Beneath the Kauri Tree (The Sea of Freedom Trilogy Book 2)

by Sarah Lark

  “It’s so unfair,” she complained. “The men meet in the pubs, talk about the results until the votes are counted, and then drink a glass to them. We, on the other hand—”

  “I might still have two bottles of champagne in my office,” noted Sean, winking. “I just didn’t dare bring them before. After all, you know what Meri thinks about that.”

  Meri Te Tai Mangakahia had been with them in the morning. Though she wasn’t yet permitted to vote—the vote for the Maori seats in Parliament was not until December 20—she had come to Wellington with her husband to experience the women’s triumph. The Mangakahias had been invited to a lunch and had parted from the others after Matariki and Violet had voted. Before they left, Meri made some jabs about Matariki voting that day and not waiting to vote with her tribal compatriots. Matariki did not have a choice in that, though. Since she was legally Michael Drury’s daughter, she was considered of Irish ancestry. Meri Te Tai had not known that.

  “Good, then we’ll go back to our office and drink there,” Matariki said. “I can get the champagne from the Parliament Building. You just show me the way, Atamarie.”

  Violet smiled indulgently. Matariki still had not gotten over Violet having explored the Parliament Building with the girls while she herself had still never seen it. This time, however, Atamarie entered the building through the main entrance; although the prohibition on women had not been lifted, no one stopped them. While Sean and the others went on to the office, Matariki admired the entry hall of the Parliament Building.

  “The offices are upstairs,” Atamarie said as she dragged her mother up the stairs and began searching for Sean’s office, which fortunately was not hard to find. Sean had described exactly where the champagne was.

  “He even thought of ice.” Matariki pulled a champagne cooler with two bottles of ice-cold French champagne from the cabinet. “I could fall in love with Sean too.”

  “Mom,” Atamarie yelled chidingly.

  At that moment, they had heard steps in the hallway—surely a parliamentarian on the way to his office. This man’s steps, however, stopped in front of Sean’s door as if he were reading the name of the representative located here. Matariki had an uneasy feeling when at that moment the door handle turned. It seemed to be the same for Atamarie, who suddenly ducked under Sean’s massive desk. Noticeable was the reaction of old Dingo, who had patiently hauled himself up the stairs in Matariki and Atamarie’s train. He puffed himself up in front of Matariki and began to bark and growl protectively.

  The man who entered was blond, slender but heavier than Matariki remembered him. She gasped when she saw Colin Coltrane’s face. His once-appealing features were destroyed: his broken nose had healed poorly, his jaw was crooked, and a thick scar twisted one eyebrow diabolically.

  “Colin,” cried Matariki, shocked. “What happened to you?”

  Colin Coltrane was just as surprised as she, but he collected himself quickly and forced his face into a smile—or was it a sneer?

  “Well, Matariki,” he said. His voice sounded throaty, perhaps a result of the deformed jaw. When he opened his mouth, Matariki saw he was also missing several teeth. “That I should run into you here, cute as ever, and wild.” He laughed and glanced at the champagne. “Don’t tell me you’re doing my brother.”

  “Your brother is engaged,” Matariki said calmly, “and you’re still married, or has Chloe divorced you now?”

  Colin stepped closer. “I’m free again,” he smirked. “Although the little bitch kept my name. Suits her, since now she shares a name with her whore. Whoever doesn’t know them thinks they’re sisters who are very loving to each other.”

  Matariki thought that was a good solution. “You did get to keep the house in exchange,” she noted. “A stud farm, a racetrack, a manor house—not bad for a little name.”

  “The only thing I got is this here.” Colin ran his hands across his ruined face. “I don’t know how the bastards found out about the bet rigging. I could have sworn Chloe didn’t know about it. Otherwise, she would have shoved it in my face amid all the trouble at the end.”

  “Bet rigging?” Matariki asked cautiously. She knew about Eric Fence’s notebook, but it was best not to betray any of Violet’s involvement in the matter to Colin.

  Colin looked out the window at the summer day. “That’s what they call it, anyway. Really, it was only half as bad. A little boost for a horse here, a poorly shod shoe there.”

