More laughter in the meeting house. Frustrated and shamefaced, Kaneho sat back down, muttering to himself. “They must be shown.”
“I am not interested in showing them.” Te Rowaka also sat down. “I am comfortable within my pa. I trade when I want to, not when they do. And if I tell them to go away,” he made a broad, sweeping gesture with one arm, “they leave. They stay within their own pas. Those who buy our land are few while their animals are many. If we wish we could take the cattle and sheep at any time and blow these few pakeha away. There is no need to do this thing. Better to let the pakeha work hard. If we wish to taste of their animals it is an easy thing to borrow one or two.”
By now the tide had turned in favor of Aruta and the traders. Kaneho was subdued and Motawi uncertain how to proceed. Therefore it came as a surprise when a new voice spoke up near the back of the meeting house.
“I agree with Kaneho amd Motawi.”
Everyone turned to stare into the shadows as the speaker rose to address them. He was squat and powerful, clearly a warrior to be reckoned with. He did not look like an orator, but he spoke easily and fluently now.
“The pakeha grow too bold. Some take land without paying for it first. But trade is important too. What the pakeha need is a lesson, not a long war. I will not ask my brothers to join me in this thing, but will they stop me if I alone decide to show the pakeha who is master?”
Aruta was squinting, trying to see. “I know you. This is not a thing to do with reason. You fight for plunder and pleasure.”
“I do it for both,” the speaker admitted readily. “Is that not the Maori way? The pakeha can be useful if they learn their place.”
Aruta sighed. “What is it you propose?”
“To show them what the Maori can do if they wish.”
Kaneho’s enthusiasm returned. “We will burn a farm and take all the animals.”
The speaker eyed him contemptuously. “Any tutua, any commoners can burn a farm. We must make a lesson they will not soon forget. Only then will they treat us as equals in our own country. I, Hone Heke, would do this thing. I have a thousand warriors. Will any here join me?”
“I will,” said Kaneho immediately.
“And I,” Motawi added.
Hone Heke nodded. “Good. It will be enough.” He gazed at his fellow ariki. “Will any here try to stop us?”
The chiefs looked at each other, finally back at old Aruta. The aged ariki considered carefully before commenting. “We will not aid you in this thing, but neither will we hinder you. The pakeha know how to fight. They will defend themselves.”
Hone Heke spat on the floor. “Not these pakehas. They are drunk all the time. Though they have wondrous weapons they are not warriors. A pu, a gun, is only as good as the man holding it. The pakeha are soil-grubbers and fisherfolk, not fighters. You will see. I, Hone Heke, will show you!”
He turned and left the meeting house. Kaneho and Motawi went with him. The rest of the ariki began conversing excitedly among themselves. Te Rowaka had walked over to stand with Aruta. Together they stared at the door through which the young fighters had departed.
“This will be bad for trade,” Te Rowaka said.
“Yes,” said the old chief sadly. “And it will be worse if they win.”
3
“Robert?”
At first he feared the onset of another of those unsettling dreams which had plagued him for years. Groggily he realized this was the waking world as he sorted out the sounds seeping into his brain.
Holly had rolled over and lay close to him, the soft folds of her sleeping gown pressing tight against his side. She was pushing against his shoulder as she whispered. “Robert, wake up.”
He rolled over, still half asleep, confused. Slowly he opened his eyes, ready for the harsh burst of sunlight through the bedroom window. It didn’t come. Slightly purpling sky was visible through the imported glass. He blinked.
“Woman, it’s still night out.”
“Don’t you hear it, Robert?” She was sitting up in the bed, staring at the same window. The tenseness in her voice was mirrored in her posture.
“Hear what?” Then his senses were roused to full awareness as the noise outside answered the question for him.
Confused voices, an excited babble of many people speaking all at once. Not quite simultaneous shouting, but not normal conversation either. Fumbling with matches, he lit the lamp that sat on his end table. His pocket watch lay there and he squinted at it. Two in the morning. Too late for drunken revelry, too early for a riot.
