The Wives of Henry Oades

She filled her lungs with air and pushed hard, expelling the blasted rag finally. “Please untie me.” She spoke with difficulty, her ribs throbbing painfully. “Bring my babies. They’ll suffocate.”

The man jabbed a finger. “Down!”

“Have you blankets to spare? My big boy and girl are surely freezing to death.” Her teeth clattered in her head. “Have mercy, please. They’re only children.”

He advanced. “Down!”

She sank to her knees, her breasts aching. “Mightn’t you allow us to walk together? Surely that’s not asking too much, is it?”

He picked up the rag and rammed it to the back of her throat. She gagged, her eyes watering. He walked away, joining the clutch of low-speaking brethren.

Alone she lost balance and fell sideways. She saw with one eye the men returning from the bush. A boy pulled her up by the apron strings. They resumed walking, making first one confusing turn and then another. Hadn’t Henry maneuvered similarly on the way to his aunt’s viewing? Round and round he drove, passing the same public house twice. They’d missed the entire wake. The man had no sense of direction. But he’d have others with him now, men who knew the land by heart.

Toward daybreak the Maori paused to water the horses. One approached, chewing on something gristly. He pulled down on her chin with his dirty fingers and extracted the rag, tossing it aside. She worked her sore jaw and pleaded in a rusty voice.

“Please sir. I beg of you. Bring my babies. They’ll be in need of me.”

He grunted and pushed on her shoulder. She swayed and fell to a hard sit, her back to the children. A lanky lad, no more than twelve or thirteen, swaggered her way. She met his sleepy gaze and spoke slowly, distinctly. “Bay-Bees. Fetch them, please.” Nothing registered in his flat eyes. He put a wedge of cold sweet potato to her mouth and yawned. She hawked out the potato. “My babies, damn you!”

He scowled, understanding at least her tone. He picked up the rag and roughly gagged her again.

They were allowed no privacy before setting off again. She voided herself while walking, with no more grace than a horse. She acknowledged the fetid act, but did not agonize. As if her parts, her cramped hips and legs, her leaking breasts, her bleeding soles, her filthy drawers, belonged to someone else.

Morning passed. The river was no longer visible. There was bright light above, blinding splinters of sun between the branches. They were tramping through dense growth, traveling in a north-westerly direction, she guessed. It was two o’clock at least. Though she could not be certain of that either.

The voices were like those inside a dream. She heard them throughout the afternoon, a steady running throb. Her father appeared, oddly clean shaven, as did Mim with her clothes ablaze. Unintelligible hymns were sung, incomprehensible advice given. Mim came and went throughout, crackling and burning and screaming obscenities.

The smell of smoke brought her around. Margaret broke from thick reverie, sensing Henry’s presence. There was a break in the trees ahead, where Henry and his men, every ambulatory townsman, she imagined, lay in wait. She grew giddy with anticipation. Leave it to her methodical husband. He would not put his family at risk by moving in with but a handful of men. No, praise God. He would have rallied a cavalry. The bastards would be surrounded, forced to put down their arms. Henry the pacifist would no doubt take them prisoner rather than shoot them, which meant enduring their murderous company on the return journey. So be it.

The village wall and moat came into view minutes later. Joy broke out among the Maori, rapturous barking and shouting. The lead bastard picked up the pace, throwing back his head, shaking his rifle. Chimerical Henry and the other figments of her imagination allowed him to pass with impunity. Her legs turned liquid and gave way beneath her. She fell face forward.

“Up!” Someone seized her forearm, yanking hard. “Up, up, up!”

She staggered to her feet and faltered against him, the same detestable linguist who knew the word “down.” He pushed her off. She heard a sound then, a single fluted note, a bird or her baby, and cried out. He slapped her. She barely felt his hand.

They were brought over a bridge, and through carved wooden gates. Maori came running from all corners—tattooed men, bare-breasted women, children, and dogs. They swamped the returning murderers. Margaret listened hard for her babies, looking everywhere for the flax sacks containing them. Oscar was pulled from the horse. He took two drunken steps and fell. His face was red, swollen from crying. She spotted John and Josephine—standing huddled, hand in hand—and then lost sight of them again in the shrieking mayhem. The mob led them to a clearing, a common area, bordered by huts, low, sturdy-looking dwellings, beamed and thatched. Margaret turned in search of Henry. But the gates behind were already closed.

