‘I had not expected that,’ he said, looking at her sideways.
‘No,’ Isla replied, and giggled. ‘But I’m verra glad o’ it.’
Tai grinned and pulled her to him in a ferocious hug. ‘Ae, so am I,’ he said, and they sat for several minutes, wrapped in each other’s arms.
Isla closed her eyes and felt herself wanting to drift into sleep, to stay under the tree with Tai forever. And then her father’s voice came to her:
Look oot for them, Isla!
She shook her head to clear it, stood and fastened her blouse. ‘I have tae go, Tai.’
Leaving him sitting under the tree with tears in his eyes, she walked away across the glade, turning once to wave. And then she was gone.
Isla let her peke slide to the ground and squinted up at the sun: just after midday. ‘Aboot another seven or so hours, I’d say,’ she remarked to Laddie, who gave a short half-hearted bark.
They had been walking continually since they’d left the inlets and little bays of Tauranga this morning, but fired with the desperate need to see Jean and Jamie again and know that they
were all right, Isla was alive with nervous energy. Tonight she would find somewhere safe to sleep; she planned to reach Maketu the next day around noon. The quickest way to get there would be via the long sweep of beach that Wira had said ran from the mountain called Maunganui at the southern end of Tauranga Harbour as far as Maketu, but there were imperial ships anchored all along the coast, and the risk of being seen was too high. She could easily pass for a settler fleeing Tauranga, she knew that, but she had no intention of wasting her precious time acting out such a charade for anyone who might ask.
So she had been travelling across country, and the going had not been too gruelling. But some of the land was forested, which slowed her down even though she kept to the traditional walking tracks; other parts crossed open tracts of fern and bracken. Laddie delighted in these, racing off to chase birds and even bringing back one he had caught; Isla made him leave it in the bracken as an offering to Tane, god of the forest. But the next one he caught, she would share with him for supper.
Twice now, though, she’d had to get off the track quickly as horsemen approached. From her hiding places, she had seen that both had been army dispatch riders, no doubt carrying messages between one imperial camp and another. Since the first one had passed her, she had been careful to keep her ears attuned for the sound of hoofbeats. The only other people she encountered were small groups of Maori, who at first regarded her with suspicion, but then stopped to share news after she addressed them in Maori, telling them of the victory at Gate Pa. One pair, however, had
already heard, so news must have spread by sea down the coast. This meant that the garrison at Maketu probably also knew and would be even more on guard.
She and Laddie slept in the bush that night and were on their way again at first light. The morning was cool and Isla wished she had her warm tartan cloak, which she had left behind with Mere because it was so heavy. It was also starting to rain, and the track was quickly becoming slippery. Nearby, she could hear the gurgle of a stream as rainwater began to flow into it, and her stomach rumbled as she thought of the eels that would be hovering near its banks, their sinuous bodies dancing against the movement of the water.
‘Shall we have tuna for breakfast?’ she asked Laddie, who shot excitedly off around a corner in the track. Isla smiled: although Laddie was good at catching birds, he was hopeless with eels, not having the patience to stand in the water long enough for the creatures to forget he was there before he pounced.
Suddenly, she heard a short, sharp bark, and froze in her tracks. What had he found? Was someone coming the other way? She moved into the forest, out of sight, but no one passed. She waited a few minutes more, then, when Laddie barked again, hurried along the track to find him. His bark had been an excited one, not frightened or otherwise distressed, but she felt the hairs on her arms rise all the same. Just before the bend, she stopped and checked that she had loaded both barrels of the shotgun. It was Tai’s, taken from the body of a British soldier at Rangiriri, and one of the new breech-loading models. She cocked the hammer,
raised the stock to her shoulder and stepped cautiously around the corner.
Before her, the track opened up to run alongside a stream, although from where she stood she couldn’t yet see the water. Laddie, standing at the edge of the bank and peering down, turned to her and barked again. Nearby, its head down, grazed a large bay horse, fully saddled. Isla’s gaze flicked around the clearing. No one else was visible, but the rider must be somewhere. Silently she crossed the open space and, very warily, looked over the edge.
