The Fire Blossom

by Lark, Sarah

  But his father and Jakob Lange wouldn’t accept any excuses.

  “What do you mean you won’t understand? You have eyes in your head and will be able to tell us what you saw. How the arrest went, for example, and if there was any resistance.”

  “It’s important that we mark our presence,” Lange added. “We can’t send the English to pull the chestnuts out of the fire for us. They should be aware that we’re ready to defend ourselves, we’re ready to fight for our land—”

  “Fight? I don’t even own a musket,” Ottfried said. In Mecklenburg, the most he had done was harass birds with a slingshot.

  “My God, boy, we’ll arm you!” Lange exclaimed.

  “We’ll buy you a musket,” Brandmann agreed. “It would be good, anyway, to have a hunting weapon. Who knows, we’ll probably all have to learn how to defend ourselves out there in the wilderness.”

  Lange nodded. “You’re right. I should probably get one too.”

  “Is Anton going?” Ottfried asked hopefully.

  “Anton is only sixteen,” Lange said. “They aren’t taking any children with them. As far as I know, Jensch is the only man going from our group—and he’s the last person I want to trust the fate of our land to!”

  Karl Jensch had found out about the expedition when he picked up his passport, and had jumped at the chance to make some money. Besides, it would also be a way to see more of his new country, and to get a look at the natives. He’d spent his first night in a room in a pub near the harbor, where the owner had let him stay in exchange for scrubbing tables. But in the long run, Karl had bigger plans for his future.

  “Jensch surely doesn’t own a weapon,” Lange continued. “Who knows, maybe they’ll turn him down if enough armed men step forward. You will offer to take the job, Ottfried, and then we’ll see about buying you a gun.”

  There was one likely shop in Nelson. The owner spoke German quite well and was happy to be able to practice it with his new customers. He told the Brandmanns and Lange that when he had arrived several years before, he’d worked at a whaling station run by a German named George Hempleman. With the money he’d earned there, he’d been able to open his shop. However, he didn’t have any guns. The shop specialized in fishing equipment.

  “We don’t have anything to shoot at here,” he said, shrugging. “There are no dangerous animals. And not much edible either, unless you like grasshoppers.” He laughed. “There are just a few birds, and most of them can’t even fly. They’re so stupid that they spend all day sleeping in burrows under trees and only walk around at night. The Maori just dig them up, and then they have their barbecue.”

  Ottfried thought the burrowing birds sounded strange, and he didn’t understand the word “barbecue.” But it made him feel better to hear that the natives must not have any guns either.

  Lange had more questions. “What about the savages themselves? Don’t they pose any kind of threat? There’s going to be some kind of disciplinary action. Don’t we have to be afraid of—”

  The shopkeeper laughed. “Oh, the Maori are all right. You can always come to some kind of agreement with them. During our first year, Mr. Hempleman had problems with them stealing from the whaling station, but then he gave them a boat, and after that, everything was fine. And even now, Te Rauparaha has his reasons to be angry. Sometime last year, a woman of his tribe was murdered by one of the settlers, and Wakefield didn’t prosecute the murderer. The chieftain felt as though the tribe wasn’t being taken seriously. So now, he’s making trouble about the land sale. And instead of negotiating or even formally apologizing, the police magistrate is charging in with his sword swinging. It’s basically a power struggle.” The man grinned. “Two short men who like to make themselves look important. Our Wakefield is under five feet, and the chieftain is also a little thing; they call him the Napoleon of the South. In any case, they both have delusions of grandeur. You don’t have to take them very seriously, as long as nothing goes wrong.”

  “Nothing goes wrong?” Lange repeated. “How do you think this will end?”

  The shopkeeper scratched his chin. “Well, the way I see it, Thompson is heading to the Wairau Valley with a bunch of randomly chosen men who have never seen a Maori in their lives. They’re itching for a fight. And Maori warriors aren’t exactly levelheaded either. If the wrong men provoke each other, it’s possible that both Wakefield and Te Rauparaha will lose control. It could turn ugly. But if everyone keeps calm, then they’ll argue for a while about the unpunished murderer and the alleged arson charges, and then Wakefield’s men will leave. Later, they’ll send negotiators, and in a few months, money will be exchanged and the surveyors will be allowed back.”

