The Turehu saw him, and called out, his voice hoarse with fear.
“Please help. The water…fast…cannot swim…cold.”
He stood looking at the red-headed boy, his eyes half-closed, and said nothing.
“Please ven, help us. We’re drowning.”
The log turned in one more, lazy circle as the big one made a desperate attempt to bring it to shore. Both boys were looking at him, spluttering as they tried to stay on the surface. He looked at them with no expression on his face, and he saw doubt forming on theirs.
As they moved along in the water, he walked slowly beside them on the bank, staring into the eyes of red hair, who had both arms around the log, making it tumble as it turned. He said nothing. It wasn’t up to him. For now, it was up to the river. But he would see what happened, perhaps even do something if Atua did not.
Something slithered through the water, not far from the log. An eel, and a good-sized one. Later he would have that, when they had drowned. Red hair saw it too, and lunged at it, apparently thinking it was another log. He sank below the water and came up gagging, his disembodied head seeming to float there, mouth gaping. The big one threw himself towards the other to save him from sinking. But red hair grabbed at his rescuer desperately. The pair went under the water together and came up gagging. They made progress, but red hair once again had his arms around the big one’s head, holding desperately.
He lost sight of them for a minute as the forest track moved away from the river. When he caught up again, the big one was gone, but he saw a red head pop out of the water. He watched the boy find his footing near the far bank, where the bush went straight up from the shore. The boy managed to catch a hanging branch and clung to it, yelling for the other boy in a hoarse voice. When the other did not appear, red hair dragged himself to the edge of the water and up onto a rocky outcrop and sat there retching and shaking.
The watcher stood in the shadows, one hand resting on his tomahawk, waiting to see what red hair would do. Eventually, the boy looked across the river and saw him. The watcher contemplated throwing his tomahawk at the boy to kill him, but the river was wide here. He would lose the tomahawk if he missed; even if he hit the boy he would have to swim the river to retrieve his weapon, and he disliked cold water. Instead, he struck a haka pose, eyes wide and fierce, tongue extended, hands on knees. The boy looked at him, terrified, and then turned and scrambled up into the bush.
He laughed and returned to thinking about his mission, the fate of the two young men serving only to remind him of what he must do; the two boys whose deaths he must avenge. He removed his hat, the blue forage cap, and stared at the crest on the front, running his fingers over the numbers there, feeling his rage grow. The old chant came to him: “Kill them, eat them, kill them, eat them, let them not escape. Hold them fast in your hands.”
His enemies would not escape from him, none of them. He was Anahera, the Angel of Death. He would kill them all, and eat their hearts. And they would not die easy; they would die hard, as the cap said. But the drowning boys…he stared across the river at the place where he’d last seen the boy with red hair running from him in terror, and felt a faint twinge of emotion deep in his heart. Should he cross the river and…? But looking down at the turbulent water he decided it was too dangerous. He would come back tomorrow and look for him. Give the boy some time to learn his lesson.
He spotted the eel again, caught it, and put it into his bag. Eel was good, but he wished he could find a pig in this bush. That would last him longer. The fire had burned down and there was no longer enough smoke to dry an eel. He cursed softly. He’d wasted too much time watching the Yaya. He walked around in the bush until he found a rotting tree trunk full of large white huhu grubs. He tossed several handfuls of them against the remaining embers. He would eat the grubs now, and later he would have some eel.
3
The Die Hard
Frank Hardy, the one-time Sergeant Hardy of Her majesty’s 57th Regiment, sat on the steps of the Royal Hotel watching two men struggling through the mud of the Square towards him. He was smoking a Sweet Three, a habit he’d picked up in Crimea, and he was almost out, with no chance of getting his hands on another packet. He could look for some up in Napier, when he was up there in his Royal Mail coach, but the turnaround time was brief – barely enough time to change the team and ready the new pair for the return to Palmerston. Maybe he could persuade someone to bring some tobacco and papers over from Foxton and he could start rolling his own. But he preferred the ready-mades; the roll-your-owns left nasty flakes stuck in his beard.
