The Parihaka Woman

1.

The graphic muru of most of Taranaki and the raupatu without ending describe the holocaust of Taranaki history and the denigration of the founding peoples in a continuum from 1840 to the present.[17]

These words come from the conclusion of the 1996 Waitangi Tribunal report on the invasion of Parihaka and the taking of Taranaki land.

I have the same opinion, although others might think the word ‘holocaust’ to be rhetorically deployed and overstating the case. I do not consider that any comparison was intended with the mass murder of six million Jews less than 100 years later. Rather, the word describes what the survivors of any great injustice and plundering of land, treasures, bodies and souls have had to endure. More important, the crimes in Taranaki were justified for very similar reasons — the superiority of one race over another.

My ancestors had to live through some relentless attempts at their extinction. The fact that I’m here, however, is evidence that the government didn’t succeed in wiping us out. Administrations began to be dominated by peace lobbies attempting to demilitarise the situation between Maori and Pakeha. Frankly, though, it is my opinion that Pakeha escaped a return to war with Maori only by the skin of their teeth.

Why didn’t Te Whiti change his tactics and fight Bryce? All I can do is point to the prophet’s own sense of Parihaka’s future. After all, the people of the kainga had experienced only Takahanga and Akarama, and were now undergoing Tupapaku.

There was still to come, Aranga, the day of resurrection.

Did not Joseph predict seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine before the good years of the harvest?

2.

Ah well, timata ano. Let’s start again.

By gender switching, Erenora was only affirming what Te Whiti himself had authorised when he said, ‘Ko tama wa’ine, a woman is a man.’ Indeed, it was this dual strength that he had always admired in her.

Women fought beside their men during the long war. Sometimes irritated at the long discussions of men when debating the welfare of the tribe, women would often step in to provide the solution. Most times, in good humour, the men would acknowledge their caustic and peremptory tone. Hence the saying, ‘A man unties a knot, but a woman cuts it.’

I tell you, my darling Josie often acts in this way. You want to hear her when the local school committee has a meeting! Last time she looked at her watch, stood up and said, ‘Enough talk. Time to vote now.’

‘I woke early,’ Erenora wrote, ‘wanting to get away from the village before dawn. I lit a candle and dressed quickly in vest and trousers. When I looked at myself in the mirror I was heartened by my appearance; it helped that I had always looked somewhat boyish, with my broad shoulders and narrow hips. I saw, looking back at me, a young man in his mid-twenties.

‘However, there was one problem: my hair. Certainly I could roll it up and pin it tightly under a farmer’s hat, but what happened if someone knocked the hat off? I would be exposed. I realised I would have to sacrifice it before I could truly assume my new guise. Although many men had long hair, woman definitely didn’t have short hair, so to avoid any questions as to my gender, it had to go. And I would make that offer because, oh, how I loved Horitana and …

‘“Wie bitter sind der Trennung Leiden,” I muttered from memory, words from the German phrasebook. “How bitter are the sorrows of separation.”

‘I made a quick decision. “Forgive me, husband,” I said. I picked up a knife and with savage movements cut my hair off as close as I could to the scalp. Oh, and I felt a huge regret, remembering how Horitana loved to braid and wrap it, twining it with his as we made love.

‘The huge hanks fell to the floor. When I looked again at my reflection, I hid myself from my eyes. I’d never been beautiful but now …

‘Keeping my emotions in check, I finished the job with a razor. When I looked again, I saw Eruera, with unkempt hair, standing before me.

‘No time to waste on self-pity. It was time to go.’

Erenora pulled on some boots and put on her hat. She put the large knife in her belt. Then she grabbed a shoulder sack, filled it with some food and went to blow out the candle. Before she could do that, Meri and Ripeka came in. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ Ripeka asked.

‘I told you Erenora was up to something,’ Meri said.

The two sisters had been watching Erenora like hawks. They pushed her back and glared at her. ‘You think we don’t know what you’re planning to do?’ Ripeka continued. ‘Well, you’re not doing it without us! Trying to sneak away, no wonder Meri got suspicious. We’ve got husbands too, and neither of us can cope any longer with having our hopes raised whenever prisoners are returned only to have them dashed when Paora and Riki are not among them. We’re coming with you.’

Erenora was extremely sympathetic, but more to the point she was irritated that they had found her out. Not only that, however, they were all ready to go: coats on, scarves around their necks, knapsacks slung over their shoulders, and Meri had brought some poi with her. Did she think Erenora was going somewhere you could sing and dance?

‘What are we waiting for?’ they asked.

Erenora folded her arms. ‘You two will only hold me up,’ she answered, ‘and it could be dangerous.’

‘Not with a young man to look after us,’ Ripeka sniggered, ‘and don’t think I didn’t consider cutting my hair off too.’

‘That would have been a sacrifice for nothing,’ Erenora answered sarcastically, referring to Ripeka’s overflowing beauty. ‘Get out of my way, both of you.’

She was shocked when Ripeka and Meri pushed her back … again. ‘Either we go with you,’ Ripeka began, ‘or we’ll raise the alarm and you won’t have only us in tow. There are lots of other wives who would want to come with us.’

‘Are you trying to blackmail me?’

‘You’re not the only one with brains, sister.’

Erenora glared at Meri, hoping to intimidate her. ‘You, Meri … you should know better than to abandon Kawa.’

‘He’s already gone to our mother,’ Meri answered smugly.

What could Erenora do? ‘It won’t be easy or straightforward,’ she argued. ‘I was planning to go to Wellington first to follow Horitana’s trail to wherever it might lead …’

‘Well, you’ll just have to include us, and our search for Paora and Riki, in your plans,’ Ripeka interrupted her.

Oh, this was infuriating! Erenora realised that if she kept arguing, other women would indeed be attracted by the raised voices and decide to tag along. She gave up. ‘If you lag behind, either of you, don’t expect me to wait for you.’

They stepped outside the house. The darkness was shapeshifting with swirling light.

‘Let me button your coat for you,’ Meri said. ‘It’s cold.’ When she had done the task, she touched Erenora’s hair gingerly. ‘You always did look like a boy,’ she continued, ‘but your voice should be lower.’

‘Like this?’ Erenora asked, demonstrating.

Meri grinned. ‘That’s a bit better.’

At the last moment, Erenora remembered she had left the candle still glowing. She returned quickly, cupped the flame and blew it out.

Dawn rose over the horizon.

1.

Let’s look at a map of colonial New Zealand.

We know that Erenora, Ripeka and Meri left Parihaka on or around 15 November 1881. They stole past the sentries and the cordon of constabulary and soon made their way to the coast. They were all carrying food supplies, and Meri was in charge of their money.

The morning wind was blowing into their faces as they turned southward. ‘The sea,’ Erenora sighed when they reached it, ‘so far so good, sisters.’ But when they were passing Piharo’s palatial homestead, his foreman saw them and woke his master.

Piharo called for his telescope. ‘They are trying to escape,’ he shouted.

The sisters made good time to Opunake.

Erenora was hoping to pass by the redoubt and other fortified positions undetected. Aue, the morning was very bright and they had no choice but to go to ground for the day or to chance it. ‘The sooner we clear the district the better,’ Erenora decided. She waited until the changing of the guard was under way and, while the constabulary were occupied in their drills, she ordered her sisters, ‘Run for it!’

Just in time. Safe and laughing, the three women continued along the beach.

‘That’s when I heard the sound of pursuit. I thought it must be the constabulary but, no, it was Piharo’s foreman and three Maori farm workers coming after us on horseback. They were brutish men and, when they caught up with us, they belaboured us with sticks.

‘But my sisters and I had learnt a trick from the tataraki’i. We flapped our scarves at the horses and added shrill karanga, “’aere atu!” The horses reared, unseating the men. Cursing, our assailants took after us on foot. They had not reckoned, however, on my strength or that of my sisters. Although we were soon battling for our lives, we managed to fend off their attack. When they saw the flash of my butcher’s knife, they kept their distance.’

‘Ripeka,’ Erenora screamed to her sister, ‘get Meri away now.’ She lashed out at the men and, as soon as she reckoned her sisters had cleared the beach, made her own escape.

The ruffians were closing in again and, in desperation, Meri threw half of the money she was carrying at them. ‘Take it!’ she yelled. The ploy worked; the men began to fight among themselves for the coins and, by the time they had lifted their heads, the women had disappeared. ‘Let the bitches go,’ they laughed.

Safe, the women dropped to the ground. ‘I’m sorry, sisters,’ Meri said. ‘Throwing the money away like that was the only thing I could think of.’ Really, Meri was so childlike you could forgive her.

‘Don’t weep, Meri,’ Erenora consoled her. ‘Money is only money. At least we have escaped with our lives.’

‘Those men could have made vicious sport with us, Erenora.’ Meri was shivering.

‘Yes,’ Erenora nodded. ‘It’s going to be dangerous all the way to Wellington. Are you sure you both want to come with me?’

Ripeka and Meri saw right through her. ‘You can’t get rid of us that easily,’ Ripeka said, ‘and we’ll be safer with you.’

‘All right,’ Erenora answered. ‘However, Meri,’ she added grumpily, ‘I will take charge of the money.’ It wasn’t a reprimand, but the incident taught the three sisters a lesson — to avoid the Pakeha as much as they could — and if anything happened to their money again, Erenora wanted to be the one at fault.

Meanwhile, the foreman and his three Maori labourers returned to Piharo empty-handed. They may have gained some coins but Piharo saw through their fabrications and lies.

‘I had plans for the wah-hee-nee Erenora,’ he said regretfully. ‘Never mind, one of these days she’ll return.’

2.

The three sisters had never been out of Taranaki. Can you credit the courage it must have taken for them to make that terrifying journey on foot?

‘Originally I had planned to make my way to Patea where I hoped to take passage on a ship to Wellington. With my two sisters in tow, and half our money gone, that idea was no longer possible. “We’ll have to walk,” I told Ripeka and Meri.

‘“Not all the way?” Meri asked.

‘I ignored her dismay. “We’ll keep to the coast,” I continued. “We’d better stay off the roads.” Ripeka agreed, “Me ’aere tatou,” she said, “let’s go.”

‘I walked ahead, setting the pace. I was surprised at how strong and fit my sisters were. “We’ve been in training,” Ripeka said in a droll manner.

‘We soon arrived at Ohawe. Near this kainga, steeped in history, moa hunters had once pursued the fabled bird. We took shelter at the pa and then moved on to Patea. That kainga was one of greater importance to us, marking the place where our ancestral waka, Aotea, had landed in Aotearoa, bringing our forebears. The people there were kin and we rested among them for a couple of days. Like many other villagers in Taranaki, they were now living by leave of the Pakeha. Their eyes grew as wide as saucers when we told them where we were heading. “You’re going where? Who will look after you when you leave your homeland?” We may as well have been heading to the edge of the world and over.

‘From Patea we began the long walk to Putiki, on the Whanganui River. We made good progress along the beach, but I noticed that Ripeka and Meri were always looking back at our beautiful tipuna mountain, Taranaki. “Don’t do that,” I snapped at them one day, because their sentimentality was getting under my skin. “If you’re already homesick, turn back now.”

‘That was when Meri cried out, “Wait.” Tears were spilling from her eyes, oh, how they were falling. And I looked back. The mounga had diminished to a triangle between earth and sky. Any further, and we would no longer see it.

‘And Meri called a farewell to the mountain. “E tu mai ra, te mounga tapu, e tu mai ra. Farewell, sacred ancestor, farewell.” Taranaki began to shine as Meri turned to me and asked, “Will we ever see our mountain again, Erenora? Our people? And will I ever see my sweet son, Kawa?”

‘We had reached the point of no return. “How should I know?” I answered, cross.

‘Ripeka reproved me. “You should have a care for our sister,” she said. She took some albatross feathers from her knapsack and threaded three into Meri’s hair. Then she placed three in her own. “From this point onward,” she told Meri, “people will know that we are women of Parihaka and come from Taranaki. And you will see Kawa again.”’

3.

Ae, Erenora was correct: the point of no return. What lay ahead?

This should give you some indication: it’s the 1881 census from which I quoted earlier. Look at the statistics: total population of New Zealand, 533,801 and, of this number, 44,099 Maori. Our population was declining so rapidly that by the turn of the century many commentators considered we were doomed.

Now think of the impact of the Pakeha population on the landscape. Everywhere saw tumultuous change to Aotearoa. The juggernaut of European settlement had rolled over the country Maori had once possessed and Pakeha were triumphant. Wherever Erenora and her sisters looked, had been farms built on the land, and towns had sprung up like taniw’a’s teeth.

Fortunately it was now summer, with long days and warm nights. The women could sleep comfortably and supplement their provisions by foraging for shellfish or for edible roots in the bush. Sometimes Erenora was able to catch fish.

‘The moko of the Pakeha was everywhere. We crossed his many roads, hurrying over them before we could be seen. However, we were often confronted with signs on fences which proclaimed “Private Property” or “Keep Out” or “Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted”. When we came to such warnings we waited until dark before climbing through. Some of the fences were made of barbed wire, with clusters of metal thorns. One night Ripeka became badly entangled and, in freeing her, I tore some skin off my left hand. “It’s all right, sister,” I told her, but all she could say was, “Oh, look at my dress!” Meri and I rolled our eyes at our sister’s vanity.

‘As we approached Whanganui, we skirted loggers chopping down the huge stands of coastal forests. The ground quaked as the trees fell. It seemed that even Tane, God of Trees, was powerless against the might of the Pakeha. So too was Tangaroa, God of the Sea … My sisters and I were having lunch on the beach when Meri said to me in awe, “Look at all the ships, Erenora!” They were like white-winged moths fluttering at the horizon or smudging it with their smoke.

‘Suddenly there was gunfire. Crack! Crack! Crack! A Pakeha settler had decided to use us for target practice.

‘“We must move on,” I said.’

The three sisters arrived at the mouth of the Whanganui River and walked along the bank. Ahead they saw the powerful settler town of Wanganui, one of the first to be founded in Aotearoa. Already, with its busy harbour, town buildings, church spires and fine suburban houses, it dwarfed Putiki, the Maori kainga on the other side of the river.

