Visions of Liberty (17 page)

He nudged his buckskin alongside Simon's bay.

"Who is
that
?" he asked, indicating the girl with a tilt of his head.

Simon looked and smiled. When he replied his voice was warm with affection.

"That's Jocelyn Lee. She's a cousin of the Dutchmans, came up from Auckland over the winter. She's been staying with them since August. I'm surprised you haven't met her."

Simon clipped the end off that last sentence, suddenly uncomfortable. The fact was, Faelin had become more and more a hermit over that winter. Simon did almost all their trading, even picking up the butter and cheese from the Dutchmans. Faelin had done the fishing, building, even the sewing—anything that gave him an excuse to let Simon be the one to go out.

Faelin felt a faint regret for lost opportunities. Then suddenly he didn't care. Jocelyn Lee was here. So was he. There was to be dancing that evening. He would dance with her. He would woo her. He would win her.

Faelin worked that day with a constant awareness of Jocelyn's graceful presence. When the day warmed, he stripped off his shirt, knowing his muscles would show to advantage. He did every job with a smile on his lips, knowing he'd shine better in her eyes. He even avoided the horse race—though he longed to try his buckskin against the cooper's black—lest the old tale of their scrap go round and cheapen him in her eyes.

All that day he listened as the flirting note of her laughter, sweeter than any music, carried across the bleating of indignant sheep. When Jocelyn carried around cold water for the shearers' refreshment, Faelin introduced himself, then found himself too fumble-tongued to carry on.

When the shearing was done, Faelin retired to the room he and Simon had taken for the night and scrubbed down with care. He dressed in his best clothes, glad now that Simon had insisted they pack them along.

Like most sailors, Faelin had learned to tailor and embroider. The bleached cotton shirt he wore fit to perfection and was graced with tiny blue stars. After tying his freshly washed hair back in a sailor's queue and donning newly polished boots, Faelin inspected himself in the mirror and was pleased with the sight.

Faelin's grooming had taken so long that Simon had left without him. When he entered the torch-lit circle where three-quarters of the area's population had gathered, Faelin felt strangely shy, aware that he was still a stranger in a group of friends.

To cover his discomfort, he put a sailor's swagger into his walk and joined Simon by the buffet. The food was free—donated by all the participants and transformed into a feast by those who hadn't actually been working with the sheep. The centerpiece might have been Farmer Lamont's barbecued pig, but there was such a variety of food spread around it that even its vast bulk was dwarfed.

Faelin ate lightly, waiting impatiently for Jocelyn to arrive. Even after the dancing had started, she didn't come. Gruffly, Faelin refused an invitation from saucy Debbie Dutchman, waiting like an eagle for Jocelyn lest he not be free to dive upon her when she arrived.

When Jocelyn did come in, the dancing was in full swing. Even so it seemed to Faelin that Jocelyn brought her own music with her. In workday trousers and shirt, she'd been eye-catching. Now, dressed for a party, she was everything he had dreamed—lovely as springtime itself in a floor-length frock of deep red silk embellished with scattered golden flowers.

That silk gown should have been a warning to Faelin, but he was too besotted to think. Jocelyn stood poised near the edge of the circle of light and the swirl of dancing. Contrary to Faelin's expectation that she would be pounced on as soon as she arrived, she remained alone, though by far the finest woman in the place.

Why it's just like with me, Faelin thought. No one will have anything to do with her because she's so far above the rest. They want to lower her to their level—to transform that lovely princess into a wallflower as they've tried to make me every man's lackey. 

Faelin strode over to her, the beating of his heart in his ears louder than the combined fiddles and guitars, so that he felt strangely disconnected from everything around him. He made Jocelyn a sweeping bow, aware that he cut a dashing figure, and held out his hand.

"May I have this dance, sweet lady?"

In his imagination—fevered all that day so he hardly remembered the sheep, the mud, the faces of those he'd worked beside—Jocelyn had blushed prettily and put her hand in his. Then he'd swept her off into the middle of the dancing, the two of them becoming the shining heart of the action, paired stars that transformed all the rest into extras.

But in reality, Jocelyn returned his bow with a pretty curtsy and smiled.

