Mara perked up. If the ritual could be finished quickly, perhaps she could ride back to Russell that evening and take a ship to the South Island the next morning. But if there was an argument, and if the men had to discuss the next steps at length, she could be stuck here for ages.
Mara dismounted her horse, handed the reins to Karl, and pushed back her hip-length dark hair. She had worn it loose, the way the Maori women traditionally did. She stepped forward confidently.
“I can sing something,” she offered, and pulled her favorite musical instrument, a little koauau, out of a bag.
The pakeha looked just as startled as the warriors, who had been snarling and baring their teeth. Mara raised the flute to her nose in the traditional way and played a short melody. Then she began to sing. It was a lovely and strikingly simple song, nothing like the warriors’ dramatic cries, about the Canterbury Plains on the South Island. She described the endless swathes of swaying grass, the rivers bordered with thickets of raupo, and the snow-covered mountains that hid glass-clear lakes full of fish. The song was intended for a powhiri, the formal greeting ritual in which an arriving tribe would introduce themselves to their hosts by describing their home, and served to join the hosts and their guests into one group. Mara sang with calm self-assurance. She had a pure, alto voice, and both Ngai Tahu musicians and her English tutor back home had been pleased with her performances.
On this day, too, her listeners were impressed. Not only did the chieftain and his men lower their weapons, but a stirring came from the decoratively carved wooden houses ringing the meeting ground. An old woman stepped out of the wharenui, the communal house, followed by a group of girls Mara’s age. They purposefully led their sheep past the warriors and returned her song with their own. The girls sang of the beauty of the North Island, the endless white beaches, the thousand colors of the sea, and the spirits of the holy kauri trees that protected the open expanses of green hills.
Mara smiled and hoped that the Ngati Hine wouldn’t take it as an invitation to begin an entire powhiri. That could last for hours. But the old woman, obviously the tribal elder, kept the greeting brief. She approached the two pakeha women. Ida tipped her face to offer hongi, the traditional greeting. The farmers, Johnson, and the soldiers looked on mistrustfully as the women touched noses and foreheads.
Karl and Father O’Toole looked relieved. Mara, too, breathed a sigh of relief. Finally, they were getting somewhere.
“I brought gifts,” Ida said. “My daughter and I would like to visit with the tribe while these men clear up a misunderstanding. Of course, only if that’s all right with you. We don’t know how serious the disagreement about the land is.”
Mara interpreted happily, and the woman nodded and welcomed them.
Then Karl spoke with the chieftain as O’Toole interpreted. Maihi scowled at the farmers but seemed open to Karl’s suggestion to examine the maps to determine ownership of the disputed piece of land.
The elder who had initiated the temporary truce quickly returned to one of the houses. She came back immediately with a copy of the contract and the maps that the tribe had received when they sold the land. The documents had obviously been well taken care of, preserved as though they were sacred.
Mara watched with moderate interest as Karl carefully unfolded the papers and laid his own documents next to theirs.
“May I ask which parcels are being contested, Mr. Simson, Mr. Carter?” he said, turning to the farmers. “That would save us some time. Then we won’t have to ride the entire perimeter.”
Peter Carter indicated an area directly on the border of the Maori land. “I bought this here for my sheep to graze on. Then I discovered that the Maori women had planted a field there. When I drove my sheep over anyway, warriors with spears and muskets appeared, defending ‘their’ land.”
“Fine,” Karl said. “We’ll go there. Ariki, will you accompany us? And what about your land, Mr. Simson?”
The square-built, red-faced farmer pushed to the front of the group but couldn’t make heads or tails of the map.
The old Maori woman pointed to the paper. “Here. Land belong not him, not us,” she explained in English. “Belongs gods. Spirits live there. He not destroy.”
“There, you heard it!” Simson shouted. “She said herself that the land doesn’t belong to them. That means—”
“It’s documented as Maori land,” Karl said sharply. “See the little mark on the map? She means that place. We’ll have to go look at that too. Please come, ariki. The sooner we go, the sooner we’ll have this sorted out. Mr. Johnson, please inform Mr. Simson and Mr. Carter that they’ll have to accept our decision, whatever it may be.” He shot them an annoyed look.
Karl walked back to his horse, and Ida and Mara followed to get their gifts for the Maori women out of their saddlebags. They were just small things—colorful scarves, costume jewelry, and a few sacks of seeds. They hadn’t been able to transport more practical gifts like blankets or pots and pans. But Mara could tell that it wasn’t necessary. The women and children were already wearing mostly pakeha clothing, which provided more protection against the cool climate than the traditional flax garments of the Maori. Many of them also wore little wooden crosses on leather bands around their necks, in place of the traditional god figurines carved from pounamu jade. Several of the women approached Father O’Toole trustfully, spoke with him, and allowed themselves to be blessed.
“We all Christians,” a young woman declared to Ida, and proudly touched her cross. “Baptized. Mission Kororareka.”
“Our mission in Russell was founded in 1838,” Father O’Toole added. “It was started by French Dominican priests and Marist priests and nuns.”
“Are they . . . Catholic?” Ida asked. She herself had grown up in a strict community of Lutherans where Papists had been viewed as the enemy rather than as brothers and sisters in Christ.
For her part, Mara had never differentiated very much between different types of Christianity. There was no church near Rata Station, so attending regular services was impossible. Ida led the family in prayer when she was home, but if she was accompanying her husband on his travels as a surveyor, Mara and her sisters were left in the care of Cat Rata. Ida’s best friend and the girls’ second mother didn’t pray to the Christian god. She had grown up with a Maori tribe and was more interested in teaching the girls about native gods and spirits. Their religious education was further complicated by a touch of Anglicanism from their tutor, Miss Foggerty. She had taught Sunday school lessons with great fervor, but without much success. The children hadn’t been able to stand the strict, humorless woman. Mara would much rather commune with Maori spirits than Miss Foggerty’s god. In fact, Mara and Eru had tried asking them to send Miss Foggerty back to England. It hadn’t been a successful experiment, though. Mara couldn’t remember one prayer that had ever been answered, by any god.
Father O’Toole smiled. “I don’t think it matters how the Maori find their way to God. The important thing is that we manage to get them to stop praying to heathen idols.”
“The important thing is that everyone is peaceful,” Karl grumbled.
Mara knew he was also anxious to be home, not wanting to leave Cat and his friend Chris Fenroy alone with the shearing. “Come now, Father, you can count your flock later.”