by Sarah Lark
Te Ua threw up his hands in exasperation. “You were told to bring the good news to the tribes on the east coast. If some of their warriors wanted to join us, we would have welcomed them, of course. There was no talk of fighting.”
Eru remembered it differently. Angry over the unjust accusations, he walked away, across the marae’s meeting grounds. That was when the world he had been living in since leaving home truly came crashing down around him. It was Mara. His beloved Mara. A slave? How could Te Ua approve of slavery? How could he let a brute like Te Ori be responsible for two women? Why was everyone just watching as the man threatened, beat, and kicked Mara? How could this happen in the name of peace, love, and mercy, and the archangels and prophets?
Something inside Eru exploded as he tore Te Ori away from Mara—it hurt, but it was a relief. Pai Marire had been the wrong way for him, and Mara had arrived just in time to free him from it. He wanted to help her up, to wrap her in his arms and kiss her. When she rejected him, he broke. It was too much. He hated himself for everything he had done, or at least endorsed. And now Mara hated him too . . .
All Eru wanted to do was cry and hide away somewhere. But then Tohu summoned him and Te Ori to the prophet again, and everything got worse. Te Ua Haumene sentenced Carol and Mara to death. He didn’t care about the women; they had always been an annoyance, but now they were dangerous. Te Ua would rid himself of them as unscrupulously as he had sent young warriors to their deaths with lies about invulnerability.
Eru listened to his decision, standing rigidly, knowing that now was not the time to hide and lick his wounds. He had to escape with the women that night.
“You’ve got to pull yourself together,” Carol told Mara. “I don’t care if you trust Eru or not; right now, he’s our only hope. No screaming, no crying. When he comes, we go with him. Do you understand?” When Mara didn’t reply right away, she shook her little sister. “Do you understand?”
Mara nodded. She was still shaking, but when Carol handed her bread and vegetables, she wolfed them down with a ravenous hunger. Carol noted this with relief. For a trek through the jungle, they would need all their strength.
When it was surely past midnight, they heard the guards in front of their prison being exchanged. An hour or so later, someone opened the door. In the faint moonlight, Carol could barely make out the silhouette of a warrior in the doorway.
“Hurry!” the man whispered.
“Come on.” Carol took Mara’s arm.
“That’s not Eru,” Mara whimpered.
Carol hauled her to her feet. “Quiet,” she snapped. “Just be quiet, and come with me.”
“But that’s—”
Carol didn’t listen. Instead, she took Mara determinedly by the hand and pulled her out of the hut. They were immediately grabbed from behind. Somebody stuffed gags in their mouths and tied their hands behind them.
“Follow me. Don’t you dare make a sound.”
Te Ori tied Mara to Carol and grabbed the end of the rope to drag Carol behind him.
Carol could have slapped herself for her stupidity. The guards at the door wouldn’t have looked the other way for Eru, but Te Ori had a lot of influence at the fort. One of the guards had even helped him tie the women up. The kidnapping had been silent and quick—and Carol had dragged her sister right into it.
Te Ori openly led the women to the pa’s gates.
“Prophet’s orders. He wishes to be rid of them,” he explained to the guards there.
“Fine, but hurry,” one of the warriors hissed, “and don’t get caught. I heard the pakeha are approaching. They finally want to fight. Don’t stumble over them.”
“As if I would.”
Past the gates, Te Ori immediately began to run. Carol and Mara followed, panting.
After hours of slogging through the jungle, the two women realized that their lives weren’t in immediate danger. Te Ori had defied the prophet; he wanted to keep his slaves. But as the night wore on, Carol began to wonder if a quick death wasn’t better than stumbling through impassable undergrowth forever. She was completely spent, her legs and face scratched and bloodied by thorns. She had fallen down repeatedly without being able to break her fall with her hands. In the light of the rising sun, Carol could see her sister’s pale, exhausted face. But there were no signs of tears. Mara doggedly fought her way through the jungle, obviously trying not to show any signs of weakness.
Only hours later did Te Ori stop to rest. The sun was high overhead. He drank from a stream and removed Carol’s and Mara’s gags. He didn’t untie them.