"Thank you, sir, but I'm waiting for my fiancé."

"Your what! Who . . ."

Faelin heard himself bellow so loudly that the dancers nearest turned to stare and the musicians faltered for a moment in their playing.

"My fiancé," Jocelyn replied. "He had a bit of business to conclude."

"Then he's lost his chance," Faelin said, struggling for gallantry. "Let me convince you . . ."

A new voice cut in from slightly behind him.

"Convince her of what, Faelin?"

Faelin knew that voice, light and a touch impish, mocking him yet again.

"Chapin!"

He wheeled and found the little monkey man looking up at him, head tilted in inquiry, a smile on his lips.

"I see you've met my betrothed," Chapin said. "Jocelyn Lee, meet Faelin the Sailor, late of the
Speculation
and of California, now settler—neighbor to your cousins the Dutchmans."

Faelin saw red. He didn't know what made him more furious—that this little man should have somehow bought Jocelyn Lee or that in his mocking way he should make his introduction a reminder that Faelin was just a settler, not pakeha, not now, and—if Chapin had his damnable way not ever—not unless Faelin became Chapin's lackey, building other folks' houses, shearing their sheep, taking their insults . . . 

Jocelyn had slid her slender hand into Chapin's skinny paw and was smiling up at Faelin.

"Pleased to meet you, Faelin. I know your partner, of course. Sweet Simon we call him, always such a help. Such a hand with the cattle."

Faelin began to tremble with fury. So Simon had turned against him. Jocelyn might name him Faelin's partner, but clearly he'd become a toady to these enemies . . . 

He gnashed his teeth. He hadn't known anyone ever really did that, but in the madness that was overtaking him, he gnashed them, feeling them grind like rocks in his mouth.

"You!" he bellowed, a rough growl that echoed through the suddenly quiet throng. He hardly noticed that the dancing had stopped, only that his words carried farther. "You, Chapin! What did you pay for her?"

"Pay?" Chapin looked astonished.

Jocelyn, still clinging to his hand, colored, her golden skin flushing crimson.

"Pay? Chapin repeated.

"Aye, pay," Faelin growled. "You make everyone trade with you, monkey man. I won't believe that such a beauty would agree to wed a skinny old monkey like you if you didn't offer a good trade. Did you give her cousins more cattle for their farm? Or did you buy her with pretty things and the promise of a three-story stone house?"

The significance of the silk dress came to him. Vaguely Faelin recalled having seen a bolt of that fabric on his first visit to the store.

"Aye," he continued, tapping Jocelyn's sleeve. "I see she's wearing part of your trade. Well then, I've a trade for you. I'll trade you your life for the girl. Otherwise, I'm going to rip your head off those scrawny shoulders and take her home with me. What do you say to that offer?"

Chapin shook his head gently, almost sadly, then said:

"I have a counter offer for you, Faelin. Look around."

And Faelin did. Behind him the assembled pakeha had drawn into a semicircle. No one carried weapons, but fists were clenched and faces were stern.

From in the midst of that crowd of disapproval, old Farmer Lamont shook his gray head.

"We don't do things that way, Faelin. Jocelyn has the right to make up her mind who she wants to marry. If she wants to marry Chapin—for whatever reason—we support her, especially since Chapin wants to marry her, too, and no other woman has a claim on him."

There was a murmur of uneasy male laughter as if to say "What man in his right mind
wouldn't
want to marry Jocelyn?"

Faelin spat. "You talk of claims, of rights, Lamont. I thought Aotearoa had no laws."

"No government," Lamont said with a slight stress on the second word. "Law is not the same as government. Law is the rules by which a society decides to live. What we support here is the right of every human to decide his or her own life, free of some governing body asserting its rights over theirs."

"And my rights?" Faelin countered. "Seems like since I've come here, everyone has been steering me to do things their way. I can't get a bag of flour or a pig or a few days' work on my land without trotting about doing everyone else's bidding."

"Your rights are yours," Lamont expounded, shades of the lawyer he had once been in his intonation. "You can make your own flour or raise your own pigs or work your own land, but if you want to make someone else do something, then you'd better have the means to enforce your will. Seems to me that when you're accusing us of making you do our bidding, what you're really complaining about is that you can't make us do your bidding."

