Tamar (46 page)

He plonked his own basket next to Ihaka’s. Sometimes his friend really got on his nerves; he never knew when to stop. Of all those who teased him when he decided to only answer to the name Joseph, Ihaka had gone on about it the most. They had even come to blows when Joseph finally lost his temper after Ihaka accused him of denying his Maori heritage. They came out of that with bloody noses and didn’t talk to each other for days, something that hurt Joseph far more than his injuries. He and Ihaka were best friends and he couldn’t understand why his European name
upset the other boy. Eventually Te Kanene took Joseph aside and pointed out that because Ihaka’s skin was very dark he would always be excluded from
Pakeha
society. Joseph was more likely to be accepted, and Ihaka was frightened he would lose his friend. Since then Joseph had been more tolerant of Ihaka’s teasing.

Joseph shrugged and added offhandedly, ‘She is only an old woman. None of what they say is true.’

‘Oh, yes it is,’ shot back Wi, looking shocked. ‘She can look into a person’s eyes and see what will happen to them!’

‘That is only a children’s story,’ replied Joseph, sounding more confident than he felt.

‘It is true! My grandmother swears it!’

‘Then I will ask Te Whaea to divine our futures,’ said Ihaka, and without waiting for a response he hurried out of the dining hall.

Joseph glanced at Wi, who looked nervously back, and they followed Ihaka into the late-afternoon sunshine. They found him squatting in front of the old women. As they approached he rose, with a mischievous grin. ‘I have asked her, Joseph. She will tell your future first.’

Te Whaea beckoned to Joseph to sit. He moved reluctantly towards her, feeling apprehensive. Almost twelve years of hearing tales of ghosts and fairies and angry gods had made him as superstitious as anyone else in his village, despite his claims to the contrary.

Close up, Te Whaea looked even older. Her face was wrinkled like the pebbled bed of a river, and the
moko
patterning her lips and bristled chin had faded and spread with age. One eye was sunken and watery, the other blinded by a milky membrane. There was not a single tooth left in her head and her white hair hung over her bony shoulders. She also smelled, and Joseph involuntarily leaned back as she bent towards him and stared into his face. As she scrutinised him, he grew increasingly uncomfortable. What
was she looking at? What was she looking
for
? Without preamble she opened her gummy mouth and spoke. ‘You are not full Maori,’ she declared in a voice like wind in dry reeds.

There was a moment’s silence, then Ihaka exclaimed, ‘
Ea
! Everyone knows his mother is
Pakeha
. Look at his green eyes and light skin. This is not magic!’

One of the old women reached out with her walking stick and struck Ihaka’s bare shins. ‘Do not be cheeky, boy!’ she reprimanded. ‘Have respect for your elders!’

Ihaka sat down hurriedly, but Te Whaea appeared not to have heard, her single functioning eye still gazing at Joseph. She thrust a gnarled forefinger at his face and spoke again. ‘You will live between two worlds, but you will come to a crossroads. Choose your path wisely, or you may lose yourself forever. But you have many things to do before that.’ She hawked and spat onto the ground, closed her eyes briefly, then opened them again. ‘When the wars come, to lands and shores and seas far away, you will fight first for the
Pakeha
queen, and then the
Pakeha
king. There will be untold carnage and the world will weep.’

Pakeha
king? Joseph had no idea what she was talking about. He looked uneasily at his friends, an uncomfortable frisson of fear wriggling down his spine, but turned back when the old woman spoke again.

‘Your blood will spill onto the soil of another people, but you will honour the
mana
of your ancestors.’ She sat utterly still for a moment, then shook her head sharply before adding almost casually, ‘One of your brothers will die in battle. I do not see your ultimate fate. That is all.’

Joseph realised Te Whaea had finished and got dazedly to his feet. As he did, the old woman scratched her skinny rump through her dusty black skirt, glanced disparagingly at Wi and Ihaka and rasped, ‘Next.’

Both boys stood quickly and began to back away. ‘I have changed my mind,’ muttered Ihaka.

‘So have I,’ agreed Wi. ‘Thank you,’ he added politely before he turned and ran off, followed closely by Ihaka who had, temporarily at least, lost his bravado. Joseph forced himself to walk after them, refusing to let anyone see how shaken he was by Te Whaea’s words, even though he hadn’t understood most of what she had said.

