by Dorothy Eden
But after all they were wrong in their suppositions that Te Kooti was hiding here. The disappointment was overwhelming. They had thought they had trapped him, but he had been gone for some days, the survivors said. He was far north, they said evasively. It was obvious that if they knew anything more definite than that they were not going to divulge it.
There was a prize, however, and it had fallen to Saul. He stood over the body of one of the dead, and picked up the long crimson pennant that lay muddied on the ground.
He swore softly in surprise. “The Whip!”
Captain Maltby was at his side, and bending over the sprawled figure. He turned it slightly to see the face with its elaborate tattooing, the calm, wide-open eyes, and the rich greenstone ornaments decorating neck and ears.
“Shot through the heart,” he said. “Neat work, Saul. You realize who it is?”
“Te Kooti’s personal standard-bearer, I imagine.”
“Te Kooti’s best friend, Hine Te Mataia. He’s not going to like this.”
“He’s not intended to.”
The tired captain laughed suddenly, with humorless triumph.
“His luck will change now we’ve got the flag. He was superstitious about that, just as he is about his devilish niu pole.”
Saul pulled the stained silk through his fingers. “My wife mended this once.”
“Yes, I heard about that. Under fire, so to speak. Jolly good show.”
“Perhaps. But I’ve a notion that’s why my place was spared in the last attack. There’s not much chance of mercy next time.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll have Te Kooti before he can get down south again.”
Saul’s face was grim. “He’s wilier than a fox.”
“Even the wiliest fox can’t escape the hounds when they close in. Come and see what’s in these pots. It smells like pork and I’m damned hungry.”
But after they had buried the dead, the sodden earth turning easily to their spades, Saul took a few minutes to scribble another note to Briar.
“If you have not been able to leave yet, do so at once. Don’t wait for Sophie’s baby. It is better to risk it being born on the way …”
He would give it to the first man riding south. He wished the death of Te Mataia and the capture of this symbolic strip of material, Te Wepu, had taken place before Peter Fanshawe had returned. He could have impressed on him the urgency of the women getting out. But surely they would have gone by now. Briar had disobeyed him once, and consequently had been forced to sit and make these neat stitches—his fingers found the place—in the now muddied and blood-stained silk. Surely after that risk to her life she would not disobey him again.
But remembering her sparkling eyes and her too frequent moods of perversity, his face darkened. He couldn’t trust her. She had no predictability, and the warmth in her blood seemed to be saved only for defiance of him. Thinking of her tantalizing soft-skinned hostile body in his arms, he began to wonder whether it would not have been better if he had never set eyes on her. But when he thought of the possibility of that body being mutilated by savages he was in torment.
XXIX
BEING SOPHIA, with a hankering for plenty of fuss and attention, she would decide to have her baby at midnight on the wettest night of the year. As soon as she felt her first pains the house was in an uproar, Aunt Charity padding about in dressing gown, nightcap and slippers, Peter half-dressed and trying to conceal his panic, Katie roused to boil water, looking round-eyed and apprehensive, and Mrs. Whitmore saying, “Go back to bed, all of you. Nothing will happen before morning.”
“But the doctor must be fetched,” exclaimed Aunt Charity.
Mrs. Whitmore shrugged. “It’s a wet night to turn out unnecessarily. I’d make a guess that midday tomorrow would be time enough.”
Sophie groaned loudly. “I must have a doctor at once.”
Mrs. Whitmore said, gently enough, “You’ll be all right, my dear. Relax and try to rest. There’s plenty of time ahead to scream.” But outside the room she said in her dry contemptuous voice, “Nothing would kill that young woman. She will demand all her life and, unfortunately, I fear, get her demands. Well, then, who is going for the doctor?”
“Peter has gone out to saddle a horse,” Briar said. “Mrs. Whitmore, you should be in bed. I’m going to send Katie back to bed, too. There’s no need to frighten her in advance, since Sophie won’t be a silent sufferer.”
“And what about you?” the old lady demanded.
