Queen Liliuokalani: Royal Prisoner (8 page)

“You’ll see tomorrow,” Lydia told them.

The next morning, the sky was not the beautiful cloudless blue it had been. Instead, low gray clouds threatened rain.

“I hope we get there before the rain starts,”
Maisie said as they climbed into a coach with Lydia, Victoria, and Emma.

The coach made its way through the crowded streets of Honolulu. It appeared that everyone was heading to the Restoration Day celebration.

By the time they reached the Nu‘uanu picnic grounds, the rain had begun. But no one seemed to notice or care. The streets were lined with people waiting for the parade that was moving toward them to arrive. And Maisie and Felix, in one of the royal coaches with three of the
ali‘i
children, were part of that parade.

The native people stood beneath the thatched roofs of two large pavilions, their arms full of flowers.

The parade was led by horses ridden by the older
ali‘i
children. The people in the parade—even the horses—were decked out in vivid yellow and red and blue, covered in ribbons and flowers. Behind the older children came their royal carriage. Maisie noticed how proudly Lydia sat, her back erect and her face composed. At the sight of them, the onlookers began to throw flowers into the carriage. Lydia unfurled the Hawaiian flag, which looked a lot like the British flag to Maisie. It had red, white, and blue
stripes, and a rectangle in the upper left corner with the Union Jack in it. Lydia waved it wildly.

The carriage behind theirs was even grander. As soon as it appeared, the Hawaiians cheered so loudly that Maisie’s and Felix’s ears rang.

“Kamehameha!” the crowd shouted, bowing and throwing still more flowers into the king’s carriage, where he sat with the queen, smiling out at everyone.

When Maisie turned around to look, she couldn’t take her eyes off the king. Tall and handsome, with olive skin and a fat dark moustache, he wore an enormous cape covered in brilliant yellow feathers. But Felix was riveted by the pageantry that followed the king’s royal carriage. Behind it came what appeared to be a thousand riders on horseback, all of them wearing ribbons and flowers. And behind them came a few thousand more men on horseback who were less decorated but still as colorful as all the others. Neither Maisie nor Felix had ever seen such a grand sight.

The coaches came to a stop, and Maisie and Felix joined the
ali‘i
children standing in two rows.

A tall man in a yellow cape stood before them and saluted.

The name John ‘Ī‘ī was whispered in the pavilion with great reverence.

John ‘Ī‘ī dropped the cape from his shoulders, revealing the most impressive muscles Felix had ever seen. The crowd gasped at the sight of him, bare-chested and walking purposefully into an arena where twenty men holding spears waited.

“What’s he going to do with those guys?” Maisie asked Lydia.

“Fight them,” Lydia said matter-of-factly.

“But he doesn’t have a weapon!” Maisie said.

“It’s the tradition of ancient warriors,” Lydia answered, never taking her eyes from John ‘Ī‘ī. “He must stand alone and unarmed.”

“But they’ll kill him!” Felix said, covering his eyes.

When the crowd cheered, he peeked between his fingers and watched John ‘Ī‘ī catch the first spear as if it were the easiest thing to do. The spears began to fly, aimed with great force and speed at what seemed like every part of his body at the same time. Effortlessly, John ‘Ī‘ī caught each spear, and flung them back with equal force and amazing gracefulness.

Felix let his hand drop from his eyes, and watched in awe as every one of the spearmen were sent from the field. As the twentieth one was driven out, everyone—even the westerners—cheered so exuberantly that the ground shook with the power of their applause and shouting.

Maisie was still trembling with a combination of fear and excitement when a guard arrived to escort the children to the royal banquet.

As part of aloha, commoners were invited to eat with the king and queen. Maisie and Felix found spots to sit on tatami mats at one of the long, low tables. They feasted on roast suckling pig and fried fish and, of course, the ever-present poi.

Licking her fingers, Maisie caught sight of the adjacent room. It was full of
haole
—westerners—sitting on beautifully carved wooden chairs at a table draped in white linen, eating from china plates with real silverware and crystal glasses.

Lydia followed Maisie’s gaze, and touched her arm lightly.

“It’s aloha,” she said in a soft voice.

Maisie frowned. “How can it be aloha?” she asked.

Lydia just shook her head.

“Maisie,” she said carefully, “my people lived happily for thousands of years before Captain James Cook arrived here in 1778. We tended our land and worshipped our gods, and we were happy. The
kahuna
—the priests—set the
kapu
, which were all the things that were forbidden, and we followed these rules. Until the foreigners came. Then, Kamehameha the Second observed the
haole
men and women sitting together and ignoring the gods’ wishes, and he saw there were no negative consequences for their actions. No tidal waves or thunder or fire or deaths. So he lifted the
kapu
. When the missionaries arrived, they found my people without beliefs, struggling. It was easy to convert us,” she added sadly.

