Fires of Change (The Fire Blossom Saga)

by Sarah Lark

  “Where are the people now?” Carol asked. She realized she’d asked the same question in Paekakariki. She got the same answer.

  “They were moved,” the captain replied. He didn’t elaborate.

  Carol’s eyes stung. She couldn’t even bear to look at Bill Paxton anymore.

  In stark contrast to the desolate area along the road, Whanganui itself was teeming with life. The town had originally been founded and settled by the English. Most were honest, deeply religious people who’d scrimped and saved to buy their land. But over the last few years of war, the town had been transformed into a military hub, with all the positive and negative effects that entailed. The local shopkeepers were doing good business, but so were the pubs and brothels. Carol was grateful for Bill Paxton’s help finding them an appropriate inn. Many places that called themselves by that name rented rooms only by the hour.

  When the sisters had finally settled into a clean, simple room, Carol’s fears caught up with her. The North Island had changed considerably since Mara had last traveled here. Carol’s little sister, who was currently gazing out the window at laughing soldiers and whores with brightly painted faces, had been completely sure several days ago that they could travel alone from Wellington to Russell. Karl and Ida had been hospitably received everywhere, as easily in Maori maraes as they were on settlers’ farms. Now, the farmers were fearful and suspicious. And the Maori had hardly any place at all to call their own. How would they keep traveling after Bill had arrived at his post? Carol slept restlessly and felt even more exhausted and depressed the next morning than she had the night before. Bill Paxton appeared at the inn as they were having breakfast.

  “Please forgive my early intrusion,” he said. “It’s urgent. I must ask you for help. Yesterday, a Maori tribe who were removed from their land on the Patea River came here. General Cameron ordered them to leave their village when he passed through it. If I understood correctly, the people were told where they were supposed to resettle, but instead they came here and are refusing to leave. The situation is strained, and the missionary who was supposed to translate yesterday didn’t know the language nearly well enough. But you do.”

  Carol nodded. “Though I don’t know the dialect here as well,” she said. “Mara can certainly do better. Where are the villagers now?”

  Bill grimaced. “The military police have literally got them penned in, at a sheep farm. They say it’s an aggressive tribe.”

  Carol frowned. “When people are driven from their homes, they don’t usually feel very kindly toward those responsible.” She stood up. “Come, Mara. Let’s find out what’s going on.”

  A phalanx of guards had surrounded the shearing shed and pens, but there were no Maori to be seen. It was raining, and the people had fled into the sheds to stay dry—and hide from the heavily armed soldiers. Carol and Mara nervously followed Bill Paxton and a military officer between the columns of guards. Even Fancy hung her head and whined.

  When the sisters entered the shed, they were surrounded by not only the familiar scent of lanolin but also the sweat and fear of the humans being kept there against their will. There were almost only women and children. The few men among them were very old or looked ill. The space was far too small for all of them.

  “This is one tribe?” Carol asked in surprise. “Are there such big iwis on the North Island?”

  Mara shrugged, and so did the officer. He hadn’t bothered to ask the people who they were.

  “Who is their leader, or their speaker?” Carol asked. “I don’t see an ariki.”

  A chieftain on the North Island wouldn’t have mingled with his people, but instead would have been standing somewhat apart. And, of course, he would have immediately stepped forward.

  The officer looked around. “There were two old people here yesterday; they’re the ones in charge. Unfortunately, they barely speak a word of English.” He turned to the crowd. “Hey, you,” he shouted so loudly that the women and children started in fear. “We have an interpreter here. Anyone who has something to say should come forward. Do you understand? An in-ter-pret-er!”

  “Kaiwhakamaori,” Mara explained.

  Three people in a dark corner stood up. They were elderly and needed a moment to get to their feet. Then they walked toward the officer and the young women with slow dignity. They were all wearing traditional garb, the women in woven tops and long skirts. The only man among them wore a cape over his shoulders with feathers woven into the fabric. He must have been a person of high rank, perhaps a former chieftain.

