The Devil in Paradise--Captain Putnam in Hawaii

by James L. Haley

  The storm passed, but the queen said nothing more to Karaimoku until she departed, lowered with a wave in the bosun’s chair as her attendants climbed down the ladder. Karaimoku was the last to leave, not before Bingham made his way to him. “Mr. Prime Minister, we are greatly distressed that we might have done something to offend the queen. Please, can you enlighten us and tell us how to repair the damage?”

  “No. No, no.” Karaimoku paused at the boarding gate. “It was not about you at all. The queen invited my brother to join us. He said he would come in his own canoe, but he did not. You must understand that my brother is the high chief Boki of Oahu. He is, as one English officer described him, the black sheep of the family. He has no love for the queens, nor they for him. He did not consent to the end of the old religion, but he did not fight because he knew that side would lose. He dislikes Europeans, he is cruel to his people, but he is powerful because he is close to the king, whom he supplies with rum and whiskey, which he buys of the Europeans.” He gave Bingham a moment to take all this in. “Did you really think you had arrived in paradise?”

  Bingham harrumphed with a smile. “I thank you for your candor.”

  “It will be a few days before you may land. There is much to prepare. And now I must take Hopu and Tamoree with me again. The queen will question them more about you.”

  For a week the Thaddeus rocked at anchor, kept in food by natives who rowed up to trade, which was itself a hopeful sign that they had not been forbidden to do so. Blanchard had a tarpaulin rigged over the well deck for shade, from where the company observed sea turtles paddle by, and occasionally spied the blow of a whale out to sea.

  When Karaimoku came back, it was a morning of light rain showering down, never heavy nor constant. He was dressed in a tidy black suit, with white shirt and cravat, as though he might have been a banker or lawyer, with the single exception that his feet were bare. What they took for native artlessness, the company realized might actually have been by design, for after the canoe tied on he ascended the boarding ladder far more nimbly than he could have done in shoes.

  Blanchard shook hands with him. “We are glad to see you, Mr. Pitt. We began to fear you had forgotten us.”

  “Not at all. Their Majesties have been much occupied with state affairs. Chiefs have come from many islands to make their allegiance to the new king, and matters must be discussed with each of them. However, it is their pleasure to receive you on this evening.”

  “Oh, good gracious,” erupted Bingham. “No more notice than this?”

  “More rain is coming. May we speak in your cabin?”

  Karaimoku stood at the head of the table, Captain Blanchard sitting close by, and the entire company crowding the compartment. “I tell you in honesty there has been difficulty. Some people are talking against you, that you will bring strange ways that we will not like, and that you are dangerous. Boki my brother is one, and he is against all foreigners, but there are others, even other white people like yourselves. Some of them have spoken against you.”

  Blanchard waved a hand in the air. “Well, hell, I know who that is. I’ll bet it’s old Johnny Young, is it not?”

  Karaimoku looked at him in surprise. “It is he. Do you know Mr. Young?”

  “Who does not? I would have thought he would be dead by now; he must be about eighty. Folks, the story there is that Mr. Young was an English sailor taken captive by the old king over thirty years ago. He was given a choice between teaching the king about modern military tactics and weapons, most especially cannons, and training his army, or be taken into a temple and sacrificed to the gods. Being a sensible man, he chose the former. His tutelage is the main reason that old Ta-meha-meha was able to conquer everybody else. The old king rewarded him with land, power, and high-ranking wives, over all of which he is as jealous as an old dog over a soup bone. The prime minister will correct me if I have done him an injustice.”

  “He fought well for the king and deserved his rewards, but I know also that he tells things his own way. And it is true that he promotes the English interest over the American. He knows better than to lie to the king or his minister, but his truth is British. But all this aside, it has pleased Their Majesties to receive you on this evening, at court.”

  “I say again, this is rather sudden,” Bingham protested. “Am I expected to make them a sermon, a reasoning for our faith and our mission?”