A friendly Maori in a canoe took them across to the village, where Erenora sought out the chief Te Rangi Paetahi Mete Kingi. He had been the first member of Parliament for Western Maori, a man of pro-government leanings and a frequent visitor to Parihaka.

Mete Kingi did not recognise Erenora at first but, when she told him who she was, he greeted her warmly. ‘Why have you dressed like that? And why have you cut your hair?’ Then he added, ‘I still have much love for Taranaki and your iwi.’ They were generous words, considering how he had been humiliated at Parihaka. When Bryce’s army arrived, he tried to persuade his people to leave the settlement before it was sacked; they rebuffed him by choosing to stay.

Erenora hoped that Mete Kingi might have a tribal party travelling to Wellington. When he said, ‘No,’ she was disconsolate, unsure what to do.

‘We can’t go on without protection,’ she told her sisters. ‘It’s too dangerous.’

A week later, however, Erenora heard chanting voices, ‘Toia mai! Te waka! Ki te urunga! Te waka!’ She looked upstream and saw a large sea-going waka from Patiarero coming in to dock at the kainga’s landing.

The captain of the waka was named Aperahama. With him was a group of about forty men, women and children — and some empty seats. He was a cheeky one, looking Erenora up and down. ‘Are you a boy or a girl?’ he asked.

‘Does that matter when I have money?’ Erenora answered gruffly. ‘If you’re travelling to Wellington I will pay for passage for me and my two sisters.’

‘Our destination is Paekakariki,’ Aperahama answered. ‘From there, my people and I will trek inland to kin at Heretaunga.’

At least that will get us halfway there, Erenora thought. ‘Will you take us?’ she asked.

‘Of course,’ Aperahama answered. ‘We could do with another paddler, eh boys!’ Obviously, he had decided Erenora was male — or had he?

The following morning, despite gusty winds, the waka cleared the busy rivermouth. Oaths and curses were exchanged as the canoe jostled with Pakeha vessels also wishing to go out on the turning tide.

‘Get out of the way, you heathen bastards!’ a sailor yelled.

‘You don’t own the river yet!’ Aperahama answered. Quickly, because the currents were clashing at the rivermouth, he shouted instructions, ‘Nekeneke! Nekeneke!’

Erenora paddled for all she was worth. Her arms were aching when the waka finally reached the open sea where Aperahama cried, ‘Hoist the sail!’ He winked at Erenora. ‘Do you want to change into a girl now?’

The canoe was soon skimming before the wind along the curve of coast from Putiki to Paekakariki. Out to sea, Erenora glimpsed the South Island — the inland Kaikoura. ‘So,’ Aperahama asked her, ‘who are you? And why are you going to Wellington?’

She told him about Horitana. When she had finished he looked at her with admiration. ‘Your husband is a fortunate man. May you find him.’

Onward the waka sailed, reaching the Manawatu coast. Aperahama pointed out to Erenora the huge fires that ringed the coast with rising columns of smoke. Where the coast was not on fire, it was charred, smoking earth. ‘The Pakeha burns the bush to make way for more settlement,’ Aperahama said.

The wind changed direction. It began to blow from the land and soon the people in the waka were overwhelmed with the swirling wreaths of smoke, ashes and hot embers. Out of the dark clouds, bearing down on them, was a sailing ship making for the rivermouth at Foxton Beach. ‘Kia tupato!’ Aperahama cried. It was too late. The sailing ship scraped past but its powerful wake capsized the canoe. Clinging to it, the occupants struggled through the breakers to the beach.

Aperahama was seething but, as in all transactions with the Pakeha, he was powerless. Erenora stood with him, watching as the sailing ship unloaded its precious cargo: sheep. ‘There are almost 500,000 between Whanganui and Foxton now,’ Aperahama told her. ‘When the Pakeha takes over the land, that’s only the beginning. The towns and roads come next and then the pastures where his sheep may safely graze.’ Then he looked at her and chastised himself for falling in love with women so easily. ‘No need to pay me, Erenora. After all, I didn’t get you to your destination. You and your sisters can travel overland with us as far as Otaki, if you wish.’

Offshore lay Kapiti Island, brooding in a sea of stars. Once, the great Ngati Toa warrior chieftain Te Rauparaha had controlled the region; no longer. And everywhere, other Maori were moving back and forth along the coast, landless, finding their livelihood only on the tidal fringes between land and sea.

‘We go our separate ways now,’ Aperahama said to Erenora when they arrived at Otaki’s large Anglican settlement. It was difficult for him to leave her. He started to lead his people away, then he stopped and called, ‘Erenora! When you get to Wellington, seek shelter at Kaiwharawhara. Tell Auntie Rupi that Aperahama sent you. That will make her laugh!’

4.

‘From Otaki we negotiated the thin coastal plain with its sand dunes and river fans to Waikanae and Paekakariki. Wherever we went among Maori folk we were immediately recognised, not only by the white feathers Ripeka and Meri wore in their hair but also because of our Taranaki dialect. The news had also spread about Mr Bryce’s attack, and the fall of our kainga, and we were shown great hospitality and sympathy. And, of course, our Ngati Mutunga and Taranaki connections secured us shelter among Raukawa and Ngati Toa, the iwi of the region.

‘And then our odyssey took us completely into the throat of the Pakeha. Everywhere were Pakeha settlements, houses, roads and, also, railway tracks, as if a taniw’a had slithered across the land.

‘We arrived at the mouth of the double-armed Porirua Harbour and found shelter at the Ngati Toa marae known as Takapuwahia. It was there that my sister, Meri, made a bad decision.’

Poor Meri! Ever since she had thrown half the sisters’ money at Piharo’s henchmen, she’d been upset. She decided to make good the loss by selling the beautiful pounamu ’eitiki Riki had given her. It was a huge sacrifice; from the time Riki had pledged his troth to her, she had never taken it from her neck. She sneaked off after breakfast while Erenora and Ripeka weren’t looking and went to the local trading post to sell it.

It wasn’t until half an hour later that Erenora discovered she was missing. She was thanking Hariata, one of their hosts at Takapuwahia, for her hospitality, and then she turned to Ripeka and said, ‘Time to go. Where’s Meri?’

‘She left a message that we should meet up with her at the trading post,’ Ripeka answered.

When Hariata heard where Meri had gone, she became very agitated. ‘Arapeta’s place has a bad reputation,’ she said. ‘Nobody from here ever goes there, not since the last time.’

‘The last time what?’ Erenora screamed.

‘I’d better get some of the boys to go with you,’ Hariata answered.

The tone in her voice made Erenora so alarmed that she said to Ripeka, ‘We can’t wait. We’d better go on ahead.’

Erenora ran from Takapuwahia.

‘Wait for me!’ Ripeka cried.

Erenora kept on running. Her heart was pounding when she saw the trading post with its hitching rail outside. A few Maori youngsters were sitting on the verandah passing a whisky bottle between them. ‘Hey, what’s the hurry,’ one of them greeted her. ‘Wanna swig?’

She went up the steps two at a time and entered the store. To one side was a counter with a display of sweets for little children. To the other was a big room filled with saddles, farm equipment and sacks of grain and sugar. A doorway led to a smaller room in which there were cheap cotton dresses hanging on racks, hats and shoes. There was no one in the store. Where was Meri?

The owner came out of a back room. ‘What can I do for you, matey?’ he asked. He was large, swarthy and smiling. ‘You here to buy or do you want a woman?’

Erenora stepped up to him. ‘Are you Arapeta?’ she asked. In her fear for Meri she took up an attacking position; nobody would have thought she was anything but a young boy. ‘I’m looking for my sister. She was supposed to meet us here.’ She kept her voice low and level, pronouncing the words in an emphatic way.

Arapeta held her gaze, unblinking, still smiling. ‘I’m sorry, matey, but I’ve not had a woman in here all morning.’

At that moment, Ripeka burst into the trading post. ‘Have you found Meri?’ she asked, distraught. The expression on Arapeta’s face changed. He reached under the counter for a gun and levelled it at the two sisters. ‘Get out of here, both of you.’

Then Ripeka saw Meri’s ’eitiki around his neck. ‘What have you done with her?’ she screamed.

What was that sound …?

Erenora heard thumping from the back room. ‘Get out of my way,’ she said as she shoved past Arapeta.

‘Stop or I’ll shoot,’ he roared.

She saw him raise his rifle and sight on her. He would be well within his rights: an unknown boy, wishing to rob him …

Before Arapeta could go further, however, Hariata arrived with two Ngati Toa men, one of whom wrested the rifle from him. ‘Up to your old tricks, eh, Arapeta?’

Meri was cruelly lashed to a bed with ropes. She had a piece of wood in her mouth, tied tightly by a gag to prevent her from crying out. Her eyes were wide with fear, and even while Erenora was cutting through the ropes Meri could not stop trembling. When she was released it was to Ripeka she turned for comfort.

‘Oh, sister,’ she sobbed, ‘I thought if I sold the ’eitiki we would have enough money to pay for our passage from Wellington across Raukawa. But when I got to the trading post the owner …’

Erenora grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her hard. ‘Meri, be obedient to me. Don’t think. It only gets you into trouble.’

They helped Meri out of the back room. Hariata and her men had surrounded Arapeta. ‘A man’s got to live,’ he said, trying to talk his way out of the situation. ‘And the bitch was struggling, see, so I had to tie her up. You understand …’ He began to offer them goods from the store in exchange for letting him go.

Hariata turned to Erenora. ‘Arapeta preys on young women,’ she said. ‘If he discovers they’re travelling alone, he captures them, plies them with grog to keep them insensible and then sells them into prostitution.’ Erenora walked up to him and wrenched Meri’s pendant from his neck. ‘Call yourself a Maori,’ she hissed. She was so enraged — she could have lost Meri to him — that she slashed his face with her knife.

Arapeta yelled with shock and put his hand to the wound. When he saw the blood on his hands, his eyes widened with fear.

‘Somebody should put you out of business,’ Erenora said.

He staggered away, out of the store, crying for help.

‘There’s nothing we can do,’ Hariata answered, ‘except keep a watch on his activities. We’ve put the police on to him but he always gets off with a warning. And after all, Arapeta’s one of us, he’s getting along well … and we need the trading post. You understand?’

Oh, Erenora understood all right. It was all so futile, really.

‘You’d better go quickly now,’ Hariata said. ‘Arapeta will be sure to report you for what you’ve done to him.’

Meri was still weeping as, on Hariata’s advice, the sisters set out on the old Ngati Toa track that would take them to Wellington by way of Tawa and the Ngaio Gorge. All the way up the track, Erenora refused to give her sister comfort.

Finally, Ripeka stopped Erenora. ‘Our sister was only trying to help,’ she said.

Relenting, Erenora cuddled Meri. ‘Why don’t you sing us a little poi song?’ She smiled, unloosed the poi from Meri’s belt and put them in her hands.

Meri looked at the poi. She was wan and reluctant but then her spirits lifted at having been forgiven and she began to sing a song, tap tap tap, tap tap tap:

‘Titiro taku poi! Rere atu rere mai! Look at my poi! It swings up and it swings down! Aren’t you lucky, Meri, to have sisters to rescue you?’

The sisters crested the Ngaio Gorge. From the top they beheld the harbour below and, encircling it, the city.

1.

What were Erenora’s thoughts on seeing Wellington, Whanganui-a-Tara?

In her manuscript she wrote, ‘Such a large kainga! On first glimpsing the city I truly realised the great and overpowering might of the Pakeha. So confident were the citizens of its mana that they had built it without walls or other fortifications to protect it.’

Erenora’s recollection invokes another thought:

Remember the Gustav Doré engraving, The New Zealander from London, 1873? For English men and women, New Zealand was no longer regarded as an outpost of England at the very edge of the British Empire. Could the New Zealander in Doré’s engraving, come to look at a decaying London, have been a Wellingtonian? Was a ‘new’ London being built in the southern land among green and pleasant hills?

No wonder that, from the comfort of their armchairs, the English upper and middle classes could look with pride to Wellington, where British civilisation had begun anew.

They called it Empire City.

The three sisters arrived at Kaiwharawhara just as night was falling. The marae was crowded, and a camp of tents and makeshift huts spilt onto the beach where groups of Maori huddled around campfires.

Erenora immediately sought out Rupi, whom she found in the community kitchen. ‘My name is Eruera,’ she said.

Rupi didn’t bat an eyelid. ‘Kia ora, boy,’ she answered. ‘So that good for nothing nephew of mine, Aperahama, told you to come here, eh? It’s usually his runaway girlfriends he sends for me to take care of! Ah well, we may be full up but room can always be found for three travellers from Parihaka. Eat with us and, later, you and your sisters can sleep with me and my w’anau.’

The sisters sat down to a meal of home-baked flour bread and broth. Some people, recognising the feathers in Ripeka and Meri’s hair, came to greet them. ‘Aue, we are all refugees,’ they said. ‘Even here in Wellington, ever since the Pakeha came in 1840 with his deed of purchase, we have been gradually forced out. His is the great white tribe who owns Whanganui-a-Tara now.’

Afterwards, Rupi took the sisters to her family tent on the beach. ‘Put your blankets next to ours,’ she said to them. She introduced them to others sitting at one of the nearby fires. ‘You’, she said to Ripeka, ‘can have a place near the fire.’ She muttered angrily at some who had already taken the privileged position.

Embers from the beach fire burnt tiny holes in the dark. The evening was cold but there was no wind. The moon, shining full in the sky, was reflected in the water. Looking at the sea Erenora wondered, How will my sisters and I get across Cook Strait to Te Wai Pounamu? She began to get a headache, thinking about it. Sometimes a problem, like a knot, took a long time to untie and solve. Meanwhile there was a more pressing difficulty: seeking information at Mount Cook Prison about Horitana, Paora and Riki. The question soon attracted voluble opinions from the refugees at Rupi’s campfire.

‘Political prisoners aren’t allowed visitors,’ said one.

‘No matter how long you wait at the gates, you’ll never be allowed in,’ said another.

‘And if you get inside the prison,’ said a third, ‘how do you know the guards will let you out?’

The overall view was that the venture was hopeless. ‘Don’t listen to them,’ Rupi scoffed. ‘You should place yourself upon the mercy of one of the Maori members of Parliament.’