By now he could make out individual voices in the street below the house. And there was something else, distant, echoing: a church bell ringing. No, several church bells.
Fire, he thought instinctively. The greatest danger the growing community faced and one which would bring every citizen running from his bed. But as he stumbled clear of the sheets and over to the window he saw no sign of glowing flames from any part of the city. At the same time there was a pounding on the bedroom door. Decorous, but loud enough to wake.
“Mr. Coffin, sir? Mr. Coffin!”
Samuel’s voice. The din outside must have been loud indeed to rouse the old servant from his sound sleep. He started for the door.
“Robert!” Holly was gesturing anxiously.
Coffin glanced down at himself, grinned back toward the bed. “A naked pakeha’s no different from a naked Maori, Holly.”
She made a face and pulled the covers up to her chin as he opened the door. The old man was out of breath from his rapid ascent of the stairs.
“Men outside, sir. Many men. They want to see you. Sorry to disturb.” He glanced past Coffin. “Sorry, missus.”
“It’s all right, Samuel.”
He nodded once, looked back up at Coffin. “They say you come down quick, Mr. Coffin sir.”
“What is it, Samuel? What’s going on?”
“I don’t know, sir. They don’t tell me. They just say, you go and get Mr. Coffin quick! I tell them Mr. Coffin sir, he sound asleep. They say nobody get any sleep tonight. Mr. McQuade, he say that, sir.”
“McQuade’s here?”
“Yes sir. And Mr. Halworthy and your other friends.”
If there was a fire they would’ve told Samuel right away. Therefore it was something else. He couldn’t imagine what crisis would bring someone like John Halworthy running at two o’clock in the morning.
“Tell them I’ll be right down.”
“Yes sir!” Samuel vanished down the hallway.
Striding over to the huge French armoire that dominated one wall, Coffin flung the doors wide and dragged out his old sailor’s best: heavy pants, cotton shirt. Holly watched from the bed.
“Surely you’re not putting out to sea?”
“I don’t know where I’m going. Don’t know what’s going on.” He slid into the pants.
“Well I’m coming down with you,” she told him suddenly.
“All right, but get a move on. If Angus says hurry, he means hurry.”
He was already half dressed when she began fumbling with her own clothes, and he listened a moment outside Christopher’s door. No suggestions of movement from inside. The boy was a deep sleeper and it was evident the clamor outside hadn’t woken him yet. Down the stairs he flew, racing past the pictures from Europe that lined the stairwell, each a colorful testament both of Holly Coffin’s taste as well as their rapidly increasing fortune.
His visitors had crowded through the front door. Light came from lanterns and torches just outside. The smell of many horses mixed thickly with the odor of burning oil and wood. It took him a moment to locate Angus McQuade, the one man he could count on to provide clear, concise answers to his questions.
“Hurry, Robert! We’ve a long ride ahead of us and you’re the last we’ve come to get.”
“Ride? Where? What’s this all about, Angus?”
“First see to your weapons, Robert.”
Coffin frowned. McQuade was dead serious. This was
no elaborate practical joke. He turned to Samuel.
“Get the good rifle and my pistols from the den.”
“Yes sir!” Wide-eyed, Samuel hurried to comply.
“It’s Kororareka, Robert,” Angus explained. “It’s under attack even as we stand here talking.”
“Under attack?” Coffin shook his head. He couldn’t be hearing right. Not fully awake yet. “That’s insane. We have a treaty with the Maori.”
“You can’t make a treaty with heathens!” This comment from somewhere in the middle of the assembled men was echoed by shouts of agreement.
Though obviously tired, McQuade took the time to explain. “Fellow came pounding into town an hour or so ago, he and his animal both rode near to death. Clear across the island he’d come, like Pheidippides at Marathon, to bring us the news.”
