Isle of tears, p.5
Isle of Tears, page 5
Isla didn’t respond, but scrubbed even harder at her drawers.
‘I know it because he is my husband,’ Mere continued. ‘And he would not lie to me.’
After a moment, Isla sat back on her haunches, looked at Mere and allowed the blackness that was in her heart to show itself. ‘I believe ye, and I think I ken who did do it. And, God help me, when the time is right, I will kill him.’
Mere smiled. ‘Ae, and that is as it should be.’
When Isla told Niel she thought they should stay with the Maori, for a while at least, he objected strongly, insisting he wanted to go back and find Tulloch.
‘Aye, and then what?’ Isla said. ‘A thirteen-year-old lad and a lassie no’ much older? We’ll no’ be able tae kill him with oor bare hands.’
‘We’ll take Da’s rifle.’
‘We willnae. Mere says it’s needed.’
‘What for?’
‘In case o’ war.’
‘That was Da’s rifle.’ Niel kicked angrily at the base of a crumbling ponga, his frustration bubbling over. ‘And if there is tae be a war, we’ll be on the wrong side o’ it. We should go tae New Plymouth, wi’ the other white folk.’
‘And who will look after us there, Niel? We dinnae ken anyone, and no one kens us.’ Isla grasped Niel’s shirt and turned him around to make him look at her. ‘Look, these people didnae kill Mam and Da, and they’ve offered tae take us in. It’s more’n we’ll get from the folk in town, I’m sure o’ it. And if there’s tae be fightin’ we dinnae have tae get caught up in it.’
‘That’s easy for ye tae say,’ Niel grumbled.
Angry herself now, and, to be truthful, still very apprehensive about the idea of staying with the Maori, Isla snapped, ‘You’re only saying that because Da used tae say it. Ye dinnae even ken what it means. It’s no’ easy for me tae say, Niel. But I’ve the weans tae think aboot. I’m the head o’ the family now. What if we leave here and cannae feed them? What if we cannae protect them? D’ye even ken which way New Plymouth is from here? We’ll be lost before we’re ten minutes oot.’
From the look on Niel’s face, Isla saw that he knew she was right.
He sat down with his back against the ponga. ‘But who are these folk? They could be sworn enemies o’ Queen Victoria for all we ken.’
‘We dinnae owe an English queen anything, Niel. We never have.’
‘Now you’re just copying what Da used tae say.’
‘It’s what I believe. It’s what you believe, too, so dinnae go denying it.’
‘Disnae mean we have tae get in a war aboot it.’
Isla let out a long sigh, struggling to keep her temper in check. ‘If there is tae be a war, we willnae be in it, no’ if we dinnae want tae be. But we will be looked after. And Niel, I cannae think what else tae do.’ She sat down herself then, on the verge of tears, swallowed hard and asked in a wobbly voice, ‘Where are Jamie and Jean?’
‘A woman took them away. She said she was gonnae give them a wash and something tae eat.’
Isla gave her brother a sharp, shocked look, and Niel’s face paled as he belatedly realized he shouldn’t have let the twins out of his sight.
Isla was on her feet in a second, but at that moment Jamie and Jean appeared on the other side of the camp.
Jean waved, and announced loudly as she approached, ‘A nice wifey took us tae do a wizzle in the trees. And we’ve just had oor breakfast. It wisnae verra good, though.’
‘It wis meat and tatties, but they were cold,’ Jamie added, and Isla realized with a surge of relief that it was the first thing she’d heard him say since the horror of the previous day. She gave Jamie a quick hug and asked Niel why he hadn’t gone with his brother and sister.
Niel hung his head and mumbled, ‘I didnae want tae, ’til ye came back safe. I didnae ken ye were gone ’til I woke. And then that wifey said she’d look oot for the weans.’
Isla felt her heart ache as she realized how overwhelmed and ineffectual he must be feeling. ‘It’s all right. I went tae the stream tae clean up. Mere came wi’ me.’
‘The one who gave us the food last night?’
‘Aye. She’s merrit tae that one Wira, the leader.’
As if in response to his name, Wira appeared. He was carrying Donal McKinnon’s rifle.
