Recalled to Life

by Wendy M Wilson

  Wiki returned alone and said to Frank, “I played on those palisades when I was young. We used to pretend that we were still at war; we played Toa against Ingarangi. Of course, the Toa, which was us, always defeated the Ingarangi.”

  Frank nodded. “Ingarangi—English. I’ve been called that in my time. And Toa?”

  “Warriors,” she said. “Maori warriors of course. I’d love to be a warrior.” She slashed at a weed with the surveyor’s peg. “I want to fight for my land.”

  “The war wasn’t that long ago,” he said. “You don’t remember it?”

  She grinned. “I’m only seventeen, you know. I was born the year the war started and I was too young to know much about it.”

  “Now I feel like an old man,” said Frank.

  “Mette is younger than you,” said Wiki, nodding in agreement. “Is she very much younger?”

  “Many years,” he said. “I’m not going to tell you how many. You’ve already made me feel much too old.”

  “My mother said they called her Hine Raumati when she was here with you,” said Wiki. “Because she was interested in how we cook our food, and she seems to like food. Hine Raumati is the summer maid who causes the food to grow. My mother liked her, and so do I. I wish more…more Ingarangi were like her. Most of them don’t care.”

  “Where’s your mother now?” he asked, not correcting the mistake. Mette was Danish - Kanikani he thought -not English - Ingarangi. They were probably all English to her. “Why is she not here with you?”

  She shrugged. “She went up to Poverty Bay with Moana. They’re from the same family.”

  He met the other inhabitants of his new living quarters and thanked Wiki’s second brother, Hohepa, a smaller version of Hemi, for allowing him to share his whare. Hohepa stared at him nervously without speaking. Wiki said something to the boy in a sharp tone, and the boy came forward and stuck out his hand cautiously to Frank.

  “He’s scared of you,” said Wiki. “He’s afraid of ghosts. Every time he sees a pakeha he thinks he’s seeing a ghost.”

  “Turehu,” said the boy quietly.

  Wiki punched Frank lightly on the arm. “He’s real, see Hohepa? Anyway, Turehu aren’t as dark as Sergeant Hardy. They’re pale, with red hair.”

  The boy stared at Frank, then punched his arm, grinning. Frank gave him an equally light punch in return, winking as he did so. Hohepa smiled and attempted a wink in return.

  Wiki’s grandmother, who had come out of the women’s whare, watched them, smiling and nodding, stroking her moko-etched chin.

  “No Turehu,” she said. “Pakeha Maori.”

  A white Maori. Frank had heard people called that before, not usually in a complimentary manner, and he asked Wiki what her grandmother meant.

  She said something to her grandmother in Maori, then translated for Frank.

  “She saw the tattoo on your arm,” said Wiki. “Back when my grandmother was young, there were white men – pakeha – who visited here and became like Maori. They lived with us and learned our language. They often had moko carved on their faces, all over their faces…”

  “Like Kimball Bent,” said Frank. “Ringiringi. He became a Maori.” Wiki looked mystified and asked her grandmother a question. The old woman shook her head vigorously and made a sideways stroking gesture with her hand, indicating the more distant past.

  “She says,” said Wiki, “Kimball Bent, Ringiringi, was just a deserter and Titokowaru’s slave. She knows about him. But she’s talking about many years ago, before my mother was born. Before there were wars with the pakeha, and when Maori owned all the land of Aotearoa. She’s told me these stories before. But I don’t usually listen.”

  “Even before my time, as well,” said Frank.

  The old woman leaned towards him and poked her finger at him in short jabs. “Wake a field. Wake a field.”

  “Ah,” said Frank, understanding. “Wakefield. The father or the son?”

  “She says Journey,” said Wiki. “Does that make sense?”

  “Jerningham Wakefield,” said Frank. “The son. He wrote a book about his adventures in New Zealand. I remember reading it when I was a boy. She met him?”

  Wiki confirmed that was the case.

  Frank smiled at the old woman, nodded, and said, “Wakefield.”

