Not the Faintest Trace

by Wendy M Wilson

  “The coroner’s inquest is today,” said Porter. “Dr. Rockstrow is in charge. I spoke to him earlier and he said he’d be here this afternoon.”

  “He’ll find it a case of drowning no doubt,” said Frank. He started to reach into his pocket for his cigarettes, but remembered he’d stopped smoking after Mette had told him she didn’t like it. Not that it had made any difference now. Pieter Sorensen had forbidden her to see him and it had been weeks since he he’d gone to see to tell her that he’d found the body. He’d seen her once in the distance going into Mr. Robinson’s book shop, but had been on his coach about to leave for Napier and unable to leave the horses.

  He watched Nissen coming towards him and wondered if he could ask him to intervene with Sorensen. Probably not. They were right that he shouldn’t be seen with her. Ruin her chances of marriage probably. But he missed her.

  “I found out something about the woman,” said Captain Porter suddenly.

  “The woman? Which…”

  “The sister,” said Porter, his tone indicating that Frank should have kept up with his thoughts. “Anahera’s sister. The one he was killing Die Hards for.”

  “She’s alive?” asked Frank. He hadn’t thought of her existing in the present. She seemed to exist only in the moment when he last saw her, holding her husband’s head and pleading with him.

  Captain Porter nodded. “They took her up to Patea,” he said. “Although I specifically said Wanganui. Patea is a wild town. Not at all suitable for a woman. She was there for some months – not happily, I don’t imagine, then went up to Waitara. Someone helped her get away. The tribes up in Waitara hid her for a few years. The last she was heard of, according to my sources, she was still in Taranaki - in Parihaka, with Te Whiti and his rebels.”

  “She’ll be safe there,” said Frank, and saw Porter’s eyes slide away from his. Something was going on with Parihaka by the look of it. He knew there had been some disputes in the region between the settlers and the local iwi. But no fighting yet. Did Captin Porter know something more about it?

  “What about the two boys?” he asked. Captain Porter had already told him they were probably dead, their heads taken by the Arowa, but he hoped they had survived.

  “With a collector in New York,” said Porter.

  “A collector?” asked Frank. “You mean someone adopted…”

  “Not adopted,” said Porter. “They were killed, as I already told you. I mean the heads…the Mokomakai…As you probably know, they’re very collectable…by Americans especially…”

  Frank stood up abruptly. “Their heads?” he said. “Collectable? You mean someone in New York has the heads of those two boys…?”

  Captain Porter nodded and stood up. “Of course, it would be better if they had remained in New Zealand,” he said. “But the Americans…well, you understand…”

  Frank didn’t. He watched Captain Porter leave and wondered where he could find a cigarette to calm his nerves. He was glad he wasn’t driving his coach through the Gorge today. He’d be tempted to drive off the edge and finish it all.

  Nissen reached him, said a brief good afternoon. Frank hadn’t seen him since the day he’d found his brother’s body. Nissen had left it to Pieter Sorensen to thank him for searching. Pieter had tried to pay him, but Frank had refused.

  “I was happy to search,” Frank had said. “I don’t need money. I’m just glad he knows what happened. I’m sorry we couldn’t find Jens, but he may still turn up…has Nissen written to his mother?”

  “Mette wrote,” said Pieter. “She writes excellent letters. But Mrs. Nissen won’t know yet. The letter left in the mail a week ago, and it will two more months before it arrives. And, of course, many months before Hans Christian hears from her…”

  “Mette…” began Frank. He wasn’t sure what he was going to say to Pieter. He knew he should stay away from her, but was finding it difficult.

  “Mette will be fine,” said Pieter. He looked at Frank for a minute, then added, “You must not see Mette again.”

  Frank nodded. “I realize that,” he said. “I’m not the man…”

  “No,” agreed Pieter. “She must find herself a man like us, like Hans Christian and me. Not an Englishman with a past like yours. You must stay away from her.”

  It was what he had been thinking himself, and he had found it hard to disagree with Pieter.

