Solomon's Song by Bryce Courtenay Read Free Book Online Page B

in the same place, for in the moonlight he watches as the woman loosens the neck cord and allows her feather cloak, the sign of a highborn Maori, to fall at her feet.
    In the silvered air Hawk can see that she is still as beautiful as when she first came to him. He can remember almost every word Hinetitama said to him that first night so long ago. ‘Oh, Black Maori, I have wanted you so very long. I have eaten you with my eyes and I have tasted you in my heart a thousand times. I have moaned for you alone in my blanket and my mouth has cried out to hold your manhood. My breasts have grown hard from longing for you and I have brought pleasure to myself in your name.’
    Hawk’s throat aches suddenly, for he can think only of Maggie Pye, her sweetness and her brash and unashamed love for him. Maggie so different to this beautiful shadow in the night.
    Now the moonlight throws a silver sheen across her skin and he can see the curve of her breasts and stomach. It is as if he is within a dream repeated, each detail the same as before even though so much has changed in him.
    Hinetitama crosses the small hut and she lifts his blanket and lies beside him. ‘I have never forgotten you, Black Maori,’ she whispers into Hawk’s ear. She begins to kiss him, as she did before, across his chest and belly, moving lower and lower. Hawk feels himself grow hard. ‘Oh, Maggie, forgive me,’ he moans silently, for Hinetitama’s mouth has reached his trembling hardness and now it engulfs him. Hawk thinks that he will die with the pleasure of her lips and, just when he feels he can bear it no longer, she withdraws and her hand guides him into her so that she now sits astride him. Hawk begins to moan softly.
    ‘Black Hawk, have you learned nothing from your pakeha women?’ she laughs. ‘You must wait for me, there is a twice greater pleasure when the moment is shared.’
    ‘Aye,’ Hawk gasps, and then adds in the Maori tongue, ‘But I am only a mortal man.’ He can see the flash of her white teeth as she laughs and the fine curve of her neck and the sheen of moonlight as it catches the rounded slant of her shoulder.
    ‘Ah, but did you say this to your Maggie Pye?’ She laughs again.
    Hawk’s eyes open in sudden surprise. ‘Maggie! You know of Maggie?’ he exclaims.
    ‘See how I have caused you to wait.’ Hinetitama laughs again. ‘It is not so hard to contain your pleasure when your mind is distracted.’
    ‘Yes, but how? How do you know of Maggie?’ Hawk repeats urgently.
    ‘The Maori are everywhere, Black Hawk. Our men are sailors on the whaling ships and those that bring timber to Sydney. Many of our women are widows who have lost their husbands in the wars against the pakeha and so remain barren and unloved for lack of men, some have been taken by the pakeha sailing captains to Sydney.’ She laughs. ‘As a lover I can’t say you have improved, but you have become a great fighter since you left us, a great man who is known by all the Maori in Sydney. You also honoured my tribe when you took Johnny Heki to train you, he is a Maori with my moko. Ah, Black Hawk, there is much we know of you, for you are one of us and they are our Gods who protect you now and forever.’
    Hawk, taken by surprise at the mention of Maggie’s name, has lost much of his tumescence. Hinetitama’s voice takes on a mocking quality. ‘First you cannot wait for me, now you wait too long,’ she teases softly. ‘Black Hawk, if you do not make love to me better than this, I shall think your Maggie Pye has taught you nothing.’
    With her words and her laughter and her permission to love her free of the constraints of Maggie’s memory, she withdraws and lies beside him and Hawk enters her again and now he releases his sadness and his grief for his sweet Maggie and for Tommo’s death in Hinetitama’s wild and generous loving.
    ‘Ah, Black Hawk, I was wrong,’ Hinetitama sighs at last. ‘The pakeha woman with the bird in her hair, this