Amber (16 page)

‘I believe Ngahuia’s just refilled the kettle,’ Rian mumbled through his porridge.

Kitty took the pot and went to find out: the kettle was indeed heating on the grate over the kitchen fire but Ngahuia was nowhere to be seen. Neither was Rangimarie, Sarah’s other, extraordinarily timid, housegirl. But when Kitty went outside she saw them both, crouching in the kitchen garden and talking, their heads close together.

She called out to Ngahuia and both girls started and looked up, then Ngahuia rose and limped hurriedly towards the house.

‘Good morning, Missus Kitty,’ she said.

‘Good morning, Ngahuia,’ Kitty replied, wondering why the girl looked so guilty.

‘Would you like me to serve you the pareti?’

‘Only if you’re not busy.’

Kitty followed Ngahuia into the kitchen and emptied the
teapot into the bowl where Sarah saved the old leaves to dye her crochet and tatting, then opened the tea canister. Rangimarie came in a moment later with four string beans in her hand. Surely it hadn’t required the pair of them to pick four beans?

‘Are the beans not very good at the moment?’ she asked. ‘Was it the rain, do you think?’

Both girls stared.

Kitty tried again. ‘Do you think the rain has spoiled the beans? Stopped the flowers from setting, I mean?’ She inclined her head towards Rangimarie’s hand. ‘You don’t seem to have found many.’

Ngahuia ducked her head and mumbled, ‘No, we did not find many.’

Suspecting that something was amiss, Kitty touched her arm. ‘Is something the matter? Can I be of help?’

The boiling kettle hissed onto the fire and Ngahuia lifted it off and poured water into the teapot, all the while avoiding Kitty’s gaze.

‘Ngahuia?’

Rangimarie turned to leave the kitchen but Kitty grabbed her sleeve. ‘Tell me, please.’

‘It is nothing, thank you,’ Rangimarie mumbled. Gently but firmly disengaging Kitty’s hand, she walked out.

Ngahuia, her head still down, said, ‘I will bring your pareti and the tea.’

Kitty regarded her worriedly for a moment, then went back into the dining room and sat down again.

‘They’re in an odd mood this morning.’

‘Who?’ Rian asked.

‘Ngahuia and Rangimarie. Rian, I think something might be happening. Something bad.’

‘It is,’ Rian replied, pushing his empty plate away.

Kitty’s heart lurched. ‘What?’

‘Pierre came by earlier this morning to say that there have been rumours out at Pukera that Hone Heke may be about to make another attack on the flagstaff.’ He sighed and rubbed his hands over his unshaven face. ‘Christ knows what FitzRoy will do. Send every bloody soldier he can get his hands on up here, I expect.’

Ngahuia appeared and set Kitty’s plate of porridge in front of her, then poured a cup of tea. She turned to go, then paused and said, ‘I am sorry. I did not mean to be rude.’

‘Oh Ngahuia, it doesn’t matter,’ Kitty replied. ‘I understand.’ When Ngahuia had gone, she said, ‘They wouldn’t tell me what was wrong, but obviously they’ve heard the rumour too.’

Rian crossed his arms. ‘Well, we’ll have to stay. At least until things settle down.’

Kitty was silent for some time, staring down at her porridge. Then she said, ‘
Why
do we have to stay, Rian? I sympathise with the people and what’s happened to them since the treaty, you know that, but it’s not our fight. And apart from that, do you really think there is anything we could do that would make a difference?’

Rian shrugged. ‘I don’t know yet.’

‘And if we did get involved—’

‘No, Kitty, you won’t be getting involved, no matter what eventuates.’

Kitty didn’t bite. ‘All right, if
you
got involved, you would be branded as a traitor to the Crown and the punishment for that is hanging, Rian. I am
not
going through that again.’

‘How can I be a traitor to the Crown?’ he asked innocently.

Kitty gave him an exasperated look.

‘What? I don’t have any allegiance to the British. I’m Irish, remember?’

‘So if you’re not Maori and you’re not British, why do you want to get involved?’

Rian said stubbornly, ‘Because there’s a principle at stake here.’

Kitty sighed inwardly: Rian and his damned principles! ‘Well, what is it, then?’

‘You know very well what it is. It’s
wrong
for one people to force another to submit to their rule. You can’t just go around subjugating whole countries! And that’s what the Crown is doing. Bloody English, I hate them!’

‘Rian,
I’m
English!’

