by Sarah Lark
“I took her captive, and now I can keep her as my slave—pononga. That’s tikanga!” the leader argued confidently, pounding his spear on the ground to emphasize his words.
“You shouldn’t even be here, Te Ori,” the larger man shot back, his voice sharp with rebuke. “You went against my very specific orders. Can’t you people do anything right? First that missionary, and now this! You were ordered not to provoke the pakeha. What is so difficult to understand about that?”
“Kereopa sent us those warriors, at your orders!” The leader wouldn’t allow himself to be intimidated.
“And they let themselves be caught. That means their faith was not strong enough. They wouldn’t have been any great loss.”
Mara, who was slowly becoming a little calmer, nudged Carol. “That’s the prophet,” she whispered. “Te Ua Haumene.”
“Even if you wanted to set them free, you didn’t have to do it like that,” said the other man in chieftain’s garb. He sounded gentler and more patient.
“We hardly could have freed the men without killing the pakeha. And we took their heads. We need their heads, Te Ua Haumene. That is tikanga.”
“We have enough heads,” the prophet said. “And we certainly don’t need any female slaves.”
“Then let me kill them!” That was Koro. He glared hatefully at the two women. “They turned the English against us. They said—”
The prophet dismissed Koro’s accusations with a wave of his hand. “Why should we care what women say?”
“You certainly may not kill them,” the other chieftain said. “Can you imagine how the pakeha would react if they found the bodies? And you will certainly not take them as slaves either, Te Ori. Pakeha women as slaves—that’s ridiculous.”
“Who cares?” Te Ori said. “Do we have to act like well-behaved children for Cameron now?”
Te Ua Haumene rubbed his brow in frustration. “They shouldn’t even be here,” he repeated.
“I can’t believe you just want to let them go!” Koro said.
“The younger girl is mine!” Te Ori insisted.
“They are both very young,” the other chieftain said. “They shouldn’t be here. But we can’t just send them away either. Not after what they have seen.”
“None of it should have ever happened!” the prophet said again. “I didn’t predict it; it was not part of my vision.” Then he turned to address Carol and Mara for the first time. “Pai marire means ‘peace and love.’”
“Love could be a solution,” the other chieftain said. “If we allow Te Ori to keep the girl, and if he marries her someday, she wouldn’t be a slave anymore. Then you’d just have to find a husband for the other one.”
“Never!” Mara cried. “I would rather die than be his wife. I—”
Te Ua raised a hand. “Silence!” he ordered. “You’re right, Tohu, it would work. Since you want her, Te Ori, you can have her. As for the other, the first man who took her yesterday can have her. Find out who it was, Tohu.”
Tohu Kakahi, the other man in chieftain’s garb, shook his head. “No, Te Ua, it can’t work that way. They must marry of their own free will. They have to want the men. Only then will they not run away as soon as they are free to move on their own. And only then will they speak in our favor if they come in contact with the pakeha again. Otherwise, the pakeha will not acknowledge the marriages.”
“Why should they have to?” Te Ori roared.
Once again, everyone ignored him, but Carol wondered the same thing. Te Ua Haumene seemed to be taking remarkable care not to agitate the enemy. Apparently, he hadn’t ordered the attack on the soldiers, but was actually angry about it. Carol felt sick. They were debating her fate as though she were an annoying piece of livestock.
The prophet toyed with a feather that had come off his cloak. “So we should set our hopes on love?”
Tohu smiled. Like Te Ua Haumene, he wasn’t tattooed either. He had a narrow face; a prominent nose; short, curly hair; and a long, graying beard. His eyes showed something like amusement.
“As you said, pai marire is love,” he said with a slight bow. “Perhaps Te Ori will soon be able to convince his slave of that. Let us keep them both as taurekareka. Te Ori, you caught them. Until further notice, they belong to you.”
