This Thing Of Darkness (89 page)

‘But that is disgraceful!’ said Mary FitzRoy.

‘The New Zealand people fired back, and there was a big battle. Many men died. When twelve of the white men lay dead, the rest of them surrendered, including this Arthur Wakefield. They waved a white flag. Rangihaeata was very angry about his wife and child. He had every prisoner beheaded. When our people fight, this is normal for us.’

There was a tight, anxious silence at the dinner-table.

It was broken by Hone Heke. ‘You see? You white men talk to us about Christianity, and the gospel of peace, but your countrymen come among us with seven-barrelled guns!’ Hone Heke’s table manners, FitzRoy could not help noticing, were curiously elegant.

‘The white men who came to Wairau were not Christian men,’ insisted the elder Matthews passionately. ‘God shall be their judge, may He have mercy on their souls. If they have done wrong then they shall go to hell. The same goes for those who ordered the execution of the prisoners.’

‘Hell is for white men only,’ Hone Heke corrected him, ‘for there are no men half wicked enough in New Zealand to be sent to such a place. If Atua had intended our people to go to hell, he would have sent us word about it, long before he sent the white man into our country. Our people, when they die, go to an island off the North Cape, to live there in happiness for ever. We will have nothing to do with a God who delights in such cruelties.’

‘Atua is the pagan deity of the New Zealanders,’ whispered Davies to the FitzRoys.

‘Listen, chiefs, and I shall tell you my verdict,’ said FitzRoy. ‘When I first heard of the Wairau massacre, I was exceedingly angry, and my heart was dark. My first thought was to avenge the deaths of the Europeans who had been killed, and for that purpose to bring many ships of war, sailing vessels, and vessels moved by fire, with many soldiers, and had I done so, you would have been sacrificed, and your villages destroyed.’

He hoped that this bluff was not too blatantly obvious: it had been made clear to him at the outset that there were to be no further troops under any circumstances. Seventy-eight was the absolute limit. Some of the chiefs seemed impressed, at least.

‘The soldiers in red jackets practise every day with their weapons,’ related one wide-eyed New Zealander to his neighbour. ‘They will attack anyone their chief orders them to attack, no matter whether there is any just cause or not, and they will fight furiously until the last man is killed. Nothing can make them run away!’

Hone Heke, FitzRoy noted, was among those unperturbed by the supposed bravery of British troops. He resumed his verdict: ‘But now that I have considered, I see that the white men were, in the first instance, very much to blame. They had no right to survey the land, or to build the hut as they did. Therefore I will not avenge their deaths. But I have to tell you that Chief Rangihaeata committed a horrible crime, in murdering men who had surrendered themselves in reliance on his honour as a chief. White men never kill their prisoners. So, for the future, let us live peaceably and amicably, whites and natives side by side, and let there be no further bloodshed.’

‘The governor has spoken wisely,’ said Waka Nene. ‘Let all men heed his words.’

Hone Heke’s small dark eyes flashed at FitzRoy for a moment, like a hawk sizing up its prey.

 

Mary FitzRoy placed a hand tenderly upon her husband’s shoulder. It was after midnight, and he had been working at the colony’s books since five in the morning; it had been the same story for three days past now, three days in which he had not felt able to spare his children even the briefest minute of his time. His wife had even taken on the task of writing letters home to his sister, to reassure her that they had arrived safely.

‘You will strain your vision, Mr FitzRoy,’ she said, a futile protest, for she knew that he would drive himself onwards at any task until it was completed. He turned to look at her but said nothing, and she saw the bleakness that bit deep into his features.

‘You did say that the accounts were chaotic,’ she prompted him.

‘They are worse than chaotic, Mrs FitzRoy. If I have read them correctly, the annual income of the colony is approximately twenty thousand pounds a year. The annual expenditure is forty-nine thousand. Public works are at a standstill. There are thirty-three thousand pounds in unpaid salaries. New Zealand is bankrupt.’

‘Can you not raise a loan?’