‘No you’re not. You’re…you’re Kitty.’ Rian paused. ‘And I’m not sure you really understand what all of this means.’

Kitty thought she did, actually. ‘Well, what do
you
think it means?’

He took her hand. ‘What it means, love, is that the Maoris will lose their way of life for ever. It means they’ll be persecuted for their beliefs, even killed for them, like the Catholics are in Ireland. It means they’ll be forced to live and die by a system of law weighted so heavily against them that they’ll never be able to extricate themselves from it.’

Kitty frowned, recalling uncomfortably that Enya had been tried and transported to Australia by an English judge. And so had Mick’s mother, Biddy Doyle, although Kitty had never found out what Mrs Doyle’s crime had been.

Rian was becoming more and more passionate as he spoke. ‘It also means they’ll become deprived of almost all political and economic power, and that’s happening already, isn’t it? And it means their spirit will be crushed and, believe me, that’s the hardest thing of all to recover from. Kitty, listen to me: the English have been interfering in Ireland and destroying it for nearly seven hundred years. Do you want that to happen here?’

Kitty blinked. ‘Of course not, Rian. You know I don’t.’

‘Well, it will if this isn’t stopped.’

‘But
you
can’t stop it, Rian. You’re only one person.’

‘No, I know, but I must do something.’

With a sinking heart, Kitty knew he wasn’t going to be dissuaded. She dipped her spoon into her congealing porridge and stirred it listlessly. ‘Will you promise me one thing?’

‘If I can.’

‘Don’t take up arms against the British. Please. They’ll kill you one way or another.’

Rian leaned across the corner of the table and kissed her cheek. ‘Don’t worry,
mo ghrá
, I’m not going to take up arms for or against anyone. But I will do what I can.’

Kitty pushed her plate away, her appetite gone.

The morning of 10 January was again fine and warm, so Rian decided to go across to Kororareka and pick up a few supplies. Pierre also wanted to inspect the stores there: he didn’t know when they would be leaving the Bay of Islands, but he wanted the galley to be provisioned when they did.

However, when the crew, plus Haunui and Tahi, arrived at Paihia, it was obvious that they weren’t all going to fit into the
Katipo
’s rowboat, so they borrowed one of Pukera’s waka. There was much hilarity as they set off, the waka changing direction with every stroke of the oars until Haunui, counting the cadence and laughing his head off, managed to synchronise Mick, Rian, Pierre, Daniel and Hawk as they rowed. Kitty—minus her bonnet, as she knew from past experience that the brisk winds of the bay would have it off her head in minutes—and Tahi sat in the prow with Ropata, who was thoroughly enjoying watching his crewmates making idiots of themselves. They stopped off at the
Katipo
, anchored in the bay among six or seven other ships, to collect Gideon, who had been keeping watch on the schooner, then set off again for the sweeping curve of Kororareka’s beach.

They were all damp with sea spray and in high spirits when they arrived, Kitty looking forward to fossicking in the stores, and the others to a pint or two in one of the grog-shops. The town looked picturesque in the bright sunshine, with rows of ships’ boats and waka pulled up on the shingled beach before two small palisaded pa, and the street of one- and two-storey weatherboard buildings that paralleled the shore. Behind them, the tall-windowed Anglican church squatted solidly next to its graveyard, houses and gardens sat on the lower slopes of the hills, and the American flag was flying from consul James Clendon’s house. At the southern end of the beach were clustered Bishop Pompallier’s chapel, houses, workshops and printery. The tranquil scene belied the settlement’s reputation as ‘a perfect picture of depravity’—a sobriquet that was, by most accounts, nevertheless thoroughly deserved.

Behind the town lay a large swamp, and behind that a series of rugged hills, their seaward-facing slopes peppered with coarse fern and dwarf cypress. At the northern end of the bay rose Maiki Hill, topped by the now-infamous flagstaff flying the Union Jack. On closer inspection, Kitty saw that Governor FitzRoy’s economic sanctions had not been kind to the town: it might have grown, but it seemed even more dilapidated than it had been during her only other visit, back in 1839. She had been with Wai, then. And Amy.

Walking up the potholed main street she eyed the shabby trading stores, private dwellings, boarding houses and grogshops, and the sailors and other rough-looking individuals openly eyeing her, and was glad she was with a party of eight men. And one little boy, even though she wasn’t entirely convinced that this was the sort of place Tahi should be visiting. But he was strolling along beside Haunui, his hands in his pockets, calmly taking in the sights. When a pair of gaudily-dressed young women sitting outside a small house and showing rather a lot
of stockinged calf called out, he waved to them cheerily.

