Captive Wife, The

by Kidman, Fiona

  The children and I were asleep when the hull was ripped open. It happened so quickly: one moment we were peaceful, the next, on the floor, rocks slicing through the side of the ship as if it were a sugar crust. It was around four in the morning; we were five miles south of the cape of Taranaki.

  Jacky waded through the cabin in his thigh boots. I hadn’t changed out of my blue dress and it was sodden and trailing in the water. Jacky scooped one of the children under each arm.

  There is no time to be lost, he said, as I looked in vain for my portmanteau, which was now sailing around in a sea of its own beneath the bunks.

  Getting ashore was easier than I expected. We were so low in the water, I was able to step out onto the rocks. Jacky saw every last man got off the ship. The weather had worsened. The seas were furious and huge, sheets of white water bucketing down one after another. All we could do was huddle against the cliffs, hoping none of these immense waves would catch us and sweep us away.

  As morning broke, we saw a desolate landscape behind us. At least we discovered a small break in the rocky cliffs. We were able to follow this gully a little way in, away from the worst of the roaring water. But if our scratched and filthy band had hoped for salvation, there was little to be had. The earth was naught but a thin skin on the rocks and what vegetation there was, low and scrubby. A streamer of blue sky appeared beneath cushiony clouds, as if taunting us with fair weather to come, but the sea was still running high.

  The men went back to ship, holding onto each other as they inched across the rocks in an effort to rescue as many of our belongings as possible. I saw David struggling for a foothold on the rocks, spiky as devil’s teeth. I wanted to call him back, but if he was to become a man among men, he must work with them.

  The results of this expedition were laid out on the shore to dry: ten muskets, a small quantity of sails, a whaleboat, some food and a baling pail. As soon as the sails were dry, the men went about turning them into rough tents. Later in the day, another two of the ship’s boats were brought ashore, but everything else was whipped away, bobbing and sailing in the boiling surf, while the shattered hull of the Harriet was cast up, further along the rocks. This was the second ship we had lost in a few months. It will be the ruin of us, I thought. All the toil and hardship of these last five years come to nothing.

  At least, Jacky said, we might be able to patch up one of these boats enough to sail down the coast to Cloudy Bay. It wasn’t a happy prospect, but it offered hope. The weather had changed yet again. Torrents of rain began to fall. Jacky and I shared out rations of salted pork, and the men washed it down with rainwater collected in the pail. The rain collapsed the sail tents against us.

  I asked Jacky if he knew where we were, and if there were any Maoris nearby and what we might expect if they turned up.

  He believed that we were just north of the pa of Te Namu. The head chief was Te Matakatea of the Taranaki tribe, famous for holding off Waikato invaders, the previous year. His name meant ‘clear-eyed’ and he was considered a crack shot with the musket. About twenty miles south were the twin pa of Waimate and Orangituapeka, and these too were strongholds of Te Matakatea.

  These were the great fortresses I had seen the night before. Taranaki and Ngati Ruanui, who lived at the twin pa, had banded together to fight off their enemies.

  And us? What will they do to us?

  We will just have to wait and see, Jacky said, and I did not like the way his mouth tightened around the words. They don’t have many muskets, but what they have they will use well. On the other hand, he said, Te Matakatea had had good dealings with white men, and perhaps he would spare us.

  It was on the tip of my tongue to ask whether these tribes were enemies of Te Rauparaha, but in my heart I already knew the answer.

  David was blue and shivering, his breathing shallow. I brought him in under the tent with us. I’m sorry David, I whispered, so that the others would not hear, you would have been better off in Sydney.

  I would rather be with you he said, which I thought brave of him. I would have liked to pull him close to me for warmth, but could not do so without bringing shame on him. I could hardly understand what he was saying. I thought him delirious, but after awhile I recognised an old prayer of Granny’s, one she had learned from a ship’s chaplain on one of those several ships that brought her from one side of the world to the other. I said the words with him because remembering Granny gave me strength.