Very slowly and carefully, as though Niel and Isla were imbeciles, he said, ‘We are leaving for our village. Will you come with us?’
‘Ye dinnae need tae say it like that. We’re no’ a pair o’ dunderheids, ken!’ Niel retorted, eying his father’s rifle sourly.
As Mere had commented, Wira appeared thoroughly baffled by Niel’s accent and didn’t seem to know how to respond.
In the end, Isla sighed and said, ‘Aye, we’ll be coming wi’ ye.’
It took them another day and a half to walk to the village, heading more or less north-east now, according to the position of the sun.
On the morning of the second day, Mere asked Isla, ‘Does your heart hurt with your grief?’
Isla said yes, and it did, but in a strange, muffled sort of way, almost as though the events of two days earlier had happened a very long time ago. But when she told herself that her mother and father were dead—that someone had murdered them—she still could not fully comprehend the fact. There was a sense of missing them, of course; but it was more as though they had simply gone away for a while and would be back soon. But now and then, when she was least expecting it, an image of their still and bloodied bodies would rush into her mind and she would understand, and the knowledge would hit her like a kick to the stomach. She tried to explain it to Niel, and he said he felt the same way. Jamie and Jean, though, seemed not to understand that their parents had gone forever. Jean wondered aloud if anyone had told Mam and Da where they were, and Jamie wanted to know what his father was going to say when he found out someone had taken his rifle.
‘It will never really pass,’ Mere said gently, ‘but the hurt will become less. You will learn to live with it.’
Isla doubted it, but she nodded anyway. And even if the hurt did fade with time, her anger wouldn’t, and she didn’t want it to.
She wanted to nurture it until she found a way to use it to avenge her parents’ deaths. Somehow the thought gave her a kind of comfort, and she clung to it resolutely.
When the sun was almost directly overhead, and the terrain over which they were travelling had gradually become less rugged, Mere announced that they were approaching her people’s kainga.
‘Our village,’ she amended at Isla’s questioning look. ‘You will have to learn to speak Maori, I think.’
Isla was struck by a sudden and not altogether welcome thought. ‘It’s no’ on the Peka Peka Block, is it, your village?’
‘No, we are south of the Pakeha surveyors’ pegs,’ Mere replied. ‘But some of the Peka Peka land is ours.’
‘Has it no’ been sold tae the government? Ma Da said it had.’
‘Your Governor Browne thinks he has made the way clear for that to happen, but he has not,’ Mere replied sharply.
Isla didn’t know who Governor Browne was, but Mere’s angry expression dissuaded her from admitting it, and certainly from asking anything more.
They soon approached a large area of flat, cultivated land: Isla recognized potato and kumara plants, but not the other leafy varieties arranged in neat rows across the soil. A separately fenced cultivation contained corn and, Isla thought, wheat. There were a dozen men and women working on the cultivations, and a few small children playing in the dirt nearby. They all stopped to stare as the travelling party neared. Wira shouted something, and one of the women laid down her hoe and hurried off.
‘We will wait,’ Mere said.
Isla saw that the gardens were set in a lush valley bisected by a narrow river whose depths reflected the varying shades of green surrounding it. A stand of bush bordered the far end of the gardens, beyond which the woman had disappeared.
‘She has gone to the kainga to tell them that we have returned,’ Mere said eventually. ‘And that you accompany us. They must prepare.’
Isla wasn’t sure how to interpret Mere’s comments, and experienced a frightening moment of doubt. What did ‘prepare’ mean? To fill the awkward silence that ensued, and to calm her nerves, she said, ‘How long have ye been away?’
‘One full cycle of the moon.’
‘Were ye hunting?’ Niel sounded almost, but not quite, friendly.
‘In a sense,’ Mere replied, but declined to say anything more.
Isla and Niel exchanged an uneasy glance, although neither quite knew why.
‘I’m hungry,’ Jean complained, and sat down in the dirt at the edge of one of the gardens. A small Maori child, wearing a patched shirt that came down to its knees, sidled up to her and reached out to touch her bright copper hair, but ran off shrieking when Jean made an exaggerated growling noise. Laddie’s ears pricked and he trotted over, making the child squeal even louder until someone came to pick it up and soothe it.
