Tommo and Hawk

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘Tommo, you must understand this thing! It is like we said on the ship, it’s a matter of conscience, good men working for the common good of the common man!’ He sees me doubtful face and adds, ‘Not letting the mongrels win!’

  I jerk my head and snort. ‘The mongrels always win when they is the government!’

  Hawk ignores me and if there were a tub nearby, I swear he’d have took to thumping it. ‘The Maori do not possess the land individually like we do. Land is owned by the tribe, and if the individual should use it for his own, it is only by permission of all the tribe as represented by the chief. The tribe allows him to use the shadow of the land though the substance, the soil itself, belongs to all. It has been their way, their law, since time out of mind.’

  ‘But it ain’t our way, is it?’ I insist.

  ‘That’s right,’ says Hawk, ‘but the British government understood this difference and recognised it. The treaty states that land can only be sold to the government with the full permission of all the tribe and its chief. Settlers may not buy land directly from any individual, only from the government. But the settlers are doing so, and the government is turning a blind eye.’

  ‘There you are, what the eye don’t see, the heart don’t grieve over!’ I claps my hands and laughs. ‘Put down your spectacles, gentlemen, the little Queen in London Town owns all the aces in New Zealand! Can’t expect her to see across the sea, now can we?’

  ‘No, it’s not right, Tommo!’ Hawk shouts. ‘It’s deliberate cheating! It’s Queen Victoria cheating her own subjects of what’s rightfully theirs!’

  ‘And so you wants to go to war against her? Ha! You must be mad!’

  ‘The Maori people have a saying: “For women and land, men die.”’

  ‘And Tommo also has a saying: “We ain’t got no women and we ain’t got no land and so I’m telling you straight, we ain’t gunna die for fuck-all o’ nothing!”’

  Hawk laughs despite himself. ‘The Maori people must speak with one voice and Chief Tamihana wishes there to be a Maori king to bring all the tribes together. This he has almost accomplished. A new king will be announced in the next few months.’

  ‘A king for them, a queen for us? You think that will solve the problem?’

  ‘Tommo, Chief Tamihana has a most persuasive argument. He asks, “Is there not Queen Victoria of England, Nicholas of Russia, Louis Napoleon of France and Pomara of Tahiti— each a native monarch for their people? Each nation is separate, and I also must have a king for myself.”’

  ‘Sure, and we already has a queen. Why should we help him?’

  Hawk looks hurt. ‘Tommo, the Maori have always had their wars, one tribe hating the other. That’s the government’s strength, to encourage one against the other, to divide and conquer! Since the musket was introduced to them, the Maori have killed more than twenty thousand of their own people! I can help Chief Tamihana to make peace amongst the tribes.’ He is breathing heavy now. ‘They have agreed to a king of their own but there is still much dissension between them on other matters. If they may be united then they will be a force to be reckoned with. Their wishes cannot then be ignored by the governor.’ Hawk grins suddenly. ‘For the first time in my life my colour is useful. I am neither white nor brown, I am as black as the ace of spades, so I have no axe to grind. I’m no threat to either side. This makes me the perfect go-between.’

  ‘That’s right, it’ll be no different to always! Everybody hates the nigger, so now everyone can hate the black go-between! You be perfect for the job o’ being hated,’ I says.

  ‘Please let me do this, Tommo! I have been given my voice back and I must use it well. What better way than to stand up for what’s right and honest, eh? Chief Tamihana is a good fellow, he wants peace and unity. He has shown us great charity, you know this. He has not spared his hospitality and his people have treated us like their own kind. We have so much to be thankful for.’

  ‘Hawk! We can’t live with the Maori forever!’ I brings my face close as possible to his. ‘We’s got to go home soon!’

  Hawk’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise. ‘Home? To Mary? You are ready to go home?’ He has this big smile on his gob.

  Hawk has been writing to mama and she to him. Chief Tamihana has arranged for our mail to be collected from Auckland. Mama writes all her letters to ’Mr H. Abacus’ as the authorities reckon Hawk Solomon’s dead and he’d soon enough be a wanted man if he weren’t. Hawk’s explained the need for secrecy to mama by telling her that we deserted the Nankin Maiden— he ain’t said nothing ‘bout her boys going to prison and escaping, though!

