The Cloud Leopard's Daughter

by Deborah Challinor

  ‘You have always wanted to be a seaman?’ Bao asked.

  ‘I’ve always wanted . . .’ Tahi glanced at Amber. ‘Yes, I have.’

  Bao turned to Israel. ‘And you? Sailing is your life’s dream?’

  Israel shrugged. ‘Better than being an ostler’s boy, which is what I was doing. I like it.’

  ‘What about you?’ Amber asked Bao. ‘You won’t stay with your uncle forever, will you?’

  ‘I will be returning to my father at Ballarat next year.’

  ‘You’ve been away a long time. You must miss him.’

  ‘I do. He visited as often as he could when we were in Melbourne, but not now that we are in Sydney. He is too busy. But he writes often.’

  ‘You seem so much better than you were,’ Amber said. ‘Why can’t you go home, well, to Ballarat, now?’

  ‘I am being educated.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Israel asked. ‘Letters and that?’

  Bao neatly scraped up the last of her rice with her chopsticks. ‘Yes, something like that.’

  ‘What does a girl need with reading and writing?’

  ‘I can read and write,’ Amber pointed out. ‘And do sums.’

  ‘You won’t need to do that when you’re married,’ Israel said. ‘Either of you.’

  ‘Well, I’m full,’ Tahi said, the tablecloth around his bowl scattered with bits of dropped food.

  Amber stifled a burp. ‘Me, too. Shall we go?’

  Bao waved at So-Yee, who came in and paid the bill.

  They spent the next few hours poking happily around in various shops, and watching a dog fight and then a cock fight, then headed back down to the wharves, as Amber didn’t want to anger her father by returning late. On the way they encountered a flower-seller, whose wares were arranged on the footway in tin pails containing assorted bunches of blooms.

  ‘Look at those lovely roses!’ Amber exclaimed.

  Tahi pounced. ‘Would you like some?’

  ‘I’ll get them,’ Israel said.

  ‘No, I will,’ Tahi insisted, whipping out his purse.

  ‘Look, if it’s—’ Amber began, but both boys ignored her.

  Israel’s face reddened. ‘No, I will.’

  Bao laughed. ‘Such competition! Why don’t you each buy a bunch, then Amber’s cabin will smell like a rose garden.’

  Tahi lunged at the startled flower-seller. ‘I’ll have some of those pink roses, and some of the yellow ones, please.’

  ‘How many?’ the woman asked.

  ‘Er, I don’t know. Ten of each?’

  The woman set about gathering the flowers into a bunch, wrapped paper around the stems, then handed them to Tahi. He paid, then presented them to Amber.

  ‘Beautiful flowers for a beautiful girl.’

  Amber went scarlet. ‘Thank you.’

  Israel was already putting in his order. ‘I’ll have all the rest,’ he informed the shocked flower-seller.

  ‘Of me roses?’

  Israel nodded.

  ‘There must be six or seven dozen here.’

  Amber drew in a breath. ‘Israel!’

  ‘That’s all right,’ he told the woman. ‘I can pay.’

  And he did, although Amber couldn’t carry them, the bunch was so enormous. They said goodbye to Bao and So-Yee.

  ‘You will keep writing?’ Bao asked.

  ‘’Course I will. I really miss you.’

  ‘And I miss you.’

  They embraced, the scent of roses heavy around them, then Bao and So-Yee walked away up George Street.

  *

  Kitty was leaning on the Katipo’s gunwale when Amber, Tahi and Israel arrived back. Tahi walked beside Amber who was carrying a bunch of pretty flowers, and bringing up the rear came Israel labouring under a massive heap, many times bigger than his head, of what were perhaps roses.

  He did not look happy.

  She hoped this didn’t mean trouble on the horizon.

  Part One

  THE STOLEN GIRLS AUGUST 1863

  I search but cannot find her,

  awake, asleep, thinking of her,

  endlessly, endlessly,

  turning, tossing from side to side.

  Chapter One

  Dunedin, 10th August 1863

  The wind changed direction, bringing with it a foetid stench of tidal mud, rotting fish and raw sewage.

  Leaning on the ship’s rail, a sour look creasing his face, Rian remarked, ‘Good God. The stink certainly hasn’t improved.’

