In the Land of the Long White Cloud

they’re all doing well? Daphne’s taking care of them?”
    “Well, they…” Steinbjörn reddened. “They…work a bit themselves. They dance. Here…here, Luke sketched them.” The boy had brought his saddlebags in with him and looked for a folder; havinglocated it, he thumbed through it. Only as he was pulling it out did it occur to him that these drawings were hardly fit for the eyes of a lady. However, Gwyneira did not bat an eye when she laid eyes on them. In order to supply the galleries in London, she had already combed through Lucas’s workroom and was therefore not nearly as innocent as she had been a few months before. Lucas had already painted nudes before—boys at first, who assumed the same pose as that of
David
, but men too in unambiguous poses. One of the images had displayed the traces of frequent use. Lucas had taken it out again and again, looked at it, and…
    Gwyneira noticed that the nude sketches of the twins, but especially a study of young Daphne, contained finger indentations. Lucas? Hardly!
    “You like Daphne, do you?” she asked her young visitor cautiously.
    Steinbjörn blushed deeply. “Oh yes, very much! I wanted to marry her. But she doesn’t want me.” In the youth’s voice, she discerned all the pain of a lover spurned. This young man had never been Lucas’s “catamite.”
    “You’ll marry a different girl,” Gwyneira comforted him. “You…you do like girls?”
    Steinbjörn’s expression made it clear he thought that was the dumbest question a person could ask. Then he willingly gave her more information about his plans for the future. He planned to go looking for George Greenwood and work for him.
    “I would have preferred to build houses,” he said sadly. “I wanted to be an architect. Luke said I had talent. But I would have had to go to school in England for that, and I can’t afford it. But here, these are for you.” Steinbjörn closed Lucas’s sketch portfolio and pushed it across to Gwyneira. “I brought you Luke’s pictures. All his drawings…Mr. Greenwood said they might be valuable. I don’t want to get rich that way. If I could maybe keep just one. The one of Daphne.”
    Gwyneira smiled. “Naturally, you can keep all of them. No doubt that’s what Lucas would have wanted.” She considered briefly, seeming to arrive at a decision. “Go ahead and put your jacket on, David. We’ll ride to Haldon. There’s something else there that Lucas would have wanted.”

    The director of the bank in Haldon seemed to think Gwyneira was crazy. He came up with a thousand reasons to refuse her request, but finally conceded when faced with her implacable determination. Reluctantly, he transferred the account into which Lucas’s income from the picture sales flowed to Steinbjörn Sigleifson’s name.
    “You’re going to regret this, Mrs. Warden. It’s shaping up into a fortune. Your children…”
    “My children already have a fortune. They’re the heirs of Kiward Station, and my daughter does not have the slightest interest in art. We don’t need the money, but this boy here was Lucas’s pupil. A…soul mate, so to speak. He needs the money, he knows to cherish it, and he will have it! Here, David, you need to sign. With your full name, that’s important.”
    Steinbjörn’s breath caught when he saw the sum in the account. But Gwyneira only nodded at him kindly. “Well, go ahead and sign. I need to get back to my shearing shed to increase my children’s fortune. And you’d do best to look into this gallery yourself. So that they don’t swindle you when you sell the rest of the pictures. You are now more or less the manager of Lucas’s artistic inheritance. So make something of it!”
    Steinbjörn Sigleifson no longer hesitated but signed his name to the document.
    Lucas’s “David” had found his gold mine.

Arrival
    C ANTERBURY P LAINS —O TAGO
1870–1877

1
    “P aul, Paul, where are you hiding this time?”
    Helen called after the most rebellious of her pupils, though she knew for a fact that the boy could hardly hear her. Paul Warden was certainly not playing peacefully with the Maori children in the immediate vicinity of their makeshift schoolhouse. When he disappeared, it meant trouble in no uncertain terms—whether he was duking it out somewhere with his archenemy Tonga, the son of the chief of the Maori tribe dwelling on Kiward Station, or he was lying in wait for Ruben and Fleurette in order to play some kind of prank on