by Sarah Lark
Kathleen would have liked to believe that, but there was already too much talk in the little town for it to be the case. Almost no one was satisfied with the animals Ian had sold them—only George Hancock, one of the farmers, was happy at first with a gorgeous dark-black broodmare. But she still had not birthed a foal, and Hancock had just learned that its previous owner had sold it for that very reason. The argument that Ian had not known didn’t work this time. The previous owner swore he had revealed the reason he was selling it.
“Had no reason to lie, either,” said an excited George Hancock at a picnic after the prayer meeting one Sunday. “Penny’s a fine horse, just not for breeding. And Ian Coltrane—forgive me, Mrs. Coltrane, but that fellow lies as naturally as you or I breathe.”
Kathleen had pretended she did not hear—after all, Colin was working himself up to cry as loud as he could, and she had to prevent Sean from joining him. Still, what they were saying hurt, and it poisoned her newly formed friendships. Ian preferred it that way, naturally. He never stopped torturing Kathleen with his jealousy and had grown angry because she did not get pregnant immediately after Colin was born. By now, he, too, had realized that Port Cooper was not the ideal place for him to settle.
Shortly after the Coltranes’ arrival in New Zealand, the Canterbury Association in England had formed an organization of faithful Anglicans determined to establish a large settlement in the new colony. They had acquired land a day’s march from Port Cooper for a new city—Christchurch, finally a diocese on the English model. A road would be built across the mountains in the near future.
People would need animals for transportation and work. The new citizens of Christchurch would assuredly not be buying those in Port Cooper if there were closer alternatives. So Ian was contemplating a move, while just the thought of leaving her new friends made Kathleen fearful and uncertain. When Ian once again unleashed his anger on her and accused her of infidelity, she contradicted him for the first time.
“You of all people accuse me of cheating! Who here cheats his customers? I can hardly still look people in the eye, the way people curse the old, lame, or barren nags you’ve sold them. And you don’t really think it will be any different if we move to Christchurch, do you? Or are you suddenly going to turn into an honest trader?”
“As honest a trader as you are a wife,” Ian roared at Kathleen, hitting her and throwing her on the bed.
Lately, he had started to insist on his marital rights at unexpected times. Apparently, he feared she would do something to prevent a pregnancy if he did not take her by surprise. And the struggle for sex seemed to excite him, so he increasingly forced himself on Kathleen while Colin cried and Sean was in danger of falling into the fireplace or some other horror.
Kathleen could never relax. What Ian insisted on had nothing in common with the joys of love she had shared with Michael in the fields by the river. Kathleen asked God to forgive her, but she began to hate Ian.
That day in spring, Ian’s problems with the neighbors escalated. Kathleen had just carried her sons and her supplies past John Seeker’s smith shop and considered whether she ought to take a rest. Sean was already whining; the climb was long for him, too, and the weather was unusually warm for the spring month of November. Surely Pere would have a glass of water for Kathleen and milk for the little ones. The Maori woman was the only one who still treated Kathleen as kindly as when she had first arrived. Knowing the secret of Sean’s paternity, Pere, of all people, had reason to scorn her. But apparently the Maori thought about things differently.
“Every child reason for joy, every child property of tribe, every woman mother, every old woman grandmother,” Pere had soothed Kathleen. She told her repeatedly about the customs of her people, among whom even a child out of wedlock was no reason to feel ashamed. “If a man knows woman is fertile, she valued much more.”
Even little Sean pulled her toward the house. He liked to visit Pere because she told him fairy tales and spoiled him with sugary treats. The Maori loved sugar—and Pere enjoyed that, as the wife of a pakeha, she could get all the sugar she wanted. She baked bonbons, candy canes, and sweet cakes she generously gave to all the neighborhood children.
But as Kathleen was still considering whether she wanted to knock or go straight home and start working on the wool, she heard a loud argument coming from the smithy. One of the voices was Ian’s, and indeed his horse, a strong chestnut, was hitched in front of the house.
