Toward the Sea of Freedom

by Sarah Lark

  Now it was out. Michael looked at her imploringly. His eyes no longer shone; now they burned.

  Lizzie smiled, then allowed him to embrace her.

  Michael had learned the art of love in Miss Daisy’s brothel in Wicklow—and if the women there did it for free, they wanted to get something out of it. Daisy had personally instructed him, and he had enjoyed every moment with the older woman. Later, he had given Kathleen pleasure with his slow, tender lovemaking, and he would not disappoint Lizzie now either.

  Lizzie, who had always associated physical love with pain or, at best, indifference, had until then been convinced she could never enjoy it. Men needed it, while women basked in amiable words, gentle kisses—and above all, the hope that men would protect them and make them a home. Lust had always been strange to Lizzie before, whatever Mrs. Smithers and others believed.

  But that first day on the ship to New Zealand, Michael aroused sensations that she had not even known existed. He stroked and kissed parts of her body she had not bared to her customers, and when he pressed into her, he did so slowly and gently, as if he were approaching a virgin. At some point, Lizzie forgot everything around her. She no longer knew where her body ended and his began. Finally, she arched up beneath him, digging her nails into his back with lust, pressing her face against his throat and his strong chest.

  “Michael,” she whispered. “Michael.”

  Michael nestled his face into her breasts, breathing in her scent. “Kathleen,” he said quietly.

  With that, something died inside Lizzie. She lay quietly, not bothering him—trying, though she knew better, to hold on to some magic. Michael caught his breath at some point. He propped himself up beside her and playfully stroked her breasts and stomach.

  “That was wonderful,” he said softly. “I can’t thank you enough. Lizzie, you’re, you’re such a good person.”

  Lizzie did not say a word. That night she slept for the first time next to the man she loved. But she cried herself to sleep.

  Strength

  Nelson, Kaikoura, Canterbury Plains

  1850–1858

  Chapter 1

  Lizzie and Michael spent twenty-two untroubled days on the Elizabeth Campbell. They shared the bed in their luxury cabin at night, and during the day, people treated them like a married couple. Only a few passengers were traveling on the small ship, a fact that unsettled Michael.

  “They’ll all remember us precisely when the soldiers come looking for us,” he said. “We’ll have to leave the city we land in—what was it called again? Nelson?—right away.”

  “Their investigation won’t go that quickly,” Lizzie said. “As for descriptions of us, we didn’t hide our faces in Van Diemen’s Land either. But who’s going to look for us? Naturally, the Australian officials will inform the police in New Zealand, such as they are. That won’t happen right away. And you don’t really believe that the New Zealand authorities are going to spend all their energy on finding two escapees among thousands of free settlers, do you? I think we’ll be able to look around at ease.”

  Lizzie feigned calm, but in truth, the thought of arriving in Nelson filled her with increasing dread. It had less to do with the fear of discovery and arrest and more to do with the end of forced cohabitation with Michael. Lizzie did not know what Michael had planned for this new country, but she sensed that his plans did not include her.

  Regardless, her first look at Nelson, a new but already almost city-like settlement on the northern tip of the South Island, announced the breathtaking beauty of her new homeland. As the ship entered Nelson’s natural harbor, the area glistened in the sunlight. There were beaches, green hills, and prim little wooden houses. Mountains rose up behind the harbor.

  “And palm trees!” Lizzie cried as the ship came closer to land. “Michael, have you ever seen a palm tree before? It must be warm here. Oh, I love it, Michael. Shouldn’t we just stay here?” In her euphoria, Lizzie spontaneously nestled against the man beside her.

  But Michael rebuffed her. “Stay here? Are you mad, Lizzie? We’re not coming as settlers, you know, we’re—”

  “We’re what?” She did not at all want to ask questions, but the time had come. Even if it hurt, she had to know what to expect. “Naturally, we could leave this town as quickly as possible. But you don’t really believe you’ll make it off this island, do you?”

  Michael laughed, a little forcedly. He turned his gaze from Nelson and looked almost longingly at the sea.

