As a ten-year-old fatherless boy, who was half haole, the offspring of a British father, Keno felt isolated among unnumbered Polynesian aunts, uncles, and cousins while growing up. He regarded Ambrose as the true spiritual patriarch of his life. He knew Rafe felt the same.
Even so, his deep-seated struggle for acceptance and belonging continued. Disappointment in an earthly father, or the loss of one beloved, seemed to haunt more than himself. Zachary Derrington was the emotionally disturbed son of a murderer, while Eden Derrington’s father was so preoccupied with his personal quest that he’d all but forgotten that he had a young, vulnerable daughter who longed for parental strength … until he’d returned to Hawaii a few months ago. Even now those tattered emotions affected Eden’s relationship with Rafe Easton. And Rafe was not immune either. His anger over the injustice done to his father burned deep, though under heavy restraint. And the cool and beautiful woman Keno was in love with, Candace Derrington, lost her father at sea when a small girl, so that her grandfather Ainsworth was directing her future— mainly for his own cause.
Then this little church with its smiling haole pastor came into Keno’s boyhood and drew him into the embrace of the great Creator God. It was through his pal Rafe Easton that Keno learned he could know God as Father because of the redemptive work of the blessed Son of God, Jesus. It was the same spiritual lesson Rafe learned after the death of his father, Matt Easton—that God has adopted us as His sons through Jesus Christ.
Keno paused on the sandy path to the church, a stone’s throw from Ambrose and Noelani’s homey bungalow. No mansion, this, but the warmest place in all Honolulu when someone needed a friend to trust. Ambrose was that friend.
Keno looked up at the dark sky. Even with a heart filled with gratitude, he mourned. No friendly stars shone tonight, only clouds and thick darkness.
Oh God—Father—I don’t think I can live without Candace, he prayed in agony. What am I to do?
This evening he felt he needed every drop of hope and grace he could drink from the Monday night men’s Bible study.
Rafe was usually in attendance, but tonight—well, he hoped Ambrose wouldn’t ask him where Rafe was.
Keno entered the bungalow through the back kitchen door. He didn’t notice Noelani anywhere about, though she couldn’t be far. Something was cooking on the stove that made him hungry; it smelled like oysters from the pearl bed. And Rafe’s favorite coconut cake was on the counter, as well, a sure sign Noelani expected him to drop by after the meeting. Noelani had loved Rafe as a boy and defended him whenever she could from the bullying of his stepfather, Townsend Derrington. Keno remembered how upset Noelani was when Rafe’s lovely and gentle widowed mother, Celestine, married Townsend after Matt’s death.
“She’ll live to regret her choice in a man. Handsome, Makua Townsend is, but his heart needs washing and mending—better yet, he needs a new heart.”
Noelani’s “mama” love for Rafe caused her to take on the task of being Kip’s nanny until Rafe smuggled the baby out of the Islands.
Pastor Ambrose stood in the middle of the sitting room with his Bible under his arm as though prepared to walk over to the mission church for the men’s meeting. A man strong in the emphasis of the Bible, a soldier of much prayer, he stood with a solid frame and wide shoulders. Nonetheless, a heart problem kept him from the rugged Hawaiian-style kayak fishing he’d loved in earlier years. Throwing and hauling in the big nets was now hard on him. Years earlier he had been the one to encourage Rafe and Keno in their swimming and diving feats.
At first Keno thought Ambrose was praying, for he stood still, his head bent. It always amazed him that Ambrose prayed as much as he did. He even kept a prayer list he actually used! He would go for long walks on the beach and pray for the ones he’d written on a card. Keno often hoped he was on that list. Knowing Ambrose, he probably was.
But Ambrose wasn’t praying this time. Keno noticed a deepening frown on the sun-weathered face and saw that his somber gaze was fixed on a sheet of paper in his hand.
Outside the bungalow the stormy wind made its presence known. The trees and bushes shook, and the weathered bamboo blinds rattled like skeleton bones.
Ambrose was so absorbed that he appeared not to have heard Keno’s entry.
“Something wrong, Makua Ambrose?”