‘London has strictly prohibited me from drawing on the British Treasury, or raising a loan of any kind. Besides, there is a letter here from the Union Bank refusing any further loans: there is already fifteen per cent per annum accruing on the unauthorized loans taken out by Hobson.’

‘Can you not sell any government property, any government land?’

‘Hobson sold all there was to sell for fifty thousand pounds.’

‘What happened to the money?’

‘By the looks of it, he drew it all out of the Treasury via a system of unauthorized bills, in order to meet his “expenses”.’

‘Captain Hobson was stealing from the Treasury?’

‘Perhaps not just Captain Hobson. There are some extremely curious warrants for payment here to a Mr R. A. Fitzgerald, all of them issued by Shortland.’

‘By
Shortland?’

‘I shall speak to him about it on the morrow.’

‘If the colony is bankrupt, what does that mean in practice?’

‘It means that all those poor wretches being disgorged from the company’s boats will starve. Unless — ’

‘Unless what?’

‘Unless, my dearest, they are given the native land for which they have paid the Wakefields so handsomely. Or unless I can feed and house them with my own money.’

‘How much land shall they need?’

FitzRoy laughed bitterly, and gestured to the books banked up like earthworks on the desk. ‘The total acreage of land sold by the New Zealand Company to its would-be colonists exceeds the total land area of New Zealand itself.’

Mary FitzRoy wanted to enfold her husband in her arms, as if he were a little boy; but he was the governor of New Zealand, and that would not, of course, have been entirely appropriate behaviour.

 

Shortland wrung his pudgy hands. A bead of sweat appeared at his temple, and made a furtive break for his collar. Goosepimpled with nerves, his skin assumed the consistency of a refrigerated chicken.

‘I shall ask you again, Mr Shortland. Who is R. A. Fitzgerald?’

‘He is a planter, sir, late of the West Indies.’

‘What is your relationship to him?’

‘Well, of course I know the man, sir, and I see him not infrequently.’

‘What is your relationship to him?’

‘I do not see how that is germane, sir, to — ’

‘her he is my father-in-law, sir.’

‘Your
father-in-law?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘How the devil did you get away with it? Were the accounts not audited?’

‘All the colony’s accounts have been audited, sir. All the payments therein have been officially authorized, sir.’

‘By whom?’

‘By the auditor, sir.’

‘Obviously they have been audited by the auditor. I mean, what is the name of the auditor?’

Shortland rather shamefacedly looked at his boots.

‘I shall ask you again, Mr Shortland. What is the name of the auditor?’

‘I ...’

‘Well?’

‘R. A. Fitzgerald, sir.’

‘R. A. Fitzgerald is the
auditor
?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I shall expect your resignation within the hour.’

‘But - my career will be finished, sir!’ Shortland burst out.

‘You should have thought of that when you issued the payments. Think yourself lucky I do not have you clapped in irons.’

‘“Clapped in irons”?’ sneered Shortland derisively. ‘You are not on a brig now,
sir
. I was left here, on my own, with no money and no authority, for two years. Do you think Hobson did not have his hand in the till? It is the way things are done down here. You think you can just walk in and act the sea-captain - do this, do that? You shall not last five minutes here. The company will crush you like an
ant!
Like they crushed Hobson! You have been here but a few days, and already the matter is quite obvious to everyone but you!’ Shortland’s whey face had turned puce with indignation. ‘You shall repent of the way you have treated me!’

‘Get out,’ rapped FitzRoy. ‘Get out of here and never come back.’

‘You’re done for, FitzRoy,’ spat Shortland, ‘you and your nigger friends!’

He marched out, slamming the door so hard that another shower of white flakes spiralled seasonally down from the ceiling.

 

FitzRoy took the brig
North Star
to Wellington, a trip of ten days, to confront the company in its southern heartlands. The ship stank, for it had recently regurgitated another boatload of diseased, wretched, stumbling immigrants on to the quay: England’s poverty-stricken under-class, who had given their every last penny to the Wakefields in return for a future that did not exist. With the help of the Waimate missionaries FitzRoy had organized poor relief, paid for by himself and administered by his wife. Tents were put up, and Mrs FitzRoy moved among the would-be settlers distributing bread and soup. It could only be a short-term solution. Desperate measures were called for.

