Isle of Tears, page 14
Isla glowered at him, for being such a scaremonger.
‘But we dinnae live in the Waikato,’ Jean said sensibly. ‘We live here, in Taranaki.’
‘Aye, but Te Ati Awa have sworn allegiance tae the Maori king, and he’s taken up arms again against the imperial soldiers, so soon we’ll be called tae fight alongside him.’
Jamie puffed out his chest. ‘Well, I’ll be fighting them. I’m big enough.’
‘Ye are no’,’ Isla said quickly.
‘Will it come doon as far as us?’ Jean asked, sounding uneasy now. ‘The great road?’
Isla glanced into the bucket containing the eels; they were hardly moving at all now and were drying out, their skin no longer glistening. Their lassitude unnerved her. But she said, as reassuringly as she could, ‘I wouldnae imagine so, leannan. But I have tae tell ye there might be fighting here anyway.’
‘Aye, we heard them talking aboot it a wee while ago, in the big hoose,’ Jean admitted. ‘Eh, Jamie? When Whaea Mere’s people came?’
Jamie nodded guardedly, in case he was about to be told off for listening in on elders’ business.
Isla said, not altogether truthfully, ‘No one’s sure if there will be another war here. But just in case there is, Wira’s decided there are certain things we should be doing.’
Alerted by the note of guilt in Isla’s voice, Jean asked immediately, ‘What certain things?’
Exchanging a nervous glance with Niel, Isla confessed, ‘Well, the children and some o’ the women are tae go away for a while.’
Stunned, Jean said, ‘Go away where?’
‘Tae a place in the Bay o’ Plenty over on the east coast called Maketu,’ Niel replied. ‘Just until it’s safe here again.’ Puketeitei, it had been reluctantly conceded, might be too close to the fighting, should the imperial troops stationed at New Plymouth venture further inland.
‘But it is safe here!’
‘Aye, it is at the moment,’ Niel said, ‘but it might no’ be soon.’
Jean’s copper brows lowered stubbornly. ‘Well, I’m no’ going anywhere. And anyway, I’m no’ a child. Me and Jamie are nine years auld.’
‘Only just,’ Isla countered.
‘I dinnae care. We’re no’ going.’
‘Ye are,’ Niel said flatly.
They were all silent then, the impasse a solid wall between them. The puppy scrambled onto Jean’s lap and draped itself over her thigh, letting out a whimper of contentment from one end and a squeaky fart from the other. No one laughed.
Jean burst into tears. ‘I dinnae want tae go. I dinnae even ken where Maketu is! How far away is it?’
‘No’ that far,’ Niel lied, and added hopefully, ‘It’s by the sea. Ye could go swimming every day. And fishing. It wouldnae be too cold.’
Isla and Niel both knew how far away Maketu was. Mere had said it would take three weeks, perhaps four, if they went by sea up to Kawhia Harbour, then by land through the Waikato and over the Kaimai Mountains to the coast beyond. And to go that way they would have to leave soon, before the imperial soldiers moved into the Waikato and cut off travel from west to east.
‘It’ll no’ be for long, maybe only three or four months,’ Isla said, hating herself for lying. It could be much longer than that, especially if the British marched right down through the Waikato to join with the troops already in Taranaki. But they wouldn’t, of course—they would be stopped well before that happened. King Tawhiao, Potatau Te Wherowhero’s son and successor, would make sure of that. Everyone was saying so, even if they were saying it a bit too often.
She felt terribly guilty as well, for allowing herself to be convinced by Mere and Wira that the twins should be sent away. But she knew it would be the best, the safest, thing for them, and that they would be with people who loved and cared for them—Ngahere, Pare and her child and the one she was carrying, other Ngati Pono women, some of the more aged elders including Pikaki, and most of the village’s children under the age of twelve.
She was aware that Wira had been thinking for many months about this, before finally announcing his decision. Thinking, and observing the plight of other hapu whose livestock and crops had been destroyed or confiscated during the first war, so that now they were starving and even less resistant to the European sicknesses that crept, invisible and uninvited, into their midst. He also knew that if there was to be another war in Taranaki, then this time it would be far more devastating. Sent away, the children, young mothers and the aged would be safe from both the fighting and the deprivation that came with it. The men of Ngati Pono, of course, would be needed for battle, while the women who remained would accompany them to tend to their needs and, between military engagements, help to maintain Waikaraka when they could return there.