The smoke she’d been smelling came from their cooking fire. Flesh of some sort was being roasted, a nauseating smell. She and the children were herded together, their gags removed, their hands unbound. She petted them and kissed their matted hair, pressing hard against their scalps, battling lurid thoughts of dying, of having the children see her go first.

The sacks were brought forward, unceremoniously dumped in a heap. The men stood back while the tribeswomen flocked. They drew her clean sheets from one sack, a pair of Henry’s drawers, her good blue apron, stockings and shirts, everything that had been hanging on the line down to the pegs. A young girl squatted and pulled Mary from another sack. Simultaneously, an older woman cried out, taking Mary from the child, cradling her in her arms. The women converged, softly cooing. Margaret rushed into their midst and snatched up her baby. A dry breeze moved Mary’s fine hair. She was stiff, but otherwise undisturbed. Margaret put a gentle thumb to her eyelid and eased it up, exposing a pearly crack. She breathed a frantic breath into the tiny mouth and nostrils. A dozen brown hands reached. She backed away clumsily, her mouth still cleaved to her lifeless baby. They closed in, prying Mary from her. Margaret sank to the ground in a sick numbness. At the same moment, Martha was placed in her arms, suckling air. Margaret quickly unbuttoned her blouse and put the living baby to her breast, a shiver of joy coursing. Martha pulled at her nipple greedily, noisily. Margaret’s shoulders sagged with the relief. A band of murmuring women came closer, hovering above. Margaret vaguely felt their presence.

“Up.”

She did not look to see which murderer spoke, but continued to nurse, moving Martha to the other breast, stroking and kissing her warm head. “We’re not finished.”

“Up!”

Margaret took her time, shifting Martha again and rising slowly, thinking of Henry. She pictured his lined forehead, the agony in his eyes. He loved his babies so.

THEIR THATCHED HUTS were but single rooms with a cooking fire in the center, and sleeping mats all around. Margaret, Josephine, and Martha were taken to one hut, John and Oscar to another.

“Leave the boys with me,” she pleaded, when it became obvious that they were to be separated. “Keep us together.” The flanking Maori did not respond.

Ahead, John was following Oscar inside. She called after her son. “Courage, John.” He glanced over his shoulder and mouthed the word “Father.” Margaret flicked a smile for her sturdy boy, a lad who should be home in England, romping in the meadow with the collie he’d pined for.

She bent to enter the neighboring hut, pulling Josephine along. A half-naked granny, a guard presumably, sat motionless in a dark corner. Margaret spoke as she would to any elder, politely, deferentially. “Can you tell us why we’re here, madam?”

The old lady looked at them, then looked away, saying nothing. A girl came in with a gourd bowl of wash water. Another brought rough skirts and swaddling of the same material. They scurried off, and no wonder. She stank; Josephine and Martha stank. Margaret pulled away Martha’s filthy napkin to discover insects both dead and crawling. She folded the napkin in quarters and set it aside.

Josephine sidled up close and whispered, “Did Mary croak?”

She would have heard the horrible word from Mim. Margaret kissed her and said without conviction, “Mary’s safe with Jesus now.”

A long time ago, before Margaret’s own children were born, a Surrey woman hanged herself with a bedsheet after her child’s drowning. Margaret understood completely now.

She took the coarse rag from the water and tested its roughness on her own arm. She started with Martha’s feet, moving up each squatty leg. Next she stripped and scoured Josephine, turning the wash water brown in her zeal, working up a madwoman’s sweat. Every fingernail, every bodily crease, required her attention. Their undergarments were ruined. It was good to be rid of them. Josephine struggled with the strange skirt, gathering excess fabric in her fists. “It scratches.”

“It’s clean,” said Margaret. She washed herself last, then crouched awkwardly and exchanged her feculent skirt for the dry one. “Now listen closely, little miss.” She cupped her daughter’s head and whispered directly into her ear. “All shall be fine. Do you understand?” Josephine nodded. “Father is coming for us. In the meantime you must do as I say. It’s not the same now. You must mind me absolutely. Without question.”

Josephine’s chin trembled. “Mary.”

Margaret closed her eyes and rocked her.

A girl brought food, a basket of sweet potatoes, corn, pork, and some reddish elongated pieces, dried past identification. Josephine took the meat with her fingers, chewing listlessly.

