Sleep in the Woods

by Dorothy Eden

  In contrast to Katie, Briar, upstairs in the largest and best bedroom the Ship Inn possessed, had only one man in her thoughts, and him only because of his imminent arrival. She would have forgotten him if she could.

  She had undressed because at least that spared her the embarrassment of doing so beneath Saul’s inquisitive gaze. Now she had on one of the voluminous lawn nightgowns, with the high frill around the neck, and sleeves neatly gathered in at the wrists. She had even climbed into the bed and bounced tentatively on the feather mattress, but it was impossible to stay there calmly. She was so wrought up from the events of the day—landing on the beach and walking up into the little straggling town of New Plymouth to talk to people who were eager to meet Saul Whitmore’s bride, then to take this room at the Ship Inn and eat her dinner with Saul in the dingy brown dining room, where her appetite for the roast mutton and potatoes failed her, later still to go up to the bedroom while Saul went out on the business of arranging transport for the morning.

  It was impossible to relax. She thought of Jemima’s meeting with Fred, and the happy way they had gone off, a child on either side and the baby in Jemima’s arms. Her eyes had followed them enviously, noticing their intertwined arms. She had felt very lonely when they had gone, for Saul was already deep in discussions with men he knew, and Katie’s restless eyes wandered this way and that.

  However, she had never had an intimate friend in whom to confide. She told herself stoutly that being alone in this big room with its bare floor and austere furniture was no worse than many another time in her life had been. At least she need not be entirely alone, Briar realized suddenly, for she had the portraits in the bottom of her wicker bag. She had kept them hidden there, showing them to no one, preferring to keep them as a surprise when she arrived at Lucknow.

  But now was the time to bring them out and range them on her side against the man who was presently to exact his price for her new respectable name.

  Excitedly she leaped out of bed, and pattering on bare feet bundled all the articles out of the bag until she came to the two gilt-framed portraits packed flat at the bottom.

  She lifted them out and stood them side by side on the mantelpiece. The two pairs of eyes staring at her were completely unfamiliar.

  In a moment of panic Briar thought that it was like having invited the landlord of the Ship Inn and his wife up to witness her wedding night.

  But that was nonsense. She had only to grow to know these two faces. They were kind, really. There, if she placed the candle between them the strange eyes were softened and less staring, the woman’s mouth had a gentle curve, and the man looked almost intellectual. Certainly, they were respectable people. One knew that not only from their prim expressions, but their clothes, the woman’s neat fichu clasped with a plain gold brooch, and the man very erect in his stiff collar and cravat.

  “Good evening Mrs. Johnson, Mr. Johnson.” Briar bobbed a curtsey to each, then suddenly she heard Saul’s step on the stairs, and she had to make a flying leap into bed and pull the blankets up to her chin.

  She was sitting like that, out of breath, the red ribbons in her hair scarcely redder than her cheeks, when Saul opened the door.

  He stood a moment looking at her. Then, with deliberation, he closed the door behind him.

  “So here we are,” he murmured, and crossing over to the rickety chair sat down and began taking off his boots. He fumbled at the laces, for his eyes never left Briar’s face. The boots thudded on the floor, the chair creaked raucously as he stood again to divest himself of his jacket and cravat. The wavering candlelight made his face all shadows, a lean, elated, frightening face that was shortly to bend over hers, suffocating her.

  “You haven’t noticed,” she said breathlessly.

  “What am I to notice but you?”

  “The portraits on the mantelpiece. My parents. You wanted to know them.”

  “My God, not tonight!” He didn’t even turn to look, but with a practiced flip he had thrown back the blankets. “Now, my love. Off with this.”

  “Not my nightgown!” she screeched.

  “I want to see you.”

  “You’ll do nothing of the kind!”

  “For heaven’s sake, I have no patience with false modesty. You’re my wife. And I was never deceived into thinking that modesty was your strongest characteristic.”