‘Te Wheoro?’ Erenora asked, her interest stirring.

‘He’s the member for Western Maori, isn’t he?’ Rupi answered grumpily, as if Erenora should know. ‘Go and see him tomorrow morning.’

A vigorous debate began about how difficult it was for Te Wheoro and the other Maori parliamentarians to represent Maori interests in Te Paremata o te Pakeha. Was it their own fault if, in advocating for Maori, some members believed that survival lay in Maori turning to Pakeha ways? After all, if Maori efforts to maintain tino rangatiratanga had so far failed, what other option was there?

‘Aue,’ Rupi said eventually, breaking up the korero, ‘the night is growing late. So you’ll go to see Te Wheoro?’

‘Yes,’ Erenora answered. ‘Thank you for suggesting him.’

Rupi looked around smugly. ‘Everybody around here knows that if you have a problem, Rupi will fix it! Why do you think Aperahama sent you to me?’ She roared with laughter, pleased with herself. ‘But you,’ she added, looking at Ripeka, ‘you should stay behind tomorrow.’

Ripeka coloured. ‘No. Where one goes, we all go.’

Rupi’s remark puzzled Erenora. ‘Why is the kuia so concerned for you?’ she asked Ripeka.

‘I don’t know,’ she shrugged.

The next day, Erenora had forgotten the matter. She and her sisters set off for Te Paremata o te Pakeha.

2.

‘My sisters were dazed at the marvellous sights and, although I was in a hurry to get to Parliament, Ripeka pestered me, “Please, Erenora, can we look at the shops?”

‘Of course Ripeka’s reason was so that she could look at the fashions in the windows. However, I did not think that a small detour along Lambton Quay would be amiss. “Very well,” I said.

‘Well! I had completely forgotten that Christmas was coming. The street was crowded with citizens pointing at the Christmastide displays: holly and ivy, sparkling decorations, scenes of families skating on ice or riding sleds through the snow. It was like another world, so entrancing. I thought to myself, Never will New Zealand be a place where, during our hot summers, snow will fall! Then I noticed that our presence among the festive crowd, all dressed in gay apparel, was being remarked upon. ‘‘Don’t linger,” I said to Ripeka and Meri, as they tarried too long before a department store display. Ripeka had stars in her eyes, daydreaming about a particularly lovely gown of purple silk into which she could never have fitted.

‘It wasn’t long, however, before some of the revellers took exception to our passage through their fair city. You might have thought that good will to all men would prevail but some ignorant individuals, clearly affronted by our presence, wrinkled their noses and challenged us, “What are you doing here?” And when, at the corner of Willis Street, a dowager shook her umbrella at us and said, “Be off with you!” that was the last straw.

‘I have always had a facility with the English language and, noticing that she wore a crucifix on a chain around her neck, responded to her with sharp words of my own. “Madam,” I answered, in my deep male voice, “you would do well to say three Hail Marys when you next see your priest for your uncharitable and unchristian behaviour, particularly during the holy Advent.” It was worth it to see her grow scarlet — she was in polite company — and step back to make way for us.

‘It was satisfying, too, to note that the pavement suddenly opened to us as if God had parted the Red Sea. “Let us go back now and seek the Valley of the Kings,” I said to my sisters.

‘Aue, Te Wheoro was not at Parliament. “Come back in two days’ time,” his secretary, Anaru, said. “The House will be in session and Wiremu will return to Wellington for it. When he arrives, I will let him know you seek his help to visit your men in Mount Cook Prison.”

‘Two days … and then what?

‘I made a decision. Whether Te Wheoro could help us or not, my sisters and I would still carry on to the South Island.’

3.

The following morning the three sisters again ventured into Wellington but this time they headed to the port to book passage on a vessel across Raukawa.

‘Be careful down at the docks,’ Rupi warned them. ‘They’re all robbers and cut-throats there. Watch out that you’re not overcharged for your billets of passage either. If anybody tries it on, just tell them Rupi will come and cut their balls off.’

During the night, Erenora had discovered why the old kuia had so much influence, and how she seemed to know, well, everybody. In the changing world of the Maori she was a new breed; a black marketer, her network extended not only among Maori like her nephew Aperahama — she had a lot of ‘nephews’ — and, possibly, Te Wheoro, but also among Pakeha down at the capital’s port.

‘And you, boy,’ she said to Erenora, ‘you should have known better than to encourage your sister to come with you.’ The way Rupi said ‘boy’ made Erenora wonder if the old kuia had twigged to her disguise. But after all, people escaping from the law or with secrets to hide often said they were one thing when they were really another.

The women made their way to the port through the tangles of warehouses and commercial buildings, public houses and other drinking places. Meri clung to Ripeka as drunkards called out to them, ‘You got time for a poke, girlies?’ At the dockside, it was bedlam. Cargo was being loaded or unloaded from an array of coastal ships: ‘Watch out below!’ The quays milled with shouting sailors and workers, ‘Clear the way!’ Darting among them, gentlemen shepherded their ladies, ‘Come, Millicent,’ before they were soiled by the salty language and terrible odour of sweat and labour.

Erenora found a number of offices selling billets of passage. ‘Do you have passage available to Hokitika?’ she asked.

Rupi had been correct: sharks were indeed masquerading as agents. They named exorbitant rates and then leant back, folding their arms. Even though Erenora tried to bargain, the lowest offer for deck space was still more than she and her sisters could afford unless … Well, Erenora ignored all the lewd suggestions made to Ripeka and Meri about alternative ways of paying to cross the strait. ‘All your girlies would need to do’, one scrawny ship’s agent sniggered, ‘would be to make the trip on their backs.’

Despondent, the sisters returned to Kaiwharawhara where Erenora mulled over the problem.

‘The art of forbearance, Erenora,’ Ripeka reminded her.

‘I should have come by myself,’ Erenora muttered. ‘If no solution offers itself, I’ll go on alone and send you and Meri back to Parihaka. It’s the only way.’

Ripeka showed some spirit. ‘You reckon?’ she flared. ‘Not without us you don’t.’

When the time came to set off again for Parliament, however, Erenora saw a small schooner moored at a makeshift jetty off Kaiwharawhara.

‘Quick, boy,’ said Rupi, ‘some pounamu hunters have just arrived from Auckland where they’ve been trading. They’re on their way back home to the South Island for Christmas. So I’ve spoken to Whai, their chief, and he says you and your sisters could cross over Raukawa with them.’

Oh, that was such lucky news! The sisters immediately went down to the schooner, the Arikinui, and presented themselves to Whai. He had strong links with Taranaki. ‘The old blackmailer tells me you need a passage across the strait. Well, if I don’t take you, she’ll spill the beans on me! As long as you’re ready to leave tonight I’ll take you as far as Arahura.’

Tonight? ‘Let’s hope Te Wheoro can help us by then,’ Erenora said to her sisters as, without hesitation, she leapt at the offer. ‘We’ll be ready,’ she answered. Arahura was just a few miles short of Hokitika.

‘Okay then,’ Whai continued. ‘After all, if I don’t help you the gods could get angry. Wasn’t it a woman from the North Island whom my ancestor Poutini abducted and turned into pounamu? If that hadn’t happened I might not have a livelihood today, eh?’

The sisters hastened to Parliament where they were welcomed again by Te Wheoro’s secretary, who ushered them through the corridors to the public gallery.

‘Right now, the House is debating the findings of the Confiscated Lands Inquiry,’ Anaru explained. ‘Te Wheoro and other Maori members have taken the floor to ask why Te Whiti, Tohu and their men are still being held without trial. Wiremu will see you once the debate is over.’

Anaru opened the door to the gallery and immediately the sound spilled over them. It was the sound of rage, the sound of hostility, the sound of people baying for blood. The object of their ire was a short, heavy-set man, who had taken the floor. Wiremu Maipapa Te Wheoro was speaking in Maori, and the other members of the House were roaring their displeasure at his translated words.

‘Behold, Daniel in the lion’s den,’ Anaru said to Erenora.

The roaring of the lions was so great that the walls shook from it. Te Wheoro happened to look at the public gallery and, seeing three figures, two of whom wore white feathers in their hair, inclined his head to them. Yes, pilgrims of Parihaka, witness my humiliation that day after day I must come here with my fellow Maori members to be eaten alive.

Despite the hostile debate, Te Wheoro was in a buoyant mood when the session ended.

‘The lions were hungry today,’ Anaru said to him as he made the introductions.

Te Wheoro laughed. ‘Perhaps they’ll eat me tomorrow,’ he jested. He turned to Erenora. ‘Are you the boy and his sisters who want to go to Mount Cook Prison?’

‘Yes,’ Erenora answered. ‘If there’s any way you can help us …’

Te Wheoro’s eyes twinkled. ‘Although, in the Parliament, I haven’t yet been successful in overturning the laws inflicted on your two prophets, some compensation can be taken from smaller victories. Come! A carriage is waiting to take us to the prison where my good and faithful servant Anaru has made arrangements with the superintendent to admit us.’

‘You will do that for us?’ Ripeka asked, shedding tears of gratitude. ‘And you are coming too?’ Meri added, kissing his hands.

‘One lion’s den is like another,’ Te Wheoro answered in good humour, ‘and the lions of Mount Cook perhaps do not roar as loudly as the ones here in Te Paremata o te Pakeha.’

4.

‘It was three days before Christmas, 1881. The weather had turned cloudy and cold. The Wellington streets were packed with horse-drawn vehicles of all kinds; men on horseback squeezed through the gaps. Te Wheoro’s driver, oblivious of the shouted oaths, navigated expertly through the traffic, sometimes with only inches to spare between his vehicle and the next.

‘“Bob’s showing off for the country constituents,” Anaru whispered to Te Wheoro.

‘As the carriage turned up Taranaki Street, Te Wheoro pointed out a rise ahead. “Ah, we are approaching Pukeahu,” he said. Mount Cook Prison crouched on the top of the small mounga. I caught glimpses of an encircling palisade topped with viewing platforms and sentry boxes. Guards holding rifles patrolled the walls.

‘My sisters became nervous. In an attempt to calm them, Anaru engaged them in conversation. “Did you know,” he began, “that the palisade was built by the very first contingent of prisoners from Parihaka? When they arrived they were put to work converting the original military barracks into the prison. They repaired and altered the buildings, put in the gas and water fittings, gravelled the yard and built the prisoners’ wing — and then they moved into it.”

‘The carriage clattered up to the main gateway, interrupting him.

‘“Ah, here we are,” Te Wheoro said. He showed our credentials to the guard, and we were admitted. As Bob drove through, we saw that another guard was waiting at the steps to the administration block. He gave a snappy salute as we stopped. “Rank has its privileges,” Te Wheoro continued.

‘My sisters clung to me as we were led to the office of the prison superintendent. On the walls of the corridor were sketches of similar prisons in Tasmania and Norfolk Island. One showed a prison at night, its outer walls lit up and guards on constant patrol.

‘“Let me speak for you,” Te Wheoro said. It was fortunate that he did so because the prison superintendent was not helpful. No sooner had Te Wheoro introduced himself than that officious man responded by saying, “While I am forced to entertain your presence, I am not required to assist your enquiries.”

‘Te Wheoro almost lost his temper, but he maintained admirable self-control. “Sir, I quite understand your position. I am here on behalf of three of my constituents. Won’t you help them? All they request is that you consult the manifest for the month of August 1879 …”

‘“That information is classified.”

‘“… and advise them if the names of three particular prisoners appear on it. The men were transported here with the original 170 sent from Parihaka. They were not, however, among those who returned and my constituents understand they may have been transferred instead to prisons in the South Island. Once they know that destination they will thank you and be on their way.”

‘“I repeat,” the superintendent began again, “that that information is …”

‘At his words, Meri gave a sob and, well, my sister had her uses: she could melt a heart of stone, even if it did belong to a prison superintendent. After a while, he coughed. “I will make an exception to the rules in this case,” he said, and reluctantly called one of his men to bring him the relevant records.

‘“The names of the fanatics?” he asked us. Fanatics? We gave him Horitana’s, Riki’s and Paora’s names. He thumbed through the manifest. “Yes, we have their names entered in the register among the misguided men who were sent here.”

‘I could have hit him for his abusive words. “This prison follows the Pentonville model,” he continued, “and therefore, for infractions, felons are subjected to the normal punishments. From the very beginning the fanatics you refer to were sullen, morose, refused to work and were disobedient. The ones named Riki and Paora were punished for insubordinate behaviour and the third, Horitana, was placed for seven days in isolation and solitary confinement.”

‘My heart lurched with fear. “The first two men were detained from transportation with their fellow fanatics to the South Island because they were undergoing punishment. The same applies for their misguided leader, Horitana. Upon completion of their sentences, however, the fanatic named Paora was conveyed to Hokitika …”

‘“Those prisoners have already returned to Parihaka,” Ripeka interrupted.

‘The superintendent ignored her. “… and the fanatic named Riki was sent to Christchurch.”

‘“What was the date of their release?” Te Wheoro asked.

‘“On 14 August, at 6.15 a.m., the fanatics were presented for transfer while the streets were still empty, so as not to disturb the harmony enjoyed by the citizens of our peaceful city.”

‘“What of the prisoner Horitana?” I asked.

‘The superintendent thumbed through the register. An expression of puzzlement appeared briefly on his face. “His name appears to have been erased. There’s no indication of his movements. Certainly, he’s no longer imprisoned at Mount Cook.”

‘Te Wheoro asked the question I dared not ask. “Is it possible that the prisoner Horitana died in solitary confinement?”

‘My heart skipped a beat as the superintendent turned the pages. Finally, he shook his head, “No, I have no record of his death. I do have the name of Tami Raiha, however. He was so ill he could not be sent with the others.”’

5.

Te Wheoro turned to Erenora. While the prison superintendent looked on, he whispered to her, ‘Young man, I think we have the information you and your sisters seek, yes?’

Erenora nodded. She felt drained and numb. Oh husband, where are you?

‘So we are finished here?’ Te Wheoro asked again.

‘Yes,’ she answered. She could not help the bitterness that flooded into her words. ‘Let’s get out of here and away from this disgusting man.’

