Toward the Sea of Freedom

by Sarah Lark

  The old woman said something. Haikina blushed but translated dutifully. Peter looked at her questioningly.

  “She says people should not run after fulfillment but instead seek gold with their own tribe. They cannot expect something will grow when they haven’t planted.”

  Peter agreed but spread his arms helplessly. “I can’t change anything about it,” he said.

  Haikina nodded. The chieftain’s son now uttered something as well, but Haikina didn’t translate. “So should we go to the church to look for her? We don’t mean to be a bother.”

  In Dunedin, people hardly ever saw a native, and the newly immigrated had certainly never laid eyes on one. If Peter sent these three to the church now—especially the chieftain’s son, with his spear—chaos would ensue.

  “I’ll fetch her if it’s all the same to you,” he suggested. “You’re welcome to wait here. That will surely be more comfortable for your mother, and then you can speak with Lizzie in private.”

  Haikina translated, and the others apparently agreed.

  “It won’t take me long, but how about some tea while you wait.”

  Haikini nodded and followed him into the kitchen so he could show her where the pot and cups were.

  “Is Lizzie sad?” she asked quietly.

  Peter nodded. “I hope you don’t have bad news for her.”

  Haikina shook her head. “We just want to ask her for something,” she said.

  Peter saw that the Maori were not going to reveal much more to him, but he did not need to rein in his curiosity much longer.

  Indeed, Lizzie was in the sacristy, where she was portioning out soup. Helping out in the church obviously provided her joy and distracted her from her worries—just as waxing and polishing his furniture seemed to. He knew she loved taking care of beautiful things, and she was able to lose herself in the tasks. Peter envied her this ability. He was always thinking of Kathleen no matter what he busied himself with. He prayed and worked until he was ready to fall over, but he could not move on from his disappointment, let alone his violent jealousy. A priest really should not be plotting murder, after all. Peter Burton was shaken to his core. He doubted his faith and the meaning of his life.

  “You have visitors, Lizzie, Maori from the highlands.”

  Lizzie greeted Haikina with a heartfelt embrace, the tohunga with a formal but thoroughly intimate hongi, and the chieftain’s son with a swift bow. The Ngai Tahu had long since given up the untouchability of their chieftain’s children, but one still showed them respect.

  Haikina handed both Lizzie and the reverend a cup of tea. Peter took this as a sign that he was welcome in this circle. It was just a shame he did not speak any Maori.

  Haikina asked the tohunga a question in Maori. Hainga nodded and spoke a few words in the reverend’s direction.

  “She has nothing against me translating for you,” the girl said. “You know the land near the waterfall and the five spears.”

  “She means the rocks that look like needles,” Lizzie added, “and really she means the gold mine, not the land itself.”

  Peter nodded.

  Hainga started speaking directly to Lizzie. “Right now,” Haikina translated, “the tribe is exceedingly unsettled. The gold mines on the Tuapeka River seem to be running dry, and more and more men are coming farther into the mountains to stake new claims. Our warriors have already seen such men three times on our land, men who are moving their gold pans around in the streams. So far, they have not found the waterfall. But when they do . . .”

  “If they stumble on gold, they’ll overrun your land,” said Peter.

  Haikina nodded. “We’d like to beat them to it by offering to give the land to Elizabeth Portland.”

  “How much land?” Lizzie asked, taken aback. “Surely not all the tribe’s land.”

  The chieftain’s son gesticulated violently.

  “We had been thinking of the land between the waterfall and the old Drury-Timlock claim,” explained Haikina.

  “But that’s, that’s well over one hundred acres.” Lizzie almost choked on her tea. “I didn’t even know that our claim belonged to the tribe. You never said anything.”

  Haikina shrugged. The Ngai Tahu were traditionally generous. If there was no tapu on the land and it was not turned into a wasteland like Gabriel’s Gully, they did not stop anyone from setting up a tent.

