Isle of Tears (16 page)

‘Ae. They belong to Ngati Tahinga, gifted to them by the trader Captain Kent. They have carried them here across the hills and through the bush from Whaingaroa. Nganiho Panapana of Ngati Naho is our master gunner,’ the man said proudly, warming
to his topic, ‘and our crews have been trained by a former East India Company gunner who lives in the area.’ Then he hesitated. ‘Unfortunately we do not have any cannon balls. But Panapana has sent men to many of the Waikato trading stores and requisitioned pound weights and iron chain. We will use that instead. And we have solid platforms, unlike the imperial guns, which are sinking into the swamp. Ae, we will be ready.’

Isla and Niel, looking down at the sprawling British camp less than two miles away on the other side of the Whangamarino River, agreed—she uneasily and he enthusiastically—that Meremere would surely be where the imperial forces would meet the Kingite army head-on.

For the next two months there were constant sorties out from Meremere, and from the pa at Paparata and Pukekawa, across the aukati and into the territory on the northern side of the Mangatawhiri. These raiding parties hit isolated Pakeha settlements, and military roading parties and convoys. At the same time, roving bands of Maori, who had been evicted from their lands through which the Great South Road had passed, also struck back, attacking settlers who had looted their villages and stolen stock. As a result, numerous redoubts had been built along the road, and the militia guarded every bridge along its length.

But on 6 August something happened that was both exciting and dismaying. Around mid-morning, gliding upstream out of the mist rising off the river, there appeared a vessel the like of
which no one had ever seen before. She was about sixty feet long and at the stern sat a huge wheel of paddles that rotated through the water while steam billowed from her funnel. Her bulwarks appeared to be armoured, as was the wheelhouse, and on her deck were mounted several cannon. She anchored about eighty yards offshore from the pa, then fired almost casually at the waka moored at the river’s edge. The Kingites let loose with a hail of musket fire, but the bullets pinged uselessly off the vessel’s armour. When the vessel returned six days later, one of the Kingite gun crews fired their cannon from a distance of less than a hundred yards. But the gun had been loaded with iron nails that splashed dramatically into the water around the boat, but did little else.

For the next week, talk was of little else but the strange vessel anchored downstream from the pa. It seemed to be impenetrable by firepower, that was true; but it wasn’t very big, so surely Cameron would not be able to fit all of his men on it and transport them upriver and into the Waikato?

‘It is too quiet,’ Mere said one morning as she and Isla sat with the other Ngati Pono women, preparing kumara for the meal later that day.

Hapu from several iwi—more than eight hundred people—had amassed at Meremere to present a united front against the imperial army, and each contingent fed and looked after itself, although there was a certain amount of sharing where necessary. Despite the frequent councils of rangatira and military
commanders, and a mingling of the men as they worked to further fortify the pa, there was a keen awareness of iwi and even hapu rivalry, and of past wrongs visited and not yet avenged. Traditional enmities had been put aside during the struggle against the Crown, but they had not been forgotten. At least, though, everyone was working towards the same goal, unlike one Waikato hapu, who had allied themselves with the Queen and were defending the imperial depot at Camerontown, several miles downriver from Tuakau and Alexandra Redoubt. They were being referred to, with appropriate disdain, as Queenites, or kupapa—traitors.

Isla said, ‘How d’ye mean, “too quiet”?’

Mere set aside the mussel shell she had been using to scrape the kumara, and wiped her hands on her skirt. ‘Surely if Cameron intended to attack Meremere, he would have done it by now, and not just amused himself by sailing up and down in front of us. He has a whole army at his command! Why does he not attack?’

Mere was clearly beginning to feel the strain that was affecting them all.

‘Have ye had enough?’ Isla asked hesitantly.

Mere inspected a small cut on her finger, so she wouldn’t have to meet her eye. ‘Sometimes, I think yes. Wira is also becoming agitated, and I believe he intends to send some of us home. It is time to attend to our crops.’ She looked up. ‘Do you wish to return to Waikaraka?’

Disconcerted, Isla asked, ‘Is Tai tae be sent back?’

‘I do not think so.’

‘Then I’m no’ going back either.’

Mere smiled. ‘I thought you would say that. I will not be going back myself, not while Wira remains here.’