  “Of course I do,” he said with total confidence. “I’ll stay here just long enough to earn the money for passage. Then it’s farewell, New Zealand. Home calls.”

  Lizzie held tight to the railing to keep herself from shaking Michael. “You want to go back to Ireland? You can’t be serious. They’ll arrest you on the spot and send you on the next ship back to Van Diemen’s Land.”

  Michael shook his head. “Nonsense. I have friends in Ireland. I’ll go into hiding. And it won’t be for long anyway. I’ll fetch Kathleen and the baby, and then we’ll leave.”

  Lizzie swallowed. “Michael, what you call a baby is more than two years old by now. You haven’t heard anything from Kathleen. You don’t know where she is. Or if she might have married.”

  “Mary Kathleen? My Mary Kathleen?” Michael shouted angrily. “I told her I’d come back. I swore to her I’d come, and she knows I will. Kathleen’s waiting for me. I’m sure of it.” He ran a hand through his thick, dark hair, which was tousled by the wind.

  “And where is she waiting?” Dear God, they might part in anger, but it had to be possible to make him see straight. “In your village? Do you think her parents were so eager to keep feeding her? Her and her bastard?”

  “Well, perhaps she isn’t in the village,” Michael said. “Perhaps she lives in a big city like Dublin, and”—a light shone in his face—“perhaps she’s even gone on to America. I gave her the money to go. Maybe she’s there.”

  “Walking down to the shore every day to watch for your arrival?” Lizzie mocked him. “I don’t know anything about America, Michael, but they send a lot of ships there from London. One departs every week or so, most of them filled with hundreds of people. So I take it it’s a big country. How do you mean to find her? And how is she supposed to make a living for her child? Heavens, Michael. It’s not that simple for women.”

  Michael spun around. “What do you mean by that? That Mary Kathleen might have lowered herself? That she could be like you?”

  Michael’s words revealed all of his disdain for fallen women. Lizzie turned away, but then rage welled up within her, and once more, she faced him.

  “Of course not! Absolutely unthinkable! Mary Kathleen is far too holy to spread her legs for a bite of bread. I don’t doubt she’d rather die. Maybe she’s already thrown herself in the sea with her bastard and her shame. Often enough that’s the only choice a woman has, Michael: whore yourself or starve. Sorry I’ve been too cowardly for the second. Though it’s all the same when it comes to damnation: whoring and suicide. God sends both types of sinners to hell. Only Michael Drury makes a distinction. How can you live with yourself knowing my whore money bought your freedom?”

  Lizzie ran to their cabin and quickly retrieved her few possessions. Michael could keep David Parsley’s clothes and travel bag. From under the mattress, she pulled out Mr. Parsley’s wallet. There was not much left, but half of the remaining ten shillings belonged to her. Half? Defiantly, Lizzie took every penny. She had worked for it. And Michael still held that against her. Damn it all, if only he had paid her for every bit of pleasure she had granted him on the voyage.

  She put on her hat and ran down the gangplank to the pier of the placid little harbor. Michael, she would have to forget. It was time for a new beginning. Somewhere in this lovely country, in which the air seemed clearer than Lizzie had ever thought possible, there had to be a place for her. She would look for employment, and perhaps she would finally make her life pleasing to God.

  Lizzie str
olled down the new, clean streets of Nelson and felt her anger abate. She hoped it would be replaced with courage and optimism, but in truth, there was only an endless sadness. However Michael had treated her, she had loved him. And now she would probably never see him again.

  Michael was upset when he disembarked a short time later. Angry, on the one hand—he had noticed the missing money—confused on the other. His fight with Lizzie weighed on his heart. After all, he couldn’t dismiss everything she had said about Kathleen. Naturally, Kathleen would never lower herself to whoring or thievery. Of course she would wait for him. But indeed, it might be difficult to track her down.

  He could not let the matter go as he roamed Nelson’s streets, though he had other, more urgent, problems. Where, for instance, could he earn enough money for his next meal? Still, that paled in comparison to how he might find Kathleen, wherever she was hiding.

