I cannot tell you how pleased I am to see you sir I said to Captain Sinclair. He is a man I have across many times in Sydney and from time to time there in the bay.
You look like castaways he said.
We are all of that sir I says. I told him our troubles, pausing only to swallow the rum he’d poured for me.
He listened with great sympathy. I will do all I can to help you he said.
Well I said suddenly weary, I am grateful but I do not know what is to be done next.
Why Jacky Guard that is not like you. He poured me another tot of rum which started a fire in my belly. The first 1 had hardly touched the sides on its way down.
There is much to be done he said. I will give you a good supply of provisions to use for a ransom, enough for your crew and Mrs Guard as well. That is the least I can do for a man deprived of the comfort of a fine young wife and children. Captain Morris is in Port Nick with the Joseph Weller. He is planning to go back to Sydney any day now. It should be no trouble for him to drop you off at Moturoa.
My spirits picked up a little at this prospect.
Sinclair dropped us in Port Nick and I went aboard the Joseph Weller. I knew Morris too of old. A short tubby man with ginger hair and sideburns known for his short temper. But he and I always got along. Sure enough he was sorry to hear of my plight and said it wd be not trouble to put us ashore at Moturoa.
But then it turned out we had to turn round and go back to Cloudy Bay to collect potatoes and baleen. This rubbed me up the wrong way because all I wanted was to get the whole thing over. Now started one of the darkest times I ever remember of my life. Whereas I had been relieved to make landfall and find the Mary Ann now coming back I was hard hit by seeing where my home had been and my wife and children content. To see it all empty from the deck of another man’s boat was too much to bear. As if nothing had ever been. I have often seen dark shapes in my mind. It is not something a man tells other men about. I fear Betty has seen them peer out of my eyes. The shapes seem to dance before me. I see half a man or half a woman in outline, dancing and waving at me. I see cats that have been skinned standing on their hind legs. I see a creature that may have risen out of the deep, like a whale perhaps, only it is above me and threatening to bear its full weight down upon me. And I have nowhere to go. That is how it was in my head as I waited for the Joseph Weller to set sail. And always I asked myself what if this rescue should go wrong. I took a bottle of rum down to my hammock in the cabin. I drank all of it at one go. I buried my head under a blanket and woke when it was dark and the ship was under way. It was now July 14, the heart of winter, and storm clouds brewing.
Rain started again, the N.W. came up once more and the Joseph Weller could not make land. My worst fears had come true. Because of the storm it was impossible for the ship to drop anchor and set me ashore. I saw the outline of Taranaki alongside and then we left it behind. My heart were fair breaking. I wanted to call out. I wished to call my son by his name. John. And my wife. Wd she ever belong to me again? Betty. My mouth shaped the word but I could not say it.
I heard the Maori chiefs groan as the wake of the boat followed us steadily away from land, their adventure gone wrong too.
It was too late to have been a better man. At that moment I was ready to jump over the rail and swim. If I never reached shore it wd be all to the good.
We sailed on towards Australia, arriving here in early August. Nearly 4 month has been and gone since the Harriet ran aground.
Near as long since I saw my children and my wife Betty.
I cannot forget her try as I might. Betty and Jacky, the words echoing in my head. Peti and Haari. We were meant to be together, her and me for all time.
Part 7
The Captive Wife
Chapter 27
The pa at Te Namu was very small, but also secure. It sat on a plateau, like the top of a very high table, on a rocky outcrop of the coast, almost surrounded by vertical cliffs. Around this, runs hollowed out land, some sixty yards wide, separating it from the mainland.
Like a moat?
Yes Adie, perhaps that is how you’d describe it. Across the way is cleared space where the gardens grow: kumara, sweet potato, yams and gourds. From the top of the pa, which was like a sentry box, invading forces could be seen long before they arrived.