Ambrose turned to look at him, the frown remaining on his rugged features. There seemed to be what Rafe had called a moral intensity to the even gaze of his dark eyes. Those pastor’s eyes now turned toward Keno, then stirred, as if awaking.
“Wrong, lad? Too much is wrong. When light is willfully rejected, darkness gains another stronghold.”
Was he speaking of someone in particular?
“Will Rafe be coming tonight?” Ambrose inquired, folding the sheet of paper three times.
Keno ran his fingers through his wavy brown hair, a restless habit he couldn’t seem to break. He shoved his hand in his trouser pocket. Here it came, the issue he’d wanted to avoid.
He and Rafe were as close as blood brothers, and loyalty brought Keno to a wider dilemma; he’d all but promised Rafe that he’d hold his tongue about the business tonight that had called him to Waikiki Beach. Though Rafe trusted Ambrose, he knew he would disapprove, so Keno still faced a problem.
Ambrose was looking at him as if he understood a spiritual tug-of-war was going on within. He must have liked what he saw, for his eyes spoke encouragement. He’d often said spiritual growth was the result of various trials. “No testing is too small when God’s truth is involved, my lad. Don’t wait for the big one, the lion’s den, or the Roman arena—why, most of life’s testing comes in the small things. And if you can’t be trusted with the small truths, who will trust you with the big ones?”
Keno cleared his throat. It had become natural in these days of political division to cast a glance toward open lanais and doorways for unfriendly ears. He lowered his voice.
“Rafe’s at a secret meeting.”
“I rather guessed as much. Annexation I suppose?”
“They’re all meeting at Hunnewell’s house.”
Keno hadn’t decided whether Ambrose favored annexation to the United States or a continuation of the Hawaiian Chiefdom. Ambrose had been careful to keep the matter to himself. His congregation both favored and opposed, and he would say his calling was to teach the Word. “Its truths, if heeded, will give wisdom in all areas … including culture and politics. The Word already offends the proud sinner, so I shouldn’t add yet another hurdle.”
“Mr. Thurston’s returning to Washington,” Keno said. “Ainsworth Derrington and a few other big kahunas are going too. Even Rafe is tagged to go with them, since he’s holding Parker Judson’s seat in the Legislature.”
“If Rafe expects to go with the Thurston group, then that may be the answer. They’ll hold over a few days in San Francisco before taking the train to Washington.”
“The answer?” Keno asked, bewildered. “To what?”
Ambrose tapped the paper he held, his solemn gaze fixed on Keno. “The answer to this telegraph wire. His mother sent it to me from San Francisco. She knew I’d get it to him safely. That meeting you mentioned, Keno. Can you take it to him now? It’s important.”
Keno glanced at his timepiece. “I’ll go at once. They usually don’t break up till around ten o’clock. If not, I’ll find him at Hawaiiana, or the hotel. He’s been using both lately.”
Since Ambrose hadn’t said what was in the wire, Keno refrained from asking, but guessed it to be troubling.
Noelani appeared from the kitchen carrying a tempting plate of small cakes. She was a big-boned woman, strong and healthy, with white hair worn in neatly coiled braids wrapped around her head and a cross on a gold chain around her neck. Her father had been a whaler out of Boston Harbor, her mother, Polynesian. She wore a typical Mother Hubbard gown, this one blue.
“You are going so soon? And where is Rafe? Again, he’s not coming?”
“Keno will be back
later,” Ambrose told her. “Rafe might return in time. Better save those delicious cakes, my dear. We can’t wait. I need to be over at the church in ten minutes.”
Keno felt a grave stare coming from his aunt. “Did you tell your uncle what your ancient grandmother whispered to you about your haole father?”
Most of the time she treated him like a little boy. It usually amused him, but not tonight.
Keno affected indifference and tried to laugh. “Oh, that. I’ve been too busy to think about it, Aunt Noelani. I’d better go—”
Her dark eyes were unhappy. “Grandmother Luahine was wrong to tell you after all this time. It is a burden to bear. She’s old. Too talkative.” She looked at Ambrose. “Now there will be more trouble.”
Keno felt the tension rise in the room like a thermometer in the noonday sun.