  “You shoed horses so they’d go lame?” Matariki was outraged. Violet had not gone into details when she told Matariki about what Colin and Eric had done. “And then naturally they couldn’t win. That’s lousy, Colin.”

  Dingo growled.

  “So, you’ve still got the mutt,” observed Colin. “Does he put on this kind of show when Sean comes near you?” He pressed threateningly close to Matariki. “You’re beautiful, my dear. I ought never to have let you go.” Colin kicked at Dingo as he reached for Matariki.

  She evaded him skillfully. “Enough, Colin,” she said sternly. “What are you even doing here? Were you looking for Sean?”

  Colin nodded. “Oh yes, sweetheart. I thought I’d ask my brother to whom I owe my betrayal. Someone must have given the information to the bookmakers. And the first one who sent his ruffians after me was in Dunedin.”

  Matariki pointed to Colin’s face. “That’s from people who wanted to collect money?”

  Colin grimaced. “You got it,” he said, “and now you know what happened to the farm, the track, and the house. Everything sold, sweetheart. ‘As compensation for lost bets,’ as the gentlemen put it. Requested with a great deal of emphasis.” He touched his jaw again. “It’s nice to see you here. Indeed, perhaps with your help, I can request some compensation from Sean? What do you think: Would he pay a bit for you if I take you with me now?” He reached for her arm and twisted it with a skilled motion onto her back. “We’ll take the champagne and have a nice evening with it. Tomorrow we’ll send Sean a note, maybe a dog’s collar.” He kicked at Dingo again. “Or a dead dog.”

  “You bastard.” Matariki tried to tear herself free, but Colin held her with an iron grip.

  “Sweetheart, doubtless you’d come with me willingly rather than look like me afterward?”

  While Matariki was desperately considering how she could draw out information from him about where he intended to take her—Atamarie was listening and would have been able to inform Sean and the police—the door was thrown open.

  “Let her go this instant,” roared Kupe.

  It was not the tattoos that made the warrior and certainly not the haka Kupe had danced in Parihaka. It was rage. Kupe leaped on Colin, pulled Matariki from him, and landed a fist in his face. Colin fell to the ground.

  “No,” he whimpered, trying to protect his nose, which was bleeding again.

  Matariki almost felt sorry for him. He had not been cowardly before, but the bookkeepers and their brutes must have worn him down.

  “Oh, so the gentleman doesn’t want an honest fistfight,” Kupe spat at him. “But you always had your difficulties with honest combat, didn’t you, Sergeant Coltrane?”

  “I had nothing to do with your arrest,” Colin moaned. “You have to believe me.”

  “No,” Kupe retorted, “but you did with the fact that afterward I spent six months lying in that shithole in Lyttelton and almost died. You certainly had something to do with that.”

  Matariki looked at Kupe, confused, and then let her gaze wander over to Colin. “I asked him,” she whispered. “He said he didn’t know where you were.”

  Kupe laughed. “And you believed him. You only had eyes for him. How could you take off with him, Matariki? How could you?” He turned to her with a distraught look.

  Matariki swallowed. “But, Kupe, what good would it have done if I had let myself be locked up too? He said we were looking at months in prison, all of us. And he would smuggle me out, and I was so afraid. You had disappeared, and every day more people were taken away.�
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  “And set free two miles from Parihaka,” Kupe scoffed. “In the final days, they did not arrest anyone anymore, Matariki. Either they transported you the fastest way home to your tribe, or they set you free somewhere in the wilderness. With one exception.” He looked at Colin hatefully. “What did you tell that Bryce bastard I was, Coltrane? A leader? A criminal hiding out in Parihaka? I suspect the latter, given the way they treated me. They sent me to the South Island, Matariki, in chains. In this shithole of a prison where they had kept the plowmen whom they didn’t take to trial for months either. If a few journalists and churchgoers there had not become aware of us, they would have forgotten us there. With nothing but bread and water, although they liked to forget the first sometimes. Just like cleaning out the cell and heating fuel in the winter. It was cold and wet in the cells, Matariki, and the latrines overflowed. We had cholera and gangrene of the lungs while you were enjoying yourself with your pakeha. They pulled us out of there just before the first of us died. Straight to the nearest army hospital. We all just made it. While Miss Drury was planning to start a stud farm with Sergeant Coltrane. Probably with a few savage Maori as stable hands.” Naked hate filled Kupe’s eyes.

