In the Land of the Long White Cloud (66 page)

“Lucas Warden is Gerald’s son,” George replied. “A tall, thin man, light blond hair, gray eyes, very proper deportment. And there’s reason to believe that he’s on the move somewhere on the West Coast.”

Daphne’s open expression turned suspicious. “And you followed him here? What are you, the police?”

George shook his head.

“A friend,” he explained. “A friend with very good news. I’m convinced Mr. Warden would be overjoyed to see me. In case you do know something…”

Daphne shrugged. “It wouldn’t matter,” she muttered. “But if you really want to know, there was a man here named Luke—I never got his last name—but the description fits. Not that it matters now, like I said. Luke is dead. But if you want, you can talk to David…if he’ll talk to you. Up until now he’s hardly spoken to anyone. He’s pretty far gone.”

George gave a start—and knew in the same moment that the girl had to be right. There were not going to be many men like Lucas Warden on the West Coast, and this girl was a keen observer. George
got up. The sandwich Daphne had brought him looked good, but he had lost his appetite.

“Where can I find this David?” he asked. “If Lucas…if he really is dead, I want to know. Right away.”

Daphne nodded. “I’m sorry, sir, if it really is your Lucas. He was a nice fellow. A little strange, but all right. Come along, I’ll take you to David.”

To George’s astonishment, she did not lead him out of the bar but up the steps. The hourly hotel rooms had to be up here.

“I didn’t think you rented by more than the hour,” he said as the girl purposefully crossed a plush salon lined with several numbered doors.

Daphne nodded. “That’s why Madame Jolanda screamed bloody murder when I had David brought up here. But where could he have gone, badly hurt as he was? We haven’t got a doctor. The barber put his leg in a splint, but feverish and half dead from hunger as he was, he couldn’t just be laid out in a stall. So I made my room available. I now take customers together with Mirabelle, and the old woman takes half my pay as rent. That said, the fellows are happy to pay for the double, so I’m not making any less. Oh well, the old lady is greedy as the Gates of Hell, but I’m ditching this place soon anyway. When Davey’s healthy, I’m going to take my children and look for something new.”

So she already had children. George sighed. The girl must have a hard life. But then George concentrated his full attention on the room that Daphne was now entering and the young man lying in the bed.

David was hardly more than a boy. He looked tiny in the plush double bed, and his splinted and heavily bandaged leg, held up by a complicated contraption of supports and ropes, exaggerated this impression. The boy lay with his eyes closed. His handsome face was pale and drawn beneath his scraggly blond hair.

“Davey?” Daphne asked cheerfully. “Here’s a visitor for you. A gentleman from…”

“Christchurch,” George finished her statement.

“Apparently, he knew Luke. Davey, what was Luke’s last name? You know it, right?”

For George, who had been casting an eye about the room, the question was as good as answered already. On the boy’s night table lay a sketchbook with drawings that were perfectly in keeping with Lucas’s style.

“Denward,” the boy said.

An hour later George had heard the whole story. David told him how Lucas had spent the last few months as a construction worker and draftsman, and ended by describing their ill-fated search for gold.

“It’s all my fault!” he said desperately. “Luke didn’t want to go at all…and then I just had to try climbing down this rock. I killed him! I’m a murderer!”

George shook his head. “You made a mistake, son, maybe more than one. But if it happened like you told me, it was an accident. If Lucas had tied the rope better, he would still be alive. You can’t blame yourself forever. That doesn’t do anyone any good.”

Inwardly he thought that this accident seemed just like Lucas. He was an artist, hopelessly inept in practical life. But such a talent, such a waste.

“How were you saved in the end?” George asked. “I mean, if I understood correctly, you two were pretty far from here.”

“We…we weren’t all that far,” David said. “We both miscalculated. I thought we had ridden at least forty miles, but it was no more than fifteen. I couldn’t manage that on foot…with my injured leg. I was sure I was going to die. But first…first I buried Luke. Right there on the beach. Not very deep, I’m afraid, but…but there aren’t any wolves here, right?”

