Isle of Tears (14 page)

‘Is she not beautiful?’ he said. His face was beaded with sweat, but he beamed with pride.

Speechless with delight, Isla could only grin back.

But there was one more thing they had to do. Reluctantly setting the baby carefully on the mat beside them, Tai massaged Isla’s belly to encourage the afterbirth to come away, and after it had he wrapped it in another cloth and put it aside. Later it would be buried in the secret place he and Isla had already chosen, to signify the baby’s spiritual home.

As Isla cradled the baby again, she gazed down at the exquisite, miniature person she and Tai had created. She had a lot of dark hair, a tiny nose, a rosebud mouth and, in the firelight, rather mottled purple skin.

But she seemed very…limp.

A bubble of unease forming in her chest, Isla jiggled the baby slightly, and the baby gave a hitching wheeze, then settled into a pattern of shallow, irregular breathing.

In silence, Isla and Tai watched her struggle to draw air into her lungs, barely breathing themselves as fear crept gradually but inexorably into their hearts.

Finally, Isla whispered, ‘She cannae breathe properly, can she?’ Then, stricken, she said, ‘Is it
my
fault? Because o’ the sickness I had?’

Feeling a lump of grief so large and jagged in his throat that he couldn’t swallow, Tai could only vehemently shake his head.

Then, as the sun rose and filled the whare kohanga with pale light, they understood the hopelessness of what had happened, for their precious daughter’s skin was now as blue-white as a child of the moon itself.

Niel, unable to sleep soundly and up at dawn, watched as Tai hurried through the village gate and into the Tamaiparea whare. A minute later he emerged with Mere close behind him, pulling her cloak around her shoulders.

Moments after they’d gone, a bleary-looking Harapeta appeared, followed by Wira, and soon the whole village was stirring.

A short time later, Tai reappeared out of the mist and this time went directly to the whare of the tohunga Te Katate.

‘Is she all right?’ Niel called out, but Tai didn’t seem to hear.

Niel felt a cold dread settle on him and hunched his shoulders, as if expecting a blow. He closed his eyes and prayed that it was the bairn and not Isla, and felt terrible for doing so.

Squatting in the whare kohanga, Te Katate regarded the baby closely, then said censoriously, ‘You should not have walked in the
moonlight. Because of it, the child has been born a patupaiarehe. She cannot survive in this world.’

Mere’s mouth gaped in outraged disbelief. ‘A
fairy
child! Do not be so stupid. She is as real as you and I!’

Affronted and angered by Mere’s disrespect, Te Katate rose creakily and declared as he swept out, ‘She will die. There is nothing I can do.’

Staring at the spot on the mat where he had been sitting, Isla whispered, ‘Will she, Mere? Will she die?’

The baby lay in her arms, gasping quietly and shuddering from time to time as she fought to draw breath. Her eyelids were blue, and so was the skin around her mouth. Isla had put her on her breast several times, but the infant was so weak that she hadn’t been able to suckle.

It was clear to Mere that the infant would not survive, and her heart broke, for Tai and Isla, and for the child herself. ‘I do not know,’ she said eventually, ‘but I think so.’

Isla nodded slowly, and grazed her lips across the top of the baby’s head. ‘Then I want her tae be baptized. She cannae die wi’oot being baptized.’ If she did, she would die with the weight of sin still upon her and would not be received into the arms of Christ.

Mere glanced at Tai.

‘Ae, she must be baptized,’ he agreed. ‘But will Te Katate do it? He seemed angry before.’

‘Te Katate will do what Wira tells him to do,’ Mere replied sharply, tired of the old tohunga’s arrogance and posturing.

And so, later that morning, Isla and Tai’s daughter was baptized Meg Tawai: Meg for Margaret, as that had been Agnes McKinnon’s middle name, and Tawai for the morning star that had risen during her birth. But the baptism was performed privately, since Isla was still in a state of tapu. After the short ceremony, Tai carried Meg swaddled in his arms to the village so that Niel, Jamie and Jean could see their baby niece.

‘She looks just like a wee white dolly!’ Jean exclaimed as Tai loosened the folds of the baby’s blanket. Hesitantly, she touched Meg’s tiny hand. ‘But Mere says she’s verra ill.’

‘Ae, she is,’ Tai said. ‘And you must say goodbye, just in case.’