Below her, at the bottom of the steep bank, lay a soldier flat on his back, his trousers around his ankles, one arm outstretched and his firearm a short distance from his fingers. His head was twisted at an unnatural angle and he wasn’t moving. Isla noted several fresh gouges in the edge of the bank not far from where she stood, and realized what had happened: the soldier had stopped to relieve himself and, extending his bare backside too far over the bank, had slipped and fallen, breaking his neck on the way down. At least, she hoped he had broken his neck.
‘Away!’ she whispered to Laddie, who bounded down the bank and trotted over to the motionless figure. He sniffed about, then barked in the man’s face. When there was no response, he took a mouthful of his jacket and pulled, but still nothing happened, except that the soldier’s head lolled with a very unpleasant looseness. Isla decided he was indeed dead, and slid down the bank to investigate.
He was young, dark-haired, and his eyes were open, staring sightlessly up at the tall ferns growing along the river. His little
round hat had fallen off and there was mud on one side of his face. She touched his outstretched hand; it was cold, but the stiffness of death hadn’t yet set in. Isla felt a little sorry for him—dead just because he’d needed a shite—but he could have been the man who fired the cannon that wounded Niel. But no, this boy was a cavalryman, not a gunner.
She picked up his weapon and examined it. It was one of the new Snider carbines, designed to be used on horseback and therefore quite short in the barrel; a very nice piece.
She laid it aside with her own weapon, and squatted next to the soldier, considering. Then she opened the buttons of his field jacket and eased his arms out of it. When she sat the body up, it emitted a long, loud belch, which almost scared the life out her until she realized what it was—only air escaping from a gullet that didn’t need it any more. She put the jacket on over her long-sleeved blouse. It was a bit dirty, but then so was she. She also removed the soldier’s boots, then his warm serge trousers, relieved that his tumble down the bank had apparently halted the activity of his bowel: the trousers would be useful as the weather became colder. She contemplated the boots, but they would be far too big for her.
She collected her weapons and climbed halfway up the bank. But something made her stop and glance back at the dead soldier; a sorry, bedraggled figure now in his dishevelled, grubby white undergarments. Relenting slightly, she slid back down, tugged his drawers up his legs to where they should be, then broke several small branches off a fern and laid them over his face.
Satisfied, she scrambled up the bank and walked towards the horse, still stuffing its face with lush green grass.
‘Here, laddie,’ she called, her hand out. Laddie trotted over and she shooed him away. ‘No’ you, leannan. It’s the horse I’m wanting.’
The animal raised its head and stopped chewing, wary now.
‘Come here, ma fine wee beastie, come on, that’s it.’
The horse blinked, then ambled towards her, its nostrils flaring in search, Isla suspected, of something tasty to eat. It was big, taller than the horse she had learned to ride at Waikaraka. She crouched and looked under its flank: a gelding. He was a lovely dark chestnut colour with black legs up to knee and hock, and a black mane and tail. There was a small nick in his left ear, well healed.
‘Been fighting, have ye?’
Ferreting in her peke, Isla found some pieces of dried kumara and presented them on the flat of her hand. She smiled at the tickle of the horse’s velvety muzzle as his lips sought the treats.
Attached to the saddle were leather bags, containing some dried meat wrapped in a scrap of oilskin, a pipe, tobacco pouch and tinderbox, two shiny shillings, ammunition, a canteen and several packets of papers. So he was a dispatch rider after all. Isla opened the papers and skimmed through them, but found little that boded ill for Ngati Pono or their allies. Still, she made a heap of the papers, opened the tinderbox and set fire to them.
She was ready to go. Sliding the carbine into its saddle holster and slinging her shotgun and peke over her shoulder, she gathered
the reins in one hand and gingerly placed her left foot in the stirrup, which was a considerable stretch for her. Rolling her eyes as the seam of her skirt gave way with a loud ripping sound, she lowered her leg, hitched up the skirt and swung herself into the saddle. Perhaps the soldier’s breeks would be more useful than she’d thought. The horse turned his head and looked at her, but didn’t object or bolt, as she had feared he might. She leaned forward and briskly patted his neck.
‘What a good wee beastie ye are. What shall we call ye, eh? What d’ye think, Laddie?’
Laddie stared at her, but evidently didn’t have any suggestions.
‘What aboot Prince, after Bonnie Prince Charles? Aye, I think I like that,’ Isla said, flicking the reins.