  It was no use to struggle, for his strong hands would soon have wrenched the garment off. And there was no sense in having it torn, after all those hours of hemming that had gone into it, one part of Briar’s mind told her prudently.

  Rigid and trembling, with rage more than apprehension, her slender body exposed to his gaze, she lay while he lifted the candle from the mantelpiece and held it over her. He looked for a long moment. She couldn’t see his expression. Then he put the candle down and pinched it out with his fingers. In the darkness she could hear him throwing off the remainder of his clothes. Just before he got into bed he gave a sudden snort of impatience, and went and turned the portraits, so carefully acquired and proudly displayed, face to the wall.

  Afterwards, Briar lay stiffly by his side trying to control her tears. She was furious with herself for crying. For what use now were tears? She had gone into this marriage with her eyes open. Even after Saul had humiliated her so, in the road, outside Cooper’s public house, a stubbornness had risen in her that made her determined to go on with her plan.

  But she had not thought it would be like this, with Saul behaving like a victor with his spoils. If one were to endure this intimacy night after night—how many nights were there in a lifetime—there must be love, or tenderness, at least.

  “Why are you crying?” came his hated voice out of the darkness, invading her privacy once more.

  “I am not!”

  His arm came across her, heavily. “Don’t worry, my love. Women usually do—I believe.” His voice had been kind enough, but the belated end to his remark was the final humiliation. His arm pressing against her was the bar of her prison.

  But she had entered it voluntarily, so there would not, if she could prevent it, be any more tears.

  Surprisingly enough she slept and did not wake until dawn was lightening the big bare bedroom, full of the smell and sound of the sea. She sat up cautiously to see how she felt, and to take a surreptitious look at the sleeping face of her husband.

  Her nightgown, she saw, lay on the floor yards away, and the blankets fell off her shoulders exposing them to the chilly morning air. Also, her husband was not sleeping. She was aware, all at once, of his eyes, narrowed and gleaming, watching her.

  “Saul!” she said imperiously. “Get me my nightgown.”

  He made no move. His eyes were on her uncovered shoulders. Furiously she jerked the blankets around them, but it was no use.

  Just as last night coming into the room and seeing her face brilliant in the candlelight, her eyes like dark green glass, and the red ribbons in her hair, he had been excited beyond bearing, now her shoulders and the glimpse of an uncovered breast worked the same spell.

  She was his wife, after all, and she had not been forced into marrying him. Perhaps this time she would not be stiff and unresponsive, and he would find the passion he expected.

  She did not cry afterwards. That was the only difference. She lay biting her lips, her eyes dilated and black with some unreadable emotion. It was not love, that was certain enough.

  He tried to stifle his anger and disappointment. “Come, Briar. You’re not aboard the Seagull now. At least this is better than seasickness.”

  He began to believe, as she gave him that brilliant unwavering stare, that her seasickness had been deliberate. Suddenly he was disproportionately amused. Small laughing matter that it was, wry amusement shook him.

  “If that is how you feel about being Mrs. Whitmore,” he said softly, but not without anticipation, “then we have some stormy times ahead.”

  XIV

  IT WAS WHILE they were having breakfast that there was the
sound of a horse galloping down the road. It stopped outside the hotel, and excited voices outside made Saul spring up.

  “Excuse me. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  Briar waited impatiently for a few minutes, then, when Saul did not return, she, too, went out into the road to see a group of men collected around a young man in a soldier’s redcoat. His horse, foam-flecked and exhausted, was being led away, and he himself was talking rapidly and excitedly.

  Briar saw Saul and ran forward. “What’s happened?”

  “There’s been a skirmish—nothing for you to worry about—miles from here.”

  But his face was grim. She did not yet know him very well, but well enough to guess when he was disturbed.

  The young man, in a high voice that indicated hysteria and the limit of endurance, was saying, “They didn’t eat him, thank God! There was just this enormous bonfire, and the tohunga with his wrinkled cheeks and his face black from tattooing, poking at it with a long pole and chanting his savage elegy to the dead. And then, just at the last, while the smoke was still pouring out, that crafty old chief Titokowaru stalking forward, and making his farewell speech.”