  Mara made a deferential gesture. She showed she was ready to exchange hongi with the women, and waited to give them the chance to initiate, but none did. They remained at a distance from the pakeha girl.

  “Is this child to determine our fate?” asked the oldest woman.

  Her hair was gray, and she stood straight-shouldered. She had no tattoos, and Mara realized that it meant she was a priestess, the woman with the highest spiritual rank in the tribe. She was of such a high rank that even the tohunga-ta-oko was forbidden to touch her and draw her blood.

  “Of course not. I am only translating the words of the pakeha ariki into your language,” Mara replied.

  “What did she say?” the officer asked impatiently.

  Carol told him.

  “I will tell him in his own language what you have to say,” Mara continued.

  “You are tohunga?” the elderly man asked. “The gods have given you the gift of speaking in different languages?”

  Mara shook her head. “No. I’m just the makau of a Maori warrior,” she said proudly, using the word that could mean either lover or spouse.

  Carol shot her a look, and didn’t translate for the soldiers. But Mara’s explanation seemed to satisfy the Maori.

  “Which tribe does your taua belong to?” asked the priestess.

  “I come from the South Island,” Mara said. “We belong to the Ngai Tahu tribe.”

  “The Ngai Tahu are not our friends,” the old man with the feather cape said uncertainly.

  “Perhaps they were once our enemies, but that was long ago,” the younger woman said. “We should speak to the girl. At least she understands our words, even if she doesn’t fully comprehend their significance. That’s more than the man who accompanied the pakeha ariki yesterday could do.”

  Carol spoke up. “I, too, understand your words, karani,” she told the old woman, respectfully addressing her as “grandmother.” “I also believe I can understand a little bit of your pain. I was driven away from my own land recently.”

  “What did she say?” The officer turned impatiently to Mara, who ignored him.

  “Please,” Mara said to the old tohunga, “tell my sister and me what happened to you.”

  The old woman looked from Mara to Carol, and then began to speak. “I am Omaka Te Pura, and I belong to the Ngati Tamakopiri. This is Aka te Amiri of the Ngati Whitikaupeka, and Huatare te Kanuba of the Ngai Te Ohuake. These are all iwis of the Mokai Patea. We all once came with one canoe, the Aotea, to Aotearoa.”

  Carol turned to the officer. “It’s not one tribe, it’s three. Their ancestors came to New Zealand in the same canoe.”

  “So?” the officer replied disdainfully.

  “We have lived in Patea since our ancestors arrived in this land. We live from fish and mussels that the river gives to us.”

  “Ko au te awa. Ko te awa ko au!” the two others chanted together.

  “I am the river. The river is me,” Carol said, translating for the impatient officer.

  The priestess continued. “A few days ago, the pakeha came to us and told us we had to leave our land.”

  Mara relayed this to the officer.

  “Yes! It has been confiscated under the stipulations of the New Zealand Settlements Act,” the officer declared. “You’ll have to go somewhere else. Do you hear? Some! Where! Else!” Some of the children began to whimper in distress.

  The priestess nodded to Mara. “We understood that. We
were told to move to Mount Tongariro. But we can’t do that.”

  “Why not?” the officer bellowed. “I warn you, if you refuse—”

  “Let her explain,” Bill said, stepping toward the furious officer.

  The priestess gazed at the man fearlessly. “If we move to Tongariro, we will all die. We are river folk.”

  “Ko au te awa. Ko te awa ko au!” the others repeated, and the Maori around them joined the chant.

  “We are fisher folk. Tongariro is a land of volcanoes. We won’t be able to find anything to eat there,” the priestess said.

  The officer snorted. “There are plenty of tribes living there. Just ask them what to plant.”

  “That’s the second problem,” Carol said, translating after the old chieftain had replied with a stream of rhetoric. “The Ngati Tuwharetoa live in Tongariro, and they have been enemies with the Nga Rauru Kiitahi for centuries. If these people enter their territory without a reason that is acceptable to the other tribe, and without the protection of their warriors, it’s very likely that they will all be slaughtered.”