Ambrose stood still. Then looked at him with sympathy. He appeared to know what Noelani was talking about, even though Keno hadn’t mentioned it to him.
“When did Luahine tell you, lad?”
Keno maintained his affectation. “Oh, a few days ago. I went over to see her. It was her birthday. Look, I don’t want either of you to worry. Understand? It matters not to me. I’ll never see him. He sired me—that’s all.” Despite his best effort, a strain of bitterness sounded in the low rasp of his voice. He tried the harder because of it. “Look, I’m going to say it. If any man’s been fatherly toward me, it’s you, Uncle Ambrose. I’ll never forget what you’ve been. As for the other—I haven’t given Grandmother’s tale much thought.” All the same, it did matter, deep in his soul. In fact, it made him angry.
Ambrose walked over to Keno and laid a hand on his shoulder. He said nothing, but the strength from his grip told Keno all he needed. Then he turned to his wife.
“I’ve got to be over at the church, Noelani. They’ll be waiting. We’ll all be back for refreshments in an hour or so.” Ambrose walked out the front door, and Keno felt the rush of warm, moist air.
“Such words can only bring discontent,” Noelani repeated. “And where there’s discontent and roots of injustice, there will be pilikia— trouble.”
Keno smiled deliberately at her repeated word of “trouble.” He tapped his chest. “Not this guy, Noelani. I don’t like trouble. You’ve nothing to worry about. My life will push ahead as usual.” He wanted to add, I’ve already lost what means more to me than anything else. There’s not much more the Devil can hit me with. Or so he hoped and prayed.
He walked over and put his arm around her shoulders, kissed her cheek, and left, shutting the door behind him. Outdoors, he was pummeled by the tropic wind snapping at the foliage and sweeping onward to produce havoc elsewhere.
He left the porch and the forebearing environment of the bungalow, a respite from the bitter winds of reality that too often blew with hurricane force, then made haste along the path toward the Waikiki beach house belonging to widower Thaddeus P. Hunnewell, the financially and politically influential father of Oliver P. Hunnewell, soon to be Candace’s fiancé.
The waves foamed over the black rocks, some of them sweeping in close to his feet. He leaped from one rock to the next with the sure and steady agility of an acrobat.
Hunnewell, he thought with a touch of scorn. Keno Hunnewell. The names did not blend when linked together. He mocked aloud in the wind, “What about Keno P. Hunnewell, does that help?” No. He rejected it with contempt, as he knew the Hunnewells themselves would if they knew.
Nor would the fact that his biological father had been Philip Hunnewell, Oliver’s uncle, make any difference to Ainsworth Derrington, or to Candace. Candace with her flame hair and cool blue eyes had sent him a letter two months ago written from her great-aunt’s house on Koko Head. In the letter she’d “explained”—rather, told him—of her decision to bend with the wind of family compromise and marry Oliver P. She was doing this to please the Derrington family patriarch Ainsworth, who would make her his chief heiress if she would “wisely” comply.
Keno scowled. So, she had complied. So much for the Candace he had thought he knew, who left a fragrance of integrity in her passing, who had ignored his lack of birthright to the big Hawaiian sugar families, who had enjoyed the notion that he was half Hawaiian, who had said in the moonlight that his skimpy bank account meant next to nothing to her compared to his Christian character—and he had believed her.
Keno had tried to see her, taking his cousin Liho’s boat out to Koko Head to Tamarind House, soon after he’d received her appalling letter, but she’d refused him. Her great-aunt Nora Derrington had stoically come to the parlor to inform him that her great-niece “Miss Candace is quite busy editing my manuscript, which must be completed and delivered to the publisher in November. She is unwilling to see you.” She might as well have added “ever again.”
He had written Candace several letters since the morbid rebuff in the parlor, but they’d been returned to him, unopened, in a large envelope. Not even Rafe had been able to influence her to see him.
For the past two months Candace had remained in relative seclusion, keeping her great-aunt company during her recuperation from the emotional shock of knowing that her nephew Townsend had callously tampered with her medication.
