Isle of Tears (17 page)

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.

The next morning, when Isla awoke, it was to the blood-freezing news that a column of the Colonial Defence Force Cavalry was advancing directly towards Rangiaowhia.

They heard them before they saw them: the thunder of pounding hooves, then flashes of blue serge and the glint of drawn sabres as the horsemen galloped through the centre of the village.

Chickens flapped squawking into the air, dogs barked explosively, and screaming women and children scrambled for the shelter of buildings or ran out into the fields surrounding the village. Isla followed Mere and hurled herself through the door of the whare in which they’d slept the previous night, Laddie barking madly and landing almost on top of her.

Scrabbling for her musket, Mere cried, ‘Load the tupara, hurry!’

Like everyone else in the village, Isla had not expected that they would be attacked. When they’d arrived yesterday afternoon they had been confidently informed that Cameron and his army were still to the north of the Paterangi line: how had they managed to get through without any of the defenders knowing? As Mere feverishly loaded the musket—powder down muzzle, ball in, wad in, ram home, caps on nipples—Isla steadied her own shaking hands and loaded the tupara, the double-barrelled shotgun. It was a heavy weapon, and she knew what would happen when she fired it.

She snatched a look around the door: the soldiers had wheeled and were coming back, driving several dozen villagers ahead of them before dismounting and herding the terrified people into a corner. Others were firing their pistols at any villager still in sight. Isla moved to the whare’s open window, rested the barrels of the shotgun on the ledge, took aim at a passing horseman and fired, the noise deafening in the confines of the whare. The recoil slammed her backwards and knocked her onto the floor, where she lay for a second, stunned. Whining, Laddie tried to lick her face. Mere stepped up to the window, aimed and fired the musket.

‘Did I get him?’ Isla said breathlessly, alarmed that she might have, but disappointed that she might have missed. Rubbing her bruised shoulder, she struggled to her feet.

Mere’s face was impassive. ‘If you did, he has not fallen.’ She picked up the shotgun and fired the second barrel, staggering backwards and cursing when it seemed that she had missed her target.

Outside the soldiers, most now dismounted, were shooting wildly, and a number of village women and the remaining warriors were returning fire and looking for cover. Isla reloaded the shotgun, risked another look outside, and saw something that made her heart pound even faster.

‘There are more soldiers coming! On foot, dozens and dozens o’ them!’

Mere looked quickly at the men in their distinctively plain blue serge tunics, then pulled her head back in and said disgustedly, ‘Ae, the forest rangers. Did you see where Hera and Atarangi went?’

‘They ran intae the fields. Will they have got away?’

Mere reloaded the musket and handed it to Isla. ‘I hope so. They will be heading for Paterangi by now. Help will come soon.’

Isla, peering through the window again alongside Mere, prayed that she was right.

Then came shouts and shrill screams as a group of elderly men, children and women broke cover and ran into the Anglican church, while another made a mad dash for the large whare next-door to Mere and Isla. Immediately, the soldiers congregated around both buildings. Isla fired the musket, noting with a sort of appalled satisfaction that this time a soldier did go down: there was an answering volley, and Mere and Isla threw themselves to the ground, the bullets punching through the raupo above them. When the bullets had ceased, they crawled back to the window.

An officer shouted at the whare next-door for the people inside to surrender and come out. Nothing happened and a second soldier moved towards the door, apparently intent on enforcing
the officer’s order. But a shot rang out from within, and the soldier fell and was dragged through the open doorway. At this, the soldiers not already firing at the church and elsewhere formed into two ranks, the men in front kneeling, and let go a thunderous fusillade at the whare, bits of the raupo walls flying off in all directions.

Horrified, Isla gasped, ‘They’ll be kilt, all o’ them!’

Mere shook her head. ‘The ground will be lower inside, like this one.’

The shooting ceased, there was a long moment where no one did anything, then an officer stepped forward to the whare door—and was immediately shot, although he was thrown far enough back to avoid being pulled inside. Yet another soldier ran forward to help the officer, and was also shot down. In the rear, at a safe distance from the whare, sat a still figure on horseback—Cameron himself.

Mere started to laugh.

There were shouts of ‘Rush the whare! Rush it!’, and a dozen forest rangers stampeded through the door, where they were instantly met by gunfire from the defenders inside. A moment later the rangers reappeared, dragging their dead and wounded behind them.

Volley after volley was again fired into the whare, and now a wisp of smoke began to curl from the thatched roof: in less than a minute the building was ablaze.