Isla had already decided that she would be staying in Taranaki with Tai. For the past three years it had been her job to look after the twins, and so far as she was concerned, it still was, but she could not be at her husband’s side and with Jean and Jamie—and she knew that the twins would be well cared for. And they were no longer bairns, of course, and were old enough now to understand that the separation would not be forever. But still, it wrenched at her heart to think how long they might be apart.
‘Why can I no’ stay and fight?’ Jamie said. ‘I’m getting verra tall and I’m good wi’ the taiaha. Harapeta says so.’
Jean crossed her arms belligerently. ‘If Jamie’s staying, so am I.’
Niel shook his head. ‘Neither of ye are staying, and that’s that.’
‘But you are, though, aren’t ye, Niel? Ye’ll be fighting?’ Jamie asked.
‘Aye, I’ll be fighting.’
The confirmation was succinct, but in it Isla heard pride and, to her dismay, a barely concealed excitement. Niel was as much Pakeha-Maori now as she and the twins were, and any vague British allegiance he might once have felt on the basis of a shared skin colour had faded long ago. It suited him well, the life he was living now, and Isla knew that their mother and father would be very proud of him. At close to sixteen, he had grown into a tall, wide-shouldered young man, fit, agile and athletic, although it was clear that the heavy muscles that had so characterized their father’s physique were still to come. His face had changed as his jaw and brow had broadened, and he no longer had the soft, slightly girlish features of his boyhood. His hair, long now, was still fair but had darkened to several shades deeper than Isla’s, and the hair on his face and body was a light copper. He was becoming a man and he was popular with the Ngati Pono girls, even though they seemed to lead him a merry dance, which he pretended not to enjoy.
He was still quiet sometimes—what Agnes McKinnon would have called ‘deep’—but nowhere near as sulky as he once had been. To Isla’s amazement and delight, he had become quite a storyteller, happy to spend hours sitting around a fire recounting legends passed down by his father about the military prowess and victories of the McKinnons of past generations, particularly the stories associated with the ’45, even though that had ended in such disaster at Culloden. His audiences seemed never to tire of hearing his tales of skirling pipes on the battlefield, the muted flash of the clans’ tartans, the shouts and battle cries, and the skill with which the claymore, the broadsword, the dirk and the targa were wielded. Some listeners even went so far as to postulate that Niel’s high degree of competence with taiaha, tewhatewha and rifle must surely be gifts passed down to his spirit and his blood directly from his ancestors. Privately, Harapeta thought it was more likely to be the countless hours of dedicated and singleminded practice Niel put in with those particular weapons, but he kept this observation to himself.
And now he had attained a level of skill that made him a very welcome addition to Ngati Pono’s fighting force, a fact that filled Isla with trepidation as well as a reluctant pride.
Round-eyed with awe and consternation, Jamie looked at his brother and blurted, ‘But what will happen if ye go off fighting and ye get kilt?’
The others, including Niel, glared at him. He had said what they were all thinking, and expressing it made the terrible possibility more real.
‘What?’ Jamie knew he’d said something bad, and he reached for the puppy and squashed it against his chest in a vicious cuddle.
‘You’re no’ supposed tae go saying things like that, ye dunder-heid,’ Jean admonished.
‘I’ll no’ get kilt,’ Niel said quietly.
But Isla couldn’t look at him any more.
TARANAKI, 1863
The children did not leave Waikaraka until eight weeks later at the end of February. But the weather would still be good for another month, and word had come that the progress of the Great South Road into the Waikato had stalled on the far side of the Mangatawhiri River. The imperial troops had built a large redoubt at Pokeno, and a stockade above the Waikato River nearby at Havelock’s Bluff, but, providing the travellers from Waikaraka were not delayed, they would have time to traverse the Waikato basin before Lieutenant-General Cameron’s men crossed the Mangatawhiri.