  “In a few months?” Peter Brandmann said, appalled. “A few months until the land can even be surveyed? Then it could be a year or more until we’re allowed to build!”

  The shopkeeper shrugged. “That may be. But what can I do for you gentlemen? Can I sell you some fishing equipment? You can fish anywhere here, and that will make the time pass more quickly—”

  Jakob Lange snorted in annoyance.

  “You don’t have any weapons at all?” Ottfried asked nervously.

  “Well, if you really insist . . .” The man got up and sorted through some items before placing a box on the counter. “I have a musket here. Some wayward soldier of fortune traded it for a fishing rod. It’s a nice piece, but it’s been gathering dust.”

  Peter Brandmann took the musket out of the box. He knew nothing about guns but tried not to let it show.

  “Then you’ll be able to give us a good price,” he said, opening the bargaining.

  A little while later, the former whaler closed his shop and took the immigrants to his farm to teach Ottfried how to shoot. The young man learned quickly how to load and fire the musket. He also learned to aim. The men finally paid and made their way back to their lodgings, Ottfried proudly carrying the musket on his shoulder.

  “I don’t understand Wakefield,” Jakob Lange said. “He has to deal with a bunch of unarmed natives who don’t even shoot bows and arrows but dig up their prey instead! Why doesn’t he go there and burn their camp to the ground the way they did the surveyors’, and just wipe them out once and for all?”

  “That wouldn’t be Christian,” Peter Brandmann said thoughtfully.

  Lange waved a hand disdainfully in the air. “Nonsense! They’re heathens, anyway. And it’s certainly against God’s will for them to keep us off our land.”

  On June 17, 1843, Ottfried Brandmann, Karl Jensch, and forty-nine other men boarded the government-owned brig Victoria. Aside from a few surveyors, all the men were armed. Thompson had handed Karl a musket with the incorrect assumption that the young man knew what to do with it.

  The ship sailed up the Wairau River toward where the Maori camp was supposed to be. They hoped to reach it in a few hours.

  “And then hopefully, the problem with the land will be cleared up,” Jakob Lange said to his children. He had completely ignored the shopkeeper’s misgivings.

  After all, when Beit had translated Captain Wakefield’s speech for the settlers, he had told them that Wakefield planned to relocate the surveyors to the Wairau Valley immediately after he’d arrested the chieftain. Then the development work would proceed quickly.

  “Let us pray that God will be merciful,” Lange continued, and folded his hands. “Oh Lord, please especially protect my future son-in-law Ottfried. May he do your work for us all, and return safely and victoriously home to us!”

  Ida obediently joined the prayer, but also secretly said another for Karl Jensch. She was worried about both men. And she also wondered if God would really bless them if they began their lives in this new land with an expedition to punish the natives.

  Part 3

  THE BLONDE MAORI

  THE WAIRAU VALLEY AND NELSON, NEW ZEALAND (THE SOUTH ISLAND)

  1843

  Chapter 15

  “You do want to translate, don’t you?” Te Puaha asked ag
ain.

  Before Cat had joined the Maori six years earlier, interpreting from English had been the young man’s responsibility, and he wasn’t anxious to give it up. Just recently, when Te Rauparaha had driven Wakefield’s surveyors from the Ngati Toa’s lands, it had been Te Puaha who had made it politely but unequivocally clear to them that they weren’t welcome. But Te Puaha would never be able to express himself in the pakeha’s language as eloquently and correctly as Cat could.

  “Of course!” Cat set aside the basket she had been weaving and nodded. “Everyone will be there, anyway. Te Ronga said there would be a proper powhiri.”

  Te Puaha grimaced. “We could save ourselves the effort. The pakeha are annoyed when they are greeted with songs and dancing. They have little patience.”

  Cat nodded again. “But it is tikanga,” she said, repeating her foster mother’s words. “The gods will view the negotiations more benevolently if we honor tradition.”