  “Saul!” hissed Briar. “What is he talking about? Who has been killed?”

  “Major von Tempsky.”

  “The man Uncle Hubert told me about, who led the forest rangers.”

  “The Maoris called him Manu-raw, Many birds,” said Saul absently, “because they said he was as nimble as the birds of the forest.”

  Briar saw the tight line of his mouth. “You knew him?”

  “Yes, I knew him. He was a brave man. He and his rangers have saved more white settlements than I care to think.”

  “And now he’s—burned to death?”

  “No, he fell in the battle. The ensign has been telling us about the funeral pyre they built for him. He was respected by his enemies. The Maori admires a brave fighter. The old chief made an oration over his dead body.”

  “What did he say?”

  Saul looked down at her tense face. He showed an uncharacteristic thoughtfulness. “You shouldn’t be listening to these things.”

  “But I must. One should know one’s enemy.”

  “I hope you will never meet this enemy.”

  For Saul, in his mind, could see very vividly the scene that had taken place—the battle over, the strewn dead, and the victors in their forest stockade mad with excitement. All the birds would have screeched away in alarm from the fury of the dancing savages who, naked, with blackened faces, would be yelling war songs and dancing the earth-shaking haka.

  And their dead would not have lain undisturbed, for the women had their part in the dreadful celebration, doing their gruesome work of slashing the blood-drained faces with tomahawks. There were twenty white men lying there, the ensign had said, and all of them mutilated. He himself had escaped hours later from his crouching haven in a tall ngaio tree, the smoke of the funeral pyre blackening his face and the flames well-nigh scorching him.

  But at least he could say that there had not, on this occasion, been any cannibalism. The body of the brave major and his men had been granted a grand and terrible farewell.

  For, in his immensely dignified voice, the old chief Titokowaru had spoken to his fallen enemy: “In the days of the past you fought here and you fought there, and you boasted that you would always emerge safely from your battles into the bright world of life. But when you encountered me your eyes were closed in their last sleep. It could not be helped. You sought your death at my hands. And now you sleep forever. Ka moe koe.”

  At the end, the ensign said, his cheeks blanching again as he relived the experience, the tall green trees were scorched and the forest filled with the unspeakable odor of burning flesh.

  Yet the dreadful grandeur of the scene had not been an unfitting way for the fallen men to depart.

  Briar clutched Saul’s arm. “How far away did this happen?”

  “Oh, too far to trouble us. And Te Kooti’s reported to be following the old battle trail in the Ureweras. That’s a wild and savage part that is the other side of the mountain range.”

  Briar studied his face. “But there’s something else, isn’t there, besides the death of this brave major?”

  “How do you know?”

  “I can tell by your face.”

  “I didn’t know you knew my face so well.”

  “Not with that expression, no. What is it, Saul?”

  “There’s been a man and his wife and two children murdered not twenty miles from here. They had a farm just off the road to Lucknow. It’s a lonely place. They didn’t have any near neighbors. The dog must have given the alarm, because it was found with its throat cut. I’m sorry, I didn’t want to tell you this.”

  “You’ve brought me here to live, so I must know. Go on.” Her face was blanched, but her voice perfectly steady. Even if she had wept last night, she would not now let him see that she was afraid of a very different ordeal.

  “There’s nothing more to tell. Whoever did this—a roaming band of Hauhaus, one imagines—had apparently come on the pretense of selling potatoes, because there was one of those native flax baskets upside down, and potatoes lying about. John and Martha and the children had died very quickly,” he added, giving her at least that uneasy comfort.

  Briar pressed her hands together and straightened her shoulders. “We haven’t finished breakfast, and we had planned to start at eight. Would you bring the bags down while I see if Katie’s ready. And I’d suggest we don’t mention this to Katie or Jemima. It’s bad enough having to face it ourselves.”

