“The boy.” All those gathered exchanged knowing glances. Those two words spoke volumes to us. They hung in the air as night fell and Kamehameha slipped away from us, deep in sleep once more.
Throughout the night, while we kept silent watch, Kamehameha slumbered, his shallow breathing the hale’s only sound. There was no need to waken Kamehameha that night, for Liholiho did not come.
Kamehameha did not stir again until early morning. Kailua was still slumbering in the shadow of Mauna Kea when he opened his eyes and grunted as he struggled to raise himself from his mat. He had no need to ask after Liholiho this morning; he could see that his son was not among those gathered close around him. Instead, he inquired after Liholiho’s little brother. “Where is my keiki?” he asked. “Where is Kauikeaouli? Why is he not here?”
“Kauikeaouli is yet at the mua, Lord,” replied Kalanimoku. “We did not want to fetch him at this hour; we feared that he would cry and disturb you.”
“Please bring him to me now,” said Kamehameha.
My other royal cousin, then just five years old, was brought into Kamehameha’s presence. When he saw his father lying there and our sad faces, the little boy understood that something was dreadfully wrong. He began to whimper.
Kamehameha tried to console him. “Come to me, my beloved keiki,” he said, in a voice barely above a whisper. Now, Kauikeaouli’s sobs came closer and closer together until they fused into a high-pitched wail. “Don’t be afraid,” Kamehameha implored. “Come closer to me.”
Still crying, Kauikeaouli slowly edged closer until at last Kamehameha reached out with one long arm and gathered the little boy to his chest. This effort cost him dearly and his breaths came in quick, shallow progression as Kauikeaouli settled against him. But as Kamehameha’s arm enfolded my cousin, Kauikeaouli must have sensed that his father’s strength was failing and wailed even louder.
“Hush, hush,” Kamehameha soothed. “Soon I will join my ancestors. But I will always watch over you, Kauikeaouli. I will become your own ‘aumakua.” These words quieted Kauikeaouli at last. Now Kamehameha drew the little boy closer and said so softly that we could hardly hear him, “Kiss me, my beloved son.” Kauikeaouli bent his little face low over his father’s broad visage and gently rubbed the tip of his small nose against Kamehameha’s.
At this moment, Liholiho burst through the door of the hale and rushed to Kamehameha’s side, weeping and wailing. “Father!” he cried, “Do not leave us!”
Kamehameha sighed. He rubbed noses with Liholiho and whispered something to him. Then he looked from his two high-born sons to the others gathered around him. Willing himself to speak loudly enough for all to hear him clearly, he said to us, “E oni wale no ‘oukou i ku‘u pono ‘a‘ole e pau.” Endless is the good I have given you to enjoy.
Now Kamehameha closed his eyes and took his last breath. As his mana departed, his arms went slack, and Kauikeaouli commenced to wail again, even louder than before, his cries almost immediately submerged in the chorus of our own grief.
It was Saturday, May 8, 1819.
Liholiho did not remain long at Kailua. No sooner had he arrived than he was required to leave, lest proximity to his father’s corpse defile his own person. He fled north to Kawaihae with his retinue of young nobles, where he remained for the next ten days, drinking haole rum and disporting with women while in Kailua the heat of the imu melted Kamehameha’s flesh from his bones. During this time, in fact, the whole of the Hawaiian archipelago plunged into licentiousness as the kapus against men and women eating together and against women eating pork, roasted bananas, and other foods were suspended. Kekuaokalani and I had heard of this traditional way of mourning a great and beloved mō‘ī, but we ourselves had never before witnessed it. Kamehameha, after all, was the only mō‘ī we had ever known.
I was astonished by the spectacle of men and women eating together. My brother was profoundly disturbed. “Why should our mō‘ī’s death give people license to violate the kapus he held sacred?” Kekuaokalani asked. “Our people’s misbehavior now dishonors his life, and you can be sure that no good will come of it, Nāmākēha.”
“But surely, brother, this is a passing thing,” I said. “Our people have ever mourned the death of beloved rulers in this way and the kapus have always been restored when the people have finished grieving.”
“And when was the last time this happened?” rejoined my brother. He did not wait for an answer. “It was when Alapa‘i died, before you and I were born. It didn’t happen when Kalani‘ōpu‘u died because war broke out so soon after his death. And of course, no one mourned for Kiwala‘ō in this fashion, for he was never a true mō‘ī. Do you think anyone alive remembers this now?”