Since then Miss Nora had recovered her health and arrived at the Derrington sugar estate, Kea Lani, and Candace with her. Meanwhile, the day of Candace’s engagement to Oliver was being arranged to take place before her grandfather Ainsworth boarded the steamer for San Francisco. The celebration would need a great fanfare and a mammoth hoolalei.
Anger and pain seized him. There had been no tropical sunset this evening, no blossoms heavy with love’s promise. The wind off the Pacific was salty and damp, and Keno looked up to the starry heavens with hope, but they were blanketed by low hanging clouds.
Chapter Two
Serpent in the Garden
Inside the beachfront house of sugar grower Thaddeus P. Hunnewell, Rafe Easton stood near the lanai where the same salty and moist wind entered from Waikiki. He leaned there, arms folded, bored, looking across the large oblong room furnished with rare native woods and decorated with potted ferns. He half-listened to Ainsworth Derrington concluding his long political briefing to a group of men that formed the new Annexation Club, begun in recent days by the resolute Lorrin Thurston. Rafe regarded Thurston as possibly the most persevering advocate for the complex goal of the annexationists gathered here tonight. Men in the fight for the destiny of the Islands, all loyal, or so Ainsworth believed. Rafe wasn’t as certain. In glancing at the sober faces of the varied gentlemen seated or standing about the room, he persisted in his conviction that a spy was sheltered among their ranks. Not that there was evidence to lay his hands on. For all intents and purposes the men’s zeal confirmed them to be annexationists at heart.
What set Rafe on edge was Thaddeus Hunnewell’s lack of vigilance. Earlier, when the trip to Washington was planned, Hunnewell was commissioned by the highest members of the Reform Party to write the document they would present when they met with Secretary of State Blaine. Blaine, in turn, would take the manifesto to the desk of President Harrison, who was known to favor annexation of the Hawaiian Islands.
As Rafe understood it, the seven-page manifesto laid out in full detail each step planned by the Annexation Club for rapid success, in order that President Harrison could send a bill to Congress for ratification before he left office.
Thaddeus Hunnewell was a brilliant lawyer, an able politician, and a formidable spokesman, but like all of Adam’s fallen race he had his foibles. At times Hunnewell came across as one deficient in the wisdom for discerning whether or not a man could be trusted. When betrayal did come, he was the sort of fellow who would always be shocked.
It had been easy for Rafe to learn that the important manifesto was here in the beach house tonight. Had Hunnewell taken any precautions? Was the document he worked on locked securely away? Or did Hunnewell believe, as did Ainsworth, that “none but trusty men” moved about the hous
e this windy night?
Ainsworth’s voice drove onward toward his political goal—
“And so, gentlemen, in order to establish these Islands on the foundation of liberty and justice, we must have the security that’s based on the American Constitution and the Bill of Rights. I say, we must have annexation. It is our finest choice.”
Ainsworth’s familiar gold watch chain sparkled as he stood under the lamplight, as did the wedding band still faithfully embedded on his lean, tanned hand, though he’d been a widower for longer than Rafe could remember.
At the conclusion of his talk, Ainsworth inclined his hoary head with a “Thank you so much.” His nimble fingers gathered his superfluous stack of handwritten notes from the table and he sat down again amid the semicircle of men, crossing his long legs at the knees and gazing at his spotless white shoes.
In response to the sober picture Ainsworth had painted of Hawaii’s future, silence permeated the room as a bamboo blind rattled in a gusty breeze. As if on cue, several men started to speak at the same moment. A frustrated discussion ensued over “the queen’s obstinacy” in not appointing one of their own Reform Party members to a position in her new cabinet.
Rafe recalled that the recent trouble had begun soon after Liliuokalani assumed the throne on the death of her brother, King David Kalakaua, in January 1891. Once seated on the throne she’d insisted that Kalakaua’s cabinet, primarily men of the Dole and Thurston Reform Party, resign, in order that she might appoint her own men, leading some in Kalakaua’s Reform cabinet to believe that they would be reappointed. Their expectations, however, were cut short, and a list of different names in support of a new Constitution was sent to the Legislature for ratification. The Legislature under men like Dole and Thurston had managed to gain enough votes to reject her appointees, and so the political chess game continued.
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