  I bind unto myself this day

  The virtues of the starlit heaven

  The glorious sun’s life-giving ray

  The whiteness of the moon at even

  The flashing of the lightning free

  The swirling of the wind’s tempestuous shocks

  The stable earth, the deep salt sea

  Around the eternal rocks.

  After that, I thought he had stopped breathing, but then he began again, more easily, as if rested in himself. I fell into another patchy sleep, praying the weather might clear so that work could begin on the boats.

  I was rewarded at least by clear skies, but it was too late. The news of our shipwreck had travelled.

  The hour is late and the governess dozes. Perhaps she’s not as old as I thought. Fifty at least, but that is not truly old. My husband Jacky is already in his forties. I never thought of him as old, but now I’m twenty and he has moved into middle-age, a man full of brooding thoughts, I’ve begun to see him in a different light. I think back just the space of eight years when Granny foresaw him as my husband, and of the girl I was then. I believed he would take care of me, but he could have been my father, and a father was what I lacked. I am all but penniless now, but I have a rich and desirable body, something I didn’t know when I married him, and I yearn for a touch that I might return. Sitting here in the Australian dark beside my teacher, I believe I have learnt more than she can ever know, in spite of all her gods.

  The fan I gave Adie has slipped from her fingers. All evening she has waved it back and forth but all it has done is stir the heavy air. Her upper lip is beaded with sweat like rainwater on the edge of a drain, her mouth twitching open, allowing tiny snores to escape. She stirs and seems to smile. Perhaps a dream drifts by, passionate blue and silver, like the gifts I bring her. She wakes and shakes her head, as if to clear her thoughts, but her eyes are heavy. I don’t know what she hears, but I talk on quietly anyway, for now I’ve begun I can’t stop.

  I talk of how we fell out on that rocky shore, as raiders from the pa fell upon us, demanding whatever they could lay hands on, and when we didn’t give it up, taking it from us. Of the impudent way they laughed in Jacky’s face. E, Haari, they mocked, who is in charge now?

  Where is Te Matakatea? Jacky asked.

  He is at Waimate, they said.

  Does he know we have been wrecked?

  The men from Te Namu laughed in his face. You are a big man, Haari, why do you need protecting? You have always had your own way.

  The crew were divided, wanting to save their own skins first. This should have come as no surprise, some of them being violent thieves and murderers to begin with. When Jacky’s back was turned two crewmen, Thomas Mossman and James Johnson, gave away some of our provisions and much of our gunpowder to Te Matakatea’s men. They did this behind our backs. We could not understand why Mossman and Johnson and several other men began walking off with the tribesmen.

  It will be all right, Haari, said one of the Maoris. We will treat them well. And he laughed.

  That will be the last we see of them, Jacky said, and then their theft was revealed.

  I will go after them and kill them, Jacky shouted. He was breathing heavily, his chest rising and falling as if his heart would burst.

  There is nothing to be done, I said. I was afraid he would go off and leave us here without protection. The mood of the men left behind was very sour.

  We will take a whaleboat to sea, Thomas White said, within my hearing. He was a man I had taken against from the first, his d
ark jowls set as if with an inner fury.

  Even though it’s holed, I asked, for I was not going to let him get away with this. Perhaps he thought a woman couldn’t understand the King’s English.

  We can bail fast enough to keep it afloat, he said. We can bring back a rescue boat.

  A likely story, Jacky said, when I told him. Mind you, the plan is not entirely foolish but these men cannot handle a boat holed like this. And who’s to say they will come back, once they’ve saved themselves?

  You’re not going yourself, I said. Or begged. I knew that if anybody could do it, it would be him, but I was terrified of being left alone.

  Perhaps, he said.

  Would you take us?

  Never, he said firmly.

  Then you cannot leave us. I heard my voice piteous and weak.

  He did not answer. That evening, I saw him and Charley and Captain Hall deep in conversation.

