Flight of a Maori Goddess

by Lark, Sarah

  Roberta shook her head. “Atamie, the Church of Scotland is a nightclub compared to what I’ve heard about these Boers. And I won’t have anything at all to do with the black population. Miss Hobhouse reports only on white camps.”

  The young women reached the ship’s gangway and watched the baggage being taken aboard. Sean and Violet were collecting some final donations, but had assured Roberta they would be there in time to say good-bye.

  Atamarie did not know much about the Boer War, but at the mention of “Africa,” she pictured wild animals and black people. What about them?

  “So, if Miss Hobhouse is just concerned with the whites, where are all the blacks?” she finally asked. “The Boers have slaves, right? Isn’t that part of what this war is about? They surely also lived on the farms that were burned down. Did they run away?”

  Roberta looked caught out. She shrugged desperately. “I just want to help whomever I can.”

  “Well, you’ll write me and explain the situation once you’re there. But no empty letters, please. Tell me everything. And, of course, I’ll keep my fingers crossed you find Kevin. As long as you face the fact that—”

  Roberta raised her hand. “Maybe you should worry about your own great romance for once,” she said sternly. “There might be some facts you’re not facing either. Atamarie, Kevin may not want me, but, well, he’s already far away, and it’s been so long, and Juliet—” Roberta fell silent, and Atamarie sighed theatrically.

  Roberta swallowed and reached into her bag to touch the stuffed horse she had carried since Kevin won it for her. “But Richard,” she pressed on, “he doesn’t even live a hundred miles from Christchurch. And he did notice you. You talked for hours and even held hands and kissed. If he doesn’t visit you now, then—”

  Atamarie started to protest, but their conversation was interrupted by Violet and Sean’s arrival.

  While Sean unloaded another sea chest full of donations, Roberta said her tearful farewell to her mother. Afterward, she embraced her stepfather and, finally, Atamarie.

  “I’ll write for sure, Atamie. Every day. And don’t be mad about what I said.”

  Atamarie laughed and pressed her friend close. “Every day might be a bit much,” she said. “Once a week is fine. And, of course, I’m not mad. You’re right: something has to happen in this business between Richard and me.”

  Atamarie was already planning her journey to Timaru as she watched Roberta waving from the departing ship.

  She was at least as brave as her friend. If Roberta could follow Kevin to South Africa, Atamarie would spit on convention and go visit Richard on his family’s farm. She needed to get him alone and find out for certain whether he still loved her.

  Chapter 5

  “Miss van Stout, I can only tell you again how sorry I am and how much I repudiate the actions of—” Kevin rubbed his forehead. For days, he had been trying to appeal to Doortje van Stout, but she declined to even look at him. “Regardless, I deeply regret what was done to you and your sister. We would like to file a report, but for that, you would need to make a statement, describing the men, giving any names and ranks if you can. Please speak to us, Miss van Stout.”

  Kevin swallowed. “Doortje, talk to me.”

  But Doortje van Stout did not look at Kevin. Dr. Greenway had approved her release from the camp hospital. Johanna, too, could go. The young girl moved like a sleepwalker.

  “I think it’s best the two of them go to their family now that they’re better,” the doctor had said. “Perhaps you could assign them to a single tent.”

  Greenway knew as well as Kevin the state of the camp’s occupancy: Karenstad was hopelessly overfull.

  Indeed, it took Kevin hours just to find out where the blind Mevrouw van Stout and her young sons had been lodged. No one knew precisely how many Boers lived in Karenstad, nor where individual families could be found. Only the number of dead was registered, and that was shockingly high. In general, everything having to do with death in this camp was exceptionally well organized. They had a gravedigger, a carpenter who cobbled together primitive coffins, and a photographer who made portraits of the dead children for their fathers. Lord Kitchener had to be heartless or simply stupid if he thought this would force the men to capitulate. On the contrary, the conditions in the camps stoked their anger.

