Fires of Change (The Fire Blossom Saga)

by Sarah Lark

  A few weeks previously, a troop of inexperienced, adventure-hungry warriors from Opotiki had made their way to Waikato to join the Hauhau rebels. They were led by Te Aporotanga, a young, aggressive chieftain of the Te Whakatohea tribe who had never been interested in adapting to the ways of the missionaries. Voelkner was happy to be rid of the man, no matter how much he had preached against rebellion in his church.

  The warriors first tried to reach Waikato directly by traveling inland. But they soon met an enemy tribe that blocked their way. Te Aporotanga retreated and took the coastal route. There, they had no luck either. At Maketu, two days’ walk from Opotiki, Te Aporotanga got into a skirmish with British troops. He was taken prisoner and, through a series of unfortunate events, ended up in the hands of enemies. Finally, the wife of a chieftain of the Te Arawa tribe had him killed. The exact reasons for his execution could only be speculated on.

  “We will pray for him,” Voelkner had said when he was informed about the tragedy. Carl Voelkner had never said a bad word about anyone who’d died, but Franz could tell by his tone what the missionary must be thinking: the young chieftain had probably had a hand in his own death. He had been known as a womanizer. Perhaps he’d overstepped the boundaries with a chieftain’s wife or daughter.

  But for the Te Whakatohea, prayer was not enough. They were outraged at the death of their chieftain. They believed that the governor should have prevented his murder.

  What was more, the warriors’ excursion had brought the war to Opotiki. It didn’t come in the form of battles, but the English employed the same strategy they had used in Taranaki: rebellious tribes were punished by having their land confiscated. Of course, the missionary station was untouchable, and the maraes immediately surrounding it were largely spared. Only a few fields were appropriated and some others destroyed before the missionaries could halt the reprisal. But the episode served to fuel Maori anger against the pakeha.

  And then typhoid broke out.

  “He’ll feel better soon,” Franz Lange said kindly to a Maori woman who was sitting on her three-year-old son’s bed, crying. He hoped he wasn’t lying to her. In truth, Franz had no idea if the child would survive or not. He didn’t even know if the mother could understand his comforting words. His linguistic abilities were still woefully insufficient, even though he had finally been trying to learn Maori.

  “We should pray together.”

  The woman nodded, and Franz recited the Lord’s Prayer in Maori. However, he no longer spoke it with the same enthusiasm he’d had a year ago at Rata Station. Since then, he’d prayed far too often at the beds of the afflicted without getting an answer. Even now, he had the sneaking suspicion that his prayers would have little influence on whether little Hanu survived. What might make the difference was whether Voelkner returned from Auckland with the new medicine in time. If he returned . . .

  Franz sighed and moved on to his next patient. It was another child, a little girl. Kaewa had a high fever, and he didn’t know if she also had typhoid, or perhaps measles. Both illnesses had been rampant for months. Reluctantly, Franz undressed the child and washed her. He did his duty, but it required all of his humility. Ever since the beginning of the epidemic, it had been clear that he wasn’t cut out to be a doctor or nurse.

  So far, neither Carl Voelkner nor Franz Lange had been able to determine who had brought the epidemics to Opotiki. Voelkner traveled to Auckland regularly, but assumed he was not guilty because not one single white person at the station had come down with either illness. It affected the Maori alone. In a short time, the school and the tribal meetinghouses had been converted to provisory hospital wards. Franz had long since put aside his lessons, and had to watch one student after another die. Almost a third of the Maori population in Opotiki had been buried in the last three months, and the end still wasn’t in sight.

  In the face of such suffering, Franz Lange was slowly losing his faith in the power of prayer, and the Maori were losing their faith in the missionaries. After the people had humbly begged God for help and sought out the mission doctor with no results, rumors began to circulate. Was it possible that the whites were trying to poison them? Had the Christians made the old gods angry? What was Voelkner doing in Auckland so often? Was he really collecting donations in order to fight the illness more effectively, or was he hiding there to avoid contagion?