“How are we supposed to drink?” Carol snapped at him. “Like dogs?”
Te Ori grinned. “Exactly,” he said. “I like to see you from behind.”
“You will see me head-on when I sink my teeth into your throat,” Mara said.
Te Ori threw her to the ground without comment.
“Where are you taking us?” Carol asked.
Te Ori seemed to consider not answering, but then his anger got the better of him.
“I will not have my prey taken from me!” he raged. “I don’t care if the man calls himself prophet or ariki. Chieftain, ha! Te Ua was never elected. And he is no chieftain’s son either. To the contrary, he was a slave himself. That’s why he has no moko like real men do. If he wants to take what’s mine, he’ll have to fight me first.”
He surely hadn’t said that to the prophet’s face. Carol wanted to say so, but decided against it for fear of the inevitable blow.
“Where are you planning to go?” she asked again.
“I will take you to my village. To my tribe, the Ngati Huia. They will need warriors like me when the pakeha come for their land.”
Carol and Mara glanced at each other. They could escape from an ordinary village. A marae was not a pa.
It took Eru, Tamati, and Kepa half the night to make a hole in the palisade without drawing attention to themselves. They worked far from the gates, at a place screened by high grass and rata bushes. The passage had to be large enough to crawl through on one’s stomach. Toward the early morning, they broke into Carol and Mara’s prison. They knocked down both guards, who hadn’t been all that watchful, tore the door open—and found the hut empty.
“It looks like someone else got here first.” One guard picked himself up while the young men were still gazing into the empty room, stunned. “And you can stay in there. We will keep you until tomorrow. I am sure the prophet will have a word to say about this.”
Eru didn’t stop to think. With a quick motion, he knocked the man down again and made sure the second one was unconscious as well.
“Hurry!” he hissed at his friends. “I will not be locked up by these people. They might sentence us to death as traitors.”
Tamati and Kepa followed Eru. They slipped from one cover to the next very cautiously until they reached their escape point. They squeezed through, crawled over the mound that secured the pa, and reached the forest without being spotted.
“Do you think they killed Carol and Mara?” Tamati asked as they caught their breath. “Are we too late?”
Kepa shook his head. “Not for the murderers the prophet was going to send. The guards were still there.”
“They knew something,” Tamati said. “We should have questioned them.”
“Don’t you get it?” Eru spat, his voice full of hatred. “Te Ori has them. But not for long. Which way do you think he went?”
Even if the young men had been skilled enough to follow Te Ori’s trail, it wouldn’t have mattered. McDonnell and his men already had the fort surrounded. After less than half an hour, the trio found themselves in the hands of a division of military settlers. Tied to a tree and guarded by two armed men who spent the day playing blackjack, they listened to the thunder of cannons and musket fire coming from the pa. The battle only lasted one day and wasn’t nearly as bloody as the one the young men had been a part of in Kaingaroa. In the end, only a few men were injured. The prophet and his advisers had left t
hem behind while they escaped. The pakeha soldiers herded everyone together and made them watch as the fort and village burned. Instead of finding Te Ori and freeing the sisters, Eru found himself in a convoy of prisoners bound for Wellington.
Chapter 58
When autumn arrived on Fitz and Linda’s farm, not even half of the work had been finished. Tasks that had been easy for Linda before were more agonizing by the day. More often than not, she had to ask Fitz to fetch water or chop firewood. He usually did so without complaint, but he took it as an excuse to avoid construction work.
“Sweetheart, I can only do one thing at a time—keep your fire burning or build your sheepfold.”
While most of the other settlers had already moved into their own houses, Linda was steeling herself to give birth in a tent. She wasn’t thrilled about the idea, but reminded herself that it wasn’t the worst thing that could happen. Linda and Fitz’s army-issued tent was spacious; there was room enough for four soldiers inside. It was warmer and kept out the damp much better than their covered wagon or the prospector’s hut back in Otago. And Linda had actually managed to make it quite cozy. There were no beds, but they had Maori-style sleeping mats and carpets that she had woven with Omaka. For the two women, it was almost a spiritual experience to connect the designs of the Ngai Tahu near Rata Station with those of Omaka’s Ngati Tamakopiri. Such designs had been woven into blankets and clothing for centuries.