  The chieftain’s nephew winked at her. “You’ll do well. I think we’ll begin welcoming them when they are still aboard their ship. Then we’ll row them ashore, I’ll lead them to the village square, and you can join us after the dancing has finished.”

  Cat pushed back her long blonde hair, which was held out of her face with a wide headband woven in the tribe’s traditional colors. The pakeha would doubtlessly be surprised by the interpreter’s appearance. So far, Cat had only had contact with the traveling merchants and missionaries who visited the village every now and then. Her foster mother, Te Ronga, didn’t allow her to accompany the men during diplomatic or militant expeditions, knowing that the white settlers had little respect for women.

  “I hope they won’t be distracted by me, or by the women among the council of elders,” Cat said.

  Te Puaha shook his head. “Te Ronga will accompany Te Rauparaha as well. And she has never had difficulties making her mana seen.” In the tribe, mana meant prestige and the ability to assert oneself. “Besides, you are tohunga now, and they have to accept that.”

  Cat smiled proudly. Not only did she have fluent command of the pakeha’s English, but she also had recently negotiated with a German missionary in his strange language. The Maori called someone tohunga only when they had gained an unusual amount of knowledge in a particular area. It could refer to talent in the realms of spirit or healing, and also to exceptional skills in house building, wood carving, or languages. Cat had worked hard to gain her status, because when she had been adopted by the tribe, she hadn’t spoken a word of Maori. She’d also had to learn everything that was familiar for people here, from setting a fish trap to planting and harvesting sweet potatoes.

  “How were you possibly able to survive before?” Te Ronga had said almost every day at first, teasing the girl.

  Cat had blushed with shame when even the smallest children had shown her which plants were edible, or which leaves she could rub on her skin to protect against insects. But once she’d learned the language, everything else came quickly. She was guided by the kind hand of Te Ronga, who had smoothed the way for her acceptance into the tribe.

  “She’s my daughter now!” she had declared, after her father, Chieftain Te Rauparaha, had paid Carpenter a small compensation for leaving the girl to the Ngati Toa.

  Te Ronga had taken the scared girl into the tribe’s sleeping quarters and given her a place next to her own. To Cat’s surprise, all the members of the tribe shared one big bedroom. Only the chieftains had their own houses, in which they were visited regularly by their wives. As Cat soon discovered, Te Ronga often slept with her husband, Te Rangihaeata. The couple had a close, loving relationship. But during the first few nights Cat had spent in the tribe’s sleeping quarters, trembling with the fear that the Maori would make her leave with Reverend Morton and Carpenter after all, the young tribeswoman had stayed close. She had worked to make it clear to Cat that there was nothing for her to fear. She showed her how to eat the strange food and how to fold up her sleeping mat during the day. The entire tribe supported Te Ronga’s attempts to make the white girl feel at home. When Cat began to understand their language, she discovered with surprise that all the women of Te Ronga’s age were calling her daughter. The older women called her mokopuna, granddaughter.

  When she shyly asked Te Puaha about it, he had explained that children belonged to the whole tribe, and that no one would refuse to accept the new daughter because Te Ronga had so much mana. “Now you have many mothers,” he said. During her first few weeks, Te Puaha was Cat’s interpreter and constant companion, and she was grateful for his patience and kindness. And something else was new for her: Te Puaha didn’t look at her lustfully even once.

  Cat soon blossomed into her new life, and she hardly ever thought about Suzanne, Priscilla, Noni, or the whaling station in Piraki Bay. Barker was far away, and his pub seemed like a bad dream. Instead of the ramshackle huts of the whalers and the stench of blubber and rot, she was surrounded by the colorful houses of the Maori and the aromatic smells from the cookhouse, including the scents of the medicinal plants and fruits that Te Ronga collected. Cat learned to weave and worked in the fields. And if the harvest wasn’t sufficient because of too much rain or too little, she would journey with the tribe to better grounds.