  The people had become so restive that, on his previous trip to Auckland, Voelkner even decided to leave his wife there.

  “She’s safer,” he’d told Franz, “though I’m sure it’ll be fine. I’ve always gotten along well with the people here. With God’s help, we will withstand this trial together and be the stronger for it.”

  Franz was less convinced. Voelkner’s friends in Auckland had advised him to stay there as well until the epidemic had run its course. But Voelkner hadn’t listened then, and Franz hoped that the missionary would come back to Opotiki after this trip as well. Under no circumstances did Franz want to be alone with all the suffering people. After only two weeks he was feeling out of his depth with the temporary management of the mission. The Sunday sermons were particularly difficult for him. What could he say to people who had to bury one relative after another, no matter how fervently they prayed?

  Franz covered the little girl again and looked up as one of his favorite students, a clever boy of about thirteen, approached respectfully.

  “Reverend Lange,” Paora said, and helpfully took the bowl of water that he’d been cooling the child’s forehead with. “I thought I should be the one to tell you. People have come from Taranaki. The tribe has welcomed them hospitably.”

  Paora himself was not one of the Te Whakatohea. He was a foundling who had been living in the mission since a whaler had brought him there years ago. The boy looked Maori, but Voelkner believed he must be half-pakeha, with a Maori mother who’d lived alone with a white man. Otherwise, a tribe never would have allowed the child to be abandoned.

  Lange nodded. “That is well and good, my son, if at the moment perhaps not wise. The last thing we need is for this epidemic to spread past the borders of Opotiki.”

  The boy shook his head. “That would be terrible, Reverend, but that’s not why I’m here. It’s because—I believe these men are missionaries for Te Ua Haumene.”

  Chapter 40

  “Voelkner is a spy!” Kereopa proclaimed. “It’s obvious. Look how his mission is flourishing. What it must have cost to build the church and this school . . .”

  Kereopa, Patara, and Eru had arrived that afternoon at the marae of the Te Whakatohea and had been welcomed kindly. Now, over a rather meager meal, the villagers were pouring out their hearts to them. The primary subject was Carl Voelkner. What was he doing in Auckland? Had he turned against the Maori? And how much responsibility did he have for all the deaths? And now, thanks to Kereopa, what if he was reporting to the governor?

  “We built the church and the school ourselves,” an old man said. “Not much money was needed. And even if Voelkner had been a spy from the very beginning, what sense would it have made for him to spend his earnings for the good of those he was spying on? What would he have gotten out of it?”

  “Your souls,” Patara said darkly. “Look at yourselves. You’re all wearing pakeha clothing. You’re learning their language. You’re reading their books. You’re attending their church. Voelkner made sure that you’d always have to be grateful to the English.”

  “We aren’t grateful to the English,” a woman said indignantly. “They burned our fields! We hardly have anything to eat. If Voelkner hadn’t—”

  “There you have it!” Kereopa declared. “You’re beholden to Voelkner again. He made you poor and helpless. He only gives you enough to survive. He’s pakeha, people! He’s one of them, doing their dirty work! He has the same goals, except he’s trickier about it. So far not a single shot has been fired in this region, but half of your people are dead, while not a single pakeha has died. Doesn’t that make you suspicious?”

&
nbsp; The people looked at one another.

  “You think he brought us typhoid and measles?” one of the tribal elders asked, toying with the cross that hung around his neck. “A curse?”

  “That’s entirely possible,” Patara said. “Just like our belief can make us invulnerable, a wicked thought can be poison.” The idea seemed to inspire him. “And now we’re here to break the curse!”

  “Rire rire!” Kereopa said encouragingly.

  “Hau hau!” Eru added.

  “Listen to the prophet’s words. Accept that you took the wrong path when you followed Voelkner on the road through the darkness!” Kereopa stood up, and the people thronged around him by the fire. He spoke of the whites’ evil deeds in Taranaki and Waikato, and also about the power of the Hauhau and their prophet. “General Cameron has destroyed every marae with his murderers and thieves—but none of his men even dare to come close to Weraroa! Just the presence of the prophet makes his fortress invisible and invincible. The power of the belief of thousands of men has created a ring of fire around the pa.”

