Song of the Spirits (In the Land of the Long White Cloud saga)

by Lark, Sarah

  Matt shrugged. “A few of them afford themselves far too many. Most of their pay goes toward drink, and that’s why they never come to much. But can you blame them? Thousands of miles from home and still no future, their filthy houses, the constant rain.”

  “Still, it’s no good to have drunks underground,” Timothy said, taking a sip of his beer and a closer look around the pub. The men were not drinking outrageously just then. Most of them had beer glasses; only a few had ordered whiskey, and they didn’t look like miners. The music suddenly took a more cheerful turn. The sad Welshmen had cleared away from the piano, and the pianist was playing an Irish jig.

  The pianist?

  “Who the devil is that?” Timothy asked, astounded, when he recognized the girl on the piano.

  It was without a doubt the shy little thing he had met that afternoon. She was no longer wearing her unremarkable riding dress, however, but a flouncy, pretty blue dress that emphasized her narrow waist. The color was a little too intense for a girl from a good home, but it was relatively high-cut and far from being as salacious as what the barmaids and whores were wearing. Her hair, hanging down over her shoulders now, seemed to be in constant motion. Her locks were so fine that even the tiniest breeze blew them about.

  Startled, Matt and Ernie looked in the direction where Timothy was pointing. Then they laughed.

  “The cutie on the piano?” Ernie asked. “That’s our Miss Keefer.”

  “The Saint of Greymouth,” Matt joked.

  Timothy frowned. “Well, she doesn’t look like a saint to me,” he remarked. “Certainly not here of all places.”

  Matt and Ernie chuckled.

  “You just don’t know our Miss Keefer,” Ernie said soothingly. “They also call her the ‘Virgin of Greymouth,’ but the ladies don’t like to hear that, because it makes it sound like she’s the only one.”

  There was roaring laughter, this time from the neighboring table as well.

  “Will someone please fill me in?” Timothy asked in a surly tone. He didn’t know why, but he did not appreciate the way the men joked about the girl. The little redhead looked remarkably sweet. He watched her delicate fingers flying over the keys as she strung together the difficult passages of the melody, a deep furrow between her eyes, a sign of her intense concentration. The girl seemed to forget the pub and the men all around her, forming an island of… innocence?

  Matt was finally moved to pity and told Timothy what he knew.

  “She says her name is Lainie Keefer. She popped up here about a year ago, in pretty bad shape and looking for work. Respectable work. She even made an attempt to rent a room in a decent hotel. The barber’s wife still gets worked up about how she almost let someone like Lainie into her house. But she had no money. Well, as you can imagine, Greymouth is not exactly a hub of female labor. Madame Clarisse finally hired her as a pianist. Naturally, we all took bets on when she’d fall. In this sort of environment, how is a girl supposed to stay clean?”

  “And?” Timothy asked. He watched as one of the barmaids placed a whiskey on the piano for the girl. Miss Keefer knocked the drink back in one go. Not exactly the hallmark of an innocent country girl.

  “And nothing!” replied Ernie. “She plays the piano and chats with the men a bit, but otherwise—nothing.”

  “And she keeps the chitchat limited to work hours,” Matt added. “Otherwise, the only man she speaks to is the priest.”

  “She talked to me this afternoon,” Timothy remarked.

  The girl was now playing “Whiskey in the Jar,” apparently by request. One drink, one song.

  “Oh, you’ve met her already,” Matt said, laughing. “Well, I bet the conversation was limited to the weather. She doesn’t manage much else.”

  “We talked about horses,” Timothy said absentmindedly.

  Ernie laughed. “Well, you’re a quick one. Gave it a try too, eh? And not a bad one at that. Horses are just about the only thing she’ll talk about—with dogs a close second. Joel Henderson claims she once managed three sentences on two versions of an Irish song with different sets of lyrics.”

  “What was I trying?” Timothy wasn’t really listening. Elaine’s piano playing had a much stronger grip on his attention.