As they went, the
kuia
who had wielded the walking stick turned to Te Whaea and asked curiously, ‘Did you see his fate, grandmother?’

Te Whaea said nothing for several moments, then nodded and replied, ‘
Ae
, I did.’ Then she shut her toothless mouth tightly and said no more.

August 1893

Joseph went to sea a month after his twelfth birthday. He thought it a wonderful idea and his father agreed it could do him no harm, but Tamar was not so enthusiastic. She felt he was too young, but eventually conceded he had to do something to fill in the time before he went to Te Aute, and an introduction to seamanship was as good as anything. The sea was in his blood, after all.

He sailed on the
Whiri
, a swift and handsome schooner and the pride of the family’s fleet. The
Whiri
had been built eight years before in the northern milling town of Aratapu by James Barbour, a renowned shipbuilder; Barbour himself had selected the timber from the bush. The keel came from a
kauri
log over a hundred feet long, the planking and spars were heart
kauri
, and the framing best quality
puriri
. It was generally agreed the
Whiri
was one of the finest schooners built in New Zealand. She had originally been engaged in transporting timber but Te Kanene had ordered her
hold modified and now she could ship almost anything.

Joseph’s first visit to the
Whiri
had been on a wet and windy day in July, just after she arrived at the Port of Napier for minor repairs after encountering a cyclone in the Tasman. He had been introduced to Cassius Heke, captain of the
Whiri
and the man who would be charged with his welfare while he was at sea.

Cassius Heke was a huge man, a full-blooded Maori with chocolate-dark skin, a wide flat nose and permanently bloodshot eyes. When Joseph climbed out of the dinghy and scrambled up the rope ladder onto the schooner’s deck, his first sight was of Heke’s ugly face leaning towards him and a heavily muscled arm outstretched to help him over the bulwark. He took the offered hand and was almost flung across the deck by the man’s strength. As he steadied himself with as much dignity as he could muster, he noted Te Kanene and his father both declined Heke’s offer and negotiated the bulwark on their own. His father’s amused wink suggested that he too had once been tossed across the deck by the big man.

Te Kanene stepped forward and touched foreheads with Heke. Kepa flicked the sea spray off his coat and swept his damp hair off his face before he too leaned forward to
hongi
the captain and introduce his son. ‘Cass, this is my son Joseph.’ He turned to Joseph. ‘This is Captain Cassius Heke, boy, the best captain navigating southern waters.’

When Joseph stepped into the
hongi
he couldn’t decide whether the enormous seaman was scowling ferociously for a particular reason, or if he always looked like that. Then Heke’s face broke into a wide, gap-toothed smile that changed his countenance completely, and Joseph decided he must have been born with perpetually bellicose-looking features. He was so tall Joseph had to stand on his toes for the traditional greeting. Heke stuck out a large callused hand, took Joseph’s in a crushing grip, and said in
moderately good English, ‘Welcome to
Whiri
, boy. She a good ship, but you got to remember who she named after. Treat her good and she behave, treat her bad and she do the same to you.’

Joseph nodded solemnly. Whiri was one of the youngest in the Maori pantheon of gods, usually depicted as a red or black lizard. He embodied all things playful or naughty, and was notorious for perpetrating unwelcome tricks. The schooner
Whiri
was painted black below her water line and deep red above, with a stylised lizard as a figurehead and an intricate Maori pattern carved across her bow. In full sail with her double masts, huge expanses of white canvas sail and long, lethal-looking jib boom she was a magnificent sight, the envy of many coastal traders. Joseph gazed around the tidy deck with mounting anticipation of the adventures to come.

‘Boy?’

‘Pardon?’ replied Joseph, snatched rudely from his florid imaginings.

‘I said sit down. Captain Heke wants to ask you some questions,’ said Te Kanene irritably. It vexed him greatly when Joseph went off into one of his dreams; inattention could be a dangerous thing.

Joseph and Kepa sat on a coil of thick rope while Te Kanene leaned against the foremast. Picking up a heavy, long-handled axe, Cass turned to several rounds of wood lying on the deck and delivered a mighty blow to the closest, grunting in satisfaction when it split neatly in two. He was wearing a sleeveless woollen vest and worn trousers held up almost under his armpits with a piece of string, and Joseph observed his bulging arm and chest muscles with awe. The light rain had stopped and Cass paused to remove a grubby handkerchief from his back pocket and mop his face.