  “Why do you even want to give your land away?” asked the reverend. “If it clearly belongs to the tribe?”

  “As long as it’s just land, it clearly belongs to us. The pakeha don’t want any trouble, after all. They accept that someone has to pay for the land on which they mean to settle. But gold mines? They don’t belong to anyone. Everyone would dispute our claims.”

  “And they won’t do that to Lizzie?” asked Peter.

  Haikina gave him a look that spoke volumes. She obviously thought him naive.

  “Reverend,” she said patiently, “if Lizzie Portland places border markers and puts a gun under the nose of anyone who sets foot on her land, she’s defending her property, and everyone will applaud her. If we do the same, it’s a Maori uprising, and they send soldiers.”

  Peter bit his lip. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  Haikina shrugged. “It’s not your fault. And Hainga was not happy to see Lizzie go anyway. The elders agreed to give her enough land for a farm. That was her plan after all. Michael wanted to breed sheep. The way it looks now . . .”

  Lizzie looked completely stunned by the generous offer. “I, I’m happy to accept, of course,” she said. “At least officially, so the land has a pakeha owner.”

  “It would be safer if you lived there too,” said Haikina.

  “I don’t know; alone?”

  “Lizzie, if you build your house where your cabin is now, then you’ll only be three miles from Lawrence,” said Peter. Lawrence was the new name for the gold miners’ town around the Tuapeka post office. “You can’t be much closer without being in town.”

  Hainga raised her voice. “You not alone,” she said in broken English. “Baby with you. Baby welcome in tribe.”

  Lizzie stared at the old woman, stunned.

  “How does she know?” Lizzie asked, looking at Haikina.

  Haikina shrugged. “That would be the spirits—or the gaze of a practiced midwife.”

  Hainga looked at Lizzie. “It came to be under the lights of Matariki,” she said in Maori. “A child blessed by Rangi.”

  Lizzie felt herself blush. What was she saying? The baby was conceived on New Year’s Eve? She thought of Kahu. But then she calmed herself. Hainga had not mentioned the festival of Tou Hou, merely the Pleiades. And they still stood in the sky.

  “It’s Michael’s child,” she said to Hainga.

  Hainga made a dismissive gesture. “It’s a child,” she said.

  “It has your mana,” added Haikina, “until it acquires its own. Are you agreed? Would you like a farm on the Tuapeka River?”

  Lizzie nodded. She had been happy on the river. It was only right for her child to grow up there. And as for the farm: if she did not have to pay for the land and she lived in the cabin, she would have plenty of money for years. She would have no need to bother with sheep. And with regards to employment, she already had an idea.

  Haikina asked the reverend for the address of a lawyer who could certify the sale by the Ngai Tahu of some hundred acres of farmland to Elizabeth Portland. Peter helped however he could, even calling in a justice of the peace as a double check that everything was official. Two days later, Hainga, Kuri Koura, and Lizzie carefully signed their names to a document written in Maori and English.

  Afterward, the Maori left right away to bring word to the tribe.

  Lizzie promised she would get to the land as soon as possible. “I can’t come right away. I have a few things to see to,” she told Haikina.

  “Such as talking to Michael?”

  Lizzie sighed. “Michael and that Kathleen of his will have a farm in Otago. I
don’t think there’s much more left to say or do about it. But I need to go to the bank that has my money for the farm—and I have some orders to place.”

  “Orders?” Haikina asked.

  Lizzie smiled. “Something like seeds.”

  Peter Burton opened a bottle of champagne when Lizzie joined him at the parsonage. She had spent hours studying catalogues, placing orders, and making arrangements with a transportation company. Peter had asked his housekeeper to cook, since he thought Lizzie would be too tired to do so herself.

  “Just who is going to polish your furniture when I’m not here anymore?” Lizzie sighed as she fell, exhausted, into an armchair.

  Peter laughed. “I’d suggest you order furniture from England and tend to your own things for a change,” he replied. “You have enough money, you know. You could have a beautiful house built.”

