Amber

by Deborah Challinor

  She pushed on, climbing over fallen branches and moss-covered logs, slipping in damp mulch, snagging her wretched skirt every few yards it seemed, and swearing in a manner that would have made Sharkey proud. It wasn’t until she paused at the base of the next hill to take a drink from a small stream that she realised she could no longer hear the sounds of battle. Listening intently, she turned in a full circle, but there was only the burble of the stream and the clear, ringing call of a tui in the trees above her.

  Was she lost? She couldn’t be, surely? The hairs on her arms rose and a flutter of cold panic filled her belly. Then she told herself not to be so silly; she hadn’t even come that far yet. Or had she? She looked up to gauge the position of the sun, but couldn’t see it through the canopy above her. Well, that was easily fixed—she would climb again until she could.

  She looked back at the precipitously steep hill she had just negotiated, noting the deep gouges in the leaf litter where she had slipped and slid her way down, and mentally shook her head. She crossed the stream, shivering slightly as the cold water seeped inside her boots, and set off across the small clearing beyond it, heading for the slope leading up to the next hill.

  But she had gone only five yards when suddenly there was nothing beneath her feet and she was falling.

  Chapter Eight

  She landed heavily on her side, and lay motionless with her eyes squeezed shut until she was sure she wasn’t going to fall any further. Then she opened them to encounter an enormous weta only inches from her face, its eyes bulging from its revolting, shiny black head. Shrieking, she scrambled away.

  But it wasn’t the weta that made her heart almost leap out of her throat—it was the human skull upon which it was squatting. She crawled as far from it as possible, then sat back on her haunches and breathed deeply until her pulse started to steady again.

  When she felt a little more composed, she checked herself for damage. Pulling up her skirts she saw that she had a large purple graze on her left thigh, scratches on her calf, and a cut on her right knee that was bleeding quite heavily. Her left hip hurt and so did her elbow, but she didn’t think they were broken, and when she wiped her nose on the back of her hand there was blood. As soon as she saw it she realised she could taste it as well, in the back of her throat.

  She gripped the hem of her petticoat and pulled, intending to tear off a strip to use as a bandage. But the stitching in the seam was a lot tougher than she expected, and after a lot of fruitless tugging and twisting she resorted to poking a piece of sharp stick through the fabric and ripping it, and even then it didn’t tear off neatly. She took what she had and tied it around her knee, where it immediately turned bright red. Watching the stain spread like a lush red blossom, she noticed with a stab of dismay that her bangle had gone from her forearm.

  Willing herself not to cry, she took a deep, wavering breath and made a thorough examination of her surroundings. She appeared to be at the bottom of a tomo, the word the Maoris gave to an underground cave. About twelve feet above her she could see a small patch of sky, partially obscured by the fallen branches and fronds of nikau that had concealed the opening. The hole she had fallen through wasn’t very wide, and a lot smaller than the cave itself. The ground beneath her was damp and scattered with rocks, and rotting leaves and debris that had fallen in over time. She was surprised she hadn’t hurt herself more when she’d landed. It was so quiet she could hear the blood pulsing in her ears, and from somewhere in the dark recesses of the cave she could hear the drip of water. The cave smelled wet, even there under the opening, and small ferns had taken hold between the rocks and in tiny fissures in the walls. The walls themselves sloped inward as they rose, and, with a sinking heart, Kitty could see that climbing them would be impossible. She was trapped like a crayfish in a pot.

  Overwhelmed with sudden panic she screamed for someone to help her, and the echo of her voice bouncing off the cave walls almost deafened her so that she had to clap her hands over her ears. She closed her eyes for what felt like a very long time, but when she opened them again nothing had changed.

  A second later she almost jumped out of her skin when she heard a sharp little scratching noise, but it was only the weta’s claws as it climbed ponderously off its perch. The skull looked weathered, with long yellow teeth that appeared too large for the jaws, and there was moss growing across the back of it, like fuzzy green hair. The skeleton was tall and seemed to be intact, except for a break in one of the thighs, the bones arranged more or less as nature had intended. There were shreds of rotted fabric clinging to it, some little round things nearby that looked like metal buttons and the feet bones were still inside collapsed leather boots.