  Nissen went in to the inquest, his hat mashed between reddened hands, his face nervous. As he opened the door Hop Li came out, smiling happily. A room full of jurors and a doctor known for his love of good food. He’d be doing well today. He was holding a plate of food, and handed it to Frank. A Scotch pie filled with minced mutton, which he knew was a favourite of Frank’s.

  “You all right boss?” he asked. “You don’t look so happy. Eat the pie. Then you’ll feel better.”

  Frank took the plate. The idea that food would make him feel better reminded him of Mette, who ate when she was unhappy, and found Hop Li’s food especially comforting. “Captain Porter said something…”

  Hop Li sat beside him on the step of the verandah. “I haven’t seen Miss Jensen in town for a long time,” he said. “That’s who you need to make you happy again. Go talk to Miss Jensen.”

  Frank looked at Hop Li and then back at The Square. “Pieter Sorensen suggested I should stay away from her,” he said. “Apparently, I’m a bad influence on her and he says she has to keep her friendships within her own community.”

  “Friendships?” said Hop Li. “What do you mean friendships?”

  “What would you call it?” asked Frank.

  “I call it love,” said Hop Li. “I see how she looks at you.”

  “How she looks at me?” asked Frank. “You think…”

  Hop Li put his arm across Frank’s shoulder paternalistically. “Forget about friendship,” he said. “You need to marry, you two. Then you are her boss instead of Sorensen.”

  “I don’t know…”

  Hop Li shook his head. “You fight your whole life, twenty years; you fight people and you kill people, you use a gun and a sword, but you can’t push a dumb Scandi out of the way and say I want to marry that woman?”

  Frank laughed. “When you put it like,” he said. He felt happier suddenly. He would do it. What was the worst that could happen? She would say no and he’d be back where he was two months ago; if she turned him down he could drive himself off the edge of the Gorge or move somewhere else. “Thanks Hop Li. I needed to hear that.”

  The inquest ended and the jurors came out, yawning and stretching.

  “Obvious, that verdict,” said one. “We knew they’d drowned as soon as they disappeared. Could have had the inquest months ago.”

  Nissen came out and nodded to Frank again. Not a talkative type. Frank watched him plod off through the mud. Things had come full circle.

  When everyone else had gone, Dr. Rockstrow came out. He’d enjoyed a meal of mutton bird and kumara, Hop Li’s specialty, and burped loudly to show his appreciation. Dr. Rockstrow was a thickset man of Prussian origin, in his early forties. Like many of the Scandinavians in the area, he was in New Zealand to avoid conscription into Otto von Bismarck’s military machine, so he had an understanding of their situation. Nissen was still half way across the Square. “That should satisfy him,” said the doctor. “Knowing that his brother drowned, and probably his cousin as well.”

  “Is that what you found?” asked Frank. “Both boys drowned?”

  Dr. Rockstrow pulled out a box of dark-coloured cigarettes, and offered one to Frank. “What else could have happened?“ he said. “Of course he drowned.“

  Frank put out his hand to take a cigarette, then changed his mind. If he was going to talk to Mette he needed to be at his best. Better get himself dressed properly, get a hair cut. He felt light-hearted suddenly. Maybe the years stretching before him would be happy ones, after all.

  26

  Paul and Jens Reborn

  Mette was on her knees digging up
the last of the winter potatoes, separating the ones that were good enough to eat from those that would make good seed potatoes. The work was soothing and she was enjoying the warmth of the sun on her face and the process of deciding which potato should go into which pile.

  She heard Maren scream and started back on her heels. Maren was inside lying next to a sleeping Hamlet. In the last months of her pregnancy she had become very tired and usually slept with Hamlet beside her for an hour or two every afternoon, both taking comfort from the contact. Mette had left them back-to-back on the bed, snoring contentedly. She listened for a minute. Maren gave another choked scream and Hamlet woke up and started to wail.

  Mette stood up and faced the house, her heart thumping and her hands sweating with fear. What was happening? Had someone now attacked Maren? She called her sister’s name tentatively. Then louder, said “Er du gut, Maren?”

