Not that they ran out of meat these days. Mutton had become so cheap that even they could afford it - sixpence for a whole leg of mutton that would last them for most of a week, because all the sheep’s wool was sent to England and something had to be done with the meat. But Pieter was saving every penny to put towards his farm, clearing the land and working at the sawmill as well. It was a hard life.
While the apron was drying, she’d planned to go into the bush behind the sawmill and find some food to supplement the cabbage, carrots and potatoes the settlers grew in among the tree stumps at the end of the clearing. They stored the vegetables in a covered pit, eking them out through the winter, but the store was almost empty, with planting about to start. Time for Mette to find another source, as much as Maren wished she would not.
Before she left, she prepared the camp oven, the heavy three-legged iron pot they used for cooking, building wood up under the flat pot and partly filling it with water from the butt. She would light the wood when she returned from the bush with food. The milch cow she had already milked this morning, and a fresh bucket of milk sat in the two-sided cupboard beside the front door, covered in a piece of heavy cotton cloth weighted down with stones sewn into the hem at the corners.
She tightened her bonnet around her head, pulling the strings into a slip knot under her chin, called out to Maren to tell her where she was going, stepped into her clogs and set off along the path through the bush to the sawmill. The path had been trodden down by the men from the clearing who walked to the sawmill every day at first light and back again as the sun was going down. She carried a large woven flax basket that she hoped would be full when she returned. The sun was nice, but she felt hot in her woollen skirt.
She was tall compared to most women she knew, too tall, with white blonde hair tied in two thick plaits, and hazel eyes. She knew she was not considered pretty, like Maren who had fluffy golden hair and enormous blue eyes. Once she and Maren had taken the tram over to Foxton to buy cloth for dresses, back when bullocks pulled the tram and it took forever to get to the coast. A young man in a dark suit had stared at Maren for a long time, and then had come up and said she was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen, and would she marry him?
Maren looked calmly at the young man and told him she was already married, but suggested he might like her sister who had not yet found a husband. Mette had blushed, as she always did, and looked at the man, hoping he would understand it was a joke. Although she was embarrassed, she was prepared to laugh it off. But she was hurt and humiliated when the man looked back at her, dropped his gaze to the floor, and walked silently back to his seat.
“I’m suppose I’m not pretty enough for him,” she whispered to Maren, although she was sure she was quite pretty enough for that man.
Maren had shrugged.
“What good does pretty do in this country? If he knew how you could cook he would come running back.”
But a woman couldn’t be too choosy, and Mette knew she was. She wanted to find a man who would give her healthy babies and make a home for her. But also someone who would enjoy talking to her beside the fire in the evening, someone who would be there when she looked up from her sewing. She imagined a sturdy, fair-haired man with a pipe in his mouth and a twinkle in his eye, a man who would talk to her about books and history and interesting things that were happening in the world. Danish men were not generally talkative types, however, and they certainly didn’t fit the image she had in her head. Not any that she knew at least. On the other hand, neither did any of the other immigrants she had met since she arrived. They were a rough lot.
A group of young boys was playing in the dirt near the entrance to the bush. They stopped playing and looked at her with wide eyes.
“There’s a troll in there,” said one.
“In the bush?”
He nodded. His blond hair fell forward and he brushed it back. “We saw him. He was a big troll and he was holding a sack and a club.”
Mette suppressed a smile. She’d seen just such a troll in a book of fairy tales when she was younger.
“And was he green with orange hair?”
One of the other boys jumped in. “No, he was brown and he had marks on his face, dark ones, like wings. And he had a big cloak made of feathers.”
Well, that was a different kind of troll. Not the kind Mr. Anderson described in his stories.
“Why did you think it was a troll then?”
“Because he was angry,” said the first boy. “He looked at us like he was going to put us in his sack and take us away for dinner. We were scared and we ran home.”
Mette had nothing to say to that. But she felt a little twinge of nervousness in her scalp as she walked, as if someone was staring at her from the darkness of the woods. Once or twice she spun around to make sure she was alone. The troll sounded like one of the Hauhau Maren worried about.
The trees on the mountain side of the clearing were massive, larger than the span of a tall man; the bush was dark and full of things that were unknown to Danish people. She’d done her best to explore and understand the plants and animals, but knew she had much to learn. She forced her mind from the troll. The boys had imagined him, she was sure. They were boys. And boys had active imaginations.
She touched the leaves of a fuscia tree as she went by. Later in the autumn it would be covered with konini berries and she would make jam. Pieter loved her jam, and took a jam sandwich to work with him every day. Too soon for the berries yet, but she longed for something sweet. Savoury would be nice as well, something with taste, or bite, like the pickled herring they used to eat at home. On that memorable trip to Foxton on the tramway they’d visited a small café and she’d tasted whitebait fritters, made from the tiny fish that swam upstream in the springtime, cooked in a batter of eggs and white flour. She’d never tasted anything so delicious in her life, and she longed to taste them again.
