The Fire Blossom

by Lark, Sarah

  Cat frowned. “Well, then I hope she knows the meaning of yes and no when you walk down the aisle with her. And how will you tell each other stories on winter evenings?” Carpenter grinned and was about to reply, but Cat waved her hand in dismissal. “What about George Hempleman?” she asked and passed the whiskey back. “Who left what to whom?”

  “Hempleman’s wife to little Kitten,” the merchant replied. “You were mentioned in her will. But George didn’t give you your due. He was so angry when he saw Barker selling you at the pub. The staring men, and you in the middle, and his wife not even cold yet . . .”

  Cat nodded and took the bottle back again. This time she took a longer swig. You don’t deserve . . . Suddenly, Hempleman’s last words to her made sense. As if he’d had the right to judge.

  “Well, and then you were gone,” Carpenter continued. “So he must have wondered. He asked me about you when I was back in Piraki Bay, and I told him what I knew. I told him that you ran away from Barker because you didn’t want to be a whore. I also told him about Reverend Morton, and he was shocked. He seems to have missed the fact that the man was an old lecher.”

  “Linda Hempleman thought the best of Morton,” Cat murmured. “But of course, she was very devout, and most people who are very devout are also a little, well, naive.”

  Carpenter laughed. “Amen to that! Ah, may she rest in peace. And if the old chap brought some light into her last days with his praying, then at least he did one thing right in his life. Still, she can’t have been too naive. If she was going to leave you something, then it would surely be to help you. That was how George saw it, anyway, and he was very sorry for how he’d behaved. He had me assure him ten times that you were someplace safe, and he asked me to send you to him as soon as I saw you again. After that, I didn’t return to Wairau, unfortunately. First I was busy elsewhere, and then there were conflicts in the area. Anyway, I had no idea until today where you were.”

  “So matters have taken care of themselves in the meantime, then,” Cat said and stoked the fire.

  Carpenter shook his head. “No, not for George. He still asks about you whenever we meet. As it happens, he lives in Akaroa now with his new wife. He remarried about five years ago. I’d like to take you with me so you can talk to him yourself.”

  “I have responsibilities here,” Cat said. “But I’ll think about it.”

  Ida cried when Cat told her about the inheritance and her intention to travel to Akaroa. Cat had made her decision the very next day when Chris had shown up in the village again and hadn’t been able to stop staring at her. Carpenter had noticed right away.

  “Responsibilities here, was it?” the merchant had said with a grin. “Looks like you’re interfering with more than just Jane’s business deals!”

  “It’s just better if Chris doesn’t see me for a while,” Cat told Ida. “He needs some time to adjust to the situation.”

  “But who knows if you’ll ever come back?” Ida sobbed. “I’ll be here all alone.”

  One of her eyes was framed by a purple bruise, and her bonnet covered a cut near her hairline. Cat had an inkling where the injuries had come from. But if Ida turned to Chris or Karl for help, it could end badly.

  “Ida, I’ll only be gone for four weeks!” she assured her. “And if the inheritance amounts to anything, we can both get away from here. We can take the children and go to the North Island, to Australia, or even to Bahia for all I care.”

  She took a deep breath as she saw Ida smile through the tears. “We’ll take different names, tell people you’re a widow. We’ll send your Karl and my Chris a letter after a year or so. By then, they’ll have thrown Ottfried out. And then we’ll see if they’ll leave their sheep and Jane for us.”

  “Karl would come,” Ida said quietly. “Karl would go anywhere for me.”

  Even to hell, she thought as Cat hugged her and said her goodbyes to the children. And suddenly, hell didn’t seem all that bad anymore. If she was damned by her sinful thoughts and, maybe someday, her sinful deeds, at least they would be there together.

  It was much more comfortable to travel on Tom Carpenter’s coach box than it had been to hide in the back under the canvas cover. The merchant laughed when Cat told him that. The weather was clear, and she enjoyed the views of the plains and, later, of the woodland hills of the peninsula. On top of that, Tom Carpenter proved to be an unexpectedly pleasant traveling companion. The merchant was clever and well traveled. He could tell her a thing or two about every farm they passed, and he entertained Cat with stories from the time when the island’s only settlers were whalers and seal hunters. When the rough men had met the Maori, things would sometimes end in bloodshed, but more often than not, they were simply curious about each other’s customs. Back then, there were barely any fights over land; the hunters didn’t need much.

