Amber

by Deborah Challinor

  Enya sat back. ‘So, are you in Sydney for a reason, or are you on your way somewhere?’

  ‘We’re here for Wai,’ Kitty said. ‘It’s time to take her home. Well past time, actually.’

  Enya knew about what had happened, of course, and had been told about the Maori protocols that decreed that Wai be returned to New Zealand so her soul could finally rest in peace.

  She asked, ‘The little boy will be four by now, won’t he?’

  ‘Almost four and a half,’ Kitty replied.

  ‘And you haven’t seen him since you took him home?’

  ‘No, we haven’t been back to New Zealand at all.’

  ‘And you’re sure it’s all right for you to go back? No one there will still be holding a grudge?’

  Kitty thought for a moment. ‘I don’t know. I hope not.’

  ‘Well, be careful anyway,’ Enya said incisively. ‘Have you heard about the unrest there, in the Bay of Islands?’

  Rian said, ‘We saw something in the paper in Durban about Hone Heke having a go at the flagstaff at Kororareka.’ He looked at Kitty. ‘Or was that in Montevideo?’

  ‘Durban,’ Kitty replied. ‘It was just after Sharkey died.’

  Enya’s fine eyebrows arched in surprise. ‘John Sharkey, your crewman? The one with the scar and the earrings?’

  Rian nodded grimly. ‘He was knifed in a street brawl.’

  ‘Oh dear, I’m very sorry to hear that. I know you thought well of him, Rian.’ Enya paused, then said, ‘Well, as I said, be careful. There’s talk that war might be imminent.’

  Startled, Kitty blurted, ‘War? In New Zealand?’

  ‘Yes, between the natives and the Crown, apparently.’

  Rian frowned. ‘Is it in the north, or throughout the country?’

  ‘Just in the north, I believe. There was an incident at Wairau—is that how you say it?—in New Ulster, but they say that was over fairly quickly. But Governor FitzRoy moved troops into the Bay of Islands earlier this year.’

  ‘Just because Heke cut down a flagstaff?’

  ‘I’m not entirely sure. We don’t get all the news from New Zealand.’ Enya’s eyes narrowed. ‘Your cargo this time doesn’t include guns, does it?’

  ‘No,’ Rian said. ‘But still, they might come in handy, mightn’t they?’

  Enya gave her brother a long, apprehensive look, but said nothing.

  Kitty watched Gideon as he carefully carried a tray loaded with jugs of ale and tumblers of spirits across the crowded public room of the Bird-in-Hand. In fact it only had a public room: its clientele wasn’t particularly discerning, unlike the St Patrick’s Inn a few doors along, where Kitty had once worked and which had both a public room and a private lounge.

  Following Gideon at a respectful distance was a serving girl, whose wide eyes seemed to be drawn to Gideon’s enormously broad back. The Rocks attracted all sorts of unusual and exotic people, particularly sailors, from every corner of the world, but Kitty had to admit that Gideon was more or less in a league of his own. He spoke extremely cultured English, though, and it always amused her to watch the expressions on people’s faces when he opened his mouth.

  He set down the tray on the long, scarred wooden table and squeezed himself onto the bench beside it.

  Rian reached for his ale and said to the serving girl, who was now hovering nervously at his elbow, ‘Do you still have that bread, cheese and pickle plate?’

  She nodded.

  ‘One of those then, thanks.’ Rian glanced at Kitty. ‘The same?’

  Kitty said yes. Pierre replenished the ship’s larder every time they called into port, and he had a very good eye and nose for interesting, good-quality foodstuffs, but she’d become partial to Australian cheese and had missed it while they’d been away.

  The girl took everyone else’s orders, then trotted off.

  ‘How did you get on?’ Rian said to Ropata, who had made considerable inroads into his ale already.

  Ropata stifled a burp. ‘We found someone who can contact him, and we passed on a message.’

  Gideon added, ‘He must be close by, because we will hear by tonight.’

  The man they were talking about was Mundawuy Lightfoot, the Aborigine who, through his friendship with Gideon, had allowed Wai to be interred in the ancestral burial cave of his people until it was time for her to go home. They had all agreed that it would be deeply disrespectful to return to the caves on the western shore of Sydney Cove and collect her without consulting Mundawuy. But there were very few Aborigines in Sydney town, and to make contact with one required a considerable amount of tapping on the right shoulders.