  Karaimoku raised his hand and shook his head. “You will not speak, but I think you will be told a day when you can speak. It will not be a luau; eat your dinner before I come for you. Wash yourselves, and wear your best clothes. Have a mind what you will say if you are called upon. Do not approach until you are recognized and beckoned by the king, at which time I will present you. I will come back for you at sunset.”

  As soon as he had gone, the women set water to heating in the galley, enough for a basin of it in each cabin. In their berth Clarity and Muriel scrubbed vigorously. “Well”—Muriel smirked—“the suddenness of it all may prove a blessing if Mr. Bingham has not the time to work up a mighty sermon.”

  Clarity agreed, but they were interrupted by raised voices from the Chamberlains in the next berth. They could not hear distinctly but understood that Jerusha was refusing to take her children ashore.

  The bay was calm as glass when the sun disappeared over the horizon, leaving in its wake strands of orange and violet clouds; they saw the bright twinkle of torches ashore and through their glasses observed that an arbor had been raised and people were gathering. Karaimoku reappeared, this time in a double canoe with a deck lashed between them, and accompanied by Hopu and Tamoree, now bare of foot and chest and wrapped in tapa.

  Bingham was the last to descend the ladder and stared at them as though he had never seen men’s nipples before. “Gentlemen, I am sorry to see you thus clad.”

  “On this night, Reverend,” said Tamoree, “it will be better for Hopu and myself to stand with you as one of them, not as though we have forsaken our people and become one of you. A little humility on your part will also have a good effect.”

  Hidden in the folds of their dresses, Muriel reached out and squeezed Clarity’s hand, certain that the rest of the company shared their amazement at Tamoree’s transformation into a lord of his people and heir to an island kingdom. “It is well,” he continued, “for Kanui and Honoree to be dressed as you. Among us we can show the bridge between our two worlds.”

  “Yes,” Bingham agreed. He was uncertain at how to react at having been set so straight, but trusted in Tamoree’s guidance. “I am glad that you have thought this through.”

  The great double canoe shuddered as it slid up onto the beach; a wide plank was raised up to it to allow the company to descend to the sand without getting their feet wet. Sybil Bingham, who seldom spoke, took steps small and unsteady. “Gracious,” she swore, “the land is not moving! I feel as though I am still swaying with the ship. How very queer and unsettling. Captain Blanchard?”

  He laughed loudly. “Remember, ma’am, this is the first you have set foot on dry land in over five months. It will take a while for your sea legs to get accustomed, but they will.”

  Karaimoku led them up the beach to the line of green grass and into the scent of flowers that were new and strange to them. Under the arbor of palm fronds were lined up three chairs in the style of Louis XIV. There was a sort of clearing before them, with a throng of people standing in an irregular circle, one or two of whom came forward into the royal presence when called to receive a greeting or answer a question.

  “These are all chiefs and persons of quality,” said Karaimoku.

  “No common people?” asked Bingham.

  “Commoners do not come to court. Now we wait. You see the king on the center throne.” It was apparent even from their distance that the one he referred to, who was wearing an English officer’s uniform, was intoxicated almost to the point of fainting dead away
. He laughed at everything in a high, rasping cackle, seeming insensible to the various representations made to him, which instead were answered and disposed of by Kahumanu, who sat at his left. “On his left is the kuhina nui, whom you know. On his right is his queen, whose name is Kamamalu.”

  “And what a queen she is,” breathed Clarity. “My word!”

  Karaimoku overheard her. “English officer measured her once. Six feet, seven inches tall, and very strong. Behind the king you see my brother, High Chief Boki, whose absence caused the row last week on your ship. By him you see his wife, Liliha.”

  “Yes,” said Clarity. “Remarkable.” They would have stood out at any gathering, she thought. He appeared to be in his mid-thirties, brown-skinned but almost Western in his features, even handsome in a self-possessed, haughty way. At intervals, when different people came forward to transact with the king and queens, Boki would lean forward and whisper something that would amuse the king, and three times while they waited, Boki signaled to a servant to come forward and fill the king’s silver cup from a bottle with the long neck and round bole that even the missionaries knew to be rum.

