She had appeared out of nowhere, running like a gazelle, and as soon as she saw Frank she started screaming like a banshee and clutching her basket to her front as if it contained the crown jewels of England. He dismounted and stepped towards her, his hands out, unsure what to say or do. But she dodged around him and in doing so, bumped against him and spilled the contents of her basket: a dead piglet, followed by a shower of leaves and petals. When she bent to pick it up, her bonnet came off, causing one of her braids to come loose and swing down in front of her face. He leaned down to help her and she reared back, took off her wooden clog and hit him on the back of his head. He stood up and rubbed the spot, staring at her in astonishment.
“What are you…?”
“That’s my pig you skiderik. Take your hands off it.”
Frank stepped back to escape the flailing clog, his forearm in front of his face. “I’m not after your pig, I…”
She stopped and stood there panting, the clog still in her hand, raised and ready to hit him again. Her face was flushed and her hazel eyes were fixed on his, waiting for him to move. He recognized her now. The woman who had lit up the clearing, the day he went to tell Nissen and Sorensen he’d changed his mind. He’d wanted to meet her, but not like this.
“I was only trying to help,” he said mildly. “You dropped your pig.”
“Was it, did I…” she stammered, doubting herself. She let the clog drop to her side.
“Did you what?” he asked, retrieving the piglet, brushing away the leaves and wiping off the dirt. He held it towards her and she snatched it and put it back in her basket. “Looks like a pretty fine meal you have there.”
“Was it you…?” She waved her hand towards the bush. “I saw you in the woods…”
He shook his head. “How could you have? I came from the sawmill, from that direction…”
“He looked very much like you.”
“You saw someone in the bush who looked like me and who scared you for some reason?”
“He tried to take my pig, and he had something in a sack that wriggled. I thought it might be,” she stopped and clutched at her throat, a catch in her voice. “I thought it might be Hamlet.”
He was confused. “Hamlet? I thought you had the pig and he—the person who looked like me—tried to take it away from you.”
“Hamlet is my sister’s little boy, not a pig. I’m afraid because I know that the Hauhau take the little children and eat them.”
“Hauhau don’t eat little children. They don’t eat anyone any more, if they ever did. What is it with you Scandies that you’re afraid of the Hauhau eating you? What about this person in the woods who looked like me?”
She looked at him more closely, then stared back into the woods, thinking.
“Well, he wasn’t completely like you. He had the the…” she patted her chin, “the hair on the face.”
“Beard,” he supplied.
“Yah, the beard. And it was big and black, like yours. And he was tall like you, but maybe not quite so tall or hand….” She stopped and looked him up and down. “He was wider than you.”
She glanced upwards again.
“And the hat was like yours too.”
He took off the forage cap he was wearing. “You mean it was a soldier’s hat, like this? What about on his feet? Did he wear boots?” Frank glanced down at his own boots, the Hessians that were an exact copy of those his father had worn when he saw duty with the Duke of Wellington.
“Yah, his hat was exactly like that. But I didn’t see his feet. He was standing in the ferns.”
“Could have been a deserter.” He looked thoughtful. The deserters he had encountered on his travels often wore vestiges of their former uniforms mixed with Māoriclothing; they were fearful of people like him who had been non-commissioned officers. They tended to be hungry as well. A deserter would have certainly taken a pig from this young woman if he’d wanted it. Besides, it would explain what the Armed Constabulary were doing in the district. They were looking for men like this, despite what the two Irishmen had said. Memories were long for the army.
She shook her head. “No. He was a Hauhau. He was wearing a cloak with feathers all over it, and he had drawings on his face. Blue drawings that looked like a butterfly across his nose. And he was dark. Darker than you—a little darker than you, although there it’s dark in the bush so I can’t be sure.”
Frank stroked his beard thoughtfully. “A Māori then? Although deserters often take on moko—tattoos. Lots of them around still in hiding.” He decided against telling her he had moko himself, on his upper arm, a wreath of oak leaves with the number 57 in the centre. He’d had it done in Patea, after the attack on Otapawa. Couldn’t get rid of it now. Fortunately, he hadn’t had the name of some long-forgotten woman etched on his arm, or worse, his mother’s name, like many of the soldiers did, so far away from home and lonely.
She shook her head. “No, he was certainly a Hauhau. His English was not good. And he said a word that sounded like pig, but wasn’t. It sounded like poker.”
Frank tried not to smile, wondering how she could tell the English wasn’t good. It wasn’t much use arguing about the man. He was long gone.
“A Māoripossibly, but no reason to believe he was a Hauhau. A needy person passing through and hungry. Let’s get you home then. Or would you prefer that I escort you to the sawmill. I presume your husband works there?”
For some reason, she flushed bright red.
