Fires of Change (The Fire Blossom Saga)

by Sarah Lark

  Mara sat in her dark hotel room and played the instrument that Eru had given to her, wondering if she could have gained power over Te Ori if she’d had a koauau then. Perhaps it had been good that she hadn’t. At least now her thoughts of the instrument weren’t tainted with bad memories. Lost in thought, she played her melody for Eru. It was a good feeling to have saved him. She couldn’t imagine a world without Eru. If only she could overcome her fear of his face.

  Mara brought the flute to her lips. She didn’t want any influence over others. She was playing for influence over herself.

  Eru heard Mara’s gentle music, and this time he didn’t hide from it. Instead, he allowed it to lull him to sleep. For the first time in ages, he slept calmly, deeply, and dreamlessly, under the protection of Mara’s spell.

  Jane and Te Haitara peered in at him before they went to their own bed. With his face relaxed in sleep, it was easier for Jane to see her son as he used to be.

  “Actually, they look very beautiful,” she said. “The tattoos, I mean.”

  Te Haitara smiled. “Mine never bothered you.”

  Jane caressed his cheek. “I always loved yours,” she said, and then moved toward the window as she noticed the sound of the flute.

  Te Haitara held her tightly by the hand. “Don’t worry,” he said. “That’s Mara. She’s playing for Eru. That’s her secret call.”

  His wife’s forehead creased, and the old sternness flashed in her eyes. “That’s Mara?” she exclaimed. “It was always Mara, all those years? And you knew it?”

  Te Haitara nodded, embarrassed.

  Jane frowned. It looked as though she were about to reprimand him, but then she smiled. “Damn,” she murmured. “And I always thought it was a bird!”

  Epilogue

  Rata Station, the Canterbury Plains

  Autumn 1867

  As Ida gazed at the wide green plains and the Waimakariri shimmering in the sunlight, she felt completely at home again. The setting sun doused the sea of tussock grass in golden light, and the unusually warm weather had encouraged the rata bushes to bloom again. That made Cat very happy. It inspired her to decorate the garden for the celebration. Carol, Linda, Bill, and Franz had only hung a few Chinese lanterns—perhaps in the vain hope that it would be warm enough to sit outside after dark. They’ve been spoiled by the weather on the North Island, Ida thought, although Carol had been back at Rata Station for several months already. On this sunny afternoon, Franz would join Carol and Bill Paxton in holy matrimony, and with the entire family gathered together, he might as well baptize Cat’s and Mara’s babies. The guests had been arriving at the farm over the last few hours, strolling between the rata bushes and helping themselves to the rich buffet that had been set up on the meadow next to the riverbank. Carol had invited all the neighbors, even the Butlers and Jane and Te Haitara. Jane had accepted the invitation a little meekly, but Deborah Butler had appeared dressed like a queen.

  “That woman never changes,” Cat said with a smile, as Deborah purposefully parked the baby carriage with her recently born grandchild as far as possible from the bassinet that Mara’s daughter was sleeping in. “She’s already being careful to keep her little crown prince away from our mixed child.”

  Ida laughed. “If March stays as pretty as she is now, Deborah won’t be able to keep him away forever. But don’t listen to me, I’m just a besotted karani.”

  “Everyone falls in love with March,” Cat said.

  She carried her own son in the Maori fashion in a frame on her back, and of course everyone thought he was delightful. But Robin didn’t get as many oohs and aahs as little March. Mara’s daughter was simply the most charming baby imaginable. Her bronze skin and the shape of her eyes reflected her Maori parentage, while her mouth and her aristocratic features came straight from her mother.

  Mara seemed very happy with her, even though the birth had brought her once again to the limits of her stoicism. Even though the baby was small, the fragile young woman endured a frightful labor. The midwife had worried that she wouldn’t make it. But then at last the baby came, and Mara had recovered. She finally looked healthy again.

  “It would be better if March didn’t have too many admirers,” Ida remarked. “That only makes trouble. One is enough, if it’s the right one.” She nodded toward Eru.