“Does it matter?” I asked. “Everyone knows about it. We have all heard the stories.”
“Oh yes, Nāmākēha, everyone has heard the stories. But I fear that for most of our people today, they are just stories,” Kekuaokalani said. “And think of how much has changed since the days of Alapa‘i. Haoles were unknown to us then. Now they live among us. They do not observe our kapus, and nothing ill has befallen them because of this. This is not just a story to our people, Nāmākēha; they see it.”
“But Kekua, Kamehameha ruled that the haole ways were not our ways,” I protested. “Our people still understand this. Liholiho understands this—he will honor his father and restore the kapus when he returns.”
“You are right; it all depends upon Liholiho,” Kekuaokalani said. Now his tone turned bitter. “And that, little brother,” he spat, “that is what worries me.”
Idid not share my brother’s unease at this time. Liholiho’s inner circle was composed of the sons and nephews of the chieftains who had fought with Kamehameha to unite the islands, and who had raised their sons to respect the kapus. Moreover, as high-born ali‘i themselves, Liholiho’s advisers enjoyed all the benefits the kapus conferred upon the nobility: status, land, and wealth without effort. What chance was there that they would ever counsel Liholiho to do anything other than uphold the kapus, as his own father and their fathers had done? Little to none, or so it seemed to me.
But I had not reckoned with Ka‘ahumanu or Keopuolani, for where they were concerned, our royal cousin proved as malleable as he was feckless.
Kawaihae, May 1819
L iholiho was lounging with some of his friends in a palm grove near the beach when Kekuaokalani and I reached Kawaihae. Though it was not yet midday, he and his companions were already drinking rum. Liholiho greeted us with a desultory wave when he saw us approaching.
“My cousin, the kahuna nui of my father’s god Kūkā‘ilimoku, comes to see me, with his brother and dear companion of my childhood, Nāmākēha,” he said, to no one in particular. “Welcome, cousins.”
I could smell the liquor on Liholiho’s breath as we knelt next to him. My brother had journeyed to Kawaihae to urge our cousin to restore the kapus before returning to Kailua. Kekuaokalani had entreated me to accompany him. “I believe Liholiho has some affection for you yet, Nāmākēha,” he said. “He may be more easily persuaded if you are with me when I speak with him.”
Kekuaokalani hoped that my presence would help dispel the chill that had settled over his own relations with our royal cousin since Kamehameha’s death. My brother had only himself to blame for this state of affairs, for he had always been distant toward Liholiho when he was a boy, and had made no effort to befriend him in later years. I had remained cordial with him.
“Lord,” Kekuaokalani began, and then paused. I could tell that it had cost my brother some effort to use the honorific, and perhaps Liholiho sensed it as well. “Lord,” he resumed, “your father’s bones have been purified, and Kailua is no longer a place of defilement for you. Your people await your return, but you must first restore the kapus.”
“But cousin, my foster mother Ka‘ahumanu has not yet summoned me to Kailua,” Liholiho replied. “I must await word from her. Do you bring word from Ka‘ahumanu?”
“Lo
rd…my brother and I have come to bring you this word from Kailua which you have been awaiting,” Kekuaokalani said. “The time has come for you to restore the kapus and return.”
Indeed, Kekuaokalani’s decision to travel to Kawaihae had been precipitated by news that Ka‘ahumanu was about to recall Liholiho to Kailua while the people still flouted the kapus. This intelligence had come from my brother’s closest advisers in the priesthood, Kauiwa and Holo‘ialena, who also reported that Ka‘ahumanu had secretly eaten kapu foods while Kamehameha yet lived.
“Do you see what this means, Nāmākēha?” Kekuaokalani asked me when he heard this news. Then he answered his own question. “It means that Ka‘ahumanu does not want the kapus restored! She wants to end them. I think she has long wanted to end them. If Liholiho returns to Kailua without first restoring the kapus, Ka‘ahumanu will see to it that he never does. We cannot allow this to happen. We must speak to Liholiho first.”
Having considered my brother’s words, Liholiho now turned to me. “So my foster-mother and kahu, Ka‘ahumanu, wishes me to restore the kapus now, Nāmākēha?” he asked.