Margaret put restless Martha to her breast. “I’m very thirsty,” said Josephine. Margaret turned to the old woman and pantomimed drinking from a beaker. “Water, please?”

The rooted woman did not speak.

“Have you no children of your own, madam?”

The woman farted, a noxious bleat.

Margaret clucked. “Why, you rude old trout!”

“Mama, please.”

Margaret laid Martha in the scoop of her skirt. “You’ll have a little of my milk.”

Josephine scowled. “I’m much too big.”

Margaret stroked her child. “Let’s pretend you’re not.” Josephine came reluctantly. Margaret pushed on her breast to aid the flow, taking the hard teeth like a she-wolf. “Gently does it now.”

The desiccated woman looked their way. Margaret met the beady black eyes. “Sodding old hag with your dried up dugs.” The woman blinked. “Useless childless thing.” The woman looked away again. “Warts to you,” Margaret hissed.

Josephine stopped suckling. She nestled against Margaret’s side, raking her tongue along her teeth as if to rid her mouth of the taste. Margaret adjusted her blouse and covered sleeping Martha with her apron. The crone came alive, pointing toward the mats along the opposite wall.

They crawled over, sharing a mat, Martha beneath one arm, Josephine beneath the other. Insects scuttled in the thatched ceiling above. Margaret drew up the hide of some long dead creature, tucking her big girl close. She ached for John, imagining him frightened and thirsty, biting his bottom lip raw.

“There’s another matter, Pheeny.”

Josephine moaned sleepily.

“When Father comes you are not to call out to him. Do you understand?”

“He may arrive in secret,” said Josephine.

“That’s right.”

“Will he come in the morning?”

Margaret whispered, “It’s quite possible, sweetheart.”

“May I ride home with him?”

“You may.” A gutter of voices could be heard outside, a baby’s far-off cry. They’d sail straight home once this ordeal was over. Promotions, money, and honors be damned. They’d leave on the first ship. Four cots in steerage would do.

Josephine murmured, “Perhaps he’ll bring the buggy.”

“He won’t. It’s too large.”

Josephine yawned a sticky yawn. “The branches won’t allow it through.”

“Yes. That’s right. Sleep now, my love.”

“He’ll come,” said Josephine.

“He will.”

The grief pressed on Margaret’s chest like a third child. Once her girls were asleep she wept without cessation. Never before had she loathed the world or herself so thoroughly. It had been her idea to move so far out. The fresh country air will be good for the children. Over and over she’d said it, wearing her husband down, getting her tyrannical way finally.

It was still dark when they came, and bitterly cold. If Margaret had slept she did not recall it. Her body was stiff. She could barely stand. Two short, sullen women led her to the latrine, and with a series of gestures instructed her to clean it.

Alone

HENRY SMELLED SMOKE and put the whip to Katie’s rump. A tramp’s cook fire started in the bushes, he figured, with the perfect breeze to bring it straight to his roof. Christ Almighty. He’d be up all night sopping down the bloody timbers. Rounding a stand of karaka trees, the smoldering destruction came into view. Henry called out, expecting his wife to appear, their homeless children clinging. He left the old nag and rig in the road and ran the last distance.

The fire was giving off the last of its heat. He entered where the door had been this morning. “Meg!” He stood stock still and listened for his family. “Meg, sweetheart.” He said it softly now, taking in the blackened wreckage, his eyes adjusting. In the same moment he saw a few cookpots, John’s lucky horseshoe, Meg’s mother’s ginger jar, and a human body. “Oh, Jesus, please.” He approached disbelieving, falling to one knee. The body was hairless, faceless, and long-limbed, not a child. “Oh God.” He removed his coat and laid it over her, then drew it away again and touched her head. An ashy wet bit of her came away on his fingers.

He stood in a stupor and called to his children. “John. Pheeny, darling. Dad’s here.”

He took careful steps, using his hat to gently rake the ashes. He paced off the length, and then the width. Here was something. He bent over, sweat pouring, soaking his beard. He rubbed the shard between his fingers—glass, not bone, a trembling joyous discovery. He started over. Inch by cautious inch he combed the floor for his children’s remains. He went outside and did the same without finding a trace. They were alive then. A fire will always leave something behind. “Kids!” he shouted. They were lurking in the woods above, having fled the fire in time. They’d be freezing, frightened out of their wits. He ran uphill without a lamp, bellowing their names.