  “George Hempleman wanted to get into the land trade after giving up the whaling station. He had arranged some sort of deal with Hone Tuhawaiki of the Ngai Tahu. He was supposed to receive almost half of the Banks Peninsula, for a song of course: an old ship, a bit of tobacco, and some blankets. If he’d sold it to settlers, he would have made a fortune. But when he came, the French were already there. And as it turns out, that old crook Tuhawaiki had sold the land twice! Now Hempleman’s lodging a complaint with the government. Not that it’ll do him any good. The French are hardly going to tear their houses down.”

  Cat laughed. Yet another person who wouldn’t get rich off land. And that was despite Hempleman having been in the country for many years. He should have known how the Maori thought that land couldn’t really be owned. In any case, Carpenter laughed heartily when Cat told him about Ottfried and Gibson’s similar misadventures.

  “At least Gibson made some profit,” he said. “As long as they don’t catch him. And the other bloke did, too, I suppose, or he wouldn’t have been able to buy sheep. Which was a good investment, by the way. Sheep are important on the South Island now. They’re even being stolen, or so I’ve heard. The Redwood brothers are furious because some of their sheep were rustled. Anyway, the creatures are worth good money now. For the wool, above all. Doesn’t surprise me, cold as it is. In fact, I could do with a fire and some whiskey right now. Here by the river would be a good place to rest. Why don’t I light a fire, and you catch us some fish?”

  Nights with Carpenter were also uneventful. The merchant was used to feeding himself, and Carpenter set up a tent for her every evening. What was more, not once during their travels did he harass her. After the second day, Cat relaxed completely. She no longer kept her knife ready when she sat by the fire with Carpenter, listening to his stories and drinking whiskey. Even Chasseur, whom Ida had insisted she take with her, lay calmly next to Carpenter and allowed himself to be stroked.

  In truth, Ida had probably been thinking of the dog’s safety more than Cat’s when she’d tied a leash on him. She worried constantly that, one night, Ottfried would silence the dog’s objections to his mistress’s mistreatment for good. He no longer accepted her argument that the dog was needed for rat hunting. The collies Ottfried had brought along were much better at hunting the pests.

  After a week of leisurely travel, Cat and Carpenter reached Akaroa. Almost every property enjoyed a breathtaking view of the bay framed by lush green hills. Everything was clean and lovingly tended, and the charming houses were painted in all kinds of colors.

  Carpenter’s new love, Nadine, lived in a cottage by the edge of the village that looked a little bit like a dollhouse. It was painted pale yellow with powder-blue doors and window frames, and on the sills stood pots of herbs, spices, and flowers. On a porch, dainty little chairs were grouped around an adorable little wrought-iron table.

  And then the door opened. They were hit by a wave of rapid French, and a young woman came rushing out to pull Carpenter into a warm embrace. The small, thickset merchant seemed to melt into it completely. Nadine was a head taller than he and quite buxom. Everything about her seemed soft and
round; she had a merry face with red cheeks, and her thick black hair poked out from beneath a lace bonnet that sat on her head slightly askew. Nadine was wearing a dark red dress, and she smelled of fresh pastries.

  “I bake!” she explained in broken English and laughed a tinkling laugh. “Spirits ’ave told me Tom eez coming! ’e tell me!” She pointed at one of the hei tiki that Cat’s tribe had been selling and that was now hanging around her neck.

  “But come een! Oh, you bring visitor? And ze doggee . . . Come ’ere, leetle doggee . . .” Chasseur brushed up against her happily.

  But then an annoyed male voice disrupted the scene. “Nadine!” A thin, dark-haired man came running. “Vos foutues brebis sont encore dans mon potager! Quand est-ce que ça s’arrêtera? Enfermez-les enfin! Mes belles laitues!”

  “Oh!” Nadine’s face took on an expression of alarm. “Oh, pardon, Monsieur Jules, pardon, Tom, I must catch ze sheep. Terrible sheep, always run away. Always to eat vegetables of Monsieur Jules . . .”

  Nadine followed her neighbor around back to the empty sheep pen. The wooden fence was broken in several places, and its inhabitants were spread out over the surrounding hills and neighboring gardens. Ten or twenty of the woolly creatures were now munching on Monsieur Jules’s last heads of lettuce and first few winter vegetables. Neither Jules’s waving stick nor Nadine’s waving apron made any impression on the animals.

