Fires of Change (The Fire Blossom Saga)

by Sarah Lark

“I believe it is better not to wage war,” the woman replied. “Then you don’t need the strength of your dead enemy. And above all, it’s better not to wage war with a tribe whose warriors have more warriors and sharper spears.”

  “You mean the pakeha?” Eru asked. “But we have to protect ourselves! We can’t allow them to take our land away. We—”

  The old woman made a gesture to silence him. “The whites gave us seeds; they brought the sheep whose meat we eat and whose wool keeps us warm. Of course they wanted part of our land, but they gave us blankets and pots and pans for it. And then the missionaries came and told us it was too little, that we’d been tricked. They taught our children what land is worth in the eyes of the pakeha. They taught us their language and reading and writing so that no one can fool us anymore.”

  Eru started with surprise. “But for that we had to give up our gods, our customs—”

  The woman laughed bitterly. “You gave up your gods for that prophet. We’ll see if he gives you anything better than sheep and seeds. And you don’t like his customs either.”

  She glanced pointedly at Kereopa, who was staggering out of the sleeping house and looking for water to wash the blood off his face. Then the old woman stared into the fire for a long time before she spoke again.

  “Of course we can ask ourselves if we wouldn’t have been better off if we’d never met the whites, as your prophet says. But we liked the blankets and pots and pans . . .” She smiled weakly. “My beliefs are very different from those of the pakeha. I don’t know if their gods are as strong as ours, or how strong those of your prophet are. But I do know that a god has never come down from heaven to protect warriors in battle. And that will not happen now, no matter what lies your prophet tells you.”

  “What do you mean, ‘now’?” Eru asked helplessly.

  The woman gave a snort of disapproval. “Do you believe the pakeha will just sit back and accept what you’ve done to Voelkner? You have brought war to our village, son!”

  “Us?” Eru heard the scathing voice of Patara behind him. “Oh no, karani, it was your people who put the noose around the priest’s neck! We didn’t have anything to do with it!”

  Eru spun around and stared at Patara, appalled and uncomprehending.

  The old woman remained calm. “So you will leave, and we will die.”

  “No!” Eru cried. “Of course we’ll help you, we—” He broke off as he saw the chain of events unfold. Even if he hadn’t freed Lange and Gallant, Voelkner’s death wouldn’t have been a secret for long. There were probably soldiers on their way already. “We should gather around the niu immediately. The warriors—”

  “The warriors who want to join us will travel westward today to meet Te Ua Haumene,” Kereopa declared, and sat down beside them. The old woman got up and left the fire. “We’ll accompany them a ways and then continue southward to Turanganui, to bring the message of the prophet to the tribes on the river there. Just as planned.”

  “But the English will come here!” Eru cried in disbelief. “They’ll want revenge!”

  Kereopa shrugged. “Then they will awaken even more anger in our people, and even more warriors will join us.”

  Eru couldn’t stand to listen anymore. He jumped up and walked away, wanting to follow the old woman and apologize. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Filled with shame and rage and fear, he slipped into his hiding place behind the church. He didn’t know where he belonged. Should he stay here and fight a battle that couldn’t be won, accept the responsibility for Voelkner’s death, and die himself? Should he run away? Should he try to get back to the South Island and herd his mother’s sheep like a good boy, a boy with the face of a warrior that wasn’t real?

  In the meantime, Kereopa had gathered his followers and sworn them in to their new beliefs again. Eru heard them singing the morning hymn and stamping around the niu. But only when Kereopa had blown the conch to signal that it was time to move on did he leave his hiding place. Then he was witness to one last terrible scene. Kereopa and Patara were refusing to let young Pokeno join them.

  “How old are you? Twelve? I’m sorry, boy. We don’t need any children in the pa. In a few years you’ll be old enough to fight, but now . . .” Kereopa shook his head.

  “I was old enough to hang the priest!” Pokeno cried in protest. He was a tall boy, gawky, but just as overbold as his father had been. Now his voice was shrill with indignation and fear. “If you don’t take me with you now—”

  “Then the English will hold him responsible for the crime,” Eru said.

  Patara shrugged. “Just hide for a few days,” he advised. “It won’t be that bad.”

