by Sarah Lark
“And would you become said bishop?” asked Claire respectfully.
Reverend Burton laughed. “No. Quite certainly no. At least, it would surprise me very, very much. I’m more of a placeholder. In the truest sense of the word.”
“There, you see,” crowed Claire, looking triumphantly at Kathleen. While the girls politely curtsied to the priest and Sean offered his hand, Claire explained her theory of land acquisition in Dunedin. The reverend laughed loudly at that.
“No, my dear, it’s not that simple, although in my case you’re not entirely wrong. In my case, Johnny Jones, a former whaler out of Waikouaiti who now maintains a few farms, has donated this site to us. One day it will be known as St. Paul’s Cathedral—although St. John would surely have seemed more fitting to our noble patron and doubtlessly increased his willingness to give. I suggested that, too, but no one listens to me.”
The reverend invited Kathleen and Claire to sit. Then he also sat, and continued speaking.
“Now, the location of our future house of worship is rather central, as you’ve no doubt noticed, which does not suit our Calvinist city fathers. The Church of England in the middle of New Edinburgh! In any case, they’re contesting the site, and so that no one will think of placing a statue to Calvin or the like here, I’m camping on the spot.” Reverend Burton smirked. “I’m something like Peter the Rock, on which we’ll someday build our church. I hope the bishop doesn’t take that literally and build me into the foundation in some heathen sacrifice for luck.”
Kathleen looked confused.
“But they won’t really do that, will they?” asked Sean anxiously.
Reverend Burton laughed once again. “There are people who’d think it rather a good idea. But I think you’re right, my child. It wouldn’t be Christian, and the bishop will surely turn away from it.”
Claire gave the reverend her dimpled smile. “I take from your words that you don’t exactly hold the most desirable position in the Anglican Church,” she said. “But we should introduce ourselves. Claire Edmunds and Kathleen Coltrane. And this is Chloe, Heather, and Sean.”
Reverend Burton held out his hand formally to the women. Kathleen stood back up and curtsied shyly.
“Chloe and I are Anglican,” Claire added. “Kathleen, well, she’s Irish.”
Reverend Burton nodded. “My parish has just grown by two members. Which puts us at five all together, I believe. Mrs. Coltrane, you and your children are welcome, too, naturally. You’ll see that the differences are not at all that great.”
Kathleen nodded. She had already visited the Anglican Sunday service in Lyttelton.
“But what brings you here now—other than that you would like to acquire land quickly and easily?”
Again Claire told her story about their respectively missing and dead husbands. “We want to open a dress shop,” she explained. “Perhaps we could put up a few sketches here? The pastor’s wife in Christchurch was one of our best customers.”
Kathleen blushed deeply, but Claire dug a few pictures out of her travel bag.
Reverend Burton whistled mischievously through his teeth. “Very nice,” he said enthusiastically. “But I’ll tell you now: these will attract about as many people as my preaching does. Have you seen the women here? They outdo each other in trying to look as much like a crow as possible.”
Claire giggled, and Kathleen had to laugh. In contrast to her optimistic friend, it had already occurred to her as they drove the city how sad and unassuming the Scottish wives’ dresses were. The second innkeeper had looked very much like an evil crow.
Reverend Burton regarded the women. So far, Claire had steered the conversation, but now he noticed Kathleen’s honey-colored hair, her aristocratic features, and her enticing green eyes.
“This here,” said the reverend, pointing to one of the drawings—an evening gown with a fitted bodice and low neckline—“must look like the straight road to hell to a Puritan. After all, it would give any man sinful thoughts.”
His smile took the sharpness from the words. Claire winked at him conspiratorially, but Kathleen looked at him anxiously.
To Reverend Burton, Claire Edmunds appeared unselfconscious, but Kathleen Coltrane did not seem like an adventurous and so far successful entrepreneur. Rather, she seemed to be browbeaten. Or even on the run?
“Now, what’re we to do with you?” he asked the circle. The women looked visibly tired, and the children, too, seemed exhausted. “I think, first thing, I’ll grant you all sanctuary for tonight. Although you have to imagine it’s a sturdier refuge.”