"There's no law against my way," Faelin sneered.

"No law," Lamont agreed, "but we don't like your manners much."

Faelin swung on his heel to look at Jocelyn. She was holding on to Chapin's arm, her posture protective. Whatever Chapin had paid for her, he'd bought her well and good.

"Damn you all," he said to no one in particular.

He spotted Simon on the edge of the crowd, Roto sitting on his feet.

"C'mon, Simon. We're cutting out of here."

Simon shook his head.

"Not me. I've got dancing to do."

Faelin stared at him, then he stormed out past the circle of torchlight and into the darkness beyond. The buckskin was at least tied up and waiting. Tacking it up, he swung into the saddle.

As he rode off, he heard a wave of laughter and the music starting up again. Angrily, he turned the horse's head not west toward the claim, but north to Auckland.

Bandits stole the buckskin two days later, taking also Faelin's boots, his leather belt with its brass buckle, and the trade trinkets from his pockets. Almost as an afterthought, one ugly fellow made him strip out of his party clothes, tossing him a ragged shirt in trade.

Faelin made the rest of the way to Auckland half-naked and on bare feet. He hobbled into town and discovered that there was no police or soldiery interested in his sorrows. A group of bounty hunters paid him in secondhand shoes and trousers for information on the bandits. They weren't interested in his joining them, though.

"Get a horse," one said, "maybe then."

Faelin turned to robbery. After one nasty beating when he underestimated the strength of the man he planned to assault, he humbled himself to laborer's work. He stayed away from the docks, though, lest someone who'd known him in better days recognize him.

Summer wasn't too bad, nor was autumn, but winter came in wet and chill. After nearly dying of hypothermia one night, Faelin traded some of his earnings to bunk in a barracks. He was robbed there, set back to almost the same naked condition in which he'd arrived in Auckland six months before.

He began to dream of Richmont as one might a fairyland. No one had robbed him there—not even though he and Simon were two men alone and known to be rich. Folk had even been kind, after a fashion. Oddly enough it was little Debra Dutchman's laughing attempt to get him to dance with her that haunted Faelin most. What had he done to earn that kindness?

Winter turned to spring. With the better weather, clipper ships came into dock. Faelin was drawn to them, haunted by his past. At first he watched from a distance, admiring the white spread of the sails. He began to think that if only he could get off this damned island, maybe he could earn enough to make his way. He'd lost weight and muscle, but the skills were there.

Soon, whenever he wasn't working—earning just enough to keep him in poor food and worse clothing—Faelin took to lurking about the docks, the pride that had kept him away faded to a shadow. In a way he was still afraid to be seen by anyone who might know him, yet he longed for the contact that might get him a berth.

Late one afternoon in September, almost a year after he had fled Richmont, a voice spoke his name.

"Faelin?"

He looked up, trying to place the voice, realizing with shock that the man who was speaking to him was Simon. Superficially, Simon looked the same, but there was something to his bearing—a straightness, a way of meeting your eye when talking to you—that transformed him into another man. Faelin, who had been much beaten and kicked this past year, had to fight an automatic urge to cringe.

"Faelin!" Simon repeated, dropping to his knees next to him. "Man, you're alive! I'd given you up for dead. I've been looking . . ."

He stopped, shocked as he assessed his former partner's condition. Then he went on in a deliberately steady voice:

"I've been looking since last year. Someone said they saw your buckskin for sale in a shady market at the edge of Auckland. I went there, but no luck, though I did find someone who remembered a man wearing what had to be your shirt. It wasn't you though—for one thing he was older, for another fair as a whale's belly. I kept checking for you though, came on all the supply runs to Auckland, but never got a whiff of you.

"When the clippers were due, though, I thought I'd check again. Seemed you might have gotten a berth, if by luck you'd gotten here alive. God's own, man, but what happened to you?"

Faelin told him, first crouched there on the street, later, when Simon recovered himself, in a tavern where they drank good ale and Faelin had his fill of chowder and bread.

"And so here I am," Faelin concluded. Simon's honest joy at finding him alive had robbed him of any defensiveness. He'd told the entire thing straight, even including the embarrassing parts.