  “What?” The officer laughed. “They’re fighting among themselves too?” He turned to the uncomprehending group and waved his arms. “You’re all Maori! All one people!”

  “Just like the English and French?” Mara remarked. “Like the English and Irish and Scottish? They’re all pakeha, and they would never fight among themselves.”

  The officer glared at her. “That’s different.”

  “Stop it, Mara,” Carol said. “Sarcasm won’t help right now. Officer, isn’t there another place these people can go?”

  The man shrugged. “Lake Taupo? They could fish there.”

  Carol repeated the man’s suggestion to the tribal elder, then shook her head again.

  “They’re also enemies with the Ngati Toa at Lake Taupo,” Carol said, translating. “Without the protection of their warriors—”

  “Why are they here without the protection of their warriors, anyway?” the officer asked with a snarl, and continued immediately before Mara could translate. “I can tell you! Because their warriors have gone to the fort at Weraroa to join the rebels. Rire rire, hau hau, isn’t that what they say, old woman?”

  He waved a scolding finger in front of the tohunga’s face as he imitated the Hauhau warriors’ battle cry. The priestess shrank back in disgust.

  “That’s why your land was confiscated. You brought this on yourselves. And instead of locking you up like I should, I will provide you people with an escort to Lake Taupo. We’ll even make it clear to the Gati-whatevers that they should refrain from eating their fellow countrymen,” the officer said. He looked at Carol and Mara. “Thank you, ladies, for your interpreting services.”

  With that, he turned to leave. Bill Paxton followed, trying to appease the man’s temper.

  Carol and Mara broke the news of the officer’s decision as gently as possible. “He says you will be under the protection of the Crown,” Carol said, trying to comfort them. “The Ngati Toa won’t dare to attack you.”

  “Not as long as the pakeha are pointing guns at them,” the priestess said bitterly.

  “And not afterward either.”

  A boy who had been sitting nearby with his mother and siblings straightened his back.

  “The pakeha man is right about one thing,” he declared. The chieftain glanced down at him indignantly, but the boy didn’t let the disapproval bother him. “We are one people! The chosen people! We will go to the land of the Ngati Toa, and we will carry Te Ua Haumene’s message with us! There will be Hauhau warriors among the Ngati Toa as well, and they will be our warriors. Pai marire, hau hau!”

  A few other young men took up the chant. Carol thanked the Lord that the officer had already left.

  “We should get out of here,” Mara said.

  They found Bill outside.

  “I tried to make the man understand,” he said unhappily. “If these people must settle at Lake Taupo, then they will have to be guarded for a long time. But he just doesn’t care.”

  Mara shrugged. “It looks like the villagers have already found a solution.”

  Bill furrowed his brow. “What kind of solution?”

  Carol sighed. “A biblical one,” she said. “The officer invoked the wind, but he will be confronted with a hurricane.”

  Chapter 33

  After Whanganui, Lieutenant Paxton was supposed to head for the Patea River with his recruits. There he would meet General Cameron’s troops. Bill was assuming that the women would be joining him, but Carol had doubts.

  “You’ll be going too far west. If we want to get to Russell, it’d be better to split off and travel inland to Auckland.”

  “You want to go directly through Waikato?” Bill asked, horrified. “That’s impossible, Miss Carol. The area is only theoretically at peace. In truth, it’s full of marauding Hauhau hordes. No, please believe me; it would be best to come with me and then continue northward under the protection of Cameron’s offensive.”

  “‘Offensive’?” Carol asked suspiciously.

  “The general is supposed to enforce the Settlements Act, and that means he has to send the Maori away from the Patea River. That land is supposed to be made available for white settlers. It works very well when the Maori abdicate. But when they don’t—I don’t know exactly what will happen, Miss Carol. I’ll find out more when we’re there. And perhaps we could take it as a stroke of fate! Cameron would certainly be grateful for skilled interpreters.”