  Rian asked, ‘Does this messenger know where to find us?’

  ‘Yes. I told her to come here,’ Gideon replied.

  ‘Her?’

  Gideon said, ‘Yes. A relative, I believe. A niece?’ His eyes bright with amusement, he added ‘Ropata took a fancy to her.’

  ‘I did not!’ Ropata protested.

  Rian said, ‘What time tonight, did she say?’

  ‘Just evening,’ Gideon replied.

  ‘Well, I suppose we’ll just have to sit here and drink until she turns up,’ Rian declared, not sounding at all bothered by the prospect.

  ‘I haven’t been to see me mam yet,’ Mick said, setting his empty tumbler on the table.

  ‘I thought you were going to see her when we parted company earlier?’ Kitty said.

  Mick smirked. ‘I was waylaid.’

  ‘On the way past the whorehouse on Argyle Street?’ Pierre asked slyly.

  ‘Aye. ’Tis a terrible thing, human nature, so it is,’ Mick said solemnly while everyone else laughed. Except for Kitty, who still wasn’t completely at ease with the men referring so casually to that sort of thing.

  ‘Anyway, you can talk,’ Mick said to Pierre, ‘considerin’ where you’ve been all afternoon.’

  Having spent the past few hours in the company of the lady friend who regularly accommodated him whenever he was in Sydney, Pierre looked affronted. ‘Ah, but there is une petite difference: I have the special friend, not just some ratty whore. And that is what makes the world go around—good food, friendship and l’amour.’

  Mick snorted, opened his mouth to say something, then glanced at Kitty and shut it again.

  ‘When are you going?’ Rian asked Mick.

  ‘Soon as I’ve had me dinner.’

  ‘We might come with you, then.’

  ‘Aye, that’ll be grand.’

  An hour later, Kitty, Rian and Mick turned off Cribb’s Lane into Caraher’s Lane and walked along the familiar, narrow cobbled street until they came to Mick’s mother’s house. Kitty slowed as she approached, feeling surprisingly and disconcertingly close to tears.

  ‘It’s very strange, being back here,’ she said after a moment. ‘Sort of comforting, like coming home, but sad at the same time.’

  Rian slid his hand around her waist as Mick knocked on his mother’s door and stood back. When Biddy Doyle opened it, she launched herself down the two front steps and threw her arms around Mick.

  ‘My boy, my baby boy!’ she cried, kissing him all over his face and squeezing him until Kitty feared that his dinner of pickle and cheese might burst out of him.

  ‘Hello there, Mam,’ Mick said slightly breathlessly. ‘You’re looking well.’

  Mrs Doyle was barely changed from when they’d last seen her. She was perhaps a little more plump, but everything else was the same—the grey hair, the shawl folded across her bosom, the shrewd, sparkling eyes.

  ‘And Rian. And young Kitty!’ Mrs Doyle went on, delighted. She hugged them both, then stood back. ‘Still together then, I see?’

  Grinning, Kitty proudly held up her hand to display the wide gold filigree band she wore on her ring finger.

  ‘Aye, and wed, too! Well, I never saw that one coming, so I didn’t!’ Mrs Doyle said, laughing. She turned to Mick and clipped him smartly across the ear. ‘You could have written and told your old mam there’d
been a wedding!’

  ‘Sorry, Mam. I didn’t think of it.’

  ‘Well, never mind,’ Mrs Doyle said. ‘Lucky for you Enya gave me the news. So, how long have you been man and wife?’ she asked Rian.

  ‘Three years and five months.’

  Mrs Doyle nodded knowingly and remarked, ‘You must really love the lass. It’s usually her that counts the months as well as the years, not the man.’

  Kitty took Rian’s hand and squeezed it.

  Mrs Doyle noticed. ‘Aye, ’tis both of you. Well, that’s grand, isn’t it, Mick?’ she said, raising a hopeful eyebrow at her unmarried son.

  ‘Mmm,’ Mick said noncommittally.

  ‘No babbies?’ Mrs Doyle went on.

  Kitty shook her head. ‘Not yet. One day, perhaps.’

  ‘Aye, there’s time enough yet, I suppose. Just,’ Mrs Doyle added pointedly. She believed in big families. ‘So what brings you back to Sydney town?’

  ‘We’ve come to collect Wai and take her home,’ Kitty explained.