The forest floor was damp and slippery. Henry searched along the quiet periphery, entering the bush from the south. He’d been up here during the day with John often enough, gathering kindling, debating which dogs were best. At night the black trees loomed the same in every direction. Henry ran north; he ran west, climbing deep into the interior. It was after midnight when he quit, exhausted and hoarse. He started down, still calling to them, spotting Mim Bell’s empty rig in the road then, a surge of love and relief rushing through him. The body inside had to be Mim’s.

Henry untied Mim’s skittish mare from the post and turned her and the buggy around. Meg and the children had somehow managed to escape. They would have found their way to the Bells’, their closest neighbor. Henry rode south a grateful man, a man redeemed. He could not fathom a life without them. He would take them home to England now. They’d endured enough. He planned to tell Meg first thing, the moment he saw her.

FEAR AND CONFUSION were fully restored by the time Henry reached the Bells’. Meg would not have set out in the cold and hiked the twenty miles with four children in tow, not with Bell’s horse and buggy at her disposal. He pounded Bell’s front door, hearing footsteps after an eternity, muffled cursing.

Cyril Bell appeared in his nightshirt, holding a lamp. He reached behind the door and brought out a crude cudgel. “Who the devil is it at this hour?”

Henry stepped into the wreath of light, listening for sounds in the house. “Oades. Henry Oades. We’ve met, sir.” He spoke fast, wheezing like a hound. “I’m Margaret’s husband. Your wife’s friend. My wife and children have gone missing.”

Bell frowned, scratching his privates with the club.

Henry demanded, “Are they here?”

“What’s this all about?”

“Are you bloody hard of hearing? I’m looking for my family.”

Bell craned, sniffing the air. “You’re about three sheets to it, aren’t you?” He lifted the club. “Go on home before I give you the beating of your life.”

Henry shoved him aside, shouting into the interior. “Meg!”

Bell recovered from the surprise, raising the club higher. Henry had the advantage of thirty more pounds and at least ten fewer years. He grabbed Bell’s wrist, locking the man against the doorjamb. “Where’s your wife?”

Bell struggled. “What do you want with her?”

“Where is she?”

“She’s not here, you buggering idiot. There’s nobody here but me and the dog. She’s a mean one, too. She’ll bite. One word from me and—”

Henry wrenched the club from Bell’s flaccid grip and sent it sailing into the dark yard. Bell ducked back inside. Henry put himself between door and jamb. “Help me, please.”

“Why should—”

“Your wife visited mine last evening?”

Bell swiped his nose on a sleeve. “If you say so. Walked out with a bee in her bonnet. Not for the first time. She and the boy. Pig-headed woman. Didn’t bother to say where they were headed.”

“I found your rig on my property.” Henry pointed vaguely. “I’ve returned it.”

“I owe you then. I thought…”

Henry ran a hand through his dry hair, still scanning the interior, half expecting Meg and the children to suddenly show themselves.

“My house burned to the ground last night.”

“That’s terrible news.”

Henry stood shivering, the dread rising in his chest, constricting his breathing. “My children are nowhere to be found.”

“Ah, for the love of—”

There had to be a rational answer. They couldn’t simply disappear.

“I came upon a body.”

“Oh, no, was—”

“My wife, I thought at first.”

“Oh Christ.”

“Or your wife, sir. I’m sorry.” Henry was anxious to leave. He’d given up the search too soon. There were miles still to cover. John would have constructed a shelter of some sort, far away from the smoke and fire.

Bell began to weep. “Jesus, Mary, and—”

“There’s no way of knowing,” said Henry. “I couldn’t tell.”

“My boy?” Bell’s tears streamed. “Oscar?”

Henry shook his head. “I’m sorry. No sign of him either.”

“Oh, sweet sacred heart. We’ll want to inform the authorities.”

“They can wait.” On the way over Henry had considered and rejected the idea. No good would come of rousing the governor at this hour. He was a useless indecisive man; his sycophantic underlings were no better. Meg and the children were his family, his concern. He’d have the benefit of daylight soon. He’d start over looking. “Will you make a loan of a horse, Mr. Bell?”

“Have your choice of the two in the stable,” said Bell. “I’ll take the other.”