He exchanged a glance with Niel, who looked on grim-faced. ‘And you, Niel.’

‘Will it no’ be long?’ Niel asked.

‘Mere does not think so.’

Niel swallowed, then bent down and kissed Meg’s cold cheek. ‘Goodbye, mo leannan,’ he whispered.

Jamie burst into tears, then so did Jean. Tai let them each cuddle Meg for a few minutes, then carried her back to the warmth of the whare kohanga and her mother.

‘Were they upset?’ Isla asked as he settled the baby in her arms. Her voice was tremulous, and Tai could see that she very much wanted to cry but would not allow herself to do so. Not while there was still a splinter of hope.

While the village waited, going about their daily business with heavy hearts and speaking in hushed tones, Isla and Tai took turns to cradle Meg as she struggled for life. Food was left for them
outside the whare, but no one intruded, respecting their privacy and the little time they had left with their daughter. Tai knew that in the old days a seriously ailing infant would have been placed outside in the cold to slip into the eternal embrace of Hine-nui-i-te-po, but could not bring himself even to voice the idea to Isla.

As the day wore on Meg continued to fight, but it was clear that she was growing weaker by the hour. Her skin was becoming even more shadowed, her legs and feet were beginning to swell, and her breath came in irregular, jagged little gasps. Watching her, Tai felt as though his heart were being torn out, and he knew Isla felt the same. She sat in near silence, refusing to eat and taking only small sips of water, rocking Meg when she held her, and dozing when Tai took her. There seemed to be very little to say to one another, their focus having dwindled to the tiny, flickering life they held between them.

Some time after night had fallen, and Meg’s breathing had grown even more erratic and tortured, Isla blurted, ‘I cannae stand this, Tai. I just cannae.’

‘Neither can I.’

‘Ye have tae do something.’ Isla’s voice cracked. ‘Ye have tae help her.’

Tai gazed for a long moment at his daughter, thinking. Then he placed an armful of manuka sticks on the fire and stirred the embers so that the flames caught and grew. He looked at Meg again, then took her carefully in his arms and stretched out on the mat on his side, the baby tucked against his belly.

‘Lie with me,’ he murmured to Isla.

Realizing what he intended to do, she hesitated only briefly before she lay face-to-face with him. It was a sin against God, but it would also be a blessing. With infinite gentleness Tai rearranged the folds of Meg’s blanket so that it covered her face. Then Isla and Tai, their arms and legs entwined and Meg cocooned tightly between them, embraced so that their cheeks touched and their breath and tears mingled.

A short while later, their precious daughter left them.

Mere, standing sentinel at the village fence since sundown, flinched as she heard Isla’s cry of guilt and despair rising out of the darkness: ‘Ma bairn! O Mam, ma beautiful bairn!’

Mere lowered her head, her dark hair covering her face, and finally allowed herself to weep—for the poor dead child, for her bereaved nephew, and for the pale, golden Scottish girl she had come to love.

Isla was not present at her daughter’s tangi, as the tapu imposed by her post-partum bleeding had not yet been lifted. But many others attended. As Meg, through the institution of whangai, had been the grandchild of a respected rangatira, mourners travelled considerable distances to pay their respects. A contingent from Mere’s iwi, Ngati Maru-whara-nui, came, as did those from other iwi and hapu with affiliations to Te Ati Awa. And with them they brought talk of more war to come.

T
ARANAKI
, D
ECEMBER
1862

W
hen summer arrived later that year, and Isla’s belly had long since become flat and firm again and the puawananga she had planted near Meg’s grave bloomed with starry white flowers, she said to Jean, ‘D’ye still miss Mam?’

Jean, who was amusing herself plaiting Isla’s hair, stopped. ‘Whaea Mam, ye mean?’

Isla nodded hesitantly, fearful, as always, of discovering that the twins might have forgotten their real mother. She worried that unless the four of them continued to remember their parents, it would seem as though they had never existed at all.

Eventually, she said, ‘Aye, our real mam.’

The hands on her hair began to braid again. ‘O’ course I do. She’s in ma prayers every night. And Da. Well, no’
every
night,’
Jean amended, ‘but whenever I remember tae say them.’