  Hawk read Mary’s recent letter aloud to me. She is well and the brewery’s going nicely. He misses her and longs to see her again, I know. But I ain’t ready yet for more of our mama.

  ‘We got to get to Australia,’ I says now. ‘There’s more gold been discovered in New South Wales, Mrs Barrett said so in the bloody poker game. And where there’s gold, there be card games.’

  Hawk looks disappointed. ‘And grog?’

  ‘Yeah, but I reckon I’m cured,’ I lie.

  ‘After this, after Chief Tamihana has managed to bring all the tribes together with the new king, I promise we shall leave.’

  ‘And who will be this Maori king? Wiremu Tamihana, is it?’ There is an edge of bitterness to me voice. I don’t like this business of a Maori king, I’ll wager nothing good will come of it.

  ‘No, no, he does not wish it for himself. His ancestors are not powerful enough. The tribes have chosen Chief Potatau te Wherowhero to be crowned next month.’

  ‘King Potato!’ I laughs. ‘Queen Victoria versus King Potato! What a contest that will be! Her ancestors, William, George, Charles, James, Elizabeth and all the bloody Henrys,’ I say, mixing up all me kings and queens. ‘Them against King Potato, Onion, Leek, Taro, Cabbage, Carrot and Beetroot!’

  Hawk don’t smile at my little joke. ‘The Maori’s ancestors be just as important as England’s kings and queens, Tommo. Just as noble. But you are right, it is an uneven match. The Maori’s belief in the malignancy of their dead ancestors adds a host of terrors to the real evils which beset them. It will be difficult to convince them to make the accommodations necessary for uniting the tribes.’

  As Hawk predicts, Potatau te Wherowhero is announced King of the Maori in August. In the months what follow, I grows to admire me brother for his patience in trying to bring the tribes to one mind. My respect also grows for Chief Tamihana, who is much put upon by the other chiefs and the tohunga, the priests, of the various tribes, but who always listens to all points of view. In the end most of the tribes in the North are united. All that dissent are a few small ones and the mighty leader of the Taranaki Maori, Chief Wiremu Kingi.

  By now Hawk and I both speak the Maori tongue well, and Hawk’s voice has a deepness and calmness what makes men listen. But there is one thing left that he must do to earn the authority he needs, and I am much puzzled when he comes to me one morning.

  ‘Tommo,’ says he, ‘they wish to make me Maori.’

  ‘Might as well,’ I quip, thinking to meself it means nothing more than what’s already happened.

  ‘No! You don’t understand, they wish to tattoo me, to give me moko.’

  ‘What?’ I cries. ‘Your gob and all?’

  ‘Tamihana says if I do this the other chiefs will listen to us the better. They will name me the Black Maori.’

  I look at me twin brother and shake me head. ‘Hawk, you promised soon as they got themselves a bloody king we could leave this place! How’d you be at home with all them purple whirls on yer face?’

  Hawk thinks for a moment. ‘It isn’t much of a face, by my reckoning, so no harm will be done there. As to what folks would think at home? They think I’m just a nigger anyway. Marks on my face will just confirm their view that I am a primitive savage!’

  Hawk is smiling, but I sees the hurt of all the years underneath, the humiliation at being thought a black bastard. He is now seven feet tall and
, at seventeen years old, near full grown. He is taller even than Hammerhead Jack and his strength be enormous. What he says about his gob makes me sad. I’m not sure I knows what handsome is meant to be in a man, but when me brother smiles it makes other men feel the world is good. The wahine, I’ve noticed, looks upon him with desire, which brings me to another matter what’s troubling me. The Maori laws are strict about women and Tamihana has barred us from being with the tribe’s wahines. Yours truly has been a mite frustrated.

  ‘Will they give you the right to take a wahine?’ I asks Hawk now.

  It seems he’s thought of this too. ‘I have asked for us both and it is yes!’ He smiles shyly.

  ‘No chance!’ says I, most alarmed. ‘I ain’t gunna have me gob scratched with blue lines for no bloody woman!’

  ‘The tohunga and the chief will make a special dispensation for you, Tommo. If I become Maori, as my twin you are also Maori, even without tattoos on your face.’

  ‘Without the tattoos, but still with the wahine?’ I laugh, but me heart misses a beat.

