Beneath the Kauri Tree (The Sea of Freedom Trilogy Book 2) Read online

  ALSO BY SARAH LARK

  In the Land of the Long White Cloud Saga

  In the Land of the Long White Cloud

  Song of the Spirits

  Call of the Kiwi

  The Caribbean Islands Saga

  Island of a Thousand Springs

  Island of the Red Mangroves

  The Sea of Freedom Trilogy

  Toward the Sea of Freedom

  Other Titles

  A Hope at the End of the World

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2012 by Sarah Lark

  Translation copyright © 2018 by D. W. Lovett

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Previously published as Im Schatten des Kauribaums by Bastei Lübbe in Germany in 2012. Translated from German by D. W. Lovett. First published in English by AmazonCrossing in 2018.

  Published by AmazonCrossing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and AmazonCrossing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503900585

  ISBN-10: 1503900584

  Cover design by Shasti O’Leary Soudant

  Contents

  Child of the Stars

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Child of the Shadows

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Apocalypse

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  No Choice

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  With Open Eyes

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  White Camellias

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  About the Translator

  Child of the Stars

  Dunedin and Waikato, New Zealand

  1875–1878

  London, England

  Cardiff and Treherbert, Wales

  1878

  Chapter 1

  “And until now you have been privately educated?”

  Miss Partridge, principal of the renowned Otago Girls’ High School in Dunedin, cast a stern look at Matariki and her parents.

  Matariki thought the darkly clad woman with a lorgnette a bit strange. Miss Partridge appeared to be about the same age as her grandmothers from the Maori village, but no one there needed help seeing. The principal, however, did not strike her as imposing, nor did the furniture, undoubtedly imported from England, nor the heavy drapes for the tall windows, and the many bookshelves. None of it daunted Matariki. It was her mother’s behavior that was unsettling. She had been anxious to the point of hysteria the whole ride from Elizabeth Station to Dunedin, nagging Matariki about her clothes and comportment, and worrying over the entrance exam her daughter would take that day as if she herself needed to do well on it.

  “Not precisely, M . . .”

  It was all Lizzie Drury could do not to call Miss Partridge “ma’am,” and during their introductions, she had nearly curtsied. For more than ten years, Lizzie had been mistress of Elizabeth Station, a farm near Lawrence. It had been a long time since she had worked as a maid, but highbrow settings and polite society still intimidated her.

  “Miss Partridge,” she said, trying to make her voice sound firm, “our daughter was in school in Lawrence. But the settlement is slowly dying as the miners move on. What remains of it, well, we’d rather not send our children there. That’s why we’ve arranged for private instruction this past year. However, the capacities of our tutor have been exhausted when it comes to Matariki.”

  With nervous fingers, Lizzie checked the hold of her coiffure. She wore her frizzy dark-blonde hair primly put up under a pert little hat. Perhaps too pert a hat? In front of Miss Partridge, the delicate blue and pastel flower decorations seemed almost too bold. If it had been up to Lizzie, she would have pulled her hooded cloak from the far corner of her wardrobe and put it on to look more serious. Michael, however, would not allow it.

  “We’re going to a school, Lizzie, not a funeral,” he had said, laughing. “They’ll take Riki, don’t worry. And why not? She’s a bright child. And if they don’t, it’s not the only girls’ school on the South Island.”

  Lizzie had let herself be convinced, but before the severe eyes of the principal, she felt as if the earth would swallow her. However exceptional Otago Girls’ High School was or was not, Matariki would always stand out.

  Miss Partridge’s gaze now became markedly disapproving.

  “That is quite interesting,” she said, and then addressed Matariki for the first time. “Dear, you have just turned—what is it?—eleven. Yet you have already exhausted your tutor’s capacities? You must truly be a gifted child.”

  Matariki—on whom the irony of Miss Partridge’s tone was completely lost—smiled. It was a smile that usually won over every heart. “My grandmothers say I’m smart,” she confirmed in her soft, melodic voice. “Aku says I can dance more haka than other girls my age. And Haeata says I could be a tohunga, a healer, once I learn more botany. And Ingoa—”

  “How many grandmothers do you have, child?” Miss Partridge asked, looking confused.

  Matariki’s large, light-brown eyes briefly lost themselves in the distance while she counted to herself the older women of the tribe. For her age, she was also advanced in arithmetic, though that skill had less to do with tutors, teachers, or “grandmothers” and more to do with her thrifty mother.

  “Sixteen,” she said.

  Miss Partridge turned her gaze back to Matariki’s parents. Her expression made Lizzie’s breath catch.

  “She means the older women of the neighboring Maori tribe,” Michael explained. “Among the Ngai Tahu, it is customary to call all of the older women ‘grandmother’—not just grandmothers by relation. The same is true for grandfathers, aunts, and uncles, sometimes even mothers.”