  Lizzie shrugged. “What do I need a big house for? The cabin is enough for me and the baby. And I’ll have so much to do outside. There’ll be no household with maids.” She smiled tiredly. “Kathleen surely has more of a knack for being a sheep baroness than me. Even just how pretty she is.”

  Peter sat beside Lizzie. “It’s not my affair, of course, Lizzie, and I also understand that you don’t want to discuss anything with Michael anymore. But have you thought of approaching Kathleen?”

  Lizzie became angry. “Why? So she can laugh at me? If Kathleen had wanted to protect me—if I had interested Kathleen even a jot—then she would not have encouraged Michael. She knew about me. She knew of the wedding we were planning. My God, she tailored my dress.”

  Lizzie took a quick drink from her glass.

  “She was surprised,” said Peter. “Lizzie, I don’t mean to excuse her, but she was surely shaken to her heart—she did think, after all, that she would never see him again.”

  Lizzie snorted. “That was weeks ago, Reverend. Let her come down from the clouds.”

  Peter shrugged. “Be that as it may,” he said, “you should tell her about the baby.”

  Chapter 3

  “So if you really want to buy this farm, Michael, then at least don’t take Mr. MacDuff’s sheep. Look around for well-bred stock; the big farms sell animals for breeding, you know.” Once again, Kathleen was summarizing the results of the journey for Michael. For about the twentieth time—or so it seemed to him, at least. Their whole ride back from Queenstown, she had talked about practically nothing other than her suggestions for the purchase and management of a sheep farm.

  Kathleen was riding Sean’s little black horse, which pranced blithely as they approached Dunedin and his own stall. Michael’s patience had nearly run out—no matter how beautiful Kathleen looked as she rode beside him, no matter how at ease on the horse. If he was honest, even that got on his nerves. He was nostalgic for their rare rides together on O’Rearke’s donkey. Then she had laid her head on Michael’s shoulder, clung to him, and given up the reins to him. Now she talked as if she wanted to take the sheep husbandry entirely into her own hands.

  “But there’s not enough money for that,” he said, annoyed. He had said it several times already too.

  Yet Kathleen simply kept going.

  “Then start with cattle until you’ve made enough,” she said. “Cattle are a safe business, especially in Otago since the gold find. Thousands of gold miners working hard, who want nothing more after all the panning for gold than a fat steak. Naturally, you’ll have to seal up the barn better, but you should do that anyway. Later you’ll want to hire shearing companies, and nowadays they want sturdy shearing sheds.”

  Michael sighed. It was best just to let her talk. Maybe she would get back to herself when they reached Dunedin.

  “If you do buy the farm at all, that is; you really ought to think it over again. More than ten miles from town, Michael. And right now, Queenstown is just a better sort of gold miners’ camp. Maybe someday it’ll be a city, but maybe not. It’s none of my business, but . . .”

  Michael’s ears pricked up. “Kathleen, of course it’s your business. It’s to be your farm too. We do mean to live there together, after all.”

  A shadow fell over Kathleen’s face. She seemed to struggle with herself briefly, and then she stopped her horse and turned to him very seriously.

  “Michael,” she said, “I love you. But I don’t want a farm. I don’t want to herd sheep anymore or help them lamb on ice-cold nights, and under no circumstances do I want to live miles and miles from the next city. You don’t know how lonely it is, Michael.”

  “But we would be together,” Michael objected. “How can you be lonely with me there? We, we always dreamed of a farm. Even back in Ireland.”

  The first houses of Dunedin were now in sight. They could reach Sullivan’s stables in a few minutes. Kathleen alighted and let the horse walk behind her. Obviously, she had more she needed to stay before they got there.

  Michael also dismounted, and they walked a few steps side by side in silence before Kathleen spoke.

  “Michael, Ireland, that was seventeen years ago. Half our lives ago. So much has happened in that time; this to me, that to you—I don’t know if we can make up for that. But I know for sure that I don’t want to live on a farm. Just as my children don’t.”