  “They will kill him,” said the village elder who’d spoken with Eru that morning. “He’s not safe here, or anywhere on the east coast.”

  Kereopa shook his head. “Then he should go find some friendly tribe. In any case, he can’t go with us. We only take warriors. Adult warriors.”

  Eru saw Pokeno’s tears spill over. He, too, felt a fresh wave of helpless outrage. Pokeno’s life was ruined. He would have to pay for what Kereopa, Patara—and Eru—had done.

  Eru ran a hand over his face. Makuto had been right. The moko hadn’t made him into a man. If he was a man, he would stay and fight and die with Pokeno. He tried to gather all his courage, but he couldn’t do it. He wanted to live.

  With his head lowered, he followed Kereopa, Patara, and their recruits. The men turned toward Gisborne.

  Barely two hours after the warriors had left, the cavaliers arrived in Opotiki. The soldiers found a destroyed mission, a niu in the churchyard, and the remains of Carl Voelkner. Someone had left his head on the altar of the church, his empty eye sockets staring out at his devastated realm. The anger of the English was boundless. The Maori who had not yet fled, the women, children, and old people who had hidden in terror, had to watch as their fields were destroyed, their orchards were chopped down, and their houses were set on fire. Finally, soldiers herded the villagers into the churchyard, forced a few young boys to make confessions, and arrested Pokeno. The boy listened with a stony expression as his friends and relatives pinned the sole blame for Voelkner’s execution on him.

  Only the tribal elder spoke for him. “He’s just a child,” she said. “Not even the Hauhau warriors wanted him. They said he was too young.”

  The leader of the cavalry unit laughed. “Too young? You don’t even believe that yourself, old woman. Those villains are just washing their hands in innocence. When we catch them, they won’t admit to having anything to do with all this. Of course the boy was misled. But that won’t help him. In Auckland, he will hang.”

  The soldiers took not only Pokeno but also a few other boys and two old men who had attempted to stop their houses from being burned. The tribe’s land was confiscated, and the missionary station suspended. After all, there was no one left there to missionize. The Te Whakatohea were thrown to the winds.

  Part 5

  DESTRUCTION

  OTAGO AND CAMPBELLTOWN, NEW ZEALAND (THE SOUTH ISLAND)

  WAIKATO AND OTAKI, NEW ZEALAND (THE NORTH ISLAND)

  1865

  Chapter 42

  “Where is your husband, Mrs. Fitzpatrick?”

  Linda had been checking if the laundry was ready to be taken down from the line, but it was too damp. She turned around and recognized Tom Lester, the farrier and horse trader from Tuapeka. The stocky, red-haired man looked annoyed. She put on an innocent smile.

  “I thought Fitz was with you, Mr. Lester.”

  Lester snorted. “If he was, I wouldn’t be looking for him,” he retorted. “Apparently, he didn’t turn up yesterday because his horse was lame. He obviously can’t walk because that would be beneath his dignity. The barn has to be ready before it snows, Mrs. Fitzpatrick. And I can only finish building it if your husband happens to be in the mood to work.”

  Linda sighed. They’d been in Tuapeka for more than three months, and as hard as she’d tried, she was a long way from being
happy. Fitz’s excitement for prospecting had dwindled significantly. During the first few weeks, he had started one project after another, all of which Irene had promptly declared to be insane. He had dug deep shafts in the ground to try his hand at mining. Then he’d gone to the mountains to chip away at boulders with hammers and chisels. After all, there were other parts of the world that had veins of gold in solid rock, so why not here? Linda had shaken her head and let him go. But just as Fitz was about to get to work, he’d been surprised by two armed Maori warriors. It turned out that the boulders were a sacred site to the tribe, and he would have paid for their desecration with his life. Fortunately, he hadn’t laid a hand on them yet, and as usual, he charmed his way out of the predicament.

  When it came down to it, Linda’s husband hadn’t managed to scrape together a single ounce of gold, and he was slowly losing his enthusiasm for the undertaking. He was hiring himself out to the local businessmen as a handyman more and more often. Skilled as he was, he enjoyed a good reputation at first, but he became more and more lackadaisical. Linda could understand Tom Lester’s annoyance. Fitz had agreed to help him build a livery stable, and now . . .