  “Now wait a minute,” Saul said sharply, “I don’t intend to take women into this danger. I thought things had quietened down. There hasn’t been a settler murdered for a long time in this district. But as it is now you’d better stay here for a while. I don’t think you’ll find the Ship Inn too bad. I’ll arrange for Jemima and the children to move in, too. Fred, I’ll need with me. But we’ll come back for you as soon as possible.”

  “And when will that be?” Briar inquired politely.

  “Oh, by the spring, I hope.”

  “The spring! And I’m to sit here and look at the sea for four months! I never heard such nonsense! Just go upstairs and bring down our bags and pay the bill, and we can start.”

  He looked at her implacable face. Good heavens, last night she had trembled and wept in his arms, today she behaved as if facing a band of murdering Hauhaus were of little moment.

  His crooked smile held admiration but not amusement.

  “And see that we have muskets and ammunition,” she added. “Each time we stop we must have some firing practice.”

  She hadn’t shown him she was afraid, had she? Her voice had remained calm and her clenched hands hadn’t trembled. But inside her gray traveling dress and her several petticoats her body was stiff with apprehension. The bruises at the base of her throat which Saul had inflicted last night were no longer such an outrage. That, at least, belonged to the world of living, and as such must be endured. One only hoped to reach the bedroom Saul had promised her at Lucknow with no worse wounds.

  They were to travel over a road that was, in places, no more than a track across the scrub and tussocks, she and Saul and Katie to ride in the first bullock wagon, and the Potter family, accompanied by their baggage and various pieces of furniture, in the second. They would have to sleep one night by the roadside, creeping under the wagon for protection, for although the weather was still mild and humid it rained frequently.

  Katie and the two children, Jimmy and Lucy, regarded this as a tremendous adventure. Jemima looked more anxious, as she worried about the problem of feeding the baby. That was such a small problem in comparison, Briar thought, knowing that she and Saul and Fred would not sleep at all, or if they did, in snatches, while one or the other kept watch. Besides, solely for the small Rose’s benefit they were taking a cow, hitching her to the back of the second wagon. She was a two-year-old Jersey in full milk, and
Saul said that if she arrived safely she would be Fred’s own, along with the two ewes he had already promised. It was the small beginning of a farm, and Briar had a feeling of triumphant pleasure at the light in Jemima’s face. Without her, Jemima and Fred could not have achieved this so soon.

  And without Saul she could not have played the satisfying part of Lady Bountiful. She had to be fair and give him his due, bitter as it was to have to do so. She would even make herself submit to lying in his arms again. Perhaps, if she shut her eyes to keep out the sight of his taut, elated face, his strangeness and his hard violent body would be just endurable.

  If ever, of course, they were to reach the end of this journey.

  As they bumped out of the little town Jemima turned to take a long last look at the sea. She tucked the baby more closely against her, and her sad face grew calm.

  “Now I’ll be able to sleep again,” she said. “The sea used to keep me awake at nights. I hope I never have to look at it any more.”

  “There are other things ahead,” Fred said uneasily.

  “Such as what?”

  “You ought to know, Jem. You’ll have to cook in a camp oven outside, and the house is only one room, really, with an attic. The roof leaks, and there isn’t much furniture.” (And the forest is all around. The tree ferns make wonderful cover for anyone stalking. If the birds start screeching and flying out, you’ve got to grab your gun and be ready …). He didn’t add those things. The very thought of them made a light sweat break out on his forehead. He was not brave, he told himself sadly. He could only pretend to be, for the sake of Mr. Whitmore, whom already he revered, and for Jem and the children, and for that patch of ground he was preparing for its first crop of potatoes.

  Jemima was laughing. Her thin face, so prematurely worn for her twenty-six years, was full of optimism.

  “You think I care about a little thing like a roof leaking, Fred Potter!”

  She cast one more furtive glance over her shoulder at the gray line of the sea receding into the horizon as a nightmare receded, and she said sharply to the two children bouncing in the back of the dray, “Jimmy! Lucy! You’re never to forget your brothers.”