The day the women and children left Waikaraka was a grim one, punctuated by terrible weeping and wailing. Isla had not felt so distraught since Meg had died, and wondered privately how much more sadness her heart could accommodate. The twins had clung to her and Niel, begging to be allowed to stay with them after all. Pare, her baby strapped to her back and weeping copiously herself, had had to prise their fingers open and firmly lead them away while Laddie, held in check by Niel, howled with chilling desolation.
At the village gate Jamie, his face a red, tear-streaked mask of misery, had turned and cried out, ‘Ye promise ye’ll come and find us when it’s o’er, Isla? Ye’ll no’ leave us there?’
And Isla had run to them and pulled the pair of them to her in a last, fierce embrace. ‘I promise ye, mo leannan. I promise both of ye. I’ll no’ leave ye, and I’ll no’ forget ye.’
And then the children were gone, leaving the village feeling empty and robbed of its life. Those who stayed had often grizzled about the noisy and boisterous behaviour of their children and grandchildren, but now wished they were back.
Time seemed to drag very slowly, but in April the situation began to change rapidly; and the change was wrought by Governor George Grey, the man whom many Maori had believed was their ally during his first tenure as governor, in the 1840s. Now he was back, but things were very different. He had seemed poised to finally return the Peka Peka Block to Te Ati Awa, but on the morning of 7 April 1863, three hundred troops marched onto the Tataraimaka Block. This had been occupied two years before by Ngati Ruanui, until Peka Peka was returned. Wira quickly realized what Grey’s intentions were and he called a village council.
‘That Pakeha dog!’ He strode up and down the beaten floor of the wharenui, spit flying and arms gesticulating angrily. ‘That two-faced, conniving, white-skinned devil!’
His audience gaped at him. Then Te Katate hissed in sudden comprehension, and hurled his pipe across the whare.
Wira spun to face him. ‘You see? You see what he is doing?’
‘Ae, I do,’ Te Katate replied grimly. Elbowing Tai on his right, he ordered, ‘Go and get my pipe, boy.’
For the benefit of everyone else, Wira explained in icy, clipped tones: ‘He knows that we will not tolerate the presence of imperial soldiers on the Tataraimaka Block while the Peka Peka Block is still in the Queen’s hands. So, he makes it known that he is about to return Peka Peka to us, then sends his men to occupy Tataraimaka so that we will attack them.’
‘So will he then not return Peka Peka?’ Kimiora, Pare’s husband, asked.
‘In the end, it does not matter if he does or does not,’ Te Katate replied. ‘By then, it may be too late for us.’
‘Why?’ Isla exclaimed. ‘Why will it be too late?’
Wira said, ‘Because he knows that when Ngati Ruanui retaliate against the British reoccupation of Tataraimaka, they will be joined by their allies. Those allies include all iwi from the Taranaki area.’ He paused. ‘And Ngati Maniapoto.’
There was silence at this, as everyone digested the import of what he had said.
As usual, Te Katate had to have the last word. ‘Ngati Maniapoto are Waikato. If they take up arms again, Grey will use that as his excuse for declaring war on the Waikato, and opening the way for Pakeha invasion of the King Country. And then Taranaki. They will come with their soldiers and guns and their diseases and their dirty English ways. We will be obliterated.’
‘We will not!’ Harapeta declared vehemently, raising his fist. ‘We will fight to the death!’
He looked around, expecting everyone to cheer, but there was only silence.
On 4 May, a Ngati Ruanui taua ambushed a detachment of nine imperial soldiers at Oakura, travelling from the redoubt of Fort St George along the beach to New Plymouth, killing eight of them. Nine days later the Peka Peka Block was officially returned to Te Ati Awa but, as Te Katate had predicted, it was too late. With almost nine hundred men, Lieutenant-General Cameron drove the Ngati Ruanui from the Tataraimaka Block to two nearby pa—Kaitake on a spur of the Kaitake Range, and Katikara opposite Fort St George—where they were joined by taua from Taranaki and Whanganui. By the beginning of June they had been defeated, and Grey knew he had delivered an insult of sufficient magnitude that Waikato iwi were sure to fight. Immediately, he withdrew to New Plymouth and sent his military reinforcements north, alleging that the Kingite ambush at Oakura was clear evidence of a ‘determined and bloodthirsty’ plot to invade Auckland.