George assured him that no wild animal on New Zealand would exhume the body.

“And then I waited…waited to die myself. Three days, I think…at some point I lost consciousness; then I had a fever. I couldn’t make
it to the river anymore to drink water…but during that time our horse had come home, which made Mr. Miller think that something wasn’t right. He wanted to send a search party right away, but the men laughed at him. Luke…Luke was not that skilled with horses, you know. Everyone thought he had just tied the gelding up wrong, and that it had run off. But then when we didn’t come back, they sent a boat up. The barber came along, and they found me right away. After only paddling two hours, they said. I was completely unconscious. When I came to, I was here.”

George nodded and ran his hand over the boy’s hair. David looked so young. George could not help but think about the child that Elizabeth was carrying inside her at that moment. Maybe in a few years he would have a son like this—so eager, so brave—but hopefully born under a luckier star than this young man here. What might Lucas have seen in David? The son he had wished for? Or the lover? George was no fool, and he came from a big city. Homosexual tendencies were nothing new to him, and Lucas’s bearing—along with Gwyneira’s years of childlessness—had given him reason to suspect early on that the younger Warden leaned more toward boys than girls. Well, that was none of his business. As for David, the loving glances he cast at Daphne left no doubt about his sexual orientation. Daphne did not, however, return these glances. Another inevitable disappointment for the boy.

George thought for a moment.

“Listen, David,” he said. “Lucas Warden…Luke Denward…was not so alone in the world as you believe. He has a family, and I think his wife has a right to know how he died. When you’re feeling better, there will be a horse waiting for you in the rental stables. Take it and ride to the Canterbury Plains and ask for Gwyneira Warden at Kiward Station. Will you do that…for Luke?”

David nodded seriously. “If you think that’s what he would have wanted.”

“He would certainly have wanted that, David,” George replied. “And after that, ride to Christchurch and come to my offices. Greenwood Enterprises. You won’t find any gold there, but you will find a job that pays better than being a stable boy. If you’re a clever boy—and
you must be or Lucas would not have taken you under his wing—you might even grow wealthy in a few years.”

David nodded again, but this time reluctantly.

Daphne, though, gave George a friendly look. “You’ll give him a job where he can sit, right?” she asked as she led the visitor out. “The barber says he’ll always limp; the leg is bum. He can’t work at the site or in the stables anymore. But if you find a place for him in an office…then he’ll also change his mind, with regard to girls. It was good for him that he didn’t fall for Luke, but I’m not the right bride for him.”

She spoke calmly and without bitterness, and George felt a slight regret that this active, clever creature was a girl. As a man, Daphne could have made her fortune in the New Country. As a girl, she could only be what she would have been in London—a whore.

More than half a year passed before Steinbjörn Sigleifson directed his horse’s steps over the approach to Kiward Station. After lying for a long while in bed, the boy slowly had to learn how to walk again. In addition to that, taking leave of Daphne and the twins had been hard for him, even though the girl had been telling him for days that it was time for him to be on his way. In the end, there had been nothing else left for him to do. Madame Jolanda expressly asked that he clear out of her room in the brothel, and though Mr. Miller allowed him to make camp in the stables again, he could no longer repay the favor. There was no work for a cripple in Westport—the hard-bitten Coasters had informed him of that without sugarcoating the matter. Even though the boy could already get around without trouble, he still had a strong limp, and he could not remain on his feet for long. So he had finally ridden away—and now stood dazed before the statues on the facade of the manor where Lucas Warden had lived. He still had no idea why his friend had left Kiward Station, but he must have had important reasons to give up such luxury. Gwyneira Warden must have been a real shrew. Steinbjörn—after leaving Daphne, he saw no
reason to hold on to the name David—seriously considered turning around without accomplishing anything. Who could imagine what he would have to hear from Lucas’s wife. She might even hold him responsible for Lucas’s death.