Te Wheoro was more polite. ‘I thank you, sir,’ he said to the prison superintendent, ‘for your assistance.’

They were just about to leave — Te Wheoro, Anaru, Erenora and her sisters — when the superintendent coughed for attention. ‘We don’t have many members of Parliament visiting us,’ he began. ‘Perhaps you might like to make an inspection of the fanatics so as to reassure your colleagues that they are well cared for by Her Majesty’s prison officials?’

Te Wheoro looked at Erenora: this was manna from Heaven. ‘Of course,’ he answered.

The superintendent led them all toward the prisoners’ wing. ‘The fanatics are all at work,’ he began, ‘in our brickyard. Thus they serve a useful purpose during their confinement by making bricks to erect the proud edifices of our country’s government. The current batch is destined for the Wellington courthouse.’

Even before they reached them, Erenora could hear the men singing:

‘Fly, our thoughts, on golden wings! Alight upon the slopes of Taranaki Mountain, the slopes and hills where the soft and sweet breezes blow warmly over Parihaka! Oh, our beloved people! Our beloved country!’

Suddenly, there they were, toiling in the yard. Erenora’s heart went out to them. Fanatics they were not, but fine and good men. Some were filling the moulds with clay. Others stooped at the kilns, stoking the fires. Even more were stacking bricks onto sledges.

All the prisoners were sweating. They wore the familiar prison garments with their broad arrows. Most looked in good health but a few were coughing and clearly ill from their incarceration. Ripeka and Meri recognised some of them and, before they could be stopped, called out to them, ‘E nga ’oa, tena koutou! Titiro ki nga roimata o o koutou tua’ine o Parihaka!’

‘No,’ the prison superintendent cried, alarmed, ‘don’t do that.’

It was too late. ‘Women of Parihaka, here?’ the prisoners cried. Flinging down their tools, leaving the kilns, they rushed to the bars behind which Ripeka and Meri were standing and pushed their hands through the gaps to touch them. Tears flowed down their gaunt faces.

‘How are our wives? Our children? Tell them that we think of them and yearn to be with them.’

Whistles were sounding. Prison guards rushed toward the men. ‘Back! Back, fanatics! Get back!’

One of the men Erenora knew well. It was Ruakere and, despite her disguise, he recognised her. ‘Erenora! Wait!’ His eyes were wide with shock and desperation.

Te Wheoro and Anaru looked at Erenora, puzzled. ‘You are a woman?’ Te Wheoro asked.

She nodded, then turned her attention back to Ruakere. She saw him reach into his shirt pocket and try to thrust something through the bars to her. Too late — he was brutally herded away with the others. ‘No! Please, I …’

All too soon the brief encounter was over.

6.

The three sisters returned with Te Wheoro to Parliament.

‘What will you do now?’ he asked Erenora. He and Anaru had accepted with equanimity her confession that she was not a boy.

‘My sisters and I will go on to Te Wai Pounamu,’ she answered. ‘We came to find our husbands and we will not rest until we do.’ She thanked him for his assistance. ‘Keep fighting the lions,’ she said.

She turned to Anaru. ‘I will never forget your kindness.’

They hastened back to Kaiwharawhara. Had Whai and the greenstone hunters left without them? With relief Erenora saw that the Arikinui was at the jetty.

‘You’re just in time,’ Whai called.

There was hardly a moment to say goodbye to Rupi and others gathered on the beach. Rupi patted Ripeka’s stomach, gave her a kiss and Erenora and Meri a stern look. ‘Look after your sister,’ she said.

The schooner was casting off when Erenora heard a shout. Who was that? It was Te Wheoro’s carriage, and Bob the coachman was still showing off his skills. He drove straight through the crowd and right up to the jetty. Rupi had to leap to one side and into the water. When she got up, she gave Bob an earful, ‘A new dress is going to cost you a pretty penny.’

Anaru jumped out of the carriage and ran along the jetty. ‘Erenora! Wait!’ He was just fast enough to thrust something into her hands; any later and it would have fallen into the sea. ‘A letter, Erenora,’ Anaru panted, ‘under the parliamentary crest, to whomever it may concern. Who knows, it might come in handy.’

The wind belled the sails and the Arikinui surged away.

‘And I have a message.’ Anaru was panicking. ‘From Ruakere, who recognised you in Mount Cook Prison. It’s about your husband.’

Seagulls were clattering in the air. ‘Tell me!’ Erenora shouted.

Anaru cupped his hands and his voice came across the water, pursuing the schooner, dipping on white wings, quickly, quickly, and then soaring above her head, dropping its message. ‘Piharo came in pursuit of your husband,’ he yelled. ‘It was on Piharo’s order that Horitana was put in leg irons and chains and placed in solitary confinement.’

He threw a second object across the waves. It came tumbling through the sky and clattered on the deck. Erenora ran to pick it up. It was a small figurine, about 8 inches long, of a Maori warrior; Ruakere must have whittled it in his cell. But around the warrior’s head Ruakere had wrapped a shard of tin. As Erenora took a closer look, the tin silvered in the sun.

At the base of the carving, Ruakere had carved Horitana’s name, followed by a phrase that Erenora had never seen before:

Te tangata mokomokai.

1.

From the calm of Wellington Harbour, the Arikinui approached the gap between the heads. Beyond, the southerly was whipping the water and white-tipping the waves. The swell deepened and, with Whai at the tiller judging the contrary currents, the schooner sailed out into the open sea. The Arikinui hesitated, then her canvas cracked and she leapt into Cook Strait.

‘She’s keen to get home,’ Whai called to Erenora. ‘We’ve been away a long time.’

Erenora nodded and smiled at him. The wind was in her face. Ahead were the cloud-encircled mountains of Te Wai Pounamu, the South Island. She was thrilled, not a little afraid, and said a quiet prayer of safekeeping. How undreamed of — to leave one island of Aotearoa for the other. It defied all her expectations to have made it this far.

In her left hand Erenora still clutched the wooden figurine thrown to her by Anaru. For a moment, she grew afraid of it: the carved indentations, the rough whittled surface and, especially, the suffocating tin enclosing the head. And the name Ruakere had given it, te tangata mokomokai, what did it mean …?

She nicked her finger on the tin and blood welled from it. Suddenly she felt nauseous, as if the figurine was a devil-doll. Something horrifying had happened to Horitana. If she cast the effigy into the sea, perhaps whatever malevolent spell or incantation that had been cast over him would be undone.

‘Erenora?’ Meri’s voice interrupted her.

‘I’m so afraid, Meri. Oh, I’m so frightened.’

The sky was turning crimson, and night began to fall fast.

A few moments later, Ripeka joined Erenora and Meri. ‘There’s something I have to tell you both,’ she began. She was shivering with cold.

Meri grabbed her in her arms and held her tight. ‘No, Ripeka, don’t say it …’

‘If you haven’t already guessed,’ she began, ‘I am with child.’

Oh, and the glowing sun was falling quickly to the west, setting fire to the horizon.

‘We thought as much,’ Erenora said after a while. ‘You’ve kept your morning sickness well hidden but Rupi’s eyes unmasked you.’

‘Of course the child isn’t Paora’s,’ Ripeka continued. ‘When I was raped at Parihaka, one of those bastards planted his seed in me. Ever since, I have felt it growing like an unbidden vine in my womb. How I have wished I could rip the plant out and watch it shrivel and die.’ She burst into sobs. ‘What am I going to say to Paora?’

‘He’ll forgive you,’ Meri said, willing the words to be true. ‘He’ll know it wasn’t your fault.’

Erenora remained silent but, in her head, a selfish thought took root. If I am barren, perhaps I can ask Ripeka to give the child to me and Horitana to bring up. Wouldn’t that make it easier for Ripeka and Paora? They wouldn’t want the child as a constant reminder of what had happened to Ripeka, would they? Almost immediately she had the thought, however, Erenora felt ashamed.

‘Being with child is supposed to be a woman’s crowning joy,’ Ripeka continued, ‘but there is no joy in my heart. I will place myself on Paora’s mercy.’

‘You’ll have us with you when you tell him,’ Erenora said, kissing Ripeka on her cold cheek.

It was the morning of Christmas Eve when the schooner reached Arahura.

As they were disembarking, Meri asked Erenora, ‘Would you really have sent me and Ripeka back to Parihaka?’

‘Yes,’ Erenora answered. ‘I would have purchased a single ticket for myself on a vessel sailing across Raukawa.’ She sighed melodramatically. ‘Oh, why did Whai and his schooner have to show up?’

Meri gave a wide grin. ‘See?’ she said to Ripeka. ‘Our sister is all blow and no go.’ They began to wrap themselves up against the cold, hoisted their shoulder sacks and prepared for the walk to Hokitika.

Whai was reluctant to let them leave. ‘Are you sure you won’t come with us to our kainga for Kirihimete?’ Already his men were waiting for him to join them on the last few miles to their families. ‘Hokitika will be filled with miners wanting a good time. Not a safe place for women.’

‘Don’t worry about us,’ Erenora assured him. ‘Go to your loved ones.’ As they separated, she made a vow to herself. From now on, she would not let her disguise slip again, the risk was too great. She would be Eruera.

The sisters turned south along the beach. How majestic the mountains were. They rose into the heavens like poutama, great staircases, foaming with snow.

Bowing before them, Meri raised her voice in karanga. ‘E nga mounga tapu,’ she called in the dawn light, ‘oh, sacred mountains, we bring you greetings from your brother mounga, Taranaki.’ In her usual simple, affecting manner she attempted to clear a safe passage for the three sisters.

Again, Erenora set the pace. Silently, Ripeka and Meri followed her. And it came to Erenora that she loved her sisters, and that she was the least among them. How would she be able to protect Ripeka, who was with child now, and Meri, who had a son waiting for her at Parihaka? She looked up at the towering mountains and the blue void beyond.

‘If one of us is to die, let it be me,’ she prayed.

2.

At this point, the question needs to be asked:

How many men from Taranaki were sent to the South Island?

Let me answer by dealing, first, with those men forcibly removed from Parihaka. Think of it: estimates of the permanent male population of Parihaka range between 600 and 800, but nobody knows for sure. Put that figure against the one for the numbers initially exiled to the South Island, over 420 Maori ploughmen in 1879 and a further 216 fencers in July 1880, and, well, you are already above the lower male number.

Then, however, you have to add the prisoners who continued to be exiled; some of those would have been supporters from Waikato and other tribes who were staying at Parihaka. Whichever way you cut it, Parihaka was sadly reduced. When you think of the implications for the future, the birth statistics must have taken a huge dip. How could the settlement survive?

Now, what of the other men who had begun to be sent to the South Island during Titokowaru’s War ten years before the fall of Parihaka?

On this point, let me draw your attention to the excellent monograph by my friend Maarire Goodall. Speaking of Dunedin in particular, Goodall cites the case of 74 men from South Taranaki — supporters of Titokowaru — who arrived in Dunedin on the Rangatira, along with 71 guards, on Saturday 6 November 1869:

A huge crowd thronged the wharf and lined the streets as the Maoris were taken to the prison, on its present site by the foot of Stuart Street. Some were fine, stalwart fellows, reporters noted; others, elderly and frail, able to walk only slowly. All were downcast. On reaching the gaol, they were given prison garb in exchange for their blankets and other clothes; and, the Otago Daily Times assured its readers, ‘presented a much more comfortable appearance’. But within a few minutes of entering his cell, the first prisoner had died — Waiata, an elderly man serving a three-year term.[18]

The prisoners were from Pakakohe, of Ngati Ruanui. Sometimes they were marshalled from Dunedin Gaol or from work at Andersons Bay — a mile or so away — at the inlet on the neck of the Otago Peninsula. Some reports state that they were held permanently in the caves at the end of Portsmouth Drive, but this is incorrect: it has been deduced that the three caves concerned were too small and probably used as offices or for storing equipment; a pole in one of the caves may have been used for chaining a prisoner for some infraction.

They worked with Pakeha convicts on constructing the causeway. Eighteen either pined away or succumbed to tubercular or bronchial ailments, before all who remained were formally released on 12 March 1872. In gratitude for the assistance of local Dunedin Maori, those who survived to return to the Taranaki changed their name to Ngati Otakou.

No women and children served with the Pakakohe prisoners.

It is likely that, despite the privations of their initial gaoling, two and possibly more of these Pakakohe men returned again as prisoners. This time, they came back as ploughmen of Parihaka. So, every gaol a Bastille? I know I’m being a Rottweiler; you can blame the mood I’m in.

How many Taranaki men kua ngaro ki Te Po? What was the number exiled to Te Wai Pounamu? Would a thousand be too high? And what about the number not sent to the South Island but gaoled in New Plymouth or other North Island prisons? The statistics are sketchy. We just don’t know.

Perhaps some university historian, with a grant behind him or more funds than I can muster, might give some attention to these questions.

And now, treading the same Trail of Tears, came three Taranaki women.

3.

No wonder Whai was worried about Erenora and her sisters.

The road to Hokitika was crowded with young miners, riding horses or driving carts and raising dust as they raced into town. They threatened to run the women down in their haste, their thoughts on alcohol. Even on the outskirts of the town rowdy miners had already begun to celebrate, though not the birth of the Christ child; rather, they were intent on drinking themselves into a stupor.

‘Hey, boy,’ a voice shouted. ‘Have you lost your senses? Get those women off the street immediately.’ The voice belonged to the wispy-haired and nervous keeper of a dry goods store. ‘The miners may be mothers’ sons but come tonight they’ll be an unruly mob.’

‘Thank you for the warning, sir,’ Erenora said.

Ripeka whispered to her, ‘We’d better stock up while we can.’

‘You’ll be my last customers of the day,’ the storekeeper said.

As he calculated the amount owing, Erenora asked, ‘Perhaps you could recommend a safe route for us? We’re seeking the gaol.’

‘You’ll be after Seaview Terrace on Misery Hill,’ he answered, giving her a curious look. ‘But I don’t think they have any Maoris left inside.’ He ushered Erenora and her sisters out of the store, closed and padlocked the doors and then tested the windows again to make sure they were shut.

‘Some of the prisoners may have been sent to another gaol in the South Island,’ Ripeka told him. ‘We’d like to know where.’

The store owner was on the point of venturing another possibility to Erenora but was warned by her look, No, don’t say it.