  Now, Kevin led the silent van Stout sisters over the muddy paths between the long rows of once-white tents. Each was laid out for fifteen people, but meant for soldiers, who only slept there. They had not been designed for families who would have to spend their days there. Furthermore, the overcrowding meant lodging several families together. At least two, more often three, mothers and their children or the elderly they cared for shared a tent—mostly with stoic equanimity, at first. Over the course of the months, tensions almost always developed, which sometimes exploded in fierce fighting.

  “We wanted to offer communal food supplies,” Kevin told Doortje as they passed provisional kitchens built alongside the tents. “But the people wouldn’t eat it. Someone started the rumor the English were mixing broken glass into the porridge to kill their children.”

  Doortje gave him a disgusted look. “You are killing them already,” she said angrily, pointing to a howling mother whose dead child was just then being carried out of one of the fly-swarmed tents.

  These were the first words Doortje had spoken since their reunion, but Kevin could not be happy about them. The child had died of typhus after his mother had refused to bring him to the hospital. And so, here was another tent where the disease would take hold—and from which the flies would transmit it. The swarming insects were another problem Kevin could not get under control. They were attracted by unwashed dishes and dirty bodies, which could be prevented only by placing enough water at the women’s disposal. Drinking water, however, was in short supply, and though washing water could be fetched from the river, the way was far and the women often too weak. There was hardly any soap, a fact about which Lindsey had already complained repeatedly, but command simply did not send more. The women could not keep themselves or their children clean. Their clothes also became tattered quickly when worn day and night. Kevin heard that no one in Karenstad disrobed to sleep.

  “The people sleep on the ground,” Cornelis had explained. “Most don’t even have covers. It’s too cold to take your clothes off—not to mention, there are strangers in the tent.”

  Kevin had nodded and put in a request for more blankets, as well as canvas to partition the tents for privacy. Vincent helped out with a few horse blankets and advised Kevin not to wash them.

  “They say fleas don’t like horse sweat,” he’d said. “So, maybe a small help against all the pests?”

  Kevin did not share this hope. He had discovered that new admissions to the camp brought fleas and lice. Whether the vermin were lodged in the crannies of the transport carts, or perhaps in the blankets with which they were upholstered, he did not know. Maybe the Boers caught the pests in the veld. Regardless, Kevin ordered the wagons thoroughly cleaned, but the mischief had, of course, long since been done; all of Karenstad was crawling with vermin.

  “We do have flea powder, as it happens,” Kevin had told Cornelis, “in large quantities. It’s just no one seems to know how to use it. Dr. Greenway has kept it under lock and key after two women shook it into their children’s food. I don’t understand your people. They live in the same world as we do, they can read and write, but they—”

  “They reject this world,” Cornelis said curtly. The young man was even more shocked at the conditions than Kevin and was naturally more affected. His patriotic attitude had so far remained bounded, but now he, too, was developing anger toward the British. “Boers learn to read only so they can read the Bible, and the men work the land of their forefathers. Their women keep the house clean and the children healthy with remedies handed down from their foremothers. If one dies, then it’s God’s will. But this—”

  “This here is surely not God’s wil
l. On that, we agree. But maybe you can explain to the women how to use the flea powder. Try using a Bible verse.”

  Cornelis grinned. “‘And I will sever in that day the land of Goshen, in which my people dwell, that no swarms of flies shall be there; to that end thou mayest know that I am the Lord in the midst of the earth.’ Book of Exodus.”

  Kevin nodded. “Wonderful. I thought we might need divine intervention. Please, do all you can.”

  Cornelis had disappeared in the direction of the hospital while Kevin exhaled. It had been a clever decision to bring Cornelis Pienaar. He had not needed any explanations of the danger he ran in the camp. To ward off accusations of cowardice, he exaggerated his limp and acted as if his right arm were almost entirely unusable, rendering him no use at the front. Since he claimed to have fallen into the clutches of the British wounded and unconscious, the women grudgingly forgave him for surviving his last battle. Indeed, Cornelis even received some mothering—at least until Kevin had tracked down Bentje van Stout. Doortje’s mother was suspicious of the second injury. She suspected Cornelis of fraternizing with the enemy. Even Doortje herself refused to see her cousin. Kevin took it that she was ashamed—and his anger at Doortje and Johanna’s attackers grew.