The first villager out, an old man with his arms held wide to show he carried no weapon, was cut down in a hail of bullets.
There were cries from several officers to stop shooting, but the next two people to emerge, both armed, were also shot down. The only person to emerge unharmed was a little naked child, who was snatched up by a soldier and wrapped in an army greatcoat. Moments later, accompanied by a great shower of sparks and floating ash, the roof of the whare collapsed.

Mere sat back on her heels, slowly and ruefully shaking her head. ‘There will be untold trouble after this.’

Isla nodded, wiping an angry tear from her cheek. ‘Aye. It’s a terrible way tae die, tae be burned.’

‘It is not just that. I believe two of the women still inside were Kereopa’s wife and daughter,’ Mere said flatly.

Isla looked at her. ‘Kereopa Te Rau? The Ngati Rangiwewehi warrior?’

‘Ae. He is a powerful man, and he will not let this pass lightly.’ Looking out again, Mere noted that the imperial soldiers were rounding up prisoners and seemed to be preparing to depart. Grabbing her musket, she crossed to the rear of the whare and began kicking at the raupo wall. ‘Help me with this, Isla. We need to leave here now.’

M
ARCH
1864

R
ewi had abandoned Paterangi as soon as word had come of Cameron’s attack on Rangiaowhia, and had redirected his men to Hairini, between Rangiaowhia and Te Awamutu, in the hope of protecting the village from any further attacks. But Maori casualties at Hairini were heavy, and they had been forced to retreat through a nearby swamp and disperse. The delay this caused to Cameron’s second advance, however, allowed the Kingites to move their people, guns and ammunition out of the area. When Cameron entered Rangiaowhia again—this time accompanied by Bishop George Selwyn, who had assured the Kingites that the village would remain a place of safety for women and children—his men helped themselves to the food and livestock the villagers had had to leave behind.

Five weeks later, the remnants of the Kingite army had retreated across the Puniu River, along with dispossessed Maori fleeing deeper into the King Country, and were preparing to make a stand at Orakau, three miles south-east of Kihikihi. Rewi was not particularly enamoured of the location, but, hearteningly, Ngati Maniapoto had been joined by taua from all over the central North Island. A large contingent from the Ngati Te Koheroa hapu of Ngati Raukawa were there, as well as Ngati Pono, Tuhoe from Urewera, Ngati Kahungungu from Hawke’s Bay, Ngati Tuwharetoa from Taupo, and representatives from most other Waikato hapu and several East Coast iwi.

Now, everyone was busy working day and night to build a fighting pa on a rise surrounded by sweet-smelling peach orchards, and bordered to the north and south by swamplands. It wasn’t an ideal site—it was overlooked by a hill to the south named Karaponia, and lacked a water supply and an easy escape route—but they hoped the added fortification would be enough.

Since Rangiaowhia, Tai had been even more protective than usual of Isla. He had been terrified, when the news had reached Paterangi, that Isla had been killed by the British, or at the very least taken prisoner. Now he barely let her out of his sight, fretting even when she and the other Ngati Pono women went beyond the pekerangi, the fence, to gather the last of the peaches that weren’t rotting on the ground. Harapeta told him not to be such an old woman. Had Isla and Mere not only fought Von Tempsky’s forest rangers at Rangiaowhia but also escaped and made their way unharmed to Paterangi?

‘I know,’ Tai muttered, embarrassed and unable to meet Harapeta’s eye.

‘But you fear for her safety, ae?’ Harapeta said, nodding. ‘I do, too, cousin. We all fear for each other. And that is why we look out for each other. But she will come to no harm with Mere, you know that.’

Tai heard the words, but was not reassured. ‘I still worry.’

‘We will be all right when the battle comes. I feel it in my bones.’

Laying aside his spade, Tai wiped the sweat out of his eyes. ‘I do not feel it in
my
bones. This is not a good place to make a stand.’

Harapeta glanced at him uneasily; Tai’s future on the battlefield had been foreseen, therefore his opinion on such matters was to be respected. But then he shrugged. ‘We cannot leave now.’

‘No. We must stay and fight.’ Tai retrieved his spade, then put it down again. ‘I am also worried about Niel.’

Niel, farther down the trench, was talking to someone and gesticulating expansively. Like all the men, he was naked from the waist up and sweat gleamed on his muscled shoulders and torso. He had arranged his hair in a cue and let his sparse beard grow, but it only partly concealed the moko he had worn proudly since Rangiriri: he had killed two men there, and was therefore entitled to it. But there had only been time to complete half of the pattern as the tohunga ta moko had been called away before its completion, and had not come back. The pattern covered the left side of Niel’s face, spiralling out from his nose and sweeping
across his cheek to his ear, between his eyes and across one temple, and down into his beard. The other Ngati Pono men had to admit that it looked very striking on Niel’s fair skin, and there was more than a little collective pride in the fact that the boy had chosen to wear the badge of honour.