  Eru smiled at the contradiction between invisibility and a glowing ring of fire. He’d long since stopped taking Kereopa’s speeches literally. He had great respect for his leader, but the man was certainly not a prophet himself, even though he called himself one. Kereopa wasn’t saying what the archangels told him to, but rather what he thought his listeners wanted to hear.

  Eru had perceived very quickly that these people were not warlike. Their minds were occupied by fear and grief. They were looking for someone to blame for the epidemics, and Kereopa and Patara were giving them Voelkner.

  Eru decided to ease their fears. “You are all baptized in the name of the God that the pakeha brought with them to Aotearoa,” he said. “That isn’t wrong. He is a powerful God, and Te Ua Haumene himself served him for many years. And you’ve heard the stories that they tell about his Son. All the healings in the Bible.” Eru paused for a moment.

  “We prayed to Jesus!” a woman cried. “We begged him to heal our children, but he did nothing.”

  “You sent your prayers in the wrong direction,” Eru explained. “God the Father sent Jesus to the Israelites. To us, he sent the archangel Gabriel, Tama-Rura, who spoke to Te Ua Haumene. And, of course, you’ve heard of the healings that Te Ua performed in his name.”

  As expected, the Maori on the east coast had not heard this confusing story. In fact, Eru hadn’t yet told it in any of the maraes they’d visited. Supposedly, the archangel had ordered the prophet to take a child in his arms and cut off its leg. There had even been rumors that it had been Haumene’s own son. Of course the prophet had done it, and that’s where the stories diverged. Some said that the child prayed to be healed, and others said that the tribal elders or even the pakeha authorities had jumped in, only to find the child healed, happy, and healthy in his parents’ house. Eru didn’t believe a single word, and to Haumene’s credit, he had never bragged about it. But now Eru was using the story for his own ends, although he told it a little less dramatically. In his version, Te Ua had healed a broken leg, and not one that he himself had chopped off.

  “Couldn’t he come here to heal our children?” a mother asked hopefully.

  “You can heal them yourselves,” Kereopa declared, and Eru nodded. “You can heal them by receiving the faith of the prophet, planting peace and love in the hearts of your people, and sowing hatred against your enemies. You must destroy these enemies, my friends! You must use their blood to wash away your children’s sickness. We will set up a niu for you! Today! Learn the magic words! Learn the words of healing!” Kereopa began to chant. “Rire rire, hau hau. Pai marire, hau hau.”

  Eru and Patara joined in, and most of the Te Whakatohea followed suit. A group of men hurriedly got up to find a pole. Finally, they took wood from the frame of a new house. The people cheered as the niu was erected.

  “God the Father, mai merire! Tama-Rura, mai merire!”

  “Te Ariki Mikaera!” Patara bellowed. “Guide our hands when we kill! Kira, wana, tu, tiri, wha!”

  “Kill, one, two, three, four . . .”

  Paora, Franz’s student, translated Patara’s words in a low murmur. They had been sitting in the shadows on the edge of the marae for hours, listening with increasing distress to the speeches of the Hauhau recruiters.

  “Let’s leave now,” Franz whispered to the boy, as the people of the village began to dance ecstatically around the niu.

  “Holy, wonderous niu, fill us with your power! Rire rire, hau hau!”

  Their voices cut terrifyingly through the night.

  Paora regarded Franz with a serious expression. “Isn’t that idolatry, Reverend?”

  Franz nodded. “Yes,” he said. “The most evil, darkest kind of idolatry. They are dancing around a pole as once the Israelites danced around the golden calf.”

  The boy swallowed. “Then don’t we have to—I mean—like Moses—”

  Franz Lange quickly withdrew beyond the protection of the fence, Paora close on his heels. He felt a burning sense of shame. The boy was right. Of course he should throw a flaming sword between the villagers and the Hauhau recruiters. His father certainly would have. Jakob Lange’s people had feared his authority. But Franz had never managed to scare anyone in his life.