  “Well, to land her,” Matt said, rolling his eyes. “But that’s hopeless, believe me. We’ve all tried. The miners too, but they never have any luck either. What girl wants to move to their place? But even the landowners and their sons, the artisans like Ernie here and the smith. Not to mention yours truly, as well as foremen of the Blackburn and Biller mines. All love’s labors lost. She doesn’t spare anyone a glance.”

  That was indeed the case—in the strictest sense of the word. Timothy thought of Elaine’s lowered gaze during their whole conversation.

  “Do you know what the other girls say about her?” Ernie asked. He seemed a little tipsy by this time, but it might be that the thought of his botched courtship of Elaine gave him a melancholy aspect. “They say Miss Keefer is afraid of men.”

  Timothy waited for the conversation to move on to other topics. Then he slowly stood up and went to the piano. This time, he made sure that Elaine saw him. He did not want to startle her again.

  “Good evening, Miss Keefer,” he said formally.

  Elaine lowered her head, and her hair fell like a curtain in front of her face.

  “Good evening, Mr. Lambert,” she replied. So, she had taken note of his name.

  “I just placed my horse next to yours, and the two of them are flirting like schoolchildren.”

  Elaine’s face flushed slightly.

  “Banshee likes company,” she said stiffly. “She’s lonely.”

  “Then we’ll want to cheer her up from time to time. Perhaps she’d like to take a walk with Fellow sometime.” Timothy smiled at the girl. “Fellow is my horse, and I assure you he has only the most honorable of intentions.”

  Elaine continued to hide behind her hair.

  “No doubt, but I”—she looked up briefly and he thought he saw a twinkle in her eye—“I don’t let her go for walks unattended, you see.”

  “We could both chaperone the horses, of course.” Timothy tried to sound casual.

  Elaine eyed him carefully. Timothy was looking at her with sincerity, neither salaciously nor lustfully. He appeared to be kind, and he’d presented his invitation to a ride together in the most diplomatic manner. The other men had probably warned him. And now there was probably a bet over whether he would get her to come around.

  Elaine shook her head. No excuse came to her; she simply blushed and bit her lip. Callie growled beneath the piano.

  Madame Clarisse finally took matters into her own hands. What was this stranger doing to Elaine? Was he trying to cozy up to her? He seemed to be driving the girl to distraction.

  “Miss Keefer is only for looking at,” she explained resolutely. “And listening to. If you’ve got a favorite song and want to buy her a drink, she’ll play it for you. Otherwise, stay away from her, got it?”

  Timothy nodded. “I’ll get back to you,” he said amiably but without clarifying whether he meant the invitation or the song.

  Matt and Ernie received him with a grin.

  “Nothing, eh?” the saddler asked.

  Timothy shrugged.

  “I’ve got time,” he said.

  Timothy went to the pub again the following evening, sat down near the piano, and watched Elaine. He drank a beer slowly, then a second, and exchanged a few words with his new friends, but aside from that, he did nothing but stare the girl at the piano.

  At the end of the evening, he said good-bye politely to Elaine and Madame Clarisse, who was a little embarrassed about her gruff behavior the day before, having since learned who he was. Timothy came again the following night. And the next. On the fourth evening, a Saturday, Elaine could not take it anymore.

  “Why do you sit down there every night and gawk at me?” she asked, aggravated.

  Timothy smiled. “I thought th
at’s what you were there for. At least that’s what your boss told me. ‘Miss Keefer is only for looking at.’ So, that’s what I’m doing.”

  “But why? If there was a certain song you wanted to hear, you could ask, you know?” Elaine looked at him helplessly.

  “I’d be happy to order you a tea if that’s what this is about. But as for songs, that’s difficult. Drinking songs are too loud for me, and you don’t put any feeling into the love songs.”

  Elaine blushed at the mention of tea. “How did you know?” She indicated the whiskey glass on the piano.

  “Oh, it’s not hard to guess,” Timothy said. “You’ve had five drinks since I arrived. If that were alcohol, you’d have long since been quite drunk. You should give it a try though. It might ease the problem with the love songs.”

  Elaine turned even redder.

  “I get half,” she said flatly. “Of the whiskeys.”