Isla turned around, and for the first time noticed that the beauty of their mother’s bones was beginning to show in Jean’s face. She had always looked to Isla like a little red button, but now she was a pretty young girl. ‘What did she look like then?’ she asked, wishing she could leave it alone, but unable to.

‘She had shiny golden hair and blue eyes, just like yesel’,’ Jean replied. ‘And oor da had the red hair that me and Jamie’ve got. And he wis big and tall. He used tae throw us up in the air and catch us, aye?’

‘Aye, he did too!’ Isla said, delighted. She turned back and felt the final tug as Jean tied the plait with a piece of twine.

‘Isla?’

‘Aye?’

‘Will they be wi’ wee Meg?’

Isla moved so that she faced her sister. ‘Mam and Da?’

‘Aye. Will they all be in Heaven? Will they be together?’

‘O’ course they will.’

‘How will they ken who Meg is?’

‘Well, God will tell them, I suppose.’

‘Will he say, “Look, Mister McKinnon and Missus McKinnon, here comes Isla’s wee bairn?” And d’ye think they’ll be sad?’

Isla thought for a moment. ‘Aye, they probably will be sad.’

But not as sad as she and Tai had been in the months following Meg’s death. The loss had torn viciously at Isla’s heart, cutting deeply and opening the old wound of her parents’ deaths afresh. She couldn’t eat, avoided sleep because she was afraid of her
dreams, and was unable to find the energy to leave the whare she and Tai shared, once the tapu had been lifted from her and she had been able to return there. She sat for days at a time in the semidarkness, not caring whether the fire went out, not even bothering to wrap herself in her tartan cloak, and struggling to confine her pain within the borders of her own flesh and bones. Mere fed her, the villagers sent messages of sympathy, and Niel, Jamie and Jean hung around outside the whare, very often too dismayed by her desolation to go in. Tai did what he could for her, and spent hours holding her hand and rocking her, but his grief had been overwhelming, too, and he had needed to get out, to go into the forest to hunt and run, shouting his rage and despair into the wet, misty winter air until he was able, finally, to live with it.

But Isla took longer to accept what had happened, until one day, as the chill of winter receded and the thin warmth of the early September sun began to creep further and further across the floor of the whare, she realized that clinging so tightly to her grief would never change the fact that Meg had died. So she tidied herself, put on her boots and left the whare to tell Tai that her period of mourning had ended. It had not, but she knew now that she could summon the courage to bear it.

And to ensure that she would not risk encountering such awful grief again too soon—for the possibility that her own body had been to blame for poor Meg’s sickness still haunted her—she asked Mere what she could do to prevent another baby from starting. She had not discussed this with Tai, but as they had resumed their love-making, now even more passionate and
intimate because of the closeness wrought by their shared loss, and nothing had come of it, she suspected he’d guessed. But their love, they both knew, was stronger than ever.

‘Your hair’s getting verra long, Isla,’ Jean said.

‘Aye. Yours would too, if ye brushed it oot now and again.’

Jean swept her matted hair to the top of her head and let it drop again. ‘But I like it like this. It’s easy tae look after.’

A shadow fell across them: Niel, carrying a coil of freshly caught eels dangling from a stick. ‘Would ye like some?’

Isla said yes and he dropped three onto the ground at her feet, where they slithered and wriggled in the dust, desperately searching for a way back to the river. Jean snatched them up and threw them into a bucket. They writhed and thumped, but the bucket stayed upright.

‘Have ye told her yet?’ Niel asked.

‘No,’ Isla said in exasperation, because she’d been finding excuses not to. ‘I’ve no’ had the chance.’

Jean’s eyes narrowed warily. ‘Told me what?’

Isla said to Niel, ‘Well, have
you
told Jamie?’

‘No’ yet,’ he admitted.

Her heart sinking, Isla knew they couldn’t put it off any longer. ‘Go and get him, then. We’ll tell them together.’

As Niel went off, Jean stamped her bare foot and demanded, ‘Tell us
what
, Isla?’

But Isla kept her counsel until Niel returned with Jamie, who was clutching a wriggling puppy, its pointy ears and little thrusting snout looking suspiciously like Laddie’s.

Niel sat and gestured for Jean and Jamie to do the same. ‘Ye’ve heard talk o’ what’s been happening in the north, aye?’

The twins’ heads bobbed in identical nods; they had caught snatches of what the adults had been discussing during past months in the wharenui, at hapu meetings and when visitors had come.