  Then something inside the rib cage caught her eye and, moving slowly because her hip and elbow were beginning to throb now, she stepped gingerly across the slippery rocks and peered down.

  The object was an ornate silver cross inlaid with ivory and it looked familiar, like the sort of thing a clergyman might wear. Where had she seen it before? Then, with a horrible jolt, she knew—it was the cross Uncle George had habitually worn. Tahi had been right: his father was under the ground. Her mouth opened in silent shock and she stared at the skeleton, realising that the mystery of her uncle’s disappearance had finally been solved.

  But only if she found a way out of the tomo herself. She glanced up at the opening, then at the skeleton, then back up again.

  Then, finally, she started to cry. Not for her lost bangle or for miserable, dead Uncle George, but for herself.

  At midday, acting commander Lieutenant Phillpotts made the decision to evacuate all women and children from Kororareka to HMS Hazard and to the other ships anchored just off shore; the fighting had died down for the time being and the Maoris had not yet invaded the town, but it seemed inevitable.

  Observing from a hillside above Kororareka as women and children filed out of Polack’s Stockade, Rian began to grow more and more uneasy as Kitty’s familiar figure failed to appear.

  ‘I can’t see her,’ he said to Hawk, and passed him the spyglass. ‘You have a look.’

  Hawk raised the glass to his eye, but half a minute later said, ‘No, I cannot see her either.’

  ‘Are they all out yet?’ Mick asked, watching the scene below. ‘Maybe there are more to come.’

  They waited until it seemed that the last woman and child had emerged, but there was still no sign of Kitty.

  Rian snapped shut the spyglass. ‘Right, we’re going down.’

  They had been up in the hills since just after the fighting had begun at Matuawhi Pass earlier that morning. It had been a simple task to slip away from the town under cover of the sea mist, and they had been able to watch almost everything as it unfolded below them. It had been clear to them that Heke’s men positioned on Maiki Hill had lost their enthusiasm once they had felled the flagstaff, as there had been only sporadic activity from them since. The sounds of battle from Matuawhi Pass had ended hours ago and the British troops involved had returned to the town. The Kapotai firing from the heights behind Kororareka also seemed to have quietened, so Rian wondered whether the fight was in fact over. But if it was, why had the order been given to evacuate the women and children?

  At the gate to the stockade he grabbed the arm of a jittery-looking soldier.

  ‘Have you seen a woman named Kitty Farrell?’ he demanded. ‘Tallish with black hair? Very pretty. Are the women all out?’

  The young soldier, his eyes darting about as though expecting a horde of marauding Maoris to appear at any moment, jerked away from Rian and shook his head.

  Exasperated, Rian snapped, ‘No you haven’t seen her, or no they’re not all out yet?’

  Sensing his impatience, the soldier replied quickly, ‘The women and kids are all out, they’re going out to the ships. Didn’t you hear the order? You civilians are supposed to be going as well.’ And then he darted off.

  Hawk said to Rian, ‘Why are the men also being evacuated?’ But Rian was alrea
dy walking away, through the stockade gate.

  They checked every room in Joel Polack’s house, but Kitty was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘What about the women?’ Pierre suggested as they came out. ‘Ask the women. They might know where she be.’

  On the beach, among the throng of wounded soldiers, and women and children surrounded by piles of belongings, waiting to be collected by ships’ boats, Rian finally found someone with news of Kitty.

  ‘Yes,’ said Martha Geddes, eyeing Gideon with poorly disguised alarm, ‘I spent some time talking with her. She was in the house until just after dawn and then she ran out like a thing possessed. I tried to stop her but I couldn’t, I’m afraid. Are you her husband?’

  ‘Yes. And she didn’t say where she was going?’

  ‘No, all she said was something about “I have to find him”. You don’t have a son, do you? She seemed very upset. Mind you, we all were. The noise of the battle was terrific.’

  They hurried back to Kororareka’s main street, where Rian reluctantly admitted to Hawk, ‘Oh, Christ, I think she might have gone out to look for me.’