‘You think you up to this, boy?’ he asked Joseph.

‘I believe so,
e koro
,’ said Joseph. ‘I have heard a lot about it from my father and uncle.’ This was true. ‘I think I know what to expect.’ This wasn’t.

‘Is that right?’ replied Cass in a kind voice. He had talked to Te Kanene and Kepa several times about taking the boy on and it had been made very clear that Joseph was to be treated no differently from the rest of the crew. The boy would be on board to learn the seaman’s craft, but his family’s primary motive was to toughen him and give him a taste of real life before he went to what Cass privately viewed as that milksop Maori boys’ college outside Napier. Cass didn’t approve of books and pretty clothes and the teaching of European manners; he believed life taught the greatest lessons, especially when that life was not always smooth or easy.

Cass smiled to himself. The boy looked a fine lad, even if he did have more than a drop of
Pakeha
blood; if his job was to teach the boy to look after himself, then that’s what he would do. A Ngati Koata from D’Urville Island, he owed nothing to Te Kanene’s family except respect, and that he was more than willing to give. For the past fifteen years they had paid him generously to captain their most valued ships, because he was the best. He might not look or behave like a conventional sea captain but he knew the waters around New Zealand and Australia intimately, and the crews he signed on — usually Maori but occasionally from other parts of the world — were always experienced and competent. The
Whiri
was his responsibility; now this boy would be too, and he didn’t mind, providing the boy was able to pull his own weight.

‘You get seasick?’ he asked Joseph conversationally.

‘No,
e koro
. Well, not so far.’ Joseph didn’t want to say he had never been more than a mile offshore.

‘Say to me Captain, eh, or Cass. Not
e koro
. I wish to speak my English better. Only speak Maori when we have to, eh?’

Joseph nodded. He was happy conversing in either tongue.

Cass said, ‘The work is hard and you got to be hard too. No puking soon as the swell comes, no moaning about sore hands, no being feared of the rigging, and no crying to go home.’

Joseph opened his mouth in protest, mortified to think anyone might consider him likely to behave in such a manner. ‘Of course not!’ he countered angrily. ‘A man would not do any of those things!’

‘Oh, you a man, eh?’ said Cass, amused. ‘Well, I tell you something, Joseph — the sea can be a bloody bitch, and so can
Whiri
. You learn, but you learn hard. You got to have the guts for it, boy.’

At this, he picked up his axe and resumed chopping. Joseph watched while he struggled to think of a suitable reply. With his eyes following the axe’s powerful arc as it swept down over Cass’s shoulder, he saw the exact moment when it embedded itself in Cass’s lower leg with a solid, sickening thwump.

The captain let out a bloodcurdling scream, staggered backwards and spun around, the axe’s long handle protruding at a ghastly angle from his shin.

Joseph’s gorge rose as he visualised the axe head smashing through muscle and bone, and before he could stop himself he let out a small cry of horror. Next to him Kepa sat motionless, and Te Kanene seemed frozen in his position against the mast.

Joseph leapt to his feet, his boots skidding as he lunged towards Cass. ‘Stand still!’ he yelled. ‘Don’t move! I’ll pull it out!’

Cass collapsed heavily to the deck moaning with pain, the axe handle jerking violently as he writhed. Without thinking Joseph stepped forward, planted one foot between Cass’s legs, the other on the man’s knee, grasped the handle and yanked as hard as he could.

Behind him Joseph could hear the sound of choking. He turned to see Kepa doubled over, his face in his hands and his shoulders jerking spasmodically. ‘It is out now,’ Joseph assured him in a shaky voice, wanting to sit down before his legs betrayed him. ‘Father?’

Kepa dropped his hands to his knees and raised his head. He was convulsed with laughter, tears of mirth running down his cheeks.

Joseph stared at him, then turned back to Cass. The captain was sitting up, both legs stretched in front of him, giggling and
leaning forward to inspect the new hole in his trouser leg. ‘Eh?’ said Joseph in confusion as Cass glanced up, all evidence of his previous agony gone.