  Father O’Brien. The priest would surely know where Kathleen was. Michael only needed to write to him and inquire. First, though, he needed an address to which Father O’Brien could send his reply.

  Michael sighed and finally began to look around. Damn, this Nelson place had the most spick-and-span harbor he had ever seen. Everything looked tidy and navigable. But still, it was a port. Michael Drury, or rather David Parsley, could not be the only man stranded in town without any money or future. He entered the nearest tavern, put on a winning smile, and looked over the barkeeper behind the counter and the drunkards in front of it.

  “Well met, lads! Anything I can do here to earn a beer? Just got in from Australia and my girl stole my money.”

  The barkeeper boomed with laughter, and one of the drunks made room for Michael. He waved for a glass. A few hours later, in the tavern yard, Michael slept off his first night of drinking in this new land. The next morning he made his way to what would be his new workplace.

  “Go south to Kaikoura,” one of the men had advised. “There’s a whaling station, Waiopuka. There’s always work there for a good lad, and no one asks for papers.”

  “But I’m not a sailor,” Michael said.

  The man shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. They haul the critters onto land.”

  Lizzie wandered Nelson’s right-angled streets, in a rush from her recovered freedom. She had hated her life in London, but now and again, there had been wonderful little moments. She remembered sunny days when a kind customer had handed her a few shillings and she was able to stroll through the market streets admiring a display or trying on a hat. In those times, she had been the happy, innocent young girl whose life she always imagined.

  She had missed that these last couple of years. In Van Diemen’s Land, everyone had known who she was, and she had not even had a penny to her name. Thus, she felt all the richer now as she entered a tearoom in one of the whitewashed wooden houses adorned with bays and balconies. Lizzie sat, smiled at the server, and ordered tea and rolls. She felt confident enough that she almost succumbed to the temptation of asking about employment. But Michael was right: it would be madness to settle straight away in Nelson. And madder still to work in a tearoom into which someone like David Parsley could walk as soon as he finally got to New Zealand . . .

  Lizzie almost had to laugh. If she spent a few more hours in this carefree spirit, she would soon come to view her life as an adventure. But it was not, and Lizzie forced herself to think seriously. Her money would not last long; she needed to do something.

  “Pardon me, might I ask you something?” She turned with a shy but heartwarming smile to the server. “I had hoped to reunite with an old family friend, from my village back in England. He arrived two years ago and wrote to us, but I forget the name of the town he settled in. Something near Nelson, I know that much. Not in the city itself. Are there other settlements nearby?”

  The young woman shrugged. “Settlers have been arriving in Nelson for ten years now, miss. Few stay, though. There’s not much to be done here. They spread out all over the area—to the villages and farms. The next-biggest town would be Sarau. But there it’s almost all Germans.”

  Germans? Lizzie wondered, but the heritage of her future fellow citizens did not really matter. She had to improvise now. “Now that you mention it, my friend wrote us something about German settlers. And Sarau, yes, that could be it. How do I get there from here?”

  “The gentleman over there comes from the area.” The woman gestured at a tall, heavy man with thick brown hair and a wide, weathered face. He was sitting in the corner of the tearoom, thoughtfully shoveling meat pies and sweet potatoes into his mouth. He was drinking coffee with his meal. “Just ask him if he knows your friend. Perhaps he can take you as well. He’s quite nice. Comes by whenever he has business in town.”

  Lizzie chewed on her lip. “But I can’t simply sit across from him. What would he think of me?”

  The server smiled. “I’ll talk to him for you.”

  A short time later, Lizzie was curtsying politely before Otto Laderer, a farmer from Sarau.

  “There are English in area. But stay with themselves, like we too,” he said in hard, somewhat broken English. “So, can be, your friend there is. Can ride with and look if you want.”

  Lizzie thanked him courteously and waited until Laderer had finished his meal, then climbed onto his wagon, which was pulled by two powerful horses. Laderer had bought wood and tools in Nelson, and a few supplies like coffee and tea. Not much though.