‘Ye’ll have a job getting Niel tae go home, I expect.’

‘And Harapeta. Many of the men will not want to go. But if they do not, who will make sure we have food for next year? And some of the other hapu have already sent men home.’

Isla nodded: a number of the warriors at Meremere had departed, although most had been relieved by men from their own, or affiliated, hapu. As well, several taua from other Ati Awa hapu had arrived over the past week, as well as contingents from the Taranaki and Whanganui iwi.

Even the fearsome and greatly respected rangatira Rewi Maniapoto had made an appearance a few days ago, on a visit from Ngati Maniapoto’s position at Pukekawa. A handsome, heavily tattooed and extremely fit man of middle age, he carried himself with the chiefly mana that was his right, and all who crossed his path showed him the deference he had earned as a renowned warrior, politician and orator. When others had dithered and procrastinated over taking a concerted stand against the government, Rewi, a strong supporter of the Maori king, had urged overt action: it seemed that his deep suspicion of the Crown had been warranted. Spectacular and charismatic though he was, he still scared the daylights out of Isla, who had ducked behind Mere as he’d passed by.

She and Niel had also met Wiremu Tamihana, William Thompson, when they both had been summoned one day by Wira, to discover with some trepidation that the Kingmaker
wished to speak with them. He was curious to know why two children from the Isle of Skye had taken up arms against the British queen, who also reigned over Scotland and was therefore surely their monarch?

‘Ae, but she shouldnae be,’ Niel had remarked tartly. Then, remembering his manners, had added, ‘Sir.’

‘Is that so?’ Wiremu Tamihana had responded, also in English. He sat down on an upturned barrel and crossed his legs, just like, Isla thought, a man relaxing in his favourite chair in front of the fire after a hard day’s work. ‘Tell me why that should be.’

So, at some length, she and Niel had told him their story, and why they distrusted the English so. Later, she wasn’t able to say whether it had been the genuine curiosity in Wiremu’s voice, or his gentle and calming demeanour that had encouraged such frankness, but he had seemed extremely interested in what they had to say, and afterwards thanked them for their comments and said that he knew that the love of God would be with them in the coming days.

When Isla told Tai what had happened, he clearly couldn’t decide whether to be jealous or awestruck by the fact that she and Niel had been singled out for special attention from the Kingmaker. When he suggested that they should celebrate the honour by sneaking out to a stand of bush beyond the pa for an hour of privacy together, she had laughed and kissed him, but was left with the realization that she and Niel really had been honoured. She was also reminded, however, that she and Tai had not made love since they had left Hikurangi, and suddenly wished,
for purely selfish reasons, that Cameron would either attack and get it over with, or pack up his army and go back to Auckland. The Maori weren’t prudish people, but she knew instinctively that, no matter how eager Tai was to lie with her, he had no wish to share that intimacy with dozens of interested onlookers, even in the dead of night. She also suspected that it might be unwise in the midst of so many men who did not have their women with them.

Several days later, Wira did send some Ngati Pono men home, reducing the contingent from Waikaraka to forty-eight fighting men and thirteen women. But they would be back, and when they did return, another twenty or so men and their women would go, and so on until the campaign had ended. In the meantime, those left at Meremere were busy helping to build a formidable line of defence a little farther south at Rangiriri, which extended east from the Waikato River across to the swampy shores of Lake Waikare, effectively blocking the most direct access into the Waikato.

Finally, at the end of October, it became clear why Cameron had been waiting. Another heavily armed and armoured paddlesteamer appeared on the river, twice the size of the one that had arrived three months earlier and equally impervious to bullets and nail bombs, followed by four armoured barges that had been converted to gunboats.

On the morning of the 31st, before daybreak, Cameron and his
men boarded the gunboats and the armoured steamers. Unscathed by fire from the pa, and responding with considerable firepower of their own, they churned past Meremere and upriver.

The Kingites’ Meremere line had been breached.