  Timothy laughed. “Then we should just treat ourselves to a whole bottle. But what would we do for a song? How about ‘Silver Dagger’?”

  Elaine bit her lip. It was a song in which a girl swears off love. She sleeps with a silver dagger in her hand to keep the men away from her.

  It awakened very concrete memories in Elaine, and she had to force herself not to tremble.

  Madame Clarisse approached.

  “Now, let the girl work in peace, Mr. Lambert. The poor thing gets nervous when you stare at her the whole time. Behave like an upstanding gent and go drink with your friends. You can meet with the girl at church tomorrow and politely ask her if she’ll let you walk her home. That strikes me as much more respectable than sharing a bottle of whiskey with her.”

  Timothy was not sure, but he thought he saw Elaine stiffen at the mention of church. Whatever the reason, the red in her cheeks faded to a waxy pallor.

  “I think I’d prefer the whiskey,” she said softly.

  The next morning Timothy did indeed meet the girl in front of church, but she slipped away at once—which was easily done since she played the organ and was separated from the rest of the congregation. During the service, Timothy did what he was now used to doing: he watched her. This time, it was his mother, rather than Madame Clarisse, who chided him. He hoped that he would have a chance to see Elaine after the service, but she disappeared as soon as the last notes had sounded.

  Charlene explained to him that Elaine was eating lunch with the priest and his wife.

  “They invite her to join them occasionally, but I think she invited herself today. Church is not the best place to pursue her, Mr. Lambert. She’s had some bad experience with that.”

  Timothy wondered where he could go about pursuing her then, but his determination had been awakened once and for all.

  He continued to visit the pub regularly over the next few weeks. Though he did not stare at the girl as noticeably as he had the first few times, he always sat nearby. Sometimes he exchanged a few words with her before requesting the same song every time and ordering her a drink. She would then smile shyly and play “Silver Dagger” while Charlene served her “whiskey.”

  Several weeks passed in this manner without his making even modest progress. But then Saint Barbara’s Day approached.

  “Your father’s really putting on a festival?” Matt Gawain asked Timothy as soon as they entered the pub. The horse race at the Lambert Mine was the only thing anyone was talking about at the Lucky Horse that evening, and the young foreman was hungry for any details.

  Timothy had arrived a little later than usual and had just gotten through his exchange of formalities with Elaine—“Good evening, Miss Keefer.” “Good evening, Mr. Lambert.” Only then did he approach his regular table and sit down next to Matt.

  “The festival wasn’t my idea if you’re really asking me why there’s money for entertainment but not for safer explosives,” Timothy replied reluctantly. He had just been fighting with his father over the matter, and had made no headway as usual.

  “A festival is much more important to these miners than their working conditions,” Marvin Lambert had insisted. “Bread and games, my son, even the ancient Romans knew that. If you build them washrooms, tomorrow they’ll want a new hoisting cage or better mine lamps. But if you offer them a proper horse race, roast an ox, and let the beer flow in rivers at your own expense, they’ll be singing the praises of it all for weeks.”

  “That’s not what I’m asking,” Matt said, trying to placate Timothy. “It’s just not at all like the old boss to put on a big festival for Saint Barbara’s Day. It’s never happened before, and I’ve been here three years.”

  Timothy shrugged. “We’ve talked about it before. The unions are making progress. People have heard about the uprisings in England, Ireland, and America. It would just take the right leader and we’d be in trouble.” Timothy emptied his beer faster than usual and ordered a whiskey. “My father thinks he can prevent that with bread and games.”

  “But a horse race? We don’t even have any racehorses,” Matt said as Ernie and the smith, Jay Hankins, joined them at the table.

  Timothy raised his eyebrows.

  “We don’t have any greyhounds either,” he remarked calmly. “So we also couldn’t have a dog race. Unless we had Miss Keefer’s Callie run against Mrs. Miller’s poodle.” Timothy smiled and cast a glance at the small dog underneath the piano.

