Amber (35 page)

‘Oh, bear up,’ Kitty said benignly as she passed Amber down to him then slid off Tio. ‘Although I have to admit, I’m a bit sore myself. It does take a little while to get used to being in the saddle for long stretches.’

Amber had been riding in front of her, leaning back against Kitty. At one point, Kitty suspected, she had even gone to sleep. She was wearing the little trousers and jacket Kitty had bought for her in Auckland, and Kitty thought she looked rather sweet with her hair fluffing out from beneath her cap. She had stopped shouting the minute Kitty had turned back on the beach at Paihia and had shrieked with delight when it became clear to her that Kitty was packing her things so she could go with them. Since then she had said ‘Mama’ no less than eleven times, and Kitty had been absolutely thrilled. She had also said something that sounded like ‘potie’, which Kitty assumed was Amber’s version of ‘Bodie’. The letters ‘B’ and ‘D’ were not part of the Maori tongue, so naturally they would be difficult for her to pronounce, at least to start with, as Kitty had said to Simon at least three times.

Amber ran happily around, helping Simon collect sticks and dry leaves for the fire while Kitty unpacked the saddlebag containing the food. Simon soon had a small fire going in the shelter of an enormous kauri log, and crouched in front of it, warming hands that were chafed red from gripping wet leather reins. Amber watched him for a moment, then did the same thing, squatting down and reaching out little brown hands towards the small flames.

Kitty smiled. Even though it was wet and cold and they were going to be tired and sore for the foreseeable future, she hadn’t felt this happy in months. She had Amber now, and they were on their way to find Rian, and as far as she was concerned everything was right with the world. She cut several slices of bread from one of the loaves they had packed, and skewered them with green sticks.

‘I thought your aunt was going to have a hysterical fit when you said Amber was coming with us,’ Simon remarked as he poked at the fire. Then he added, in a very good approximation
of Sarah’s outraged voice, ‘If even just a single hair on that child’s head is harmed, Kitty Farrell, you’ll not be able to live with yourself!’

‘I know, she
was
rather upset, wasn’t she?’ Kitty made a rueful face as she sliced cheese to put on the bread after it had been toasted. ‘But she did tell me I shouldn’t leave Amber behind. So, in the end I was only following her advice, wasn’t I?’ She poured water from a bottle into a billy and set it on the fire for tea. ‘I couldn’t leave her behind, Simon, not after her crying out like that. I wonder if she could always do it—speak, I mean—but just didn’t want to.’

‘Who knows?’ Simon said. ‘But obviously she was upset enough to try, which I suppose is a good sign. She’s clearly regarding you as her mother now.’

‘Yes, but how did she know to say “Mama”? Do you think someone taught her?’

Simon shrugged, then swore softly as his piece of bread fell off the stick and into the fire. He wriggled the stick under it and flipped it out, wiping the ash off onto the leg of his trousers. ‘That’s toasted enough, I think. Pass me some cheese, please?’ Kitty obliged. ‘Actually,’ Simon continued, ‘I think she’s been listening to us when we’ve been talking, and picked it up that way.’

A strong gust of cold wind blew into the shelter created by the kauri log and fat drops of rain sizzled in the fire.

‘I think it’s really setting in,’ Simon observed dolefully, nodding out at the grey wall of rain. ‘Do you want to press on or find somewhere better to shelter?’

‘What time is it?’ Kitty asked, putting a slice of cheese on Amber’s toast.

Simon looked at his watch, then slipped it back into his pocket. ‘Half past one. A bit early to stop, I suppose.’

‘Yes, I’d rather press on,’ Kitty said, anxious to get as near
as possible to the area where they suspected Rian was before night fell.

Simon withdrew the map Haunui had drawn for him, and carefully opened it and spread it out on dry ground, away from the rain. ‘If we carry on across-country towards Kawakawa, but turn back towards the coast before we get there, we should be able to ford the Kawakawa River somewhere near Taumarere. Here, see? We
should
be able to,’ he emphasised, ‘providing it isn’t too swollen by all this rain.’

Kitty said, ‘Can you move out of the light, please?’

‘What? Oh, sorry.’

Amber came over, too, and huddled beside the map, her little features taking on the same expression of studied concern Kitty had no doubt was on her own and Simon’s faces.

‘Which part of the river?’