The spark intended to ignite the war in the Waikato had caught.
Chapter Eight
Although those at Waikaraka did not hear of it until several days later, on 9 July Grey demanded an oath of allegiance to Queen Victoria from all Maori living between Auckland and the Mangatawhiri River—the aukati, or boundary, between Auckland Province and the King Country. Those who refused were immediately evicted from their land. Women, children and the aged moved down into the Waikato in search of food and shelter from the cold, wet winter while their men took to the bush.
Days later Grey issued a proclamation to Waikato rangatira: anyone waging war against Her Majesty the Queen would forfeit the lands guaranteed to them by the Treaty of Waitangi. At daybreak the following morning, on 12 July, and before the proclamation could possibly have reached its intended recipients, Grey ordered Cameron and his fifteen hundred troops to cross the Mangatawhiri River by boat. Grumbling and stamping their cold feet once they had landed, their white webbing and the dark blue of their uniforms mingling with the mist and shadows of the dawn, they set to digging ditches and piling sodden turf to form the parapets of Koheroa Redoubt, situated on the heights between the Mangatawhiri and the Waikato River. To the east and further downstream on the Waikato, soldiers were busy building Alexandra Redoubt at Tuakau, which would protect military traffic on the river and close it to Maori.
With the fortifications complete, Cameron, in deference to the miserable weather, settled down to wait. The entire area had been thoroughly surveyed, an electric telegraph had been erected along the Great South Road from Auckland all the way to Queen’s Redoubt at Pokeno, and more reinforcements were arriving from England. As well, the Auckland Militia had been mobilized, armoured steamers were under construction in Sydney, and volunteers were about to be recruited from Australia. The Waikato River below the vantage point at Koheroa was empty, bereft of the busy Maori traffic normally on its way to Port Waikato to deliver goods destined for sale at Auckland, and for Australian markets.
Everything was ready.
Isla sat down and eased the peke from her protesting shoulders. They’d been on the march now for a week, on their way up to the Waikato to join the Kingites as they readied for war. Her feet in their squelching boots were blistered and sore, and she was cold and tired, but then so was everyone else.
They were a taua numbering one hundred: twenty-six women and seventy-four fighting men. Behind them at Waikaraka they had left a core of women, elders and older children to watch over the village and tend to the crops as best they could, while, far away to the east, the Ngati Pono travelling party, or ope, had, they hoped, reached the safe haven of Maketu.
The taua, men and women, carried their weapons, bedding mats, cooking and hunting implements, and enough basic food to last the journey into the Waikato. They had brought with them preserved meats, bird and eel, a small supply of kumara and potato, and had been gathering fern root, berries, herbs and nikau leaves, and snaring birds and rats as they travelled. Laddie hunted his own food. When they reached the Waikato, they knew they would be refurnished with supplies by local Kingite hapu.
The previous night they had camped at Mokau, the first time they had seen the ocean since their journey had begun, and had gathered an abundance of kai moana. This morning, Isla had had an upset stomach from eating too many mussels. It would have been quicker to travel by sea, but the waka were at Kawhia Harbour and they were unsure whether the British were still patrolling the coast.
This morning they had turned inland again, heading northeast for the Ngati Maniapoto stronghold of Hikurangi, near Otorohanga. There, they would prevail upon the people of Ngati Maniapoto to ferry them down the Waipa River to Ngaruawahia, King Tawhiao’s seat, where it was assumed Cameron and his troops would be sure to attack. But they were worried that they would not reach Ngaruawahia in time: it would take them at least another week to reach Otorohanga, and it was already the middle of July.
Tai had fretted all the way from Waikaraka, saying several times, ‘We will miss the battle at this rate.’
Kakama, Tai’s father, had told him to be quiet, but Wira was not so concerned. ‘If we arrive at Ngaruawahia too late and the British have been sent back across the Mangatawhiri, then well and good. That part of the battle will have been won. But if not, we will surely clash with them somewhere.’
