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.

  Chapter Nine

  Stunned 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.

  TARANAKI

  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.

  But there was good news, too: after many months, word had finally been received at the village that the women and children who had gone over to the Bay of Plenty had arrived safely. Isla almost fainted with relief. At the back of her mind there had always been the awful possibility that they had not made it, that something terrible had happened to them on the way. She had never really believed that they would fall foul of imperial troops, as there were no British in that area, but plenty of other misfortunes might have befallen them.

  After enjoying the luxury of several days’ rest after their long journey from the Waikato, those who had been at Rangiriri settled back into the routine of life at Waikaraka, gardening, fishing, hunting and eating. Isla and Tai were delighted to enjoy time alone at last, after months of sleeping within arm’s length of dozens of other people.

  Loving Tai was so much more fun when Isla didn’t have to worry about what anyone else might see or hear. And he liked to have sex during the day, not just at night beneath a blanket. So since they had come back to Waikaraka, they had been doing it every day, and more or less everywhere: in the river, in the bush, in their whare, and even in the small waka they had paddled downstream to check Isla’s eel traps. Except that had ended less than satisfactorily when the waka had overturned and spilled them into the water, leaving them floundering around naked and giggling hysterically, Tai’s erection at half-mast. But despite all the passion and intimacy, Isla had made sure there was no possibility of starting a new baby: the memory of Meg was still too raw.

  The intensity of their love-making had been heightened by the knowledge that soon they would be away up north to war again. Several days after they had returned home, news had come that Cameron had entered and occupied the Maori King’s seat at Ngaruawahia unopposed. His soldiers, apparently, had looted to their hearts’ content, and even the sacred tomb of King Potatau Te Wherowhero had been broken into. But Tawhiao had gone deep into the King Country a week earlier, so not much had been lost except mana.

  More disturbing was the accompanying news that Cameron had now extended his military telegraph as far as Rangiriri, and east to the Firth of Thames, and had sent hundreds of his men to Tauranga—not far from where most of Ngati Pono’s children were staying at Maketu. Also, kupapa Maori had allowed a route to be opened between Raglan and the Waipa River, which would no doubt assist Cameron’s advance into Ngati Maniapoto territory. In response, the Kingites began building fortifications to block Cameron’s path southward, and called for their armies to gather once again and prepare to fight.

  So, at the end of January, Waikaraka’s warriors who were not already fighting the British locally departed for the north again.

  By the time they reached Rangiaowhia, some ten miles from Paterangi, on 20 February, they were relieved and exhausted. The journey had taken longer than had been anticipated: the going had been difficult, the ground soggy with recent rains, and several rivers had been in flood. The view that greeted them on arrival—acres of maize, wheat and potato, peach and apple groves surrounding the raupo whare and timbered houses, stores, school, flour mill and two churches of the thriving settlement—was therefore a welcome one. The people of the village, mostly women, children, old men and only a handful of warriors, were busy preparing supplies for transportation to Paterangi. After a brief rest for refreshments, Wira arranged for Isla, Mere, Atarangi and Hera to stay overnight and help, then he and the men left for Paterangi themselves.

 

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