“What are you doing here? State your name and your desire.”

Steinbjörn started when he heard a high-pitched voice behind him. It came from the bushes below, and the young Icelander—who had grown up believing in fairies and elves who lived in stones—at first suspected a spirit.

The little girl on the pony who then appeared behind him made a suitably mundane impression on him, even if the rider and steed had a fay-like sweetness. Though the horses on his home island were not big, Steinbjörn had never seen such a small pony. But this tiny sorrel mare—whose color harmonized perfectly with the red-blonde hair of its little rider—looked like a full-grown horse in a miniature edition. The girl directed the horse purposefully toward him.

“Get moving!” she said rudely.

Steinbjörn had to laugh. “My name is Steinbjörn Sigleifson, and I’m looking for Lady Gwyneira Warden. This is Kiward Station, isn’t it?”

The girl nodded seriously. “Yes, but they’re shearing the sheep now, so Mummy isn’t home. Yesterday she was overseeing warehouse three; today she is at number two. She’s trading with the foreman. Grandfather is handling warehouse one.”

Steinbjörn did not know what the girl was talking about, but assumed that the little girl must be telling the truth.

“Can you take me to her?” he inquired.

The girl frowned. “You’re a visitor, right? So I have to take you into the house, and you have to put your card in the silver tray. And then comes Kiri who bids you welcome, and after that Witi, and then you go into the little salon and get tea…oh yes, and I have to entertain you is what Miss O’Keefe says. That means talking with each other, or something like that. About the weather and such. You
are
a gentleman, right?”

Steinbjörn still did not understand a thing, but he could not deny that the girl was rather entertaining.

“By the way, I’m Fleurette Warden, and this is Minty.” She pointed to the pony.

Steinbjörn suddenly took more interest in the child. Fleurette Warden—she had to be Luke’s daughter. So he had left this charming child behind as well…Steinbjörn understood his friend less and less.

“I don’t think I’m a gentleman,” he informed the girl. “At least, I don’t have a card. Couldn’t we just…I mean, can’t you just take me to your mother?”

Fleurette did not seem to care much for polite conversation and let herself be convinced. She moved her pony so that it was in front of Steinbjörn’s horse, which then had to work hard to keep up. Little Minty made short but fast strides, and Fleurette directed her with great competence. On the short ride to the shearing sheds, she revealed to her new friend that she had just come from school. She wasn’t generally allowed to go by herself, but she was just then because there was no one to accompany her while the sheep were being sheared. She told him about her friend Ruben and her little brother, Paul, whom she though rather daft because he didn’t talk and only screamed—most of all when Fleurette held him in her arms.

“He doesn’t like any of us, only Kiri and Marama,” she said. “Look, there’s shed two. What do you bet that Mummy’s in there?”

The shearing sheds were long buildings with space for several pens that allowed the shearers to work rain or shine. In front and behind them were more pens, where the still unshorn sheep awaited their shearing and those already shorn waited to be herded back into the pastures. Steinbjörn understood next to nothing about sheep but had seen many in his homeland—and could tell that he was looking at top-quality animals. Before being shorn, Kiward Station’s sheep looked like clean, fluffy balls of wool with legs. Afterward they were run through a hygiene bath and looked well nourished and spirited, if a little peeved. Fleurette had dismounted and tied her pony in front of the warehouse with an expert knot. Steinbjörn did the same, then followed her inside, where a pervasive stench of manure, sweat, and wool grease struck him. Fleurette seemed not to notice it as she pushed her way through the orderly chaos of men and sheep. Steinbjörn observed
with fascination how the shearers seized the animals quick as lightning, laid them on their backs, and unburdened them of their wool in short order. They seemed to be competing against each other in their task. They triumphantly called out new numbers to each other at regular intervals, which were evidently meant for the overseer.