  “I’m sure that something—important came up,” Linda stammered.

  It was much more likely that Fitz had let himself be distracted by something frivolous—a card game or a conversation with an Australian prospector who’d promised him insider information, maybe shoptalk about betting on horses. Linda had stopped worrying about such things. At first, she hadn’t believed it, but Fitz really did win at cards more often than he lost. Without his passion for gambling, they would have often had to go hungry in the last few weeks. So far, he’d always kept his promise that his wife would never want for something to eat.

  But for the most part, they lived from the money that Linda found with her humble gold panning. It was work that became more and more difficult the closer that winter came. It hadn’t snowed or gone below freezing yet, which was a small miracle in Otago, where it was often bitterly cold in late autumn. Instead, it rained almost without pause, and the streams became raging rivers. So Irene and Linda wound their way through the deserted claims and sifted through the soil and mud. When they got home, they were soaked to the skin, and Irene didn’t even have anything dry to change into. She had been sniffling and coughing for weeks, as had little Paddy. Linda shared her food with the two of them, and with her heart bleeding, parted with one of her dresses and a shawl that Irene could wrap the child in. With the increasingly bad weather, it became more and more difficult to light an open fire to cook over or to get warm by. Even when it didn’t rain, the wood was damp and produced more smoke than heat.

  Tom Lester cast a half-angry, half-pitying glance over Linda’s dilapidated hut, the smoking fire, and the damp laundry. Then he turned to leave.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Fitzpatrick, but when you see your husband, please tell him I’m looking for a new helper. I can’t work with Fitz. As for his credit—” Tom had shoed both Brianna and Fitz’s horse recently, and Fitz had promised to work off the debt. “He can bring me the two shillings whenever he has the chance.”

  Linda pressed her lips together grimly. Fitz surely wouldn’t give him the coins. Recently she had been questioned by multiple people her husband owed money to. It was never very much. No bank would have given Fitz a loan. But the barman in the pub allowed him to start a tab, the general store keeper gave him credit for groceries, and every now and then another prospector would loan him a few shillings for some other reason. Fitz treated these small amounts as unimportant, but all together they came to a handsome sum. Linda had no idea how Fitz intended to pay all the money back. She was often sleepless with worry while he snored contentedly next to her. If he was home at all. The worse it got with their finances, the more time he spent at the card table. That might also have to do with the bad weather—Fitz preferred the warm pub to drafty building sites.

  This evening, too, Linda prepared herself for a lonely night warmed only by Amy. As she tried to keep the fire going at least long enough to cook her dinner and dry the damp laundry, Irene appeared. The young woman seemed excited, and Linda noticed that she was wearing new boots. Paddy was wrapped in a warm jacket. Linda was about to ask what was going on when she heard hoofbeats. Fitz was racing toward the hut, the horse’s hooves spraying mud in the air.

  “Lindy!” For once he wasn’t smiling as he jumped down. “Lindy, I’m sorry, but we have to pack. I changed my mind—we’re going to the west coast.”

  “Wh—what?” she stammered. “We’re leaving? Now?”

  Fitz nodded and moved toward Brianna, who was tied to a tree, to harness her for the covered wagon.

  “Come on, Lindy. Maybe we can still get going while there’s light.”

  “Do you think that’s a good idea, Fitz?” Irene asked sarcastically. “Maybe it would be better for you to escape when it’s dark. Or doesn’t your sudden change of heart have anything to do with the fellows who were firing shots in the pub?”

  Linda took a closer look at her husband. Fitz had a fat lip, and one of his eyes was almost swollen shut.

  “Fitz, you’re hurt! Someone—someone shot at you?”

  Worriedly, she scanned his body. Neither his ripped canvas pants nor his old leather jacket showed any traces of blood.

  “It was nothing,” he said. “Just a little difference of opinion. You were right, Lindy, this place isn’t for us.”

  Linda glanced at Irene, seeking help. She shrugged.