Isla had initially been rather shocked at his decision to receive the moko. Her first reaction had been to ask herself what their mother and father would have said, but when she saw how much pleasure and dignity the moko gave her brother, she’d relented and, when she had grown used to it—the stark, raised black lines beneath his gold hair and around one bright blue eye—she agreed that it did rather suit him. At sixteen he was so different from the frightened, sullen and angry boy who had first gone to live with the Ngati Pono. She knew, though, that he still harboured a deep and festering anger over their parents’ murder, and suspected that it had somehow been transformed into a hatred of everyone and everything British. She had seen it roil up out of him at Rangiriri, and it had frightened her.

‘Why are you worried?’ Harapeta said. ‘He is becoming a fine warrior.’

‘Ae, I know,’ Tai muttered. ‘But he is growing reckless, and he might die because of it.’

‘But we all might die.’ Harapeta looked at Tai sideways. ‘Except for you. You will not die on the battlefield.’

Tai shrugged off Harapeta’s comment; it had been said so many times now that he barely heard it anymore. ‘I worry for Niel, and I worry for Isla. If her brother were to fall in battle, it will be too
much for her to bear.’ He was silent for a moment. ‘She has lost so much already.’

‘I believe, cousin, that your wife is stronger than you think,’ Harapeta remarked, with a wisdom that surprised himself.

Tai met his gaze. ‘Ae, perhaps. I hope we will not have to find out.’

Early on the morning of 31 March, scouts reported that Cameron’s army was on the move towards Orakau—from the west, the south and the north. The columns converged at the pa and, as the sun rose, the cavalry made its first charge. Faced with the pekerangi, the horsemen pulled back to allow an advance of foot soldiers, the two companies almost falling into the low fortification before they realized they were upon it. But the Kingites in the rifle pits delivered a wall of gunfire. Three times the foot soldiers charged, and three times they were driven back to cheers of derision from the defenders, leaving their dead and dying on the ground.

Within a very short amount of time, however, it was clear to those inside Orakau that the pa had been surrounded and that there was now no way for them to escape.

Isla bit into a raw potato and sucked the juice out of it before it could escape down her chin. She was very hungry now, and desperately thirsty. The meagre amount of food they’d brought
with them had gone; all that was left were the raw potatoes they’d unearthed while building the pa.

For all of yesterday and today, Orakau had been under siege and noisy, relentless fire. Although small taua had sallied forth from the pa to jab at the imperial lines, there could be no mass exodus; but nor could the British soldiers get in. They could be seen, however, busily digging a sap beyond the northern end of the fortifications; moving about, half-underground, like little blue moles, and pushing earth-filled baskets before them to absorb the defenders’ bullets.

Wrapping ten or twelve potatoes in her shawl and tying it securely across her chest so that the tubers lay against her back, Isla stepped around the growing piles of earth that the women were piling up as they worked to deepen the bunkers, then quickly climbed the north-facing parapet. Before she reached the top, she lay on her stomach and wriggled across a shallow depression gouged into the earth, then rolled down the other side into the shelter of the palisade, the potatoes digging painfully into her back. Laddie slid down after her in a small avalanche of soil. Picking herself up, she moved in a crouching run between the parapet and the palisade to a gap in the manuka poles, lay down again, and crawled through. This took her outside the pa, but still within the pekerangi. Now as flat to the ground as she could get, she pulled herself forward on her elbows until she came to a rifle pit, then rolled in.

Tai managed to catch her with one hand and break her fall. At the bottom of the pit she sat up and shook the dirt out of her hair.

‘Are you hurt?’ Tai asked as he reloaded his shotgun.

Isla untied her shawl. ‘No. I brought ye these,’ she said, and handed out the potatoes. Niel, Harapeta and Kimiora, also in the pit, took one each and bit hungrily into them. Salivating, Laddie intently watched every move they made. Harapeta sighed and gave Laddie a piece of potato, which he mouthed then disappointedly spat out.

‘You should not bring him out this far,’ Tai remarked. ‘He might get shot.’

‘I didnae. He followed me.’

Tai passed his gun to her. ‘Can you watch while I eat? Did you bring more ammunition?’

Isla climbed onto the firing step at the front of the pit and, keeping her head well down, aimed the shotgun at the head of the advancing sap about fifteen yards to the fore.

‘No. We’re running oot,’ she said over her shoulder.

Tai stopped eating.
‘Everyone
is running out?’

‘Aye.’ Isla felt, rather than saw, the men exchange glances behind her.