  “Sean is my son,” said Michael.

  “Sean is almost grown, Michael. He knows what he wants. Much better than we knew back then. He’s a smart boy, and I thank you for such a wonderful son. Sean was worth it all, Michael, even if I sometimes doubted it. But you can’t make up those years with him. He—”

  “He’s sad about that reverend!” Michael blurted out. “I still haven’t asked, Kathleen, but was there something between you Peter Burton?” He glared at her.

  “If there was something, it’s not your concern. Especially since there was also something between you and Miss Portland.”

  “That was different!” Michael said. “We’re two halves of a whole. Between us is something holy. Lizzie is, Lizzie was a—”

  Kathleen bade him be silent with a hand gesture. “I don’t want to know what Lizzie is and was. Your past doesn’t interest me, let alone hers. The future is what interests me. You determined my life, Michael, for seventeen years. I married Ian for your sake; I left Ireland for your sake. You did not plan all that, but it was for your sake. I did what you wanted. I raised your child with dignity. But if we really belong together, irrevocably, because God wants it, then you have to orient your life to mine. Set up something for yourself in Dunedin. A business or whatever. I would love to live with you, Michael, but I also want my children, Claire, my business . . .”

  “And your reverend?” he asked.

  Kathleen slapped Michael in the face. She could hardly believe what she was thinking: Michael, her wonderful beloved who had always known a way out, who had always made her laugh, who had seemed strong and good to her—he was behaving like a petulant child.

  Kathleen put a foot in the stirrups and swung onto the small black horse.

  “Think it over, Michael,” she said calmly. Then she galloped away.

  She did not care if he followed her.

  Kathleen was dirty, tired, and sweaty by the time she had finally delivered her horse to the stables and reached her apartment on George Street. All she wished for now was to take a warm bath and then fall into a proper bed. Kathleen was tired of brooding about Michael and his farm. It was his turn. If he wanted to live with her, he would have to make a different offer.

  Defiantly, Kathleen slammed the door behind her and took off her hat. She heard voices and laughter from the salon. Was that Sean she heard?

  Claire opened the door to the kitchen and came out with a platter of tea and cake.

  “Kathleen.” She seemed surprised, and to Kathleen’s amazement, she blushed. “I really had not been expecting you yet. But it’s good you’re here already. You have a guest.” Claire gestured to the salon. “Come to think of it, though,” she said as they heard a new round of laughter, “perhaps you should not i
ntrude just yet. Here, just listen for once, would you?”

  Claire pushed Kathleen into the next room and quietly opened the connecting door so Kathleen could peek into the salon. She put her finger to her lips—and yet Kathleen could hardly keep herself from crying out in surprise. Lizzie was sitting on the sofa, conversing excitedly with Sean. She was telling anecdotes from Michael’s life, and for the first time, Sean seemed interested in his father.

  “He wanted to make it from Australia to New Zealand in a rowboat?” Sean laughed. “Across the Tasman Sea? Didn’t he have any idea how far that is?”

  “In a sailboat,” Lizzie corrected him, “and with three companions. One of them had sailed before.”

  “But he would have gotten himself killed,” cried Sean. “How can anyone be such a fool?”

  Kathleen frowned.

  “Your father isn’t a fool,” Lizzie said firmly. “Just a little heedless sometimes. And then he wanted to get back to Ireland, no matter what. To your mother. And to you.”

  “He didn’t even know me,” objected Sean.

  “But he talked about you all the time. He promised your mother he would come back to her. And he wanted to do that even if it meant running his head through a wall.”

  Sean laughed. “And how did he actually make it here? Did he swim?”

  “Is that what he told you?” asked Lizzie, truly interested. She would have given anything to know how Michael had represented their passage.

  “He didn’t say much about it. Just that, well, it was a stroke of luck. He was able to ride on a large ship.”