  Liliha beside him, her hand threaded through his arm, leaning on him, was much younger, perhaps twenty, and whereas the royal ladies wore Western dresses, she wore a skirt of native tapa, her breasts exposed, large and round and full, and Clarity saw in an instant how she held her shoulders back to show them to their best advantage. It was well that Karaimoku called her Boki’s wife, for in any gathering she would have been seen as a courtesan, and a successful, laughing one.

  “Wait here.” When there seemed to be no further business, but still the king gave them no sign, Karaimoku strode into the clearing before the gilt chairs, speaking out of their hearing to the royal persons. Karaimoku stood aside even as it was apparent that the king had nodded off to sleep. After an embarrassed moment it was Queen Kamamalu who took the initiative. She reached over, took hold of and raised her husband’s limp arm in greeting, and bending his elbow beckoned the missionaries forward. She let his arm fall in his lap as she whispered some witticism in his ear that made him giggle in his sleep, and she paid him no further mind.

  “Aloha,” intoned Kahumanu. “You are welcome, you who bring the word of God. Mr. Bingham, it is our pleasure that on next Sunday you and your company shall come to this lanai and preach to us the message you bring.”

  “We are grateful for such an opportunity, ma’am.”

  “Do not be grateful yet. I do not promise that you can stay, only to hear what you have to say, and then the chiefs will discuss it.”

  “I understand, ma’am.”

  “Your ladies, however, may stay to make me the dresses they promised.” There was a ripple of laughter. “Later on this night they will have my permission to measure me. Now, Hopu has told me that one of you has come with a special purpose. Mrs. Putnam, come forward!”

  Clarity was surprised and apprehensive, but now was no time for timidity. She approached and curtsied. “Ka mea kamahao, ka moi wahine.”

  “Mahalo. Mrs. Putnam, no doubt you have been told that we are a savage people.”

  The flash of fear and uncertainty must have been plain to read on her face.

  “Tut-tut, woman. Do not be afraid; you may speak freely.”

  “That has been the opinion of some, Your Majesty, but I learned early in life not to believe everything that is told to me.”

  “Heh! A very wise doctrine. Now you have met us, what is your opinion?”

  This was her first close look at the queen in state, and her attention was drawn to a thick braided necklace of what appeared to be human hair. “Ma’am, I think that the delicious food you have provided us, and your gracious hospitality, speak eloquently that you are not at all savage.”

  “Heh! Well done. Now Mrs. Putnam, I am told that you have come with these others on an errand that is different from theirs.”

  “Majesty?”

  “Hopu and Tamoree tell me that, at your home, you had a friend from our islands who grew sick and died. He asked of you if you would visit his family and tell them that he loved them and was thinking of them.”

  “Yes, ma’am, his uncle and his grandmother.”

  “Hewa-Hewa, step forward!” Advancing two steps from the crowd of courtiers appeared an old man, his hair white but ample and wild, his nose hooked, and dark eyes fierce, and his neck hung with amulets that dangled in the hollow of his chest. “This is the chief priest of the old religion, who has consented that it should be put away. Your friend Opukaha’ia, whom you called Henry, was known to our priests. Hewa-Hewa tells me that this uncle, who was kahuna to the storm god, fought in the battle to keep the old religion and was killed. But his mother, who is the grandmother to Henry whom you seek, does still live at Kearakekua. Kapiolani, step forward!”

  There advanced from the crowd an ample, middle-aged woman, whom Clarity recognized as the one the company beheld sunning herself on the rocks a few days before. “This is Kapiolani, High Chiefess of Kona. We give her our commission to conduct you to the grandmother of your friend. This is a journey of three days, and three days to return. Mrs. Putnam, will you agree to undertake this?”

  Such an adventure, so soon after landing, was almost too much to have hoped for. “Oh, yes, ma’am, with all my heart.” She faced the chiefess and curtsied, but not so deep as to the queen. “Ka mea ki-eki-e,” she said, using the term for highness, short of majesty.