  Cat whistled for Chasseur. He wasn’t as skilled as the Redwoods’ and William Deans’s collies, but he was good enough to impress Nadine, Carpenter, and Monsieur Jules. In a matter of minutes, the brown-and-white mutt had herded the sheep together, and now Cat opened the door to the pen. Moments later, the sheep marched in, single file.

  “They’ll be back out in no time if you don’t fix the fence, Nadine,” she pointed out to the grateful Frenchwoman.

  “Such good doggee! Thees I need! Such doggee!” She turned to Carpenter as though hoping he could make a sheepdog appear from thin air.

  “What you need is a buyer for these sheep!” Carpenter grumbled. “Come on, Monsieur Jules, let’s fix this fence now.”

  A little later, the men set to work on the fence with pliers and wire. Meanwhile, Nadine told Cat about her dilemma with the sheep that her late husband had bought.

  “Tom says I must sell sheep. But I not ’ave ze ’eart . . . Zat eez ’ow you say, no?” Nadine smiled woefully. “Because ’eart of my good poor Pierrot was with sheep. ’e said always, ‘Sheep eez future, Nadine, weel make us reech.’ But then as sheep arrive and Pierrot so ’appy, ’e die. Good poor Pierrot! I cannot sell sheep of good poor Pierrot to people I not know . . . And zey not made me reech at all.”

  Tom Carpenter, who was just returning from his work on the fence, rolled his eyes. “Nadine, right now the sheep are making you poor! You have to pay Jules back for the lettuce and the cabbage, of course. Where’s the shepherd boy gotten to?”

  Nadine shrugged. “Today ’e finish early.”

  Cat glanced at the empty feeding troughs and water tubs in the pen. “It seems the animals weren’t fed. Do you have hay anywhere, Nadine? And they need water too.”

  Nadine sighed unhappily. “I ’ave ’ay for winter. But now still grass. So expenseeve otherwise.”

  Carpenter nodded. “They’ll eat you out of house and home. I’ll have a talk with that boy tomorrow, teach him to just run off without even giving the animals any water. Things can’t go on like this, Nadine. I don’t care how much your late husband cared about them.”

  “O non! I not sell Pierrot sheep to strangers, maybe zey not love zem as much!”

  Monsieur Jules said something Cat didn’t understand, but Nadine’s neighbor also seemed tired of hearing about poor Pierrot’s love of sheep.

  “Now we go inside, eat mes biscuits. I bake just for my Tom. Et vous, Monsieur Jules . . .”

  The man scowled, but he followed Nadine and her guests inside, only to leave a little while later with a bowl of aromatic vanilla biscuits and pastries.

  “Now ’e ’appee again!” Nadine smiled. “Eez magic, mes biscuits.”

  She eagerly showed Cat and Carpenter to the living room, which was right next to the roomy kitchen. Cat’s eye was immediately drawn to three vases of flowers, whose aroma was mingling with that of the cookies.

  “Must bake a leetle more for tomorrow, I promeesed Monsieur Revé some brioches,” Nadine said. “You eat now. Eat biscuits. I make café.” She swept into the kitchen.

  Cat timidly reached into the bowl of biscuits, took one, and bit off a piece. “This is amazing!” she said. “How do you make these?” Maybe she could bring Ida the recipe.

  “With much sugar, chérie!” Nadine called. “And much love!”

  Carpenter smiled. “Nadine’s a confectioner,” he explained to Cat. “She did that in Paris before she married Pierrot. Now, she sells her baked goods at the general store. She makes a good living, when she doesn’t have to spend it all feeding a herd of sheep.”

  “Pierrot say make reech!” Nadine insisted.

  She had just returned with fresh baked goods and a pot of fragrant coffee. There was cream, sugar, and maybe even a bit of cocoa in the coffee. Cat had never tried anything like it before.

  “A confectionery shop could make you rich,” Carpenter told her. “You could open one if you sold the sheep. Here on the market square. Everybody would come!”

  Nadine sighed sweetly. “Oui, pâtisserie eez my dream. But I not sell sheep of good poor Pierrot to people I not know!”