Prince pricked up his ears, gave a little skip that almost unseated her and trotted smartly off, Laddie close behind.
I
sla sat astride Prince on a low, bush-clad hill and surveyed the settlement of Maketu. To either side of the town lay shallow harbours formed behind long sandspits that provided shelter from the ocean, and offshore lay several ships at anchor. On a ridge overlooking the sea she could make out a church and mission house, what might be a hotel, a large building she guessed was a post and telegraph office, and a number of smaller buildings—trading stores, she was sure, and houses belonging to Ngati Pikiao, the Arawa hapu who lived here.
Nearby was the fighting pa she knew had been taken over by the British, but she didn’t think the Ngati Pono children would be in there; soldiers would not want thirty or so youngsters underfoot. If they were still at Maketu, it was more likely that they would be in the hands of the Ngati Pikiao. In her heart, though, she sensed that the twins were no longer at Maketu, that
they had all moved on. But where to?
On the western side of the settlement lay an ordered patchwork of orchard trees and gardens where people were working. Giving Prince a gentle nudge with her heels, she headed down off the hill towards the cultivations, hoping to find someone to speak to. But before she came into sight of the gardens she dismounted, tied Prince to a tree so that he could graze, told Laddie to stay, and took off the soldier’s jacket. It would not do to approach kupapa Maori riding a horse and wearing a jacket stolen from an imperial soldier. She did, however, carry her shotgun in full view.
‘Good afternoon,’ she called in English as she neared two elderly men working in one of the gardens.
They stopped what they were doing and looked at her curiously. Eventually one of them said, ‘Tena koe, e hine.’ He had a leathery face and eyes like jet beads.
But Isla didn’t want them to know she was fluent in their tongue. ‘I beg your pardon, mister, but I cannae speak Maori.’
The speaker switched to English. ‘Then greetings to you, girl. What are you doing here? I have not seen you before.’
‘I’m looking for ma brother and sister. I wis wondering have ye seen them?’
The men looked at her blankly.
‘They’re twins, aye? Wi’ red hair, aboot nine years auld?’
The men exchanged a glance, and Isla’s pulse quickened. ‘We lived in the Waikato, but then the war came and we were separated. I’ve been trying tae find them and I wis told they’d been seen o’er this way, travelling with some o’ your people.’
‘No, they were never with our people,’ the other man said.
The first speaker scratched his head. ‘There were two tamariki of that description with a party of Ngati Pono staying here until recently, but they left.’
‘All o’ them?’
‘Ae. But they belonged to Ngati Pono, they were not simply travelling with them.’
Isla made herself look suitably alarmed. ‘Oh my Lord, ye cannae mean they’d been
kidnapped?’
The man shook his head, the length of leather cord in his ear swinging. ‘No. It did not look like it.’
Isla bit her lip. ‘But they left, did ye say?’
The less garrulous of the two said, ‘Ngati Pono have declared against the government. We, Ngati Pikiao, are Arawa and fighting on the side of your queen. Only five days ago, we defeated a Kingite taua from the East Cape. You should not be out and about on your own, e hine, it is too dangerous.’
‘D’ye ken where they went?’
‘Farther down the coast.’
‘When?’
The man frowned, the expression adding even more wrinkles to his brow. ‘More than a week ago. Just before the British came. Perhaps twelve or thirteen days?’
‘You should not attempt to follow them,’ the other man said, then pointed towards the village. ‘Go up to the garrison and ask to speak to Major Colvile. He will know what to do.’
‘Aye, I’ll do that. I’ve been so worried aboot them. Thank ye
verra much,’ Isla said, and turned and began to walk away.
‘Wait!’ one of the men called.
Isla froze. Had they seen through her charade? She turned slowly, ready to raise the shotgun to her shoulder.
‘You are going the wrong way. Fort Colvile is over there!’
‘Oh! O’ course! Thank ye,’ Isla said, and walked past them towards the village, smiling inanely.
As soon as she was out of their sight, she doubled back to where she had left Prince and Laddie. So they had gone down the coast. She knew, from what Tai had told her, that this could mean anywhere from Whakatane to Ahuriri way down in Hawke’s Bay. And if they had left two weeks ago, she was a very long way behind them. But at least they would be among friendly Maori further south: Ngati Awa and Te Whakatohea around Whakatane, she knew, were Kingites, as were most of the iwi beyond.