  “We farm with dairy cows, pigs, chickens. And fields. Feeds itself,” Laderer explained when Lizzie asked him about his farm.

  Lizzie was fascinated. She had never been in the country before, and the thought of being able to sate one’s hunger with produce from one’s own fields seemed paradisiacal.

  “Is Sarau a pretty place?” she inquired. “You see, really, really I’m supposed to have come to marry my friend.” Lizzie was becoming intoxicated by her story, which was taking on a life of its own. “But if I don’t find him? And well, anyway, I don’t find the idea of marrying somebody I haven’t seen in ten years very appealing.”

  The big German gave her a quick sidelong glance. “Will be fine,” he muttered.

  Lizzie offered him a sweet smile. “Maybe. Well. But if not, do you think I could find employment in Sarau? I’m a maid. I worked for a very fine family.”

  “No fine families in Sarau,” the farmer informed her. “But work. Much work. If you want, I take you as maid. Food and clothing, a pound a week. But hard work.”

  Lizzie nodded. “I’m used to it,” she declared, self-assured. Even in Campbell Town she had worked from sunup to sundown, after all.

  The farmer gave her an appraising sidelong look. His eyes wandered over her petite figure, her narrow shoulders and hips. Lizzie was used to such looks, but she realized to her surprise that there was no lust there.

  “Will see,” he said and shook the horses’ reins.

  The team trotted through copses behind which the majestic view of the mountains became visible. Lizzie felt confident about the future.

  Kaikoura lay more than a hundred miles from Nelson, but Michael’s drinking buddy was a sailor, and he told him he’d ask his captain to give Michael a ride on his ship, which took train oil and whalebone to Europe. It had taken on some freight on the West Coast but would mainly be supplied in Kaikoura.

  “Can’t I just come along to England?” asked Michael, who could hardly believe his luck. “I’ll make myself useful, I swear.”

  The vessel’s very small crew did not need any more members, and the captain showed little interest in teaching a landlubber. He did agree to take Michael to Kaikoura, but he immediately made it clear that passage was not free.

  “Old Fyfe’ll pay your way when we get there,” the captain said. “A big, strong lad like you, he’ll be licking his chops. You’ll have to work it off, of course. But not to worry.”

  Robert Fyfe was the founder and proprietor of the whaling station, and it did sound as if he were hungry for workers. In any case, the captain was w
illing, so Michael boarded a ship once again, leaving Nelson—and Lizzie Owens—behind without a second thought.

  Kaikoura proved an idyllic peninsula separating two bays with beaches that were part rock and part sand. In one of these bays lay the whaling station, Waiopuka, which was dominated by a stately manor, its founder’s house.

  “Built on a foundation of whalebone,” Michael’s drinking buddy explained. “There’s hardly any wood here, you see.”

  Indeed, even the tombstone crosses of the men who met their end in Kaikoura were made of whalebone. The bodies of the powerful sea creatures could be used in a number of ways, and their capture must have been profitable. Robert Fyfe, a wiry man with sparse red hair and skin weathered by wind and sea, readily advanced Michael the money for his voyage.

  “You can build a shack up there,” he instructed his new worker, pointing at a meager settlement past his house.

  The whalers built their shacks from tree bark and fern branches. They hung doors and windows with tarpaulin or sackcloth to keep out the worst of the wind and rain. Michael’s future neighbor, Chuck Eagle, invited him right away into his shack, which he had furnished only with a cobbled-together table and chair made of whalebone. It smelled beastly—apparently the bones had not been boiled long enough. Or did the stench emanate from Chuck and his clothing?

  “You get used to it,” Chuck said amicably when he noticed Michael crinkling his nose. He held out a bottle of whiskey, and Michael took a deep drink. “The fishies stink—especially if we don’t get ’em on land right away. We try to keep ’em on the hook and pull ’em onto the beach, but sometimes the harpoons get loose, and then the body sinks down. Not so bad, really. It fills with gas, and after a few days, floats back up. But stinks something awful.”