  Her sister groaned, then said, “Hjaelp mig, Mette.”

  Mette rubbed her hands against her apron and ran into the house. Maren was lying on her side, her hands on her stomach, eyes closed, teeth bared in pain. Hamlet had stopped crying and was sitting up, looking at his mother with his thumb in his mouth.

  “Maren, Maren, what is it? What is the matter? Are you ill?”

  She moved quickly to Maren’s side and saw that her dress and the bedding were soaked.

  Maren groaned again. “It’s too early, it’s too early.”

  “What is too early?”

  “The baby, the baby is coming. It is too early.”

  Mette’s heart almost stopped. She knew very little about how babies were delivered. She’d been present when Hamlet was born while a woman from town, Mrs. Hansen, had coached Maren into pushing the baby from between her legs while she and Pieter watched helplessly. It had all happened in a few hours and everything seemed so natural, other than Maren’s screaming when the pain hit her, that she’d decided that it would be an uncomfortable thing to go through, but worth it when you saw the beautiful little baby at the end of it. This was not the same.

  She touched Maren’s arm gently.

  “Should you push?” she asked. “Will that help it come out?”

  Maren looked at her with pain-filled eyes.

  “He has not been moving,” she said. “I knew something was wrong. When I was like this with Hamlet he was moving all the time. But this time, not for many days. I thought it must be because it was a girl, but I was fooling myself…agh.” She stopped and clutched at her stomach again, then whispered, “so much pain.”

  “What should I do?” asked Mette. “Tell me what I should do and I will do it.”

  “Find one of the women in the clearing who has had babies and bring her here,” said Maren. “Johanna Nissen, or Frida Jepsen. Frida would be better. She has had three children and one was stillborn.”

  Mette backed out of the house, then turned and ran. She could see several of the women in their gardens, either digging potatoes as she had been doing, or hanging out washing. She rushed down the path to Johanna Nissen, who was standing holding little Claus and talking to a woman Mette did not know.

  “Johanna, Johanna,” she panted. “You must come. Maren’s baby is coming early. I don’t know what to do. Maren says it hasn’t moved for a long time and she has been worrying.”

  A faint look of annoyance came over Johanna’s face. She sighed and thrust her baby at Mette. “Take care of Claus for now and I’ll see what I can do. If she’s losing the baby she just has to carry on and let it come. Even a baby who has died must still be born first.”

  “You should send for Mrs. Hansen,” said the other woman. “She can help. My sister lost her baby and Mrs. Hansen was very helpful. She gave her something to drink which made the baby come out very fast.”

  “But Mrs. Hansen is in town,” said Mette. She was clutching baby Claus feeling totally helpless. She did not trust Johanna Nissen to be helpful, or even kind.

  “Run over to the sawmill,” suggested the woman. “Find someone there to go into town and bring Mrs. Hansen back. Mette turned towards the path to the sawmill. She had not been on that path for some time, and with all that had happened since then the thought of running to the sawmill made her cold with fear. Just when she thought she was over her encounter with the Hauhau, and what Frank had been through with him, she would be forced to confront the dark forest again.

  “I’ll go,” said a voice from behind her. Mette turned to see Frida Jepsen standing behind her. “Mette, can you take care of the children while I’m gone? Pieter and Sofie are in my cottage. I will just tell them quickly that they must mind you, and then I will go to the sawmill as fast as I can.”

  Other women had started to gather, and two of them headed off to Maren and Pieter’s house to give what help they could. Frida Jepsen hurried off along the path to the sawmill. Mette watched her go and shivered. She hoped Frida would arrive safely, even though the Hauhau had been captured. The bush represented a place of fear to her, as much as she had struggled to regain her love of the treasure it represented to her. She knew she would have to move into town. She sat down on a tree stump and made the children sit on the ground around her. She took deep breaths and was just starting to feel better when a black shape erupted from the forest and came towards her. She stood up with a little cry, almost dropping Claus in the process.

  Frank Hardy stopped his horse in front of her and leaped down.