  She grinned back at him, revealing gums almost devoid of teeth, then reached forward and stroked the tattoo on his shoulder.

  “Ta moko.”

  “She likes your moko,” said Wiki. “My grandmother is a Tohunga ta moko. Not many women can be moko artists, but she was because she’s the daughter of a Tohunga. She still practices it when she can.”

  The other women now had a fire going, and had placed a large bird over the fire on a spit. One woman turned it by hand, close to the flames and in danger of burning herself. Frank moved forward and took the end of the spit from her, indicating that he would take over her job.

  “Chicken…ah, heihei?” he asked as he turned the spit, remembering the old woman from the previous day with her bag of stolen chooks.

  Wiki shook her head. “Huia. My brother Hemi caught it in the bush. We can’t make the Hangi anymore, so we cook by a fire instead. My potatoes are in the fire as well, down in the ashes.”

  “It smells excellent,” he said. “I’ve never eaten huia before, although I’ve heard them calling in the bush. I assumed they were smaller…more like a tui.”

  “No. Nice and big, but not many left,” said Wiki. “Too easy to catch.”

  After they’d finished eating, the grandmother went inside the women’s whare, and came out holding a rolled-up leather satchel that looked as if it had been well used, and a carved box. She said something to Wiki, who shrugged, then said to Frank, “She’d like to carve a symbol on your other shoulder.”

  Frank knew he’d been offered a rare honour, and that he should accept. When he’d been tattooed by a rogue Maori tattoo artist in Patea, a week after the attack on Otapawa Pa, he had been drinking all day, and even drunk it had hurt like hell, but he said, looking directly at the grandmother, his hand on his heart, “I am most honoured.”

  She unrolled the leather satchel and laid it out to reveal her equipment. Frank’s gut lurched slightly but he kept his face expressionless. The inside of the satchel revealed rows of pouches with bone chisel blades and a handle with a fixed blade for cutting.

  “Albatross bones,” said Wiki, pointing at the chisel blades. “It’s going to hurt and it will leave a raised scar. Are you sure you don’t mind?”

  Frank shook his head firmly.

  “Of course I don’t. What will she carve? Something small?”

  Wiki grinned at him. “You’re scared, aren’t you? I’ll tell her to choose something little and it won’t hurt as much—or as long.”

  She said something to her grandmother and they had a brief discussion.

  “She says she’ll do a koru, which is an unfurling fern leaf. It means new life, growth, and peace.”

  That’s appropriate, he thought. He said, “I would like that. Thank your grandmother.”

  He spent the next hour with gritted teeth as the grandmother opened long circular cuts in his arm with her fixed chisel, and held open the cuts with the smaller blades and drew along them with a stick dipped in a sooty substance taken from the carved box. When she was done, she sat back and tapped him lightly on the arm below the moko with the fixed chisel and said something that sounded like an incantation.

  “Usually we would have to burn down the place where ta moko is done,” remarked Wiki. “But we have only these two whare and they’ll be burned down soon anyway, as soon as we leave. You’ll be the last to receive ta moko in this whare.” She put a damp flax cloth on Frank’s arm. “Sleep with this on your arm. It has something in it that will dull the pain.”

  It took him some time to fall asleep on the woven flax mats in the boy’s whare. The cuts throbbed relentlessly and he wondered how they could possibly have been worse without the cloth Wik
i had given him. On top of that, the rich, fatty meal of huia sat in his gut and kept him awake. But eventually he drifted off into a dream of his own past, his life growing up in the stables of a huge estate, his love of adventure that had led to him joining the army. That had taken him to Crimea, and then on to India.

  In the late sixties, his company had made a forced march from Poona to Bombay through the jungles at night, listening to the roars of the man-eating tigers as they picked off any man who ventured away from the torches. Then they’d sailed from Bombay to Auckland —89 days aboard ship. He’d been sent to Taranaki after the Land Wars were over to help defeat Titokowaru. The vague figure of a woman lurked in his dreams…he chased her but she escaped. Mette? No. Someone darker, malevolent…wearing a silk dress that rustled as she moved.