It quickly became clear that Te Ori Porokawo didn’t know what to do with his slaves. It was even a problem to find quarters for them. Te Ori slept with the men in the meetinghouse. He didn’t have a house for women, nor a good place to lock them up. For Maori prisoners of war, that was generally not necessary. A warrior who was caught and enslaved instead of being killed in battle lost his mana and the respect of his own tribe. He was seen as an outcast. The only marae that would offer him refuge was that of the enslaver, so he stayed of his own free will. Mara, by contrast, tried to escape from the first moment that Te Ori took her hand. The girl screamed hysterically and tried to pull away. Te Ori flung her to the ground, cursing and kicking at her until Tohu Kakahi stepped in.
“You certainly won’t win her heart that way,” he remarked. “Let her come to her senses and think about the situation. What did you do to scare her so much? Now, take the two of them to, hmm. Where did they sleep last night?”
The warriors who had escorted Carol and Mara to the prophet stepped forward.
“We locked them in a storage shed,” one said. “Next to the kitchen.”
Tohu nodded with relief. “Good. If you agree, Te Ori, they can be brought back there. You can give them food later, and tomorrow they can work in the kitchen. Get the key. But be good to them. Don’t forget, it’s expected that one of them will want to marry you within a reasonable amount of time. You’ll have to make yourself attractive to them.”
Mara wept the entire way back to their prison. Te Ori didn’t touch her again, but he remained in high spirits. Laughing, he jested with the other warriors about taming his little slave and his plans for Carol.
“The pakeha have girls for rent,” one of them said. “You pay, and they do anything you want.”
“The pakeha are disgusting,” another muttered. “Maori would never pay for a girl.”
“Maybe not in a marae,” the first replied. “But here in the pa, there are no women. I’d really like to—”
Te Ori pointed to Carol. “Then take her. We can surely come to an agreement about the price. Or marry her. I just want the other one, the wild one.”
Mara began to sob again.
Carol took a breath of relief as the door to their prison closed behind them. The guard hadn’t accepted Te Ori’s offer, at least not yet. He hadn’t had time. Immediately after the women had left the chieftain’s house, the prayers had begun on the Hauhau drill grounds. The cries and rhythmically shouted prayers and commands had rung through the pa for hours. The stamping feet of the men as they marched around the niu made the ground shake.
In the meantime, Mara lay in a corner of the storage shed, curled up in the fetal position. Her body shook with sobbing. Carol tried to take her in her arms and comfort her, but she wouldn’t allow herself to be touched.
“I want to die,” she whimpered as Carol held a cup of water to her lips. “If I don’t eat or drink, I could die.”
“That would be stupid,” Carol replied. She had been thinking about what she’d heard during their strange encounter with Te Ua Haumene. “Mara, this isn’t going to go on for long. The English will soon storm the pa and free us. That horrible prophet can’t do anything about it. He’s already worried about what they’ll do; otherwise, he wouldn’t have been so angry about the prisoners being freed.”
“But they’re still recruiting warriors,” Mara said. “They said there’s someone called Kereopa—”
“Who likely has as little respect for the orders of his prophet as Te Ori,” Carol said with a grim smile. “It’s no wonder. Haumene doesn’t know what he wants. On one hand, he’s encouraging the warriors to kill, and on the other, they’re supposed to be preaching love and peace. General Camero
n is right; they will soon give up this pa. And then maybe we can escape. Or perhaps the general has already heard about the attack anyway and is looking for us. Bill Paxton will make sure of it. Maybe he’ll even be here tomorrow! Don’t give up hope, Mara. We can get through this.”
Chapter 46
Bill Paxton stood at the scene of the massacre, numb with shock. The young sergeant from the last army base along the river had sent a messenger to General Cameron as soon as escaped horses of the dead redcoats had begun to appear. The sergeant also sent out scouts, who quickly found the site of the battle. Cameron immediately sent a search party northward under the command of Bill Paxton, who had requested the job. Now, a few hours later, the young lieutenant was staring at what was left of the prisoner convoy. He kept himself under firm control while three of his men staggered into the bushes to vomit.