When I was placed in the enclosure at the edge of the pa, I felt great weariness. My head was painful from the blow I’d been struck, and I must have been weak from loss of blood. I thought I might be allowed to live but nothing was certain, and a part of me was ready to let go, to simply sink into that other sleep from which there is no waking. Louisa lay in my arms, bruised and sad. Like me, she seemed ready to give up the ghost. I saw by her eyes that she was in great pain, but past crying. She held my finger with the frailest of grasps. And all of this time I didn’t know where John was.
Jacky, I said in my head, as if I was preparing a speech for him, to explain myself. They wouldn’t let me keep him. I tried, but they took him away, our precious boy, and my heart is broken. As these thoughts followed each other round, I began inventing wild schemes of breaking free and going into the bush to look for John. But I wouldn’t have known where to begin and who knew how far away he was by now. In quiet moments, I strained my ears as if I might hear his voice blown on the wind but I only heard seabirds, the circling gulls, and the voices of the people in the pa, who were strangers to me.
The day after our arrival in the pa, the people began cooking provisions taken from the wreck of the Harriet. If they had asked me, I could have told them the mixture they were preparing was a mistake. They mixed together flour and sugar and soap, and when it was foaming in the heat of the fire, they tested it for taste, expecting a delicacy. Of course, they found it disgusting, and I saw angry looks cast in my direction, as if it was my fault. The mood about the place turned sour. I could see them thinking they had been cheated. The flour we had hoarded with such care was thrown over the clifftop. They said it was some kind of sand and should be returned to the beach.
There was still more cooking to be done. In the morning, from the place where I was confined, I saw flames in the direction of the river we had followed after we were wrecked. Flames shot in the air, and I smelt burning flesh, a smell I know all too well. But I was puzzled. I wondered if this tribe had a different way of preparing human flesh.
That night the women came to me, and passed a flax basket of meat through the entrance to the hut.
I shook my head, no. And no again. They pulled it back, their eyes resentful, as if I had done them another wrong.
Ruiha squatted down in the doorway. She told me I must eat something. For my child. She was begging me to take the food.
That is my brother, I said, and began to weep tears that wouldn’t stop.
No, it is not, she said. We have killed a pig in honour of your coming. At that I began to scream, and backed away into the corner of the whare. I don’t believe you, I shouted.
You don’t understand, she said. Te Matakatea has ordered that the dead be burnt. He has made a great fire. It was so that your dead would not be eaten. You are our family now.
She went away and brought me a basket of sweet potatoes, and these I did pick at, in spite of myself. I knew it was true that if I was to do anything to save my children, I must gather my strength for whatever was to happen next. The food was very good.
All the same, I could not bring myself to speak to them, and I did not know what to believe. The scorched smell of the distant fire lingered in the air. From the whare, I saw dinner being eaten. I saw the man Oaoiti who had carried John up the hill. He ate with delicacy, and I thought, if that is my brother, at least he has eaten him with respect, and for that I was grateful.
My uncleanness brought me a few days of grace. Nobody came near me, except the women, mostly Ruiha, who brought me baskets of food and water in gourds. I was given a mat, and I was warm and dry, and at nights I lay down to sleep, Louisa nestled by my side. I would
have given much to know where John was. And yet I believed I would see him again. I don’t know what made me so certain. Perhaps it was just that I was his mother.
After days of sleeping and eating, I began to feel stronger. I watched the life of the people as they moved around the pa. The houses were built around the marae. At Te Namu, the entire space was closed, divided into fourteen smaller spaces. Everyone had lines of smoked and dried fish, and their own potato plot, though there were more gardens outside the pa, to the east. There were only two sides to the fortress that could be climbed without ladders. On the third side, raised stages sloped away from the summit, to stop people climbing it. Inside the stockade stood large piles of boulders for hurling down on the enemy as they advanced. The year before, the people of Te Namu had fought off an invasion from the north. Beneath the stockades still stood the remains of burnt huts, torched in the attack.