S
tunned by the apparent ease with which Cameron had leap-frogged past them, the Kingites abandoned Meremere, leaving behind their artillery pieces, and moved upriver to Rangiriri. There was much discussion about whether Rangiriri should be held or not—neither Wiremu Tamihana nor the recently arrived Tawhiao thought it should. Unlike the Kingites, Cameron obviously had considerable resources at his disposal. Local supplies were running low, and a number of warriors, like those of Ngati Pono, had returned home to tend crops, and although replacements had arrived, the original thousand-man army at Meremere had shrunk to fewer than six hundred. Also, Ngati Maniapoto had departed after a disagreement; Rewi had wanted to make a stand farther south at Taupiri. In the end, though, it was decided that Rangiriri would be defended, and the remaining Kingites—mostly Tawhiao’s Ngati
Mahuta, and other Waikato hapu and their chiefs and military commanders—dug in.

All hands were required, and by the time the defences were deemed satisfactory, leaving the sour smell of soil in the air and great ridges of pale clay piled above the trenches, Isla was exhausted. The core of the line constituted a small but very strong hilltop redoubt, with a system of deep ditches, high parapets and rifle pits extending along a ridge from east to west. Standing atop the earthworks surrounding the redoubt, her boots clarted with clay, Isla could see the Waikato River on one side and the lake on the other, approximately half a mile apart. From what the men had been saying, she knew that Cameron would probably attack from both the river and the open, fern-clad area to the north of the pa. But no one knew when. Every time she thought about what was to come, her stomach lurched queasily and her palms grew damp with sweat.

They had been at Rangiriri for almost three weeks now, working on the defences all day and into the night. She was desperately tired—they all were—and hungry; unlike Cameron, with his regular river deliveries of supplies, and his bullocks and drays loaded with kegs of salted meat and barrels of water. And she knew she smelt awful. There was water, but it was preserved for drinking, not washing: summer was on its way and it had rained only four times since they had been here. She could have swum in the river, but had been too frightened that Cameron and his gunboats might suddenly steam around the bend.

As the days of waiting stretched into weeks, she knew everyone
else’s nerves were as frayed as hers. While their men snapped at each other, the chiefs and their commanders conferred frequently. Tawhiao was a man of immense mana, with a stern, heavily tattooed face, and Isla could see why he had been chosen as king. He was a politician as well as a commander, and issued regular edicts urging all within the Rangiriri defences to remain calm and focused. It helped greatly, she thought, to have a man with such standing and influence to hold them all together.

Laddie, too, seemed sensitive to the tension, and persisted in picking fights with the handful of other dogs at Rangiriri. Being the largest, he tried to dominate them, and the vicious snarling during the consequent clashes escalated to the point where Wira ordered Isla to tether him. So she reluctantly tied Laddie to a post with a length of rope, with which he soon almost choked himself. After a morning of wincing at his strangled whining and coughing, she untied him, but left just enough rope around his neck to act as a collar should she need to grab him in a hurry.

That night, lying next to Tai and watching the stars as they tracked slowly across the black sky, she whispered, ‘When’s Cameron gonnae come, Tai? I cannae put up wi’ this for much longer.’

‘Are you frightened?’ He propped himself on one elbow and looked down at her.

She tucked her hands against his chest, enjoying the warmth. ‘Aye. I’m sorry, mo leannan, but I am.’

Kissing the top of her head, he murmured, ‘You are not the only one. We all are.’

‘No one else
looks
scairt.’

‘We are, all of us. It is a fool who on the eve of battle declares himself not frightened. A fool or a liar.’

Isla thought about her brother’s confident declaration that he felt only eagerness to face Cameron and his troops. ‘So which one is Niel?’

‘Your brother is no fool, so he must be a liar. But not a very good one.’

Feeling marginally better, Isla smiled to herself and snuggled against Tai, closing her eyes when he began to stroke her hair. After a minute he said quietly, ‘You can go if you want to, Isla. I will understand. This is not your war.’

Isla’s eyes snapped open. ‘Go where?’

‘Back to Waikaraka. One or two of the other women may wish to return, too. Shall I speak to Mere in the morning?’

‘Ye will
no’.
Ma place is wi’ you, Tai. You and Niel. I wis only telling ye that I feel scairt. I didnae mean I wanted tae go home. And none o’ the other women want tae leave.’ Isla’s voice had risen and several people nearby mumbled and glanced across at her. Whispering again, she said, ‘We’ve all agreed we’re gonnae stay wi’ oor men, no matter what happens. And so we will.’