“Oh, I have no need to be alarmed,” Briar said lightly. “As I told you this afternoon.”
Peter had brought the horse to the door and had come back inside. Briar heard him moving about downstairs, and went down to find him in the drawing room helping himself to rum. He looked up guiltily as she came in. She noticed that his hand was trembling badly.
“It’s raining infernally hard,” he said. “I can feel that fever coming back in my bones.”
“You must wrap up well. You’re wet already. Didn’t you put a coat on to go out?”
“I didn’t realize it was raining so hard. I guess I got in a bit of a panic. Sophie suffering like that—”
“She’s not suffering much yet,” Briar said shortly.
He peered at her. His eyelids were a little swollen, as if he were only half awake.
“You women—not much sympathy—for one another.”
But he didn’t mean that, Briar realized. He meant that she had not much sympathy for him. Going out in the dark wet night, afraid. He was not afraid for his wife, who after all was only going through what all women went through year after year, but for himself, because his tortured imagination saw a Hauhau in every wind-blown bush, behind every dripping tree.
He could not admit to this dreadful fear, of course. So he drank rum, instead, and tried to hide his trembling.
Abruptly, pity filled Briar. Poor Peter, he could not help this. It was the way he was made. For sunshine and an easy life, for all the pleasant things which could be acquired without payment in hard work and loneliness and bloodshed.
He should never have tried to be a pioneer. His imagination and ambition had allowed him to see only the advantages of a new country, and none of its hardships. So he was going to be one of the failures, or at best a mediocre, unmemorable citizen.
But it was not his own fault, for everyone could not be full of courage.
“Is the horse ready?” she asked.
“Yes, it’s outside. I just slipped in for a drink, to keep out the cold.” His uneasy blue eyes sought hers.
Briar made a sudden decision. “I think it would be better if I go for Doctor MacTavish. I’m more used to the track than you. I know all its peculiarities in the dark. I’ll be much quicker, probably. And Sophie would rather have you close at hand.”
His frank relief was mixed with shame. “But, Briar, a woman abroad at night—”
“We have to do that in this country. It’s one of the hazards. I shall be back as soon as I can. Tell Aunt Charity you have your fever again.”
“Briar, you’re quite, quite wonderful!”
Once that effusive compliment would have meant a great deal to her, because it would have meant she could have had Peter Fanshawe as her husband, her slave, whatever she desired. Now she was only thankful for the fate which she had escaped. One could be ambitious enough to marry without love, but not without respect. At least she had found no reason not to respect her own husband …
She carried a carriage lamp because of the extreme darkness of the night, and rode astride since there was no one to see her with her skirts hitched up. She had never been out so late alone, in spite of her careless assurance to Peter, but she was not nervous. At least, not until the dark shape of a wild pig blundered across her path and the horse shied violently. She was almost over its head, but managed to save herself at the expense of the carriage lamp, which went flying into the darkness, its light instantly extinguished.
Her horse was surefooted and knew his way
. She could still progress without the aid of a light. But now the muddy and water-logged track seemed endless, and the black bush crowded too close on either side. Rain fell with a persistent patter, and the wind crashed through the forest. The never-ceasing wind in this country had an eerie quality, because of the unfamiliar trees and bushes it disturbed. The toe toe grass with its feathery plumes swished, the raupo bushes crackled and the bigger trees creaked and sighed. It formed a pattern of sound that effectively shut out the approach either of prowling night animals or the stealthy scouting of a Hauhau brave.
Though now, Briar told herself steadily, there were no Hauhaus in these parts. Growing more accustomed to the dark she urged her horse on. The sudden cry of a bird made her start again, it had sounded so close, almost as if it had come from that clump of flax by the roadside. It was not a call she could identify, for it had neither the melancholy of the little owls nor the harshness of the kiwi or weka. In fact, wasn’t it strange to hear a bird call at all on such a wet night?
As she rode on, digging in her stirrups, the call came again, and she still could not identify it, but it had seemed to have a secret urgency …
When at last she stumbled off her horse at Doctor Mac-Tavish’s door she could scarcely speak. Soaked to the skin, breathless and afraid, she got out her message.