  David, after seeming to rally, was ill again. Young John had stopped eating altogether. I wondered if we too should make approaches to the tribe, like the deserters. They were, no doubt, having a more comfortable life than ours — unless they’d been eaten. But though the people of Taranaki were not well disposed towards us, they might consider a deal if Jacky offered something in return for our shelter. By now, I was willing to risk it. My hair was matted thick, my throat and nostrils raw from salt spray. The children were failing, my milk had all but dried up. I had offered John my breast, big boy though he was, but there was nothing there.

  We had now been on the beach for more than a week. It was the seventh of May. Two things happened that day.

  First, three of the deserting crewmen arrived back at the beach.

  What has happened? Don’t your friends at the pa want you any more? I asked, in what I hoped was my most sarcastic tone.

  They didn’t look at me. I knew they had done something wrong. Though they wouldn’t talk to me, I guessed from their appearance that it was something very bad, and that we were now in greater danger.

  Later, the women at the pa would tell me what had happened. All had seemed well for some days, and the men had been well fed, in return for their gifts from the Harriet’s stores. Then three young girls, not yet twelve, had had their bodies torn open and tossed aside by the men. Afterwards, the men took their place beside the fire, picking fernroot from their teeth, with the virgin blood of the girls on their hands, as if what they had done was of no account.

  No wonder they had taken flight. Their wits had not completely deserted them, for soon they sensed the mood around them after the tearful girls were discovered. They escaped the fury of their hosts by running back to us.

  It was late in the afternoon when the second thing happened.

  Two hundred warriors advanced upon us. There was no question of a fight, we were outnumbered on every side. All that remained of our belongings was taken. The warriors took with them such items as soap, though God knows, we were past washing or bathing, sugar and a sack of flour, which at least I could have made a paste from. When they left, we looked at each other, gaunt and hollow-eyed, the bones in our cheeks standing out like those of the skeletons on the beaches of Te Awaiti.

  Days passed, which I remember as if in a dream. I am not sure whether it really happened or not, but I seem to recall Charley coming to me in the night and kneeling beside me. It will be all right, darling, he said, I’ll take care of you. Another time I might have been shocked by his endearment.

  I sat bolt upright and Jacky was not there beside me on the hollowed out sea-grass that was our bed. Has he put to sea? I cried.

  I knew by the look in Charley’s eyes that it was so.

  But in the morning Jacky was there. Again the seas ran high. I thought perhaps he had tried and failed to launch the boat.

  What will become of us? I asked myself many times.

  David seemed to decide this for himself. He was now truly delirious and spoke like a madman. Tell Mama she was the best mother in the world, he said, holding onto my hand. His eyes were heavy, the lids swollen so that he could hardly see.

  I thought those were powerful words of forgiveness but I did not let them move me. She is all right, I said. Our mother is our mother. You can tell her these things yourself, for soon we will be rescued. I was willing him to stay with me, for John and Louisa to stay. If just one of them were to slip beyond my grasp, then I would know God had forsaken us altogether.

  On the tenth of May, we were taken by the Maoris.

  The first raid happened soon after dawn. Thomas White was killed before our eyes.

  Around midday, musket fire hit our party. Our group returned the fire. I saw, in part, the manoeuvre Jacky and Charley and Captain Hall had been planning: what were left of our muskets were being fired from positions on the beach where they were most likely to hit a party descending from the hilltops. More than twenty Maoris fell before this onslaught, but in all, we lost fourteen men. Richard Hall was the first to go. The beach rang with the men’s dying shouts, some bitter at their fate, others muttering prayers, and words of love for people far away.

  David staggered to his feet.

  I tried to pull him back with us. I cried out, David, for God’s sake, stay with me. You cannot fight.