  Mrs Doyle muttered, ‘And not before time, I’d say.’

  Kitty started to ask her what she meant, but Rian interrupted. ‘How’s business?’ he asked, gesturing at the tenement houses attached to Mrs Doyle’s.

  ‘Fair,’ she said. ‘Good in all but downstairs at number four.’

  ‘Where we lived?’ Kitty said.

  ‘Aye. Anyway, come in and have a cup of tea. You’re just in time—I’ve just made a lardy cake.’

  Inside, when Mrs Doyle had served tea and happily watched them each eat a slab of cake, Mick asked, ‘Why can’t you rent out number four, Mam?’

  ‘Well, it’s not the renting that’s the problem,’ his mother replied, collecting cake crumbs from her plate with her finger, ‘it’s keeping the tenants in there.’

  ‘But it’s a lovely little house,’ Kitty said.

  ‘It is. But as you know I only rent that one to ladies, and all the ladies I’ve had in there over the past eighteen months or so have complained about there being a taibhse wandering about.’

  There was a short silence, then Rian said, in a not altogether disbelieving tone, ‘A ghost?’

  Mrs Doyle nodded, and the hairs on Kitty’s arms began to stand up.

  ‘Aye, they all insist that they’ve seen a young girl with long black hair sitting on the daybed, just under the front window there, keening and wailing and asking for her babby.’ Mrs Doyle paled slightly as she uttered her next words. ‘Me, I think it’s the wee colleen Wai.’

  Kitty burst into tears.

  They arrived back at the Bird-in-Hand just before eight o’clock. The rest of the crew were still there sitting at the long table, but a young woman had joined them. She had a brow heavy enough to suggest that Aboriginal blood flowed in her veins, and beautifully curved, full lips, but her skin was lighter than Ropata’s and her black hair was straight, though there was masses of it. Kitty guessed she was somewhere in her early twenties, and also that she was very uncomfortable sitting in the pub, as she had her back to the wall and kept looking around, her dark eyes wary.

  Hawk said, ‘This is Leena, Mundawuy’s niece.’

  Leena inclined her head, but said nothing.

  ‘She says Mundawuy will take us to the caves tomorrow night,’ Hawk added.

  Leena spoke up then. ‘He say to meet him at the shore, like last time. When the moon is up. And to bring shovels.’ Her eyes darted around the pub again. ‘That is all. I have passed the message. I will go now,’ she said, and stood up.

  As she slid out from behind the table, Kitty could see that she was tall and slender, and probably younger than she had first assumed. She also saw that Ropata was staring intently at her, watching every graceful movement of her limbs. He opened his mouth to say something but was too late, because a second later she had slipped through the door and out into the night. When he realised he had missed his chance, his handsome face assumed such an expression of childish disappointment that Kitty almost laughed.

  ‘Will we all go?’ Mick asked.

  ‘No,’ Rian said. ‘Just me and Kitty. And you two?’ he asked Gideon and Ropata.

  They both nodded.

  Pierre let out an audible sigh of relief, as did Hawk and Mick. Pierre was the most superstitious person Kitty had ever met. Not only did he abide by the full quota of traditional sailors’ superstitions, he was also steeped in the codes of his personal religion, the voudou of his native Louisiana. Some days on board the Katipo, if the sun was shrouded in hazy cloud, or a particular bird had been seen wheeling in the sky two days before, or for no apparent reason the bread hadn’t risen in the galley oven the day before, Pierre could barely force himself to get out of his bunk without performing a wide range of rituals designed to ward off the evils he insisted that any one of those portents might evoke. So digging up the bones of a long-dead girl was not the sort of thing he relished at all.

  Hawk also was very wary and reverent of death rituals—his own as well as those of others—and had made it clear that, although he would help in any other way required, he would not be visiting the Aborigines’ sacred burial ground. Mick, however, wasn’t particularly superstitious, just very keen on paying another visit to the whorehouse on Argyle Street.

  Kitty sighed. She had a headache from crying and fully expected that by the time the following night was over, she would have shed even more tears.

  Chapter Two

  Kitty had the strangest sense of déjà vu. But then, they were doing exactly as they had the first time they’d landed on the little beach on Sydney Cove’s western shore, except that this time Gideon was rowing the boat instead of the taciturn waterman who had ferried them on their previous journey. And this night the moon was high and bright, which would help them negotiate the steep, narrow track that would lead them to the Aborigine burial caves.