“You mean we’re to sleep here with you in the tent?” Claire asked, frowning.
Reverend Burton shook his head. “For heaven’s sake, the bishop would . . . Well, there’s likely no lower post in New Zealand, but elsewhere in the world, there are supposed to be cannibals to whom he urgently needs to send missionaries.”
“What exactly did you do?” asked Claire, seizing the moment. “That is, to be banished here—if not quite to be among cannibals.”
But Kathleen had heard enough talk. Heather had been leaning, exhausted, against her for a while, and even Sean looked as if he were ready to fall over. She, too, needed a bed desperately.
Agitated, she turned to the pastor. “Please, do tell us where we’re to sleep. Because otherwise we’ll have to look for something else. It’s already getting dark. And I don’t think that Mr. McEnroe will let us sleep in the stables.”
“Hardly,” Reverend Burton said drily, “lest you seduce the horses! No, as I said, I’m granting you sanctuary.” He quickly lifted the tent flap and pointed to a second, similar structure a few yards away. “Do you see that? That’s St. Paul’s Cathedral. We celebrated the placing of the cornerstone, and I pitched that tent over it. For now it belongs to you, although we do celebrate Sunday service in there. Of course, you won’t need the whole cathedral anyway. It’s to have space for five hundred of the faithful, the bishop tells me.”
Kathleen smiled shyly at the reverend. “That is, it’s very nice of you.”
Reverend Burton dismissed this. “There’s nothing to thank me for. Though I might thank you all if you’d do me the favor of sharing my meager meal with me. In fact, it need not be so meager if I might send this young man here off to the butcher.” He indicated Sean. “I was not counting on company. But they don’t let me starve, and I have a stove. So I would be happy to feed you and your children, if I may.”
Kathleen wanted to express her tiredness and decline timidly, but Claire was already nodding with a grin. “Of course you may! We’re starving. Should we do the cooking? That is, I can’t cook very well, but Kathleen is an excellent cook.”
In the end, Kathleen took over Reverend Burton’s kitchen inside the tent while Claire and the children went over to the future church with the pastor. It was dry and warm enough, but aside from a few wooden benches and a cross, there were no furnishings and certainly no beds. Claire suggested retrieving the blankets and bedding from their buggy to make the space more comfortable. She happily accepted the reverend’s offer to accompany her and the children to the stables.
“Although you’ll be sure to compromise yourself in Mr. McEnroe’s eyes,” Claire teased him.
Reverend Burton shrugged his shoulders and opened a huge black umbrella over her head. “In Mr. McEnroe’s eyes, we’re all damned to hell. And better yet, we can’t do anything to change that. From the very beginning of time, God determined that Duncan McEnroe would go to heaven and we wouldn’t. No wonder he keeps his nose so high; he didn’t even have to earn it. Damnation could just as easily have happened to him. In any case, we’ll fetch your things now, and tomorrow you can look for new stables. There’s an Irishman who lives on the other side of town: Donny Sullivan. Does a bit of horse trading and is Catholic, of course. But otherwise, a good fellow.”
“Now, what did you do?” Claire inquired for the second time an hour later, after everyone had taken a seat around Reverend Burton’s large
dinner table.
The reverend had said a prayer and eagerly scooped himself food from the steaming bowls of meat, potatoes, and other vegetables. He did not scrimp on praise for the cook. Kathleen blushed with embarrassment and sipped nervously at her wine. Reverend Burton toasted the women, without compunction, after he opened the bottle with a grand gesture.
“To my first visitors in the new diocese! And to our fabulous cook, Mrs. Coltrane,” he declared, smiling at Kathleen. Kathleen lowered her gaze shyly and peered through her lashes at Claire, looking for help.
This brought them back to Claire’s question. She would not let go until the reverend told them his story.