“It’s Sophie, doctor. Mrs. Whitmore says there’s no hurry, but Sophie’s in a state, as you can imagine. And so is Peter.”
“It seems he must be, seeing he let you make this journey,” Doctor MacTavish said dryly.
“He has his fever back—he couldn’t have come out in the rain. Let’s hurry, doctor. But we must go carefully past a certain point. I heard something.”
“You did, eh? What sort of noise?”
“The kind of bird that doesn’t call at night. At least, I don’t think it does, but I’m still ignorant about birds here.”
“I’ll get my gun,” said the little doctor in his unperturbed voice. “We’ll go back in the buggy. Your horse can lead behind. But come in and get a drop of brandy. You look as if you could do with it. Perhaps you’d like to spend the night here, and I’ll go on alone.”
Briar pushed the wet hair out of her eyes. “Don’t be silly, Doctor. I have to help Sophie.”
The trip back was uneventful. There was no sound but the splash of the horse’s hooves in the soggy mud, and the wild wind in the forest. Briar had not realized her tension until, at the front door of the house, she tried to climb out of the buggy and found that she was too stiff and cold to do so. Doctor MacTavish swung her out easily and set her down.
“Run and change into dry clothes, lassie.” And, as Aunt Charity opened the door, “Good evening to you, ma’am. Where’s the patient?”
Sophie’s baby was born in the early morning, with tolerably little trouble, although Sophie might well have been imitating a Hauhau attack from the noise she made. But afterwards she was infuriatingly smug, cradling her plump pink-faced son in her arms as if she had performed some highly original act. She did not notice that her husband was more than three parts drunk, nor that Briar was white-faced and exhausted after her midnight ride to the village, and then assisting at her first birth.
“We must make a list of names,” she said. “A name, particularly for a first son, is so important. And I can’t wait to get back to Wellington to show him off. Doctor says we should be able to travel quite soon as both baby and I are so well.”
Briar, stumbling to her room to rest, told herself that everything old Mrs. Whitmore had predicted had come true. She had had to cook and clean, and fight the enemy and assist at childbirth. Somehow she had done it. She had even done it without anyone noticing her sickening qualms and apprehension.
So now there was no need to cry, especially since she had no idea why she was crying. Because she was lonely? Because it was Sophie who cradled a baby in her arms?
After she had slept, however, she felt better. Indeed, since it had stopped raining she decided to ride a little way along the track and try to identify the part of the bush from which she had heard the bird’s cry last night.
She told no one where she was going, and afterwards she was thankful for this, for although there was no sign of life in the dripping forest, lying on the rain-flattened grass beneath a flax bush she found a black feather with a white tip. A huia feather such as a rangatira wore in his hair to show his rank. The huia bird did not live in these parts. It was found only in the higher mountains. So the feather must have been dropped by a human agent.
Briar sprang on her horse and rode hard into the village to report what she had discovered. A scouting party, led by Amos O’Brien, was formed at once. Most of the young able-bodied men were away with the troops, so if an attack were to come it would be a sorry thing for the defenders left here. But late that evening Fred Potter came to report that no sign of the enemy had been found. The rain-sodden huia feather must have lain beneath the flax bushes since the original attack a month ago.
Briar’s anxiety was lessened, but not completely dismissed. She had begun to listen again in that strained uneasy way. She was impatient to get all her guests away, particularly Sophie and the baby. How dreadful if something should happen to the baby. She wished, too, that she could prevail on old Mrs. Whitmore to change her mind. But one had only to look at the old lady’s implacable face to know it was useless to try.
Within a fortnight Doctor MacTavish pronounced that Sophie, who was a remarkably strong young woman, was fit to travel, and Aunt Charity, Sophie and the baby, and Peter, prepared to set out on their journey to New Plymouth, there to await the Seagull.
Peter was obsessed with his desire to get away, and Sophie, too, was happy to depart, her baby wrapped in an enormous quantity of shawls and blankets. It was left to Aunt Charity to shed tears.