“The child will learn the symbols. I will explain them to him,” Linda promised the old woman. “Their meaning will not be forgotten.”
Together, they wove a carrying cloth and a bassinet for the child. Linda would have liked to have a cradle, but Fitz made no attempt to build one.
“There’s still time!” he insisted. He seemed almost oblivious to her progressing pregnancy.
Vera slept in the wagon—Linda didn’t know if that was for her sake or Fitz’s. All she could do was be grateful to have her husband to herself in the tent, at least. Only there, when Vera was safely out of the way, did Fitz occasionally act like he had in happier times. Only there could they have serious conversations in which Fitz actually listened to his wife and accepted her opinions. Only there did he make her laugh and show her some affection. Occasionally he pleasured her, and Linda would spend a contented night in his arms. During those times, she would wonder if she had only imagined the dark cloud that had been hanging over their marriage since Vera’s appearance.
But the next morning, Vera’s glare would bring her back down to earth, and usually there would be an ugly scene between Fitz and the girl the same day. Jealousy was clearly a factor, although Linda had never witnessed any tenderness between the two of them. Fitz took great pains not to be accused of being Vera’s lover. His relationship with “his women” already had people in the settlement talking. His comrades as well as their wives asked themselves the question that bothered Linda too: Was Fitz having a sexual relationship with the girl, who was much too young, or was his connection to her a fatherly one?
One day, Captain Langdon asked Linda directly. He led his horse over to her wagon, which she was just driving out of the main encampment in Patea, loaded with building materials.
After they had exchanged pleasantries, he broached the delicate subject. “Please forgive me, but these rumors about your husband and the girl—well, as company commander, I have a certain responsibility toward my men and their families. So, Mrs. Fitzpatrick, awkward as it is, I must ask: This isn’t a case of bigamy, is it?” He glanced unhappily at her belly. “Private Fitzpatrick isn’t keeping a, um, second wife, while you are, um, indisposed, is he? You see, we could—well, we’d have to intervene.”
Linda blushed deeply. It certainly would have suited her if Fitz’s superiors had banished Vera from his side. But it would have been far too embarrassing to admit that there was a problem.
“Oh no, nothing of the kind. Of course not! The girl simply took refuge with us. You know the situation with her family.”
Although Private Carrigan did his service dutifully, there was talk that his wife, Mary, had a distillery, though nobody was quite sure where. Her supply of whiskey seemed inexhaustible, and she had set up a kind of pub on her land. Major McDonnell and Captain Langdon knew about it, but they saw no clear way to intervene. This also held true for Vera’s sister’s behavior. It was an open secret that Kyra spread her legs for money.
Langdon rubbed his forehead. “I am sure young Vera has struggled with many hardships,” he said cautiously. “It’s good of you to take her in. You’ll have to decide for yourself if your husband is a bit, um, overwhelmed by the situation.”
As usual, he tipped his hat, spurred his horse to a trot, and rode away. Linda waved after him. She didn’t blame Langdon for his frankness. To the contrary, she felt sorry for the young officer. The conversation had been almost as awkward for him as it had been for her. And now, at least, she knew where she stood. Linda wasn’t crazy for questioning the nature of Fitz and Vera’s relationship, as Fitz had accused her of twice now.
With her heavily loaded vehicle, it took Linda almost two hours to get back to their land from Patea, and on the way, she ruminated over bleak thoughts. Through no fault of her own, she had become the butt of sensationalist gossip. For the first time, she could imagine how her mother, Cat, must have felt years ago back in Nelson.
Thoughts of Cat were followed by thoughts of Ida, Karl, and Carol. So far, Linda hadn’t heard from her family, although she had written to the farm in Russell several times. They’d told her at the camp that mail services weren’t very reliable, since the situation inland was still precarious. Mail was often lost. But Linda longed for somebody to pour her heart out to. She had Omaka, but the woman preferred to talk about spirits more than worldly problems.