I was surprised to hear Liholiho speak of Ka‘ahumanu as his kahu. When had Ka‘ahumanu supplanted Kalanimoku in this role? And what did it mean that a wahine had become kahu to a kāne? I carefully weighed each word of my response.
“As Kekuaokalani, the kahuna nui of your father’s god, Kūkā‘ilimoku, has said, the time of mourning for your father is past and it is time to restore the old ways,” I replied. “You will be our mō‘ī, Liholiho, and it falls to you to restore the kapus, as your own father would have wished and as he would advise you now.”
Liholiho pondered this for a moment, and then said, “It is true, Nāmākēha. My father would wish the kapus restored, and so I shall restore them—when I return to Kailua. But I must remain here until Ka‘ahumanu summons me.” Liholiho addressed these remarks to me as if my brother was not present.
Kekuaokalani could no longer contain himself. “Liholiho—Lord,” he exclaimed, “you are the mō‘ī. You may go where you will and act as you will. You need not wait for anyone’s summons. But I beg you: Do not countenance men and women eating together. Likewise, do not look away while women yet eat kapu foods and enter the heiaus at will, as they do now at Kailua and elsewhere. Right order must be restored; you, our mō‘ī, must restore it now.”
“Kekuaokalani,” Liholiho said, turning to my brother at last, “my father left you the god, but he left the kingdom to me, and it is not for you to tell me what I must do or not do. As mō‘ī, I choose to remain at Kawaihae until Ka‘ahumanu summons me to Kailua. Now would you care to join my friends and me? The haole rum is very good.”
Ihad never seriously questioned the kapus that ordered our peoples’ lives in those days. After all, why would I? I was ali‘i; I was a member of the great King Kamehameha’s immediate family; and I was male. I had been born to benefit from the kapus. The entire world—such as I knew of it—seemed open to me. I never considered the inequities our kapus visited upon the maka‘āinana at large and upon our ali‘i women in particular. Indeed, the concept was foreign to me.
Yet I had also come of age at a time when haoles were living alongside us, and anyone could see that there were other ways of living. It was common knowledge, for example, that haole men thought it odd that we Hawai‘ian men would neither eat with our women nor allow our women to cook for us. In the recesses of my own mind, I had begun to wonder if the haoles might be right.
One day I discovered that Ka‘ahumanu’s younger brother, Kahekili Ke‘eaumoku, had turned his back on our gods and our kapus. “Kahekili,” I had said to him, “Kekuaokalani told me that you believe the time of the war god is past. Do you feel the same way about our other gods?”
“Look to the haoles,” he replied. “They do not follow our gods. I believe they have shown us that the time of our gods is past, Nāmākēha.”
“Then what of our kapus?” I asked.
“If the gods’ time is past, then it is past time to end their kapus,” he said.
I was shaken by Kahekili Ke‘eaumoku’s certainty on these questions, and doubly shaken by my own certainty that his sister, Ka‘ahumanu, shared his rejection of the gods and the kapus. Thus, even as I accompanied Kekuaokalani to Kawaihae to convince Liholiho to restore the kapus, I doubted we would succeed. I nevertheless suppressed my doubts in hopes of avoiding a clash that, looking back now, I must already have known was coming.
Kailua-Kona, May 1819
L iholiho’s sacred mother Keopuolani had emerged from her hale to walk abroad in the daytime. No one preceded her to warn others of her coming, so those who had the misfortune to be in her path had no time to flee to avoid her approaching shadow. With the sun already well seaward on this cloudless, late afternoon, Keopuolani cast a long shadow as she walked along the beach at Kailua. The best anyone could do was to fall to the ground as she approached. The beach was crowded with fishermen cleaning their catches or mending their nets, women beating bark into kapa cloth, and keiki playing amid their elders. Keopuolani’s shadow brushed the still, prone forms of dozens of people just mauka as she walked along the water’s edge. Yet she of the unforgiving burning kapu seemed to neither notice nor care. Looking straight ahead, Keopuolani smiled and sang to herself as she walked. She was on her way to Ka‘ahumanu’s hale.
To the onlookers, it was as if the ground had trembled in advance of an angry eruption by Pele, the goddess of the volcano.