One of the women stood up and struck a pose, her hands smoothing the cheap, shiny fabric of her dress over her hips. Kitty stopped and stared, wondering if they were the same whores she, Wai and Amy had encountered five years before, but after a moment decided they couldn’t be.

‘Good morning, gentlemen,’ the woman on her feet called out invitingly. Belatedly noticing Kitty, she added unenthusiastically, ‘Oh, and lady. Are yis looking for a little bit o’ comfort? Because yis’ve come to the right place if yis are.’

Pierre looked her up and down and shook his head disdainfully. The woman made a rude gesture at him. Daniel went pink. Hawk, Ropata and Gideon ignored her, and Mick looked as though he was having a terrible time deciding between the sort of comfort the woman was offering and the sort that could be purchased over a bar.

‘What about you, little man?’ the woman called, pointing at Tahi, and both she and her companion burst into ribald giggles.

Mick bent down and said to Tahi, ‘Now’s your chance, so it is.’

Kitty gave Mick a stern look, which only made him grin.

‘Pardon?’ Tahi said, his big eyes turned up to Mick.

‘Never mind, love,’ Kitty told him. ‘Mick’s only being silly.’

Nevertheless, Haunui manoeuvred Tahi protectively between himself and Gideon.

‘They won’t bite,’ Mick teased.

Haunui made a face. ‘They bloody might.’

Pierre spotted a likely-looking trading store, gave a grunt of satisfaction and veered off towards it.

‘Hey!’ Ropata shouted, and when Pierre turned Ropata raised his elbow in a drinking gesture. ‘Are you not coming?’

‘
Oui
,’ Pierre replied. ‘But first I buy the food, then I drink.’

Ropata shrugged and followed the others across the street to a rather seedy-looking establishment that was clearly a grogshop. Noting the envious expression on Haunui’s face, Kitty took Tahi’s hand and steered him towards the trading store.

‘But I want to go with Koro,’ Tahi complained, dragging his feet.

‘Well, you can’t,’ Kitty said. ‘Little boys don’t go into places like that.’

‘But Koro said I am allowed,’ Tahi insisted.

‘I did not!’ Haunui called from the verandah of the grogshop. ‘Go on, boy, go with Kitty.’

Tahi’s bottom lip came out, but he reluctantly allowed himself to be led across the street.

The light inside the trading store was dim, but when Kitty’s eyes adjusted she saw that the interior was entirely lined with shelves reaching from the bare, uneven floorboards to the ceiling. There were lower shelves in the middle of the floor and a solid counter ran across the back of the store, presumably blocking off access to the smaller, more expensive items on display behind it. The aproned storekeeper, leaning on the counter and concentrating on lighting his pipe, ignored them. The whole place smelled of chaff, leather, wet wood, and some strange, dusty sort of spice.

The shelves, which weren’t overstocked by any means, held rolls of coarse cloth suitable for men’s work clothes, and sturdy shirts and moleskin trousers, woollen undergarments and socks that looked as though they would be horribly itchy to wear, hobnail boots, broad-brimmed hats, leather belts, lengths of canvas, plain tableware, cutlery, iron griddles, hooks, cheap pots and pans, rope of all sizes, lamps and lanterns with fresh white wicks, buckets and basins, jars, sacks—in short, everything a person might need for a basic life. Behind the counter were tobacco, pipes, razors and strops, soap, sharp gleaming knives,
alcohol, laudanum, and various other bits and pieces.

Pierre had headed straight for the shelves containing edible provisions. Kitty went after him, the heels of her boots clacking on the wooden floor, Tahi padding silently beside her.

‘Do they have what you want?’ she asked Pierre, who was peering into a bin of flour.

He took up a pinch between his fingers, looked at it closely, then sniffed it. ‘Pah! There have been the weevils in this flour!’

‘I beg your pardon!’ the storekeeper exclaimed from behind his counter, puffing clouds of rank-smelling smoke towards the stained ceiling.

‘Your flour, she is spoiled!’ Pierre declared, theatrically rubbing his fingers together to clean them.

‘That is perfectly good flour,’ the storekeeper replied.

‘It has had the weevils,’ Pierre insisted.

The storekeeper looked sceptical. ‘What makes you say that?’

‘I smell them. I smell where the little feet have been. She is in
fe
rior! I will not pay you for that.’