One morning, I saw Captain Hall’s smoked head impaled on a stake. I supposed it must have been placed in such a way that I would see it. I don’t know who had done this, but whatever thoughts I had had of escaping I put aside. Some weeks passed. I now slept in a whare with several other women, in very close quarters. There were some fifty whare at Te Namu, built with rushes and interwoven with fern, the top thatched with long grass. The doors to the sleeping houses were very small, with scarcely enough air to breathe, the walls so close together. These women whose house I shared were girls yet to be married. The girls who had been raped by the men of the Harriet slept there and I saw how they lay in a huddle together, their faces to the wall. I guessed that they were no longer wanted.
But what could I say to them, a white woman who was part of their trouble? At night the fleas bit, and our breaths were clammy. During the day, I was allowed to move around the pa. The women greeted me, but I didn’t want their company. I felt misunderstood, because I wanted my son and they were tired of me asking, as if I was crazed. Louisa was now much better and I knew in my heart that this was thanks to them, though I would not tell them this. Of course this served me further ill.
This went on for some time, until eventually I had to go back to the hut on my own because I was bleeding again. When it had finished, I pretended it had not, and stayed on for a few more days. One day, I saw a man whom I recognised as the chief Oaoiti, standing in shadow. He may have thought I didn’t see him, but I had the impression he was staring in my direction. I knew he had been gone from the pa for some time. I now understood that Taranaki and Ngati Ruanui people were living here at Te Namu, and further south at the two big pa I have told you about, standing on the cliffs. The two tribes had banded together to help each other after the fighting of the previous year, and despite some differences of opinion, I gathered that they passed regularly between the pa as brothers in arms. They had differed, though, over Te Matakatea burning the bodies of the crewmen. If this was true. But as I still did not know who to believe, and I did not speak with anyone unless I had to, I would never know the truth. I did know, though, that I was pleased to see Oaoiti. Perhaps it was that look he had given me as we climbed together up the hill, him carrying my son. Whatever it was, I was drawn to him.
How can I describe Oaoiti to you? He was a singular-looking man. Though solid and muscular, his build was clean limbed and he held himself lightly. His face was like a carving, his hair pulled up in a top-knot decorated with white feathers, so that it was easy to examine his features. His face was tall, his cheekbones wide. I thought his eyes an unusual shape, large and yet deep set. Like other men of his tribe, he wore a short thin beard. I think of him as handsome. But then, many people of Taranaki possessed great beauty. You might feel quite the opposite, Adie, were you to see them. But would they be so different from your ancient Greeks? This is where you and I have different eyes. Who knows, you and I may have seen Oaoiti in the same light. One of the things I remember, in particular, were his hands; although his palms were broad, his fingers were long and slim.
On a night when the wind lay still, I pushed the door of the whare open, and found it untied, so that I could go outside. Nobody appeared to bar my way. The air was cold and clear. At least three hundred people lived at Te Namu, perhaps more. I walked along the top of the cliff, and heard nothing, as if the place was deserted. It crossed my mind that the whole encampment might simply have moved on under the cover of darkness. But I did not believe this.
The pa was surrounded by palisades of wooden stakes, with small lanes leading between, so they could be blocked off with trapdoors if enemies came. I slipped through one of these entrances to the outer world and still nobody stopped me.
Before me the sea flashed like cold steel, behind me was the darkness. I sat down at the edge of the rocks, and knew that one step would take me away from all of this, through dark empty space. If it had not been for Louisa, left sleeping alone behind me, it would have been so easy.
What would Granny have made of it all, I wondered?
I remembered the tale of my naming day, and how grandfather had tricked her, by having me called Elizabeth, the name of his first, perhaps best, love. And how she had set out to show that she loved me better than he ever loved any woman.
I remembered the stories of the hulks, the filth below decks in the ships, and the starving and the dying. Only the faint-hearted and the children died, she told me once. The rest of us hung on. You have to, or there is nothing left.
I began to sing quietly to myself: ‘singing too-rall, li-oo-rall, li-ad-di-ti, singing too-rall, li-oo-rall, li-ay’. I turned, as if a breeze had touched me. I thought I saw her thin wiry old body sitting beside me.