  “It’s just up ahead,” he said now, turning to the young van Stouts. “Your mother is in a tent by the river, but you won’t be there long term. We’re going to relocate that settlement. The Karenspruit overflows its banks with every rain, and then—”

  “We shall stay right here until our men come and liberate us,” Doortje said calmly. The sight of the conditions in the camp seemed to stir her spirit of resistance. Her mention of the men, however, cut Kevin to the quick. Apparently, she knew nothing about the death of her father or Martinus DeGroot. “Now, where is my mother?”

  Kevin found Bentje van Stout sitting in front of her tent, telling a group of children about the Great Trek.

  “And don’t you believe the children hid under their blankets. No, they moved bravely around the camp, bringing their fathers water and food to replenish their strength for the fight, and when the Kaffirs attacked, they stood behind them and reloaded their weapons.”

  Bentje’s blind eyes beamed with patriotic ardor. The eyes of many of the children, on the other hand, shone feverishly. Even Bentje’s youngest son, who snuggled in her lap, did not look healthy.

  “Mother!”

  Kevin turned away as Doortje embraced her mother. However, he did not miss that Johanna stared past Bentje just as she had past the doctors. Something inside the girl had been broken. Kevin ached to fix it.

  “Doortje,” he said softly before he took his leave. Where should he begin? He felt the deepest shame, but also desperate love for the young woman who still held her head high despite everything. “Doortje, if Johanna doesn’t—come back, please bring her to the hospital. Perhaps she needs further examinations or different medicines.”

  Kevin did not really know what could be done, but Johanna needed constant supervision at the least. She did nothing of her own accord. In her first days in the hospital, someone had even had to feed her. Now she spooned her food herself again when someone pressed a bowl and a spoon into her hands. If it was simply put on the table, she left it there.

  “She has everything she needs,” Doortje informed him. “Isn’t that what they say about these camps? That we are better off than on our farms? That the care is exceptional and we are comfortable?”

  Kevin turned to go without another word.

  In the next few days, Kevin struggled against the urge to check in on Doortje. Not that he lacked for things to do. Everything he tried to do to change conditions in the camp ran up against the British supply posts or regulations—or the prisoners, who were not prepared to cooperate even in the smallest matters. Kevin complained about the food rations, which were wholly insufficient. The stringy meat could have been used to make stew, but they lacked any vegetables. Meager quantities of rice or potatoes were sometimes delivered, but often it was only flour, which the women used to make flatbread. With drinking water, at least, Kevin had some success. Above the military camp, there were wells as well as clear streams, in contrast to the mostly muddy water in the river. Horse-drawn wagons carried it to town, but Vincent diverted a few of them to the women’s camp every day. However, the families had to retrieve it, and that was not possible if a mother lay sick in her tent. Cornelis hauled buckets to needy families half the day, but the camp held almost fifteen hundred people. It was hopeless to think the limping young man could provide for them all.

  Cornelis also became increasingly skilled at convincing women to entrust themselves or their children to Dr. Greenway’s care. However, the lone doctor was dangerously overextended. Ultimately, Kevin convinced the garrison doctor from town to loan them a few orderlies: three experienced and eager Indian men. Unfortunately, the Boer women reacted hysterically when men—moreover, men of a different color—tried to touch them.

  “Where exactly are the blacks?” asked Kevin one evening. He had invited Dr. Greenway over to his lodgings. Both doctors sank, exhausted and dispirited, into the armchairs in Lindsey’s former living room, which had once been elegant but now looked unkempt. The whiskey stores, at least, seemed inexhaustible. Kevin had already transitioned into using the stuff medicinally. He remembered his mother’s stories about the passage from London to Australia—the ship’s doctor had ordered feverish men to be rubbed with gin. “All of these people’s servants, slaves, whatever.”

