Beneath the Kauri Tree (The Sea of Freedom Trilogy Book 2)

by Sarah Lark

  “The bastard burned my clothes?” Matariki yelled. “Fine, so be it. I’d run away from here naked. And I thought of something. When the warriors want to escort me to the camp, I’ll tell them I need to speak with the spirits a moment. Back there on the rocks by the stream is a sacred place.”

  “It is?” asked Kupe.

  Matariki rolled her eyes. “Maybe, maybe not, but Hainga sees spirits in every second rata bush and between rocks and the like. I’ll say I need to converse with the gods there. The warriors will naturally have to stay away. The site is tapu—very, very tapu. I’ll sing a bit at first to calm them. And then I’ll make tracks.”

  “But your father—”

  “My father will be suspicious. Of course. But with a little luck, he’ll already be at the niu, speaking to the warriors.” Matariki folded her blanket into a manageable bundle.

  Kupe looked at her indecisively. “For sure?” he asked.

  Matariki moaned. “No, not for sure. But most likely. Now, get to work, Kupe. You don’t need to worry. You’re not betraying your people by letting me go. I can’t make all of you invulnerable. Strictly speaking, I’m not even a chieftain’s daughter. Kahu Heke doesn’t have a proper tribe. He isn’t ariki, just a war chief, rangatira. And I’m certainly no priest. You’re not breaking any tapu, Kupe. You have to believe me.”

  When Kupe looked at her, he appeared unsure but also hopeful. For the first time, Matariki noticed golden flecks in his soft brown eyes. In his friendly face, she saw admiration and reverence—but of a completely different sort than what one held for a priestess.

  “If that’s how it is,” said Kupe shyly, “I mean, if you really aren’t tapu, could I perhaps kiss you?”

  Matariki could feel their kisses the whole long afternoon she spent waiting in her hut. Kupe’s lips were soft, warm, and comforting, and it had been a good feeling when he held her to his firm, muscular chest. First, he had kissed her circumspectly on the cheek, but then, when she did not object, he kissed her on the mouth. Finally, his tongue had opened her lips and explored her mouth. A strange feeling but not an uncomfortable one. On the contrary, Matariki had felt warmth well up within her. She was light-headed—floating and happy.

  When she parted from Kupe, she doubted her decision to go for a moment. But then she pulled herself together. She was not in love with him. At least she had not been a few minutes before. This love had no future here anyway—who knew what sort of punishment awaited a warrior who dared to touch a chieftain’s daughter? If there was any hope, then Kupe had to flee with her. But he did not want to do that. Matariki was too proud to ask him again, let alone to seduce him so he would fulfill her wishes.

  After their kisses, Kupe had looked at her longingly and then left without another word. Matariki had no doubt it was better to forget the episode and concentrate on escape. By herself. She was a little afraid of the wilderness on the North Island, but she reassured herself nothing could happen to her. She had spent half her childhood among the Ngai Tahu. She could make a fire, catch fish, and she knew every edible plant on the South Island. The flora might be a little different here, but she would manage.

  As evening fell, Matariki heard murmuring in front of her hut. The men who guarded her made way for the ariki.

  “Matariki, here, I brought you a cloak,” the chieftain said. He did not open the fern curtain in front of the hut. Probably that was also forbidden for him. “You’ll wear it now, when you come to the clearing.”

  “The clearing.” Matariki could not help herself. She was going for broke. “You know the clearing is tapu, Father. Men died there. Hainga would say we may no longer set foot there. We must leave Papa to her mourning. Nature must take possession of it again.”

  Kahu Heke snorted. “This is the only clearing here, and we don’t have another gathering place. But Hare says we can use the power of the dead. Their spirits will strengthen the living they accompany on their way to becoming invincible warriors.”

  Matariki fought back the thought of spirits also crawling between her feet. She needed to master herself. No matter what, she needed to get away.

  The cloak turned out to be a true work of art, one of the traditional chieftain’s cloaks with kiwi feathers weaved throughout. It was brown and plush, surely warmer than Matariki’s blanket. Most of all, it was dark. It would help her evade possible pursuers when she escaped. Matariki was in high spirits. A horde of warriors afraid of touching her would not follow her into the jungle. Indeed, they might accidentally trip over her—it would be pitch-black, after all. With a little luck, she would have at least a half hour’s head start. Matariki was short and delicate, the men big and heavy—another handicap for them in the fern forest. In any case, the warriors would not be able to pick up her trail until the following morning, and by then, she would have to have thought of something to cover her tracks.