Kathleen’s first impulse was not only to go home but to run there. If Ian saw her here, he would accuse her of wanting to see John or fetching some means of preventing a pregnancy from Pere. It would be far better if she were at home washing and teasing the wool. But then what she heard from inside the shop made her too curious to leave. Kathleen ordered Sean to quit his whining and listened by the door of the smithy.
“What do you mean you won’t do it?” Ian asked. “Come, I’m just asking you to hammer in the nails a little higher. The seller gave me the horse because its shoes wouldn’t hold.”
John snorted like an angry horse. “Don’t tell me your tales, Coltrane. If the shoes don’t hold, you change smiths, not horses. The man sold his horse because it’s unsteady. Something’s wrong with the left back leg; bad hipbone, I take it. And now you want me to hammer the nails so tight the shoes pinch? Then both legs will hurt, and he won’t drag that one, eh? But I won’t do it, Ian Coltrane. It goes against my professional honor.”
“Bah. What’s honor, John? Now do it. I’ll pay three pence more.” Ian’s voice sounded relaxed. “If you don’t do it, I’ll do it myself, but I can’t get the nails in a neat row. People notice that.”
Kathleen was startled when John tore open the gate to the smithy and commanded Ian to leave. “I believe you, boy, that you don’t know what honor is. But I do know, so get lost with your lame nag, and shame on you.”
The powerful smith rushed Ian outside with a shove. Ian tripped and fell. The horse, which he held by the reins, shied. Kathleen hoped she could still flee unnoticed, but Ian had already seen her.
“You, you little whore,” Ian seized her arm and shook her. “Caught you in the act, huh? You were listening at the door to see if everything was quiet and you could get to your lover.”
Kathleen shook her head desperately. The children began to scream.
John Seeker opened the door to his smithy again. “Be gone, Coltrane,” he growled. “On my land you’ll neither cheat your customers nor beat your wife. The poor thing, she’s really done nothing to deserve an ass like you. Leave her alone, ride home, and calm yourself. And woe to you if tomorrow I see you’ve hit your wife. Are you all right, Kathleen?”
Kathleen nodded, her face red with shame. So now the neighbors knew Ian beat her too. And worse still, in his rush to defend her, John had called her by her first name. Ian would hold that against her. Normally her friends’ husbands respectfully called her Mrs. Coltrane, especially in Ian’s presence.
Ian shoved Kathleen rudely toward home. “Get out of here,” he whispered to her. “You’ve caused me enough trouble. Now get home; I’ll see you there. And this time, I’m giving you a new baby.”
Indeed, Kathleen was pregnant when Ian sold their house in Port Cooper two months later. John Seeker had talked about the scene at the smithy all over town, and since then, everyone had avoided Ian Coltrane. Kathleen received no more invitations to Bible study or the prayer meetings on Sundays at which the settlers of all faiths met. So far, there were neither Catholic nor Anglican pastors in Port Cooper, so they had to fend for themselves. Kathleen, who could sing or read from the Bible with a full, sweet voice, had been a welcome addition. But Ian had spoiled that for her too. On the other side of the mountains, he explained, there would be no neighbors with whom she could flirt. Ian had bought a farm on the Avon River, not far from the new settlement, Christchurch, but still too far to offer Kathleen any opportunities for socializing.
“You can care for the children; we’ll have a few sh
eep too. For diversion you can shear your own wool for once.” It was clear that Ian was cheered by the thought of soon being able to lock up his young wife on a solitary farm.
Yet despite all the bad omens, Kathleen was excited about the world beyond the mountains. Finally, she would see more of her new country than a bay and a few hills. So she tried to look at the future with optimism as she carried Colin and Sean and a few of her things over the trail to Christchurch. Since the people of Port Cooper were expecting an onrush of new residents bound for Christchurch, the trail had been smoothed, and traveling it no longer presented a great challenge. Nevertheless, mounts were usually led, mostly by assistants who knew the region and held the halters of the horses or mules for a small fee. This practice gave the route its new name: the Bridle Path.