This she did copiously, for not only was she leaving that stubborn and stupid Prudence behind, in her most unsuitable role of mother to the Perkins children, but she had developed a genuine affection for Briar.
Being Aunt Charity, however, she could not show this in any way but by criticism.
“Briar, you should be obeying Saul and coming with us. It’s very unwise of a young bride to defy her husband. It will lead to trouble. And Saul, I am sure, is not one to put up with this sort of behavior. Another thing, I’m most unhappy about your keeping Katie. You’ll regret that, I can tell you. It’s up to people like us to set a moral standard in this country. Young women like Katie don’t slip only once. Most likely you’ll have this happening all over again in a year’s time, and then what are you to do?”
She surveyed Briar’s face fretfully.
“I can see you’re not taking notice of anything I’m saying. But just remember, I warned you. And Briar, do try to persuade Prudence to leave that squalid household. Oh, I know she’s doing what must be considered a worthwhile job, but who is going to marry her after this? Except that poor creature, Perkins himself. Oh dear, now Peter wants to be off, and there’s so much I still have to say to you. You’re such a difficult, unbendable person! So strange for one so young! But nevertheless I love you—” Aunt Charity sniffed tremendously. Her large face was scarlet with emotion. “Almost as if you had been my own,” was her parting cry.
The little group stood in the road watching the wagons out of sight. Sophie’s handkerchief was fluttering, and Aunt Charity every now and then turned to lift her arm in a vigorous wave. She was already, no doubt, in her own mind back in Wellington talking volubly and endlessly to Uncle Hubert about her hazardous trip, her encounter with the Hauhaus, and her strenuous efforts to put Briar’s and Prudence’s lives in order.
Watching the bumping wagons grow smaller in the distance, Briar silently prayed that the travelers would reach New Plymouth safely. The shepherd who had volunteered to drive one wagon, and Peter driving the other, were armed and on the alert, but the danger, everyone said, was negligible.
Yet Briar could not rid herself of her feeling of premonition. The sparkl
ing day, the quiet forest, the slow spirals of smoke from chimneys, all seemed too peaceful. But perhaps her low state of mind was caused only by the sadness of saying goodbye to friends, and the constant knowledge that Saul had wanted her to go with them. It was so terrible to feel unwelcome and unwanted in one’s own home.
She had a right to stay, she told herself fiercely. She would not be intimidated by a domineering and impatient husband. How dare he try to turn her out! She would not be ruled by him.
Everyone had come to say goodbye to the travelers, but now Prudence had dried her tears and was saying that she must go back and prepare the children’s dinner. She had Honi by one hand and the youngest Perkins child by the other. Jemima was there, too, and Fred Potter was waiting in the dray to take them all back to the village.
“Do you wish you had gone, Prue?” Briar asked.
Prudence shook her head. “Aunt Charity’s very difficult to oppose. But I’m glad I didn’t give in to her. I like it here. The children are sweet now they’ve got to know me, and Mr. Perkins is so kind. Everyone says how he has changed.”
“Let’s hope it lasts,” Briar said skeptically. She had never recovered from her feeling of guilt that it was her bonnet that had brought about Amy Perkins’ death, and that this obscurely was the fault of Amy’s husband for not having been a better provider.
“I think it will last,” said Prudence seriously. “You know, I think his wife, poor thing, nagged him too much, and complained all the time. A man has to escape from that, hasn’t he?”
She hadn’t nagged Saul, Briar thought privately, but in other ways she had failed. Didn’t even old Mrs. Whitmore say so?
“What about you, Briar?” Jemima was saying. “Aren’t you sorry you didn’t go with them?”
“No! Of course I’m not sorry!” Her voice was too emphatic, giving away her inner turmoil. “My home is here, just as yours is. But perhaps you wish you could have gone?”
Jemima shook her head. She was not so thin and meager as she had been at the time of the baby’s death. Her face had plumped out a little, and her eyes were bright.
