A Mother's Courage

by Maggie Hope

  Within a split second, Eleanor had almost convinced herself that there was nothing wrong, but as she saw the bedraggled group of women, their legs and short skirts daubed with mud and their bare limbs scratched from running through undergrowth, the hope died.

  Beside them the men, returned from the turtle hunt only a few minutes ago laughing and singing their triumph, were grim-faced and angry, muttering to each other in their own language. Even as they gathered in a group before the mission house, another woman ran out of the bushes and flung herself at one of the warriors, gesticulating wildly in her hurry to tell what had happened, her words completely incomprehensible to Eleanor.

  ‘What? What’s happened? Where are my children?’ Jumping down the steps, almost falling as she missed her footing at the bottom but managing to regain her balance though her ankle had turned and a sharp pain shot up her leg, Eleanor took hold of the shoulder of the woman who had spoken.

  ‘Not my fault, missus, not any of us, we couldn’t stop it!’ the woman said, her already fearful face showing signs of panic. She tried to back away but Eleanor had tight hold of her.

  ‘What isn’t your fault? Tell me, woman, tell me, what are they saying?’ She was practically screaming with frustration now and as she shook the shoulder she was holding, another woman stepped forward, a woman with a long scratch across her cheek and a trickle of blood slowly creeping down her neck.

  ‘The men were on a turtle hunt, they think God protect the babies,’ she said. ‘We ran off with our children when the devils came, don’t want to be slaves.’

  ‘What do you mean, the devils came? What are you talking about, you stupid woman, tell me what happened to my children!’

  Eleanor stamped her foot and pushed her face forward to within an inch of the other woman’s nose. Why didn’t she say what had happened, surely it was a simple enough thing to do?

  One of the men stepped forward, and she saw it was Mala, the headman among the small community of Christian Fijians who lived in the compound. Firmly he removed her hands from the shoulder she still held and turned her to face him.

  ‘War party came,’ he said, ‘tribesmen from the hills, devil warriors, no good, take white babies and Tongan man and white woman away. Fijian women escape into the trees.’

  Eleanor stared at him; even though she had known in her heart right from the moment she had left the ship that something like this must have happened, she was still disbelieving.

  ‘Missus sit down,’ he said and attempted to lead her back on to the balcony but Eleanor shook off his hand.

  ‘We have to go after them, we have to get them back!’ she cried.

  ‘We go, you stay,’ said Mala decisively. ‘Warriors do battle, woman stay at home.’

  ‘I’m going. Oh, Mala, how could you go off on a turtle hunt like that and leave my babies unprotected? What were you thinking of?’

  Mala looked hurt. ‘Turtles in the bay. They good to eat. Always Fijian men hunt the turtle.’ He turned to the other men. ‘Now we hunt hill people.’

  A roar went up from the assembled warriors; their throwing clubs leapt out of their belts and were flourished menacingly in the air. As Eleanor watched she was struck by how different they looked. Their faces were unrecognisable; they looked as fierce as the tribesmen she had occasionally met in the past. And it was comforting, they would fight for her babies, she knew they would, but would they be in time?

  ‘I’m coming, I’m coming,’ she shouted as they streamed towards the canoes pulled up at the water’s edge and unceremoniously dumped the turtles out on to the sand. Their throwing clubs were once again tucked in their belts and somehow each one was flourishing a short, lethal-looking spear. But the men didn’t even hear her or if they did they dismissed it as a woman’s hysteria.

  ‘Come back, missus.’ One of the women took hold of her arm and tried to pull her back up the beach towards the compound.

  ‘No, I’m going,’ Eleanor insisted, running into the waves after the boats, her long skirts becoming soaked and immediately dragging against her legs. She gathered them up in one hand, not caring that the men were there, and still tried to reach the canoes. But it was no good; they were pulling away, paddling in unison to the deep-voiced war chant they had started up as soon as they were in the canoes.

  And Eleanor was left, floundering in waist-high water, until a high wave caught her and lifted her off her feet and flung her back to the beach where she would have fallen heavily were it not for the women who caught her and half-carried her out of the water.