  Kitty silently agreed: the town of Dunedin smelt even worse than when they’d last visited two years back. She most certainly wouldn’t be wearing her new cream kid boots into the town.

  Amber swung down from the rigging, where she, Tahi and Israel were hanging like a trio of monkeys, landing silently in the deck. ‘God, what is that terrible stink?’

  ‘Oh, don’t be so dramatic,’ Kitty said. ‘It’s coming from the mudflats.’

  Aghast, Amber glanced in the direction of Dunedin’s swampy waterfront. ‘The town? Where we’re going ashore?’

  Kitty’s eyes met Rian’s. At the age of twenty-three Amber was still prone to histrionic behaviour (the result of being spoilt, her father insisted), but in truth she was as tough as old boot leather. Kitty believed she was more easily bored than anything else. She was distracted at the moment, too, and a little on edge, and Kitty didn’t know why.

  ‘That’s right,’ Rian said tersely.

  ‘Well, I’m not traipsing around streets that smell like . . . that,’ Amber declared. ‘I’m staying on the Katipo.’

  ‘You are not,’ Kitty said. ‘Is she, Rian?’

  ‘She can stay aboard if she likes, but it won’t do her any good. We’ll be tying up at the wharf later and I can’t imagine the smell there will be any better. In fact, it’ll probably be worse.’

  ‘How long do we have to stay here?’ Amber asked.

  ‘Until our business is concluded,’ Rian said. ‘A week, perhaps. For God’s sake, Amber, it’s just a smell.’

  ‘I’m not sniffing other people’s shit for an entire week.’

  ‘Language, dear,’ Kitty admonished, but without conviction. Amber spent so much time with the crew and they all swore like, well, sailors.

  Ignoring her, Amber said to the ship’s cook, ‘Pierre, can I borrow some of your lavender cologne?’

  Pierre, sitting quietly on a coil of rope and watching proceedings with amusement, said, ‘Ma chérie, for you a whole bottle.’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea, love,’ Kitty said, alarmed.

  ‘Thank you.’ Amber glared at her father. ‘I’m going to bathe in it so I can’t smell anything but lavender.’ Then she spoilt her fierce demeanour by giggling. ‘I’ll pong more like a perfumier’s than you do, Pierre.’

  ‘Non, but you must use with the light hand, chérie,’ he warned. ‘She is the very special cologne.’

  Pierre’s ‘signature’ perfume not only acted as a scent but also deterred mosquitoes and was known to bleach delicate fabrics. As Amber flapped a dismissive hand, Kitty silently cursed Pierre: always so indulgent.

  ‘Ship’s boat ahoy!’ came a voice from the air.

  Kitty raised her gaze to the platform midway up the mainmast, where Israel now perched waiting to alert Rian of the return of the first mate, Running Hawk, and bosun, Gideon. Rian opened his spyglass and trained the lens on a pair of figures rowing out from the shore.

  His schooner, the Katipo III, stood off in the curve of Otago Harbour, awaiting a berth at the crowded wharf, which extended from the foreshore of Dunedin township like a bony finger infested with a case of particularly spiky warts. Hawk and Gideon had gone ashore several hours earlier to enquire of the harbour master when a berth might become available. They’d been warned in Auckland that docking at Dunedin would be a challenge due to the sheer number of ships arriving there daily to disgorge tonne after tonne of goods, not to mention canny businessmen intent on hanging their shingles in the rapid
ly growing town and miners dreaming of striking it lucky in the surrounding goldfields. The message had been similar regarding accommodation, currently at a premium, which is why they’d decided to sleep on the Katipo during their stay.

  Until 1861, Dunedin had been home to around two thousand settlers, a small, rambling town prospering from the literal fortunes of Otago’s wool lords. Then, in May of that year, Gabriel Read had found gold forty-five miles inland, and now there were close to twenty thousand people living in and around the town, throwing their rubbish out of windows and tents, sluicing shit directly into the streets, and churning up mud everywhere they went. The place was a shambles – thriving, filthy, overgrown, a ferment of mining and commerce, a magnet for ne’er-do-wells, and a haven for merchants and traders of all stripes.