  “How do you do, Mrs. Putnam.”

  “I believe we saw you a few days ago, ma’am, at the beach.”

  “Ha!” Kapiolani straightened herself and tossed her head a little. “Well, I beg your pardon, I was not dressed for company.”

  Clarity burst into a laugh, at which the chiefess laughed, showing white, even teeth. “Good!” boomed the queen. “You shall be friends. But, Mrs. Putnam, Hopu has told me that you are with child, and that such a journey might not be wise. Do you feel able to undertake this?”

  “Majesty, I am grateful for your concern, but let me assure you that I am able, and indeed eager, to visit Henry’s grandmother.”

  “You are very tiny. Can you have a child?”

  “Ma’am, the women in my family are more resilient than we appear.”

  “Where is your husband?”

  “My husband, ma’am, is a captain in my country’s navy. He will be here soon in his own ship, to bring you America’s greetings and goodwill.”

  “Heh! Mr. Bingham brings us the love of God, and your husband will bring us the love of your country. We feel well beloved.” The queen harrumphed deeply. “Well, Mr. Bingham, you see the way of it. Do you approve that Mrs. Putnam shall make this journey?”

  “Mrs. Putnam’s zeal for the Lord, ma’am, is equal to anyone’s. If she feels able, I can but wish her godspeed.”

  “Wonderful! Then it is settled. Get off, now. Come see me when you return.”

  8

  Missy La Laelae

  As Clarity and Kapiolani left the court together with Blanchard, Clarity turned over in her mind how the queen as well as Karaimoku must have learned their English from British sailors, for it was sprinkled with their slang: “tut-tut,” “horse of a different color,” “You see the way of it . . .”

  “I have horses,” said the chiefess, “and guesthouses, and servants. You will not find it a difficult travel.”

  “Chiefess Kapiolani, I gather you wish to leave at once?” Blanchard asked.

  “Yes. It is not so far to my first house. It will not be too late when we arrive.”

  “Then, ma’am, while you are putting your train together, I can take Mrs. Putnam back out to my ship and she can gather some things she will need.”

  “That is very helpful, Captain, thank you.” As Blanchard and Clarity descended to the beach, she looked over her shoulder a few times to see no fewer than a dozen horses brought to
gether and packs and parcels began to be apportioned among them, and she realized what state a high chiefess traveled in. By the time Blanchard brought her back, the train was packed and waiting on her, with one horse only lightly burdened so as to receive her portmanteau.

  From the palm-fringed shore at Kawaihae, the chiefess’s steward took the lead of her lengthy caravan. Kapiolani and Clarity rode immediately behind him in the finest English sidesaddles, followed by two female servants.

  “You are very well attended, Chiefess,” said Clarity.

  “In your language,” said Kapiolani, “I think you call them ladies-in-waiting. Why are they called that? Is it because they must wait for me to tell them what to do?”

  “Not exactly, ma’am. In English, the word ‘wait’ has two meanings. One is to wait for, as in ‘to wait for me to return from the ship.’ The other meaning is to wait upon, which means to serve. Ladies-in-waiting means ladies who serve.”

  “I see. Thank you.”

  The ground rose by degrees away from the sea until they reached the foot of a high hill that was crowned with the enormous stone platform that marked Kawaihae from the sea. She judged it more than two hundred feet long, with walls perhaps twenty feet high and what appeared to be a watch tower at the near corner. In the dying sunlight the edifice glowed deep red against the darkening sky. “What a remarkable structure,” said Clarity. “Is it a fortress of some kind?”

  The train turned south to follow along the foot of the hill. “Do not ask this just now.” There was a telltale change of timbre in her voice.

  “Chiefess, are you all right? Is it the sight of that old ruin? What is it?”

  “Look well upon that pile of rocks, and I will tell you when we are away from this place.”

  “I am very sorry to have upset you, Kapiolani. I should not have asked about it.”