Isle of Tears, page 13
Tai walked beside her, an arm around her shoulders and a hand under her elbow, making sure she did not stumble in the bracken and fern, black in the moonlight and already beginning to crunch underfoot from the settling frost. Their breath blew out in plumes before them, and Tai looked at his wife’s beautiful, pale face and thought that the silver from the moon had settled into her hair.
They walked around and around, their feet making tracks behind them, until Isla was ready to return to the warmth of the whare kohanga.
Inside, she kicked off her boots and sank once more onto the mat, but was unable to get comfortable. Finally, sitting cross-legged, she settled into riding each new wave of pain, rocking and gritting her teeth at its peak, remembering her mother once telling her that McKinnon women did not cry out from pain. She breathed deeply when the contractions ebbed, intoning the karakia that Mere had taught her to calm herself. The swelling, grinding feeling in her lower belly was getting worse. Tai moved to sit behind her, taking her weight against his chest and rocking with her in time to each new contraction. As the minutes passed and the night stretched on, he told her stories, then sang to her.
At last, an hour before dawn, Isla said, ‘I think it’s time.’ She pulled herself into a squatting position and shrugged off her chemise. Tai rose and stood before her, knees bent and bare feet splayed as she gripped his forearms. Her face screwed up with effort, she grunted and bore down, then again.
‘Kia kaha, e whaea,’ Tai murmured. Be brave, o mother.
Isla bore down again, her buttocks almost touching the mat, and suddenly the baby rushed out in a slither of mucus and fluid. Letting out a long, relieved moan, Isla subsided, letting her legs fall apart so that the baby was cocooned between them. The umbilical cord, so engorged with blood it glistened black in the firelight, trailed back inside her. Tai grasped the infant by her tiny feet, for she was indeed a girl, and shook her gently to dislodge any mucus caught in her throat or nose. The shaking also made her cry, a weak mewling that sounded more like a kitten than a child. Cradling her with one arm, Tai hooked his little finger into her mouth to check that no mucus remained, then tied a piece of twine around the umbilical cord near her belly, and deftly severed the lifeline between child and mother. Finally, he wiped the baby’s face, firmly wrapped her in a soft cloth and handed her to Isla.
‘Is she not beautiful?’ he said. His face was beaded with sweat, but he beamed with pride.
Speechless with delight, Isla could only grin back.
But there was one more thing they had to do. Reluctantly setting the baby carefully on the mat beside them, Tai massaged Isla’s belly to encourage the afterbirth to come away, and after it had he wrapped it in another cloth and put it aside. Later it would be buried in the secret place he and Isla had already chosen, to signify the baby’s spiritual home.
As Isla cradled the baby again, she gazed down at the exquisite, miniature person she and Tai had created. She had a lot of dark hair, a tiny nose, a rosebud mouth and, in the firelight, rather mottled purple skin.
But she seemed very…limp.
A bubble of unease forming in her chest, Isla jiggled the baby slightly, and the baby gave a hitching wheeze, then settled into a pattern of shallow, irregular breathing.
In silence, Isla and Tai watched her struggle to draw air into her lungs, barely breathing themselves as fear crept gradually but inexorably into their hearts.
Finally, Isla whispered, ‘She cannae breathe properly, can she?’ Then, stricken, she said, ‘Is it my fault? Because o’ the sickness I had?’
Feeling a lump of grief so large and jagged in his throat that he couldn’t swallow, Tai could only vehemently shake his head.
Then, as the sun rose and filled the whare kohanga with pale light, they understood the hopelessness of what had happened, for their precious daughter’s skin was now as blue-white as a child of the moon itself.
Niel, unable to sleep soundly and up at dawn, watched as Tai hurried through the village gate and into the Tamaiparea whare. A minute later he emerged with Mere close behind him, pulling her cloak around her shoulders.
Moments after they’d gone, a bleary-looking Harapeta appeared, followed by Wira, and soon the whole village was stirring.
A short time later, Tai reappeared out of the mist and this time went directly to the whare of the tohunga Te Katate.
‘Is she all right?’ Niel called out, but Tai didn’t seem to hear.