  Rian himself was the latter: the Katipo’s hold was stuffed full of house bricks, chests, half-chests and boxes of tea, assorted preserved grocery items, fine wheat, oats, pollard, bran and barley (in casks for the sea journey, not sacks), and the components of a Glasgow-made steam-operated saw mill, all of which Rian knew he would easily sell on in a matter of days.

  Gideon and Hawk reached the ship some thirty minutes later.

  ‘Will we hoist the boat?’ Rian called down.

  Hawk nodded and scaled the rope ladder lowered over the side, followed swiftly by Gideon, the black man’s huge, muscled bulk severely testing the ladder’s strength.

  ‘Well?’ Rian asked.

  ‘The harbour master said there will be a berth available at four o’clock this afternoon,’ Hawk replied, sweat adding a sheen to his copper skin. ‘There is a schooner leaving port. He warned us the berth is small and the Katipo might not fit.’

  Rian said, ‘We’ll make her fit. We’re not lugging the entire bloody cargo from here to shore on a lighter.’

  Kitty wondered yet again what Rian had found in their private box at the Auckland post office – no, even earlier: he’d been out of sorts since they’d stopped in briefly at Paihia. When she’d asked at the time if he had received bad news, he’d replied with a curt no, but had been impossible nevertheless.

  ‘The schooner departing is only a two-master,’ Hawk pointed out.

  ‘I said, we’ll get her in,’ Rian snapped.

  Oh dear, Kitty thought, there goes the paintwork on the hull. She watched Rian a moment longer as he hauled on the ropes with Hawk to raise the ship’s boat up from the sea over the gunwale to its cradle above the deck, then said to Amber, ‘Go and change into a dress, love, and tidy yourself up.’

  Amber’s hair was tied back with a piece of black ribbon, her shirt (one of Rian’s cast-offs) hung out, her trousers (Pierre’s) were rolled up to her calves, and her feet were bare.

  ‘Oh, Ma!’

  Kitty sighed: they had this little scene almost every time they made port. ‘You are not going ashore wearing trousers!’

  ‘You’re wearing trousers.’

  ‘Yes, and I’m just about to put on a dress. Go on, off you go.’

  Amber made a face then marched off across the deck and disappeared below. From behind, in her scruffy, loose outfit, she looked about twelve years old, but she was a fully matured young woman.

  Tahi climbed down the mainmast and landed lightly next to Kitty. ‘Is she in one of her moods, Auntie?’

  He’d always called her Auntie. It was a term of respect and endearment, though technically they were cousins.

  ‘Not really. She wants to wear her trousers ashore.’

  ‘You’re not letting her?’

  ‘Of course I’m not. I’ve told her to go and get changed.’

  As Tahi visibly sagged with relief Kitty nearly laughed. Poor Tahi: he was like a puppet whose emotional strings were constantly being pulled – every one of Amber’s moods made him twitch.

  ‘Have you seen Simon and your grandfather?’ she asked, knowing Tahi would have had a perfect view of everyone on deck from the rigging.

  He pointed past the wheelhouse towards the bow. ‘Coiling rope.’

  Haunui was in his seventies now, and spent much of his time at home at Paihia, but when the Katipo had dropped anchor there the other day, he’d decided to venture down to Dunedin with them ‘on a whim’. Except Kitty didn’t believe that, because Haunui didn’t have ‘whims’ and he’d been avoiding her since he’d come aboard; he obviously knew about whatever had made Rian so tetchy but she wasn’t to be told, it seemed.

  The almighty clank as the ship’s boat settled into her cradle jerked Kitty out of her irritation. She decided Simon and Haunui, and Rian’s drama, could wait. She’d do better to make sure Amber really was getting changed. She went below decks and knocked on the door of her daughter’s cabin.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Ma.’

  Amber was lying on her bunk (still dressed in trousers and shirt), comfortably propped against a pile of cushions, reading Great Expectations by that Charles Dickens. She was such a smart girl, always reading, always asking questions, always turning things over in her mind. Kitty often wondered – still – what her real mother had been like before she’d lost her sanity.

  She sat on the only chair in the cabin. ‘How’s your new book?’

  ‘I’m really enjoying it,’ Amber said, all traces of her bad mood apparently vanished, though Kitty noted the bottle of Pierre’s cologne sitting conspicuously on the small bedside table. ‘It’s about a seven-year-old orphan called Pip – at least I think he’s seven – who goes to visit this mad old jilted spinster, Miss Havisham, who wears a tatty wedding dress all the time and lives in a falling-down house and has an adopted daughter called Estella, who Pip falls in love with, which seems a bit odd for a seven-year-old but never mind, and that’s as far as I’ve got.’