  “I don’t know any of the details,” she replied. “Oppenheimer and I heard shots in the pub. There was some kind of brawl. The postmaster fetched the police officer, but the fellows were gone by the time he arrived. He didn’t come particularly quickly, not wanting to be shot. The barman was as white as the wall, and said something about poker and cheating. The shots were just a warning, right, Fitz? Otherwise, you’d surely be dead. It’s hard to miss your target in such a small room.”

  While Irene spoke, Fitz had harnessed the horses and was starting to throw Linda’s damp laundry into the covered wagon. He certainly wasn’t packing. It looked more like fleeing.

  “I should have never taken up with those chaps from Queenstown,” Fitz said, trying to explain. “I should have realized they were crooks. But it’s just hard for me to resist a good round of poker.”

  “You had a job,” Linda said. “The farrier was here.”

  Fitz furrowed his brow. “I was challenged,” he insisted, as though it would have been dishonorable for him to turn down the game. “I said I’m sorry. It was a mistake. But the chaps were playing with marked cards, I swear. Lindy, it wasn’t just a stroke of bad luck for me, it was—”

  “So you lost,” Linda said. “And then you accused them of cheating.”

  “I was angry, Lindy. That’s no reason for them to start a brawl and pull a gun.”

  Fitz strode into the hut and took more of their possessions, hurling them all under the wagon cover. Amy sprang nervously onto the seat. She was afraid of being left behind.

  “Then why do you have to leave so quickly?” Linda asked. “I mean, they gave you a beating. That should be enough for them.”

  Fitz rubbed his forehead. “It’s just that—they want a thousand pounds by early tomorrow morning.”

  Linda’s heart began to bang against her ribs. “We can’t pay that much,” she whispered. “Not even if we sold the horses.”

  “I would never sell Brianna!” Fitz declared. “I know how much you love her.”

  “Is that why you gambled everything?” Linda spat back. She’d carefully avoided fighting with her husband, but now she was in the grip of naked panic. “Fitz, people like that are dangerous. Who knows, they might even follow us!”

  “Oh, fiddlesticks,” Irene said. “Those fools aren’t ice-cold killers, just some down-and-out ruffians who somehow found their way here. I don’t think they’re big on making plans. But it would be a good idea to leave town. Just put as many miles as you can
between yourselves and that pack. And tomorrow, it would be better for Fitz to hide in the wagon—you drive, Linda. Then, if they happen to spot you, the only risk would be them recognizing Fitz’s horse.”

  Linda made a quick decision. “Fitz’s horse stays here,” she said. “I trust you, Irene. Sell it, pay off all our debts, and if there’s anything left over, keep it.” She smiled crookedly. “For the rent.”

  Irene had never asked for the agreed-upon rent for the use of her hut.

  Irene smiled. “I could also send it to you somewhere, if you ever settle down,” she suggested. “Because—I don’t need it anymore.”

  “You don’t need money anymore?” In her confusion, Linda forgot momentarily about the disaster. “What happened? I wanted to ask you before.” She cast a glance at Irene’s new boots. “Irene, you aren’t selling your body, are you?”

  Irene shrugged. “Sort of. I’m getting married.” She smiled shyly.

  “You’re doing what? Who are you marrying so suddenly? You didn’t even have a boyfriend, you—”

  “Oppenheimer,” Irene said softly. “I’m marrying Ely Oppenheimer. He asked me today. He’s closing his office. There’s no gold to buy here anymore. What little business he has left will be taken over by the banker. Ely made good money over the last few years, and saved it too. He can retire now. He has a nice house in Queenstown, and he says it’s a pretty city. And he likes me, and Paddy.”

  She jogged the little boy in her arms. Paddy didn’t react; he was unnaturally quiet.

  Linda sighed. “Irene, you—you’re so young. How old is Oppenheimer? Sixty?”

  “I didn’t ask him,” Irene replied sharply. “And I don’t care if he’s a hundred. Yes, I’m young, and I’d like to live to be a little older and see Paddy grow up. If we go on like this, he may die this winter. Look how thin he is, and how tired and weak! As for me, I’m practically coughing my soul out of my body every night. Who would take care of him? With Oppenheimer, I’ll have a warm house and enough to eat, and Paddy can go to school later. Ely says he’ll adopt him. I’d have to be crazy to say no, Linda.”