  She lay in the sand, the breath taken out of her body, gasping and crying with frustration and gradually, as her breathing eased, she became aware of an ache in her back, coming round to her belly, becoming deeper seated and more insistent. Not this one too, she thought, forcing herself to sit up, holding down the panic until it lessened while she stared out to sea after the canoes, which had already rounded the headland and were gone. It was too late to go with them, she had to think about the baby within her, she had to be calm. Getting to her feet, she turned to walk up the beach to the mission house.

  ‘Ship!’

  At the cry from the group of women Eleanor whirled round and sure enough, as though by a miracle, there was a ship coming into the bay, a proper ship, not a canoe.

  ‘Thank God! Thank you, God, thank you, I swear I’ll never doubt you again,’ she said aloud, starting back to the water. ‘Francis!’ she called. ‘Francis?’

  He had come back, of course he had come back, he had heard of the raid and had come back. But even as she ran, she was berating him in her mind; why had he not realised there was something wrong when there was no one on the beach when the John Wesley went away? He couldn’t even have been watching her disembark, far too full of his work, that was it.

  Suddenly she slowed down and stared at the ship coming in to the jetty; it wasn’t the John Wesley, and where would Francis have got himself a different ship? It wasn’t a missionary ship at all, it was a sloop. She had heard that there were boats like this one going round the islands, sailed by opportunists looking to buy land off the natives in just the way Morgan West was rumoured to have done, land to grow cotton.

  What did such people want with their settlement? They were Christians here, they would not be tempted by the offer of guns, they were at peace with their neighbours. The panic was beginning to rise in her yet again as the sloop drew slowly alongside the jetty and a figure jumped lightly off the deck and tied the boat up. She glanced around quickly but she was alone on the beach. The native women had had enough for one day; they didn’t want to meet another threat and had melted away into the undergrowth once again.

  ‘Eleanor? What on earth are you doing out here on your own? Just look at you, you’re soaked through. What is Francis thinking of, doesn’t he know there are unfriendly natives in the area?’

  As Morgan West strode along the jetty and took hold of her arm, Eleanor let out a great sigh of relief and sagged against him so that he had to catch her in his arms. He stood there for a moment, gazing round the deserted compound, then he picked her up and carried her back up the jetty and on to his boat, depositing her on the deck where she stood leaning against the wheelhouse, swaying ominously. Swiftly he cast off again and took the sloop back out into the bay before turning back to her.

  ‘Now then,’ he said, ‘tell me what happened. And don’t act the weak woman with me either, I want to know it all and as soon as may be.’

  Eleanor stared at him; he looked so strong and dependable, so exactly what she needed at that moment, that it was only his brisk tone of voice that stopped her breaking down altogether.

  ‘There’s been a raid,’ she said, ‘they took my babies. Oh, my Lord, Morgan, I wasn’t here, neither of us was here, we were returning from Bau. We weren’t here when our children needed us, God forgive us, God forgive us.’

  ‘Oh, pull yourself together, woman,’ said Morgan. ‘We’ll go after them; my crew and I are perfectly capable of seeing o
ff a bunch of these black heathens. Where are the men of the settlement anyway? And where the hell is Francis?’

  ‘Francis had to go off with Mr Calvert, well, how was he to know? It’s not his fault this has happened, we should have been warned that there were war parties about.’ Eleanor was on the defensive about Francis though in truth she felt he was to blame. Why did he go off so quickly, why did he not see there was something wrong? Despair welled up in her; how were they going to find the warriers, how?

  ‘The men – where are the natives?’

  ‘They’ve gone after them, just now, it’s a wonder you didn’t see them as you came in, did you not? They seemed to know where to go. Oh, can you find them, Morgan?’

  He didn’t waste time in answering her; he was shouting orders to the man at the wheel and to another in the rigging. The wind was fresh, fresher out on the open sea, and the sails fairly billowed out as they skimmed across the surface of the water.

  ‘Go below, Eleanor.’