  Greenway took a deep drink and contemplated his glass. “Did no one tell you? The blacks have their own camp, just about a mile upriver. You oversee that too.”

  “What?” Kevin asked, the blood draining from his face. “And you’re only telling me this now?”

  Greenway raised his hands apologetically. “I thought Lindsey would have told you, or operations command.”

  “Didn’t you wonder why I never went there?” Kevin emptied his glass in one gulp and poured himself more whiskey.

  Greenway shrugged. “I think Lindsey only ever visited once. And I—heavens, you know what I have to do here.”

  Kevin tried to remain calm. “What are conditions like?”

  “In some ways better, in some worse. It’s, well, different.”

  “Different how?”

  “Food isn’t distributed to the blacks. They have to work for it. When the family has a provider, when the women grow vegetables, then they do fine. There are also more men there—many came willingly. They weren’t forced like the Boers. Some of them cooperate. The Boer guerillas don’t have a chance near the blacks. That’s why command likes to settle them along the train lines. But it’s bad for the families that only consist of women and children, especially in camps where the people come from different tribes. The families starve—I hear the death rate is even higher than in the white camps.”

  “And I don’t have to ask if there’s medical care,” Kevin remarked. “I’ll ride upriver tomorrow. I need to have a look.”

  “Dr. Drury.” Kevin and Greenway both spun around at the sound of Cornelis’s voice. “Forgive my intrusion. I called from the front door, but you didn’t hear.”

  Kevin nodded. “What’s the matter?”

  Cornelis lowered his head. “I need to ask for a few flashlights so we can search the camp. A girl has disappeared.”

  Kevin leaped up, but Greenway only rubbed his tired eyes. “If she’s in the camp, young man, we’ll find her in the morning. I know the women don’t want to believe it, but there are, among these very, uh, Christian women, a few who sell themselves for food or soap.”

  Cornelis looked up, his gaze hard. “That may be, sir. But not in this case. It’s Johanna van Stout.”

  Kevin felt dizzy. Damn it, he should have held the girl in the hospital.

  Resigned, he reached for his jacket. “I’ll come,” he said. “And alert the guards, would you, Greenway? They should form search teams. I’ll telephone town as well.” Kevin knew Vincent was al
ways on call for emergencies. “Dr. Taylor can surely organize more men. But I don’t think we’ll get far searching in camp. Let’s go to the river.”

  Johanna van Stout’s body washed up the next day, downriver. A soldier on patrol discovered it. The body showed no new traces of assault, which did not prevent Bentje van Stout from accusing the guards of murder.

  “One of you pushed her. Somebody pushed her. We are Christians. My daughter would never do such a thing.” Bentje sobbed and screamed.

  “But that’s out of the question, Mevrouw van Stout. The banks are gentle everywhere here. No one could be pushed in,” Kevin told the woman helplessly. Finally, he turned to Doortje. “Miss van Stout, can’t you explain this to your mother? It’s a tragedy, it is, but Johanna wasn’t killed; she—”

  Doortje turned her snow-white but tearless face to him. “Johanna was too weak to live with the shame. God may forgive her that. But if he forgives the man who killed her, not last night, Dr. Drury, but that night in the veld. If he forgives that man, then—” The young woman balled her fists.

  Kevin clenched his as well, wishing for nothing more than to take Doortje van Stout in his arms.

  “He’s not likely to stand trial soon before his God,” he said as calmly as he could. “Unless you’re finally prepared to give a statement. Then, he’ll hang.”

  Doortje bit her lip. And remained silent.

  Chapter 6

  Deep down, Atamarie was convinced that Richard Pearse must love her, but she had to admit that the proof left something to be desired. Since Richard had left the university after the excursion in the fall of the previous year, she had seen him only once. He had needed to take care of something in Christchurch and had taken the opportunity to visit Professor Dobbins. Atamarie had been overjoyed when Dobbins relayed that Richard was in town, and that he’d gone to the patent office to register a lightweight bicycle with a bamboo frame, gearshift, and back-pedal brake.