“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” a sergeant said. He was an old, long-serving soldier who’d fought in the last Maori war. “And I’ve seen a lot. Some warriors still know about the old Polynesian traditions and create quite a bloodbath, among themselves as well. But this—” He couldn’t go on.
“It’s even worse than what they did to the missionary in Opotiki,” Bill whispered. “We can only hope that at least the soldiers were already dead when—” He blanched, trying to suppress visions of Carol. “Have you found the women?”
The scout, a member of the Maori auxiliary forces, shook his head. “Women not eaten, sir,” he explained. “Warrior eats enemy for strength. And takes head to control spirit. Women have not so much mana. Not worth eating.”
Bill stared at him. “But where are they, then? They couldn’t have escaped. Are there any tracks?”
With the help of the scouts, he searched the vicinity to try to reconstruct the course of the ambush. It wasn’t easy. The warriors had apparently held a Hauhau ceremony. The battle site and the vegetation surrounding it were trampled, and bloody footprints were everywhere. However, the scouts were able to find the place where the Hauhau had hidden before the attack.
“More than twice ten men,” the scout estimated.
Bill suddenly paused. Was that a dog whining?
“Fancy?” Bill’s heart raced. Was it possible that Carol and Mara had hidden—that they were still hiding, having mistaken the Maori auxiliary forces for the enemy? “Carol, are you here? Is that you, Fancy?”
Bill held his breath as the little dog limped out of the bushes, her coat smeared with blood. At the sight of Bill, she wagged her tail and rushed over. Aside from a cut above her eye and the injured leg, she seemed unhurt. But there were no traces of Carol or Mara.
“Where is Carol, Fancy?”
Bill crawled into the bushes where the dog had come from, and had scouts search the entire area again. But they found nothing but a depression in the grass under a bush.
“There lay dog,” the Maori scout said. “Too small for human. Here no human.”
“But there’s blood here,” one of the soldiers said, pointing at a place behind a tree where the grass was trampled. “Someone was lying here.”
Bill nodded. Something must have happened in that place.
“Here’s a button,” another soldier added. “It’s not from a uniform . . .”
Bill went pale when he saw the light blue, fabric-covered button. Mara’s riding habit.
Fancy sniffed the blood on the ground and whined. Bill followed her and found a scrap of material, stained too dark to distinguish whether it had come from Carol’s or Mara’s dress. But he could imagine only too well what had happened there.
“Apparently, they do other things to girls than take their heads,” he said bitterly to the scout. “Don’t they?”
The scout shrugged.
“Well, what do you think the brutes would have done with women, Lieutenant?” the old sergeant said. He didn’t know how close Bill had been to Carol and Mara. “They were raped and dragged away. If we get closer to the pa, we’ll find the bodies.”
“The women might also still be alive,” Bill said.
The sergeant frowned. “It’s possible, but—”
Bill silenced the man with a look. “We have to ride there now. Right now.”
The older man regarded him warily. “We, sir? The five of us and the two Maori? Against the prophet’s entire pa? It will amount to nothing, sir. We should ride back and report to the general. After this, he has to attack the bastards.”
Bill nodded weakly. The man was right. The general had to be informed as quickly as possible. On the other hand, it went against every part of his being to leave his friends to their fate. And the dead had to be buried too. He couldn’t just leave them lying there.
“Of course. But—”
“We could ride a bit closer to the fort,” one of the younger soldiers said.
“We look for tracks,” one of the Maori scouts suggested. “There, look, sir. There walked warriors. Back forth, one place to other. Celebrate, take heads. Then away, to pa.” He pointed to the trail, and the footprints there were partly bloody as well. “Many men, one horse.”
“They took a horse?” Bill asked in surprise.
That rarely happened; the Maori weren’t interested in riding. The English soldiers liked to tell the story of the freshly crowned King Tawhiao, who’d wanted to ride to a meeting with the pakeha. After an attempt, he had gone the rest of the way on foot and had arrived with his face twisted in pain. The English doctor had performed a miracle of diplomacy and inconspicuously provided him with a salve for his injured backside.