  ‘No, I can help.’

  He didn’t bother answering her, simply took her arm and pushed her down into the cabin, closing the door after her.

  ‘And if you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay there,’ she heard him say as he went back on deck. Rushing to the tiny porthole she peered out to sea. Dear God, the light was going already, how were they to catch up with the Fijians if they couldn’t even see them? And surely the raiding party and her poor babies were already ashore, already hidden away in the hills?

  Chapter Nineteen

  Prue held John close to her as she sat in the corner of the hill village. Incredibly, Francis William was asleep on her shoulder, completely worn out. John was staring wide-eyed at the group of tribesmen in the centre of the clearing, his little face white and drawn, but he was very quiet, not a whimper, not a movement.

  Neither of the children had cried after the first shock of the warriors from the hills swooping down on the village, flourishing their spears and shouting their war cries in deep, guttural voices. The women had picked up their children and run for cover and Prue had done her best to follow them but, before she knew what was happening, the warriors were running for the mission house, ignoring the native women and the rest of the compound.

  Matthew rushed through the house, his throwing club already in his hand. ‘Back, woman,’ he cried. ‘Run!’ But they were the last words she had heard him say, for a well-aimed club whizzed through the air and knocked him off his feet, sending him to land with a sickening thump on the ground, where he lay still.

  Both John and her little Billy stopped in mid-cry and stared, solemn-eyed, at the blood oozing slowly into his thick black hair until Prue pulled their faces round and into her skirts.

  And that was it, the rest of the day was surely unreal, it couldn’t have happened, the war party rampaging through the mission house, smashing everything, looking for she didn’t know what. They were dragged down to canoes lined up on the shore, Matthew’s body unceremoniously slung in one and, as Prue gazed out over the ocean desperately looking for the turtle-hunting village men, they began to pull away swiftly into the bay.

  The children cuddled in closely to her as Prue sat in the bottom of the canoe. She looked back at the shore. There was not a sign of anyone; the village was deserted and silent, even the parakeets had stopped their eternal racket, even the pigs had fled into the undergrowth.

  What was she going to do? Prue stared wildly at the men in the boat, their heads with a thick shock of black hair sticking out so it looked like a wig, necklaces of what looked like sharks’ teeth round their necks that gleamed white against the black oiled muscles glistening so powerfully as they pulled the oars against the tide.

  The man nearest her saw her watching him and he grinned. Almost without breaking the rhythm of his stroke he touched her blonde hair, even lighter nowadays as it was bleached by the sun, and said something to his neighbour and they laughed.

  ‘Don’t touch me!’ For a moment Prue forgot her fear as rage rose blindly in her and she spat at him. Casually he lifted a hand and swiped her across the head, rocking it back on her shoulders, making her ears ring. The children burrowed deeper into her lap, bringing her to her senses. She had to look after the children first; no matter what else happened, she couldn’t let anything happen to them.

  Anything more, that is, she thought, feeling her little Billy’s body trembling against her thighs, for all the world like a puppy she had once found in the pit yard at Lyon Pit at Hetton. Oh, God, why in hell had they ever left Hetton?

  ‘Suffer the little children,’ Mr Tait had said only last week at Sunday School, and they did sure enough, poor canny bairns. But nothing was going to happen to these two, no it wasn’t, the black heathens would have to kill her first.

  She looked over at the boat in front, the one that held Matthew’s body. What did they want with Matthew’s body? Why hadn’t they just left it where it fell? But her thoughts came to a sudden stop as the implications of them bringing it with them hit her and a shutter closed off the worst of her imaginings.

  Bending to the children, she stroked their heads, lifted up their faces and wiped their noses. ‘It’ll be all right,’ she whispered, ‘Daddy will come for you, you’ll see, we’ll just get to wherever we’re going and Daddy will be there in the big ship. You know it can go faster than these canoes, and Mala and all his men will come and, you’ll see, they’ll punish these naughty men for taking us away.’

