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

by Sarah Lark

  “Well now, Colin, what brings you here? And without a horse. I would have expected you to race, at least.”

  Colin grinned condescendingly at Sean. “Would you have placed a bet on me, then, dear brother? Or do your morals forbid you that? I’m not going to ride my rear sore so you can win a few coins. Besides, the riders here don’t get anything, so forget it.” He turned away, and Sean did likewise.

  The half brothers had never liked each other. They had little in common. Sean first had suffered from Ian Coltrane’s preference for Colin and later from Colin’s escapades in Dunedin. He had been overjoyed to watch Colin sail off for England and even now could not quite believe that he had turned into a useful member of society—armed constable or not.

  Colin sauntered over to Matariki to wish her luck once more before the race started. Sean eyed him suspiciously.

  “Is he always slinking around the Drury girl?” Sean asked his mother before spotting Lizzie.

  “Oh, forgive me, Lizzie. I hadn’t noticed you. I, uh . . .”

  Sean blushed, which drew a friendly smile from Lizzie. The serious, friendly Sean had won her over even as an adolescent. Now, he looked like Michael, with his dark hair, angular facial features, and tall stature. Sean was not a man of action like Michael, but rather of a contemplative nature. His eyes were not shining blue like Michael’s and those of her own sons by him, but rather pale green. He always looked a little like he was daydreaming. That must have been irresistible to girls, but so far Sean had not found the love of his life.

  “You have certain qualms about your brother’s relationship with our daughter,” Lizzie observed. “You’re not alone in that. We view this rather quick engagement with skepticism. But clearly they are in love.”

  She pointed at Colin, whom Matariki was leaning down to kiss again just as the pastor lowered the flag to start the race. Matariki had to sit up quickly as Grainie began to trot along with the other horses.

  The riders—and the one driver—were soon out of view. Reverend Burton and a few other observers followed them on horse to identify rule violations. Since no racetrack was available, the race was on the road to Dunedin. It was well paved. On the first half of the course, the driver had even chances with the riders. The return stretch, however, led over uneven ground. Matariki had considered hitching her horse to a cart, but with an eye to the condition of the roads, she had decided to ride instead of drive.

  Colin watched the riders go, but rejoined his family until they came back into view. He needed to make a good impression on Lizzie Drury. After all, his plans for the future hinged on her, among others. He had come prepared: in his saddlebag was a bottle of good Australian wine to which a large portion of his last paycheck had gone. He knew that Lizzie would not resist a sip, but for discretion, he procured a few teacups before he opened the bottle and offered Lizzie and his mother a taste. After all, Mrs. Morison might be nearby.

  Matariki had made a good start, and positioned Grainie behind one of the horses that had immediately broken into a gallop. That at least set the pace, whereas the other horses were held by their riders to a slow trot. Matariki had to rein Grainie in, but she hardly had any trouble keeping the mare from a gallop. The only other participant who achieved that so effortlessly was the woman in the gig with a picture-perfect chestnut mare. The purebred hackney quickly made itself known: another exceptional horse for trotting and Grainie’s greatest rival. Added to which, the driver had her own pacesetter. Ahead of the hackney, Heather Coltrane’s Thoroughbred galloped easily.

  Matariki trotted Grainie beside her. “It’s not exactly fair what you two are doing here,” she complained, somewhat short of breath.

  Grainie’s massive trotting motions shook her mercilessly while Heather sat at ease in her sidesaddle. Her horse obviously had a soft, pleasant gallop.

  Heather shrugged. “No one’s stopping you from following along.”

  Matariki glared at her. “And if I’d rather go faster?”

  Heather laughed and gave her friend in the gig an animated look. “Is Jewel warm enough now?” she called to her.