  I don’t think he heard me, or if he did, my words made no sense to him. He walked upright, the first steps he had taken in days, putting his shoulders back. He walked out into the line of fire that came from above. I ran out to stop him, and felt a blow like a tree trunk falling on me. Above me stood a man with a raised tomahawk. A look of astonishment crossed his face. He glanced at his weapon as if there was something wrong with it. I touched my head, and felt a burning pain. My head was split, but not shattered as it might have been. Instead, the tortoise-shell comb in my wild and tangled hair had shielded my skull from the violence of the blow. Blood ran from a wound in my throat where the axe had grazed as it slipped off my shell, as if I was the tortoise.

  Then I saw David fall, watched his blood running across the sand.

  Mama, I am truly sorry, I said, whether in my head or out loud, I am not sure. Please forgive me, Mama.

  His blue eyes stared blank at the sky. My brother was just eighteen years of age. Among the tangle of limbs, brown and white, strewn across the beach, I saw the tribe, too, had lost boys who were little more than children. So they lay together.

  I touched the sticky blood seeping down my chest, but I felt nothing, as if the blood belonged to another person. I heard a voice rising in a wail. It was my own. I heard Jacky say: Do not take on like this, it will not make things better.

  But strong and sinewy hands were pulling me.

  Run, Jacky shouted, but there was nowhere I could run. Charley, and other men who had survived, were in retreat along the beach, and suddenly the tribe seemed to lose interest in them. They still held onto Jacky, his arms pinned to his side as he looked on from across the beach.

  A man with smouldering eyes, not unlike those of Thomas White in their hatred, stepped forward. I would later learn he was the father of one of the girls taken by the sailors. His was the first hand to tear my clothes, the blue dress peeled away. Others followed him in undressing me, my corset stripped off, so that my breasts sprang free. In a few minutes I stood naked, and there was nowhere to hide myself. Voices rose in sighs and ahs and I prepared myself for death or the sharp spear of the men’s bodies between my thighs. The children were crying. I could not comfort them. I raised my ashamed eyes and saw Jacky’s face, full of anguish, as he struggled in vain against those who held him.

  My first tormentor reached over with his lips puckered. He brushed the nipple of my right breast as he leant into my throat where the blood still trickled and fell on my shoulders. With one hand he pushed my hair away and with the other he held me still. I felt his mouth close over the wound in my neck and begin to suck.

  He stood back, as if offering others the chance to follow, but he must have swallowed all the blood, because the flow had stopped. He s
eized an iron hoop, which I believe had come from the wreck of the Harriet, digging it into my neck in an effort to open up a fresh wound.

  As the frenzy of excitement continued, the men holding Jacky were perhaps distracted, looking towards their turn with me, for when I looked again, he was gone and I knew he had slipped their grasp. A musket shot rang out, but he was lost to them.

  Now the mood turned uglier still, as I struggled to cover my nakedness, my hands in front of the bush of hair covering that last forbidden place. But death was on their minds and the man lifted his spear.

  Only, at that moment, more people arrived. One of them was Te Matakatea, and with him was a woman. She saw what was happening and stepped forward. There is something to be said for the kindness of women to one another at the worst possible hour. The woman threw a cloak over my body, and in that instant I was saved.

  The woman was the wife of Te Matakatea.

  Instead of execution, we were told to follow.

  But it was as I feared, the children and I were alone. I carried Louisa in my arms. A lithe dark man I had not seen before carried John in his arms. I guessed that he must have come from Waimate with Te Matakatea. I could barely keep up with him. Perhaps I imagined it, but he seemed to throw a look of sympathy towards me. He did not speak to the men who had taunted me on the beach. In this way we came to the pa of Te Namu, high above the sea. We climbed to it by a rope ladder that could be drawn up as quickly as it was dropped.

  We found ourselves in an open space before a meeting house.

  That night the chief’s wife asked her husband if my life might be spared. He listened intently, nodding his head as if in sympathy with her arguments. It was to these two people of the Taranaki tribe that I owed my life.

  The slim young man who had carried John also spoke with Te Matakatea. I learnt that his name was Oaoiti and that he was a chief of Ngati Ruanui. In this manner, it was decided that I would live there at Te Namu pa, as part of the tribe.