The next morning, when Isla awoke sometime before dawn, she knew that something was wrong with her. She was sweating profusely, her skin was hot, she felt sick and her belly was cramping sharply.
She crawled out from beneath the rough nikau shelter she had made the previous evening and over to a clump of bushes. Raising her skirt, she squatted and evacuated a stream of fire from her bowel. The stench made her even more nauseous and she vomited violently, her stomach feeling as though it were being torn in two. Laddie stood some distance away, whining softly.
When she thought she had finished, and had cleaned herself, she crawled back to the shelter and lay down. It must have been the soldier’s dried meat; she had eaten half of it last night, and given the rest to Laddie. But he looked as brimming with health as he always did.
‘Are ye all right, Laddie?’ she said weakly, the taste of vomit still in her mouth. She reached for the saddlebags beside her and sipped from the soldier’s canteen, filled with fresh stream water yesterday afternoon, rinsed vigorously and spat. Then she took a long drink, clenching her jaw as her stomach threatened to expel the water immediately. She must have water, she knew that; food wasn’t so important. She tried to think of what Mere would have recommended, but then realized she didn’t have the energy to go searching in the bush for the plants she would need.
She spent the entire day feeling awful, alternating between dozing and crawling outside to relieve herself until her stomach was completely concave, marvelling that there was anything left inside her to come out. By early nightfall, she felt well enough to stumble to a nearby stream to wash herself thoroughly, drink and refill her canteen. But it was too late by then to travel, and she fell asleep, fretting that a whole day had been lost.
In the morning the sickness had left her, although she felt weak and a little dizzy from lack of food. But she had no time to waste creeping around after pigeon and eel. By sun-up, she was on her way.
She kept to the tracks until mid-morning, but then, after realizing she hadn’t seen a single soul since she had set off, she
headed out of the bush towards the ocean; the long beaches might not be as safe as the forest, but the going would be faster and she was anxious to make up lost time.
Once she reached the sand dunes, she saw that the deserted beach stretched out on either side of her for mile after uninterrupted mile. Very far away to the east she could make out the steep, haze-shrouded hills that marked Cape Runaway at the end of the long curve of the Bay of Plenty. To the north-west protruded the little point where Maketu lay. Even from here, she could still see the tiny black dots that were the British warships, but she was too far away now for them to see her.
Prince slid inelegantly down the dunes until they reached the hard sand at the water’s edge, and Isla turned him into the salt wind and cantered east along the beach, her hair streaming behind her and Laddie lolloping alongside with his tongue hanging out. Prince’s tugging at the bit beneath her hands told her he wanted to go faster, but she kept him at an easy pace to conserve his energy. They would get farther quicker if she did not have to rest him every few miles.
She rode like that for almost an hour. At one point she wondered if she hadn’t almost fallen asleep, lulled by Prince’s easy gait and the susurration of the waves on the sand, when a flock of seagulls, picking at something in the shallows, took fright and exploded screeching into the sky, frightening Prince and almost unseating her. Her heart thumping, she decided they needed a rest and reined him in.
Ahead was a small stream cutting through the sand and fanning
out where it reached the waves; following it up through the dunes, she came to the place where it trickled out of the bush and they all drank greedily. There were tiny koura in the stream, almost invisible against the gravel, but not big or plentiful enough to make a meal. She would stop to find food later.
Over the course of the day, she left the sand only to circumnavigate outcrops of rocks or to find a suitable place to cross the rivers and streams flowing into the sea. By late afternoon, as the sun began to descend behind the huge pohutukawa cloaking the cliffs that had bordered the beach for the past twenty or so miles, Isla’s stomach was rumbling loudly. Laddie, she knew, would also be very hungry. So she turned away from the sand and headed a short way into the bush behind the hills to find food and a place to sleep before it grew too dark. She suspected there could be a village nearby where she might be welcomed, but, unsure whether she had left Arawa territory, she thought it more prudent that she keep to herself.
Finding a suitable spot near a stream, she tethered Prince and removed his saddle, then stood at the water’s edge to compose her thoughts. Presently she scooped up a handful of water and threw it into the air, calling, ‘E hura, e hura, Tangaroa! Tenei au e tu nei.’
Uncover thee, o Tangaroa! Behold me standing here.