  “Carol, let’s just ride back to Wellington and take a ship,” Mara urged. “The journey so far hasn’t been dangerous. We can ride on these roads alone.”

  Carol rubbed her temples. “A ship? Halfway around the island? I’m sorry, Mara, but I’m not ready for that yet.”

  Mara groaned. “Well, I’m certainly not going to interpret for General Cameron!” she declared. “If he wants to throw people out of their villages, he’ll have to tell them himself.”

  Carol shrugged. “No one will force you,” she said. “All right then, Mr. Paxton. Let’s ride to the Patea River.”

  The landscape around the Patea River reminded Carol painfully of her home on the South Island. Beech trees, pukatea trees, raupo, and rata grew there, as well as the resilient, ever-present ferns. The lower reaches of the river flowed through broad plains, and then into a wide estuary to the sea. However, the Patea didn’t flow through grasslands like the Waimakariri did, but through dense forests. Carol had heard that the South Island had once looked this way before the Maori cleared the land. Once the forests had been cleared, they didn’t grow back. Instead, the tussock grass spread. Currently, land around the mouth of the Patea was being cleared for settlers—and for General Cameron, who needed both space and wood for his military bases.

  The general and his English troops had reached the mouth of the Patea several weeks earlier. They had set up an encampment for two hundred men, which had later been converted into headquarters. The camp was on a hilltop facing the sea, not far from the settlement of Patea. It offered an excellent view of the river and boasted accommodations for six hundred men. They were a mix of professional soldiers from Australia and volunteers from New Zealand. Many of the latter were either Maori warriors or members of the new military settlers regiment. The officials responsible for the new recruits sought out liaison officer Bill Paxton immediately after his arrival.

  “What kind of men did you send us?” an Australian officer complained. “They’re a bunch of milksops who climb the nearest tree if I say ‘boo’! Pitting them against Hauhau warriors would be unimaginable. And right next to them, we have the complete opposite: ruffians and crooks, directly from the goldfields—or from Van Diemen’s Land. I swear some of them must have escaped from chain gangs.”

  “What do you want me to do about it?” Bill asked.

  “Make them get their heads on straight!” the English official ordered. “They’re here in service of the Crown, even if all they want is land. They�
�d better pull themselves together and make themselves useful in exchange for what they’re receiving!”

  “They also have to learn to obey orders,” the Australian added. “In my regiment, they just do whatever they want.”

  Bill called a meeting. He did his best to explain the strict English regulations to the cocky, self-assured “Kiwis,” as the English liked to call New Zealanders.

  “The seal hunters and the whalers feel powerful because they almost never lose in barroom brawls,” he told General Cameron two days later. The general had invited his new liaison officer and the two ladies in his company to dinner. “The idea that one person gives orders and all the others obey simply doesn’t fit with their view of the world.”

  Cameron laughed. He was a tall, slim man in his fifties with thinning hair and graying sideburns. He was exceedingly experienced in battle, but he wasn’t enjoying his current job. In his opinion, Governor Grey had provoked the recent conflicts. He suspected the military settlers of the same transgression.

  “Perhaps they’re exactly the sort of people the governor needs,” Cameron said. “I’ll carry out Grey’s plans and expel the Maori from that land, but then my men and I will leave. Permanently. The military settlers will have to have an abundance of self-assurance if they’re going to hold their ground. And now we should stop boring the young ladies with administrative problems,” he said. “Miss Brandmann and Miss Jensch, are you satisfied with your quarters? I’m terribly sorry that you can’t continue on your journey directly.”

  Carol and Mara assured him that they couldn’t have wished for more comfortable accommodations. They had been given a clean, spacious room in the officers’ area, which consisted of a collection of log cabins. The cabins were new and smelled of fresh wood, and the interiors were simple and practical. The women were welcome to take meals in the mess hall, which was set up in another large cabin.

  “You aren’t boring us at all, General,” Carol replied. “To the contrary. Since we are now stuck here, we are quite interested in everything that’s happening at the base.”