  Hawk nods, grinning as well. But I still don’t want him to do it. ‘I can survive. Pulling the pud ain’t so bad. Don’t let them bugger up your face, Hawk.’

  ‘Like I said, it’s not much to bugger up!’ Hawk laughs, and turns serious. ‘I would think it a great honour, Tommo. I have much love and respect for the Maori race.’

  ‘Don’t do it, Hawk!’ I shouts, angry now. ‘You’ll be sorry forever!’

  ‘No! You don’t understand, Tommo! These will be the marks of my conscience!’

  ‘To hell with your conscience! You be stark, starin’, ravin’ mad!’

  ‘Please, Tommo, I must do it, show that I am not afraid to be different, not afraid to fight for what’s right and fair!’

  ‘Your fight is gunna get us killed!’ I shrug and look up at him despairingly. ‘Nothing I say is gunna change your mind, is it?’

  ‘No,’ says he quietly. ‘I love you, Tommo, but I don’t seek your permission in this. I want only that you should understand.’

  ‘I understand you’re a bloody idjit!’ I snort. But the anger is gone out of me voice and I gives up. ‘Do what you like, it be none o’ my business.’

  Hawks grins. ‘Thank you, Tommo. Perhaps I’ll look the better for it!’

  And that be the oddest thing. Hawk with all his Maori tattoos looks like a general. The blue swirls and markings are just visible on his black skin, but they seem to add to the strength of his face. Like I said, I don’t know what handsome be, but Hawk is now a man what you is forced to look at with a lot of respect. He appears about five-and-twenty, and there is no mistaking him for a lad no more.

  Life in the village is also gettin’ better. There is a little wahine I’ve had me eye on for months, what looks at me the same. Most Maori women be too big for me, towering above, but this one be a perfect fit. After Hawk’s tattooing, I talks to Chief Tamihana, and he gives the nod.

  Maybe it comes natural with the Maori wahine, but it were never like this in the wilderness. My woman’s name is Makareta and I am taken with her. She has a most beautiful disposition and laughs all the time. There ain’t nothing she won’t do for me and I be just as happy to care for her. I got no notion of what might be love, like Hawk sometimes goes on about, but whatever this be with Makareta, it will do me just fine.

  We often goes walking together in the forest to gather koroi, the beautiful scarlet and black fruit what grows at the top o’ these giant trees. I shimmies up their huge trunks, jumping like a monkey from branch to branch as I done so often in the wilderness, and Makareta laughs and claps her hands. She says I do it much better than the Maori lads. Other times we gather berries what’s so delicious that half is always eaten by the time we gets home. I know something of the way o’ the wilderness from me past, but Makareta teaches me more. She loves the birds and they are of a great variety here, carrying on, shrieking, chirping and calling out, so’s you can hardly hear yourself speak. I know the wren, the fly-catcher, the robin and the bellbird, o’ course. She teaches me to recognise the calls of the pio-pio, the thrush what be different to ours, the popokotea, the piwakawaka and the riroriro. This last one’s a funny name for a bird, though riroriro be somewhat like the sound it makes, like some small steam-engine starting up.

  Makareta knows all the forest plants. She were taught by her mother what knows much about herbs. She can name all the ferns, maybe a hundred or more, also the many parasites and climbing creepers, their huge coils and slender vines festooning the massive branches. She knows every detail of their bright leaves, blossoms and fruits, what’s to eat, what’s poison, what can be used to cast a spell or stop a pregnancy. I’ve always thought the wilderness a dangerous place, but now I marvels in the infinite variety and cunning o’ mother nature and sees the beauty of the lichen, moss, fungi and vines. The graceful clematis is everywhere, its white blossoms the shining stars o’ the forest firmament.

  Makareta takes great joy in teaching me what she knows and, in turn, wants to know everything about me. But the things I should tell her about meself I’d rather she didn’t know. So I shows her some card tricks and tells her about Mary. I even teaches her some o’ the nursery rhymes, ‘Three Blind Mice’ and all the rest, as well as the songs Mary taught us when we were young uns. I tell her about climbing Mount Wellington and spearing yabbies and some of me and Hawk’s boyhood adventures before we were took by the wild men. After that I don’t say nothing and she soon knows not to ask, for she sees the look in me eyes.