  Since Mara and her baby had come to Rata Station with Ida and Karl two days ago, Eru had been entirely devoted to them both. Now Mara watched him with shining eyes, almost the way she had looked at him before. Eru’s moko didn’t seem to bother her so much anymore. The separation had clearly been good for both of them. In the past months, Eru had lived with his tribe on the South Island, and Mara had finished her pregnancy in Russell and had given birth there. But they had written to each other. At first every few weeks, and by the end almost daily. Eru had been a part of her life in Russell, and had also told her about his experiences in the Ngai Tahu village. The tribe had accepted Jane again—not exactly with open arms, but it had never been a particularly warm relationship, anyway. Apparently, she had made efforts to change that. She spent days gardening and weaving, and tried to learn how to play the koauau. In a letter, Eru had described to Mara very humorously how his mother’s playing had first driven the dogs, then the chickens, and finally the sheep away from the area around their house.

  At some point, Makuto said that all the spirits were preparing to desert them, and encouraged her to give up her musical experiments, he wrote. To her credit, she agreed without objection. I think she realized herself how terrible it sounded. My mother may be unmusical, but she’s not deaf.

  In time, Jane gave up her attempts to become more Maori. She wasn’t very good at gardening or weaving with the women, and at some point Te Haitara took pity on her and formally asked her to take back the bookkeeping and the organization of Maori Station’s business. Chris and the chieftain had finally managed to divide the sheep into separate herds again, and of course Jane was furious when she discovered that Te Haitara had resolved every case of uncertainty in favor of Rata Station.

  “Chris has very high costs right now,” he explained to his wife. “The papers for the pakeha karakia toko cost a fortune. Five thousand pounds, Jane! Now they need more for Linda so she can marry the reverend. Because she married the other one first, the one who talked so much. That’s partly your fault too, Jane.”

  You could practically see Mother’s brain boiling behind her forehead, Eru wrote. She didn’t want to take responsibility for Linda’s failed marriage. But she didn’t say a word, and she’s thrilled to be running things again.

  It was true. Jane was grateful for what she had. She attacked the bookkeeping and the breeding plans for the following year with enthusiasm, and also began to order the shepherds around again.

  She’s gentler than she used to be, though, Eru wrote. She says “please” and “thank you” and “could you . . .” As before, everyone is tense when she turns up. But the money is flowing again. And they see how much happier my father is. Some people even missed working with the sheep. Overall, the village is happy that she’s back.

  Over the last few months, even Chris had apologized to Jane a little. She actually hadn’t driven Rata Station into poverty. Her various innovations, such as the addition of cattle, had threatened to fail at the beginning, but now they were proving to be lucrative. Chris and Cat were more than happy with the first balances after getting the farm back. They could afford the divorces, and since neither Jane nor Fitz was making any trouble, they proceeded quickly.

  “The next wedding will be Linda and Franz’s,” Ida told Cat contentedly.

  The couple was just then approaching Eru and Mara. Linda was leading Aroha by the hand; her daughter was just learning to walk. Amy followed at her heels, looking worried. In the absence of sheep, the dog had been herding the toddler ever since she could crawl.

  “That’s if Mara and Eru aren’t first,” Ida said. “They’re still too young, but after their love has been through so
much and survived, no one could object.”

  “Let’s go and join them,” Cat suggested. “Maybe then Franz won’t start an argument. He’s already lectured me about ‘Robin’ not being a good Christian name, and he surely won’t approve of ‘March.’”

  Cat was right. Franz was speaking very earnestly to Mara. “Do you really want to name her ‘March’? If it was a Maori name, I could understand—or a mixed name, like Irihapeti.”

  Many Maori parents had begun giving their children Christian names that they had adapted to their language. The name Irihapeti, for example, was Elizabeth, and Arama was Adam.

  Mara didn’t dignify Franz’s complaint with an answer, but gazed at Eru instead. She had been somewhat scared on her journey to the South Island. She still couldn’t bear to look at heavily tattooed men without her heart racing with fear. But that feeling had disappeared with Eru completely now. She didn’t see his moko anymore. She saw his face behind the curved blue designs. Makuto had noticed immediately.