Kekuaokalani and I had just returned from Kawaihae, where Liholiho still remained with his entourage. Already disturbed by our cousin’s refusal to restore the kapus at once, my brother was dismayed when he learned what Keopuolani had done.
“It is shameful enough that our people still disobey the kapus, but at least they can ascribe it to their ‘grief’ for our uncle. But this—this is insupportable!” Kekuaokalani exclaimed. “Keopuolani now casts her own kapu aside? No amount of grieving for Kamehameha can justify that. And in truth, I do not believe that Keopuolani still grieves!”
My brother would have been angrier still had he known that Ka‘ahumanu had summoned Keopuolani to her hale to meet with her and her male cousins, Kalanimoku and Hoapili, and her brother, Kahekili Ke‘eaumoku. Keopuolani outranked them all by virtue of her birth, and her own kapu dictated that they should have come to see her instead. By the time we learned that Keopuolani had acquiesced in this additional sacrilege, rapidly unfolding events had already revealed the meeting’s evident purpose.
First, Ka‘ahumanu let it be known that as Kamehameha lay dying, he had named her kuhina nui—intending that after his death, Ka‘ahumanu should govern jointly with Liholiho. Kekuaokalani shook his head in disbelief when he learned of this.
“Our uncle never had much confidence in Liholiho’s ability to rule wisely,” he told me, “but I cannot believe he would name Ka‘ahumanu co-ruler. If Kamehameha meant to name anyone to rule with Liholiho, it would be Kalanimoku. I do not trust Ka‘ahumanu’s word in this, Nāmākēha. Do you?”
I had no answer for my brother. We had both watched as Kamehameha spoke to Ka‘ahumanu and Kalanimoku the night before he died, but neither of us could hear his words. I agreed that Kalanimoku would be a better choice for co-regent than Ka‘ahumanu, but Kalanimoku had not yet disputed her. Who were we to say that she was lying?
“Perhaps you should ask Kalanimoku himself,” I finally replied.
Kekuaokalani went to see Kalanimoku. He appeared shaken when next he returned.
“What is wrong?” I asked.
“He claims that Kamehameha told him and Ka‘ahumanu that Liholiho should share the government with her,” he exclaimed.
“Would Kalanimoku tell you that Kamehameha said this if it was not so?” I asked.
“I think Ka‘ahumanu proclaimed herself co-ruler without telling Kalanimoku first,” said Kekuaokalani. “And now Kalanimoku fears to challenge her because he wants to avoid conflict with her and his other cousins. That is the on
ly explanation that makes sense to me.”
“Or perhaps Kalanimoku is merely content to continue in his present capacity,” I suggested. “He would no doubt wield as much power as he does now.”
“But brother, Kalanimoku surely would advise Liholiho to restore the kapus,” Kekuaokalani said. “You and I cannot say the same of Ka‘ahumanu.”
“Then what will you do?”
“We must convince Liholiho that his father never meant to entrust the government to a wahine, not even his favorite consort,” Kekuaokalani said. “We must persuade him that if he is to share the government with anyone, it must be Kalanimoku, who has always respected the kapus.”
“We must persuade Liholiho, brother?”
“Yes, Nāmākēha, we. I fear that Liholiho does not care what I have to say, but he may still listen to you.”
“He did not listen much to me the last time we spoke,” I protested. “What makes you think this time will be different?”
“Because this time is different. The last time we saw him, Liholiho called Ka‘ahumanu his kahu. That is a far different thing from co-ruler, and no wahine has ever been mō‘ī.”
I could not dispute this, nor could I abandon my brother. Thus, in this latest appeal to Liholiho and in the events that followed, I became my brother’s emissary.
Kawaihae, May 1819
Liholiho was troubled when next my brother and I visited him at Kawaihae. Ka‘ahumanu had just the day before sent word to him to return to Kailua. Her summons was not what he had expected.
“She calls me back to be installed as co-ruler with her,” he said. “What does this mean, Nāmākēha?” As before, Liholiho spoke to me as if my brother wasn’t there. “Am I not the mō‘ī?” His hands fluttered in front of his face as he spoke and he sounded beleaguered.
“Yes, cousin, you are the mō‘ī,” I said.
Once There Was Fire: A Novel of Old Hawaii Page 48