  “So, she’s not even your natural-born child?”

  The thought seemed almost to rel
ieve Miss Partridge. After all, Matariki did not particularly resemble her parents. Though Michael Drury was dark haired like his daughter, his eyes gleamed as blue as the sky over Ireland; his face was angular, not round like Matariki’s, and his skin was lighter. The girl could have gotten her delicate figure and curly hair from her mother—though Lizzie’s hair was rather frizzy whereas Matariki’s was wavy. Lizzie’s eyes were also blue. The girl had not inherited her amber eyes from either of them.

  “No, no,” Michael Drury said, shaking his head decisively. “Matariki is our daughter.”

  Lizzie gave him a brief, guilty look, but Michael did not return it, instead fending off the principal’s apparent displeasure. Michael Drury had his failings, and sometimes his careless manner drove Lizzie mad. But he kept his promises, including the one Lizzie had asked of him before Matariki’s birth: that he would never hold Lizzie’s past against her daughter.

  Michael had never asked the question of paternity, although soon after Matariki’s birth, it was clear that he could not have sired the dark-skinned, brown-eyed child.

  Now Lizzie braced herself, convinced that the principal would not believe that Matariki was their daughter.

  “I am her mother,” Lizzie said firmly. “And beyond that, she is a child of the stars.”

  Hainga, the Maori tribe’s wisewoman, had called Matariki that. The girl had been conceived in the tumult of the Touhou Festival. The Maori celebrated New Year when the Matariki star cluster first appeared in the South Island’s night sky.

  Miss Partridge furrowed her brow. “So, not merely preternaturally gifted but also celestially conceived,” she said.

  Matariki glared at the principal. The woman’s words did not mean much to her, but she felt how they hurt her mother. And she would not allow that.

  “Haikina says I’m a chieftain’s daughter,” she said. “That’s something like a princess. I think, anyway.”

  Lizzie almost cracked a smile. She, too, had once thought that. Kahu Heke, Matariki’s biological father, had lured Lizzie into his arms with the hope she would be his queen. But things had turned out quite differently, and the tutor, Haikina, had done the right thing by not telling Matariki everything.

  Miss Partridge’s gaze became more hateful, and Michael squared himself. He needed to step in—he could no longer watch while Lizzie shrank in front of this impertinent lady.

  “Miss Partridge, Matariki Drury is our daughter. That’s what it says on her birth certificate in Dunedin, and we are asking you to accept her for admission to your school. Though I wouldn’t call her gifts preternatural, our daughter is smart. Her tutor can read and write well, and she’s taught our children English with loving rigor, but she doesn’t know French or Latin, and she can’t prepare Matariki for further studies or for a society marriage.”

  Michael emphasized “society” almost threateningly. Let Miss Partridge dare to contradict him here. In the last few years, he and Lizzie had grown their farm into a very successful business that specialized in the breeding of quality sheep. Rams and ewes from Elizabeth Station received the highest prices at auction, and the Drurys were widely esteemed.

  Nevertheless, Lizzie suffered from feelings of inferiority when they were invited to the sheep breeders’ association meetings or parties. Both Drurys came from humble circumstances, and Michael, in particular, did not strive for social standing. Lizzie did exert herself, but she was shy. When she was in front of people like the Wardens of Kiward Station or the Barringtons and Beasleys of Canterbury, her otherwise wonder-working smile failed her first, followed immediately by her voice. Lizzie had sworn to herself that it would not be like that for Matariki. Otago Girls’ High School should provide her with the necessary skills.

  Matariki, however, did not tend toward shyness. Nor was she nervous when Miss Partridge finally asked her a few science and math questions. With a clear voice and without any note of Irish brogue or the Cockney accent her mother had struggled with all her life, she solved the problems. Haikina had been an ideal teacher when it came to speech and elocution.

  The principal looked at her benevolently. “From a knowledge standpoint, I have no objections to your acceptance,” Miss Partridge finally observed, somewhat peevishly. “However, it must be clear to you that, hmm, Mat-uh-riki will be the only girl with such an exotic background.”

  Michael bristled, but Miss Partridge waved her hand soothingly.

  “Please, Mr. Drury, I say that only with good intentions. The best families in Canterbury and Otago send us their daughters, and some of these children are, well, they are not accustomed—”

  “You mean to say that the sight of our daughter would so frighten these children that they would run straight home?”

  “I mean it from your daughter’s perspective,” said Miss Partridge. “Most of these children, in the best of cases, know Maori as servants. Your daughter will not have it easy.”