Perhaps she would find some honey today. Manuka scrub flourished at the edge of the forest and was beginning to flower with small white buds. Bees loved the pollen from the manuka blossom. She stopped to pull off some leaves for tea, just the smallest and softest leaves, and tucked them carefully into one side of her basket in a kerchief placed there for just that purpose. The larger leaves made a bitter tea but the smaller ones were refreshing and you could almost imagine you were drinking real tea. If she could not find any honey she would at least have some leaves for tea.
She could hear the hum of the sawmill in the distance and as she got closer she thought she recognized the voices of Pieter and Hans Christian. Behind the mill a stream surrounded by fern and the occasional kowhai tree, not yet in bloom with its lovely yellow flowers, rose towards the hills and she climbed towards it. She pulled out some young fronds of pikopiko and put them beside the leaves. The roots tasted horrid, but they filled you up when you were hungry. Someone had suggested to her that pikopiko tasted like asparagus, but not to her. You might as well say that huhu grubs tasted like chicken, which they certainly did not. Ugh!
She wandered slightly off the path, being careful to keep it in sight. People were always disappearing into the bush and not coming back, especially small children, and she knew she must stay within sight of the path. Maren had put the fear of God into little Hamlet, telling him that the troll would get him if he went too far from the cottage. So far it had worked, although it had also made him nervous about going to bed at night, and he often woke in the night yelling that there was a troll under his little truckle bed. When that happened Maren and Pieter would take him into their bed. Maybe the other mothers in the clearing had told the same story to their boys and that was why they were claiming to have seen a troll. It was their name for a scary being who lived in the woods.
Still in sight of the clearing she found a large growth of puha, which would do for their vegetables. The leaves of puha, which was a type of thistle, were quite tasty if they were twice cooked in water—almost like spinach. Beside the puha were some red cap
ped toadstools. She had avoided mushrooms and toadstools so far; you never knew which ones would kill you. She knew for certain that the red capped toadstools were not to be eaten. They made you go crazy, and then they killed you. She’d seen it happen with her own eyes.
A small sound made her turn and look to one side. A pair of bright eyes regarded her through the undergrowth. She stared into them and drew in her breath.
“Hej min lille mand,” she said softly, moving slowly towards the baby pig.
How they would love her if she came home with a little piglet for dinner!
She glanced down, looking for something heavy and spotted a hand-sized rock. Keeping her eyes on the pig, she bent and picked it up. The pig kept looking at her, its head on one side enquiringly. She took a minute to look around. If the mother was nearby she would run like a hen with its head chopped off to the clearing, but she knew baby wild pigs could become separated from their mothers and she would have heard a large wild pig moving through the bush. She hoped so, at least.
The little pig moved towards her slowly, a conspirator in its own death. It was busy nibbling leaves from the very puha she had just harvested when she raised the rock in two hands and brought it down hard on the side of its head. It fell slowly sideways, its eyes glazing over. To make sure, she hit it hard two more times, being sure not to get any blood on her woollen dress and stockings. Then she carefully lifted it and placed it in her basket. It was heavier than it looked and would give them so much meat! She covered it with leaves to keep the smell from the mother if she were nearby, turned, and walked towards home, the pig weighing her down on one side. She had trouble keeping from laughing. A pig for dinner. It would last them for days, and the fat under the skin would sizzle and cook into the most delightful taste. She could already imagine it.
After only a few steps she heard another noise, muffled steps in the leaves. She stopped. The mother pig was behind her. Now she was in trouble. She moved around carefully to see what was there. In the mottled shadows, she could not see well, but the pink skin of a pig would stand out against the green. Instead, she saw something brown. Some legs. Human legs. She raised her eyes and saw another pair of eyes looking down at her from under a blue cap, eyeing her in a way that was not unlike the way she had eyed the pig.
She gasped and almost dropped her basket. The troll.
A huge, dark-bearded man wrapped in a feathered cloak stared at her from the bush; or, more correctly, not at her but at her basket. He carried a bag of something that was moving, wriggling to get free, and she thought in horror of little Hamlet, wondering if he was safe at home. This was one of those Hauhau who ate little children. He was the troll the children had seen. The women in the clearing talked about the terrible Hauhau and scared the children with stories to make sure they behaved properly, often calling them trolls. She had not made the connection.
He raised his arm towards her and pointed at the basket. His face, the part that was not covered by his beard, bore blue markings resembling a large butterfly.
“Poaka,” he said and snapped his fingers at her. She understood what he wanted. He wanted her pig. She backed away slowly.
“This is my pig,” she said. “My poaka. For my family.” She waved a hand towards the clearing. “They wait for me, over there. Many men. Big men.” She heard her a quiver in her own voice and dug her nails into her hands to calm herself.
He shook his head dismissively. “My pig,” he said, taking a step towards her. His voice was deep and gravelly, and sounded rusty, as if he didn’t use it much.
She was still holding the rock she had used to kill the piglet and without thinking she threw it hard at his head. He grunted and took a few steps backwards, his hand to his forehead.