‘Ah, my little golden girl,’ Tai breathed, and kissed her forehead. ‘I am glad. I would be sad if you did go. But you would be safe.’

Isla rolled over. ‘I’m safe here wi’ you,’ she said, and heard his breath catch as she snuggled her bottom against him.

‘You will not be if you keep doing that.’

Isla giggled, and felt Tai, his mouth against the back of her
head, smile. But, serious again, she said, ‘It’s true, Tai. I’ll always be safe when I’m wi’ ye, no matter what.’

The next day, 20 November, at three o’clock in the afternoon, it became clear that the waiting was over. Cameron’s army gathered on a ridge six hundred yards to the north of Rangiriri and set up their heavy Armstrong guns. At the same time, the two paddle-steamers, towing the four gunboats packed with troops, steamed past Rangiriri to a position just south of the fortifications.

Behind the parapets and in the rifle pits, the Kingite troops checked their weapons, said quick prayers and readied themselves for the coming battle. Isla, with the rest of the women, crouched in the shelter of the redoubt, her hand firmly gripping Laddie’s rope collar. Above them, Tawhiao strode along the earthworks, his face grim, urging his men to hold their fire until he gave the command. The strong wind dropped, and it seemed to Isla that the whole world had suddenly fallen silent.

Then Tawhiao’s arm came sweeping down and the firing began in a deafening fusillade of musket and shotgun blasts. Laddie wrenched himself out of Isla’s grasp and raced out of the redoubt, barking madly. Almost immediately an answering shell whistled overhead and exploded near the redoubt, blasting shrapnel in all directions and showering everyone with clumps of clay and soil. Isla cried out in fright and flung her arms over her head, but her face was still peppered with dirt. Thank God she had been sitting below ground level. Spitting to clear her mouth, she followed Mere
as she crawled from the redoubt to the nearest wounded man and helped to drag him below the parapet. The noise was tremendous, and Isla, the earth literally moving beneath her, had to use all her will just to avoid wetting herself.

When she got a clear look at the man’s wounds, she gasped and immediately felt her gorge rise. He had been hit in the face by shrapnel which had torn off his right ear, sliced through his cheek leaving his teeth exposed, and taken out an eye. His blood, so fresh and red and prolific, instantly transported her back to the day her mother and father had been murdered. She stepped away and bent over, vomiting up hot and sour bile, and her meagre breakfast.

Behind her, Mere barked, ‘I need help, Isla!’

Averting her eyes from the man’s wounds, Isla said weakly, ‘I’m no’ sure I can do this, Mere.’

Another shell exploded nearby, but Mere barely flinched. Her gaze held Isla’s. ‘Kia kaha, Isla,’ she said.
Be strong
. ‘You are needed.’

And Isla suddenly realized that if she couldn’t be strong she would not only fail Niel, but also Jean and Jamie, whom she might never see again if she and everyone else perished in this battle. She glanced across at Atarangi and Hera, two other Ngati Pono women tending to a warrior who appeared to have lost some fingers, tying a strip of cloth tightly around his forearm. They nodded at her encouragingly, but did not stop their ministrations.

So, taking a deep breath, Isla tucked her hair behind her ears and bent over the warrior, working to wipe the dirt from the
flapping wound in his cheek. Her gorge rose again but she forced it back down, and soon she was aware of little more than noise, warm torn skin and the smell of blood as shells continued to whistle into the fortifications and more wounded men appeared in the redoubt, dragged there by their comrades. She did not recognize any of them.

‘Have ye seen any o’ oor men?’ she said to Mere.

‘Do not think about that,’ Mere replied, not looking up. ‘You must just do your job.’

So Isla did, ignoring the slipperiness of her bloodied hands, the faces of the men before her and, at one point, the cold wetness of Laddie’s snout as he licked her face to make sure she was all right before bounding off again.

Within the shelter of the redoubt, the women could not see what others could—that Cameron’s second flank, the naval contingent, was in trouble. One paddle-steamer, struggling with the blustering wind and bullying river currents, could not make a landing on the bank and was in fact blocking the fire from the other vessel and the gunboats. But Cameron, apparently unconcerned, ordered his men to attack the fortifications head-on. Those on the heights of Rangiriri watched keenly as a line of imperial troops advanced through the fern and bracken with their bayonets fixed, many falling when hit by Kingite bullets or dropping to find shelter. Minutes later, a party of troops carrying ladders ran forward at the double, while others in the advancing line veered off through the swamp between the pa and the river, fighting hard and breaching the defences, and came at the pa from the rear.