At the time of their move, Ian and Kathleen owned three mules, but Ian needed them to carry the household accessories and furniture. Though one could send cumbersome items up the Avon by ship, Ian was stingy about the price. After the voyage and the purchase of their first house, there was nothing left of Michael’s money. Ian bought the farm with the income from his own business.
Kathleen told herself that a part of that money still belonged to her and Sean. She was no longer ashamed that it was made selling whiskey. Distilling alcohol had always been met with a wink. What Ian did was much worse.
In any case, Kathleen and the children had to walk—like most settlers who came to New Zealand in steerage. They had an advantage because they weren’t weakened by the long voyage and they were practiced in climbing the hills of Port Cooper. Kathleen no longer ran out of breath so quickly, but the first part of the climb up the Bridle Path was, nevertheless, a challenge. She had to pull behind her a whining Sean, who did not see why he had to climb up the pass or why they had cleaned out their house. The thought of having to live somewhere else, far from his beloved Aunt Pere, scared him as much as it did Kathleen.
Worse still, the steep path was stark. The grassland quickly gave way to barren rock. For a long time, they walked along crater rims through a desert of bare gray volcanic rock. Sean clamped onto Kathleen’s hand and Colin onto her neck. Kathleen was worried before they had even made it a third of the way, and even more so since Ian did not bother to encourage her or help. It wasn’t until they stumbled at a dangerous spot that he finally took Colin’s carrier and packed it on one of the mules.
“He can’t stay up there, Ian. If he moves, the whole thing will fall down, and he’ll fall off the mountain.” Kathleen was exhausted—probably even more so since she was pregnant—and relieved not to have to carry Colin around anymore, but that rickety seat on the mule . . .
“As clumsily as you move, he really would fall,” Ian spat back. “I won’t allow you to endanger my child.”
Kathleen had a sharp response on the tip of her tongue, but she swallowed it when Ian reluctantly buckled the carrier onto the mule’s back. A lot could be said against him, but he loved Colin. He sometimes returned from his business travels with something for the boy—wooden horses or woven balls crafted by the natives. Colin still did not know what to do with them, but Sean was delighted. Kathleen would not let herself think about how he would react when he was old enough to realize that Ian brought the gifts exclusively for his brother and not for him.
The climb over the rocks and along the extremely narrow path seemed not to want to end, but then, suddenly, a plateau leveled off before them. Ian suggested they rest and tied the mules to a tree. Kathleen ought to have unpacked the bread she had brought along, and she longed for a drink of water. But curiosity overtook her. She felt carefully, while holding Sean’s hand, for the edge of the shelf.
What she saw overwhelmed her: a world that she had left behind nearly two years ago. Before her lay her homeland. Ireland. The fields. The river.
Kathleen blinked to make sure she was not dreaming. She stared down, uncomprehending, at a green landscape of gentle hills through which the Avon wound. It was broken up by copses and rock formations, just like the ones she remembered from Ireland. What was lacking were human settlements. There were no villages and no manors—only small individual farmhouses. And something else was missing: the endless stone fences that divided the land into smaller entities. This was free, open land.
Kathleen felt her heart pound with a strange sensation of happiness. She looked at the land of which she had dreamed with Michael. Bathed in sun, but green, just as green as Ireland—a land reflected in Kathleen’s eyes.
“Good Lord, Ian, it’s so beautiful,” she said admiringly. “It’s just, just like my country.”
“Your country is nothing,” Ian informed her moodily. “This is the land of our children. By the time they’re grown, I’ll own a great deal of it, enough for a grand farm. Sheep perhaps, and horses. We’ll be rich.”
Kathleen wondered if he was also thinking of Sean when he spoke of these children. He could not disown the boy. Ian had received Michael’s money—Kathleen was now sure that he had known about the purse in her possession when he courted her. Sean carried his name in exchange. A fair trade, on paper. Sean was also her son, and Kathleen would fight for him. Their land in Port Cooper had not been important to her. But this? This should belong to Michael’s child.