  The young missionary still didn’t know if God had truly called him to do his work. But one thing was painfully clear to him as he scrambled and crawled through the bushes, trembling with fear: he was no Moses, and no martyr either.

  “Trying to stop them now would be suicide,” he said honestly, when they finally reached the safety of the woods between the marae and the mission and could stand up again. “The only thing we can do is warn Voelkner. We have to head toward Auckland as quickly as possible and intercept him. If he returns here, he’ll be killed.”

  Franz would have preferred to start for Auckland that night, but he was hindered by not only his fear of riding through the darkness but also his sense of responsibility. There were eighty sick people depending on his care, many of them children. He couldn’t leave them to the Hauhau mob, at least not without warning the doctor and the other caregivers. The doctor was also pakeha and might decide to flee as well. But the caregivers were Maori. If he explained the situation to them properly, they could manage their tasks and the everyday running of the mission until help arrived. It was clear to Franz that the army had to be alerted. It was the only way to stop the Hauhau recruiters.

  Franz spent a restless night on his narrow cot in the schoolhouse. He had been sleeping there since the beginning of the epidemic so he could always be available for the sick. At dawn, he rose to pray and awakened the other caregivers. Then he looked for Paora. The boy usually slept in the mission house, but now he was nowhere to be seen.

  Franz washed his face and went over to the church. He would have expected complete silence so early in the morning, but he could hear voices as he approached. Franz could hardly believe his ears. Carl Voelkner was loudly chanting a song about God’s love!

  Confused, the young missionary threw open the church door and saw the old missionary kneeling in front of the altar with a younger man in a dark suit and priest’s collar. Voelkner glanced up, then smiled.

  “Reverend Lange! Awake so early? How nice! You can join us in our next devotion and then help us unload. We have an entire wagon full of medicine and food for the children. Oh yes, this is Reverend Thomas Gallant. He’s here to help us.”

  “Reverend Voelkner,” Franz exclaimed, “we must leave! The people have gone completely mad. I wanted to ride out to stop you. You’re no longer safe here!”

  Voelkner laughed. “My life, Brother Franz, is in God’s hands. Wherever I am and whatever I do, I am not afraid, for he is with me. He guided us safely through the days and nights of our journey. Whenever possible, we traveled by night, to get the medicine here as quickly as possible.”

  Franz rubbed his temples. “Brother Voelkner, you don’t understand.” As quickly and clearly
as he could, he told the missionary about the ceremony he had witnessed the night before. “The people are no longer their own masters,” he said in closing. “They know not what they do.”

  Voelkner put a comforting hand on Franz’s shoulder. “My poor brother, that was surely too much for you. Especially since you probably didn’t understand everything they were saying.”

  Franz shook him off. “Paora translated for me. And it wasn’t so hard to understand, anyway. Brother Voelkner, they want your head! In the truest sense!” He shuddered at the thought of the smoked heads that Patara had put on display.

  “It’s rumored that the Hauhau warriors really will decapitate people,” Reverend Gallant said. “If our brother here thinks—”

  “How narrow-minded you are, and how weak your faith is!” Voelkner’s eyes filled with reprimand. “If our flock’s senses have been dimmed, then we must shine a light on them again. If they direct their anger at us, then we must counter it with love. If they threaten us, we must stand before them without fear, because the power of the Lord is within us!”

  Franz’s eyes widened. Those were almost the same words that had come out of the mouths of the Hauhau warriors the day before. Everyone here thought themselves invulnerable—aside from himself and Thomas Gallant, who now lowered his head in prayer.

  “Come, let us sing God’s praise once more and then go about our work. We’ll go to the marae later and talk to the people.”

  Voelkner turned to the altar and began his song again. He had a beautiful, deep voice, but beneath it, Franz heard the chant that suddenly sliced through the morning, with the strength of many voices.

  “Glorious niu, mai merire! By the mountains, by the rivers, by the lakes, kill!”