Fires of Change (The Fire Blossom Saga)

by Sarah Lark

  Cat nodded. “It probably didn’t do him much good, even if he really could navigate by the stars. We just don’t get enough clear nights around here. After the General Lee sank, it rained nonstop. We had no chance. Two more women were dying . . . and then we saw this island! We rowed toward it with all our might, managed to get ashore, and built a fire. We had only six usable matches. The men were praising God for hours after the wood had finally caught. I showed them later how to do it without matches.” She smiled again.

  “Carol said you used to live with the Maori,” Bill said.

  “For six years, yes,” Cat replied. “And Chris grew up around Maori children as well. It helped us a lot here, although we still had to improvise quite a bit. Aotearoa’s a lot more fertile than this island. I thanked all the gods I knew when I found raupo here. Things would have been much harder without flax. I was able to work the raupo so that we could weave mats, traps, and weirs from it. The roots are edible too. Some of the men had penknives with them, as did I.” She pulled a small knife from her belt, which itself was woven with raupo fiber. “I always carry this with me, even when I’m wearing my gown. It’s an old habit of mine. One time I forgot, and it didn’t go so well for me.” Cat sighed at the memory.

  “On the first day,” she continued, “we cooked a few raupo roots, and Chris caught us some fish. It was enough for everybody to get something to eat, but the two women died anyway. Their graves are down on the beach, not too far from your dinghy. The rest of us built shelters, and we survived. It was hard, especially because it was so cold. Fortunately, there were rabbits, seals, and a lot of birds that we caught in my traps. We could survive another few years here if we had to. Look, here comes Chris.”

  Chris Fenroy ran toward them wearing a kind of skirt made of sealskin, a simple shirt, and sealskin boots. He was holding a spear made from a tapered branch, ready to use it. He’d always worn his hair a little long, but now, it hung way past his shoulders. He seemed upset, not knowing if the man walking next to his wife had come as a rescuer or an attacker.

  “Cat, I—” He stopped, breathless, as Bill’s hands flew up in surprise and Cat stopped him with a reassuring gesture. “I saw the ship, but I was on the other end of the island.”

  “It’s all right, Chris,” Cat said gently. “They’ve come to rescue us.”

  At that moment, Fancy came running out of the underbrush. She leaped up on Chris happily. Stunned, he sought his wife’s eyes.

  “Am I going mad now, Cat?” he asked. “Is this Fancy? How did she get here?”

  Cat shook her head. “You aren’t going mad. Fancy came here with Lieutenant Paxton—you know, the young lieutenant from the General Lee. Do you recognize him? He was in a lifeboat with the girls. They were saved. But he hasn’t told me how he came by Fancy. I hope he’ll do so in a moment, once we get out of this rain.”

  A light drizzle had started to fall, and Bill shivered in spite of his warm oilskin coat. He marveled at the castaways. Cat made surviving on the island look easy, but he knew they’d endured great hardship.

  Soon they reached Cat and Chris’s dwelling. The path led them past a corral with four goats in it. Fancy started circling them enthusiastically.

  “Where did you get those animals, Mrs.—”

  “Call me Cat,” she said. “The goats were already here, of course. There are twelve on this island, in all. If the others haven’t killed one of them, that is. Someone must have abandoned their predecessors here at some point, just like the rabbits. These are all nannies. We caught them together, and I tamed them. I can even milk them.” She stroked the animals’ noses. They had come over to the fence in a show of trustful curiosity.

  The corral reminded Bill of the fences that surrounded Maori pas. Here, too, branches had been bound together with flax cord. It all looked very tidy and not as temporary as the other castaways’ camp. The same went for the hut they arrived at a few moments later. Without proper tools, Chris hadn’t been able to fell enough wood for a log cabin. But he’d been able to erect a stable, tentlike scaffold that they’d covered in skins. There was a smoke hole at the top. All in all, the construction was reminiscent of Native American teepees.

  “We used albatross bones as sewing needles and flax as cord,” Cat explained, having noticed Bill’s appreciative expression. “The hardest part was tanning the hides. I knew which plants to use, mostly, but they don’t all grow here. We had to experiment a lot. It didn’t smell very good at the beginning, and I’m afraid it’s still a little bit unpleasant . . .”