  Matariki, nevertheless, held his gaze. “I didn’t know any of that, Kupe,” she said quietly. “I didn’t hear about you again until you were studying in Wellington, from the other young women, first from Koria and then Pai. She wrote me that you didn’t want anything to do with me, and I got the impression you were with her.”

  Kupe snorted. “Then you got the wrong impression. I actually wanted to see you when I heard that this bastard left you, first got you with child and then left you.” He seemed about to kick Colin, but Colin turned, whimpering on his side before Kupe’s foot even came close. Kupe laughed and spat at him.

  “Kupe,” Matariki called chidingly. Then, however, she looked at him doubtfully. “You looked for us?” she asked quietly. “But we weren’t hard to find, Atamarie and I?”

  “I received a letter from Amey Daldy,” he explained wearily, “who strongly denied she was letting any fallen woman work for her. You were a widow. She had never heard of a Colin Coltrane. Well, so I gave it up. Two pakeha one right after the other, married to one.” He smiled crookedly. “I had hoped I could come by like something of a fairy-tale prince to help you out of your troubles. I did have experience in that, after all. But then you never thought much of me.”

  Matariki looked up at him seriously. “In any case, you did save me again today,” she asserted, letting her gaze—a gaze of contempt—wander over to Colin, who had turned his face from her. Then she collected herself. If Kupe was now finally talking, maybe he would tell her why he was so endlessly resentful toward her.

  “But you must have found out later that I wasn’t ever married,” she drilled down, trying not to sound accusatory. “In Wellington at the latest, I am still named Drury, after all.”

  Kupe nodded. “I also only needed to look at your daughter’s face to know that there was no one else other than this, this piece of shit.” He pointed to Colin. “But it was too late, Matariki. Then I didn’t want it anymore either.” The expression in his eyes betrayed him.

  Matariki smiled. “But maybe I’d like to,” she said, “and I think it’s time you forgave me. I was eighteen and in love.”

  “I was too,” said Kupe, his tone hard. “When your father brought you to the Hauhau, I was eighteen and in love. And? What good did it do me?”

  “It didn’t do me any good either,” noted Matariki. “And Mrs. Daldy lied to you, and Pai lied to me. Can’t we just begin again?” She stepped toward him. “I’m Matariki Drury,” she said, smiling. “A chieftain’s daughter. In search of a warrior with loads of mana.”

  Kupe looked at her doubtfully. “I’m not a warrior,” he said.

  “Oh, but you are,” Matariki said, pointing to his tattoos. “You fight for your people, don’t you, Kupe? Didn’t you just win a decisive victory?”

  Kupe had to laugh at that. He had controlled himself so long, although he had never been able to resist her.

  He squared himself, building himself up in the manner of a Maori warrior presenting his pepeha. “All right, fine, Matariki Drury. But I have a surprise for you. I’m not Kupe Something Something. My name is Paikeha Parekura Turei from the tribe of the Ngati Porou. My forefathers came to Aotearoa in the Nukutaimemeha. Hikurangi is the mountain—maunga—Waiapu the river.”

  “That’s good, I don’t need to know everything,” Matariki said, interrupting the speech he had obviously learned by heart. A pepeha could go on and on, and Matariki was really not interested in Kupe’s ancestry to the fifth generation. “But how do you know it? You always said—”

  Kupe bathed in the successful surprise. “Hamiora told me before. They undertook inquiries in the area from which my tribe came. Since they could hardly send someone to Parliament who didn’t know his old canoe. Well, and Te Kotahitanga does make quite a bit possible.”

  This time, he let Matariki come closer to him, and he seemed to be expecting her to embrace him. She did not do that, however. She pressed her nose and her forehead to his face in the traditional hongi.

  “Haere mai, Paikeha Parekura Turei,” she said tenderly, “and with that, the curse should be taken from you.”

  “Curse?” asked Kupe, confused.

  Matariki rolled her eyes. “Heavens, Kupe. A woman goes and takes the trouble to curse you, and you can’t even remember it?”