John Halworthy stepped forward. “He’s in my house, resting, with a doctor attending him. Jonas Cooper. One of my own people from Kororareka. The man could barely speak but talked long enough to tell the story. Told me to rouse every able-bodied man and bring every gun in Auckland and come as fast as we could, for the Maoris were razing the town. That if we didn’t ride like the wind there’d be a terrible massacre.”
“Massacre?” Coffin was trying to make sense of the impossible. “There’ll be no massacre even if this Cooper’s words be true. The people can always take refuge on the ships in the harbor.”
“If they have the time and the Maoris don’t cut them off,” Halworthy pointed out grimly.
Samuel came running with Coffin’s guns. “Good, Samuel. Now see to my horse.” The servant nodded, disappeared beyond the stairway.
“I can’t believe any of this. That treaty was sound. I personally can vouch for half the chiefs who put their names on it.”
Halworthy sniffed disdainfully. “And what of the other half? We’ve argued this many times, Robert, you and I. You don’t know the Maori. You just fool yourself into thinking that you do. It suits your vanity.”
Coffin bristled and McQuade hastened to intercede. “It may be that whoever is attacking Kororareka didn’t sign the blasted treaty at all. We can’t say for certain until we get there.”
“Heaven help any ariki who signed that treaty only to break it,” Coffin muttered intently. But his mind was on the cryptic message that had prompted him to sell his property in Kororareka some months before.
McQuade put a hand on Coffin’s shoulder. “Come then, Robert. If this man Cooper’s wrong I’ll wring his neck meself. But if he be but half right we’ve not another moment to lose!”
4
“Mother, I’m frightened!”
Mary Kinnegad clutched her daughter tightly as they huddled together on the iron bed. “I am too, child.”
“Don’t worry, Mother, Sally. It’ll be okay.” Young Flynn Kinnegad held the loaded pistol in both hands. He could barely lift it from the floor, but when he did finally raise it he held it aimed steady and true on the front door.
Thus far the conflagration sweeping Kororareka had spared them, though Mary was convinced it was only a matter of time until the Maoris found the little house on the hillside. The natives had come pouring down out of the hills, gesticulating and howling. There’d been no talk and no warning. It was clear they intended utter destruction from the beginning. Now the fires that illuminated the town came not from the reducing cauldrons aboard the whalers in the harbor but from the buildings themselves.
She knew that for one of the first times in her life she’d been lucky, fortunate not to have been at work down at the tavern when the Maoris had struck. She watched the defiant Flynn aiming at the door, wondering if the old pistol would even fire. It was all they had.
From the window she could see that more than half the town was already ablaze. The attack had slowed as the Maoris broke into the taverns, making first for the biggest ones like the Fife and Drum or the Broken Anchor. Now they were rampaging through the ruins, their whoops and war cries interspersed with the sounds of crashing mirrors and breaking bottles as they helped themselves to the town’s liquor supply. This time they would not settle for the cheap wine and watered rum their flax and corn usually bought.
An explosion split the sky nearby. A yellow spear of fire like a flare shot from Hell lit the low clouds. Sally tried to press closer to her mother’s breast while Flynn flinched at the sound but kept his grip on the pistol.
They would come through the door, she knew. She closed her eyes, rocking the sobbing Sally in her arms. Prayer had never been a part of her life, was something outside her experience, but she struggled with it now. The butcher knife she’d taken from the kitchen bumped coldly against her thigh. If necessary she would use it on herself and her daughter.
Something began pounding on the door, anxious but not insistent. There was a quaver in Flynn’s voice as he raised the pistol a little higher.
“Stop there or—I’ll fire! I will!”
The pounding came again. The boy closed his eyes and turned his head slightly as he squeezed on the trigger with two fingers.
A thunderous boom echoed around the interior of the room. The recoil knocked the eleven-year-old to the floor, the butt of the gun striking him in the nose and starting the blood flowing. The pounding outside ceased. For an instant Mary dared to breathe again.
Then her ears were filled with the sound of splintering wood as the door was kicked in. She screamed and buried her head in Sally’s hair.