  Cat pulled aside the skins covering the doorway with an apologetic smile. It did smell a little, but it was warm and cozy. The firepit in the center was surrounded by stones and seemed well protected. Chris stepped inside and stoked the embers, putting on some more fast-burning wood. Their fuel supply was stacked in a neat pile in one corner. There were dishes and cups whittled from wood on makeshift shelves along the wall. The couple had prepared a stack of raupo leaves to wrap roots or meat in for cooking, and there was a wide bed made out of a raupo-fiber mat and a rabbit-fur blanket. Cat unrolled some more mats.

  “Have a seat,” she said to Bill. “I brew excellent herbal tea, if I do say so myself. Though it’s a bit of a nuisance without an actual teapot. We do have a cooking pit, though.” She pointed at a pit that had been dug in the ground. “But it takes a while for the stones to heat, you know.”

  “Please, don’t bother,” Bill said, opening his backpack. “This here is a lot better than tea.” He took out the whiskey bottle and watched Chris’s face with satisfaction.

  “Well, this is one for the books!” Chris said with a laugh, quickly pulling the stopper from the bottle and raising it to his lips. Then he passed it to Cat. “The essence of life!”

  “Which sometimes helps us bear life,” Bill said as the bottle was returned to him.

  “So, will you tell us your story?” Cat asked, giving him a worried look. She scratched Fancy’s head.

  Bill nodded. The time had come to tell them about Carol and Linda, and about Jane’s takeover of Rata Station.

  “I’m going to kill that woman!” There wasn’t enough space in Chris and Cat’s hut to pace back and forth. Here, Chris had to content himself with kneading a rabbit skin. He was about to tear it to pieces. “How could she? We’ve been divorced for years. That spiteful shrew! She’s known Carol and Linda since they were little girls. How could she do that to them? And Te Haitara—”

  “From what I heard, the chieftain didn’t help her,” Bill offered.

  “Well, he didn’t stop her either!” Chris said, fuming. “And don’t tell me he couldn’t, that she had too much mana or something. The man calls himself a warrior. He ought to be able to deal with his own wife!”

  “I can’t imagine anyone putting Jane over their knee,” Cat said, trying to placate him.

  Chris glared at her. “Just you wait until I see her. She went too far, Cat! Way too far! Kicking the girls out—”

  “And then Oliver Butler weaseled out and broke his engagement to Carol,” Cat surmised, tight-lipped.

  Bill nodded. “Carol was very hurt,” he said quietly.

  Next, he told them about Linda and Fitz—another reason for Chris to be upset.

  “That little windbag! How on earth could she fall for him? Good Lord, they could have stayed with Ida and Karl. All of them. There wasn’t the slightest reason for a shotgun wedding! And to run off to the goldfields . . .”

  Bill rubbed his forehead. “Mr. Fenroy . . . Chris. This liaison with Joe Fitzpatrick might have saved Linda’s life.”

  Contritely, he told them how he’d taken Carol and Mara to Taranaki and Waikato, and how they’d been caught up in the turmoil of the war. Finally, he broke the news of the kidnapping.

  “I tried to dissuade them,” Bill insisted, his face turned away in shame. “And then I made the mistake of proposing to Carol. She thought I only wanted to keep her in Patea so I could keep courting her, which was why she wouldn’t lis
ten to me. And the general wouldn’t allow me to ride with them.” He looked up and met Cat’s burning eyes. “I would have gone, you have to believe me!”

  Cat raised her hands to silence him, then closed her eyes. She stood and stumbled out of the tent. Bill and Chris stared at the dirt floor as a roar of pain came from outside, rousting the birds from the trees. Several long minutes passed in silence, and then Cat stepped back inside, her face a mask of steely control.

  “If you had gone, Carol would have had to look at your severed head,” she said, her voice thick with unshed tears. “As you said, those Hauhau warriors slaughtered twenty heavily armed soldiers. What makes you think you could have triumphed against them on your own?”

  “I should have tried to free Carol and Mara, at least.”

  Bill repeated the self-reproaches he’d been torturing himself with ever since the young women had disappeared. Finally, Chris passed him the whiskey bottle again.

  “Enough. Stop beating yourself up. You couldn’t have done anything whatsoever on your own, and you know it.” Chris looked down again and took a deep breath to steady himself. “Are you entirely sure that Carol and Mara were kidnapped? Were—were they definitely still alive when the warriors retreated?”