Niel felt a cold dread settle on him and hunched his shoulders, as if expecting a blow. He closed his eyes and prayed that it was the bairn and not Isla, and felt terrible for doing so.
Squatting in the whare kohanga, Te Katate regarded the baby closely, then said censoriously, ‘You should not have walked in the moonlight. Because of it, the child has been born a patupaiarehe. She cannot survive in this world.’
Mere’s mouth gaped in outraged disbelief. ‘A fairy child! Do not be so stupid. She is as real as you and I!’
Affronted and angered by Mere’s disrespect, Te Katate rose creakily and declared as he swept out, ‘She will die. There is nothing I can do.’
Staring at the spot on the mat where he had been sitting, Isla whispered, ‘Will she, Mere? Will she die?’
The baby lay in her arms, gasping quietly and shuddering from time to time as she fought to draw breath. Her eyelids were blue, and so was the skin around her mouth. Isla had put her on her breast several times, but the infant was so weak that she hadn’t been able to suckle.
It was clear to Mere that the infant would not survive, and her heart broke, for Tai and Isla, and for the child herself. ‘I do not know,’ she said eventually, ‘but I think so.’
Isla nodded slowly, and grazed her lips across the top of the baby’s head. ‘Then I want her tae be baptized. She cannae die wi’oot being baptized.’ If she did, she would die with the weight of sin still upon her and would not be received into the arms of Christ.
Mere glanced at Tai.
‘Ae, she must be baptized,’ he agreed. ‘But will Te Katate do it? He seemed angry before.’
‘Te Katate will do what Wira tells him to do,’ Mere replied sharply, tired of the old tohunga’s arrogance and posturing.
And so, later that morning, Isla and Tai’s daughter was baptized Meg Tawai: Meg for Margaret, as that had been Agnes McKinnon’s middle name, and Tawai for the morning star that had risen during her birth. But the baptism was performed privately, since Isla was still in a state of tapu. After the short ceremony, Tai carried Meg swaddled in his arms to the village so that Niel, Jamie and Jean could see their baby niece.
‘She looks just like a wee white dolly!’ Jean exclaimed as Tai loosened the folds of the baby’s blanket. Hesitantly, she touched Meg’s tiny hand. ‘But Mere says she’s verra ill.’
‘Ae, she is,’ Tai said. ‘And you must say goodbye, just in case.’
He exchanged a glance with Niel, who looked on grim-faced. ‘And you, Niel.’
‘Will it no’ be long?’ Niel asked.
‘Mere does not think so.’
Niel swallowed, then bent down and kissed Meg’s cold cheek. ‘Goodbye, mo leannan,’ he whispered.
Jamie burst into tears, then so did Jean. Tai let them each cuddle Meg for a few minutes, then carried her back to the warmth of the whare kohanga and her mother.
‘Were they upset?’ Isla asked as he settled the baby in her arms. Her voice was tremulous, and Tai could see that she very much wanted to cry but would not allow herself to do so. Not while there was still a splinter of hope.
While the village waited, going about their daily business with heavy hearts and speaking in hushed tones, Isla and Tai took turns to cradle Meg as she struggled for life. Food was left for them outside the whare, but no one intruded, respecting their privacy and the little time they had left with their daughter. Tai knew that in the old days a seriously ailing infant would have been placed outside in the cold to slip into the eternal embrace of Hine-nui-i-te-po, but could not bring himself even to voice the idea to Isla.
As the day wore on Meg continued to fight, but it was clear that she was growing weaker by the hour. Her skin was becoming even more shadowed, her legs and feet were beginning to swell, and her breath came in irregular, jagged little gasps. Watching her, Tai felt as though his heart were being torn out, and he knew Isla felt the same. She sat in near silence, refusing to eat and taking only small sips of water, rocking Meg when she held her, and dozing when Tai took her. There seemed to be very little to say to one another, their focus having dwindled to the tiny, flickering life they held between them.
Some time after night had fallen, and Meg’s breathing had grown even more erratic and tortured, Isla blurted, ‘I cannae stand this, Tai. I just cannae.’
‘Neither can I.’
‘Ye have tae do something.’ Isla’s voice cracked. ‘Ye have tae help her.’