‘That wisnae verra nice, Jean,’ Isla admonished.
‘But I’m hungry.’
‘Well, there’s no need tae be unkind.’
‘But she wis dirty, wi’ a snotty nose,’ Jean declared loudly.
‘“He”,’ Mere corrected. ‘The child is a boy. One of my niece’s children.’
Jean looked aghast. ‘But he’s got long hair!’
‘Ae,’ Mere said benignly.
‘What a wee jessie!’
‘Jean!’ Isla warned.
But before Jean could protest, the woman who had gone off reappeared and spoke quickly to Wira. He and the rest of the travelling party, excluding Mere, moved off with the woman and the other gardeners, the children trotting behind them. When they had disappeared into the trees, Mere gave the signal for Isla, Niel, Jamie and Jean to follow her.
‘You will be welcomed onto our marae,’ she explained as they walked, ‘and then we will eat to celebrate your arrival.’ She glanced at Laddie. ‘Can you control your dog? We have dogs at our kainga. They may fight.’
‘Aye,’ Isla replied, hoping that Laddie would behave. ‘But what if your family dinnae want us there?’
‘Oh, they will. Whangai is a common thing among my people.’
‘But we’re no’…’ Isla struggled to put into words what was bothering her. She glanced at Niel, whose hair was as fair as hers, and at Jamie and Jean, two little carrot-tops with freckles dusting their pink noses and pale skin. At home, on Skye, it also had been very common for the raising of children to be shared among families, but there the children had always, without fail,
been Scottish, and always some sort of kin. ‘We’re no’ Maori,’ she said eventually, not bothering to dress up her words. ‘We willnae fit in.’
Mere raised one eyebrow in amusement. ‘You will fit in, you will see.’
Another thought struck Isla. ‘But what if settler folk see us? Will they no’ think ye’ve kidnapped us?’
Mere gave a casual shrug. ‘They can think what they like. You do not have any other family in the area?’
‘No, it wis just Mam and Da and us.’ Isla felt her bottom lip tremble at the immense and lonely truth of the fact, and struggled not to cry.
‘Are there not friends who will come looking for you?’
‘No’ really,’ Isla said truthfully.
‘Then you will have family here.’
They came then to the village, a cleared area in the bush dotted with huts and houses of various sizes and surrounded by a solid fence of manuka poles. Outside the fence stood a few lonely little huts, and a patch of ground randomly studded with unpainted wooden crosses. The village’s main gate was bordered by a pair of tall wooden posts carved with what seemed to Isla to be a hierarchy of figures with strange, distorted bodies and exceedingly ugly countenances. An ornately carved lintel joined the two posts, reaching a high point in the middle where another ferocious-looking creature perched.
Beyond the gate waited a crowd of intimidating proportions. Isla felt Mere’s gentle hand on her shoulder, and reluctantly began to walk through the gate towards the courtyard in front of the largest of the houses, Niel on her left and the twins, tightly holding hands, on her right. She glanced nervously at Mere, who nodded at her encouragingly to continue.
Suddenly, the crowd parted to reveal a man wearing only a very brief skirt, apparently made of reeds. His hair was tied up in a topknot and the sweat on his dark skin accentuated the lines of the tattoos on his face, thighs and, shockingly, his naked buttocks, glimpsed when his skirt swayed. He carried a long, intricately carved staff, sharpened at one end and flattened like a narrow paddle at the other, which he brandished with alarming rapidity and strength, the weapon making an unnerving sound as it cut through the heat-laden air.
Jean gave a small, stifled squeal. Isla stopped dead as he approached, feeling a surge of panic engulf her. Had it all been a trick? Were they to perish here after all? She reached for Niel’s hand, and drew Jean and Jamie closer.
The man darted and pranced, the reeds of his skirt rattling as he whirled his staff, hissed and pulled the most alarming faces. Watching intently, the crowd didn’t move, not even when he took a sprig of leaves from his waistband and tossed it onto the ground at Niel’s feet.
Behind them, Mere calmly instructed, ‘Pick it up, Niel.’