  10

  V. Monrad, Esq. J.P.

  Mette had just finished sharing a snack of Hop Li’s pikelets, sitting on the sunny verandah of the Royal Hotel – Hop Li understood how distressed she was and what would help – when she saw Karira return. She’d talked to Maren, and reassured her that Pieter was fine and that there was nothing to worry about, downplaying his arrest, but he’d still not come home and Maren was in a panic. Remembering that Karira did not know that Frank had reappeared, she ran out to meet his horse, wanting to make sure he heard the full story from her before he talked to anyone else and said something he shouldn’t.

  He dismounted and led his horse into the paddock behind the hotel, waving to her as he passed. She followed him there, found him carrying his saddle across to the shed which served as a saddlery, and said quietly, “Frank is back. He’s hiding at the pa with Wiki and her family.”

  “He’s back? Where was he?” asked Karira.

  “At the gaol where they took Anahera,” said Mette. “On the Wanganui River. He said the Armed Constabulary had him, but he escaped when there was a fire…”

  “Does he have any idea why he was taken up the river?” asked Karira. “I can’t imagine…”

  “No, no idea,” she said. “But he went to Pieter’s new farm up in Bunnythorpe. Pieter took me to Bunnythorpe, and while and I was there they came after him. He got away from…”

  “The Armed Constabulary?”

  “Yes. And a young man he’d met before,” she said, and filled him in on the Mountjoy story, leaving out the scarier parts, which she preferred to forget. “What did you learn?”

  “I spoke to the pilot who brought the Stormbird across the sand bar,” he said. “He says there was dense fog and the boat sat outside the bar for four hours or more before he could bring the boat in through the narrows. While he was waiting, he saw a row boat taking something – someone – off. He didn’t think anything of it, because he’s seen it before. Passengers get impatient and insist on being put ashore by jolly boat. But he says he thinks there were three men, and one of them appeared to be drunk, or at least having difficulty walking.”

  “The large Maori with the hat – the one you thought might be a constable, he was with the constables – the mysterious passenger and Frank,” said Mette. “I don’t think the man I saw was a constable. I’m not even sure he was a Maori. He was darker and different somehow. But tell me the rest. Did you find out who the mysterious passenger was?”

  “All he saw was someone in a long cloak,” said Karira. “I spoke to the local native constable and he asked around. He found nothing. And he doesn’t know of anyone important who has recently arrived in Wanganui, which is odd. Wanganui is bigger than Palmerston, but not by much, and a new arrival, especially an important person, would have everyone talking.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No, I don’t think so. You said the man with Mountjoy, the younger one, might not be a Maori. What made you think that?”

  “Just the way he acted,” said Mette. He looked like a Maori, but he…I don’t know…he sneered at Mountjoy when Mountjoy gave him an order. I don’t see Maori behaving like that.”

  “Hmm,” said Karira. “I think I can sneer with the best of them, but perhaps you’re right. What I’m curious about is what would a father and son have against Frank?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Mette. “But there was something strange. The son, he looked…”

  Before she could finish, the door opened and Constable Price entered.

  “Karira,” he said. “You’re needed outside. The Armed Constabulary are here after Frank. They say he escaped from their gaol up the Wanganui River and is known to have headed this way. I don’t believe they have the right person, but you’d better speak to them.”

  “That’s not possible,” said Mette, not sure how she should react or what she should say. “Frank wasn’t in prison. Why would he be in prison? They must be mistaken.”

  Constable Price, his head thrust forward, regarded her through his heavy eyebrows. “Possibly,” he said. “Although they seem quite sure. But Karira needs to come and reassure them that he has not seen Frank.”

  Outside in the Square, a group of horsemen sat astride skittish horses; they were mostly Armed Constables, a different group than she had seen the day before, wearing the familiar blue serge uniforms rather than the informal shawl kilts, but one was not wearing a uniform: Mountjoy.