“No,” she said. “My sister’s husband works there. Pieter Sorensen. You know him perhaps?”
“I do,” he said, surprised. “I talked to him last week. He and Nissen, about those missing boys…”
She bit her lip and looked away.
“You know them, I suppose.” Damn. Of course, she knew them.
She nodded. “I thought they might have drowned. But now I think the Hauhauhave taken them, after I saw a Hauhau with my own eyes.”
“No, no.” He shook his head, frustrated. The ideas some new immigrant communities had about Maori were laughable. “Don’t worry about the Hauhau. They’re not a problem any…”
She was looking past him at something.
“Is someone behind me?” he asked softly.
She nodded, her eyes fixed on a spot behind him, and whispered, “The Hauhau…”
“Walk towards the sawmill,” he said in as normal a voice as possible.
“He has a hatchet,” she said quietly. “He’s looking at your head…”
Frank felt the hairs on the back of his neck tingle.
“Go.” He grabbed her shoulder and urged her along the path. “Go, run for the mill.” He bent to pick up her bonnet, which had fallen to the ground. As he started to move he felt something fly by his ear and land with a loud thud in a totara tree. He flung himself on his horse, leaned down, pulled her up and threw her across the saddle, still clutching her basket. Both braids had come down now, and she was breathing quickly, starting to panic. He backed the horse up a few steps and yanked the tomahawk from the trunk of the tree. He felt the sharp edge, imagining the job it would have done on his head if he’d been standing upright.
“Go, please go,” she whispered.
“He’s already thrown his tomahawk,” Frank said. “I doubt he has another one. If he makes a move, I’ll hit him with his own tomahawk.”
“But he may still be able to hurt us,” she whimpered. “Id he has a gun...” She was straining her head backwards to look at him. “Please, let us go now.”
He turned his horse. The path was empty, but he thought he could see a shadow moving away deeper into the bush and hear the muffled sounds of ferns being trampled. No point in giving chase, not through the dense bush on his horse, and especially encumbered by the girl. He held his horse in place, his hand lightly on her back to hold her still, concentrating on looking and listening. But the bush had gone silent. He stared at the spot where he had last seen the shadow. He had the eerie feeling that someone was staring back.
“Who are you?” he called. Then again inMāori, “Ko wai koe?” He felt that the bushes shimmered a little, but no one replied. The girl was sobbing now, holding on to his leg with a ferocious grip, and he knew he had to get her away from here and to safety.
He helped her upright on the front of his saddle, and trotted his horse back to the sawmill, the girl holding his arm in a death grip. At the sawmill, he delivered her into the hands of her brother-in-law Pieter Sorensen, Nissen’s neighbour who had come with Nissen to talk to him about the missing boys. She spilled out the story breathlessly, and, before Frank could stop her, added the possibility that Hamlet might have been wriggling in a bag held by the Hauhau. Sorensen grabbed his axe and the two ran off towards home, eyes wide with fear, to rescue the boy.
Frank watched them go, bemused. He told Nissen what he had found so far, which was nothing. Nissen nodded sadly.
“I expect they’ve drowned,” he said. “What else could it be? But what about this man in the bush that Mette was in so much trouble about?”
“He tried to steal a piglet that she’d killed,” said Frank, realizing what an achievement that was for a young woman. No woman he knew would have the grit to hit a piglet over the head with a rock, even if it was standing still in a pig sty fast asleep on its feet.
“She goes into the bush to look for food for her family,” said Nissen. “Pieter doesn’t like it. Now he has proof that a woman should not go into the forest alone. No doubt he will keep her at home after this.”
“She seems capable of taking care of herself,” said Frank. “But let your women know that there’s a suspicious looking character hanging around, a tall dark man who’s after food – a Māori or a deserter who resembles a Māori. Tell them to stay close to home.”
“They’ll do that,” said Nissen. “They’re always telling each other stories about fierce Māori who lurk in the woods waiting to kill them and eat them. They scare our children with such stories. Most of them wouldn’t leave the clearing unless accompanied by men with guns. Mette is different, unfortunately for her.”
Not so unfortunate, really. Frank liked to see a young woman with courage. Especially a good-looking woman like…Mette, her name was.
“He may be a Māori,” he said. “Although that alone doesn’t make him dangerous. I suspect that he hasn’t eaten in a while. Not the most intelligent thing to do, throw a tomahawk at me. But he may just be hungry, and annoyed that he lost the pig.”
“If he asked us for food we’d give it to him,” said Nissen. “We wouldn’t let someone starve.”
“Keep an eye open for him,” said Frank. “I have his tomahawk so he isn’t armed. I doubt he’s dangerous, as I said.”
He left Nissen standing at the door to the mill and rode off towards the town to talk to Constable Price, keeping an eye out for the mysterious tomahawk-thrower.