Niel hesitated, then bent to retrieve the sprig, and watched with obvious relief as the man danced backwards and melted into the crowd.
Then came an eerie, reedy wailing and an ancient woman shuffled forward, uttering something that was between a song and a chant. As her call tapered away, Isla’s heart missed a beat as, directly behind her, Mere responded in kind. As Jamie’s whimpers of fear became very audible, Isla slipped her free arm around his shoulders and pressed him against her skirts until, once again, she felt Mere’s hand urging her forward.
The bulk of the crowd then launched into an energetic sort of dance, stamping their feet and fluttering their hands in unison. Some of the women held bunches of leaves, which they shook and swished about. All of this was accompanied by a loud and very boisterous chant, and, when several rows of staff-wielding men moved to the front and proceeded to shout and leap about, Jamie and Jean burst into frightened tears. At Isla’s side Niel’s face was white, and his grip on her hand was so tight that it hurt.
After the dance had come to an end, Mere said to Isla, ‘Do you have a dance or a song that you would care to perform?’
Isla looked at her blankly, deeply alarmed by the preceding performance and bewildered by the question. ‘Here? Now?’
‘Ae. It is part of the powhiri. First comes the wero—the challenge—then the karanga, which imparts information to both the tangata whenua and the manuhiri, then the tangata whenua perform a haka to greet you.’
The native words Mere had used were meaningless to Isla, but she certainly recognized the last two. ‘That wis a greeting?’
‘Ae. Now you may respond if you care to.’
Isla eyed the crowd, who were watching this exchange with interest; waiting to see, she suspected, whether the strange, pale children were capable of doing anything more than quaking in their boots. She felt instinctively that it was important that they respond with something, but all she could think to offer was a dance from her native Skye. She had been dancing since she was a tot and had become very accomplished. But to do that she would need two swords, and the Maori didn’t seem to carry them.
But they did have those intricately carved staffs. She closed her eyes and conjured an image of her da telling her that she could do anything she wanted to do as long as she believed she could, then took a deep breath and opened her eyes again. Niel started to say something as she marched off across the sun-baked ground towards the crowd of onlookers, but she ignored him and kept going, her arms swinging and her head high.
She stopped before one of the dancers and pointed to his staff. Looking nonplussed, he nevertheless passed it to her. She did the same with the man beside him, then strode determinedly back to the middle of the courtyard. The crowd, engrossed, was utterly silent. Without looking at anyone, she arranged the two weapons on the ground to form a cross, then stepped to one side, untied her boot laces and slipped them off, and, as an afterthought, pulled the ribbon from her hair so that her hair tumbled down her back.
She stood with her head bowed for a moment, fixing in her mind the beat that would normally be provided by her father’s pipes. She bowed to the crowd, then the crossed staffs, raised her arms and began to dance.
Beginning slowly and turning always widdershins, she executed the steps that were those of Highland warriors, who had used the dance to hone their strength, agility and state of mind before battle. Like those ancestors, she soon began to feel the heat rise in her veins and, as she recalled the congealing pools of blood beneath the still bodies of her mother and father, she became gloriously angry and danced with more and more intensity until the sweat dripped off her brow and stung her eyes. Everything around her began to blur, and she knew she was grunting and hissing with effort and emotion, but didn’t care. She danced for her parents, and she danced for all those who had ever fought under the McKinnon banner, but most of all she danced to express her grief and her desire for vengeance. But still she was careful to point her toes and avoid the staffs, because to touch them would mean certain disaster on the battlefield, and her clash with Tulloch was one she had privately vowed to win.
By the time the dance was nearing its end, the bodice of her dress was soaked and long wisps of her hair stuck clammily to her damp face. She performed the final few steps—three slow, followed by three very quick and a high jump—then moved deliberately away from the staffs and, panting, bowed to the onlookers, then to her brothers and sister. Niel was biting his lip and blinking furiously, and Jamie and Jean were clutching each other with awe and delight.
Isla grunted with satisfaction, knowing that her da would have been very pleased with her.
A mutter of approval rippled through the crowd, then Wira, dressed now in a fancy feather cloak over his shirt and trousers,