They made good time, arriving by first light to a smoky quiet. Bell tied up the horses. Henry stood in the road making quarter turns, calling to his wife and children. The men tramped up to the bush and began searching, giving up after three hours, making their way down to the charred cottage. “Tucked away,” Meg had called it. “A perfect place.”

Bell had thought to bring a shovel and a bedsheet. The men labored with the delicate corpse. It collapsed in their hands, making red and yellow stains on the sheet. Daylight was no help, as Henry had hoped. “Can you tell anything?”

“Might be anyone,” muttered Bell.

“Anyone.”

“Mine wore a little gold locket on occasion,” said Bell.

“Mine wore her ring,” said Henry.

“With my likeness and Oscar’s inside,” said Bell.

Henry, the middle brother, had been the first in his family to present a wife with a wedding ring. His parents had disapproved, as had Meg’s parents. The older set still regarded the ring an ostentatious pagan practice. “Unseemly,” his mother had said. “Unchristian.” She may have reconsidered had she seen the thrill in Meg’s lovely eyes.

The men poked around and beneath the body for as long as they could bear it, finding nothing to prove who it was or wasn’t. The lack of evidence meant little to Henry. Meg often took off the ring. She feared losing it in the wash, she’d said.

They took turns with the shovel, burying the body out back, where the hydrangea once bloomed. They fashioned a cross of scorched stones and walked away, both quaking with uncertainty.

Henry discovered the dogs beneath a thicket of broadleaf puka, flies and beetles feasting on the head wounds. “My boy’s pets,” he said, incredulous. “Who’d do such a thing?” Bell stalked off, disgusted. Henry stared, attempting to make sense of the grisly mess. These were John’s harmless pups, pleasant, obedient animals, bound for the circus. His eyes burned. He craved sleep; he wished not to think anymore.

Bell called to him from below, waving an arm. Henry started down, his heart thundering with fear of finding a dead child. He came up on Bell, his breathing fast and shallow.

Bell held a white-tipped, black tail feather. “Huia,” he said. “They wear the filthy things in their topknots.” He pointed out the horse tracks leading down to the river, the droppings. “Goddamn Maori were here. I’d stake my last farthing on it.”

Henry had heard stories about long-ago murders and snatchings. He’d chalked them up to apocryphal pub tales at the time. There’d been problems back in the sixties, blood shed on both sides over land, but nothing lately, not since he’d arrived, not that he knew or even heard of. What would provoke them? Why his house and family? “I’m going after them,” he said.

“I’m going with you,” said Bell.

“We’ll need guns and rope,” said Henry, wide awake now, full of seething energy. “I’ll take a coat if you can spare it.”

They raced back to Bell’s for supplies. Henry was barely aware of the horse beneath him. He did not see what caused the animal to rear. He lost hold of the reins and fell back, striking the road hard, his leg audibly cracking. A dusty blur of hooves rose in his vision. Henry tucked his head and flung himself right, rolling down an embankment, his eyes filling with searing juices.

Bell came rushing, trampling leaves and twigs. “Close yer damn eye.” Henry couldn’t see him, but he could smell the man’s peculiarly olid flesh. “Close it, I said. Don’t try to use it.” A dry cloth was pressed to his right eye. “Yer damn leg’s broken. I can see the bloody bone. We’ll get you straight to hospital. Can you hear me, Oades? Put an arm about my neck. That’s it. I’ve got you. Gently does it. That’s a steady lad. Here we go then. On the count of three. One. Two. Here we go.”

A fiery bolt shot up his spine. Henry screamed and slipped into black oblivion.

THE DOCTOR SAID he was lucky. The leg was broken in three places, but both it and the eye had been saved. The doctor was a pale, walleyed man with cold hands. “You’ll walk eventually,” he said, “though it shan’t be anytime soon.”

The eye dressing would come off in two or three weeks, depending. Depending on what, the doctor did not say. Henry, in a laudanum fog, did not ask.

Bell’s note was read aloud to him. Dear Friend, it started. I’m off to see the governor. I haven’t a Chinaman’s chance on my own. Pray for us. Henry had a rambling, fevered chat with the Lord, and then slept straight through four days. “A near coma,” said the doctor. Henry brought a hand to his bandaged cheek and touched his shaved chin. He’d been bearded since twenty. He spent a drugged moment worrying that Meg and the children wouldn’t recognize him, then closed his good eye and slept another three days.