It started to drizzle. He pulled off his blue forage cap, ran his fingers through his dark hair and put his cap back on more firmly. He was bored with his life; the same thing every day, with no action. Once he’d been a soldier, a Die Hard, fighting his way through the Crimea and India. Now he was trapped in a country that was becoming more like his tranquil English birthplace every day, and in Palmerston, population 800 people, mostly men, mostly Scandinavians, with a few stolid, unappealing women, and even those married. What he wouldn’t do to see just one good-looking woman pass by on the street.
He could see the two men approaching across the Square better now, and he thought they might be Scandies -Yaya the Māoricalled them, because of the way they spoke. He dropped the butt of his cigarette and ground it into the mud with the heel of his Hessian boot. As the men slogged nearer through the mud, staring at him now, he picked a flake of tobacco from his beard and wondered if they were coming to talk to him. Some business, perhaps?
Life was exciting back in ‘66 when he first arrived in New Zealand, with the Taranaki Land Wars at their worst and wild-eyed Hauhau fanatics throwing themselves at the British Troops, the colonists and the loyalMāoritribes who fought beside them. His regiment had set up camp along the Tangahoe River, near Patea. To the west, the massive white-capped mountain, with its perfect cone shape, soared above the trees. To the south, war chants accompanied smoke rising from Hauhau villages. He’d been longing for battle—it was what he lived for. But things had not gone well, and he’d cashiered out after Otauto and the pursuit that had followed.
He looked around the Square, a mud-covered two-acre field passing for a town square. Why was he here, of all places? He could move, he supposed. Maybe Napier—some good land up there. He’d find himself a shepherd, and a wife, if he could find the right woman. But the idea bored him before it was fully formed. There were no attractive, interesting women in the entire country and he could never be a farmer, with or without the help of a shepherd. He would die of boredom.
He stretched and yawned, still watching the two men approach through the mud. As he’d surmised, they were Scandi - big men with broad shoulders and well-muscled arms, with light-coloured hair and ruddy faces. The government had brought the Scandies to New Zealand for their skill with the squaring axe, and their usefulness in clearing away the forests. He could picture these two, clearing land side-by-side, never stopping to ask themselves if they were happy.
They stared at him anxiously. Come to ask him a favour, by the look of them, and expected him to turn them down. He took off his blue forage cap, left over from his days in the 57th, and inspected the inside, not looking at them. Whatever it was they were after, he wasn’t interested. No favours. No bribes. He had a good contract with the Royal Mail. He was damned if he was going to jeopardize that, as much as the job sapped his will to live. He’d been trying to set up a private investigation agency, but that was going nowhere. No one needed anything investigated. Not in this town.
“Excuse me,” one said in heavily accented English. “If you are Sergeant Hardy, could you help us please?” The taller of the two, a desperate looking fellow with yellow, tousled hair, had spoken. “I’m Hans Christian Nissen and this is my friend Pieter Sorensen.”
Frank looked up at him, shading his eyes against the glare. “Help? What kind?” He couldn’t imagine them needing help with anything. They could break him in half without
a thought.
“I must find my brother Paul and my cousin Jens.”
Frank stifled a yawn. Runaway boys. Great. “Run off, have they?”
“I do not think so,” said Nissen carefully. “They wouldn’t do that. Maybe they drowned, or are lost somewhere…”
“So just disappeared then?”
“I last saw my brother Paul a fortnight ago,” said Nissen. “When my son Claus was born. Paul came to fetch me at the sawmill. But I didn’t think about him again until Mette asked me…she was taking care of my wife and the baby…my brother told me he was going across the river to see someone. I was busy and I didn’t pay attention. Paul should have come to see the baby, but he didn’t and I…I was thinking only of Johanna and the baby, and Anna, my little girl.”
“Have you talked to the police?”