  “That’s him,” she whispered to Karira. “Mountjoy. He’s the young man who…”

  She pulled her shawl over her head and face and mingled with the crowd that had formed. The big dark man with the hat, the man Frank called Mountjoy’s minder, was behind Mountjoy, who had a red weal across his throat. She shivered, afraid he would recognize her. At least she’d changed her clothes since yesterday, and was wearing the brown dress she’d bought with her first pay, and the shawl made her look like all the other women, who had covered up at the sight of the soldiers. The horses moved apart slightly and she saw Pieter in their midst, sitting uncomfortably on his own horse, his hands tied behind his back, his normally ruddy face white and drawn. They must have kept him somewhere overnight. Pieter would have been terrified. Thank God Maren wasn’t in town to see him…

  The captain of the troop moved his horse forward in front of Karira, and looked down at him without dismounting. It was if he thought the advantage of height would give him more control of the situation, Mette thought.

  “Constable Karira?” he asked.

  Karira nodded; he was standing with his head back to give himself the advantage of some added height. “I was a constable, but no longer.”

  “You are the partner of Frank Hardy,” said the captain. It was a statement, not a question.

  “Sergeant Frank Hardy,” said Karira. “Yes, I am.”

  “And have you seen him in the last forty-eight hours?”

  “I have not.”

  “Do you have any idea where he is?”

  Karira looked the captain directly in the eye. “No, I do not. He left for Wellington several days ago and we haven’t heard from him since. In fact, I just returned from Wanganui on a fruitless quest to discover where he might be.” He looked over at Mountjoy and his minder, and added: “I discovered he was taken from a ship, the Stormbird, before it docked at the wharf in Wanganui. That’s all I can tell you.”

  “He was in our custody,” said the captain. “And he escaped. We need to find him. He’s a dangerous man.”

  “Sergeant Hardy?” interrupted Constable Price. “A dangerous man? Surely you’re not talking about our Sergeant Hardy? I’ve never met a more trustworthy or honest man in my life.”

  The captain glanced at Constable Price briefly, then looked again at Karira. “I understand you are no longer with the Native Police, Constable Karira,” he said. “However, if you know where he is you are honour-bound to tell us. You swore an oath when you joined our ranks, and leaving the ranks does not negate…”

  Mountjoy nudged his horse closer. “The last time I saw him he was heading this way,” he said. He pointed at Pieter. “He had a woman with him, the wife of this man.”

  Constable Price glanced at Mette, puzzled.
“His wife wouldn’t be…”

  The captain interrupted. “He was put down near Sorensen’s farm by a constable from Woodville who gave him a ride in his trap. And he was heard by that same constable to say the name ‘Pieter.’ He also told the constable that he knew how he was going to get to Palmerston. We questioned Sorensen at our camp last evening and he refused to tell us anything. I left his wife in Mr. Mountjoy’s care…”

  “His wife?” Constable Price was confused. “His wife is…”

  The captain ignored him, still looking a Karira. “The pair of them stole Mr. Mountjoy’s horse at gunpoint and took off in this direction.”

  “Where do these peasants live?” asked Mountjoy, directing his question to Constable Price. Constable Price glanced apologetically at Karira and Mette and said, “There’s a clearing a mile or so down the track. Go down to the church and you’ll find the track. But I doubt you’ll find him there. Why would…”

  “Come,” said Mountjoy to the captain, taking charge. “We’ll search this clearing, and all the houses. I’ll leave Sorensen in the custody of my man. He’ll keep an eye him, on all of you.”

  “As soon as we’ve watered the horses,” said the captain, re-asserting control. “And my troop will search this…clearing. You can remain here and wait until we return. Or come with us. Whichever you wish. But I am in charge. Are you clear on that Mr. Mountjoy?”

  They left, Mountjoy opting to go with them and leave his guard with Pieter who sat on his horse, his hands still behind his back, his head down. Constable Price stood close by, but said a word or two to Pieter. He said nothing to Mette or Karira, apparently deciding the less he knew the better.