  “What’s happening? I just ran into a hysterical woman in the bush. She said something about needing help, but she wouldn’t stop to tell me why, or what help she needed.”

  Mette felt her body flood with relief. He was here. Sergeant Frank was here. Now everything would be well.

  “Maren, my sister Maren is having her baby,” she said. “Only she thinks it’s dead already, and it’s too soon anyway. It should have waited almost until Christmas. We need to get Mrs. Hansen to come and help us.”

  “Wouldn’t a doctor be better?” said Frank.

  He was met with choruses of “No’s” from the women.

  “Very well, Mrs. Hansen. Where does she live? I’ll go fetch her.”

  One of the women gave him directions to Mrs. Hansen’s house, and he galloped off. Mette watched him go, thinking that she should have been on the horse with him. Of course, then there would be no room for Mrs. Hansen, so it was a foolish idea. She sat back down to watch the children, who were building a house with sticks. Hamlet had joined them and sat watching them, his thumb still in his mouth, his eyes large. She hadn’t seen Frank for weeks and she was beginning to think that he did not want to see her, now that all the mysteries were solved—except the one about where the body of Gottlieb Karlsen was. The Armed Constabulary had announced that Anahera, the Hauhau, had killed Sergeant Jackson because he was a Die Hard, like Frank.

  After a while, Pieter emerged from the bush running, Frida Jepsen close behind him. He ran to Mette with his eyes full of fear, and Mette was reminded of the day she and Pieter had run from the mill to see if Hamlet had been taken by the Hauhau. It all seemed somewhat foolish now, thinking that the Maori would want to eat a little boy. She felt so much older and wiser than she had been just a few weeks ago.

  “Maren, Maren,” was all Pieter could say.

  Mette stood up and put her arms around him.

  “She’s fine, Pieter, and Sergeant Fr…Sergeant Hardy has gone to fetch Mrs. Hansen. We don’t know how the baby is doing, but Maren is in pain, just as she was when Hamlet was born. That’s what happens.”

  Pieter slumped his head onto Mette’s shoulder.

  “I would die without her,” he said. “Mette, what will I do if she dies?”

  Mette had not thought of Maren dying, but she realized now it was possible.

  “She’s not going to die,” she said firmly. “The baby will be born and then she’ll be fine. She just has to suffer for a little while. I am sure she thinks it will be worth the pain. Or she’ll think so, eventually.”

  Pieter sat down on the tree
stump where Mette had been seated, and she sat beside him and held his hand. They were still sitting like that half an hour later when Frank returned with a flustered Mrs. Hansen sitting in front of him on the horse. Mrs. Hansen was a strong woman. She had walked beside the bullock carts coming from Foxton back in 1873, three young children by her side and another one on the way, all of which she frequently spoke about. But she had not sat on a horse with such a handsome man before, Mette thought, realizing what it was that was so exciting about riding in front of Frank.

  Frank helped Mrs. Hansen down and followed her, still with her hand in his. Mrs. Hansen was flushed a bright pink, but managed to collect herself to say, “Where is she? Where is the mother?”

  Pieter stood up and took over. Together they hurried towards the house. Frank looked at Mette and smiled. She heard Maren give a loud trailing scream and turned towards the house, her heart pounding.

  “Should you be with your sister?” he asked.

  Mette sat down on the tree trunk again.

  “I’m just in the way. I have no thought about what I should do and I don’t know how to make Maren feel better.”

  He sat down beside her, taking Pieter’s spot on the tree trunk. She glanced sideways at him, noticing for the first time that he was not wearing his old greatcoat, but a smart jacket, and that his hair, instead of being untamed, had been combed down into a neat part. Even his beard looked trimmer, less wild than it usually did.

  “You’re looking very fine today Sergeant Frank. Were you going somewhere special?”

  He smiled again. “I was, but that will have to wait.”

  Maren screamed again. Mette put her head in her hands and shuddered.

  “It’s so terrible, having a baby. I had thought it would be a joyful thing, but Maren is in so much pain, and she thinks the baby has died because it hasn’t been moving inside her. She will be sad for a very long time, I think.”