‘Well, good day to you then,’ he said, ‘and mark my words, boy, this isn’t a good time for womenfolk to be about.’

‘We followed the storekeeper’s directions and were relieved to escape the township. The darkness was falling quickly and the wind was chill from the sea when we came upon the aptly named Misery Hill. The prison stood in a large clearing overlooking the ocean.

‘Ripeka’s early eagerness became filled with hesitation. “What if Paora doesn’t forgive me?” she asked.

‘As we approached the gaol, we saw a couple just in front of us. They were walking slowly, the old man supporting his wife, and as we drew abreast I lowered my voice and greeted them. “Good day to you,” I said. They were a working-class couple, but wearing their best clothes. The old man was tall and barrel-chested; he looked as if could have been a prize fighter in his youth. “The same to you and your women,” he answered, doffing his cap. His voice had an Irish lilt.

‘“Oh, Seamus,” the woman said. She had suddenly become affrighted by the prison: the entire circling wall, maybe 20 feet in height; the guard looking darkly down from the watch-platform, taking in our approach. Through the main entrance, I glimpsed an oblong-shaped building within. “Halt where you are,” the guard ordered, his rifle at the ready. “The prison’s closed to all visitors.”

‘“We were hoping to see our son,” the old man said.

‘“And I my husband,” Ripeka added.

‘“They’re already locked in their cells,” the guard answered. “You must come back in the morning when visitors are allowed to bring Christmas cheer to their imprisoned men.”

‘The elderly couple were disappointed, especially the woman, who dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. “We can wait one more day, dear,” her husband comforted her. He introduced himself as Seamus Donovan, explaining he had come from Kumara with his wife to see their only son, Charlie, imprisoned for robbery and assault.

‘“We met some of your Maori people,” Mrs Donovan said, “when we came to see our Charlie, almost a year ago now. Charlie so admired them. He told us they were kept separate in a day room where they could be more easily supervised. They were always at their prayers and their hymns, always singing.”

‘Yes, I thought, their voices would have called to God:

‘“Great Lord, you who flies on the wings of the wind, who unleashes the thunderbolt from the storming clouds, if it be thy will release us from those who keep us hostage! Return us, O Lord, to our iwi …”

‘Mr Donovan enquired where we were staying for the night.

‘“We’ve made no arrangements,” I answered. To be frank, I hadn’t given it a thought.

‘“You’d best return to town with us, then,” he said kindly. “The hotel Mrs Donovan and I are staying at has small but clean rooms and, who knows, there could be a vacancy. It might also be advisable, as far as the ladies are concerned, for you and me to combine forces. There’s safety in numbers.”

‘I soon realised the wisdom of Mr Donovan’s words. As we approached the main street of the town, I saw loud, drunken crowds moving through the pools of gas lighting from one hotel to the next.

‘“I hope you’re handy at fisticuffs,” Mr Donovan said. “I will lead, the women will follow and you bring up the rear.” I nodded but, even so, said to my sisters, “Keep your heads down and, Ripeka, hold tight to Meri and don’t let her go.” We began to shove through the groups of weaving miners. The commotion was extraordinary and the stench of vomit and sweat overpowering. I saw one young man open his buttons and piss where he was standing. Another staggered out of a hotel, downed his trousers and shat on the street.

‘Meri raised her head. “No, Meri!” I cried. She had seen a young Maori woman, stupefied by liquor, being forced by her pimp to service men in an alley. “That could have been me,” she whimpered.

‘A voice rang out, “Hey, lads, more Maori whores!” Meri had been seen and young miners were soon lurching into my sisters. Mr Donovan and I began fighting for our women’s lives. “Keep away,” I shouted, punching right, left and centre. Mrs Donovan, Ripeka and Meri were also lashing out with their fingers and kicking with their feet. Mr Donovan was forging through the crowd, roaring, “Keep up, Mrs Donovan! Bring the ladies with you!” Together we gained the relative safety of the hotel. Did I say relative? The din inside was extraordinary and frightening. Already made almost insensible by liquor, some of the miners were taking any excuse to fight each other.

‘And after all that, the hotelier told us there wasn’t a room to be had. Mr Donovan said, “Look, boy, Mrs Donovan and I could share our room with you and your sisters. The price is already exorbitant and you’d be doing us a service by assisting to pay for it. Does that sound reasonable to you?”

‘I nodded quickly, and we battled our way through the crowd and up the stairs. The Donovans’ room was indeed small with a large bed that the women could share. There was no lock on the door. “Now you know why I suggested we combine forces,” Mr Donovan said. Throughout the night, we kept guard shoulder to shoulder in the corridor, shoving away the drunks and louts who tried to get in. Sometimes I showed my knife as a threat. Both Mr Donovan and I were glad when, in the early morning, the hotel began to quieten down.

‘I asked him about his son, Charlie. “We came all the way from County Cork,” he said, “hoping to make a good future in Maoriland. We were gold mining but our claim was taken from us by a crooked land agent. When our darling boy went to get our papers back, his temper got the better of him and, well, one thing led to another, and he was charged with robbery and assault. Mrs Donovan and I know what it is to have your family gaoled wrongfully. She’s taken Charlie’s imprisonment very hard.”’

4.

‘The next morning, Christmas Day, we made a feast of our kai and the Donovans’ food. On looking at the spread, Mr Donovan said, “To be sure, it is a banquet fit for royalty!”

‘“Let’s have a toast,” Mrs Donovan said. She was becoming sentimental.

‘Mr Donovan agreed, and measured out small nips from his flask of whiskey. “To family, friends and children,” he said.

‘We raised our glasses, and both Mrs Donovan and Meri burst into tears thinking of their sons.’

Around eight, the sisters returned with the Donovans to Hokitika Gaol. The morning was bright, the sky cleanly rinsed. A small number of other visitors, mostly women, were also on the road to Misery Hill. ‘Merry Christmas to you,’ they greeted each other. One wife had bravely brought her two children, who skipped along, eager to see their father.

The sisters may have been Maori and the other families the relatives of felons, but on that bright morning all celebrated their common humanity and fellowship. Erenora tried to put to rest her fears about what might lie ahead. Mr Donovan, however, was concerned about Ripeka’s expectations. He whispered to Erenora, ‘I do hope you have good news today.’

Shortly afterwards, they arrived at the prison. This was the moment all had been waiting for, but when the guard finally unlocked the gates, the sisters stepped back. And even though Ripeka’s fingers dug into Erenora’s arm, painfully so, and she said, ‘I am dying of love to see my husband’, she would not go through until all the other families were admitted.

‘Come now,’ Erenora said. She told the guard that she would like a word with the Hokitika gaoler.

‘That’s Mr O’Brien you’ll be wanting,’ he answered. As he took the sisters to the gaoler’s office, Erenora saw her fellow visitors being reunited with their husbands. The children rushed to their father. Mrs Donovan clung to a fine-looking curly-headed boy.

‘Mam! Oh, Mam!’ he cried.

Mr O’Brien was in a relaxed mood, having eaten a good Christmas breakfast. He was not, thank goodness, as arrogant and abusive as the Mount Cook superintendent. Instead, to Erenora’s relief, he was a man who had dealt fairly with the Parihaka prisoners during their stay.

‘They discharged themselves of their sentences to hard labour,’ Mr O’Brien said, ‘and they worked very hard indeed around Hokitika town.’ He shook Erenora’s hand with vigour and nodded to Ripeka and Meri. ‘So you have come from Parihaka?’ he asked. ‘Is it true that Te Whiti had prophesied the prisoners here would be released when the moon turned red?’ He chuckled, shaking his head with wry amazement. ‘Came an eclipse of the moon and the next day, sure enough, I received the order that they were to be discharged! Did they arrive home safely?’

‘Yes,’ Erenora answered, ‘but two men did not.’

‘Two?’ A shadow flickered over Mr O’Brien’s face.

‘Have you ever had a man here named Horitana?’ Erenora asked, her heart beating fast.

‘No, I would remember that name.’ Erenora closed her eyes with relief.

‘What about my husband?’ Ripeka asked. ‘His name was Paora. Perhaps he was transferred to another gaol?’

Mr O’Brien’s eyes fell and he would not meet her gaze. ‘That name,’ he began, ‘I do remember …’

5.

Truth to tell, Erenora had long had a premonition about Paora, but that did not make the news of his death any easier to bear. Immediately, Ripeka began to wail a tangi for him. ‘Aue, aue te tane e, kua ngaro ki te Po.’

Mr and Mrs Donovan came to offer comfort. ‘To come all this way, dear,’ Mrs Donovan said to Ripeka, ‘with so much hope in your heart …’

Mr Donovan took Erenora aside. ‘Charlie told us that some of the Maoris died during the winter,’ he said, ‘I couldn’t bear to tell you.’

‘Could you tell me where my sister’s husband is buried?’ Erenora asked Mr O’Brien.

All the way to the cemetery, Ripeka couldn’t stop crying. The sun was hot through the trees when the sisters entered the gateway looking for Paora’s grave. They saw in the distance, slightly apart, the place where Mr O’Brien had told them Paora was resting.

Ripeka, filled with grief, stumbled forward, crying to Paora, ‘Aue, husband, aue.’ When she reached the mound of earth, she fell to the ground. ‘You lie only six feet beneath me, and yet you are so far away.’ Some kind soul had raised a white wooden cross. On it were inscribed the words:

Ripeka was in great distress, scraping some of the dirt into her hands and sprinkling it over her head. ‘Te mamae … aue te mamae …’

Meanwhile, what was Meri up to? She had wandered through the trees, picking small twigs of greenery. When she returned, she began to weave them into funeral chaplets. She placed one on Ripeka’s head, another on Erenora’s and the third on her own.

‘We will stay here for three days,’ she said. ‘And we will mourn Paora just as we would have done if he had died in Parihaka.’

Meri always surprised with her simplicity and sense of rightness.

And so began Erenora and her sisters’ vigil at the graveyard.

Mr and Mrs Donovan came to say farewell before returning to Kumara. ‘We’ll bide a little time with you,’ Mrs Donovan said, ‘for surely the Irish and the Maoris are the same under the skin.’

After two hours, Mr Donovan coughed that it was time to go. ‘You’re a good lad, Eruera,’ he said as he shook Erenora’s hand. ‘Look after your sisters.’

That evening the sisters wrapped themselves in shawls and slept in the cemetery. The sexton and gravedigger saw them the following morning, but did not disturb their grief. During that day, whenever people from Hokitika came to visit their own loved ones, they were greeted by Meri.

‘’aere mai e te manu’iri e!’ she called. ‘Come and mourn with us.’

Although the Pakeha were puzzled, not knowing Maori custom, they responded by bowing their heads and shaking hands. Some of the men, at the prodding of their womenfolk, left gold coins. ‘After all, it is the Christmastide.’

The local vicar was soon told about the women and their guardian. He went to see Mr O’Brien. ‘What shall I do?’

‘I have already informed the mayor,’ Mr O’Brien answered. ‘Leave the boy and his sisters to their mourning. They will move on in due course.’

For the second night, the sisters slept in the cemetery, huddling for warmth in the blankets the vicar had brought them. But by the afternoon of the third day, Ripeka had not come to any peace with herself. She could not let Paora go.

‘What are we to do?’ Meri asked Erenora, concerned. ‘We must go on to Christchurch. The miners are beginning to congregate for New Year. We should get out of Hokitika as soon as we can.’

Ripeka overheard her. ‘Then leave me here,’ she said to Erenora. Her grief had made her bitter. ‘You never wanted me to come in the first place, sister, and I will be one less for you to worry about.’

‘Ripeka, stop this,’ Erenora said.

‘And thank God that Paora is dead, Erenora, because this way he won’t know the shame of my bearing a child of a rape … I’m already soiled goods, aren’t I.’

‘No, Ripeka,’ Erenora said.

Ripeka’s hysteria continued to mount. ‘Yes, go on without me. Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted? Let me bear my devil’s child where nobody can see it … and, don’t worry, I’ll be able to look after myself … there’ll be other men who can have me if they want to … and when you get back to Parihaka tell them all that I died, Erenora, tell them that, like our ancestor, Poutini turned me into pounamu … I don’t care any more … I don’t care …’

Erenora slapped her, a stinging blow. ‘But we care,’ she yelled, shaking Ripeka. ‘Meri and I are not going without you. Te mate ki te mate, te ora ki te ora, the dead to the dead, the living to the living. The time has come to carry on.’

With a cry, Ripeka collapsed into Meri’s arms.

How long did it take before Ripeka relinquished Paora? It might have been an hour. Two hours. Finally, she saw a small breeze scattering fallen leaves like a benediction: Go, wife. She heaved a great sigh and, under the trees, with the sunlight slanting golden all around, she nodded.

Meri, trying to make her smile, began to tap her poi, persistent in the sunlight.

‘Oh, you two,’ Ripeka said to her sisters in exasperation.

1.

Erenora and her sisters began the crossing of Ka Tiritiri o Te Moana, the Southern Alps.

Te ka’a o nga wa’ine, the courage of the women.

‘It will be a tough walk,’ Erenora said, ‘and although it is summer, it will be makariri when we reach the top.’ The flanks of the mountains looked daunting and precipitous.

The crossing followed an old pre-European trail once used by greenstone hunters moving from the West Coast to Canterbury. When Pakeha arrived, they expanded the trail to a bridle track. Then gold was discovered, and over 1,000 men, armed with picks and shovels, wrested the coach road from the mountains.

The sisters made good progress. Most of the horse-drawn traffic was coming from the Canterbury side. ‘Hide!’ Meri would yell whenever she heard the rumble of hooves and carts on the road. Having missed Christmas, the miners swept past whooping and hollering, wanting to be in Hokitika or Greymouth for New Year, but Meri wasn’t taking any chances.

She also kept the sisters’ spirits up. As they climbed the weaving, dizzying road she would exclaim, ‘Oh, look! Titiro!’ Everywhere the Christmas flower, the rata, was in bloom across the forest-covered hillsides. The mountain tops with their ’uka — or ‘froth’ as she called the snow — delighted her.

Came the first night, and the sisters huddled together to keep warm. Sharp stones from the track had lacerated Ripeka’s shoes; her feet were bleeding.