Hullo Granny, I said. But of course it wasn’t Granny. It was Oaoiti.
What are you doing here? I asked, wrapping my arms around my knees and burying my face in my lap.
Who were you singing to? Was it your son?
What difference would that make, I said, in a muffled voice. We were both speaking very quietly. I lifted my head. My grandmother.
Uh huh. One of the old ones.
Yes.
Was she wise?
I thought so.
A kuia. A wise old lady.
Something like that, I said. And, indeed, she could have been one of the old ladies here at the pa, small, wizened and dark. Just thinking of this gave me some comfort, as if at last I could recognise someone.
He was so close to me I felt the hairs of his arms brushing mine where my mat had fallen away. But he did not reach for me or try to touch me. This is no good for you, he said. So much sorrow.
I can’t live if I don’t see my son again. I know he’s alive. You’re hiding him from me.
He sighed then. It is not me who hides him from you.
But you know where he is, don’t you? I see you watching me.
That’s not why I watch you.
You’re afraid I’m going to find him, aren’t you?
There’s nothing you can do, he said, even if you could find him. He stays with Ngati Ruanui and he is being well looked after. Would it help you if you were to see him?
Of course, I said hotly, my voice rising.
He hushed me, his fingers on my lips. I trembled at his touch, and felt the way my trembling passed through him as we were both shivering. If he had wanted to, he could have taken me then, and for a moment it was what I wanted.
Be patient, he said, it will happen. He was talking about John.
The following morning, I was moved to a whare that I understood was to be my own. Ruiha came to settle me into the new house.
I’ll see you get a reward, I told her, if you keep me and my little girl safe. And if my son is safe, my husband will bring a great reward. As soon as I said this, I wished I could take back my words, in case I had offended her.
She only smiled, nodding in agreement. She was a round-hipped woman, with hair a halo of dark fish-oil. I knew she was well regarded by the clean scent of the oil, which was always kept fresh.
I will tell the people that, she said. They will be pleas
ed.
When I crouched down on all fours to enter the whare, she took pity on me. Someone would come and make the door larger for me. Soon a man appeared, armed with an axe and an adze, and the door-frame was enlarged, and a window space made. Then several more servants arrived, and a fence was placed around the building, so that it was like a small private cottage.
I asked if might I have the soap that was left over from their cooking, for I had seen it tossed away in the corner of the whare where I had slept before, but had not dared to touch it lest they thought I was taking back what they now considered to be theirs. She looked at me and shook her head. The white man’s poison, I could see her thinking. Perhaps this was how I would do away with myself. The soap was brought for me all the same.
All this time the women combed my hair with oil, taking care to avoid the injury to my head, which seemed to be healing, though I could still feel the comb’s teeth beneath my skin when I touched it. Their touch comforted me, and I began to relax, to think that all would be well. I began to be like them. Round my anklet a bracelet of shells was placed, so that when I walked, a small tinkling sound accompanied me. There would be no more night wandering that didn’t alert someone from sleep.
By now they knew which food I preferred. That night I ate with them, and cooked fish was placed before me, along with the sweet potatoes I so relished.
The women poked me in the ribs and laughed.
In the firelight, the chief Oaoiti stared at me, and I could tell by his gaze that I pleased him.
Whatever it was they had talked about, my fate had been decided.
It is some twenty miles or more down the coast to the twin pa of Waimate and Orangituapeka, home to Ngati Ruanui. The first time I walked there with Oaoiti, I thought we would never reach the other side of the bush. As I followed him, he kept a steady pace, pausing only now and then to let me gain my breath. To look at the bush you might think there were no paths but I soon realised that an occasional tree had its trunk smoothed, a twig broken and that the undergrowth varied in its thickness. Still, it would have been difficult for someone who did not know the way to follow what might be taken for a path.
Captive Wife, The Page 20