  “If not, their bodies would have been found,” Cat said. “There would have been no reason to hide them. Decapitating the soldiers would have been reason enough for a punitive expedition if General Cameron had wanted one.”

  “So, what do you think happened to them?” Bill asked desperately, looking at Cat in a plea for help. “What—what’s normal with Maori?”

  Cat shook her head. “When I lived with the Ngati Toa, they hadn’t kept slaves in a long time.”

  “The Treaty of Waitangi made it illegal for the North Island tribes too,” Chris added. “But these rebels probably don’t see that as binding.”

  “Slaves?” Bill cried in horror. “You think they’re keeping them as slaves?”

  Chris gave the young man a look of exasperation. “Well, what else? You said it was a pa, right? That means there are no women there, or few, at any rate. Don’t think of the kidnappers as Maori or Hauhau. More than anything else, they’re angry young men.”

  Bill buried his face in his hands. Of course, he knew that it was more than likely that Carol and Mara had been subjected to violence. But he’d still been hoping . . .

  “I thought that Maori—I thought—because their girls are supposed to be so willing?”

  Cat gritted her teeth. “Like most men, Maori warriors prefer sleeping with women they don’t have to force. But—” The mask began to slip, and she paused a moment to compose herself. “As for slavery in the old days, there were tales of horrendously abused women, but also of marriages between masters and slaves. We don’t know what’s going on at that pa. All we can do is hope that Carol and Mara are still alive. Which they are. And I know Chris doesn’t believe it, but if Carol weren’t alive anymore, I’d know, just like I’d know about Linda. I didn’t give birth to her, but Te Ronga didn’t give birth to me either, and yet there was aka between us. We’ll get them back, Bill. If Cameron won’t help us, I’ll get the governor involved—if Ida and Karl haven’t already. You’ve been at sea for a year, Bill. Maybe by now, Carol and Mara are free.”

  Bill gave Cat an incredulous look. “I think I would have heard about it if—”

  He stopped short. The Hampshire had docked at the occasional harbor to stock up on provisions, but apart from Christchurch, the harbors had all been tiny outposts in the middle of nowhere. He hadn’t received any mail, and there hadn’t been any newspapers either. Cat was right; the Hauhau stronghold at Weraroa might have been given up or defeated long since. He only had the same information he’d left with: General Cameron had pulled out his troops. The man who’d taken over fighting the Hauhau was General Chute.

  “I should’ve stayed,” he whispered. “I shouldn’t have given up.”

  “Oh, don’t start again,” Chris admonished. “You found us. Be proud of that. And trust in Cat. In a few days’ time, we’ll be back in New Zealand. Then we’ll find out what happened, and we’ll see what we can do.” He put a hand on his wife’s shoulder. “I do believe in your connection to the girls. And with so many people who love them”—he smiled sadly at Bill—“I know we’ll find a way.”

  Cat smiled sympathetically. “We’d better pack,” Cat said wistfully. “I’m almost sorry to leave this island. For two and a half years, I had Chris to myself.”

  “Really?” Chris asked. “I have to say I’m more than happy that I won’t have to play midwife here!”

  “Midwife?” Bill frowned, his eyes going reflexively to Cat’s delicate form.

  Cat smiled again. “I’m sure we could have managed. But you’re right, it’ll be safer back home. Oh, don’t give me such a shocked look, Lieutenant Paxton. I’m forty-one years old, but yes, I’m expecting a child.”

  Chapter 64

  The Hampshire left Rose Island the very next day. Captain Rawley and his men left their supplies in the castaways’ shelters. Chris and the other men helped set up the signs. Cat released her goats and buried a few seed potatoes on a piece of land she’d been preparing as another raupo field. With that, she said her goodbyes.

  “I still think it should be called Rata Island,” she said as they set sail. “There aren’t any roses there. Can’t it be renamed?”

  “The man that discovered it was likely thinking about a lass named Rose, nay the flower,” the captain replied.

  Chris put an arm around his wife’s shoulders. “So, it could be called Cat Island,” he joked. “Where are we off to now, Captain Rawley? Straight to Campbelltown? Or are you sticking to your original route? Will we be sailing on to the other islands to leave supplies?”