  Callie heard her name, stood up, and trotted over to him, tail wagging. If nothing else, he had won Callie’s heart over the course of the last few weeks, though not by being above bribery. Callie loved the little sausages Timothy’s mother enjoyed serving for breakfast.

  “But there are undoubtedly a few horses around here that can gallop, and my father means to offer the people something to gamble on. If we don’t want to stoop to cockfights, horse races are our only option. Besides, they’re easy to organize. The roads that lead around the mining complex are relatively flat and good for riding. The whole area around Lambert Mine is called Derby, after all. Anyone can compete, anyone can bet, and the fastest horse wins.”

  “Then let’s do it ourselves,” Jay Hankins, said grinning. He owned a long-legged mare, and Timothy’s gelding had thoroughbred ancestors.

  “I can’t ride in the race,” grumbled Timothy. “How would that look?”

  This was another discussion he’d had with his father. The elder Lambert was not only of the opinion that his son should participate in the race but that he had to win it as well. The way he saw it, the miners should bet on a Lambert and triumph with him. That was supposed to create a feeling of common purpose and help the men develop a sense of loyalty to their employer. Marvin Lambert was even seriously considering purchasing an extra thoroughbred.

  “How should it look?” Ernie asked surprised. “You have a horse and you’re competing—like everyone else in town whose nag can still manage to trot around the mine, I imagine. You wouldn’t want to miss out on that, would you?”

  For the miners, it wouldn’t all just be good fun. Timothy knew that they were planning to place large bets. A week’s pay could be lost in a flash, and no one could know who would win such an unconventional race.

  “Well, our Lainie’s competing anyway,” Florry, the barmaid, remarked as she placed new pint glasses on the table. She had been listening to the conversation.

  The men laughed.

  “Miss Keefer with that pony?” Jay scoffed. “We’re dying of fear!”

  Florry looked at him disparagingly. “Just wait until you’re eating Banshee’s dust,” she spat. “We’re going to bet everything on her.”

  “That won’t make the little horse go any faster,” Matt teased. “Seriously, though, where did she get the idea to race?”

  “Lainie can ride better than any fellow here,” Florry crowed. “She told Madame Clarisse that she’d like to, and Madame Clarisse said if she wanted to, she should. We’re going to put colorful bows in Banshee’s mane, and then she’ll be a running advertisement for the Lucky Horse. Lainie was a bit uncertain ab
out it at first, but we’re all going to be rooting for her, and Banshee’s definitely going to be the prettiest horse there.”

  “And Miss Keefer the prettiest rider,” Timothy said with a smile before Matt and the others could tease the barmaid further. Florry was not the cleverest girl in the room, and she may not have grasped the difference between a horse race and a beauty pageant. But to Timothy, this was an interesting development. During the race, Elaine would have to talk to him, jockey to jockey so to speak. He raised his glass and drank to his friends.

  “All right, fine. Tomorrow I’ll put my horse on the list too. May the best man win!”

  Or the best woman, thought Elaine. While playing a few simple songs, she, too, had been following the men’s loud conversation. And she had no intention of making herself the laughingstock of the mine. She had checked out the course the day before. The race covered three miles over varied terrain—hard and soft, wide and narrow, uphill and downhill. It would not simply come down to who was fastest; it would also hinge on the sure-footedness and condition of the horse and the skills of the rider. Elaine cast a glance at Timothy Lambert, flushing when he noticed and winked at her.

  All right, fine. He wanted a ride together. On Saint Barbara’s Day, he would get one.

  8

  The fourth of December, dedicated to the patron saint of mining, landed at the height of the New Zealand summer. Even in rainy Greymouth, the sun had appeared, and it was beaming down on Marvin Lambert’s men, who had transformed the mine compound into festival grounds. Decorated with garlands, little flags, and balloons, the offices, headframe towers, and piles of coal did not look as dilapidated as usual, and the compound roads in between were finally dry. Decorations were also strung from temporary stalls, where beer was being given away, along with tea for the ladies. Whole oxen were being roasted on the spit over large fires. Men were competing at darts and trying their hand at horseshoe-throwing and nail-hammering competitions.