He looked at her searchingly. “If I confess now, I want to hear your story once again afterward,” he replied. “And something better than all that with the poor harvest. I passed through Christchurch a few months ago, ladies. There was no poor harvest in the plains. You should either tell the truth or show more skill in lying. Otherwise, everyone will be onto you.”
Kathleen reddened again.
Even Claire chewed guiltily on her lip. “A storm flood?” she asked. “The river flood? Yes, we did live on the Avon.”
Reverend Burton rolled his eyes. “You’re lucky I don’t need to hear your confession,” he said. “Your friend doesn’t lie as shamelessly. Wouldn’t you like to tell me the truth, Mrs. Coltrane?”
Kathleen lowered her head so much that he could hardly see her face. “I, I, well, it was not originally a flood,” she stammered, “but, but it does have to do with the fields on the river and, well, also with a bad harvest.”
The reverend and Claire looked at her, equally uncomprehending. Then the reverend dismissed it.
“Well, maybe I don’t even need to know. And I’ll agree that it’s my turn to confess.” He grinned at the women and then went to his bookshelf, drew out a magazine, and opened it to some marked pages. “I take it you’re not familiar with this.”
Kathleen had still not recovered from the questioning, but Claire reached for the magazine, interested, and Sean likewise peered at it curiously. It was a reprint of papers by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace: On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection.
Claire furrowed her brow. “What is it about?” she asked.
“A fascinating theory,” the reverend replied with gleaming eyes. “It discusses the origins of plant and animal species. Darwin supposes that one species develops from another, so to speak, over the course of many thousands of years.”
“Well, and?” Claire asked and took a sip of wine. “It’s like with sheep breeding. You cross one sort with another so that the wool becomes more beautiful and the sheep themselves more resistant to weather. That’s right, isn’t it, Kathie?”
Kathleen nodded absentmindedly.
“But perhaps it could be applied to humans as well,” Reverend Burton said.
“Nothing new there, either,” Claire agreed. “I’m dark-haired with brown eyes; my husband has, had, hm, has”—by now Claire had told so many versions of her story that she no longer recalled whether she had declared herself or Kathleen the widow—“blue eyes and blond hair. And Chloe has black hair and blue eyes. What’s the problem?”
Reverend Burton bit his lip. “You need to see it on a larger scale, Mrs. Edmunds. People are suggesting that this Mr. Darwin will conclude that mankind descended from apes.”
Claire furrowed her brow. “I saw a monkey once,” she said. “It was very cute. A little like a person. It seemed very clever. It collected the money for the organ grinder.”
Reverend Burton had to laugh. “The greed highly developed species seem to have in common seems so far to have escaped Mr. Darwin.”
Claire giggled, but Kathleen hardly seemed to be listening.
“But now what does that have to do with you defending a piece of land in Dunedin against the Church of Scotland instead of preaching somewhere in the Canterbury Plains?” Claire asked. “I don’t quite see the connection.”
Reverend Burton pointed to the volume. “I preached about this,” he explained, “about how it will make a whole new interpretation of the Bible necessary.”
Claire understood. “Because then all that with Adam and Eve can’t be true. But I could not imagine that anyway; I wasn’t made from anyone’s rib.” She threw her head back proudly, and Reverend Burton could hardly contain his amusement.
“Whereby we both seem to have made ourselves guilty of blasphemy,” he teased her. “In contrast to you, Mrs. Edmunds, my bishop insists—and with him, it seems, the whole Anglican Church—that Mr. Darwin is wrong and the Bible right. So you’ll have to make your peace with the rib, even if you like the monkey better.”
“But what bothers the bishop about this new interpretation?” Claire sniffed with satisfaction at her wine glass. “Does it really matter in the end if God made the world in six days or if it took him a little longer?”
Kathleen raised her head. She had seemed uninvolved yet had been listening attentively. “If the bishop admits that the story of the rib isn’t true,” she said calmly, “then he has to accept that maybe the rest of it isn’t true either. All that about, about the Virgin Mary maybe, and the Immaculate Conception. Or with the indivisibility of marriage.”
Reverend Burton did not know why, but he had the impression that the beautiful blonde woman felt a bit comforted by this conversation.