  The walk, more a climb than walk, up into the hills after they beached the canoes in a hidden cove on the north of the island, was a nightmare she thought she would never recover from, Francis William clinging to her back, supported by her apron tied under him and John clinging to her skirt as he stumbled along beside her and a fierce-looking warrior chivvying her every now and then, pushing her none too gently, threatening her with his spear to hurry her along. She stumbled over her skirts until she caught her foot in the hem and ripped almost half of it off altogether and then at least it was somewhat easier.

  Behind her were a couple of men with Matthew’s body slung on a pole, pushing her, complaining at her slowness. A stitch started in her ribs and she was catching her breath in long desperate pants. At last they stumbled into the clearing of a native village, a circle of huts not dissimilar to those they had left behind but with a long house to one side that, judging by the activities going on there, seemed to be a communal eating place.

  As Prue and the children were pushed to one side and told in pantomime to sit down and sit still, she began to take note of her surroundings. Her heart was filled with despair as she saw the strength of the village; there must have been thirty or so warriors in the raiding party but there were some who had obviously been off somewhere else and any number, to her eyes, of women and old men and children.

  The children collapsed beside her, little John, whose short legs had carried him all the way from the hidden bay where the villagers’ canoes were stowed, sinking to his knees close by her side and turning to face the party of warriors who were talking and gesticulating in the centre of the clearing. The men were relaxed as they told the story of their raid; they dropped the body of Matthew on the beaten mud in the centre of the clearing and were pointing to it, laughing. Prue distinctly heard the word, ‘Tonga’ and strained anxiously towards them to see if she could glean what they were going to do with the body. Such stories had been going about the islands, she remembered, tales of the cannibalism that used to be practised. Dear Jesus, she prayed, more fervently than she had ever prayed in her life before, even when her mother was dying in the miner’s cottage in Hetton.

  ‘Sweet Jesus!’

  At first Prue thought the voice was only in her own imagination, in her prayer, but no, Matthew had moved his head; she distinctly saw the black head move against his mud-and blood-bespattered shirt. Had she imagined it?

  Glancing swiftly down at the figure of her little Billy, still fast asleep, the anxious, fearful look now mercifully smoothed
from his brow as he slept, to make sure she did not disturb him, she clasped John to her with one arm and edged a little closer, watchful that none of the warriors saw her.

  There it was again, not the words this time, but definitely a moan and Matthew’s head certainly moved, he even managed to lift it an inch or so off the ground, his eyes opened and he was staring straight at her, his gaze slowly focusing.

  ‘Matthew!’

  It was the first word John had spoken since they left Viwa. Matthew heard it and tried to sit up, hampered by the ropes that still loosely tied him to the pole. He managed to get one arm free and was struggling with the other before a tribes-man noticed he was moving and raised his club, jumping forward to deliver a blow.

  ‘No!’ Prue screamed and in an instant the rest of the warriors were there, calling harshly at each other, and the one who had been going to use his club on Matthew reluctantly lowered it and stepped back, evidently on orders from one man. He must be the headman, Prue realised, for the others were falling back, forming a ring round him as he stood beside Matthew.

  ‘Whisht, John,’ she whispered, drawing back and pulling both children as close to her as she could get them and through it all Francis William slept on serenely.

  One of the warriors was hauling Matthew to his feet; he swayed and fell once, but was pulled back and this time he stood on his own, still swaying but upright, his right hand automatically feeling in the cloth about his waist, she surmised for his throwing club, but of course it had been left behind in Viwa.

  They are going to kill him now, she thought despairingly and she turned John’s face away. Incredibly, Francis William slept on, his little body curled up in ball, one fist tight-clenched against his mouth.

  Matthew is a Tongan, Prue remembered, a follower of Ma’afu, the Tongan chief in the Lau part of Fiji, and these hill people hated the Tongans even more than they did Thakembau and the Christian Fijians. Her thoughts ran on chaotically – where had she heard that discussed? Mr Langham, when he was talking to Mr Tait, that was it, dear God, they must have known something like this might happen. God damn all missionaries, the bloody fools that they were, putting their own bairns in danger.