  Lizzie raised her head and held herself straight, looking taller and more self-assured. For the first time that day, she looked like the white woman of whom the Ngai Tahu spoke with more respect than for any other on the South Island. As far as they were concerned, this pakeha wahine possessed more mana—power and influence—than most warriors.

  “Miss Partridge, life isn’t easy,” she said calmly. “And if Matariki learns that lesson in no worse circumstances than dealing with a few spoiled brats in a girls’ school, she’s to be envied.”

  For the first time, Miss Partridge looked at Lizzie with astonishment. She had appeared mousy a moment before, but now . . .

  And Lizzie was not done. “Perhaps you’ll be the first to accustom yourself to her name, should she attend this school. Her name is Matariki.”

  Miss Partridge’s mouth twisted. “Yes, hmm, that is also something we should discuss. Could we not call her Martha?”

  “We’ll send her to Otago Girls’ High School,” Lizzie said.

  The Drurys had taken their leave of Miss Partridge, without making explicit arrangements for Matariki’s entrance into the school, and Michael had immediately begun to curse the “impertinent biddy” as they emerged onto the street. Lizzie let him rage for a while, figuring that he would calm down while he retrieved the horses from the rental stables. When, however, he brought up the subject of visiting the Catholic girls’ school, she clarified her position.

  “Otago is the best school in the area. All the sheep barons send their daughters there. And they want to take Matariki. It would be madness not to send her.”

  “Those little rich girls will make her life hell,” Michael said.

  “As I just pointed out to Miss Partridge,” she replied, “hell doesn’t consist of plush sofas, English furniture, and well-heated classrooms. A few troublemakers might prowl around places like that, but not as many as in the prisons or Australia’s penal camps or New Zealand’s gold miners’ camps. We survived all that, Michael—a girls’ school couldn’t possibly be as bad.”

  Michael gave her a sidelong glance as he moved the horses into position. “She is, after all, a princess.” He smiled and turned to his daughter. “Would you like to go to this school, Matariki?”

  Matariki shrugged. “I like the uniforms,” she said, pointing to a few students passing by. Lizzie caught herself thinking that her daughter would look charming in the uniform; the white blouse would complement Matariki’s golden shimmering skin, her raspberry-colored lips, and her black locks. “Haikina says girls have to learn a lot, more than boys. Whoever knows a lot has a lot of mana, and whoever has the most mana can become chieftain.”

  Lizzie laughed a bit forcedly. She knew from her own painful experience that too much mana did not always serve a woman well.

  “But what about friends, Matariki?” She was determined, albeit reluctantly, to point out the possible difficulties her daughter might face at Otago Girls’ High School. “You may not make any friends here.”

  “Haikina says a chieftain doesn’t have any friends. Chieftains are un, un—”
>
  “Untouchable,” Lizzie said, completing the thought. That, too, awoke unhappy memories.

  Matariki nodded. “Then that’s how I’ll be.”

  “Should we stop by the Burtons’ residence?”

  Lizzie asked the question reluctantly as their carriage rumbled through the roughly paved streets of Dunedin. Reverend Burton had always been her friend, but she still eyed his wife, Mary Kathleen, with mild suspicion. Kathleen had been the love of Michael’s youth; they had been engaged, and he had carried a torch for her for years. His marriage to Lizzie had nearly fallen apart due to his revived passion for Kathleen. Lizzie would have liked to break off contact with the Burtons altogether, and she knew that Reverend Burton would have understood. He did not like to see Michael in Kathleen’s presence any more than Lizzie did. But there was Sean, Kathleen and Michael’s son. Sean had only gotten to know his father on the verge of adulthood, and even if the two had never quite warmed to each other, they ought not to lose touch completely.

  “Aren’t they in Christchurch?” Michael asked. “I thought Heather had an exhibition there.”

  Heather was Kathleen’s daughter from her marriage to Ian Coltrane. Years ago, when Michael was deported for grain theft, he was forced to leave behind his fiancée, Kathleen, in Ireland. She had already been pregnant with Sean, but Kathleen had not been allowed to wait for Michael’s return. Her father married her off to Ian Coltrane, a horse trader who promised to be a father to her child. Though the marriage had not been a happy one, they had nonetheless been blessed with two children together—Heather and Colin. Heather, the younger of the two, had made a name for herself as a portraitist. That week, a gallery in Christchurch was exhibiting her work. Kathleen and Peter had traveled there with Heather to celebrate the event.

  Michael did not seem particularly eager to pay the Burtons a visit. Though everyone got along perfectly well, it must have been strange for him to see his old flame married to another, let alone a clergyman of the Church of England. Michael and Kathleen had grown up together in a village in Ireland where they were raised Catholic. Perhaps being around the well-read, highly educated Peter Burton still intimidated Michael a bit—or perhaps he felt daunted by the equally well-read and well-educated Sean.