Tai gazed for a long moment at his daughter, thinking. Then he placed an armful of manuka sticks on the fire and stirred the embers so that the flames caught and grew. He looked at Meg again, then took her carefully in his arms and stretched out on the mat on his side, the baby tucked against his belly.
‘Lie with me,’ he murmured to Isla.
Realizing what he intended to do, she hesitated only briefly before she lay face-to-face with him. It was a sin against God, but it would also be a blessing. With infinite gentleness Tai rearranged the folds of Meg’s blanket so that it covered her face. Then Isla and Tai, their arms and legs entwined and Meg cocooned tightly between them, embraced so that their cheeks touched and their breath and tears mingled.
A short while later, their precious daughter left them.
Mere, standing sentinel at the village fence since sundown, flinched as she heard Isla’s cry of guilt and despair rising out of the darkness: ‘Ma bairn! O Mam, ma beautiful bairn!’
Mere lowered her head, her dark hair covering her face, and finally allowed herself to weep—for the poor dead child, for her bereaved nephew, and for the pale, golden Scottish girl she had come to love.
Isla was not present at her daughter’s tangi, as the tapu imposed by her post-partum bleeding had not yet been lifted. But many others attended. As Meg, through the institution of whangai, had been the grandchild of a respected rangatira, mourners travelled considerable distances to pay their respects. A contingent from Mere’s iwi, Ngati Maru-whara-nui, came, as did those from other iwi and hapu with affiliations to Te Ati Awa. And with them they brought talk of more war to come.
Chapter Seven
TARANAKI, DECEMBER 1862
When summer arrived later that year, and Isla’s belly had long since become flat and firm again and the puawananga she had planted near Meg’s grave bloomed with starry white flowers, she said to Jean, ‘D’ye still miss Mam?’
Jean, who was amusing herself plaiting Isla’s hair, stopped. ‘Whaea Mam, ye mean?’
Isla nodded hesitantly, fearful, as always, of discovering that the twins might have forgotten their real mother. She worried that unless the four of them continued to remember their parents, it would seem as though they had never existed at all.
Eventually, she said, ‘Aye, our real mam.’
The hands on her hair began to braid again. ‘O’ course I do. She’s in ma prayers every night. And Da. Well, no’ every night,’ Jean amended, ‘but whenever I remember tae say them.’
Isla turned around, and for the first time noticed that the beauty of their mother’s bones was beginning to show in Jean’s face. She had always looked to Isla like a little red button, but now she was a pretty young girl. ‘What did she look like then?’ she asked, wishing she could leave it alone, but unable to.
‘She had shiny golden hair and blue eyes, just like yesel’,’ Jean replied. ‘And oor da had the red hair that me and Jamie’ve got. And he wis big and tall. He used tae throw us up in the air and catch us, aye?’
‘Aye, he did too!’ Isla said, delighted. She turned back and felt the final tug as Jean tied the plait with a piece of twine.
‘Isla?’
‘Aye?’
‘Will they be wi’ wee Meg?’
Isla moved so that she faced her sister. ‘Mam and Da?’
‘Aye. Will they all be in Heaven? Will they be together?’
‘O’ course they will.’
‘How will they ken who Meg is?’
‘Well, God will tell them, I suppose.’
‘Will he say, “Look, Mister McKinnon and Missus McKinnon, here comes Isla’s wee bairn?” And d’ye think they’ll be sad?’
Isla thought for a moment. ‘Aye, they probably will be sad.’
But not as sad as she and Tai had been in the months following Meg’s death. The loss had torn viciously at Isla’s heart, cutting deeply and opening the old wound of her parents’ deaths afresh. She couldn’t eat, avoided sleep because she was afraid of her dreams, and was unable to find the energy to leave the whare she and Tai shared, once the tapu had been lifted from her and she had been able to return there. She sat for days at a time in the semidarkness, not caring whether the fire went out, not even bothering to wrap herself in her tartan cloak, and struggling to confine her pain within the borders of her own flesh and bones. Mere fed her, the villagers sent messages of sympathy, and Niel, Jamie and Jean hung around outside the whare, very often too dismayed by her desolation to go in. Tai did what he could for her, and spent hours holding her hand and rocking her, but his grief had been overwhelming, too, and he had needed to get out, to go into the forest to hunt and run, shouting his rage and despair into the wet, misty winter air until he was able, finally, to live with it.