  She squeezed herself onto the delicate little sofa next to Carpenter. Chasseur tried to jump up as well. Nadine gave him a biscuit.

  “Such good doggee! Eef you leave doggee with me, all eez better with sheep. And ’e loove me!”

  “Only if you feed him,” Cat remarked. “Listen, I’m sure you would appreciate some privacy.”

  “You can stay. Friend of Tom eez my friend,” Nadine declared.

  Cat shook her head. “No, I should—”

  “She’s the young woman George Hempleman’s been looking for,” Carpenter explained.

  Nadine immediately broke into a wave of rapid French that began with mon Dieu. “’e always ask for you. ’e worree, Tom say. You must be like lost daughter!”

  “Not quite,” Cat murmured. “But I should really go now, or it’ll be too late for a visit. Does he live in town?”

  Carpenter shook his head. “No. George lives in German Bay. Couple of German families came with the French and built their houses there. Hempleman joined them when he came. It’s the nicest house in the settlement, you can’t miss it. He’d built a pretty place for Linda back in Piraki Bay, and now he’s made an even nicer one for Elizabeth.”

  “That’s the name of his new wife?” Cat asked shyly. She couldn’t imagine George Hempleman by the side of anyone other than Linda. “Is she much younger?”

  The thought of being confronted with a woman her own age made her uncomfortable, but the successful businessman might well adorn himself with a young wife in his old age.

  Fortunately, Carpenter was able to ease her mind. “No, no, he’s sensible, old George is. I’d say she’s older than him, and she’s a widow too. A lovely woman, not unlike Linda, but with more life experience. Go and get to know her. German Bay’s about two miles from here, the Maori call it Takamatua. Akaroa’s a tiny peninsula, a few hills between two bays: French Bay and German Bay. So just stay north and cross over.”

  “There eez roads,” Nadine added. “We not enemies of Allemands.”

  Chapter 60

  Cat found the German settlement easily. All she had to do was walk through Akaroa and follow the wide road that twisted between the hills. The locals seemed to keep frequent contact with one another, and after her first glance at German Bay, Cat could see why. The German “village” consisted of only three or four houses. There were no shops or inns; people had to go to Akaroa for every errand. Cat wondered why the Germans hadn’t just settled there in the first place. But at secon
d glance, the difference between the two settlements became clear. The Germans’ houses were just as neat, but they were more defiant-looking and stood farther apart, so the settlers had more land to work. Their farms were simple and made for large families, and they were equipped with stables. They reminded Cat of the buildings in Sankt Pauli Village, but this settlement wasn’t under construction. Sheep and cattle were grazing, and the fields had already been harvested and prepared for winter grain.

  The largest, most sophisticated house sat on a hill above the bay. It was undoubtedly George Hempleman’s. As Cat approached, she thought wistfully of Linda Hempleman’s home in Piraki Bay. Her motherly friend had also had a beautiful view of the sea. But the area here was even more pastoral, and there was no stench of whale blubber and death. The house George Hempleman had built for his second wife stood among old trees and new gardens. The air was heavy with the scent of late roses.

  Cat called out to Chasseur, opened the garden gate, and followed a neat footpath to the front door. With a pang of nostalgia, she recognized the brass knocker that had adorned Linda’s front door as well. She had never used it back then because she had always been welcome, but now . . .

  Cat looked down at herself once more. Considering her outfit the last time she had seen George Hempleman, she had been careful to look particularly neat and respectable on this day. She was wearing a new dark green wool dress with a white collar and cuffs from Carpenter’s shipment of wares, and a matching black cape. Her hair was pinned up.

  She had chosen the clothing wisely, Cat found after finally daring to use the knocker and coming face-to-face with a woman of about sixty. Elizabeth Hempleman reminded Cat a little of the pictures she’d seen of Queen Victoria. She was a stately woman, and she carried herself in a very upright, dignified manner. George Hempleman’s second wife was wearing a somewhat severe blue dress, but it was made from expensive fabrics, and the apron over it was decorated with lace trim. Elizabeth’s carefully pinned-up chestnut hair was covered by a kind of veil rather than a bonnet, something else Cat knew only from photographs of the queen. This woman, however, didn’t seem as unyielding as the monarch. Her face was round and almost free of wrinkles. It was dominated by intelligent pale blue eyes, which regarded Cat kindly.