  The young woman nodded and lightly raised her whip. The hackney mare pulled forward at once, and Heather let her Thoroughbred go. The powerful brown gelding now galloped at a middling pace, and the mare followed effortlessly at a trot. Matariki could hardly see enough of her powerful but still light movements, and the driver seemed to feel the same about Grainie. The mare trotted with tall, giant strides, and Matariki suddenly had an idea about how to avoid the shocks: she simply pushed herself up more in the stirrups, thereby making herself lighter and letting Grainie trot effortlessly.

  Neither Matariki nor the woman in the gig had eyes for their pacesetter. The two mares were now trotting side by side and goading each other onward. Their owners exchanged looks. The race had become secondary. Both were now enjoying the rush of speed.

  “Fantastic horse,” Matariki called over to the gig. “Hackney?”

  The woman nodded. “And yours?”

  “Kiward Welsh cob,” Matariki proudly replied, and began to rein in Grainie’s pace.

  Ahead of them stood an assistant who was checking the gait of the horses and showing the riders the way. The stretch down the main road ended here, meaning they needed to turn and trot back to Caversham along the side roads. Immediately Chloe’s decision to drive instead of ride proved fateful. The return path was rough and so narrow in places that Chloe had to slow to a walk to maneuver her little vehicle through. As a rider, Matariki did not have these problems. True, Grainie did not keep the pace to which the mares had accelerated on the street, but she continued at a brisk trot. Matariki hesitated before she left Chloe and Heather behind.

  “It’s not fair,” she said regretfully. “Really, you ought to win.”

  Chloe shrugged. “So far the horses have kept the same speed. Who would have won would have been determined on the way back. Anyway, it’s my fault. I could have ridden. But I hope I’ve left all the others behind up to this point.”

  Matariki giggled. “You have, except for one.”

  Chloe laughed at her and raised her whip in salute. “Then ride on before someone else catches up to us.”

  Matariki did not need to be told twice. She cracked her whip at Grainie, and Matariki rode her across the finish line.

  Matariki’s mother and the Burtons cheered for her. Lizzie and Kathleen seemed a little tipsy. Colin received Matariki at the finish line, and she fell into his arms.

  “I won! Did you see?”

  The crowd laughed as the good-looking blond young man kissed the victor. Matariki looked lovely. On the wild ride, her hair had come loose and now tumbled down her back. The wind had reddened her cheeks, her golden-brown eyes flashed, and her full, red lips glimmered moist, especially after she downed the teacup of wine Lizzie had handed her.

  Matariki laughed without inhibition. Peter Burton’s parish celebrated her. Bigotry had never flourished under this pastor, and Matariki’s joy was infectious.

  “We should wait for Heather and her friend,” said Matariki when a few girls wanted to hang a floral wreath around the winning horse. “There they come.”

  The hackney mare was just then pulling the gig over the finish line. Heather held back. She had long since disqualified herself from the race and did not want to rob her friend of her triumph. Colin observed that Matariki had encountered a true rival here. It was a marvel that Grainie had beat the hackney. The picture-perfect chestnut did not look tired at all.

  And the same went for the young woman at the reins. Impressively cool and ladylike, she sat upright in her gig; her dark-blue riding dress was impeccably clean and modestly covered her ankles. In contrast to Matariki, whose dress had flown up so much on her spirited ride that one could see a strip of her lower leg’s bare skin above the tight riding boots, the driver barely showed the tips of her dainty laced boots. She, too, had dark hair, but not a strand had loosened from under her hat. Though her tulle veil had surely flo
wn up during the race, it now fell neatly over her face, slightly obscuring her delicate features and her pale complexion.

  “Who’s that?” Colin asked Matariki.

  She shrugged. “Don’t know. Really, she should have won. Her horse is grand, but the way back was too difficult for the gig.”

  So that was it. Colin could only shake his head. Harness racing would only be marketable if the crowd could view the race on a track throughout.

  “Ask your sister,” Matariki said. “She rode with her. She seemed familiar to me but—”

  Colin stopped listening. At the mention of his sister, a light had gone on. As Matariki turned to the driver, he did, too, and then offered his hand to help her out of the gig.