“We talked to Constable Price, and he asked everyone if they had seen the boys. And many people searched the riverbanks, but they found nothing, no trace of them,” said Sorensen. “And Constable Price says now he can do nothing more. He says to ask you…we need to know what happened to them. Someone maybe has…” He stopped and looked sideways at his friend, as if afraid to voice his thoughts.
“We think maybe bushwhackers killed them and left them somewhere in the bush,” said Hans Christian. His chin started to quiver and he stared at his feet, his fists clenched by his sides. “Constable Price says you would know…we must find the boys, even if they are dead by the bushwhackers.”
Frank looked at his feet to hide a smile. Not much chance of bushwhackers. These people were obviously not worth robbing. “Maybe, if they were carrying a lot of money, or…”
Nissen looked at Frank and shook his head. “No money, no. They worked sometimes at the logging camp as spotters, but didn’t make much money. They came from Schleswig a year ago and I was helping them until… they were just boys, seventeen and eighteen and …” he stopped and looked away, blinking.
Frank shrugged. “Well then, I wouldn’t worry too much about bushwhackers. They don’t kill people for no reason—only if there’s money involved, or goods.”
Nissen’s shoulders relaxed. He wasn’t much older than his brother and cousin, Frank realized. Twenty-one, twenty-two…
“Maybe they drowned,” Nissen said after a minute. “Constable Price thinks so. But Paul, he was – is a big man and a good swimmer, I think. And Knud,” he paused for a minute, struggling for an explanation. “Knud is Jens’ cousin on his father’s side. Knud is the one the boys visited that day. Knud says they told him they crossed the river on a log and would go back the same way.”
“So, one fell off the log, the other went in to save him,” said Frank.
“Perhaps that is so, but there was no log.”
“What do you mean, no log?” said Frank, irritated now. “I thought you said they crossed the river on a log?”
“Yah, yah,” Hans Christian agreed. “But when we went to look later there was no log, and no marks of a log either. And the river is wide there.”
“Could they have used a log to float across?” said Frank. He was losing interest, and distracted by a troop of Armed Constables who’d entered the Square from the Foxton road, looking dangerous but interesting.
Nissen shook his head. “The logs here don’t float,” he said. “I know about logs in New Zealand. I’m a mill hand at a sawmill—for now—and I work with logs every day, the rimu and the totara. Mostly they sink after a few minutes unless they are very, very dry.”
“Hmm,” said Frank. The Armed Constables had dismounted and were watering their horses at the trough in front of Snelson’s general store. “Well, drowning is still the most likely possibility. Sooner or later they’ll surface…”
“We don’t want to guess,” interrupted Sorensen angrily, pulling Frank’s attention away from the troopers. “We want to know. Constable Price said you drive your coach up to Napier. You could ask there. Or you could look in the Gorge, make sure they aren’t trapped somewhere. You could help us find them. We have so little time. We work always.”
Nissen took a small purse out of his pocket and offered it to Frank. “I can pay you to find my cousin and my….”
The money in that purse had been put aside to pay for the land they were clearing. Frank felt sorry for the man, but he was looking for work that would challenge him. Searching up and down riverbanks and asking questions up in Napier would lead nowhere. More than likely the young men had drowned and his family would have to wait until they floated up.
He made a decision. “I’m sorry. I’d like to help you, but I can’t. I can ask up in Napier for you, but that’s about it.” Nissen held out his purse to Frank again, but Frank waved it away. “Don’t worry about paying me. Asking in Napier is nothing. Help me fill in my time there. But that’s all I can do.” He put his hat back on, low at the front, then pulled it into place from the back with a quick tug.
They plodded off across the Square, shoulders down, not speaking to each other.
Hop Li, the Hotel Royal cook, came out onto the verandah from the kitchen.
“What did they want, those Yaya?”
“They wanted me to find two lads who’ve gone missing,” said Frank.
“Two Yaya boys?” asked Hop Li. “I know about that. Read in the paper. Drowned in the river, for sure.”