Linda drove her wagon through the autumn trees along the banks of the river. It was the end of April, and next month or the month after that, her baby was due. As usual, she admired the landscape of her new home—the North Island seemed so much more exotic than the Canterbury Plains. There, southern beeches and rata had been dominant, where there were any trees at all. Here, in the warmer climate, the vegetation was diverse. Linda was ready to love her new land, but she still felt as though she hadn’t quite arrived yet. If only Fitz would contribute a little more to making their land into a home! If only they could finally make their mark on the earth. If there were fields, if there were a house on the hill, welcoming her . . . Linda rubbed her eyes. No, she wouldn’t cry. She had the farm, and she was looking forward to having her baby. Everything else would work itself out.
And then, it actually seemed for a moment as though her dreams had finally come true. As Linda approached her land, she could hear voices, and somebody was chopping wood with an ax. To her astonishment, she recognized Private Fairbanks and Private Hanks, the owner of the parcel next to their neighbor’s. The two were working on tree trunks, debarking them, while Fitz and Vera had begun to build a log cabin. It wasn’t where Linda had wanted her house to be, though. Fitz wasn’t building on the hill with a view of the river, but right next to the little forest that was going to be cleared. Linda felt a twinge of anger at the thought that he was taking the easy way again instead of following their plans, but she quickly suppressed her anger. At least he was working! Perhaps this was supposed to be a barn. With some hard work, all the buildings could even be ready before the birth. Fitz and Vera were working with a will; the girl seemed to have undergone a miraculous transformation. She was laughing and joking with their helpers, and she looked as though she had recently bathed. Her hair, which usually hung over her shoulders in a messy tangle, was shiny and neatly braided. Instead of her old blue skirt, Vera was wearing one of Linda’s dresses, which Fitz had convinced her to alter for the girl. Up until today, she hadn’t so much as looked at it.
Linda regarded the scene with a mixture of joy and confusion. “Fitz . . . ,” she finally managed. Her husband seemed changed too. He was cheerful, swinging his hammer vigorous
ly. “Fitz, what’s going on here?”
Fitz came over and lifted her down off the coach box. “Sweetheart, something had to be done,” he explained. “You can’t give birth to our baby in a tent. So I rounded up some people. In two or three days’ time, you’ll have your house!”
Linda rubbed at her temple. “But, Fitz, the house was supposed to be on the hill, just like at Rata Station. We were going to have pastures here, maybe barns or shearing shacks. And—”
“And, and, and . . .” Fitz glared at her, his good mood evaporating. “What’s your problem now? You were out with the horse. Were we supposed to drag the trees up that hill by ourselves?”
“No, I just—”
Linda wanted to object that they’d been without a house for months now. Those few hours until she returned with Brianna couldn’t have made a difference.
But before she could form the sentence, Vera approached, beaming. “Oh, Miss Linda, you look exhausted. I was about to get us some cold tea. I made some for the men, just like you showed me. Surely, you’d like some too . . .”
The girl hurried away, only to return a moment later with a tin pitcher she had used to cool the tea in the river. Vera filled the cups and passed them out to the men with a few cheerful words. She basked in their admiring looks and praise.
“Aren’t you lucky, Mrs. Fitz, to have such a skillful maid,” Private Hanks said, turning to Linda. “My wife has to do everything alone.” Mrs. Hanks was pregnant too, though not as far along as Linda.
“That girl has some backbone!” Fairbanks said. “I’d like to borrow her sometime.”
Vera giggled in a way Linda had never heard from her before. “I’ll take you up on that, Mr. Phil. I’d love to earn a few extra cents. I’m only helping the Fitzpatricks for room and board and—and I’d just so love to buy a horse, you know?” Vera’s expression turned dreamy. “Like Miss Linda. Her Brianna is so pretty. How I love taking care of her.”
Linda watched speechless as her sullen, taciturn “maid” turned into a lively, eager adolescent, beguiling their neighbors with her innocent charm. Vera presented herself as diligent and eager to learn, acting grateful toward Linda and seeming to look up to Fitz. Linda wondered if Captain Langdon had spoken to Fitz or even Vera too.