  The Ngati Toa generally wandered in the summers, usually because the spirits had told Te Ronga or one of the elders that it was time for them to do so. Then they would get in their canoes and paddle up the river, and their travels would take them to sacred sites where they would honor the gods with song and prayer. The sites could be unusually shaped rocky outcroppings, volcanoes, or glass-clear lakes, but sometimes they were just places where blood had been shed at one time or another. The tribe remembered their dead while the wind blew over the grassy plains, but they also celebrated the bravery of the winners. During these journeys, Cat became familiar with the entire northern part of New Zealand’s South Island. It was the land that the Maori had named Aotearoa, which meant “the land of the long white cloud.”

  Te Ronga taught Cat about the uses of medicinal plants and how to harvest them, and the young people took her along with them to catch fish and hunt birds. Occasionally they met other Maori tribes during their journeys. Some were friends of the Ngati Toa, whom they visited at their marae, their meeting grounds, while others were members of the enemy tribe, the Ngai Tahu. Then the traditional greeting ceremony, the powhiri, became very exciting, because they staged haka, mock battle dances in which the warriors demonstrated their strength. These demonstrations weren’t games. They were intended to convince the other tribe that it would be better for them not to attack the Ngati Toa under ariki Te Rauparaha. So far, it had always worked. The chieftain was the most feared warrior in all of the South Island, and no one wanted to challenge him. Recently, Te Ronga and one of the tohungas from the other tribe had performed a ceremony to link both tribes through the gods, and afterward there had been a communal festival.

  Cat was looking forward to serving her tribe well in the negotiations with the pakeha. There was no reason to expect an attack, and she would also be protected from the lustful glances of white men like Reverend Morton by Te Ronga and an army of warriors.

  Cat smiled to herself when she remembered the reverend. She had learned later that while Carpenter spent two days enjoying the tribe’s hospitality, the reverend had been hiding in the woods, hungry and scared witless, all thoughts of proselytizing gone from his mind. Carpenter had left him at a missionary station near the settlement now called Nelson.

  Over time, Cat had learned that the Maori weren’t particularly open to being converted to Christianity, anyway. They enjoyed hearing stories from the Bible, but they had their own gods and demigods, and even goddesses. Every evening around the fire, the tohunga told stories in the whaikorero style, the art of beautiful speech, about the gods’ deeds and adventures. Cat learned about Kupe, the first settler on Aotearoa. He had come from an island called Hawaiki, a land of passion, where the souls of the Maori went after they died
. She learned about Papa and Rangi, the earth and the sky, who had been separated from their children when they created all the beauty in the world, and she listened, entranced, to the stories of the demigod Maui, a strong, brash young man who had defied even death.

  Cat found all of this much more exciting than the Bible stories that Frau Hempleman had told her. The Maori didn’t constantly talk about sin or pray for forgiveness to a god who never answered. Instead, they sent their prayers and wishes into the sky with colorful kites, and honored their gods with dance and song. Cat loved it all and was thrilled when girls her age encouraged her to learn to dance and play a musical instrument.

  But she wasn’t sure how much she believed in the gods. Privately, Cat suspected that the flowers of the rongoa bush would still have a healing effect even if Te Ronga didn’t ask the spirit’s permission to pick them, and she couldn’t imagine that something bad would really happen if someone ate or drank in any of the places that had been declared taboo, or tapu. Life at the whaling station, not to mention her experience with Reverend Morton, had shattered any illusions that might normally have come with childhood. Cat held Te Ronga and the other women in great esteem the same way she had Frau Hempleman: she respected their beliefs, said their prayers, and sang their songs. Above all, she made sure to remember all the useful things that she learned from Te Ronga. The chieftain’s daughter was a healer, and Cat liked to follow her when she went out to collect flowers and roots, from which she would make elixirs and salves. She listened when the women talked about their symptoms, and was amazed when Te Ronga often just spoke an incantation and the patient immediately showed signs of improvement.

  After a short while, it became clear to Cat how lucky her adoption had been. Te Ronga was a member of a sort of royal family. As daughter of the chieftain, she had a very high status, and her mate, Te Rangihaeata, would one day replace Te Rauparaha. But beyond this, it was Te Ronga’s wisdom and healing skills that won her a place among the council of elders. The council made decisions about tribal matters, passed judgments, and advised the chieftain in dealings with the pakeha.