  Hawk nodded.

  ‘Rian? I think that redcoat might be wantin’ to talk to you,’ Mick warned.

  They all turned and stared at the soldier trotting towards them. He looked exhausted, the knees of his trousers were caked with dirt and there was a large tear in the sleeve of his jacket.

  ‘I hear you’re looking for someone, a woman?’ the soldier said, panting.

  ‘Yes, my wife,’ Rian replied eagerly. ‘Tall with black hair. Have you seen her?’

  ‘A lady of that description left the stockade at about six this morning. In a hell of a hurry, she was. I couldn’t stop her. She was wearing…’ He screwed up his face as he tried to remember.

  ‘…a pale blue gown,’ Rian finished for him.

  ‘Yes, that was it!’

  Pierre asked, ‘Did you see which way she go?’

  The soldier pointed towards the stockade gate. ‘I tried to stop her there. It weren’t safe, you see. But she ran off, up the side of the fence there and round the back. And then I got fired on and I couldn’t go after her.’

  Rian looked in the direction in which the soldier was pointing, but Daniel was already off and running.

  Having rather tersely told Daniel to cool his heels and wait until he was given orders before he made a move of any sort, Rian led his crew through the handful of rough streets that made up Kororareka until they came to the last few cottages.

  ‘Spread out,’ he ordered. ‘It looks like she might have been heading for the hills.’ Where I said I would be, he thought angrily. This is my fault and if she’s been hurt I will never forgive myself.

  It was Pierre who found the small piece of pale blue fabric caught on the fence rail.

  ‘Rian!’ he called. ‘She go this way!’

  They drew together and stood scanning the hills above them, hoping to see a flash of blue or even the wave of a hand, but there was nothing.

  They climbed through the scrub, calling out every few yards.

  ‘She would have been heading up and back slightly, wouldn’t she?’ Rian said, talking as much to himself as to Hawk. ‘I think she would have been looking for somewhere with a good view but out of sight. She knew what I was intending to do so she wouldn’t have gone too far into the bush. Would she?’

  Hawk patted Rian’s arm as reassuringly as he could. ‘She is not a stupid woman, Rian. And she is not unfamiliar with this sort of terrain. She will have been careful.’

  Rian wiped the sweat off his face with his sleeve then stood with his hands on his hips, his shoulders slumped and his head down. Hawk thought he had never seen a man look so dejected.

  ‘Christ almighty, Hawk, I don’t know what I’ll do if—’

  ‘We will find her,’ Hawk interrupted, then set off again.

  At the summit of the hill they heard a loud explosion and paused briefly to look back down at the town. Polack’s Stockade seemed to have blown up; black smoke poured out of the house, partly obscuring the miniature figures scurrying madly around the conflagration.

  ‘Mon Dieu, that is where the ammunition be,’ Pierre muttered.

  ‘Lucky they got the women and kids out, so it is,’ Mick observed.

  As they watched, the house next door caught alight, then the one next to that. Soon, all Kororareka would be aflame.

  They spread out again and descended into the bush. Once they had entered the dense undergrowth Rian’s heart began to grow cold. If she had become lost in bush like this, she might have wandered for miles. His voice was becoming hoarse from calling Kitty’s name, and he knew the others were having the same problem because there was a lot of throat-clearing and spitting going on.

  At the summit of the next hill they discovered that a track ran along the ridge and Hawk squatted to scrutinise the leaf litter and soil for footprints.

  He straightened up. ‘There are tracks here, small. They could be hers.’

  ‘How fresh are they?’ Rian asked.

  Hawk shrugged. ‘Four, five hours? These tracks of the horse are the same, but with some more recent.’

  Rian frowned. ‘She was on horseback?’ He moved over to Hawk and stared at the ground. ‘Was it shod?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And it still isn’t,’ Mick said quietly.

  They all looked up then and saw the boy on horseback a short distance down the track, a musket almost as tall as he was pointed directly at them. No one moved for a second. Then, slowly, they all drew their weapons. The boy remained motionless, the barrel of the musket unwavering.