‘Here,’ Simon said, pointing with an ash-smudged finger. ‘Then if we go across-country again, from here to here, in theory we should arrive at Waikare where the Kapotai stronghold is and where Major Bridge was heading.’

Kitty rescued Amber’s cheese on toast, which she had left too near the fire and was now smoking, and carefully picked off the charred crusts. ‘Well, we’ll have a cup of tea, shall we, then keep on. I wonder if we’ll get as far as the river tonight?’

‘Perhaps,’ Simon said, ‘although I don’t think we should try and cross it tonight. Not in the dark.’

‘No,’ Kitty agreed. Then she frowned. ‘Did you hear that?’

‘What?’

‘Over there.’ Kitty pointed to a stand of bush beyond the kauri log. ‘I thought I heard something moving.’

Simon looked, then listened intently. ‘I can’t hear anything. A branch breaking, do you think?’

Kitty stared into the trees a moment longer, then shrugged and turned back to her food.

They finished their meal, such as it was, and pushed on again through the rain. Amber became tired and grizzly, but, as the rain began to lift later in the afternoon, so did her mood. Every time they passed something interesting—a bird, a tree, some sort of geographical formation of note—Kitty told Amber the name for it in both English and Maori, and soon the little girl was repeating the words after her quite recognisably. She was much better at Maori than English, though, which reinforced Kitty’s suspicion that she had learned at least some of her native tongue before she’d run away from her family’s village.
Family!
Kitty thought in disgust, still not quite able to comprehend the callousness that could have deliberately ignored a helpless child.

They saw very few people as they travelled, only a handful of Maoris also apparently on the move, and a small family of English settlers inland and south of Opua, who warned them that ‘John Heke was still on the warpath’ and that they had better keep their eyes open if they knew what was good for them.

Kitty knew what would be good for her—a hot bath, a good dinner and a nice, soft mattress—and she expected that Amber and Simon felt the same way. She had two sore spots on her backside from sitting in a wet saddle all day, the insides of her calves were rubbed raw from the stirrup leathers, and she was getting a headache. Soon they would need to find shelter for the night and make themselves something hot and filling to eat.

‘Where are we?’ she said to Simon as she urged Tio abreast of him. The poor horses looked as fatigued as Kitty felt. Tio’s lovely, elegant head was drooping, and Horo’s hindquarters were caked with mud from sliding down the bank of a stream they had crossed an hour earlier.

‘I don’t know,’ he said after a moment.

They were in a patch of bush but the track was gradually rising, so Kitty expected that they would soon encounter a vantage point that would allow them to establish their bearings.
But the sun was beginning to go down and in another hour it would be too dark to see.

So they plodded along until they came to a clearing at the top of a hill. It was lighter up there, out of the trees, and Kitty realised that she had underestimated the amount of daylight left; they probably had closer to an hour and a half. Behind and below them they could see where they had been—a long and dense stretch of forest that had already fallen into evening’s shadow.

Kitty suddenly shivered. ‘It’s going to be chilly tonight.’

But she was unsettled by more than just the prospect of a cold night outdoors: she had the unnerving impression that they were being followed. Two or three times that afternoon the hairs on the back of her neck had risen and she had been sure they were being secretly observed, but had seen no one—neither behind them nor in the bush as they passed through it. She had thought to tell Simon, but in the end had kept it to herself in case he insisted they return to Paihia.

‘See that down there?’ he said, pointing. ‘I think that’s the river.’

‘The Kawakawa?’

‘Yes. But if it isn’t, we’re hopelessly lost.’

Kitty looked at him in alarm. ‘Do you think we are?’

‘No, I’m pretty sure that’s the Kawakawa. I’ve been in this area before with Reverend Burrows, on one of his flock-finding journeys.’

And that reminded Kitty of something she had been meaning to ask. ‘Why didn’t you go out to Waimate when we were at Paihia? You would have had the time.’

Simon removed his hat and flicked off a weta that had suddenly appeared over the edge of the brim. Conversationally, he remarked, ‘That was a tusk weta.’

Amber’s keen eyes followed the insect as it sailed into the scrub at the side of the track.

Kitty shuddered. ‘It was appallingly ugly, that’s what it was.’

‘Yes, it was,’ Simon agreed. ‘Did you know that “weta” is a shortened form of the word “wetapunga,” the name the Maoris give to the giant weta? It means, more or less, “God of ugly things”.’