  Kupe smiled. “You mean Pai with that childish fit? That the spirit of Parihaka is supposed to have abandoned me as long as I bear the name you gave me?”

  Matariki nodded. “Don’t make fun of it,” she warned. “I, in any case, have not noticed much of the spirit of Parihaka recently. Or do you call that peaceable?”

  Colin Coltrane moaned. He moved to get back to his feet, but a look from Kupe made him sink back down.

  “Are you going to reproach me for knocking down this bastard?” Kupe asked.

  Matariki made a face. “No. I was just thinking of forgiving and forgetting with regard to a certain chieftain’s daughter.”

  Kupe smirked and put his arm around her. Matariki lifted her face toward his, but in that moment, Dingo began to yap.

  “Not again,” Matariki sighed, but then she saw the dog was only reacting to Colin, who had just seized his chance to pull himself up on the door in order to escape.

  Kupe let go of Matariki, went over to him, and helped him up. “Get out of here, and thank the spirit of Parihaka,” he grumbled. “Leave Matariki in peace. If you want to speak with your brother—come during business hours.”

  Colin practically crawled out the door; Matariki again almost felt sorry for him. Yet then, when Kupe kissed her, she forgot him just as she forgot everything around her. It was better than years ago under the stars in Auckland. She had felt sympathy for the young warrior. She loved the strong warrior of today.

  Kupe and Matariki were startled when Atamarie crawled out from under the desk.

  “Atamarie, I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I didn’t know that you were there, or I would have expressed myself more carefully. Speaking to Coltrane, I mean.”

  Atamarie cuddled against her mother. She hardly seemed to notice Kupe, and she was surely preoccupied with things other than his word choice. She was pale and trembling.

  “Mommy,” she whispered. “Mommy is, was, is that evil, ugly man my father?”

  Matariki struggled for words. How was she supposed to explain? How much had Atamarie understood of everything she had said to Kupe? What did she know about Colin?

  Kupe took the girl by the shoulder and separated her gently from her mother’s skirt. Like that, he got Atamarie to turn to him, and looked at her carefully. For the first time, he saw not Colin’s hated features, but Matariki’s slightly slanted eyes, her raspberry-red mouth always just about to form a mischievous smile, and the golden glimmer of her complexion. From now on, he would only see Matariki in her. And n
ow, he glanced up at Matariki with an expression between “please” and “sorry.” Then he looked the girl in the eye.

  “No, Atamarie,” he said firmly. “I’m your father.”

  Chapter 4

  “You want to live on the North Island, but you’re bringing the girl to us?”

  Miss Partridge, who was still the principal of Otago Girls’ High School in Dunedin, wore somewhat thicker glasses than she had nearly twenty years earlier, but otherwise, though she seemed ancient to Matariki, she was still spry, and she gave her future student and her parents exceedingly stern looks.

  “We’d like to go back to Parihaka,” Matariki explained. She could easily imagine how her mother had squirmed many years before under Miss Partridge’s gaze. Matariki nearly felt as if she were the eleven-year-old who had been summoned before the principal for torturous questioning. “You’ve heard of it perhaps.”

  Miss Partridge made a face. “I can read, my child,” she said. “I’m old but not blind or deaf or ignorant. An interesting experiment. However, wasn’t the settlement destroyed?”

  Matariki nodded. “Yes, Miss Partridge. Forgive me.” She pulled herself together. “But now Te Whiti is back, and his people are building the village up again. My husband and I want to help. He will be working as an attorney, and I’ll be managing the elementary school. We bought land there. No one will drive us out again.”

  “Ah,” Miss Partridge said as she eyed, somewhat disapprovingly, Matariki’s outfit, which was a compromise between pakeha and traditional Maori clothing. Matariki wore a dark skirt but a woven top in the colors of her tribe, and her hair hung long and loose down to her hips. Not exactly how Miss Partridge pictured a teacher—not to mention that her former student seemed to be married. For Miss Partridge, a teacher with her own family was unthinkable. “Well, times change,” she remarked. She did not sound enthusiastic.

  Matariki nodded again. She seemed to radiate from within as she did. “We hope to expand, but we won’t have a high school immediately—at the moment, there are hardly any children Atamarie’s age.” Her face clouded over. “Once, there were so many children.”