Clutching the basket with the pig close to her chest, she turned and ran, screaming loudly as she did so. She heard branches snapping behind her, expecting at any minute he would grasp her by the shoulders and seize the pig, but nothing happened. Even in her panic she realized that running back to the clearing would not help - there were no men there - so she ran towards the sawmill, which was a mere hundred or so yards away. She had the sawmill in sight and could even hear the machines running and men shouting, when a rider on a large black horse appeared in front of her on the track to the sawmill. It was him, she was sure, a big dark man with a blue cap, but for some reason he now wore a long blue-grey greatcoat which came down to his stirrups. She didn’t stop to think about why he had changed his clothes, or how he was suddenly riding a horse, but opened her mouth and screamed as loudly as she could.
“What the dickens…” he said, clutching the reins of his horse as it reared up.
27
An Excerpt from Dead Shot
Putting a Scare in the New Chums
Palmerston North, New Zealand, December, 1880
The rain had begun again, trickling off Sergeant Frank Hardy’s forage cap and pooling between his neck and his collar, soaking into his shirt. It reminded him of wartime, when they had slogged through the mud of Taranaki and had never been completely dry. When the sun came out the wool uniforms would steam and smell, and always the collar choked and the wool itched.
The rain would throw the volunteers into disarray. They were unwilling to come out when the wind was blowing; rain meant time to find a sheltered spot and roll up a cigarette. For himself, he was just glad they weren’t going to be forced to march at night or eat the packhorses. Not yet at least. Rain and mud he could handle.
He gave his command. “Shoulder, arms.”
The Palmerston Volunteer Rifles shouldered their Snider Enfields, heels together, toes splayed out, and watched him intently, waiting for his next command - probably expecting to be dismissed. It was raining for chrissakes.
“At ease.” The guns moved slightly into the ease position.
He was relieved they hadn’t interpreted the command as a chance to relax and rest their guns on the ground. The commands required specific moves, and it was important that every soldier knew exactly what to do in a time of war. He needed them to understand that failure to follow orders could mean death for a soldier.
He’d spent an hour showing them how to load and hold their weapons, in their hands for the first time. Later he would return the weapons to the drill shed behind the saddlery where they’d begun their training earlier. But for the march they were about to make they needed the intimidating effect of the shouldered Snider Enfields.
“Pay attention now,” he said. “We have a mission today.” Nothing like a mission to pull a troop together. Not exactly a war-time manoeuvre, but some esprit-de-corp might come from it. “We’re going to march through new chums town and shake them up. We - Inspector James and I - suspect that someone in new chums town is hiding the Maori prisoners who escaped from the train heading to Wellington a few days ago.”
“Permission to speak, sir,” said one of the volunteers, a ginger-haired bank clerk who saw himself as the spokesman for the group.
Frank nodded. “Go ahead.”
“They’re all new chums there. That’s why we call it new chums town. Why would a new chum hide a Maori? They haven’t had time…”
“Good question,” said Frank. “Does anyone else have anything to say? Anyone?”
No one did. He could see their eyes moving sideways to look at the bank clerk, waiting for him to press the issue.
“Right then. Shoulder arms. Face to the rear….and forward, march.”
They spun around and marched forward briskly, more or less in step, their boots squelching in the mud. He followed them as they headed towards new chums town, giving them the beat every now and then. He wasn’t sure how intimidating they’d be, but they might help to flush out Boyle. Inspector James seemed to think so.
Because they weren’t looking for the Maori prisoners. They were looking for a groom who had killed a filly - the offspring of a stud horse up in Patea - who was known to be in the district. A groom he himself had hired, stupidly. But the mixed loyalt
ies of the volunteers - mostly English and Irish, like the residents of new chums town - could cause problems; and none of them would have any loyalty to the poor bloody Maori prisoners.
More than anything, Inspector James wanted to send a message to the man, or men, who had sent the groom to do the damage.
The inspector was waiting for him at the end of the street leading into the new settlement, and he saluted Frank smartly. His two constables stood to one side with arms behind backs looking solid and capable.
“Morning men,” James said to the volunteers. “Did Sergeant Hardy tell you what your task is today?”
“Yes sir,” they snapped in unison.
“Sergeant Hardy is going to march you to the end of the street and back again. You can manage that?”
“Yes sir.”
“Like the Grand Old Duke of York,” Inspector James said quietly to Frank as they followed the men down the street. “Only to better effect, one hopes.”
Doors began opening and women came out with small children clinging to their skirts. They didn’t look especially nervous - just interested. But Frank noticed there were no men amongst them. Men were more inclined to be suspicious. He saw the two constables peel off several times to talk to likely looking women.
The volunteers reached the end of the street, and Frank brought them to a halt, arms shouldered. One of the constables came puffing up.
“Woman back there says there was some suspicious stuff going on last night in the bush. Said she heard a gunshot.”
Inspector James frowned. “Could it have been someone at target practice? Or shooting rabbits?”
“She didn’t think so,” said the constable. “It was late in the evening, getting dark. Not a good time for target practice or shooting rabbits.”
The bush at the end of the street was not dense. It was mostly flax and ferns, interspersed with scraggly Manuka bushes. It would be easy enough to search, although tricky to march through in any kind of order.
Recalled to Life Page 21