so that he felt strangely disconnected from everything around him. He made Jocelyn a sweeping bow, aware that he cut a dashing figure, and held out his hand.
“May I have this dance, sweet lady?”
In his imagination—fevered all that day so he hardly remembered the sheep, the mud, the faces of those he’d worked beside—Jocelyn had blushed prettily and put her hand in his. Then he’d swept her off into the middle of the dancing, the two of them becoming the shining heart of the action, paired stars that transformed all the rest into extras.
But in reality, Jocelyn returned his bow with a pretty curtsy and smiled.
“Thank you, sir, but I’m waiting for my fiance.”
“Your what! Who…”
Faelin heard himself bellow so loudly that the dancers nearest turned to stare and the musicians faltered for a moment in their playing.
“My fiance,” Jocelyn replied. “He had a bit of business to conclude.”
“Then he’s lost his chance,” Faelin said, struggling for gallantry. “Let me convince you…”
A new voice cut in from slightly behind him.
“Convince her of what, Faelin?”
Faelin knew that voice, light and a touch impish, mocking him yet again.
“Chapin!”
He wheeled and found the little monkey man looking up at him, head tilted in inquiry, a smile on his lips.
“I see you’ve met my betrothed,” Chapin said. “Jocelyn Lee, meet Faelin the Sailor, late of the
Faelin saw red. He didn’t know what made him more furious—that this little man should have somehow bought Jocelyn Lee or that in his mocking way he should make his introduction a reminder that Faelin was just a settler, not pakeha, not now, and—if Chapin had his damnable way not ever—not unless Faelin became Chapin’s lackey, building other folks’ houses, shearing their sheep, taking their insults…
Jocelyn had slid her slender hand into Chapin’s skinny paw and was smiling up at Faelin.
“Pleased to meet you, Faelin. I know your partner, of course. Sweet Simon we call him, always such a help. Such a hand with the cattle.”
Faelin began to tremble with fury. So Simon had turned against him. Jocelyn might name him Faelin’s partner, but clearly he’d become a toady to these enemies…
He gnashed his teeth. He hadn’t known anyone ever really did that, but in the madness that was overtaking him, he gnashed them, feeling them grind like rocks in his mouth.
“You!” he bellowed, a rough growl that echoed through the suddenly quiet throng. He hardly noticed that the dancing had stopped, only that his words carried farther. “You, Chapin! What did you pay for her?”
“Pay?” Chapin looked astonished.
Jocelyn, still clinging to his hand, colored, her golden skin flushing crimson.
“Pay? Chapin repeated.
“Aye, pay,” Faelin growled. “You make everyone trade with you, monkey man. I won’t believe that such a beauty would agree to wed a skinny old monkey like you if you didn’t offer a good trade. Did you give her cousins more cattle for their farm? Or did you buy her with pretty things and the promise of a three-story stone house?”
The significance of the silk dress came to him. Vaguely Faelin recalled having seen a bolt of that fabric on his first visit to the store.
“Aye,” he continued, tapping Jocelyn’s sleeve. “I see she’s wearing part of your trade. Well then, I’ve a trade for you. I’ll trade you your life for the girl. Otherwise, I’m going to rip your head off those scrawny shoulders and take her home with me. What do you say to that offer?”
Chapin shook his head gently, almost sadly, then said:
“I have a counter offer for you, Faelin. Look around.”
And Faelin did. Behind him the assembled pakeha had drawn into a semicircle. No one carried weapons, but fists were clenched and faces were stern.
From in the midst of that crowd of disapproval, old Farmer Lamont shook his gray head.
“We don’t do things that way, Faelin. Jocelyn has the right to make up her mind who she wants to marry. If she wants to marry Chapin—for whatever reason—we support her, especially since Chapin wants to marry her, too, and no other woman has a claim on him.”
There was a murmur of uneasy male laughter as if to say “What man in his right
Faelin spat. “You talk of claims, of rights, Lamont. I thought Aotearoa had no laws.”
“No government,” Lamont said with a slight stress on the second word. “Law is not the same as government. Law is the rules by which a society decides to live. What we support here is the right of every human to decide his or her own life, free of some governing body asserting its rights over theirs.”
“And my rights?” Faelin countered. “Seems like since I’ve come here, everyone has been steering me to do things their way. I can’t get a bag of flour or a pig or a few days’ work on my land without trotting about doing everyone else’s bidding.”
“Your rights are yours,” Lamont expounded, shades of the lawyer he had once been in his intonation. “You can make your own flour or raise your own pigs or work your own land, but if you want to make someone else do something, then you’d better have the means to enforce your will. Seems to me that when you’re accusing us of making you do our bidding, what you’re really complaining about is that you can’t make us do your bidding.”
“There’s no law against my way,” Faelin sneered.
“No law,” Lamont agreed, “but we don’t like your manners much.”
Faelin swung on his heel to look at Jocelyn. She was holding on to Chapin’s arm, her posture protective. Whatever Chapin had paid for her, he’d bought her well and good.
“Damn you all,” he said to no one in particular.
He spotted Simon on the edge of the crowd, Roto sitting on his feet.
“C’mon, Simon. We’re cutting out of here.”
Simon shook his head.
“Not me. I’ve got dancing to do.”
Faelin stared at him, then he stormed out past the circle of torchlight and into the darkness beyond. The buckskin was at least tied up and waiting. Tacking it up, he swung into the saddle.
As he rode off, he heard a wave of laughter and the music starting up again. Angrily, he turned the horse’s head not west toward the claim, but north to Auckland.
Bandits stole the buckskin two days later, taking also Faelin’s boots, his leather belt with its brass buckle, and the trade trinkets from his pockets. Almost as an afterthought, one ugly fellow made him strip out of his party clothes, tossing him a ragged shirt in trade.
Faelin made the rest of the way to Auckland half-naked and on bare feet. He hobbled into town and discovered that there was no police or soldiery interested in his sorrows. A group of bounty hunters paid him in secondhand shoes and trousers for information on the bandits. They weren’t interested in his joining them, though.
“Get a horse,” one said, “maybe then.”
Faelin turned to robbery. After one nasty beating when he underestimated the strength of the man he planned to assault, he humbled himself to laborer’s work. He stayed away from the docks, though, lest someone who’d known him in better days recognize him.
Summer wasn’t too bad, nor was autumn, but winter came in wet and chill. After nearly dying of hypothermia one night, Faelin traded some of his earnings to bunk in a barracks. He was robbed there, set back to almost the same naked condition in which he’d arrived in Auckland six months before.
He began to dream of Richmont as one might a fairyland. No one had robbed him there—not even though he and Simon were two men alone and known to be rich. Folk had even been kind, after a fashion. Oddly enough