Chapter 7
The journey from the female factory to Campbell Town had lasted three days, and the two overnight stops were more comfortable than Lizzie could ever have imagined. First they stayed with Mrs. Smithers’s acquaintances in Green Ponds. There Lizzie was welcomed by their maid, Lisa, who was a former prisoner and who had only good things to report about her current life. Lizzie and Lisa chatted half the night, and afterward, Lizzie could hardly believe they had exchanged harmless gossip and romantic stories like normal girls instead of tales of whoring and hunger.
Mrs. Smithers and Lizzie spent the next night in a small hotel in Jericho, which lay along an already finished stretch of the road to Launceston. She rented a room for Lizzie as if it were completely natural, and then joked that she should not run away in the night. Lizzie had no intention of that. For the first time in her life, she was sleeping alone in a room between immaculate sheets and on soft pillows scented with roses and lavender. Why would she leave this lovely dream?
The journey itself was exciting. The road between Hobart and Campbell Town was already well paved, but parts of it went through the wilderness. Lizzie peered, spellbound, into the darkness of the rainforests where, she was quite sure, mischievous animals like the Tasmanian devil were about. She was shocked when a kangaroo leaped across the road and just as startled when she saw the first chain gang.
When things had gone so well for Lizzie in the female factory, she had stopped worrying about Michael. Now, however, she realized that the English Crown treated male prisoners very differently.
The overseers of the chain gang were armed and carried whips, which they used without hesitation. The men’s mostly bare backs showed the marks of this treatment. The overseers mercilessly forced them to break rocks to make way for the road and to clear the forest for new settlements.
Lizzie covered her eyes with her hands.
“Well, no, it’s not pretty, Lizzie,” Mrs. Smithers said. She told their driver to pull the covering over their prim chaise; it had just begun to rain. “But the poor devils haven’t deserved any better. Whoever has to labor here, especially in the chain gangs, did wrong elsewhere. Most of them were already serious criminals in England. I know it hurts you to see, but remember they’re robbers and murderers!”
“But some, some are just escapees,” Lizzie risked objecting.
There was talk in the female factory of how a few men were always trying to escape imprisonment. For the girls, they were romantic heroes, unyielding rebels who could not be broken by even the harshest treatment. Their attempts always ended, however, in a chain gang or the dreaded prison in Port Arthur.
“A few, certainly,” said Mrs. Smithers dismissively. “But if you ask me, idiocy is also punishable.
Where do the fellows think they’re going? Into the rainforests? Where the snakes or wild beasts will get them? The towns are too small to hide in: Jericho, Hobart, Launceston—they’re not exactly London. Moreover, they don’t know anyone here. Escape is simply hopeless.”
“What if they stole a ship?” asked Lizzie. “To sail home?”
“Home?” Mrs. Smithers laughed. “Child, you know what that journey is like! Across the Tasman Sea, the Indian Ocean? Around the Cape of Good Hope? The Atlantic? If one of them had the makings of a ship’s captain, he would not be here. Although I have heard that some occasionally escape to New Zealand, that’s just hearsay. Whether they are stuck on this island or that one, in the end, it doesn’t matter.”
It does to someone who wants to be free, thought Lizzie, trying to forget the longing in Michael’s eyes. His gaze had made her melt and dream of freedom. Yet he had only been thinking of that girl he called Mary Kathleen.
Though Mrs. Smithers had said the house in Campbell Town was grand, in truth it was nearly a castle. Lizzie marveled at the many rooms, and her eyes wandered, disbelieving, from the heavy furniture to the silver to the porcelain from England.
In Lizzie’s eyes, the greatest of these wonders was the chamber she had been assigned in the servants’ quarters. It was small—besides a bed, a table, a chair, and herself, not much would fit inside. But it didn’t matter because all of it was hers. No one else would bother her with their snoring, crying, or talking in their sleep. The bed was simple but clean—and if Lizzie dried some flowers, she could make her pillow smell just like the one in the hotel in Jericho. That could not be too hard. There were roses in the garden.
Even Lizzie’s fear that the other servants might look down on her because she was a prisoner immediately proved unfounded. The cook, Martha, immediately revealed that she was a pardoned deportee.