  “Please allow me, Miss Dunloe, um, pardon me, Mrs. Boulder. That was a fantastic race. My name is Colin Coltrane, Heather’s brother. Congratulations on your gorgeous horse.”

  Chapter 7

  To Violet, it was clear that the rent for the little house she and her family had occupied since their arrival in Woolston was too high for Eric’s earnings as a stable hand. In the beginning, she had not thought much about it: there had still been money from his winnings, and Eric had claimed he would climb quickly in the hierarchy at the racing club and that he could supplement his income with gambling winnings.

  “Sweetie, when you work there, you know who’s going to win,” he’d said with bravado when they first walked through the handsome house.

  It was a cute little cottage, painted sky blue, and it even had a tiny garden in which Violet could grow vegetables and the children could play. From the neighboring house, a young woman waved over amiably, so perhaps Violet could even find friends. Except for her time with the Burtons, she had never lived anywhere so lovely or comfortable. For those reasons, she suppressed the question of why, under those conditions, all the stable hands in the racing club did not become rich in a short time. She just wanted to believe Eric. For once something had to go well in her life.

  Then, however, the stallion Thunderbird lost, and the old, hard struggle to survive began again. She had gotten new clothes for Rosie and Joe before the loss of the money and bought some material to sew more clothes. However, after she had paid the rent, only just enough remained for food, and Violet now needed more groceries than ever. Since giving birth to Roberta, she had not been breastfeeding Joe, so she needed to buy milk. What was more, the little boy was developing a healthy appetite. He already ate more than Rosie, who increasingly resembled a shadow, hanging on Violet’s skirts, ghosting through life, and staring into the void. The girl did not say anything, did not play, and did not read, although she was more than old enough and had already almost mastered reading at Caleb’s. Violet did everything to reteach Rosie her letters and open the world of books to her, but to no avail.

  Violet’s attempt to enroll Rosie in the nearest school ended in a fiasco. When Violet left her at the school, Rosie opened her mouth in a soundless scream and threw herself on the floor, where she rocked herself back and forth to an inner rhythm. By the end of the morning, the young teacher, a volunteer from the abstinence movement, whose members often engaged themselves with parishes and cared for women and children, had reached her wits’ end.

  “I tried everything I could, Mrs. Fence,” insisted Miss Delaney. “I was friendly—and then also a bit strict, but just a bit. She is already scared to death, plain to see. Rosie doesn’t even look at me. You should take her to a doctor, Mrs. Fence. She’s disturbed.”

  Eric waved it away when Violet told him of this diagnosis. “She is sick herself,” he said. “I don’t like you going around with these shrews, Violet. Teetotalers! But that’s just a pretense. In truth, they’re suff-suffra-suffratittes. That’s what they say in the pub, anyway.”

  “Suffragettes,” Violet corrected him. “They want women to have the right to vote. But that’s not what Miss Delaney or Mrs. Stuart is even talking about.”

  Mrs. Stuart was Violet’s new neighbor, with whom she had indeed formed a friendship. She was also a member of the abstinence movement, like her husband. Mr. Stuart did not gamble, which was why he could easily afford the rent for their little house even though he did not earn much more as the stable master of Brown’s Paddock than Eric. To Violet’s question as to why Mr. Stuart did not use insider knowledge about the races, he laughed.

  “I’m there like the three monkeys. I don’t see nothing, hear nothing, or say nothing. It’d be mostly off target, anyway. The trainers run their mouths, but the nags have their own heads. If just one of ’em farts wrong, or some mare’s in heat and can’t think of anything but a nice stallion, suddenly they’re running clear across the field. Sometimes literally.”

  Naturally, Eric declared such incidents as the rare exceptions to the rule. He thought Mr. Stuart was an idiot and Mrs. Stuart a dangerous rabble-rouser.

  “I’d prefer you didn’t have anything to do with these suffras,” he declared, then set down his spoon, stood up, and took his jacket. “Work a little harder at cooking. This vegetable mush’ll never fill a man up.”