‘Here,’ Erenora said, ‘let me wash them.’ She went down to the river rushing nearby and soaked her headscarf in the water. As she began to minister to her sister, Ripeka started to cry. ‘I’m sorry, Erenora,’ she wept. ‘I didn’t mean what I said about you at Hokitika.’

Erenora comforted her. ‘I know you didn’t. We are sisters.’

Their mood lightened, and they maintained good speed next day, with Erenora deciding the pace and her sisters following in her steps. Everywhere were deep gorges and spectacular rivers.

A few days later the sisters reached the summit of Arthur’s Pass. ‘Halfway there,’ Erenora said as Ripeka and Meri did a little dance of joy.

‘I knew it was right to karanga to the mountains,’ Meri said. ‘They are protecting us.’

They descended to the Bealey River, climbing again to Porters Pass. The only danger they faced was not of the human kind but from strong-beaked parrots which flew at them, crying, ‘Keeaaa! Keeaaa!’

Then they reached Cass and, not long afterward, the Canterbury Plains, shrouded in mist, stretched before them.

2.

Wellington may have been Empire City, but to Erenora Christchurch, Otautahi, was like the city she had read about in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. After landing from immigrant ships into the chaos of a new land, the first citizens had set about building a place of splendid spires:

The City of the Plains.

‘Maori were not as common in Te Wai Pounamu,’ Erenora wrote. ‘When Ripeka, Meri and I found our way to the dignified dark-grey cathedral, in its beautiful square, we were looked at curiously but not with overt animosity.

‘We decided to go inside Te Hahi Nui to give thanks to God for keeping us safe. A choir was singing, such a heavenly sound. It was so good to be refreshed by hymn and prayer.

‘As we departed I noticed a woman looking at us. Perhaps it was the feathers in Ripeka and Meri’s hair that attracted her attention. She was on the point of approaching but was called aside by her companion.

‘My sisters and I began to discuss our accommodation. “We can’t afford to be wasteful,” I said to them. “Let’s camp on the outskirts of Christchurch.” I wanted to save the money that we had for our return trip to Taranaki.

‘“What if the police find us?” Meri asked nervously.

‘“They won’t,” I answered. “Remember all those times when we were children, on the run from Warea, and made ourselves invisible in the bush?”

‘“They might have dogs to sniff us out,” Meri said. Hmm, I had never thought of that!

‘We followed the glancing loops of the flax-bordered Avon out of the city; once upon a time, the area must have been a wonderful ma’inga kai. It wasn’t long before we came to fine meadows, bright and open; a flock or two of sheep watched as we passed by. Following the glistening river took us to a potato field. The trill of the riroriro, the bird that signalled summer days, pursued us and, finally, we found a hollow that was warm and cosy for the night. We didn’t think the farmer would mind sharing his potatoes with us so we dug up a few and roasted them on a fire, and then we bedded down, spending the night talking and laughing about our adventures. Sleep came easily and, the next morning, after a quick dip in the river to cleanse ourselves and revive our spirits, we returned to Cathedral Square.

‘During the night, I had decided what I would do. “I want you both to remain in the square and wait for me,” I said to Ripeka and Meri. “It’s a lovely day and you can both rest in the sun.”

‘“Where are you going?” Meri asked, suddenly afraid.

‘“To Addington Prison,” I answered, “to find where the Parihaka men have been incarcerated. It will be quicker if I go alone.”

‘Alarmed, Meri looked at Ripeka. “What if something happens to us while you’re gone?”

‘Typical, I thought, for my sisters to think of themselves. What about me! I pointed crossly to the doors of the cathedral, “Run and seek sanctuary inside.”’

3.

Erenora was soon on the Lincoln Road to Addington, to the south-west of the city. She was in such a hurry, head down and intent on her destination, that she did not notice how quickly the environment around her had changed.

Suddenly, as she was crossing two iron tracks, there was a huge roaring sound and something monstrous, huge and belching smoke and embers, came out of a cloud to pounce on her. With a cry she flung herself to one side. And when the smoke dissipated, she took her bearings.

Where am I?

She was in a world such as she had never been before, a huge cacophonic railway junction of steaming, shunting trains and rolling stock. Of course she had seen illustrations of locomotives in books but nothing prepared her for the immensity of the engines, coaches and freight wagons. They were like her oxen, but they were also not like her beloved companions; they were malevolent, and they screamed so.

Except that in a brief lull, Erenora realised that they weren’t screaming at all: the screams were coming from her. ‘Mama, kei w’ea koe?’ she whimpered. But her mother and father were gone, had been gone for many years now. What did dead mean?

‘A moment ago I was in te Ao, the light,’ she cried to herself, ‘and now I am in te Po, the darkness.’

Yes, indeed, a few heartbeats before, Erenora had been in the presence of God; now she was in some phantasmagorical space at the edge of heaven, where bawling livestock, destined for slaughter yards, were being unloaded. From one of the trains came another kind of freight: prisoners under guard being delivered to the prison. And one of the guards had a whip …

Erenora put her hands to her throat. And then she saw the prison ahead and she had to stop and recover her breath — for it was designed in the same new Gothic style as Te Hahi Nui. But where one provided approbation and entry for those chosen by God, the other provided only moral disapproval and punishment for the fallen.

Disoriented and sobbing, Erenora stumbled across the maze of railway tracks and fell to the ground. Until that moment she had fortified herself with the unswerving belief that Horitana was alive and she would find him. After all, was he not one of the blessed? She remembered how, to Maori, even being put into the lock-up was regarded as a sentence of death.

‘Oh Lord of Heaven,’ Erenora prayed, ‘have you deserted us?’

It had been a long time coming, this sudden collapse of her faith in God. All her life Erenora had been sustained by trust and courage. Now both deserted her. She couldn’t move, and as her spirits descended even further, the question came to her:

‘In this kingdom of the Pakeha, erected to the glory of God, where does the Maori belong?’

The question sank deep into her soul, and her thoughts became incoherent. What had the Confiscated Lands Inquiry said of the purpose for allocating reserve land to Maori:

To do justice to the Maori and continue English settlement of the country?

Erenora began to moan, swaying from side to side; she felt as though she were choking. All her life, she realised, ever since her mother Miriam had been cruelly ripped away from her, she had been fighting for her life. If confiscation continued, was that to be the future of the Maori, the iwi katoa of all Aotearoa? To be herded onto and live the rest of their lives in reserves … or at the edges of the land, the fringes of the sea, the tops of mountains, offshore islands … or to scrabble with others for scraps and pieces of unwanted broken biscuit, in the great cities of the Pakeha … living at their outer limits where the Pakeha always deposited his waste or the unwanted: the abattoirs, rubbish dumps, sanatoriums, cemeteries, orphanages, tips, brothels, asylums, gaols, poorhouses …

If Maori continued to fight against the Pakeha, would the price be deprivation of God’s munificence and banishment, like felons, from his presence? Would Maori be erased all together?

And if this was the fate of Maori in God’s kingdom on earth, would it be the same in God’s kingdom in heaven?

The ground thundered around Erenora and she howled like a wounded animal, her hands over her ears and her eyes closed. That was when she heard Te Whiti’s voice:

‘Aue, Erenora, have you already forgotten that there will come a time when the days of our mourning will be ended? Our people also shall be all righteous … we shall inherit the land forever … A little one shall become a thousand and a small one a strong nation. Therefore, put aside your fears and rise up from the depths of your despair.’

From the death of her spirit came the birth of another.

‘We are not forgotten by the great Ruler,’ she said to herself.

Gathering her strength, she arose from the pit of her darkness. Her thoughts had betrayed only a momentary weakness. It would not happen again.

She looked around her. ‘Make way,’ she said. ‘Let me through.’

4.

Erenora approached the portal of Addington Prison. She knocked three times at the doorway and a warder appeared on the other side. ‘I would like to make enquiries about the Maori prisoners from Parihaka,’ Erenora said in a firm masculine voice.

‘The madmen?’ the warder asked sharply. ‘You can’t expect any information without authorisation.’

How Erenora wished that Te Wheoro was with her. ‘I have a letter of introduction,’ she offered. She showed it to the warder. Yes, the government crest did the trick.

‘Follow me,’ said the warder, tight-lipped. He took her to an office and presented her to a prison official who appeared to be of higher standing. ‘I am the registrar,’ he began. ‘You are from Parry Hacka?’

‘Yes,’ Erenora answered. ‘I’ve come to ask about two men who may have been sentenced here along with the first batch of prisoners from New Plymouth Magistrate’s Court on 26 July 1879.’

He looked her up and down. ‘You are aware, are you not, that when the maniacs were brought here two years ago they were sentenced to hard labour? And then, for continuing disturbances, moved to Lyttelton Gaol?’

Erenora couldn’t help herself; the offensive language was getting under her skin. ‘I understand,’ she said, raising her voice, ‘the difficulties may have had more to do with overcrowding than with anything the men did to warrant further harsh punishment.’

The registrar gave her a sharp glance. ‘You would do well to curb your tongue, young man,’ he said. ‘So you’re aware that most were returned to the Taranaki? As for the rest …’ He paused and with a grunt affirmed that he would answer her question. ‘The madmen are all on Ripa Island.’

Erenora was astonished to receive any information. ‘Ripa Island?’ she pushed on. ‘Where is that?’

‘It was once a quarantine station in Lyttelton Harbour,’ he said. ‘Armed constabulary were assigned to guard the maniacs but more officers were added to cope with the … increased … numbers who subsequently came down from the Taranaki.’

‘Were the prisoners Horitana and Riki among them?’

The registrar consulted his records, wetting his finger to turn the pages and trace down the list of names. Erenora wanted to jump across the counter, take the book from him and look for herself.

‘The prisoner named Riki is still incarcerated on Ripa Island. As for any madman by the name of Horitana, I have no record of him.’

Erenora’s heart flooded with both gladness and despair. ‘Is there any hope of visiting the prisoner Riki?’ Apart from the joy that would give to Meri, Riki might know where Horitana was.

‘No,’ said the registrar. ‘And that is all I will help you with.’

‘I left Addington Prison, numb, and wandered aimlessly. I was happy for Meri, knowing that she would be overjoyed with the news that Riki was alive. At the same time, I was in shock and full of worry for Horitana. Where was he?

‘Dazed, I sat by the side of the road, trying to decide what my sisters and I should do next. Obviously, there was no possibility of Meri seeing Riki and it would be best for us to return quickly to Parihaka before our money ran out. But what about my own quest for my husband?

‘The sun was declining into afternoon when I made a decision. If Horitana wasn’t in Christchurch the only other place where he could be was Dunedin. The time had come for me to continue on but, this time, alone. Therefore, on my way back to the city I made a detour to a shipping office. I thanked God that, with the addition of the coins from sympathetic settlers at Hokitika, there was just enough to purchase passage for Ripeka and Meri on a ship sailing from Christchurch to Wellington.

‘I returned to Cathedral Square. Alarm filled me when I couldn’t see my sisters. Where were they? I ran into the cathedral and, to my relief, saw them sitting in earnest discussion with a clergyman.

‘“Oh, there you are, Erenora,” Ripeka greeted me, as if I had just been for a walk in the park.’

The clergyman introduced himself.

‘I’m Archdeacon George Cotterill,’ he said. ‘I’m a canon here, serving Bishop Harper, and I’m also diocesan secretary. One of our congregation, Mrs Platt, saw you all yesterday. She recognised from the feathers your sisters wear in their hair that you were from Parihaka. Knowing that I have a sympathetic interest in the Maori people of New Zealand and, in particular, the people of Taranaki, she advised me of your visit.’ The archdeacon pumped Erenora’s hand vigorously. ‘The church is much alarmed at the way your men continue to be held without trial.’

‘Thank you,’ Erenora said. She didn’t mean to sound ungrateful but she wanted to get Ripeka and Meri to one side so that she could tell them what she’d done. She hoped they would be obedient. But first she turned to Meri, ‘Riki is alive and on Ripa Island.’

‘Alive? And here?’ Meri exclaimed as she burst into tears. ‘Can I see him?’

Ripeka, although happy for her sister, couldn’t hide a look of sadness. Why couldn’t Paora also have lived …

‘No,’ Erenora answered. ‘Absolutely not.’

Meri refused to take Erenora’s word. ‘You, of all people, you can make anything happen,’ she said with determination. ‘Don’t say no to me.’

‘Therefore,’ Erenora continued, not heeding her, ‘you and Ripeka are both returning to Wellington next week.’ She gave them their tickets.

‘I won’t go,’ Meri said. ‘And only two tickets?’

‘I plan to proceed alone to Dunedin,’ Erenora answered.

‘Oh, I see,’ Ripeka said. ‘When it suits you, you decide about me and Meri. Don’t leave me in Hokitika but dump us both when we get to Christchurch.’

‘You, Ripeka, are pregnant,’ Erenora replied angrily, ‘and you, Meri, should go back home and wait with your son for Riki’s eventual return.’

But Meri was stubborn. ‘I don’t care if I have to wait for years. I’m staying until I see Riki.’

Although they were in the House of God, Erenora shook Meri hard. ‘You and Ripeka are both holding me up and you will go back to Parihaka. Please be obedient, sister.’

In the silence that followed, Archdeacon Cotterill coughed. ‘Actually, people in Christchurch do call the island Ripa but it’s really Ripapa, and —’ he paused ‘— there might be opportunity for Meri to visit before she and Ripeka return to Wellington.’

Erenora stared at him, her mouth open.

‘Come back in two days,’ he said. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

5.

Two days? That would make it … Sunday.

The sisters returned to their sleeping place in the potato field. Waiting for Sunday was agonising, but they filled in the time by taking walks together around Christchurch and its countryside. They talked about, oh, so many things: growing up as children together, helping to build Parihaka, getting married …

‘We’ve never really had the time to korero, have we?’ Erenora said, when one day Meri burst into tears.

‘But we’ve always loved each other, eh,’ Meri said, tapping her poi.

On Sunday, the sisters were up at dawn and, after morning prayers, struck their camp and made for Cathedral Square. Archdeacon Cotterill, waiting at the cathedral doors, looked very pleased with himself. ‘I’m glad you’re here early,’ he said. ‘Come along, we have a train to catch.’