  Deliberately, Rian slid his pistol back into his belt. ‘Have you seen a Pakeha woman?’ he called in Maori, keeping his voice as neutral as possible.

  The boy ignored the question and responded with one of his own. ‘Are you the Queen’s soldiers?’

  ‘No,’ Rian replied. Not trusting himself to get the words right, he said to Ropata, ‘Tell him who we are and what we want.’

  Ropata responded in Maori, ‘No, we are not the Queen’s soldiers and we are not armed settlers. We take no sides. We are searching for a Pakeha woman. She has black hair and a blue gown. She is alone.’

  The boy lowered his musket an inch and nodded. ‘I saw such a woman today. Up here.’

  ‘This morning?’ Rian asked, looking at Ropata for confirmation.

  Ropata’s eyes never left the boy’s. ‘Today? How many hours after sunrise?’

  The horse impatiently stamped a hoof. Eventually the boy said, ‘By the time the dew had dried.’

  ‘Probably around nine o’clock,’ Ropata relayed to Rian.

  ‘Ask him which way she went.’

  Ropata did, and the boy pointed with his musket.

  Rian raised his hand in a gesture of thanks and turned away, eager to get going. The others filed after him, but Ropata waited, his eyes still on the rebel boy, for surely that was what he was, to make sure he didn’t put a musket ball in their backs.

  Half an hour later they crested the next ridge.

  ‘She can’t be far away,’ Rian muttered yet again, his gaze following the slope of the hill down until it reached a small stream some distance below, barely visible between the trees.

  ‘Which way?’ Hawk asked, watching Rian carefully. He was becoming worried; the expression on his friend’s face was growing increasingly anxious as they climbed further into the hills, and Hawk understood why. If Kitty had indeed come this far, she could be anywhere within a five-mile radius of rugged terrain covered with bush, hidden ravines and deep gullies. They might already have gone past her, or she could be miles away in the opposite direction.

  ‘Will we go down for a drink? I’m gasping,’ Mick announced, and set off down the steep hill.

  He evidently soon lost his footing and they heard him cursing as he slid and slithered his way down. Then came a long moment of silence during which they wondered if he had perhaps knocked himself out, then his disembodie
d voice came echoing back up the gully.

  ‘Rian?’

  ‘What?’ Rian shouted back.

  ‘There’s something down here!’

  Rian hesitated only a moment before hurling himself down the slope, dodging around tree trunks and crashing through low branches and undergrowth. He was only part of the way down when he slid into Mick crouching over something on the ground.

  Mick grunted as he was knocked forward onto his hands and knees. ‘It’s hers, isn’t it?’ he asked as Rian snatched up the blue bangle half-buried in the leaf litter.

  ‘Kitty?’ Rian shouted. ‘Kitty!!’

  They heard the undergrowth thrashing as the others scrambled down to join them.

  ‘You’ve found her?’ Daniel demanded, scraps of nikau leaf stuck in his hair and his eyes wide.

  Rian held up the bangle. ‘It’s hers.’

  Daniel knew it was Kitty’s—he had noticed she was wearing it on the boat coming over from Paihia, just as he noticed every single thing about her every day.

  ‘Quiet!’ Hawk demanded.

  Rian stared at him. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I hear something. Listen.’

  They all strained to pick up whatever it was Hawk had heard, and it came again, a muffled, thin cry from somewhere below them.

  Rian launched himself down the hill, shouting Kitty’s name repeatedly and coming to an abrupt halt when he slid into the stream at the bottom of the gully. The others clambered down after him, then stood motionless like a small flock of wading birds, waiting for the cry to come again.

  It did, but down here it was much more difficult to pick up the direction from which it was coming.

  Rian splashed across the stream and stood at the edge of the clearing on the other side with his head cocked, waiting. The sound came again and he recognised her voice immediately.

  Looking wildly around, he cried, ‘Where the fuck is she?’

  And then he saw it, a depression in the ground a few yards away. But he had taken only a few steps towards it when he found himself being forcefully tackled and knocked flat.