Frank agreed. “Probably. I said I’d ask up in Napier. One of the boys was interested in a girl up there. But that’s all.”
“Your time, boss,” said Hop Li. “Do what you want. But you won’t find them in Napier or anywhere else. They drowned, for sure…”
He paused. The Armed Constabulary were on the move again, trotting towards the hotel. They wore bush uniform, with shawls strapped around their waists like kilts, heavy, laced-up Blucher boots, carbines at the ready across their saddles. Still the old short-barreled Calisher and Terry carbine, like his own weapon. Each of them gave Frank a hard look. He met their eyes steadily, one at a time. Always on the lookout for deserters, the bastards, and recognizing him as an ex-soldier. Did they never give up?
“That reminds me,” said Hop Li. “The soldiers there with the shawl party. I have a card game for you tonight. With two of them. You want to make some easy money?”
Frank sighed. “If you like. Nothing else to do.”
He’d been in the Armed Constabulary himself for a couple of years, after he left the Imperial Army. Back then he’d been wild to kill Hauhau, as many of them as he could, to revenge himself for what they’d done to his brother Will. He’d served under the little colonel, Colonel Whitmore, chasing Titokowera around between Patea and Wanganui, then into the great Te Ngaere swamp in central Taranaki. He still woke up in a cold sweat thinking about it.
The soldiers were a pair of hard-eyed Irishmen who nevertheless lacked the card playing skills of Frank and Hop Li. They telegraphed their good hands with broad smiles and chuckles and Frank soon had a small pile of coins sitting in front of him. As usual, Hop Li played the greenhorn, acting like he had never seen a deck of cards before, passing information to Frank with disingenuous comments about his garden or his cooking. This was not the first time they had played this game before, taking money from men who deserved to lose it.
Frank could see the men were annoyed with their bad luck, and started a conversation to distract them.
“I saw your troop earlier today,” he said. “Don’t often see a full company in town. Something going on?”
“Not supposed to say,” said one, a short, chunky man named Wilson, slapping a card on the table.
“A secret operation?” asked Frank.
Wilson looked at his hand, sighed and played a card.
“Looking for someone,” he said, waiting to see what Frank was going to play. Can’t tell you who. Can’t scare people.”
“A deserter?” asked Frank. He flipped his trump a card on the table. “Isn’t it time you left the poor bastards alone?”
“Whitmore says they’ll be deserters until they’
re dead,” said Wilson as Frank scooped up the cards. “He’d give buckets of cash for Kimble Bent.” He tossed a shilling at Frank. “Hell’s teeth. You’re killing me. An unforgiving man, is Whitmore. But it isn’t a deserter we’re looking for, exactly. Another bastard. A bad one. Can’t say more though.”
“I served under Whitmore,” said Frank. “Back in the ’69 campaign against Titokowera, with your lot. Many from my regiment did. Hard man then. I doubt he’s changed.”
“Get to keep any of the heads?” asked the other Irishman, Benson. “I heard he gave bounties for heads. Ten quid if they were chief’s heads.”
“Never touched a head myself,” said Frank, staring at his cards. His hand had started to shake and he slammed a down card to make it stop. The images came at him like this, unbidden, unexpected. “Too barbaric for me.” He paused for a minute, collecting himself. “But Whitmore asked for ears, not heads. Some men got carried away, I know. Lot of blood lust in that war, on both sides.”
He took a deep breath and looked up at the two Irishmen. The heads. It had been a long time ago, the memories buried deep, and he pushed them back to the depths from where they had arisen. “I did hear of one colour ensign who took a head of a corpse, gouged out one of the eyes and took back to Whitmore, pretending it was Titokowera,” he said, repeating a story many had told back then. “Tito had only one eye,” he added, for Hop Li’s benefit.
“He get extra money for that?” asked Hop Li, interested.
Frank paused, mostly for effect. “He would have, only he took out the wrong eye.”
Not the Faintest Trace Page 2