A train? Very soon the sisters were being transported through Lyttelton Tunnel. As the train roared into the bowels of the earth, Meri clutched Erenora, afraid. ‘Are we journeying to hell?’ she asked.

On the other side of the darkness, however, was blessed sunlight. Lyttelton sprang brightly into view. The ‘Liverpool of New Zealand’ lay in a hollow surrounded by high hills. Ahead was the harbour.

‘Here we are,’ said the archdeacon. He hastened the sisters off the train and in the direction of Gladstone Pier. Four large ships were being loaded with wheat for England, France and other parts of the world. And further along were the docks from which busy launches plied the harbour and the coast. Among the jostling boats a small vessel was waiting with a group of austere personages aboard and three women holding hymn books.

‘We’re joining the Lyttelton gaoler Mr Phillips, the chaplain Reverend Townsend, and members of the local Anglican congregation,’ Archdeacon Cotterill explained. ‘Reverend Townsend is my colleague and friend, and he’s taking the service today on Ripapa Island.’ He whispered conspiratorially, ‘I obtained permission for you to come with us. He’s relieved as his knowledge of the Maori language is limited.’

After hasty introductions, there was a lot of nodding of heads, and then the vessel cast off. Soon, it was making good way eastward across the harbour to Ripapa.

Archdeacon Cotterill engaged the three sisters in conversation. ‘For many years,’ he began, ‘Kai Tahu used the island as a refuge whenever other tribes invaded Otautahi. The name Ripapa actually means “Mooring Rock”, which is appropriate, don’t you think?’

He was trying to keep the mood light, but Erenora could not help the retort that formed on her lips. ‘If you’re referring to its current use as a prison for Taranaki men, yes,’ she said, ‘but after any invasion Kai Tahu could always return to their homes, whereas our men are not free to do that.’

Ripeka gave Erenora a warning glance. ‘My brother does not want to sound ungrateful,’ she told Archdeacon Cotterill.

The archdeacon accepted the comparison as a fair one and carried on in a conciliatory manner. ‘Even for Pakeha, the island became a mooring place. About ten years ago, it was used for quarantining our new immigrants. We built a hospital and hostels for up to 300 people out there. But then the wars started in the North Island, and Parihaka prisoners were sent down here, so Ripapa went through a third incarnation — as an overflow prison for Lyttelton Gaol.’

‘Over 150 to Christchurch in the one month of September 1880 alone,’ Erenora reminded him sharply, ‘including my sister Meri’s husband, and many other men since then.’

At the reference to Riki, Meri gave a small sob.

Archdeacon Cotterill gave Erenora a sharp look. ‘If your men are to be held anywhere,’ he answered her, ‘Ripapa is a better refuge than most.’ He turned to comfort Meri. ‘Do you know what the Pakeha immigrants called Ripapa?’ he asked her. ‘Humanity Island. Let us all hope that, as far as your husband is concerned, it has lived up to its name, eh?’

Suddenly, there was a scattering of sun-stars and against rising headlands Erenora saw Ripapa itself.

‘We docked at the jetty to the island. Much to our surprise, another vessel arrived at the same time as us — and in it was a small group of Maori.

‘“They’re from Rapaki,” Archdeacon Cotterill said. “Their hapu is Ngati Wheke.”

‘I walked across to them and we greeted each other. “We come to manaaki, to support, your people,” their rangatira said.

‘Together we walked to the gateway and into the prison yard where the service was to be held. The breeze was cool and invigorating and I could hear the prisoners singing in their cells:

‘“O, Taranaki! Our w’enua, so lovely and lost! Hear our lamentation! Let the Lord inspire us all and give us the strength to shatter our vile chains! Let the wrath of the Lion of Judah cause our valour to awake, our courage to stir!”

‘At the sound of the voices, Ripeka and Meri — especially Meri — started weeping. As for me, I could not help but wonder at the forbidding nature of the prison. The walls prevented any view from inside except through tiny slit windows. What was it like to be immured behind that stone? Our men were accustomed to the wide spaces of Taranaki, to forests and seas; here they could die of wondering whether that world was still there, and our sacred mounga holding up the sky.

‘Then the men appeared, under guard, mustered to attend the church service. They were still singing and, as they passed by, Meri scanned their faces.

‘“What joy to breathe freely in the open air!’ they sang. ‘Here in the sunlight is life!”

‘And finally one of the prisoners looked Meri’s way, saw her and gave a deep wounded cry. “It cannot be!”

‘Although he was much changed, emaciated and stooped, Meri knew him immediately: her beloved Riki. Slowly, he stepped towards her. A guard went to stop him, but Archdeacon Cotterill intervened, whispering to Mr Phillips, who said, “Let them alone.” In that precious space, Meri and Riki were able to embrace one another.

‘“This must be a dream,” Riki said. “Is it really you, Meri?”

‘He turned to look at me and Ripeka. “And you, sisters-in-law, are here also?”

‘I could not help but glance quickly at Archdeacon Cotterill and Mr Phillips to see whether or not they had overheard Riki’s reference to me, but, no, we were sufficiently apart from them.

“You are in the light.” Riki continued. “In prison, we are in darkness.” Then his face blanched. “But why have you come?” He turned to Meri. “Has something happened to our son? You haven’t come all this way to tell me —”

‘“He’s being well cared for,” Meri reassured him, “but when Erenora left Parihaka to look for Horitana, neither Ripeka nor I could restrain ourselves from joining her. Even to spend just this moment with you has been worth our travails. One day you’ll be free and we shall all find peace.”

‘Riki began to moan with shame. He seized me and wept on my shoulder. “Aue,” he began, “Horitana … it may have been him who was on the same prison vessel that brought us all to Christchurch.”

‘“Then why isn’t he here with you?” I asked, almost screaming with frustration.

‘“Whoever the prisoner was, he was kept separately from us. Nor was he on deck when we were mustered and disembarked. But he sounded like Horitana when he cried out as we were leaving the ship, “Be of good heart, my fellow warriors”, except that his voice was muffled, unearthly. We caught a final glimpse of the prisoner from far away — prodded by gaolers, stumbling along the dock.”

‘“Couldn’t you tell if it was Horitana or not?” I asked.

‘“No,” Riki answered. “There was a blanket completely covering him and I thought … he might be somebody else.”

‘“Who?” I asked, puzzled and confused.

‘“There was a small coastal vessel waiting at the quay,” Riki continued. “A stolid and sturdy man with a bald head was waiting. The gaolers gave the prisoner over to his care. I saw him sign some papers and shake the gaolers’ hands. The prisoner was in great pain. It wasn’t the chains that were so grievously afflicting him or the legirons he wore, but something else. I couldn’t see what it was until he was being put onto the boat and the blanket fell away and …”

‘“And?” I insisted.

‘Riki paled. A shudder ran through him.

‘“… it was te tangata mokomokai …”’

6.

Archdeacon Cotterill separated the sisters from Riki.

‘We’re here only by the good offices of Mr Phillips and Reverend Townsend … you understand?’

‘My sisters and I are most appreciative,’ Erenora said, stepping away.

‘Good,’ the archdeacon answered, relieved. ‘Let’s proceed to the church service now.’

As the voices around her rose to praise God, Erenora prayed. ‘Oh, Horitana, what has happened to you?’ Her fists were clenched so hard, her fingers dug into her palms until they bled.

She seemed to hear his voice:

‘Here in this void no living thing comes near. O, cruel ordeal! But God’s will is just. I’ll not complain; for He has decreed the measure of my suffering.’

After the church service, Archdeacon Cotterill approached the Lyttelton gaoler. Mr Phillips agreed that the three Taranaki visitors could exchange greetings with the other men. Erenora moved among them, offering words of courage and sympathy. ‘Kia ka’a, kia manawanui,’ she said to them.

And the men bore witness. ‘The winters are bad, so cold, and of a kind we have never before experienced. Sometimes the only way to keep warm is to huddle together in our blankets. And can you see the walls around us? It was the same in Addington and Lyttelton too, where any infringement meant we were confined in incredibly small and cruel spaces where you couldn’t see the outside world. Our cells had slop buckets but no running water. Our food was fit only for animals.’

Erenora shivered. ‘You were never taken to work outside?’ she asked. ‘At Hokitika, the men at least worked in road gangs and had contact with the citizens of the town.’

‘No,’ the men answered. ‘We were deprived of everything, even our own sense of respect. It was as if we’d been consigned to a pit, a hole in the ground — but at least on Ripapa, although no blade of grass grows, we’re able to see the sky. Sometimes small birds fly through the barred windows. We feed them crumbs and, when the guards approach, we tell them, “Quick! Leave! Take messages to Taranaki that we survive.” When you get back to Parihaka, give our wives the same messages that we give the birds, eh? That we do survive, Erenora, we do.’

Then it was time to leave Ripapa Island.

‘Go home to Parihaka now, Meri,’ Riki said as he clutched her. ‘Await my return.’ One last embrace, and Riki joined the prisoners as the guards took them back to their cells.

The sisters supported a sobbing Meri away from the prison. How good it was be outside. At the jetty, they said goodbye to the people of Ngati Wheke and then boarded the vessel taking them back to Lyttelton.

‘Wait!’ Meri cried.

From inside the walls came a low sighing, like a phantom moaning of the sea.

Meri’s face was blinded by tears. ‘They are men of Parihaka,’ she said. ‘They will never be lost to us.’ She took out her poi, held them up to the sun and began to sing and dance:

‘Takiri te raukura, ’aere koe i runga, ’uri ’aere ra i te motu e! Takiri te raukura, ’aere koe i runga, wai’o te ture kia rere i raro e! Let the raukura dance, go forth the raukura, fluttering above and arise upwards! Throughout the land let the raukura dance, fluttering above while the laws are fluttering down below! Let all know of your travails and be proud of you! Your mountain and your women salute you! If you must bow your head, let it be only to Taranaki!’

Then she collapsed, and Ripeka embraced her.

‘When Kawa was born,’ Meri sobbed, ‘Riki was already in gaol in New Plymouth. My husband has never held his son in his arms.’

7.

On their return to Christchurch city, the sisters’ hearts overflowed with gratitude for the kindness Archdeacon Cotterill had showed them.

He took Erenora aside. ‘Young man, I’ve taken the liberty of purchasing you a railway ticket so that you can travel to Dunedin by train. No, don’t thank me. As diocesan secretary there are some charitable opportunities I’m able to take advantage of and … well … this is one of them. You continue your journey. I’ll see that your sisters are taken into church lodgings and I’ll look after them until the time comes for them to leave. And regarding your men on Ripapa … we know how harshly they’re treated. Our church commission visits them regularly to ensure that the worst excesses of that treatment are minimised.’

After their evening meal, Ripeka looked at Meri and said, ‘Well, before Erenora goes we had better shear our young man again, eh?’

Erenora’s hair had grown to shoulder length. As they scissored and snipped, the sisters laughed and joked, but their hearts were breaking. When they had finished the job, however, e ’ika, they had done it with too much love. Erenora had to grab the shears and chop off two large hanks so as to look a bit more ugly and lopsided.

‘There, that’s better,’ she said.

The next day Ripeka, Meri and Archdeacon Cotterill bade Erenora farewell at the railway station.

‘Oh, do try to be brave,’ Erenora said to her distraught sisters, ‘and please don’t cry so much.’ But she wasn’t feeling very brave herself and turned to the archdeacon, saying, ‘You will look after them, won’t you?’

Quickly she boarded the train, not wanting to look back. As the train left the station she kept thinking:

‘If Ripeka and Meri can’t even cut my hair properly, how are they going to get back to Parihaka by themselves?’

1.

Wellington, Christchurch and now Dunedin.

It was drizzling when Erenora reached the Octagon where the clock tower was striking the time for midday. The chimes were so loud and sonorous that Erenora had to put her hands to her ears. As she looked around she thought that no other city in New Zealand could be as wealthy or could compare with Dunedin’s commercial and industrial mana, its power. Of all the three Pakeha cities in Aotearoa, Dunedin must surely be the greatest, the mightiest and the largest of them all.

There was a difference, though. The Pakeha who had built this city were distinctively Presbyterian Scots. They had created the Edinburgh of the South.

‘Again, as a Maori, I was the object of curiosity,’ Erenora wrote, ‘but I noticed a strange difference. Perhaps it was because of their own difficult history with the English that the sober Scots citizens appeared to empathise with our own. The men in their suits tipped their hats to me and their women inclined their heads. They appeared to respect the Maori struggle for sovereignty and to acknowledge our mana.’

Erenora had sensed very quickly the empathy for Maori that came not only from the Scots but also others of Dunedin’s liberal-minded citizens. In the case of the city’s Maori leaders, Hori Kerei Taiaroa, the Maori parliamentary representative for the South Island, was exemplary in providing a lead for his Pakeha colleagues to follow. When, finally, the Taranaki prisoners’ release was announced he actually travelled with them on the SS Luna, on 20 March 1872. The same spirited crowd that had welcomed them was there to give them a rousing send-off. His later speech attacking one of the West Coast Peace Preservation bills is a standout of the era. Among his Pakeha colleagues was Thomas Bracken, author of the words of New Zealand’s national anthem and the originator, some believe, of the term ‘God’s Own Country’. The record shows that several other local MPs argued against the passage of those acts of legislation that gave the government the power to imprison Maori without trial.

‘I was therefore grateful to discover this sympathy, and that it appeared to be shared by those whom I met on the street. One gentleman, in response to my request for directions to the Dunedin Gaol, shook my hand and told me he had been at Port Chalmers in 1879 when the first batch of prisoners had arrived from Wellington. “Judging from their powerful builds,” he said, “it was clear that, if your warriors had wished, you could have easily defeated your foes.” Another gentleman said, “I’m so glad that your people were treated separately. You’re a nobler race than the murderers, robbers, conmen and shysters who are deservedly part of Her Majesty’s population.”

‘And so I arrived at the imposing main entrance to the brick gaol on Stuart Street. A platform above and just outside the prison walls ran along three sides, and sentries were on patrol. My heart was thudding as a guard looked through the grating. I told him why I had come and he let me into a paved yard, scrupulously clean. Then another guard showed me to the warder’s office. “If you wait here, the warder will attend to you.”

