Curado handed Marta the wooden crucifix he’d taken from her before (she took it silently and let it dangle from her hand). Then he watched them walk away, down the hill past the monastery: the Frenchman, his Indian woman and their child, like a small family of peasants, all they owned hanging from the horse’s pommel.

TWO PER MUSKET IS THE STANDARD RATE

Claus von Rolt’s head was tattooed and then cut off high on the neck. His brain was removed and the cavity filled with flax and gum, the nostrils too, then his eyes were scooped out and the sockets plugged with the same fibrous paste, and the lids were sewn shut. His tongue was thrown to a dog. A fire was lit and stones were heated in it; Rolt’s head was buried with the hot stones until the moisture had been steamed out. Afterwards, his head was recovered and smoked over another fire, then hung and left to dry out completely in the sun and wind.

The Ngāti Kuri had Rolt and the six other heads they’d collected that morning on the shipwrecked beach, plus the heads of four more bodies the sea had washed up. Tattooed, smoked and preserved, their skin turned dark brown and blackened, their hair matted and darkened coal black too, noses stretched, ears shrivelled, and ragged, bone-white teeth protruded from between thinned, retracted lips that were curled gruesomely. It was impossible to tell they weren’t Māori, or that the tattooed markings were a fabrication and meaningless.

Through an interpreter, the chief of the Ngāti Kuri told the Englishman James Crowell the story of their recent battle with a rival tribe, of the fearsome warriors they had bravely faced and slain, of the blood that had been spilled. He indicated where the imaginary battle had taken place. (Crowell turned and looked to where the chief pointed, seeing all that was described to him and laying it down in his memory. He would embellish and retell the story later to his eager collectors.) When the chief finished his story, he pointed to the eleven toi moko that had been stuck to wooden stakes driven into the ground. He said, ‘Eleven muskets.’

The Englishman James Crowell listened to the interpreter. He shook his head and held up two fingers.

‘Two heads,’ Crowell said, nodding towards the toi moko. Now he held up a forefinger. ‘One musket.’ He put an imaginary rifle to his shoulder. ‘Tell the chief it’s the standard rate.’

The chief of the Ngāti Kuri frowned. His warriors stared intently at the Englishman. A few walked around and came to stand nearer, tall and muscled and fearsome. Every hair on James Crowell’s body tightened at the root.

The chief spoke again and crossed his arms.