If Tangaroa, god of the sea and all fish, including eels, heard her, she was much more likely to catch something. Then she sat down and began to sing a song that Mere had taught her, a song that was in the language of the eels themselves, more sounds than words.
She waited, and after several minutes detected the twisting,
shadowy shape of an eel rising to the surface. When it was close enough, her hand darted out and she flicked it out onto the bank before it could wriggle away. Then, to appease Tangaroa, she threw it back and waited for another one to appear. In less than half an hour she had three fat eels in her peke.
She made a small fire and, while the heat built, cut the heads off the eels and sliced their bodies into sections, which she threaded onto green sticks and propped over the fire. As they cooked and their tantalizing aroma increased, Laddie shuffled closer and closer to the fire, strings of drool hanging from his mouth.
‘Aye, I ken how ye feel,’ Isla said as she poked her knife into a piece of whitening flesh. ‘They’re done, but ye’ll have tae wait until they’ve cooled.’
While they did, Isla led Prince to the stream so he could drink, then tethered him near a fresh patch of grass. She was so pleased that he had turned out to be a good horse. They could often be bad-tempered, she reflected, recalling with pique the time one of the Waikaraka horses had bitten her on her backside. But Prince seemed to be nice-natured and willing to do whatever she asked of him.
That night, Isla went to sleep with a full belly and renewed hope that she might catch up with Jean and Jamie sooner than she had originally expected.
The following day, at about three in the afternoon, as she was finally nearing the eastern limits of the long sweep of beach down
from Maketu, she stopped at the mouth of a wide river where it met the sea. Ahead of her, across the river, rose a great cliff of rock, studded with clinging pohutukawa. This, she presumed, as it matched Tai’s description, must be Whakatane, home of Ngati Awa. Oh God, Tai, she thought fleetingly, how much I miss you.
A group of five women—the first people she had seen for several days—watched her as she dismounted and led Prince along the sand towards them. Three were young and two were older, the latter wearing chin moko. They wore their long hair braided, their skirts were tied up around their thighs, and Isla could see that they were collecting shellfish.
When she was close enough, she said cautiously in English, ‘Good day. May I ask: would ye be women o’ Ngati Awa?’
The women regarded her warily, eying the cavalryman’s carbine in its holster, the military saddle on her horse, and her soldier’s jacket. Eventually, one of them reluctantly nodded. In Maori, she said, ‘Ae. Who is it who wishes to know?’
Isla tried not to let her relief show. Speaking in Maori herself now, she replied: ‘My name is Isla McKinnon. My people are Ngati Pono from Taranaki. I have been with my man in battle in the Waikato and at Gate Pa, but now I am searching for my brother and sister, who are travelling with a party of Ngati Pono women and children. I must find them. I hope you can help me.’
With an eye on Laddie, one of the women said suspiciously, ‘You do not look like Ngati Pono. You do not even look Maori. Look at your golden hair.’
Nervously, Isla tightened her grip on Prince’s reins. ‘No, I am not tangata whenua. My people are originally from Scotland. My brothers and sister and I were adopted by Ngati Pono three years ago, after our parents died. We are Ngati Pono now.’
‘So why do you have the accoutrements of an imperial soldier?’ the suspicious woman said.
‘I stole them from a dead man in the forest. A dispatch rider.’
There was a long silence as the women digested this, then the first woman remarked, ‘You are Scottish? I know a Scottish woman. She lives at Ohiwa, across the harbour. My name is Tarawa. We have seen your brother and sister. You are welcome to stay with us if you wish.’
Isla’s heart raced with hope. But, although she was desperate to hear more about Jean and Jamie, she nevertheless refrained from asking, aware that protocol must be followed.
She walked with them across the dunes, the shellfish they had collected grinding sandily together as they heaved their peke over their shoulders. The tide was out, so they crossed the river where it was shallow, before it narrowed, turned sharply and met the sea, and picked their way across marshland until they reached a cluster of whare, wooden stores and several Pakeha houses at the base of the cliffs. Winding up and around the side of the rocky headland was a track, which took them an hour to climb. In some places the path was so narrow Isla feared that Prince might lose his footing and tumble onto the broken rock far below. But he was sure-footed and picked his way up, his great chest heaving by the time they reached the top.