‘What are we supposed tae use for bullets then?’ Niel demanded. ‘Peach stones?’

‘Aye,’ Isla said again, her eyes still trained on the sap head. A shell burst on the other side of the pa and they all ducked reflexively.

‘What do you mean?’ Harapeta said when the blast had settled.

‘We’re tae use peach stones,’ Isla said sheepishly. ‘And plugs o’ wood.’

Niel snorted: she knew it was Niel, because it was the noise he always made to express disgust and ridicule.

Exhausted, frightened and now angry, she turned on him. ‘What else d’ye suggest? We cannae get oot o’ here, can we? Or should we send someone oot wi’ an order for more balls and cartridges, perhaps!’

‘Stop it, both of you!’ Tai barked.

Startled, Isla and Niel stared at him.

‘Watch the front, Isla,’ Kimiora said mildly as he stuffed the last bite of potato in his mouth and licked his fingers.

Isla faced the front, feeling her blood boil. It hadn’t been her idea to use peach stones! Then she felt firm hands on her shoulders, and relaxed back against Tai’s chest for a welcome moment.

‘Do not be upset,’ he whispered in her ear. ‘We are all frightened. We will get out, I promise.’ He took the gun from her and gently pushed her back from the pit wall, out of sight of any well-aimed sniper’s bullets.

Isla stood in silence, her hands on her hips, struggling to rein in her emotions.

To atone for his derision, which he knew he shouldn’t have directed at his sister, Niel mumbled, ‘The potatoes were good, Isla. Thank ye for bringing them.’

Isla nodded and picked up her shawl. ‘There’s tae be a council later, when it’s fully dark, and everyone who can be spared is tae come in. Rewi wants tae talk aboot what it is we’re tae do.’

As she began to climb up out of the pit, she heard Niel say, ‘Be canny, Isla, will ye?’

She paused, and gave him a little smile. ‘You be canny, too, aye?’

That night, as mist mingled with the gun smoke hovering over the pa, Tupotahi, Rewi’s cousin and lieutenant, suggested an attempted break-out from Orakau. The council debated this, but in the end it was agreed that the fight should continue. As Rewi pointed out, they, the Kingites, had sought this battle, so why should they retreat?

‘Let us abide by the fortune of war,’ he declared. ‘If we are to die, let us die in battle. If we are to live, let us survive on the field of battle.’

Sitting between Tai and Wira, and holding Tai’s rough, callused hand, Isla felt a strange and unexpected sense of contentment, a feeling that even though they were in dire straits with no food, water or ammunition and little chance of escaping alive, this was where she belonged: in this land, that was now her land, and with these people, who were now her people. And she understood that fighting beside them to keep that land was the right thing to do, and knew in her heart that her mother and father would have approved.

Very few inside Orakau slept that night, as the men kept watch in the rifle pits, and the women by the light of the cloud-wrapped moon continued to deepen and strengthen the bunkers, their heads dizzy from lack of food and their mouths bone-dry.

The following day, the third of the siege, Cameron himself arrived,
bringing with him even more troops. Later that morning, the imperial sappers reached the outer rifle pits at the north-west corner of the pa, and threw shells with shortened fuses into the pits, killing or wounding a number of the warriors manning them. Some of the shells were hurled back, where they exploded in the sap. Isla thanked God that Tai, Niel, Harapeta and Kimiora were inside the pa at the time.

But early in the afternoon, as Isla sat on a heap of fresh earth and wiped the sweat from her face and neck, she heard the short, sharp command of the British bugles.

The women stopped digging and listened: in less than a minute the guns fell silent and, for the first time in several days, the wind could be heard rustling through the leaves of the peach trees. A wounded man propped in the shelter of a bunker cried out and was quieted.

‘Is it over?’ Hera asked, as though she couldn’t believe it.

A child, overwhelmed, began to cry, and someone said, with plaintive hope, ‘Will we be able to go now?’

But it wasn’t over. Isla followed Mere as she scrambled to the top of the parapet and lay down. Below them, a man—an officer judging by the black braid on his jacket and his peaked forage cap—was moving to the head of the sap. Shortly, he began to speak in Maori, his voice raised so that all inside the pa could hear him.

‘Friends,’ he shouted. ‘Listen! These are the words of General Cameron! Great is his admiration of your bravery and military skill, but you must cease your defence of this place, or you will be
killed. Soon your pa will be blown up and there will be no escape as the general’s soldiers are all around you. He beseeches you: hoist your white flag and call a truce! It is your only chance!’

Isla snorted, sounding more like Niel than she would have liked to admit. ‘Hoist your white flag and be taken prisoner, more like. We’re no’ at Rangiriri now!’