A ferocious wind squeezing itself brutishly down the Cook Strait made for an uncomfortable approach to Wellington. Viewing the little town through a buffeting crowd of seagulls, FitzRoy could not believe that the company had chosen such an insane site for their headquarters. Hemmed in by high, forested hills, Wellington could boast no level, cultivable land. As a seaport, it was a disaster: the entrance to Port Nicholson was long, narrow and studded with threatening black rocks, making it almost a blind harbour. There was no shelter from the relentless winds, and no prospect of defending the exposed, straggling settlement from any native attack. Whoever had selected Wellington’s location was a fool. On closer inspection, the town reminded him of Kororareka: a shabby muddle of grog-shops and gun-dealers, populated by drunken, desperate men.

The arrival of the
North Star
at Lambton Quay and the news that the governor had come to town caused an immediate sensation. Even before FitzRoy’s party had reached the town centre, filthy, bedraggled settlers were running to keep up. A copy of the
Nelson Examiner
was thrust into his hand, and one glimpse at its cover was enough for him to register that it was the sister paper to the
New Zealand Gazette
. Jerningham Wakefield had been busy with his pen once more. ‘Our whole community,’ it screamed, ‘upbraids the governor with one accord. He has hounded a troop of excited savages upon a peaceable and scattered population. His policies risk the extermination of the Anglo-Saxon race in New Zealand.’ White-lipped with anger at this excuse for measured journalism, FitzRoy pressed on to Barrett’s Hotel, where a table was fetched and placed in the street, from which lofty heights he could address the populace. A noisy and excitable crowd had gathered, calling for the perpetrators of the Wairau massacre to be apprehended and hanged.

‘I have investigated the massacre at the Wairau river,’ FitzRoy began, silencing the crowd, ‘and whether I try the proceedings of Mr Arthur Wakefield and his followers by general principles or by the laws of England, I am compelled to adopt the same conclusion: that their unhappy deaths were the result of their own actions. So manifestly illegal, unjust and unwise were the martial array and the command to advance that I fear the authors of that order must be held responsible for all that followed in sequence upon it. I shall therefore take no action against the native population.’

A score of angry voices burst out, and copies of the
New Zealand Gazette
and the
Nelson Examiner
were waved in outrage.

‘The rebellion must be crushed!’ shouted one man, who could be heard above the others.

‘There has been no rebellion,’ countered FitzRoy ‘These were British subjects defending their own property. The execution of the prisoners was a terrible crime by our standards, but normal by theirs. Yet it would not have happened had they not been attacked first. It must never happen again. Mistake me not, my friends, when I tell you that not an acre, not an inch of land belonging to the natives shall be touched without their consent. None of their villages, cultivated grounds or sacred burial places shall be taken from them while I have the honour of representing the Queen in this country. All parties, and I mean all parties, shall receive nothing but justice at my hands. There are many British persons who look on the natives of New Zealand as impediments to the prosperity of the settlers. To such persons I would say, the best customers of the settlers in New Zealand are the natives themselves. They are the purchasers of blankets, clothing, hardware, tobacco, soap, paper, arms, ammunition, boats, canvas and other articles, for which they pay in ready money, in food, in land and in their own labour. In future I expect the settlers to do all in their power to befriend and conciliate the natives, to forgive them and to make allowances to them, because they are the natives of this place, even if they
are
sometimes in the wrong. The only hope for the future of this nation is that we should extend the hand of friendship to our neighbours.

‘Many of you will have come here believing that you purchased native land back in England. It is with regret that I must tell you that no illegal land deals shall be honoured, but I promise that each and every transaction will at least be fairly scrutinized. Meanwhile, in order to ease any hardship among those settlers not in possession of land, I shall issue notes as legal tender, to be used for poor relief. These shall not be banknotes as such, for they shall be valid but two years, but they shall be honoured by my administration.’