But Isla took longer to accept what had happened, until one day, as the chill of winter receded and the thin warmth of the early September sun began to creep further and further across the floor of the whare, she realized that clinging so tightly to her grief would never change the fact that Meg had died. So she tidied herself, put on her boots and left the whare to tell Tai that her period of mourning had ended. It had not, but she knew now that she could summon the courage to bear it.
And to ensure that she would not risk encountering such awful grief again too soon—for the possibility that her own body had been to blame for poor Meg’s sickness still haunted her—she asked Mere what she could do to prevent another baby from starting. She had not discussed this with Tai, but as they had resumed their love-making, now even more passionate and intimate because of the closeness wrought by their shared loss, and nothing had come of it, she suspected he’d guessed. But their love, they both knew, was stronger than ever.
‘Your hair’s getting verra long, Isla,’ Jean said.
‘Aye. Yours would too, if ye brushed it oot now and again.’
Jean swept her matted hair to the top of her head and let it drop again. ‘But I like it like this. It’s easy tae look after.’
A shadow fell across them: Niel, carrying a coil of freshly caught eels dangling from a stick. ‘Would ye like some?’
Isla said yes and he dropped three onto the ground at her feet, where they slithered and wriggled in the dust, desperately searching for a way back to the river. Jean snatched them up and threw them into a bucket. They writhed and thumped, but the bucket stayed upright.
‘Have ye told her yet?’ Niel asked.
‘No,’ Isla said in exasperation, because she’d been finding excuses not to. ‘I’ve no’ had the chance.’
Jean’s eyes narrowed warily. ‘Told me what?’
Isla said to Niel, ‘Well, have you told Jamie?’
‘No’ yet,’ he admitted.
Her heart sinking, Isla knew they couldn’t put it off any longer. ‘Go and get him, then. We’ll tell them together.’
As Niel went off, Jean stamped her bare foot and demanded, ‘Tell us what, Isla?’
But Isla kept her counsel until Niel returned with Jamie, who was clutching a wriggling puppy, its pointy ears and little thrusting snout looking suspiciously like Laddie’s.
Niel sat and gestured for Jean and Jamie to do the same. ‘Ye’ve heard talk o’ what’s been happening in the north, aye?’
The twins’ heads bobbed in identical nods; they had caught snatches of what the adults had been discussing during past months in the wharenui, at hapu meetings and when visitors had come.
‘But d’ye understand how far it’s gone and what it means?’ Niel asked, but was met with blank looks. ‘Well, I’ll tell ye.’
And he did. He told them how there were now thousands of imperial troops in the North Island, disgorged from ships landing at Auckland and sent out to newly established camps and forts farther south at places called Papakura and Otahuhu and Tuakau and Ramarama. He told them how the Manukau was full of cutters busily criss-crossing the harbour carrying supplies from the wharves at Onehunga to the vast imperial camp at Drury, and that Pakeha churches as far south as Pukekohe and even Pokeno had been fortified and readied for battle.
‘But why?’ Jamie asked, the puppy forgotten.
Niel glanced at Isla, who nodded at him to continue. ‘Because the imperial soldiers want tae take o’er the Waikato. On behalf o’ the government and the settlers. For the land.’
‘But it belongs tae Maori,’ Jean said, as though this was the most obvious thing in the world.
‘Aye, it does,’ Isla replied, ‘but the British want it for themselves. It’s good farmland, ye see, but the Waikato people dinnae want them tae have it. And now there’s tae be another war.’
‘Like the one that was here?’ Jamie asked.
‘Aye.’
Jean said, ‘And that’s why all the soldiers have come?’
‘Aye. And they’re building a great road,’ Niel explained, ‘all the way doon from Auckland and intae the heart o’ the Waikato. Hundreds and hundreds o’ them. They’re felling the trees, digging oot cuttings, clearing the bush and filling in swamps. And, soon, they’ll come marching doon it with their big guns and their horses and their drummer boys and all their flags flying.’