  “Your soul has grown past his face,” she’d said to the young woman as she offered her forehead in hongi. “And his soul has triumphed over his pain.”

  “Her name is March because that’s when she was conceived,” Mara finally said in explanation.

  Franz’s eyebrows shot up. “But that’s not true, Mara!” he said sternly. “She was born at the end of February. So she must have been conceived at the beginning of June.”

  Then he blushed. He was deeply uncomfortable talking about sexuality or reproduction. But he just couldn’t let a miscalculation like that go.

  Mara shook her head. “For me, she was conceived in March 1865. When I met Eru in the woods of Patea.”

  “But that—” Franz shook his head, but Linda stopped him.

  “Leave her be,” Linda said kindly, “before she decides to name her November because that’s when she got a father in the courtroom. March is a lovely name, Mara. And Franz will be happy to christen her.”

  Eru didn’t say anything, just smiled radiantly at Mara.

  “We should go change,” Mara said, standing up. “The wedding is in an hour, and the christening is directly afterward. Are you coming, Eru?”

  Eru picked up the bassinet with the baby, and as they walked away, he tentatively took her hand.

  “Why did you name him Robin?” Ida asked. She had accompanied Cat into the house and was now watching her change the baby into a christening gown. “Isn’t that a little bird with a red breast?”

  Cat laughed. “Yes, I learned that from Laura Redwood. I don’t know very much about European animals. I named my son after Robinson Crusoe. I read the novel while I was pregnant, and it seemed fitting. Then Chris thought of Robin Hood, the champion of the disinherited. It fits very well.”

  Later, Mara and Eru were holding little March, and Chris and Cat cradled four-month-old Robin, by an improvised baptismal font. In a last-minute Christian compromise, Franz was christening the children March Catherine and Robin Christopher.

  “Why not, if it makes him happy?” Linda said. “It seems a little piece of him is still stuck in Raben Steinfeld, after all.”

  Carol and Bill made a beautiful bridal pair. Carol looked radiant in her white wedding gown. The fashion of dressing a bride in white, started by Queen Victoria at her own wedding, had long since reached New Zealand. Carol noticed Oliver Butler’s admiring gaze following her. His wife, Jennifer, a dowdy sheep baroness from Southland, seemed quite nice. She congratulated the couple kindly, and was obviously pleased to have good neighbors. She didn’t seem to know anything about Oliver and Carol’s broken engagement.

  “And I hope it will stay that way,” Carol told Cat after Oliver and Jennifer were out of earshot. “After all, we want our children to be able to play with each other, without resentment.”

  “Carol is very gracious,” Chris said when Cat relayed her words. “To forgive Oliver and his family like that.”

  The two of them were walking around the garden again, after the party had moved into the shearing shed, which had been redecorated as a ballroom, to dance.

  “She’s happy,” Cat said with a smile. “She wants the whole world to share her happiness.”

  “Oh, really?” Chris said. He stopped walking and took her arm. “What about you? Are you happy?”

  Cat nodded.

  “Don’t you want to share your happiness with the whole world?” His voice was serious.

  Cat nestled against him. “Of course. But can I start with you? Ida is babysitting Robin. We’re on our own for the next two hours.”

  She was expecting Chris to kiss her, but he put a finger under her chin and made her look at him.

  “I don’t just want to make you happy for two hours, Cat,” he said, “but for the rest of our lives. Please, Cat, marry me. Just to settle inheritance matters . . .”

  “That’s what wills are for,” she said. “Like the one we made a few months ago. Don’t you remember?”

  Chris rubbed his forehead and then tried again. “I know you have chosen your own names. You are a woman with immense mana. But little Robin—Cat, would it be too much to ask if I wanted him to be a Fenroy?”

  Cat pretended she had to think about it. But then she didn’t let Chris dangle too long. She smiled and kissed him. “All right,” she said. “Although I would actually have preferred Crusoe.”