Maisie tried to make sense of all she was saying.

“Do you wish the
ka…kapu
were still in place?”

“I wish my people and our kingdom weren’t getting erased,” she said solemnly.

Maisie wished she could reassure her. But Hawaii would become a state, and the changes Lydia feared were, indeed, inevitable.

“Some people believe it’s only a matter of time
before your country claims us,” Lydia was saying.

She took Maisie’s hands in hers and looked her right in the eyes.

“But I can’t imagine it. Hawaii a state? My kingdom gone?” Lydia paused. “Can you?” she asked finally.

“S
leep well,” Lydia told them when they returned to the palace that night. “You won’t be getting much sleep tomorrow night.”

“What’s tomorrow night?” Felix asked.

“We’re going to Hawai‘i, and I thought you might want to come along.”

“Aren’t we already on Hawaii?” Maisie asked.

“Hawaii is made up of eight islands,” Lydia explained. “This one is Oahu. The capital, Lahaina, is on Maui. And the biggest island is Hawai‘i. It’s called that. The Big Island.”

“Where is that?” Felix asked. He tried to hide his trepidation, but when Lydia laughed at him, he realized she saw that he was wary.

“It is very far across the ocean,” Lydia said. “We will get there by canoe.”

“We’re canoeing across the ocean?” Felix said, panicked.

“That sounds great,” Maisie said.

“Do we have to paddle the canoe?” Felix said.

“
We
don’t paddle it,” Lydia explained. “There are ten rowers and ten sailors who do it for us. It will take most of the night.”

As she left the room, she added, “So get a good rest tonight.”

Maisie loved the idea of this new adventure. Boarding a giant canoe—it
must
be giant to fit so many people—and sailing through the dark night to a different island where the king waited for them sounded like the perfect way to spend their time.

“Wow,” Maisie said. “A canoe trip across the ocean with twenty people rowing for us. I kind of like being royalty.”

“So it’s safe?” Felix asked her.

“Oh, don’t be so nervous,” Maisie scolded him. “It’s perfectly safe.”

Felix wasn’t so sure.

“Maybe we’ll find the crown floating in the water,” he mumbled.

“The crown,” Maisie groaned. “We need to figure out how to find it.”

Before Felix could agree, she added, “When we get back from the Big Island.”

To Maisie and Felix’s surprise, not only were they and Lydia and ten sailors and ten rowers going to Hawai‘i,
all
the royal children were going. The canoe actually looked like a long, giant tree that had been hollowed out, with the ten rowers standing inside, bare-chested, paddles at the ready. Maisie and Felix found places together on the bark floor.

Felix noticed that the older kids stuck together at the prow of the boat. From where he sat, he had a clear, unobstructed view of Bernice. She had woven flowers in her hair, and as she laughed with Victoria, her dimples deepened.

His reverie was interrupted by the oldest, David, who thrust a coconut into his hands. The top had been sliced off.

“Drink,” David instructed, lifting his own coconut and gulping its milk.

Felix took a big swallow and leaned back. Maybe this wouldn’t be too terrible, he thought. He only hoped he wouldn’t get seasick, the way he usually did.

As the canoe glided across the waves, Lydia and Emma started to weave flowers into Maisie’s and each other’s hair. The sky quickly grew dark, and Lydia sang a Hawaiian song in the sweetest voice Maisie had ever heard. With the fragrant flowers in her hair, and her stomach full of the snacks that got passed around, Maisie stared up at the starry sky above them.

“What a pretty song, Lydia,” Maisie said. “What does it mean?”

Instead of answering, Lydia began to sing again, this time in English.

“Profuse bloom glowing as a delight, and lei for Kamakaeha,” she sang.

“It’s her song,” Emma whispered to Maisie.

“What do you mean?”

“Konia, her
hanai
mother, wrote it for her. It’s her name song,” Emma explained.

Maisie knew she had heard the word
hanai
before, but she couldn’t remember what it meant.

“Hanai?”
she asked Emma.

“The people her parents gave her to,” Emma said simply.

That’s right,
Maisie thought. On that day at the seaport, the conch blower had announced that the royal baby had been given to parents of a higher royal stature. And Lydia was that royal baby.

“Listen,” Emma whispered to Maisie as Lydia sang, “Ka‘ala wears a lei of rain and flowers…”

When Lydia finished her song, Emma moved closer to Maisie and whispered into her ear.

“You see, in the song Konia gave Lydia her legacy: the flowers, the rain, the mountains and valleys.” Emma leaned back and sighed her dreamy sigh. “There could be no richer legacy than this.”

Soon, Emma fell asleep, her head bobbing against Maisie’s shoulder. All around Maisie, the sounds of sleeping children mingled with the lapping of the oars in the water. Finally, she closed her eyes, too, her mind filled with images of flowers and mountaintops, and Lydia’s sweet song.