‘But d’ye understand how far it’s gone and what it means?’ Niel asked, but was met with blank looks. ‘Well, I’ll tell ye.’

And he did. He told them how there were now thousands of imperial troops in the North Island, disgorged from ships landing at Auckland and sent out to newly established camps and forts farther south at places called Papakura and Otahuhu and Tuakau and Ramarama. He told them how the Manukau was full of cutters busily criss-crossing the harbour carrying supplies from the wharves at Onehunga to the vast imperial camp at Drury, and that Pakeha churches as far south as Pukekohe and even Pokeno had been fortified and readied for battle.

‘But why?’ Jamie asked, the puppy forgotten.

Niel glanced at Isla, who nodded at him to continue. ‘Because the imperial soldiers want tae take o’er the Waikato. On behalf o’ the government and the settlers. For the land.’

‘But it belongs tae Maori,’ Jean said, as though this was the most obvious thing in the world.

‘Aye, it does,’ Isla replied, ‘but the British want it for themselves. It’s good farmland, ye see, but the Waikato people dinnae want them tae have it. And now there’s tae be another war.’

‘Like the one that was here?’ Jamie asked.

‘Aye.’

Jean said, ‘And that’s why all the soldiers have come?’

‘Aye. And they’re building a great road,’ Niel explained, ‘all the way doon from Auckland and intae the heart o’ the Waikato. Hundreds and hundreds o’ them. They’re felling the trees, digging oot cuttings, clearing the bush and filling in swamps. And, soon, they’ll come marching doon it with their big guns and their horses and their drummer boys and all their flags flying.’

Isla glowered at him, for being such a scaremonger.

‘But we dinnae live in the Waikato,’ Jean said sensibly. ‘We live here, in Taranaki.’

‘Aye, but Te Ati Awa have sworn allegiance tae the Maori king, and he’s taken up arms again against the imperial soldiers, so soon we’ll be called tae fight alongside him.’

Jamie puffed out his chest. ‘Well, I’ll be fighting them. I’m big enough.’

‘Ye are no’,’ Isla said quickly.

‘Will it come doon as far as us?’ Jean asked, sounding uneasy now. ‘The great road?’

Isla glanced into the bucket containing the eels; they were hardly moving at all now and were drying out, their skin no longer glistening. Their lassitude unnerved her. But she said, as reassuringly as she could, ‘I wouldnae imagine so, leannan. But I have tae tell ye there might be fighting here anyway.’

‘Aye, we heard them talking aboot it a wee while ago, in the big hoose,’ Jean admitted. ‘Eh, Jamie? When Whaea Mere’s people came?’

Jamie nodded guardedly, in case he was about to be told off for listening in on elders’ business.

Isla said, not altogether truthfully, ‘No one’s sure if there will be another war here. But just in case there is, Wira’s decided there are certain things we should be doing.’

Alerted by the note of guilt in Isla’s voice, Jean asked immediately, ‘What certain things?’

Exchanging a nervous glance with Niel, Isla confessed, ‘Well, the children and some o’ the women are tae go away for a while.’

Stunned, Jean said, ‘Go away where?’

‘Tae a place in the Bay o’ Plenty over on the east coast called Maketu,’ Niel replied. ‘Just until it’s safe here again.’ Puketeitei, it had been reluctantly conceded, might be too close to the fighting, should the imperial troops stationed at New Plymouth venture further inland.

‘But it
is
safe here!’

‘Aye, it is at the moment,’ Niel said, ‘but it might no’ be soon.’

Jean’s copper brows lowered stubbornly. ‘Well, I’m no’ going anywhere. And anyway, I’m no’ a child. Me and Jamie are nine years auld.’

‘Only just,’ Isla countered.

‘I dinnae care. We’re no’ going.’

‘Ye are,’ Niel said flatly.

They were all silent then, the impasse a solid wall between them. The puppy scrambled onto Jean’s lap and draped itself over her thigh, letting out a whimper of contentment from one end
and a squeaky fart from the other. No one laughed.

Jean burst into tears. ‘I dinnae want tae go. I dinnae even ken where Maketu is! How far away is it?’

‘No’ that far,’ Niel lied, and added hopefully, ‘It’s by the sea. Ye could go swimming every day. And fishing. It wouldnae be too cold.’