A towering figure stood in the broken doorway, silhouetted against the glow of the burning town. His eyes were wild and his face was smeared with blood from the two parallel knife wounds that gashed his cheek. A ragged Maori war club had ripped his shirt and shoulder. As he staggered into the room Mary started to rise from the bed.
“Shaun Connaught, as I live and breathe!”
He tried to smile but the expression twisted as he grabbed at his side. There was no blood there. “Club,” he muttered. “The bastards are strong and quick. The one that surprised me won’t be botherin’ anyone else this night, though.” He gestured slightly with the old naval cutlass he carried in one massive paw. It was stained red from point to haft.
“How be you and the little ones, Mary?”
“Well enough, though I thought when you came hammering on our door that it was the end.”
“’Twas almost so, for me. That shot missed me by barely an inch. You always could take care of yourself.”
“It wasn’t me. It was the boy.” She nodded toward Flynn, who was getting to his feet with blood streaming down his face. Gently she set Sally aside and began ripping at the bedsheets.
“Here now, lad.” She pushed the wad of cotton against his nostrils and tilted his head back. He nodded understanding and put his hand against the absorbent linen.
Meanwhile Connaught was moving from window to door and back again. “We’ve got to leave this place. They’re checking every building before firing it.”
“Get out? To where, Shaun? The Maoris are everywhere.”
“Aye. I hadn’t thought the country counted so many of the heathen, and it seems every one of them is here this night.”
“Where are the rest of the men? Why aren’t they fighting back?”
“Men?” Connaught snorted. “There be no men in Kororareka, Mary. Only fishbait! Good enough for killing whales, but they’ve little stomach for fighting other men. A few stand their ground—those that ain’t too drunk to do so.”
“Here, let me see.” She pulled the cloth from Flynn’s face and bade him lean forward. The bleeding had nearly stopped.
Connaught was talking nonstop. “A few of the boys from one American ship put up something of a fight but most just ran when they saw the Maoris coming running at ’em, waving their bleedin’ clubs and rolling their eyes and stickin’ out their tongues the way they do. Instead of fighting back they ran for the woods like frightened rabbits, watching while the Maoris steal their goods and burn their homes.”
“It won’t do them any g
ood,” she told him. “The natives will hunt them down.”
“Perhaps not, Mary. I’ve seen them ignore townsfolk, run right past them intent instead on this store or pub. They seem more inclined to looting than to murder. Oh, they’ll cut you down if you cross them, but run the other way and they’ll go right past. Might be they came planning to kill everyone, but I think their thoughts have changed. I think those who came last are afraid the first will make off with everything worth stealing.” Satisfied with what he saw outside, he moved to take her hand.
“Come. There are whaleboats waiting at the piers where defense is easy. I’ll see you and the little ones safely out to sea.”
She helped Sally off the bed. Flynn didn’t need to take her hand as he crowded close to Connaught. She paused for a last look at the cabin but Connaught was already urging her out the shattered doorway.
“There’s no time, Mary. Leave everything. Perhaps they’ll spare this small building and you can come back for your things when this is done.”
“No,” she said with unexpected finality. “No. I’ll never come back to this house. I should have left here long ago.”
Sally’s small hand was bunched inside her right fingers. She reached out and took Flynn’s in her left, gazing down into solemn blue eyes as she bent toward him.
“You remember this night, Flynn. Remember it always. Remember who caused us to be here when this happened. Don’t ever forget who is responsible for your condition.” Aware she was hurting him she relaxed her grip and straightened. The boy nodded without speaking, but his eyes were fierce.
Fire surrounded them on all sides. Maoris were running everywhere, yelling and leaping into the air and waving their dreadful war clubs. In the light of the burning buildings their tattooed faces were frightful. Howling, a group of them scattered frantically as the warehouse and store across the way collapsed in a geyser of embers which filled the night air like burning snowflakes. Connaught led them in a different direction, working a path toward the docks while striving to stay as far from The Beach as possible.
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