‘Thank you for the entomology lesson, Simon. Why didn’t you go out to Waimate?’

‘Because I didn’t want to,’ Simon said, putting his hat back on.

‘Why not?’

‘Because I’m thinking.’

‘What about?’ Kitty demanded, prying relentlessly.

Simon twisted in his saddle to give her a hard look. ‘About whether or not I
ever
want to go back. And I don’t particularly want to discuss it at the moment, if you don’t mind.’ And he tapped Horo’s flanks with his heels and headed off down the hill.

‘Oh, very well then,’ Kitty muttered, and followed him.

They rode for another hour until it really was becoming too dark to see. But just as they thought they would have to bed down in the cold, damp darkness of the bush, they emerged from the undergrowth and saw before them the glittering expanse of the Kawakawa River.

‘It’s wide, isn’t it?’ Kitty said doubtfully.

‘Yes,’ Simon agreed. ‘And clearly, at the moment, rather deep.’

‘Damn,’ Kitty said.

Chapter Fifteen

T
hey slept that night in a shelter they made from nikau branches on the edge of the marshland bordering the river. Kitty lay awake half the night worrying that wetas would creep out from the foliage and inside her blanket. And it was cold, but unfortunately not cold enough to keep the mosquitoes away; the next morning all three of them were covered in large red welts.

‘That was possibly one of the worst night’s sleeps I’ve ever had,’ Kitty complained as she came back from relieving herself in the bushes and washing her face in the cold waters of the Kawakawa. Her neck was stiff from using a saddlebag as a pillow, her body sweaty and grimy under the clothes she’d slept in, and her eyes felt gritty. ‘Do I look as bad as I feel?’

‘Yes,’ Simon said.

You don’t look much better, Kitty thought. He had a large mosquito bite on his cheek and his hair was sticking up all over the place.

He sniffed under his armpit, made a face and said, ‘A bath wouldn’t go amiss.’

Amber was the only one who seemed in high spirits. She was dancing about collecting sticks and leaves for the breakfast fire, humming something tuneless and pointing at various things and saying their names. Now that she had rediscovered her voice, she appeared intent on using it as often as possible.

Kitty dug out the horses’ nosebags and filled them with a mixture of chaff and oats. Tio and Horo had been allowed to
graze intermittently during the journey yesterday, but she knew they would be consuming a lot of energy so had made sure to provide them with something extra. She hooked the nosebags over the horses’ ears and knelt next to the newly smoking fire with the remainder of the day before’s loaf of bread and a billyful of oats.

‘Porridge and toast?’ she suggested to Simon.

Amber said, ‘Podge.’

Simon held out his hand for the billy. ‘I’ll refill the water bottles while I’m at it.’ He limped stiffly off towards the river.

Poor Simon, Kitty thought. A fortnight ago he had never even ridden a horse, and now here he was perched on the back of one for ten hours a day. No wonder he was moving slowly. She cut up the last of the loaf and stuck the slices onto sticks.

Today, if the going wasn’t too difficult, they would perhaps make Waikare by late afternoon, depending of course on where they crossed the river; if they had to follow it all the way inland until it turned into a stream, it could be days before they reached their destination. Kitty sighed inwardly. She knew that this was the point at which she was supposed to say to herself that she had waited so long now to see Rian that a few days more wouldn’t matter—but they would. They would matter a lot. She didn’t think she could bear it if they were to be held up just because it had rained and the river had risen.

She glanced up to check on Amber. Oh God, what was Rian going to say when she told him? What was
she
going to say? Hello, Rian, this is your new daughter? The thought of it made her stomach churn with nerves. Once he came to know Amber he would love her, of course. Kitty was sure of that, because what decent person wouldn’t love a child as sweet and as clever as Amber? But then her mind started to echo with Rian’s comments about a schooner being no place to raise a child, and wasn’t Kitty happy with the way things were? Angrily, she swatted at a mosquito buzzing noisily around her ear and reflected that yes,
she had been happy—she’d been happier than she ever could have imagined. But now there was Amber, and some essential part of her had changed forever. How could she explain to Rian how her spirit soared whenever the little girl smiled at her, and how she had thought her heart might break with grief and happiness when Amber had first called her ‘Mama’?