  It was totally dark when four warriors with torches appeared to bring her to the ritual. Matariki emerged calmly and majestically from her shelter. She frightened the men by letting out a sort of karanga as soon as she was in the open air.

  “The spirits,” Matariki declared theatrically. “They call us.”

  With a deep voice and relaxed dance movements, she recited from the last role Mary Jane had played in the theater club at Otago Girls’ High School, one of Shakespeare’s witches in Macbeth:

  “Fair is foul and foul is fair:

  Hover through the fog and filthy air.”

  The Maori warriors stepped back in awe.

  “Follow me,” Matariki called, and turned toward the stream’s banks.

  The men felt their way after her.

  Then she made an imperious hand gesture. “Stay back.”

  And the men stopped in their tracks. Matariki’s heart beat wildly, but she forced herself not to move more quickly. Calmly, as if the ceremony had already begun, she disappeared between the rocks. Dingo was the only one who followed her.

  On a low boulder, Matariki found her blanket, a small packet with bread, and a note. She had no idea how Kupe had found her pencil nub—or whether he perhaps had brought his own writing implement to the camp. She held a page ripped from a notebook in her hand:

  Martha, keep going upstream and you’ll come to the Waikato River. Follow it upstream—in about two days’ journey you’ll reach Hamilton. I’m thinking of you. Without tapu, Kurt.

  Matariki stuffed the note into the blanket bundle. She permitted herself a moment of emotion before going into action. She ran the first mile along the stream, and then stepped into the water. She was not wearing shoes, but the cold water did not bother her, and it would erase her tracks. If she walked a mile or two in the stream, the warriors would never find her.

  Chapter 10

  The day was just dawning, and the rain had abated. Peter Burton stood in shock in front of the collapsed mineshaft his ambitious nephew had driven into the mountain without any consideration. The miners from the Bute, Webber, Hobbs, and Davies mines had not been scared off by the weather. They had been digging for hours—and risking their lives, as Malcolm Hobbs observed.

  “More of it could certainly come down. Looks like the idiot tried surface mining first and stripped all the vegetation from the hillside. No wonder the earth was washed away and the tunnel with it. I don’t believe anyone’s alive in there, Reverend,” Hobbs said.

  That, however, did not stop the tall, burly mine owner from overseeing the excavation work or swinging a pickax himself. Peter also lent a hand, though the practiced miners naturally achieved more. The hope that only the entrance to the tunnel needed to be cleared was not realized. In the bright light of day, it became clear to even the last optimist that the level was gone. The mountain had buried the unsupported tunnel.

  “It’ll be pure luck if we find the bodies,” one of the foremen said despondently. “We ought to simply place a cross on the mountain.”

  Peter Burton shook his head. “We can’t do that to the girls. They wouldn’t believe it eith
er. Sure, the little one’s sleeping, but Violet cried the whole night through. She would have preferred to come back with me, but my wife tucked her into bed with a few hot-water bottles. Dear Lord, really that ne’er-do-well nephew of mine should dig out the dead himself.”

  Kathleen did her best to keep Violet in the house, but it wasn’t long before Violet ran from her. She arrived at the accident site at precisely the moment when the men were recovering her grandfather’s corpse. Ellen was beneath him; he had tried to protect her with his body.

  “Nothing could be done, girl. All that earth, if they were not crushed, they suffocated,” a foreman explained.

  “It surely happened quickly,” Mr. Hobbs said, trying to comfort her.

  Violet stared at the dead bodies with a pale, frozen face.

  “They don’t look dead,” she murmured. “Maybe they’re just unconscious?”

  Peter shook his head and tried to lead the girl off to the side. “I’m sorry, Violet. They’re dead.” He crossed himself. “Do you want to say a prayer with me,” he asked softly, “while the men place them in the wagon? We’re taking them down to the church. Reverend Clusky—”

  “It’s my fault,” whispered Violet, “all my fault. I found the tunnel. I wanted us to go in.”