Chapter 2
Finding a home for two women and three children in Dunedin proved as difficult as finding an inn. There were indeed some finished houses, and a few of them were lovely, several-storied stone buildings, but the owners resided in most of them, and if anything was for rent, they could pick out their renters. An Anglican and a Catholic with no husbands were at about the bottom of their wish lists.
“And things look bleak for our tailoring too,” sighed Claire. The women had shopped and cooked for their second night as guests, along with their children, at the reverend’s table. “Literally, the women here don’t seem to wear anything but black.”
“Do you have other skills to offer?” Reverend Burton asked. “Aside from cooking. You’ve done another marvelous job, Mrs. Coltrane. Though I fear hiring a cook would seem as much of a luxury to the Scots as the purchase of beautiful clothing.”
“Farm work,” said Kathleen quietly. “I always worked in the garden, in the fields, and with animals. Sean can do that too.”
The boy nodded sadly. He had been hoping he would no longer be bothered with feeding animals and spreading manure, but he understood the seriousness of the situation. Of course he would do whatever work was needed.
Reverend Burton thought for a moment, but then his face brightened. “Well, if you don’t have your hearts set on Dunedin, farm work gives me an idea. I’ve already mentioned Johnny Jones, haven’t I, our generous patron?”
The women nodded.
“As I said, he originally had a whaling station, but for a while now, he’s made his money in trading and shipping—and he runs a farm. That is, there are actually several farms in Waikouaiti, a small town not far from here. Several farmers have settled there since Dunedin was founded. They provide the city with its groceries. As far as I know, everyone there is doing well for themselves.”
“Where exactly is it?” Claire asked, but then she was already somewhere else with her thoughts. “Oh right, I remember: I could also teach piano!”
Both Kathleen and the reverend saw better chances in Waikouaiti, if only in regard to piano lessons for the Scottish children.
“Soon you’ll be thinking of playing the organ in their services,” chided Kathleen when she noticed that Claire was loath to let go of her latest business idea.
“Assuming they don’t consider music blasphemous too. On the farm, we’d surely be able to weave again. We might even be able to sell wool in sober colors here.”
“We’ll go there tomorrow,” said Reverend Burton, in good spiri
ts. He opened another bottle of wine.
Claire seemed somewhat unhappy about having to live outside a city again, but Kathleen appeared to like Reverend Burton’s idea. She came to life as he told her about settlers in the small town. Johnny Jones had brought them over to New Zealand from the Australian city of Sydney.
“But were they really allowed to leave?” she asked. “Aren’t they all convicts?”
“First of all, not all Australians arrive in the country as convicts,” answered Reverend Burton. Her sudden and lively interest surprised him. “And second, only a few people there are condemned for life. Most serve seven to ten years. As soon as their sentences are served, they’re free. They can go wherever they’d like, though they never make enough money for passage back to England. Why Jones would bring over Australians and whether they were convicts or not, I have no idea. But you can ask the people tomorrow yourself.”
Sean yoked the mules; the women had not yet changed stables, which seemed odd to Reverend Burton. He thought Kathleen Coltrane would be happy to meet a landsman. Not to mention Donny Sullivan charged less money than McEnroe. But Kathleen and Sean acted downright skittish, if not repulsed, when talk turned to changing stables. Apparently they had something against horse traders.
Reverend Burton rode his horse beside Sean and just behind the women and their two daughters in the carriage. He noted how surely the boy sat in the saddle of his small black horse. True, most farm children knew how to ride a horse, but Sean seemed like an expert; he handled the young animal with facility and care. Still, he blushed when Reverend Burton paid him a compliment about it. A quiet boy, like his mother. Reverend Burton thought them both equally fascinating, even if Kathleen never seemed to warm up to him. Perhaps she had reservations about his religious affiliation. The Irish had certainly suffered considerably at Anglican hands. But Reverend Burton was in no hurry. He would be there a long time yet, and Kathleen, too, it seemed. She might thaw someday.
