SYNOPSIS ( Excerpt)

The Captive Wife (Vintage)

‘The pa at Te Namu was very small but also secure. It sat on a plateau, like the top of a very high table, on a rocky outcrop of the coast, almost surrounded by vertical cliffs. Around this, runs hollowed out land, some sixty yards wide, separating it from the mainland.

Like a moat?

Yes Adie, perhaps that is how you’d describe it. Across the way is cleared space where the gardens grow: kumara, sweet potato, yams and gourds. From the top of the pa, which was very like a sentry box, invading forces could be seen long before they arrived.

When I was placed in the enclosure at the edge of the pa, I felt great weariness. My head was painful from the blow I’d been struck, and I must have been weak from the loss of blood. I thought I might be allowed to live but nothing was certain, and a part of me was ready to let go, to simply sink into that other sleep from which there is no waking. Louisa lay in my arms, bruised and sad. Like me, she seemed ready to give up the ghost. I saw by her eyes that she was in great pain, but past crying. She held my finger with the frailest of grasps. And all of this time I didn’t know where John was.