  Peter pulled her close. “Violet, that’s nonsense. Any reasonable person would have sought shelter in that weather. Normally a level would not have collapsed. You couldn’t know.”

  “She knew,” said Violet in a strangely monotonous voice. “Lucy, she said so. She told me again when I came outside.”

  “Who?” Peter asked, taken aback. “Who told you?” Violet looked over at his team of horses, and Peter understood. “Oh, the horse, she didn’t want to go inside? Alas, animals sometimes have a sixth sense about these things. But you can’t rely on those signs. The animal might have shied away from something else entirely. It’s not your fault, Violet. Don’t convince yourself it is.”

  “And I wasn’t supposed to be the one to go outside,” Violet continued. “Mommy wanted to go outside. She said—”

  Peter did not know what else to do. “Violet, we should thank God that you went outside with Rosie. If she hadn’t felt sick—”

  “Mommy wanted to go outside,” Violet repeated. “Mommy was supposed to go.”

  Peter held Violet even more tightly. “I’ll take you home, Violet, to your father. He’ll likely be sober now and able to understand what happened. You’ll have to find a way to live together. In any case, you now have a house in Treorchy.”

  Violet followed the reverend apathetically even as he stopped his carriage in front of the miner’s house on Bute Street. She trotted behind him into the house, which she had left so overjoyed a few hours before. Mrs. Brown stuck her head out the kitchen window. She had taken over the housekeeping when she learned of the mudslide—the usual form of neighborly help after a mine accident.

  “Reverend, Violet, I heard. Did they—? Oh God!” The miner’s wife read the answer to her question in Peter’s and Violet’s faces. “I’m so sorry, Violet.” She came outside and took the girl impulsively into her arms.

  “It’s my fault,” said Violet. She did not oppose Mrs. Brown’s hug, but she did not return it either.

  “Oh, nonsense, child.”

  Peter Burton left Violet with Mrs. Brown and entered the living room where Jim and Fred Paisley sat silently.

  “Mr. Paisley, Fred, I’m sorry that I have to be the one to tell you—”

  Jim Paisley waved it away. “I already thought as much,” he muttered. “The tunnel wasn’t supported. Madness to go inside during the rain.”

  Peter felt anger rising within him. “You don’t mean to tell me now that your wife and your father-in-law were at fault?”

  From the door came a sob. Violet. Peter hoped she had not heard her father’s words. He was struggling himself against the highly unchristian desire to strangle Jim Paisley.

  Jim Paisley shrugged. “They didn’t have any idea. I’m sorry about it too.”

  He did not exactly sound brokenhearted. Fred, who sat beside him, pale and obviously hungover, seemed in greater distress. His eyes were circled with red—he might have been crying. His gaze was glassy.

  “But they didn’t have to take off in the night,” Jim Paisley added.

  Peter balled his hands into fists. He hoped Violet would say something. Indeed, he knew the girl to be courageous and free—almost a miracle in these family circumstances. But Violet remained silent. Still, that was better than another, “It’s my fault.”

  “Your wife seems to have had good reason,” Peter said sternly. Then, however, he forced himself to be patient. Recriminations would get him nowhere with Jim Paisley. The pastor started again in a friendlier tone. “Mr. Paisley, with your wife’s death, a few things will change for you. Your children now have only you. You need to assume responsibility for them.”

  Paisley stuck out his lower lip and furrowed his brow. “I’ve always worked, Reverend. Ain’t my fault if the mine owners don’t pay worth a damn.”

  Searching for sympathy, he looked from Peter to Mrs. Brown who had just stepped into the room, no doubt driven by curiosity. Peter rubbed his forehead. The woman surely had a good heart, but couldn’t she have waited outside with Violet?

  “Now, I got to find work too,” Paisley continued. “How else are the brats going to live? And they want to throw us out of the house.” His eyes flashed slyly. “Can’t you do anything about that, Reverend? Now that we’ve had what you call a family tragedy. Maybe they’ll give us an extension after all. Or my job back at Bute’s.”

  Peter inhaled deeply. “Mr. Paisley, money isn’t likely to be your greatest concern in the near future. You—or rather your children, although it comes to the same thing for now—have inherited a house in Treorchy. And my brother will pay an indemnity.”

  Paisley perked up. “An indemnity?” he asked. “How much?”