  Rawley had decided on the latter. True, two of the castaways had health problems, and it would have been better to take them straight to Campbelltown. But the ailing men had argued in favor of finishing the Hampshire’s mission according to plan.

  “We’d blame ourselves if the next person starves or freezes to death on one of those islands for lack of supplies,” Edward Harrow said.

  “Or just imagine, there might be other survivors from the General Lee or other ships waiting for help out there,” Bill added. “As improbable as that may seem.”

  The voyage took them another three weeks, although the last few islands were quickly supplied. The people rescued from Rose Island helped with great enthusiasm, and they didn’t need to spend more than a day on any of the islands. They didn’t find any more survivors from the General Lee. The other lifeboats must have capsized out on the ocean.

  The men cheered, Fancy barked, and Cat snuggled close to Chris when Campbelltown’s harbor finally came into view.

  “I’ll admit, I’d almost stopped believing we’d ever make it,” she said. “Although I was definitely happy on our island. I just missed the girls—and a hot bath every now and then. I’m looking forward to a bit of luxury.”

  “And I’m looking forward to roasting Jane on a spit,” Chris said grimly. “Seriously, Cat, I want to get back to Rata Station as quickly as possible. Then we’ll go looking for the girls. Ida and Karl ought to know where Linda is, at least.”

  Cat looked him up and down, an amused expression on her face. “Darling, I agree with you completely, of course. But can we also agree that we shouldn’t go strutting through Campbelltown wearing sealskins? And once we get to Rata Station, do you think you can refrain from stabbing Jane with a sharpened branch? If she even recognizes you with that tangle of a beard on your face, that is. Let’s spend a day in civilization and buy some new clothes. After that, we’ll catch the next ship to Lyttelton. Or do you want to go on horseback? That could take forever, and I’m anxious to find the girls.”

  As it turned out, the next ship bound for Lyttelton wasn’t leaving for another four days, and the castaways wouldn’t be bored in the meantime. News of their rescue had spread like wildfire as soon as the
y arrived. By the time the Hampshire was unloading, the first few reporters and photographers were already on the scene. Cat, of course, was the center of attention. She made a far more attractive picture than the tattered-looking men. People were gushing over her sealskin clothes and moccasins. Reporters kept asking for details about how she’d cooked, built traps, and tamed animals on their remote island.

  Happily, all of this meant that neither Chris nor Cat were expected to pay for anything themselves. This was fortunate, since all the accounts connected to Rata Station had long since been transferred to Jane. Chris had immediately telegraphed Karl and Ida to ask them to send money. However, the bank in Campbelltown offered him unlimited credit, even without collateral. The best hotel in town invited the castaways to stay. They offered Chris and Cat the honeymoon suite, and local stores were vying for the privilege of being allowed to dress them. Cat was touched by the outpouring of kindness, and tried her best to answer all the reporters’ questions.

  Chris, however, quickly grew tired of the attention. His mind was on the girls and how, if only he’d written a will, he could have protected them from untold hardship. On the third day after their arrival, his restlessness grew worse when Bill came knocking on their hotel room door with news.

  “They’re alive!” the young man told them excitedly, waving a letter. The Hampshire’s crew had also been celebrated enthusiastically by the people of Campbelltown, and the men had only managed to collect their mail that morning. Bill had received a whole pile of letters from his family. As he was opening one of them, a second envelope had fallen out.

  This letter arrived here on 8/15/65 for you, Bill’s mother had added in a note. Forgive me for opening it; it wasn’t my intention to violate your privacy. But as you can see, the sender is a captain, and I thought it might be an official letter from the army you would have to answer. However, the man wrote to you privately, and I think his news will be welcome.

  “It’s from an acquaintance of mine on General Cameron’s staff,” Bill told Cat and Chris. “He wrote from Wellington after the troops at Patea had been replaced by military settlers. Apparently, Weraroa pa was taken without bloodshed back in July. The Maori had already vacated the fort, and they took Carol and Mara with them. Lieutenant Winter found a message from Carol in a hut near the kitchen building; it had been carved into a wooden beam. She wrote that they were kept there as slaves. So, probably that means working in the kitchen?” He gave Cat and Chris a heartrendingly hopeful look.