  Eric went to the pub. He did not have to go far. Brown had realized his plan and opened a tavern next to the racetrack. Eric had been a regular ever since. And only rarely did his small winnings cover what he drank.

  “We’re going to protest there next week,” Julia Stuart declared, encouraged when Violet aired her grievances.

  The week was only halfway through, but she had no food left, and the grocer did not want to put more on her tab. Even the milkman was threatening to stop deliveries, having so far only relented because of how the children looked. Rosie touched his heart most of all when she shyly came out to take the milk bottle.

  “Just come along, Violet.” Julia Stuart had been trying to convince Violet to join their organization. “If we don’t do anything, nothing will happen, or it will turn worse. Brown’s pub is a catastrophe for Woolston. All the factory workers take their money there. Until now, they had to walk almost to Christchurch to drink. No one was going to do that after work, so they went home to their wives like good men. But now: a beer in the tavern, and that turns into two or three, a game of darts, a little wager on the horses, and before you know it, half a week’s pay down the drain. Families are starving, Violet. Carrie Delaney has started collecting for school lunches. The children can’t learn when their bellies are empty.”

  Violet sighed. She, too, was starving, which Julia seemed not to have noticed or did not want to know.

  “You could lend a hand, you know,” Julia said, seemingly making a casual observation. “Carrie is a gifted teacher, but she can’t cook. If you’d take care of that, you could bring your children along.”

  Violet accepted the offer—full of repentance and admiration for Julia’s diplomatic abilities. She was not offering her friend alms; instead, she was offering her an honorable solution. As a cook, Violet could eat the food at the school and fill her children’s stomachs for free.

  Not long after that, Carrie Delaney achieved what Julia could not: she convinced Violet to attend a gathering of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union.

  “Forget the ‘Christian’ and concentrate on the ‘Women,’” said the lively young woman.

  She had gotten into a conversation with Violet when she had discovered a new article by Femina in a newspaper among Violet’s things.

  “We need someone like you. We have enough church wives; we need women who read this and understand it.” Miss Delaney pointed to the text. “We’re not going to change anything by singing hymns. We need power and influence; we need the right to vote. But you can’t talk about that with the teetotaling goodwives.” She grew heated. “For them, it’d be enough if the blokes stopped drinking and betting and instead prayed and worked.”

  “But wouldn’t that be progress?” asked Violet shyly.

  Carrie rolled her eyes. “Sure, it’d be good. But it’d be hard to implement. And we present it as if it were an act of mercy on the part of the men. What’s
worse: a few of them even believe that only the ‘devil alcohol’ and gambling are to blame. The poor man is a victim. That’s not how it is, Violet. Personally, I don’t believe an alcohol ban would be effective. We need completely different laws. A duty to pay upkeep for example, a proper right to divorce, one that doesn’t throw women and children into poverty. Welfare laws when the fellow won’t pay or can’t. But fine, let them ban booze, too, for all I care. The problem is this: Parliament won’t do it, not as long as only men elected by other men sit in it. That’s why we need to change that first. We need the right to vote, actively and passively.”

  “You want to be elected to Parliament?” Violet asked, taken aback but also awed.

  Carrie laughed. “Why not? Wait a few years, and we’ll have the first female premier. And you must come to the next meeting. Kate Sheppard will speak, and I’ll introduce you. By the way, you’re the first woman to whom I haven’t had to explain the difference between active and passive voting rights. Where did you learn that, Violet Fence? Do you read parliamentary reports?”

  Violet laughed. “I have a dictionary,” she said, “and I just got to ‘weather phenomenon.’”

  Carrie grinned at her. The petite, brown-haired woman sometimes looked like a schoolgirl herself. She savored the actions of her women’s group as an adventure.

  “Then you’re in for a storm. Sunday afternoon in the Methodist meetinghouse in Christchurch. Kate Sheppard from the Ladies Association of Trinity Church is speaking, and Harriet Morison is coming from Dunedin. Don’t miss it!”