  I think Hawk is secret pleased about me and Makareta. He could have any wahine in the village, for he is now made rangatira, what best translates as a gentleman of high status among the Maori. But he has not yet taken a wahine for himself. I think even Chief Tamihana has took to wondering about him. He is always suggesting this wahine or that one, but Hawk laughs and says he will know when it’s right and keeps busy with his work. There are some things about Hawk what’s got nothing to do with our being twins.

  After much fussing and shouting and to-ing and fro-ing, most of the objections of the other tribes are gradually sorted out. It takes many weeks, but at last the tribes agree to abide by the laws of the new Maori king. Our chief Tamihana is become known as the ‘kingmaker’ and ‘peacemaker’. At last, I think, Hawk’s work be done.

  But Hawk is of a different mind. ‘Not yet, Tommo. We have not yet got Chief Wiremu Kingi of the Taranaki to join the King Movement.’

  ‘Then, after you’s done that and all the tribes are united under your King Potato, then will you stop meddling?’

  Hawk frowns. ‘The pakeha and the government are most upset at the proclamation of a Maori king. Tamihana will need me at his side a little longer.’ He looks at me appealing, ‘Please understand, Tommo?’

  And so we stays. I has been given the task of training five-and-fifty young Maori warriors in the art of the fighting axe, an art what’s been invented by yours truly. It’s one of me few talents. I’ve always been good with a hand axe, fast and accurate. Now I has worked out ways to fend off spears, knives and even bayonets with the axe handle. Chief Tamihana wants Hawk and me well instructed in the use of the taiaha, the Maori fighting stick, a weapon most formidable. In return, I’m to train his men with the fighting axe. This ain’t difficult as the Maori are already skilled in using the hand axe for shaping their canoes and carving, and they quickly learns to use it as a weapon o’ combat as well. Over many weeks I shows them how to throw it so the razor-sharp blade finds its target every time, but mostly we works on hand-to-hand techniques.

  I calls me band o’ merry men what I’ve trained, ‘Tommo’s Mongrel Killers’. The Maori can’t pronounce this and so they has named us ‘Tommo Te Mokiri’, what I think sounds most pleasing to the ear.

  It’s no time at all before this new Maori king of ours has a flag, a magistrate, a surveyor, a council o’ state, a police force and all the trappings. I be sure Hawk has had a hand in setting up all of this, though he deni
es it. The pakeha are not well pleased by these events and liken it to treason. There be a lot of hostility and some, even most, would march upon the new king to put a stop to such disloyalty to the queen of England.

  Chief Tamihana, ever the moderate, says, ‘The king on his piece, the queen on her piece, God over both and love binding them to each other.’ I often thinks Chief Tamihana and Hawk both be idjits, birds of a useless, peaceful feather!

  But Governor Gore Browne— a most pompous man, I gathers— thinks that the Maori will soon take to fighting among themselves. Hawk, who gets the newspaper from Auckland, reads the governor’s opinion: ‘"I trust that time and absolute indifference, a neglect on the part of the government, will teach the natives of the folly of proceedings undertaken only by the promptings of vanity and instigated by disappointed advisers.”’

  Hawk laughs, setting the paper aside. ‘I think we, along with Tamihana, are the disappointed advisers, what say you, Tommo?’

  ‘I say governors won’t deal kindly with disappointed advisers what stands up to them. Like I said before, it’s time to scarper, mate!’

  In truth, I has grown more content with life among the Maori, what with Makareta and all. But I sniffs trouble brewing, and sure enough, me instincts be right. Six months after Patatau’s crowned king, a row breaks out between the colonists and the Ati Awa people of the Taranaki, which is where the settlers most badly want to buy land. Chief Wiremu Kingi declares his tribal lands is not for sale at any price. He ain’t, he says, going to sell even a blade of grass or sod of earth or handful of dust to Governor bloody Gore Browne. He knows that all the government will do is promptly sell it to the settlers!

  It’s bad news that the first chief to tell the governor to go to hell is not of the King Movement and some thinks this is why the government has chosen to go against him. Chief Wiremu Kingi, though he be most powerful, now stands alone against the pakeha government.

  Our chief, Tamihana, thinks this an opportunity to influence the Taranaki chief. He offers Hawk’s assistance and the tribes agree that the Black Maori should go to the Taranaki to help in the negotiations with the governor’s men. He can help with translations between the two parties.