pack Kura off to Queenstown for a few weeks,” James said. “On the contrary. She’ll just have dozens of gold miners down on bended knee. Everyone will find her ravishing, she’ll bask in their compliments—she’ll only end up with a bigger head than ever. And when she comes back, Tiare will still be there. Even if you find some way to get him out of the picture, Tonga will find someone else. It won’t do any good, Gwyn.”

“Still, she’ll grow older and wiser,” Gwyneira said.

James rolled his eyes. “Do you have any evidence of that? Up until now, she’s only grown crazier. And this Miss Witherspoon isn’t helping. I’d send her back to England first, whether the little princess likes it or not.”

“But if Kura digs in her heels, we don’t win either. We’ll just be driving her into the Maori’s arms.”

James had sat down next to Gwyneira on the bed, and she leaned into him in search of consolation.

“Why does everything have to be so difficult?” she sighed finally. “I wish Jack were the heir. Then we wouldn’t have anything to worry about.”

James shrugged. “We wouldn’t need to worry if Fleurette were the heiress either. But no, Gerald Warden simply had to have a male heir, even through force. Still, I feel a certain satisfaction that he must be turning over in his grave right now. His Kiward Station not only in the hands of a half Maori, but moreover a girl!”

Gwyneira had to smile. In matters of inheritance, the Maori were decidedly wiser. It had not been a problem when Marama gave birth to a girl, as men and women had the same rights of inheritance. It was only a shame that Kura had inherited nothing from the energetic, if less musical, Gwyneira other than her azure eyes.

“First things first, I’m taking her along to Queenstown,” Gwyneira said firmly. “Maybe Helen can put her head aright. Sometimes an outsider can find a way. Helen plays the piano, after all. Kura will take her seriously.”

“And I’ll have to get by without you.” James pouted. “The livestock…”

Gwyneira laughed and put her arms around his neck. “The livestock should keep you busy enough. Jack’s already excited about it. And you could take Miss Witherspoon along—in the catering wagon. Maybe she’ll even volunteer to come with you.”

It was March, and the sheep that had been living half-wild in the hills needed to be herded together and brought back to the farm before the coming winter. It was a job that took several days every year and required all the hands on the farm.

“Be careful what you suggest.” James stroked her hair and kissed her tenderly. Her embrace had aroused him. And what objection could there be to a little love before noon? “I’ve fallen in love with a woman who rode along on the catering wagon before.”

Gwyneira laughed. Her breath was growing quicker too. She patiently held still as James undid the hooks and eyelets of her light summer dress.

“But not with a cook,” she asserted. “I still remember how you sent me out right on the first day to herd back the sheep that had broken off from the herd.”

James kissed her shoulder, then her still-firm breasts.

“That was to save the men’s lives,” he remarked with a smile. “After we tasted the coffee you made, I had to get you out of the way.”