  Peter inhaled sharply. “I don’t know, Mr. Paisley, but I’ll find out what is usual in such cases, and you will receive that. The fault clearly lay with my money-hungry nephew. His father will have to acknowledge that, or you and I will take him to court. After all, your family perished on my land.”

  “It isn’t Mr. Burton’s fault,” Violet said in a monotone voice. “It’s my fault.”

  Jim Paisley did not respond to his daughter. He didn’t even seem to notice her. He apparently needed some time for Peter’s words to sink into his whiskey-addled brain. Then, however, an almost unearthly glow spread over his face.

  “I’m rich.”

  “You mean we should simply take them with us?” Kathleen Burton was packing her suitcase. Violet had helped wash, iron, and fold their clothing. Before the ship to Dunedin set sail, they would spend a few more days in London. “As long as their father permits,” Kathleen added.

  Peter Burton shrugged. “Why wouldn’t he? He can’t make use of Rosie, and as to Violet, sure, for now she does his housework, but he can find a wife for that quickly enough—now that the fellow’s throwing money around.”

  “Can’t anyone do anything to stop him?” asked Kathleen. “That money does mostly belong to the children. He shouldn’t be drinking it down.” She set a hatbox aside and looked at her husband. “Don’t misunderstand me, Peter. I like the girls. I’d be happy to have them come with us. We’ll find something for them in Dunedin. But it hardly seems right to me to uproot them like this—or to rob them of their inheritance. Half of the house and workshop and the indemnity belongs to the two of them. You don’t really believe that their father will give it to them to take to New Zealand, do you?”

  Peter sighed. “I don’t believe that anyone can force him to. After all, it will be a long time before Violet is of age. Before she’s twenty-one, he’ll have squandered the fortune—whether she’s here or in New Zealand. Here, though, she would have to watch him do it. Kathleen, the girls have no future here. And I feel responsible. If I had kept up with Randolph’s machinations,
her mother would still be alive.”

  Kathleen arched her brows. “Seems to me that just about everyone feels responsible for this woman’s death except those who really are guilty: Joseph and Randolph and Paisley. God, I’m happy this house has finally sold. I can’t wait to have eleven thousand miles between me and these cads again.”

  In the last few weeks, it had come to a few rather ugly confrontations between Peter Burton, his brother, and his nephew. As Peter expected, Joseph Burton had not wanted to pay for his son’s mistakes, and Randolph showed no hint of remorse. He pushed the blame for the slipshod digging of the level onto Jim Paisley, who, Joseph said, “received his just deserts when his wife died there.” Ultimately, however, the Burtons of Cardiff had come around. The Marquis of Bute was, after all, their neighbor in Roath, and other mine owners likewise had dealings with Burton’s law office. Joseph did not want to lose face in front of them, let alone in front of his wife, Alice.

  Alice was immediately pressured from two sides. Reverend Clusky asked her to work on her spouse, and at the same time, she was aware that the ladies of Roath, Lady Bute first of all, were whispering about the Burtons. Alice made quite a scene in front of her husband and inspired a space in Joseph Burton’s heart for the Treherbert miners. He not only paid Jim Paisley a proper indemnity but also generously supported Reverend Clusky’s collection for a school in the new mining settlement. Webber had presented the most modern plans for the land where Ellen had died, and Peter sold him the parcel at a favorable price and then promised financing for the school. He hoped it would comfort Violet if they named it after her mother, but nothing gave her solace. Violet had been living in her own closed-off world since her mother died. Though she emerged from it enough to do her work and take care of Rosie, she hardly spoke a word beyond her monotone, “It’s my fault.”

  Immediately after his wife’s burial, Jim Paisley had moved with his children to the house in Treorchy, but that had not been good for Violet either. In Treherbert, the neighbor women would naturally have taken care of the girls, but in Treorchy, they were strangers, and they lived not among miners but among respected craftsmen and small-business owners. There, too, the men sometimes went to the pub after closing shop, but they drank their beer rather moderately. So, they found the drinking tendencies of Jim and Fred Paisley contemptible. And Violet’s confusion and silent mourning did not exactly forge bonds with the neighbors. The women talked about the girl, but not with her. Peter’s attempts to pull her out of her isolation ran aground on her father.