  ‘How strange.’

  ‘Well, I only bought it in Auckland.’

  ‘No, I mean the story. It sounds rather, er, peculiar to me.’

  Amber shrugged. ‘Clearly you can write what you like when your books are as popular as Charles Dickens’s are. I think they’re great.’

  ‘I suppose.’ Kitty gestured at the cologne. ‘You really shouldn’t bathe in that, you know.’

  ‘Oh, Ma, I only said that. But you can’t deny this place does stink.’

  ‘Yes, it does.’ Kitty hesitated, then said, ‘Amber?’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘Your father has a lot to think about at the moment. Be a good girl and try not to irritate him.’

  ‘Is that why he’s being so bad-tempered?’

  ‘Mostly.’

  ‘What’s bothering him?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ But I very much wish I did, Kitty thought. ‘What’s bothering you?’

  Startled, Amber blinked. ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes, you. I always know when something’s on your mind.’

  Amber’s gaze slid away and a faint blush stained her cheeks. ‘Nothing’s on my mind.’

  She was lying and Kitty knew it. God. Her whole family was keeping secrets from her. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I just said I was, didn’t I?’ Amber snapped.

  ‘There’s no need to be rude. I’m only trying to help.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Amber mumbled.

  ‘Why don’t you wear your dark bronze dress with the black trim? Your father likes you in that – it might cheer him up.’ Also it was less likely to show the dirt when the hem dragged in the mud.

  Amber nodded without much enthusiasm.

  ‘But not your good boots,’ Kitty added. ‘Wear your old ones. The streets could be rather mucky. They were the last time we were here, remember?’

  ‘God.’

  *

  Next door, Kitty let herself into the cabin she shared with Rian and sat on the double bed built against the Katipo’s gently curving hull. Then she took off her jacket, lay back and stared up at the ceiling, not really seeing the caulked and shellacked planks, simply relishing the silence and enjoying the rocking of the ship. She adored her life at sea but living in such constant close
quarters with ten other people, even though she knew them so well, was very trying at times. Every state of mind and every humour was magnified. When things were good, and they frequently were, they were marvellous, but when they were not, the going could be heavy indeed.

  Eventually she sat up, letting out a tiny groan as something in her lower back snagged slightly. She was forty-two now, and had wrinkles around her eyes and a scattering of silver in her hair, but she was still trim and fit and climbed the mainmast rigging every day – to make a point to herself, if no one else. She’d been married to the love of her life for twenty-two years, had raised a child, sailed to every major port it was possible for a European ship to enter, killed two people, and run from the law more times than she cared to count. It was a life she couldn’t possibly have imagined when she’d been sent out to New Zealand from England as a silly girl of barely nineteen years, and it was a life she wouldn’t trade for anything.

  She rubbed the small of her back, then bent and unlaced her boots. Big, heavy things they were, but good on deck in cold weather, and it was bitterly cold today. Hardy little Amber went about on deck in bare feet in all but the coldest of temperatures, but she preferred to wear boots, except when she was in the rigging. No one climbed the rigging with boots on. She stood, opened the flies of her trousers and stepped out of them. A ship was no place for long skirts, especially not the ludicrous crinolines women were wearing these days. They didn’t fit through narrow doorways, or on companionways, and were positively dangerous when the wind gusted on deck. She and Amber were happy with a couple of petticoats under their skirts when they went ashore.

  She took off her shirt and wondered whether she should wash, sniffed her armpits and decided against it, then stood in her drawers and waist-length camisole before the cupboard, debating which of her frocks to wear. Her favourite cold-weather day dress was the steel blue wool, but it needed mending. She chose the magenta wool skirt and bodice ensemble instead, which would go just as well with her dark grey cape. Actually, Amber was right – it would be so much easier to go ashore in trousers.

  As she stepped into first the skirt then a petticoat, an insistent scratching came at the door. On opening it she encountered the ship’s cats, Delilah and Samson, staring up at her, accompanied by Pierre, who was carrying a tray bearing a teapot, cup and saucer.