All Isla knew of this was confused and urgent shouting from the men within earshot, and an increase in the number of wounded arriving at the redoubt, hurt by bullets now, rather than shrapnel. The men who could be patched up returned to the fight; those too badly wounded to continue were hastily tended to and left in a position of relative safety behind the parapet. The dead were dragged to one side, out of the way.

More shouting, panicked now, rose above the musket fire, and suddenly Tai was at her shoulder, his face bleeding freely from a deep, hook-shaped cut on his right temple. Isla reached up to wipe away the blood, but he grabbed her wrist to make sure she listened.

‘They have got around by the river and are behind us,’ he shouted into her face. ‘Some of the warriors have gone into the swamp towards the lake and been shot down. And the boats have landed. We could be surrounded and cut off.’

In a voice shrill with panic, Isla shouted back, ‘Are we tae be overrun?’

‘Not yet. We still have the higher ground, and they cannot put up their heads without being shot. And they cannot scale the parapets—their ladders are too short. You must leave the wounded and help to reload the muskets.’

Isla looked to Mere, who nodded, stood and gestured to the other women to follow her.

And so Isla found herself in a deep rifle pit along with Tai, Pare’s husband Kimiora, and Niel, snatching ammunition from the bandoliers the men wore and furiously reloading muskets and
shotguns as they were handed to her. Already she had blisters from handling the hot gun barrels. Below her, strewn across the flat ground in front of the fortifications, were the dead and dying bodies of many imperial troops, the blue of their uniforms merging into the fern as the sun began to set across the river. But, slipping and sliding on the fresh clay of the earthworks on her way to the rifle pit, she had passed many warriors dead where they had fallen. So many on both sides had died already, and now night was falling. She felt sick, but there was nothing else to do but keep loading the shotguns and ramming powder and balls into the muskets.

When it was finally too dark to see, and after the fighting had stopped, the defenders of Rangiriri took advantage of the blackness to evacuate their wounded and dead via trenches running east and south of the fortifications, and paddle them in waka across Lake Waikare. Wiremu Tamihana and Tawhiao also left the pa, as did most of the women, and Ngati Pono and other hapu, leaving little more than one hundred and eighty Kingites behind. When the sun rose, it seemed that they surrendered to the British.

But, as many of those who had departed Rangiriri heard later, the surrender had been the result of a misunderstanding. Te Kumete, a Kawhia chief, had raised a white flag, to indicate a willingness to negotiate. Cameron and his men entered the pa soon after, complimented the Maori on their bravery, then demanded that they hand over their arms. In a show of good faith the defenders did so but, to their indignation, realized too late that there was to be no negotiation, and that they were instead prisoners of the Queen.

T
ARANAKI

To their horror, Waikaraka appeared completely abandoned when Isla and the Ngati Pono taua arrived back halfway through December. Very aware that vicious fighting between local Maori and the British had erupted again in Taranaki while they had been away, and believing that imperial soldiers must have been through and killed or driven off their kinfolk, the women began to wail and to tear at their hair. But nothing had been torched, the gardens were still intact and appeared well tended, and, apart from the complete absence of the village’s livestock, nothing appeared to have been stolen. So Wira sent a party to Puketeitei, Ngati Pono’s fortified pa further inland, thinking that his people might have retreated there.

They had, and there was much rejoicing the following day, when they came trudging back through the gates of Waikaraka leading the horses and herding the cows and bullocks, the cart piled with baskets containing chickens and the village’s single, bad-tempered rooster. And even though lives had been lost at Meremere and Rangiriri, and the remaining defenders taken prisoner, there were envious mutterings from the men who had come back to Waikaraka early and missed the excitement. It was decided, therefore, that those men would leave in a few days to join the other Kingites currently fighting in Taranaki. No Ngati Pono men had died at Rangiriri, but a handful had been injured, and
Mere, pleased to finally have access to her full range of medicines and salves, immediately set about tending them, bickering with Te Katate, as always, about the best way to go about it.