Isla and Niel both knew how far away Maketu was. Mere had said it would take three weeks, perhaps four, if they went by sea up to Kawhia Harbour, then by land through the Waikato and over the Kaimai Mountains to the coast beyond. And to go that way they would have to leave soon, before the imperial soldiers moved into the Waikato and cut off travel from west to east.

‘It’ll no’ be for long, maybe only three or four months,’ Isla said, hating herself for lying. It could be much longer than that, especially if the British marched right down through the Waikato to join with the troops already in Taranaki. But they wouldn’t, of course—they would be stopped well before that happened. King Tawhiao, Potatau Te Wherowhero’s son and successor, would make sure of that. Everyone was saying so, even if they were saying it a bit too often.

She felt terribly guilty as well, for allowing herself to be convinced by Mere and Wira that the twins should be sent away. But she knew it would be the best, the
safest
, thing for them, and that they would be with people who loved and cared for them—Ngahere, Pare and her child and the one she was carrying, other Ngati Pono women, some of the more aged elders including Pikaki, and most of the village’s children under the age of twelve.

She was aware that Wira had been thinking for many months about this, before finally announcing his decision. Thinking, and observing the plight of other hapu whose livestock and crops had been destroyed or confiscated during the first war, so that now they were starving and even less resistant to the European sicknesses that crept, invisible and uninvited, into their midst. He also knew that if there was to be another war in Taranaki, then this time it would be far more devastating. Sent away, the children, young mothers and the aged would be safe from both the fighting and the deprivation that came with it. The men of Ngati Pono, of course, would be needed for battle, while the women who remained would accompany them to tend to their needs and, between military engagements, help to maintain Waikaraka when they could return there.

Isla had already decided that she would be staying in Taranaki with Tai. For the past three years it had been her job to look after the twins, and so far as she was concerned, it still was, but she could not be at her husband’s side
and
with Jean and Jamie—and she knew that the twins would be well cared for. And they were no longer bairns, of course, and were old enough now to understand that the separation would not be forever. But still, it wrenched at her heart to think how long they might be apart.

‘Why can I no’ stay and fight?’ Jamie said. ‘I’m getting verra tall and I’m good wi’ the taiaha. Harapeta says so.’

Jean crossed her arms belligerently. ‘If Jamie’s staying, so am I.’

Niel shook his head. ‘Neither of ye are staying, and that’s that.’

‘But you are, though, aren’t ye, Niel? Ye’ll be fighting?’ Jamie asked.

‘Aye, I’ll be fighting.’

The confirmation was succinct, but in it Isla heard pride and, to her dismay, a barely concealed excitement. Niel was as much Pakeha-Maori now as she and the twins were, and any vague British allegiance he might once have felt on the basis of a shared skin colour had faded long ago. It suited him well, the life he was living now, and Isla knew that their mother and father would be very proud of him. At close to sixteen, he had grown into a tall, wide-shouldered young man, fit, agile and athletic, although it was clear that the heavy muscles that had so characterized their father’s physique were still to come. His face had changed as his jaw and brow had broadened, and he no longer had the soft, slightly girlish features of his boyhood. His hair, long now, was still fair but had darkened to several shades deeper than Isla’s, and the hair on his face and body was a light copper. He was becoming a man and he was popular with the Ngati Pono girls, even though they seemed to lead him a merry dance, which he pretended not to enjoy.

He was still quiet sometimes—what Agnes McKinnon would have called ‘deep’—but nowhere near as sulky as he once had been. To Isla’s amazement and delight, he had become quite a storyteller, happy to spend hours sitting around a fire recounting legends passed down by his father about the military prowess and victories of the McKinnons of past generations, particularly the stories associated with the ’45, even though that had ended in such disaster at Culloden. His audiences seemed never to tire
of hearing his tales of skirling pipes on the battlefield, the muted flash of the clans’ tartans, the shouts and battle cries, and the skill with which the claymore, the broadsword, the dirk and the targa were wielded. Some listeners even went so far as to postulate that Niel’s high degree of competence with taiaha, tewhatewha and rifle must surely be gifts passed down to his spirit and his blood directly from his ancestors. Privately, Harapeta thought it was more likely to be the countless hours of dedicated and singleminded practice Niel put in with those particular weapons, but he kept this observation to himself.