‘When the warder arrived, I told him why I’d come to Dunedin. He said, “Oh, but there are no longer any prisoners from Parihaka here.”’

A huge wave of despondency engulfed Erenora. She could scarcely hear the warder’s words. To have come so far …

‘I like to think that your men were treated well by us,’ he began. ‘In Dunedin we regarded them as wards of the state and not as criminals, and, because of that, we practised open incarceration. They were employed on various public works outside the gaol, in particular the Dunedin Botanical Gardens. During the latter part of their sojourn with us, however, they worked further afield, around the harbour. On those occasions they were housed on a scow, the Success, which had originally been used for coastal trading. In the evenings, the local people said you could hear them singing their hymns.’

Erenora could not help but think of one of those hymns, one that perhaps had given the people courage and hope when they were building Parihaka:

‘We trust in God’s eternal aid! Upon the shores of Egypt He granted Moses life! He made the hundred men of Gideon invincible! If we trust in Him we will also be granted life and be made invincible, Glory to Him.’

Up to this time, Erenora had been buoyed by hope. Had she really come all this way for nothing? She tried to focus and, with a gesture of helplessness, interrupted the warder. ‘Forgive me,’ she said, ‘but would you know if there was a prisoner by the name of Horitana among the men here? Was he returned to Taranaki?’

The warder looked puzzled. ‘I knew all the men,’ he said, ‘and that name doesn’t ring a bell at all.’ He thought for a moment, then stood to consult a register. ‘No, there was no Horitana sent here to Dunedin,’ he confirmed. ‘But …’

Erenora eyed him eagerly.

‘… perhaps you should talk to …’ The warder struggled with the pronunciation ‘… Te Whao? Although the other prisoners returned to Taranaki, he decided to remain in Dunedin among Otago Maori. He met a lovely Maori girl called Katarina. That might have been the reason why he didn’t go back.’

Erenora’s hopes rose. Te Whao had been one of the younger men chosen by Horitana to ride out of Parihaka and plough the settlers’ land. ‘Do you know where I can find him?’ she asked.

‘Most certainly,’ the warder smiled. ‘At this time of day go to the bay where the Success is … he’s sure to be there. After the prisoners left, he became caretaker of the scow. He takes his job seriously. Take some tobacco with you — that will revive his memories.’

2.

‘I hurried out of the city,’ Erenora wrote. ‘My entire search had now narrowed down to one man. Quickly I sought the place where the Success was anchored in a small bay. I made my way to the mooring and found a lone figure, like an eternal sentinel, huddling against the showery rain.

‘I approached him slowly. “Tena koe, Te Whao.” He was still young, but his eyes were old, as if his experiences had forever altered him.

‘He looked at me strangely, not recognising me at first. I had to wait until he could see through my appearance. When he realised who I was, tears flooded into his eyes. “Erenora …” He hugged me tight but I was the one who held him up as he grieved for everything that had happened to us all.

‘After a while I gave him the tobacco. He tamped some into his pipe, lit it … and the memories came pouring out.

‘“They used to give us tobacco all the time,” he began, “the good citizens of Dunedin. When our overseer called for a break and we downed our tools, they’d be waiting at the side of the road. While the overseer and guards turned a blind eye, the women would offer us soup and bread and some old Highland men sneaked us a dram or two of whisky. And, always, someone would offer tobacco.”’

Let me explain the background to Te Whao’s affecting narrative.

Although the very fact of imprisonment without trial and being forced to labour — slave labour — around Dunedin was harsh, one should remember that from the very moment the first Maori prisoners from Titokowaru’s War arrived in Dunedin in 1869, they were treated with sympathy and honour. Among those who supported them were Pakeha like Isaac Newton Watt.

Watt’s story is an interesting one. During the 1860s he had been a captain in the Taranaki Rifle Volunteers at the same time as Harry Atkinson, but whereas Atkinson became malevolently inclined towards Maori, Watt took the benevolent position. He married a Maori woman of the Waitara, Ani Raimahapa Paitahuna. They both left in the mid-1860s and migrated to the Bluff, as far away as Watt could get from the fighting. There, he took up a post as resident magistrate and, because he could speak Maori, he was put in charge of the Titokowaru prisoners.

Some nine or so years later, as Dunedin’s resident magistrate, Watt did similar sympathetic service for the Parihaka ploughmen. When one named Watene died, it was owing to Watt’s kind intercession that other Maori were allowed at the graveside to attend the service. Watt himself drove three of the prisoners, including the great chief Wiremu Kingi Moki Te Matakatea, from the prison in a hansom cab. Both Watt and Ani Raimahapa Paitahuna were buried in the same urupa as the Taranaki men who died in Dunedin.

Yet another official sympathetic to the Parihaka ploughmen was Adam Scott, the warder in Dunedin Gaol, perhaps the very one who had attended to Erenora’s enquiry earlier that day.

The rain was falling, Te Whao making small holes in it with his words.

‘We all suffered the bitter weather,’ he continued, ‘but our kindly treatment by the locals carried on and, well, I met my Katarina. And Mr Watt, Mr Scott and other officials, they ensured we had good meals. Not only that but they gave us pounamu to carve so that we would have something of value to take home with us.’

Erenora asked the question that had been lodged impatiently in her throat. ‘Was Horitana ever in your midst?’

Te Whao took a long draw, then shook his head. ‘We heard he was brought here from Christchurch by a small coastal vessel. It stopped long enough at Port Chalmers to take on provisions.’

‘Where was he taken after that?’ Oh, how Erenora’s heart was beating!

‘We think to an isolated island further south,’ Te Whao answered. ‘Rumour has it that there he’s in the charge of a German overseer, kept in the hold of an old French explorer’s ship that was wrecked on the island many years ago.’

Erenora tried not to show her pain, but Te Whao touched her hand with tenderness. ‘That was long ago, Erenora — almost three years — and since then there has been no further word.’ He looked into her eyes. ‘You must face the fact … with no news of him … and the local people, my Katarina’s people, they would have known … he may be dead.’

Kua mate? Horitana dead? Erenora refused to consider it. No. Deep inside her, she knew he was alive. She could not give up on that. Never.

‘You must come and stay with me and Katarina,’ Te Whao insisted. ‘Stay for as long as you want.’

For two weeks, Erenora grieved and wondered what to do. She oscillated between hope and depression.

‘I won’t give up,’ she said to Te Whao one day while he was on duty. He was feeding a seagull, hoping to tame it. ‘Even if Horitana is dead, well, don’t our people say, “If you die a Maori the one great promise made to you is that your people will find you and bring you home?” Whether Horitana is alive or dead, I won’t rest until I find him.’

With this resolve, Erenora remained in Dunedin. Sometimes she wandered about the city, searching through the great number of public houses for clues to Horitana’s whereabouts. ‘Have you ever heard of a German sailor?’ she asked. ‘Do you know an island where a French ship was wrecked?’

One day she made a special visit to Port Chalmers, where she asked directions to the cemetery. She found it as a storm burst overhead. Regardless of the sleet, she soon located the grave she was looking for. In this southern earth lay the Reverend Johann Friedrich Riemenschneider, born Bremen, Germany, August 1817, died Dunedin, New Zealand, August 1866. He had come from one side of the world to another and fashioned himself as much as possible into a faithful servant of God.

And only forty-nine when he died? Too young, too young!

Erenora sat down beside the grave and thought of her childhood in Warea. And then she patted the earth, ‘Thank you.’ All her life, Rimene’s last words to her had been like a blessing, a feather cloak that he had cast across her shoulders. ‘Leb wohl, mein Herz,’ he had said. ‘Go well, sweetheart.’

She made her way back to Dunedin and the Success. As soon as Te Whao saw her, he began to wave vigorously. ‘Erenora! Erenora!’

She knew immediately that he had received news of Horitana. ‘What is it? she asked. ‘What is it?’

His eyes were shining. ‘The German,’ he began, ‘the German, Erenora! One of Katarina’s people saw him! He has arrived back in the port.’

3.

Erenora hastened to the waterfront and went from pub to pub asking about the German, without success. Perhaps he had already left or, maybe, Te Whao’s informant had been incorrect. Had there ever been a German in the first place? Or had the whole story been a fanciful notion?

She was losing hope when, by chance, she saw a group of sailors clustered around the shipping office. Drawing nearer, she read the advertisement posted on the wall:

The name sprang out to her: Sonnleithner.

‘Where the fuck’s Peketua Island?’ one sailor asked.

‘The end of the bloody world,’ another answered.

‘I hear tell the German’s a hard taskmaster,’ said a third sailor. ‘A big bugger like that, he’d whip you good if you slacked on the job.’

‘But the money’s good, mateys,’ said the second sailor, ‘and I hear that he has a beautiful daughter …’

Erenora’s mind was in turmoil. What should she do? What if Rocco Sonnleithner wasn’t the German rumoured to be Horitana’s overseer? But what if he was!

The next morning, Erenora presented herself at the Imperial Hotel where she was shown to a large upstairs room. Fifteen other men, including the three sailors she’d heard talking the day before, were already seated. One aspect of the room struck her as being curious: all the curtains had been opened save one. The window it covered must have been ajar because every now and then the curtain shivered and billowed.

‘Here comes the German,’ one of the men whispered.

Erenora turned to look and, through the glass doors, saw a bald man of massive girth approaching along the hallway. As he opened the doors, the glass panels flashed. Next moment he strode past her in a cloud of body sweat. His clothes were ill-fitting, as if a tailor had thrown up his hands in despair but had tried to stitch together a suit that would cover that enormous bulk. He took one look at all the men including Erenora and spat out a curse, ‘Ach herrje! What a useless-looking bunch.’

With a surly glance, he sat down on the other side of a desk. ‘My name is Rocco Sonnleithner, but you can call me Rocco.’ His voice was deep and thickly accented. ‘You must all be rogues or vagabonds if you are so hard up that you want the job, eh? I will give a contract to the right man, a man who is willing to work hard, follow my orders, do shift work with me on the lighthouse six hours on, six hours off from dusk to dawn, and keep to his own company. You do your work and mind your own business and we will get along fine.’

Erenora’s gaze was distracted by the curtain moving in and out.

‘The days are your own,’ Rocco continued, ‘though there are some chores: firewood to be cut, repairs to equipment. Do not expect me to provide lively company. A boat comes every month to bring provisions. I will pay you two months in advance once we get to the island. Full payment for your stay will come to you after the third month. I will give preference to men who indicate they will stay longer than that. Is anybody willing to stay for six months?’

Several men swore at the terms, some kicking the chairs as they left. Four remained with Erenora — beggars couldn’t be choosers. ‘He’s got us around his fuckin’ little finger,’ one of the men said.

‘Any questions?’ There were no questions. ‘So, those of you who are left, you are willing to sign up for six months? If you’re not, you should leave now as I am in no mood to entertain you.’

Nobody moved from their seats. ‘Let me get the papers and, afterwards I will look at your details and make my decision on which of you gets the job.’

He got up and left the room.

Once Rocco had departed, the remaining men in the room began to smile and laugh among themselves. ‘Bloody German, thinks he has one over me,’ said one sailor, ‘but I can take him on any time.’

Another, a tough-looking labourer, said, ‘I hear he has his daughter locked up in his house but there’s not a door that’s been able to keep me out yet.’

A third man added, ‘Perhaps she’ll help to while away the days, eh, mateys?’

‘What if she looks like the big fella?’ asked the fourth.

‘Who cares as long as she’s a woman?’ the first sailor laughed.

The labourer said, ‘Sounds like an easy job to me — on an island where the police won’t be able to find me and I can lie low and get paid for it.’

Erenora kept her own counsel.

Rocco returned, took his chair and smiled. Much to everyone’s surprise, he addressed a question to the air. ‘Meine Tochter, was sagst du dazu?’

Someone had been sitting behind the curtain all the time. A young girl’s voice came back, clear, light, full of scorn. ‘Vater, die Männer sind Bäsewichte, Dummkäpfe und verwegen! Willst du mein Urteil? Nimm den Jüngling. Take the young one.’

Rocco looked at Erenora. His expression was arrogant and his voice was tinged with a sneering tone. ‘Der Jüngling ist ein Mai-or-ee.’

The young girl’s voice came back quick as silver. ‘Den, Vater. Den.’

Rocco weighed her words, which seemed to have hidden meaning. And Erenora, irritated by Rocco’s ill-concealed contempt of her Maori identity, raised her voice in anger, though she took care to keep her tone low:

‘Ein Maori, ja, I am a Maori, yes.’ Desperately she flailed around for words. ‘Es wäre jedoch ein arger Fehler Ihrerseits, wenn Sie mich deswegen geringachten, mein Herr. But it would be a bad mistake for you to discount me because of that.’

There was a small cry of delight from the young girl. Rocco was surprised at first, and his reply was tinged with mockery. ‘Der Jüngling spricht wohl Deutsch?’ He paused, taking Erenora in, and then he nodded. Moving quickly for a large man, he advanced on the four men in the room. ‘Ach herrje,’ he spat again, ‘you are all worthless, stupid and presumptuous. Get out before I throw you out.’ He turned to Erenora. ‘You, boy, what is your name?’

‘Eruera,’ Erenora replied brusquely.

‘You might not have as much muscle on you as the others,’ Rocco continued, ‘but you can speak a bit of German and that might make it easier for me when I give you orders. So … I will give you the job and who knows? Perhaps, unlike the others I have employed before you, you will be intelligent enough to follow my instructions.’ He grabbed Erenora by the neck and brought her face close to his, spitting as he spoke. ‘If not, yours will be a miserable existence.’

‘Take your hands off me,’ Erenora snarled, shoving him forcefully from her. Caught off balance, he almost fell.

Surprised at the strength of her response, Rocco laughed. ‘Perhaps I am wrong about your lack of muscle! Be at the docks first thing tomorrow morning and report to Captain Demmer, skipper of the Anna Milder. We set sail with the morning tide.’

Rocco showed Erenora to the door. Once it had closed behind her, she leant on it with relief. Then she began to shiver uncontrollably.

The end of the bloody world. What was it going to be like at te pito o te Ao?

Would Horitana be there?