  Gideon guided the rowboat onto the beach, and Rian and Ropata jumped out and pulled the bow further up onto dry land. Then Kitty disembarked, holding her skirts up around her knees to avoid getting them wet, and waited while Gideon carefully lifted the box out of the boat.

  It was a box, that was true, but it was also a waka taonga, as Ropata called it: a place to store treasures. It measured two feet long, one foot wide and one foot high, and had been made from a teak log Rian had had milled almost two years before in Batavia. Since then, they had each taken many hours to carve into it the symbols and scenes that held importance for them, a way of honouring Wai’s memory and easing her journey back to New Zealand. Hawk had carved the spiritual motifs of the Seneca people, Pierre those of Louisianan voudou, Ropata the whorls and lines of Ngati Kahungungu, and Rian and Mick the designs unique to those with Celtic blood. Sharkey had carved a scene on the lid that depicted Wai rising out of the ocean on the back of a whale, and Gideon, who had been baptised as a young man, added an ornate cross. Kitty couldn’t carve, no matter how hard she tried, so her contribution had been the padded, flower-embroidered silk lining inside the box.

  Gideon set the box down and they settled in to wait. It was eerily quiet on the small beach, the silence broken only by the hissing of small waves scurrying across the sand. The night air was warm and heavy, barely stirred by the breeze coming off the sea. Occasionally, one of Australia’s exotic and noisy birds gave voice, making Kitty jump.

  Ropata spoke for them all when he said eventually, ‘It is scaring me, this place. When is he coming?’

  ‘Should be soon,’ Rian replied, squinting up at the full moon.

  ‘Too right,’ a voice said, then Mundawuy Lightfoot himself stepped into the moonlight. Like Biddy Doyle, he looked exactly as he had when they’d first met him; long-legged, lean, bearded and cocoa-skinned.

  ‘G’day, black man,’ Mundawuy said to Gideon, who had risen to his feet.

  ‘Good evening, friend Mundawuy,’ Gideon replied, warmly shaking hands with the Aborigine. ‘I believe you have met everyone except Ropata, who is Ngati Kahungungu of the East Coast of New Zealand.’


  Mundawuy looked Ropata up and down, and said, ‘G’day, brown man.’

  Ropata stepped forward and hongi-ed him. Mundawuy looked startled for a moment, then his face broke into a wide grin, his teeth gleaming in the moonlight. ‘That’s good, eh?’ he said.

  Ropata smiled. ‘It is. From my people to yours.’

  ‘That is good,’ Mundawuy agreed, then shook hands with Rian and Kitty. ‘You got shovels?’

  He waited while the others gathered together the box and everything else they would need, then he turned away and padded silently off into the shadows.

  This time the walk up through the great slabs of rock and in and out of clumps of hard, scratchy scrub seemed shorter, but journeys always did, Kitty knew, if you’d done them once before. It wasn’t long before they started going downhill again, and she knew they would soon be at the cave.

  As they walked in through the shadowed entrance, the moonlight slowly faded until they were moving in complete blackness. Rian struck a flint, sharply reminding Kitty again of the first time they had been here, and lit an oil lamp. As they walked on in silence, their boots sinking into the soft, dry sand, she saw once again the ancient drawings that Mundawuy’s ancestors had scored and burned into the walls so long ago. She also heard the leathery flutter of bats’ wings, and felt rather than heard their high-pitched squeaks, glad that this time she had thought to wear a bonnet.

  As they walked further and further into the cave, she began to worry that they might not be able to find the spot where they had buried Wai, but then, up ahead, Mundawuy came to an abrupt halt and held up his hand. He squatted down, spread out his fingers and repeated the strange sniffing that had so unnerved her when they had first come with Wai.

  After a minute, Mundawuy stood, moved several yards further in, squatted again, then pointed. ‘She under here.’

  They set down their tools and the box, and waited while Ropata said a short karakia to Hine-nui-o-te-po, the great goddess of death, asking for her permission to temporarily release Wai. Then they started digging, the sand whispering off the metal of their shovels as they worked.

  It suddenly occurred to Kitty that, because the sand was so dry, there might be more left of Wai than they had been expecting. She shuddered, envisaging her friend’s mummified head, the dried flesh shrunken onto her yellowed bones. She felt someone’s gaze on her and looked up.