The scout nodded. “We go, others make graves,” he suggested.
Bill considered for a moment. “Fine,” he said and took his gun from its holster. Then he turned to his men. “Take leave of the souls of your fallen comrades. We will say a prayer together as soon as I return. And then be ready to go. We will ride back to headquarters as fast as we can.”
Bill and the scouts only needed to follow the trail for a few hundred yards to figure out what had happened. The group had crossed a stream, leaving clear tracks on the sandy banks. There were the prints of many barefoot men, one horse, and someone wearing delicate women’s boots.
“They had the women with them, and at least one of them is alive,” Bill reported a few hours later to General Cameron, who had received him in his study. “Perhaps the other one as well. We are assuming they put her on the horse. Why would they have taken it, otherwise? Perhaps she was injured. We have to act as quickly as possible, General. We may still be able to rescue them!”
The general considered this for a moment, then slowly opened a cupboard and took out a bottle of whiskey. He poured some into two glasses before he answered.
“Lieutenant Paxton, I’m very sorry. In interest of the broader situation, I must decline your request.”
“What?” Bill was so taken aback that he almost knocked the glass out of the man’s hand. He startled Fancy, who was stretched out on the floor at his feet. Since he’d found the little dog, she hadn’t left his side.
“General, this isn’t a request, it’s a necessity. We can’t just leave them in the hands of the Hauhau!”
“It’s not an easy decision for me to make.” The general took a sip of whiskey. “Even if I believed they were still alive. The fellows may have dragged them for a few miles, but then—no matter, Lieutenant Paxton. From a strategical point of view, it would be a terribly stupid waste of human lives and resources to attack the pa. Think about it: The Hauhau have lost this area entirely. We control the entire river and the Waikato region, and most of Taranaki as well. My mission to bring peace to Waikato has succeeded. You know we have been steadily withdrawing our troops over the last few weeks.”
“But this has nothing to do with your mission!” Bill cried. “This is about two women who have been captured. It’s our duty to free them. Your duty!”
Fancy barked.
The general shook his head and pointed to the whiskey. “Have a drink, Paxton, and calm down bef
ore you say something you’ll regret. It’s my duty to free Taranaki and Waikato from rebellious Maori for the military settlers program.”
“And you’ve done your duty?” Bill shot back. “By leaving an area that’s controlled by a fort full of cannibals, where the settlers have to come to terms with the fact that their women and children could be dragged away at any time?”
The general’s eyes flashed angrily. “Te Ua Haumene will give up Weraroa. All of his behavior in the last few weeks indicates that—aside from this attack, that is. And most likely, the attackers were acting in their own interest. The prophet himself has been showing signs of wanting to compromise. He seems to be considering negotiation. But regardless, he will leave. He can’t operate from there anymore. That means my task has been fulfilled.”
“So you’re just going to leave the Hauhau problem up to another commander?”
Cameron frowned. “You are upset, Lieutenant, and I suspect you are in love. Because we are among ourselves, I will allow your impertinence to pass unpunished. I am very sorry about Miss Carol and Miss Mara. But think about it. If I advance on the fort with the few hundred men I have here now, we would have to prepare ourselves for a fight that could last weeks. The fort is easy to defend and almost impossible to fully control from the outside. Perhaps we would win in the end, but Haumene would escape before the fort was given up. They would probably all run away during the night. It wouldn’t be the first time we conquered an empty fort. The women would be killed long before then. I can’t do that. Paxton, be realistic.”
“The governor might see things in a different light,” Bill said.
The general took another sip of whiskey and then nodded. “He might. He probably would. We have never been able to agree about such matters. If you can’t give up on the idea, go talk to him about it. It’s likely he’ll send troops. He might be able to talk General Chute into it. But that will take time, Lieutenant. And believe me, by that time, the pa will be long deserted. They are probably already packing their things now in fear of retaliation. Once again, Paxton, I’m very sorry. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that I or the governor or you yourself can do for those women. Come to terms with it.”