  Afterword

  As with all my New Zealand novels, Fires of Change combines fiction with historical events. Sometimes they provide a backdrop for my story, and sometimes I allow them to inspire new ideas. In this book, that applies to the Second Taranaki War, all the events surrounding the Hauhau movement, and the shipwreck that almost killed Chris and Cat, as well as the conditions of their rescue.

  There were many shipwrecks around New Zealand during the course of the entire nineteenth century. The reason for them was not only the often-stormy weather along the coast but also relatively bad sea charting and the lack of lighthouses and other signals. Other causes were the provisional harbors set up in river estuaries and the difficulty of handling old-fashioned sailing ships.

  The model for my fictitious General Lee was the three-masted General Grant. The ship sank in 1866 on the way from Melbourne to London, after running aground to the west of the Auckland Islands. Most of the crew and passengers died, but ten people were rescued eighteen months later from the subantarctic Disappointment Island. My description of my castaways’ camp and their experiences on Rose Island are based on reports of the conditions there. I used as many of the reported details as possible, including the apparent attempt of four crew members to reach the town of Bluff (an early name for Campbelltown) in a rowboat.

  The castaways from the General Grant were actually rescued by an expedition that was depositing survival materials. The brig Amherst, which was my model for the Hampshire, went to sea in 1867, commanded by Captain Patrick Gilroy and assisted by Henry Armstrong, a representative of the Southland provincial government. There are precise records of the ship’s voyage, which I used in order to describe authentically Bill’s mission to rescue Chris and Cat.

  The course of the Second Taranaki War from 1863 to 1866 is also described in intricate detail. However, there are countless easily accessible sources that often contradict each other. The war occurred in too many locations, with too many parties and army commanders. On the pakeha side alone, there were three generals involved—Cameron, Chute, and McDonnell—as well as Governor Grey, who also attempted to contribute to the strategy. On the Maori side, dozens of chieftains, clan leaders, and “prophets” were fighting. Sometimes they fought together, sometimes one after another, and sometimes even against each other. Every English army commander worked with kupapa auxiliary forces, and some Maori chieftains led their tribes individually against their traditional enemies who had been weakened by battles with the English. Additionally, there was the so-called King movement, whose goal was to make New Zealand into a monarchy. They, too, wanted to unite the tribes, and they someti
mes worked with Te Ua Haumene. I left them out of this novel in order to keep the story from getting too fragmented. Actually, the tribes that offered Kereopa refuge after Voelkner’s murder were part of what was referred to as King Country.

  But I couldn’t and didn’t want to simplify the story of the war very much, although the names of many of the various North Island tribes are surely confusing and impossible to pronounce for Western readers. These tribes still exist. They fought for their land and were later able to get some of it back. It would be disrespectful to replace them with fictitious tribes with less complicated names.

  As I said, the confusing course of the Second Taranaki War is described by heavily contradictory sources. For example, in one version it says that Fort Waikoukou was conquered by General Chute, and others name McDonnell, or even both of them. How McDonnell was supposed to have led a settlers’ regiment in the frame of the military settlers program and also start a farm (one source) while at the same time playing an important role in the extermination of the last Hauhau warriors (another source) is not clear to me. I was forced to improvise here, and I attempted to describe his activities during the months in question as believably as possible. I can’t say how authentic my portrayal of events is.

  To the contrary, my description of McDonnell’s campaign against Pokokaikai pa is probably quite close to the truth. He stormed it on August 1, 1866, after pretending to be friendly toward its defenders. At the time, his strategy was considered highly suspect. He was doubtlessly a skilled but completely ruthless military commander.

  Contemporary sources offer differing estimations of the generals’ strategies, which also makes describing the Second Taranaki War difficult. One example of this is the way the English dealt with Weraroa pa, which Cameron attempted to isolate, while Governor Grey preferred the idea of storming it. There were good arguments for both points of view that were also important for me to consider when it came to the opinions of my protagonists. Cameron’s strategy doubtlessly proved to be successful. From a psychological point of view, however, the many months of tolerance for Te Ua Haumene’s presence may have lengthened the entire conflict considerably.